We've got ourselves some serious stuff this week, folks. The quest is turning out to be even questier than we thought. And an Elite? Do people even know what that is if they haven't played WoW? Is that a thing in other games? I mean, besides Halo, because that's a different sort of deal. You see the tangent I went on in the description there? Yeah, that was to prepare you for this week's episode. It's tangent-y ... tangentful? Tangentional. Yeah, that sounds right.

We're starting a new book this week! I'm very excited to be moving into book 2, which I feel like solves a lot of the issues the crew had with book 1, but I suppose only time will tell. It's time for race and class selection, and while some choices won't be surprising anyone, a couple might give our newbies pause (Paws? No, definitely pause.).

We finished the first book this week, and my oh my are there feelings about this one. After we work through all the trauma there, we've also got a couple of achievements to hand out and a little talk about the future of the show. So stay tuned through the end to hear what's happening next.

Mike had to miss this one, but he sent in some thoughts that I added in at the beginning of the episode. Beyond that, this penultimate delve into the dungeon is an interesting one. We meet The Maestro and go on Death Watch Extreme Dungeon Mayhem. With a name like Death Watch Extreme Dungeon Mayhem, it has to be good. Glurp, glurp!

The rage elemental arrives, and the rage elemental is no more. Carl exploits a bug (or feature?) in the game to take down a high-level monstrosity, and our podcast crew is here for it (well, mostly). We're in the home stretch now, just a couple more episodes until the end of the book. So how well can these folks predict where things are headed?

Despite the entire podcast crew being sure it is certain to happen any moment, the Meadowlark party of old folks is still alive and kicking ... well, alive anyway. But the way these chapters end seems likely to be the moment that everything changes. It's like the Fire Nation is about to attack. Also, Hi, Zev!

So the Odette interview was ... a thing, well, a couple of things, really. The crew overall seems to find that pretty interesting, to the point where coming back to the dungeon and discovering that the second floor was more or less identical to the first came as something of a disappointment. All is not lost though as we make our approach to the first boss fight of Floor 2.

Jennifer had to miss this episode for a charity event, and it's a shame because this was a big one. We finished floor 1, fought a borough boss, and then we came up with something for listeners who leave us a 5 star review. It's ... a thing. A thing for certain. So make sure you listen through the end so you don't miss it.