Blessing of Grand

The Blessing of Grand is a potentially suspicious player activity recently observed on various servers, in which heroic, epic and improved epic XP stones are handed out to characters.

1st level characters claiming to be Acolytes or missionaries of the word of Grand approach and send tells to characters in various public areas. Usually starting with "Hail Friend" or Hail Mylady". The Acolytes then ask if the character has heard the word of Grand, or that they have come to give the blessing of Grand to the character, and then open up a trade window. The trade window will contain any number of XP stones, the most reported thus far being 9 heroic stones. The "Acolytes" they tend to send another form-written to tell to describe the background of the benefactor including elaborate titles and several claimed achievements.

The number of follow up tells can vary but usually include various versions of encouragement to use the Blessings of Grand to become more powerful until the character is "GRAND" as well and tells the recipient that they are now a "Grand Fellow".

Initially, there was confusion as to whether this was some form of underground marketing. However, SSG community manager Cordovan confirmed on 7/9/2020 that this is not an official SSG campaign. He goes on further to say that it may involve violations of DDO Terms of Services by those involved. Therefore, receivers of stones be warned as it is unclear whether the xp Stones granted are legitimate or the tainted fruit of an ongoing exploit.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/517851-Blessings-of-(removed)-are-these-SSG-PR-event?p=6357663#post6357663