BtV Tier 84: April Fools!!!

I missed the fun last week, but here are links to the latest Remastered Tier of Beyond the Veil. Tier 84 is full of early April hijinks, as the rest of the BtV crew discusses the latest equal opportunity fashions, as well as the latest Game Director's Letter from Joel Bylos, mysteriously still dated from March. Listen in on the fun, and don't forget we webcast again tonight, when I'm sure the latest Investigation Missions pack will the toast of the show.

You can wait for me to post about our latest remastered episodes. . .

Or you can subscribe to the show through Holosuite Media's RSS feed, through iTunes (with older episodes here), and through Stitcher. You can catch the live show tonight and every Thursday at about 7p.m. EDT (11p.m. UTC) on Holosuite Excess. Beyond the Veil is produced by "Xander Hayes" and Holosuite Media.

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S(ecre)t. Paddy's Day

There were just five Knights of Mercy who survived yesterday's green-tinted festivities to show up for our weekly get-together: Syp, Scooter, Tenten, Mogsy, and me. Monday evening counted as part of TSW's Scenario Weekend, promoting these (somewhat) randomized instances with 150% Aurei of Initiation rewards (commonly known as "Oreos"). Tenten declared that he wanted to run Hotel Group Normal to complete the "Warriors of the Dawn" achievement, and we ended up running all three scenarios (Mansion and Castle are the other two) at that level. I feel the need to briefly explain that the three locales are places encountered in each of the major regions of the game, but modified for the purposes of the scenarios, which are meant to prepare both the players and the characters for the upcoming Tokyo "expansion." The goal is to keep as many "survivors" alive until the end of the scenario, which lasts several hours in-universe. Each successful scenario lasts about 21 minutes in real time. If all the survivor NPCs are killed, the scenario ends immediately in a failure.

Meanwhile, I had to scramble to put together something for St. Paddy's de la mode, which led to this rough-and-tumble get-up. It fits the battle axe (hammer) I wielded all evening, bashing the bad holograms. For my efforts, and the efforts of my comrades in arms, we all got the "Warriors of the Dawn" achievement and accompanying T-shirt. In addition, Syp earned enough Oreos to purchase an epic Shotgun weapon.

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Secret Monday and the Alliance of Awesome

I thought I was going to be the first out of the gate with this. But when you actually have to put on pants to go to work, you sometimes miss the scoop. Both Syp and Tententacles have already posted about the exploits (or lack thereof) of the Knights of Mercy on last night's Secret Monday session. In fact, I'll be damned if Tenten didn't take my intended tack and introduce some new players on the team. Syp is in full-on tourist mode, with some excellent shots of various details in Manhattan.

Our little group looks quite impressive in the harsh headlights of an abandoned car. And honestly, we do pretty well against the trash and mini bosses of the NYC raid. Of course, we are no match for Mega-Cthulhu with only eight undergeared characters. But we look good, and as Fernando would tell you, that is of utmost importance.

Speaking of looking good, let's interrupt this regularly scheduled post with another regularly scheduled post: Monde la mode. With the black turtlenecks now dropping from Flappy's bladder sac (wth?), there is finally something that looks good under the ritual coat. (I've heard that the black items used to be available for purchase with 3rd-Age currency, but are now only available from gutting the Flapmeister.) Dortmunder started out the evening in an all-black mixed ensemble, but later switched to match Dex-y's coolness. (Yes, as mentioned before, Scooter and I are THAT couple.) Thanks to the Secret Store selection introduced for Valentine's Day, you'll notice the wedding bands we now sport on our left hands in the left-hand pic.

A couple weeks ago, at the suggestion of Scarybooster, several different intersecting communities formed a more formal relationship that has become known as the Alliance of Awesome. I am technically part of at least three of these guilds, though I am only active in the Knights of Mercy. There are several benefits to this alliance; for instance, increased communication and coordination between these communities. Also, as folks migrate from one game to another, they will find ready groups of friends, even if their own guild is not active in the game. And the guilds that are active get an influx of interested players. KoM has migrated our TS activity to that of Multiplaying, and in the process "acquired" some new blood, in the persons of Zelibeli and Winin. Zeli just started a new character last night, and Winin is in Blue Mountain.

After our tourism raid—and a Flappy run wherein Dortmunder the healer got separated from everyone else—a few veteran KoMies joined Winin in a run through Hell Raised, the dungeon instance anchored in Savage Coast. He picked up quite a few nice pieces, including the awesome "Soul Crusher" hammer. Anyway, welcome to Winin and Zelibeli, and thank you for graciously hosting the Knights on TeamSpeak.

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Secret Monday: The Big Apple Takes a Bite Out of Us

Despite a little confusion and slow start, Secret Monday was full of activity. Unfortunately, Syp had to bow out early due to ailing offspring, but we hope he can join us next week. The rest of the Knights of Mercy got on about an hour before Flappy was scheduled to start, split into a couple groups and nailed the Mansion Scenario. (I won't say on what difficulty, but it wasn't Novice.) I had Scooter, Ocho, and Piddy in my group and we rocked it, even though I had severe enough lag that I got booted from Team Speak. Then it was time for Flappy(!), which we also rocked, though of course we had plenty of help from a very large group of people. Sorry, no pics of Flappy from tonight, but here's one from my first foray into the instance on LoneStarBelle when I happened to see Klaus Von Richter (a pillar of the Twitter RP community) running past.

Both Dex-y and Dortmunder got black turtlenecks from the writhing bladders that Flappy drops, which is cool, since Scooter and I are that dorky couple that often wear matching T-shirts. Ocho was the big winner though with a pair of Night Vision Goggles. I'd have a Monde la Mode shot, but I forgot again; and now it's late. Ocho then had the bright idea of checking out the NYC Raid. What follows is a series of shots from our trip through downtown to Times Square, which Ocho assured us is very faithful to the real thing, right down to some creeps you might actually find in the Big Apple.

This first shot shows our only two actual female players in the cabal: Laeyn (Mogsy) on the left, taking the heat off the rest of us; and Dex-y (Scooter) on the right, bringin' da forty-five caliber pain! I believe that's Thermic (Mr. Mogsy) there laying down on the job. Maric and Tenten rounded out the group, as seen below.

It didn't take long to get to the final boss (though we did die quite a few times on the way). These pics don't even do the environment here justice. Funcom has done an incredible job with this raid (not to mention the rest of The Secret World.)

We had absolutely no hope of defeating Mr. Grumpypants, given that we were three short and barely geared for nightmares. But it was fun running and spamming F12 to get all the screenshots we could before dying.

We totes look like we're ready for him. No? Not even close?

The halo around Dortmunder's head signals his impending demise, yet again. But that shot alone was totally worth the repair bill.

Haha, dead before I even hit the ground.

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Secret Monday: Struggling With the Statuary

Last night was the night! Time for Dexy to face Uncle Oscar. While the rest of the Knights of Mercy ran scenarios, Scooter geared up and gathered the build she needed to take down the Gatekeeper. Magnetic Wipe, with its included purge, was the key ability in Dexy's Ele/Pistol build for the second phase of the DPS fight. Lots of dancing, throwing fireballs, and the Blam! Blam! of Dexy's Big Forty-Five.

In the end (of about two and a half hours), Oscar gave Scooter the golf clap and sent her packing.

For Monde la mode, Dexy looks ever-youthful—and ready for her Struggle with the Statuary—in her Streetfight Hoodie from the Fist inner wheel and grey-blue Cargo Pants from Pangea, along with large red-frame shades, red lace-up gumboots—and Streetwear Samurai headphones, so she doesn't have to listen to Dortmunder's armchair quarterbacking.

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Secret Monday Was a Nightmare

The Knights of Mercy met yet again for Secret Monday. Scooter took the night off due to an early morning, and so I was "bach-in' it" for the evening. With Syp having just completed the Gatekeeper challenge, we gathered up the first 5 Knights that came on and decided to cut our NM teeth on Polaris. FOr me it was the first time in a Nightmare level, and wow, they aren't kidding with the name. In all honesty, we got our butts handed to us repeatedly by the first very first boss. Syp's GK victory had occurred so early yesterday that he was fighting a losing battle with the ZZZ Monster, and bowed out before we got locked out of the Instance.

Hey we're all wearing Orochi Uniforms; what could go wrong?

By then Pid was on and we decided to knock out a filth run one-shotted the first couple bosses, and then came up against our second serious challenge of the night. The filth puppy wasn't the hard part. Flappy pooping all over the group proved our downfall.

I've got a little criticism for Funcom on this particular event. To engage the players, you need high intrinsic rewards (e.g., fun, novel gameplay) and/or high extrinsic rewards (e.g., loot) The current Nightmare "Enter the Filth Phase 2" provides neither. The fights were fun, in the regular version, but quickly became repetitive. The fight in the NM are not more fun, just more challenging, but the loot is not commensurate with the increase in effort. Funcom needs to either bring the rewards up to at least the equivalent of Elites—or better yet, NM, or revamp the fights completely, or those tentacles will still be there months from now. I'm guessing it would be easier to change the loot table.

Action! Sorry, WickedTryx was offscreen.

Not wanting to end Secret Monday (or this post) on a low note, we decided to run a scenario (that I didn't get any pics of) without the Uniforms on. We had a blast blasting stuff in the Castle.

I also wanted to say—and I may elaborate later—this is what guilds are for me, a group of friends that get together to help each other, cheer each other on, celebrate our victories, and laugh through our defeats. Basically, to have fun. Any more serious tone would be (has been) a turn off. If I want to feel like I'm working, I'd rather get paid for it.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Winter Wonderland

I spent some time last night hanging out with my friends from Beyond the Veil, recording the last episode of the year. While we were talking about the latest event, Krampusnacht, I bought some festive garb for my clotheshorse, LoneStarBelle. I even got her to pose for a pic in Carpathian Fangs, although she wasn't happy about it:

Secret Monday: Dortmunder's Destroyers

Far be it for me to claim ownership, but the Knights of Mercy did pretty well this past Monday evening. A hiatus from the Slaughterhouse may have helped, but two smooth runs through the Ankh Elite and Hell Eternal boosted our confidence. In addition, we checked one more block on Syp's Elite dance card, and finished off Ocho's, who [EDIT]is now ready to confront ran circles around Uncle Oscar. Not much say about the fights, but I got a couple screenies.

Mogsy didn't take kindly to Dr. Klein's shenanigans, and taunted him into coming down and fighting Dortmunder's Destroyers himself, upon which the team lived up to its name. Game. Set. Match.

With a slight change to the line-up, the Destroyers quelled an attempted overthrow of Hell, leaving Theodore Wicker to pick up the pieces. (We kind of look like Power Rangers in this pic.)

In this pic, we see just how unimpressed Wickedtryx is with the soon-to-fall angel, Eblis.

Since Everything Is True, you can't go wrong with wearing a Secret World T-shirt in the Secret World.

A little bit of de la mode, even though these weren't from Monday. First, Dortmunder sports a tropical vacation get-up, while Dex-y wears an outfit that reminds me of a rainy afternoon.

In the last week, we also finished the last of the issue achievements: Digging Deeper (Issue 2). Dex-y wears those headphones much of the time now, so she doesn't have to listen to Dortmunder.

Secret Monday: Slaughtered

This somewhat delayed post is brought you at the behest of my BtV crewmate, Galactrix, who doesn't want to go a week without an update from Secret Mondays and the Knights of Mercy.

As I mentioned last week, the only thing standing between Double D* and the Gatekeeper is the Slaughterhouse, which Tententacles had graciously volunteered to tank for us. After making some plans on Twitter in the morning, Fire Team Bravo met up outside the Agartha portal at 8:30 CST and plunged in. Tenten tanked, of course. And I healed while Scooter, Ocho, and Syp brought the pain. We made short work off the first boss, Psychoassailant. Well, after wiping once or twice.

NKL-107 was a different story. This boss is notorious for being the hardest in the Elite Dungeons. Reading up on the forums, there are, of course, people who say he's not that hard and the rest of us just need to learn to play. Those people are assholes. Of course we need to learn to play. However, just because they may have figured it out already doesn't give anyone the right to belittle other players looking for help. Not that I think NKL needs to be nerfed or anything, but it is weird that this fight seems more difficult than the rest of the Elite dungeons, by a wide margin—including the rest of the Slaughterhouse.

Anyway, I had been through the dungeon at least once with LoneStarBelle and members of Beyond the Veil, led by Galactrix. The tactics we used were different than what Tententacles was accustomed to. Tenten's strategy involves ignoring the adds (here I am assuming you are familiar with the fight) until NKL goes into his kill-everything plasma burst, then drag the adds into the "meatlocker" at one corner of the room. This seems like a viable tactic at first. But then we always seemed to get too many adds and a few would break loose and kill the healer, or one of NKL's other abilities (10,000 Volts) would one-shot the tank and then the healer. We tried many times to do it his way; Scooter said it was about two hours.

We then attempted to use Galactrix' method. I may not have explained it very well, having only seen it in action once or twice. But it involves having a second tank drag two or three adds off right away and shut them down with DPS in the meatlocker, then rinse and repeat until most or all of them are kaput. In this method, little damage is done to the boss until the adds are all out of the way. This also seems to delay the plasma burst boss ability until near the end of the fight, but that only be my perception.

In both strategies, controlling the number of active adds at any given time is critical. Too many adds can overwhelm the tank's ability to keep aggro, and the healer is usually next in line on the aggro table. I don't know for sure, but the 10 Kilovolts one-shot may hinge on the number of active adds, as well.

In any event, we were unsuccessful in bringing down NKL-107 on Monday night, even after Mogsy stepped in to tank, with a minor shuffling of roles. We'll make another attempt this coming Monday, if my KoMies are willing.

This week's Mon de la mode is brought to you by Aten Glitch, the amazing new fashion sensation that renders part or all of you invisible. Yes, as you can see, donning my Desert Dress Casual shirt led to the disappearance of my elbows. And you know it was real because even my shadow had no elbows. This was seen by my compatriots and was verified by Tenten on his own character, Chucho.

*Dex-y and Dortmunder

Secret Monday: Cast Off Works of Darkness, and Put on the Armor of Light

I wasn't going to write about Secret Monday because I felt like I was barely on last night, but Ten Tentacles and MMO Gamer Chick inspired me. Scooter and I finished two of our last three Issue missions on Dex-y and Dortmunder, just as the rest of the Knights of Mercy were coming online. For Dortmunder, I still needed Darkness War Elite, and both Dex-y and Dort need Slaughterhouse before confronting the Gatekeeper. With Thanksgivukkah this week, our schedules are a little wonky, and Scooter bowed out of the KoM speed-record-breaking trip through Darkness War. I felt a little bad getting help from my friends and then not sticking around, but my departure did make room for Ocho to join the group for a breezy Ankh run.

According to Tenten and Mogsy, the conversation after I logged off turned to the Augment system and the enormous grind for AP it is. Like me, Mogsy is not really focusing on it right now, because she is not finished with the regular ability wheel either. While I am sure there are obsessive fans who will have their Augments complete before Tokyo opens, I believe the developers' intent is for the Augment system to serve as a point sink for the foreseeable future. That is, player characters will not need to be decked out in full top tier augments and gear to do well in Tokyo. Missions in Tokyo will also be a significant source of points, so players will have the opportunity to fill in their aux and aug wheels organically rather than grind specifically to get them.

Props to Tilty and crew for fixing a few quality of life issues and player requests in the latest patch, including the proper stacking of disassembled mats, weapon skins in the Secret Store, and (ironically) hiding weapons out of combat.

Mon de la mode was not that avant-garde for me, as I spent the evening in Exorcist garb, even though I was not the group healer. Thanks to Mogsy for the top pic, and Tenten for the one directly above. Also, thanks to Maric and Thermic for filling out the DW group.

Tenten promised to tank a Slaughterhouse run next week for me and Scooter. I'll likely heal, rather than DPSing as I did for DW. Then I am planning to do the Healing version of Gatekeeper, since I did DPS on LoneStarBelle. I think I will also research a bit more prior to meeting him, so I can optimize my build and strategy ahead of time.

Secret Monday: Just What Are These Venetians Up To?

Ermagerd, 500th Post!!

Because of busy weekend activities, Scooter and I didn't get around to running the new Scenarios until last night. As it was, even though normally we're online quite a bit earlier than the rest of the Knights of Mercy, it didn't work out that way last night, and we basically only had time to organize/empty out inventories before starting the big event. The usual suspects trickled on and we formed like Voltron. Able team consisted of Tenten, Syp, Ocho, Scooter, and me. Baker team was headed up by Mogsy, with Grace, Pagan, Pid, and Mr.Mogsy in tow. LOL We have such awesome Matrix names. We seem to have divided up this way a lot lately, I think Able works well together, and I appreciate them putting up with my occasional noobishness. (Noobality? Noobosity?)

In any event, Able ran through the normal duo version of each Scenario. In case you haven't done them yet, they are roughly the same Scenario in different locales, find and protect two or three groups of survivors from several waves of nasties, at either the Hotel Wahid, the Franklin Mansion or the Castle Dracula. We did OK, getting Silver for the first two, and Gold for the Castle, once we had a better handle on how things flow. As Tenten said last night, "Any Scenario you can walk away from is a success." But considering we were running a group of five through a Scenario supposedly tuned for two, saying the scenarios are difficult is an understatement.

Needless to say, the Scenarios require yet another re-analysis of one's deck and talismans. DPS used to "all attack all the time" in Elites and Nightmares will find their health woefully inadequate, since normal group mechanics don't apply. Tanks won't have too much problem, but may need to up the DPS ante and grab a few self heals. This is definitely where a hybrid "Unity" build will be handy. Healers probably already know they need to switch it up.

But even with that understanding, the Scenarios are difficult. So much so that the forums have blown up with criticism of the design that Joel Bylos himself has seen the need to respond. Unfortunately, his response was tantamount to "L2P nubs," which the playerbase didn't take kindly to. I pondered it a bit after having run through last night, and here's my thought: these Scenarios are supposed to prepare us for Tokyo. Much like Elites, the Gatekeeper, and Nightmares, players will not be able to stroll in and Pwn the content the first time through. Where would be the fun in that? The gear (Augments) and skills necessary to excel in the Scenarios is contained in the scenarios themselves. Purple 10.4 gear would probably help, too. Perhaps a fully augmented team with plenty of experience will have not trouble with it, but folks going through for the first or the tenth time will not be so fortunate. Nor should they be.

Not that I don't have issues with the Scenarios. The whole thing reminds me of The Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland, a ride touted as a grand new thing with random variable elements that meant no two trips through would be the same. Except that all the random elements were dressing, and some were so complicated that the ride frequently broke down and remained closed for hours and even days. Eventually, the variables were pared down. Not that it's not a fun ride; I go aboard whenever I visit Disneyland. But from a rider's perspective, I don't think it was that innovative, and Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion are still my two favorites.

So far, we only have one basic Scenario: Round up survivors and protect them from the angry hordes. The scenery changes and there are other variables, but it's all the same ride. I have to assume there are more waiting in the wings, because even with random weather and other variables, I can't imagine this holding anyone's interest for long before it turns into an unpleasant—yet unavoidable—grindfest.

For those of us who have not completed the Ability Wheel or the Skill Table, the Scenarios and Augment system present a dilemma: where to devote SP and AP. If my theory of the scenarios requiring Augments for major pwnage is correct, I don't know if it would be better to perfect and Augment a Scenario Deck or continue plugging away at the Wheel. One hundred ten AP can go a long way around. I also have yet to find out if the augments are permanently tied to individual abilities, or if they As Magson elucidates in the comments below, Augments can be swapped in and out like talismans, weapons, and abilities themselves. Of course I prefer the latter case, because 110 AP is also a lot of points to waste on an accidental misapplication.

All in all, though, I think the Scenarios are a great addition to the available activities in The Secret World. I just hope that Funcom quickly builds on this momentum. Again as Tenten has said, "Welcome to Venice, bitches."

Secret Somvār: Celebrating Samhain in Style

I just realized that this 186th post of the year marks 3x the number of posts I made in 2011.

I would have had this out sooner, but some of us work for a living. The "SAH-win" event is in full swing this week in The Secret World; and what better way to spend Secret Monday with the Knights of Mercy than traipsing across the landscape of Solomon Island like some insane (and slightly drunk) parade on the trail of some juicy urban legends? Because as you know, in the Secret World, EVERYTHING IS TRUE.

We started the night out by organizing a couple NM runs of the Cat God instance, a repeat of Samhain 2012. As it turns out, as long as at least one person is Gatekeeper qualified, the whole group can get into the nightmare version of the instance, which in fact is not particularly hard. In our group, I healed on Dortmunder while Chucho tanked, with Solaris, Dex-y, and Yeti providing DPS. Scooterz ended up with a set of 10.1 pistols for Dex-y, which she promptly put to good use. On our second run something glitched and we only ended up in the regular version of the Cat God fight, which yields no reward if you're doing the associated quest. The Mogsys headed up the other group run, with more success on purple drops and kitties.

No pics of most of the rest of the evening, where we ran around zombieland collecting "Penny Dreadfuls" for Danny Dufresne's Tales of Solomon Island mission. We got most of them before it got too late, I think Scooterz and I have three or four to go. We ended the evening with an attempt at summoning SuperJack, a Guardian size pumpkin head. As seen in the pic above, we got the ritual done correctly. But it bugged out, so no Jack.

Solaris got on the #Halloween chat channel and found another SuperJack fight going on, so we met up with another player and did battle with the squash until we smote his ruin upon the pumpkin patch. (I got smitten a couple times myself. Most of us got credit for completing the ritual and defeating Jack, except for Ocholivis, who was dead himself at the time of Jack's downfall. This is another glitch I have not seen often. During the Anniversary event, we got credit for the Guardian kill even if we were dead. On the other hand, the most recent group Filth clean-up event gives no credit if you're not on the platform at the time of the final boss' defeat. The game is down for extended maintenance this morning as they fix several bugs, so maybe this problem will be solved, too.

Anyhoo, for Monday de la Mode, we have two outfits. The left hand set that we wore most of the evening were rewards for completing our Storyline missions. Dex-y is in Weiss Knight with the Streetwear Samurai headphones, as seen worn by Rose White and Mei Ling in the cinematic game trailers. Dortmunder has on Crowley's Glad Rags as worn by Alex McCall in the cinematics. In the right-handset set, we have the Baron Samedi voodoo suits as worn by Irusan and received as reward for completing the Cat God mission chain. Yes, we're the sort of silly couple that wears the same T-shirts IRL, as well. ;-P

Secret Monday: . . . and What Are We Doing in This Handbasket?

This week for the Knights of Mercy Secret Monday event, our fearless leader, Maric (aka "Solaris") needed to finish just one more elite before taking on Oscar the Gatekeeper: Hell Eternal. Since we had five people on and LoneStarBelle needed the dungeon, as well, I jumped at the chance to join up. Mogsy and Mr. Mogsy jumped on a bit after we started and did their own thing. We're tiny but mighty.

We started out with me in the healing role—using my new Necromancer Deck—and Chucho tanking. That worked OK for the first couple boss battles, though Piddy-Cent's mega-DeePS got him one-shotted a couple times. Unfortunately, since the Necromancer depends heavily on Assault Rifle damage to set up leech heals, but many of the later bosses have damage reflecting shields, Necro was not an effective combination. LSB doesn't have enough healing gear to support a Blood/Fist build, so Pid took on the healer role, while I switched to AoE/DPS Support (a role I am very comfortable with).

It took a while to get through all the fights (with several wipes). But in the end, we were victorious! Tententacles (Chucho) commented on how great it is to run through these dungeons with a patient group of people. I find my patience lasts much longer when folks are pulling together than when they are playing the blame game. I know I had to re-examine my build a couple times, and discovered that LSB has a 10% Purge chance on a certain passive ability I'd never looked very closely at. Chucho had plenty of self-criticism, but he did a fine job tanking. I wish I could have healed better. Thanks go out to Chucho, Piddy-Cent, Solaris, and WickedTryx for a fun run through Hell.

You've seen the other pictures, but here is my ensemble for Monday de la Mode. I call it Kentucky Kick-Ass: brown and white strapless blouse and corset; hat and jeans from the New West outfit, all available from the "Secret Store"; brown ruffle heels from Pangaea; and sunglasses from the Lumie Bounty Hunter Deck.