Everquest Southern Armada Week Twenty Eight

03/09/03 Week TwentyEight

Logged straight into Garakk, ran around all the POP zones, got a wee group in Plane of Justice exit and started to bash stuff. Man I wish there was somewhere else I could go as a tank and stand a reasonable chance of getting a group. Unfortunately I think I am stuck in POJ till at least 54 when hopefully I may start to get groups in Plane of Valor / Plane of Storms etc. I am not asking to be power leveled or anything silly, just an alternate location where I am possibly going to find a group for XP that doesn‘t involve the POJ exit. Oh and Garakk got himself a Trial rune!. Just need to do the hand in for the flag!

I am going to try and get Garakk a Sebilis key this weekend as well so I have another location I can check for groups. I am also going to get a 3rd key so I put a tracker in there as I am going to be needing sinews from Trakanon shortly.

As I was standing toe to toe with nasty prisoners in the Plane of Justice and handing them the beat down they so richly deserve, the Guild message of the day came up. “Raid target today will be the Tower of Solusek Ro, all 5 Mini’s are up” WOOT!, flaggage and not back flagging!. I had managed to be in on a Xuzl kill a month or so ago in a pickup raid but had never been able to tag along on any other mini raids. I told my group I needed to go and logged into Ulaa and ran into the Tower.

We formed up fast and started to clear the trash. I really,really wish I could somehow get a good shot of the views of this zone, unfortunately I would have to do it as a separate linked page to be able to do it justice. I would have to leave the ScreenShot at its original resolution to really get the effect and the file would be huge. Suffice it to say that its magnificent. The massive stone pillars stand amidst the vast pools of lava. Huge staircases rise high into the distance that almost seems to shimmer in the heat haze.

The first significant MOB we came up against was a Magma giant.

There seem to be a number of these guys scattered about the zone. We ganked several of them on the way to our first target, The Protector of Dresolik.

There are also a large number of trash named’s on the way, kind of an oxymoron really, a trash named.

Grezou

Veleroth

I got more pics, but I will limit them to two as they are all largely the same. One question, Dresolik has Guardians and a Protector, who and where is Dresolik himself? NOTE* this question is answered here*.

Guardian of Dresolik

We ganked a butt load of these guys, they must have significant HP as even with a full raid beating on them their HP bar was dropping very slowly.

For some reason as we were getting to the last of them, myself and Sorchak were summoned to the back of the room we were fighting in and I got beaten like a red headed step child. I have no idea why. I managed to get an FD off and lay there as the Guardian that summoned me made his way back to the main raid for his beating. I was just thinking of popping up again and rejoining the raid when The Protector popped. Guess where?, right on my head of course.

I knew he was about to be pulled so I just stayed down. About 2 seconds before the pull was inc, a spell hit me, broke FD and the Protector dropped me in half a second. I died, and I have no idea how any of the sequence of events began, why I was summoned and/or what broke my FD, but it was unpleasant.

The Protector of Dresolik

I am still grinning today. I have had 4 1/2 hours sleep, had a busy day at work and I am STILL grinning!. Why you ask?. The Protector was gracious enough to drop a Wand of the Firestorm and the officers of Southern Armada were kind enough to award it to me!. Why is this significant you ask?, simple really. The Effect on this item is the best DOT enhancement in the entire game and it is unique to the Wand.

Plus it has little fire effects!, I have sooooo wanted a something with little effects dripping from it. I didn‘t really care what the item was as long as it had a little graphical effect :). Many, many people said many very nice things to me after I was awarded it. /bow to all of SA, thank you!.

We ported out and back to the zone start and began to fight our way towards Rizlona. Another couple of hundred MOB’s tried to bar our way and were summarily executed.

An Efreeti Noble

An Inferno Fiend

These models are just so cool. It would be awesome to be able to take a tour of all of these zones, completely invisible to all of the mobs with full spell effects on and just take pictures.

Finally we make it to Rizlona and pull her…

Ooo this is going to be easy!

One thing I vaguely remember reading about many moons ago is the human that turns into a Dragon when she dies. POP this is her!. Took me a bit by surprise I can tell you!. One minute the human is dieing and the next there is a Dragon right in my face!,

Dragon Rizlona

Thank god it didn‘t take the tanks by surprise!, they thwacked her good and proper!. So once again we ported back to zone start and headed back towards Jiva. Much much trash was cleared until finally we came to Galremos.

Galremos

Getting to him was tough as you have to deal with pulls of 5-8 MOB’s at a time. Once you get to him tho he dies easy. Finally in this tower is Jiva himself.

Ooo-er Man Boobies!

Another port back and run through butt loads of trash to get to Arlyxir the Phoenix. I turned spell effects on for this guy to try and get the the full effect, he is beautiful. I wonder when SOE will learn that by tethering a MOB to its room you have effectively gimped them?.

Ngah Ngah cant touch me gimp boy

We ported out again and started to get ready for Xuzl. Now I know he is a fast kill, we would have dropped him in about 30 minutes tops. But as I already have the Xuzl flag and it was after 2.00AM, I had to pass and head for bed. We also have another raid tonight, hopefully there will be some Vex Thal goodness for us tonight!. Man I am going to feel like spattered shit tomorrow morning after two heavy raid nights. At least I can sit down with my bottle of whisky on Friday night, relax and raid in comfort in the secure knowledge I can sleep in the next day!.

I just have to make comment on the amount of PhatLewtz flowing into the guild at the moment. We have become so powerful and so much more organized that we are capable of blowing through MOB\’s that 6 months ago would have held us up all night. This means that on any given night we are getting multiple significant drops, the DPS of the guild has just gotten insane over the last few months.

Armor and weapons are being heavily improved by all tank’s, Kez and the officers are putting in huge work researching and learning the next target set, Kez is going on his infamous little “shopping trips” and handing out fantastic stuff to everyone he can, people are getting items and handing them in or making items for fellow guild mates for free, most of us casters are approaching full spell books, in short we rock and we are getting even more powerful almost daily!

To leave you with one final thought; What makes the guild stronger, makes me stronger. Vex Thal tonight!

No Vex Thal :(… Emperor!. Logged in amid much debate about whether another guild had gimped the Vex Thal warders. In the end it was decided to head to Ssraeshza Temple as the Emperor was up. So we zoned, formed up, and the raid was split up. Some of us headed to the Second floor to drop a commander, some of us fought up to the 3rd floor. In the end the two raids came together and we spent quite a bit of time smacking snakes around for 3rd floor pieces.

Ooo err a snake!, how unusual!

Finally, after we had keyed about another 6 people we headed into the Emperor’s room.

It looks so pretty and so peaceful…

We sorted ourselves out and Kez made the call,

And lo we brought him SNAKES!

Once everything was under control and we were good to go, we gathered in the Emperor and added another notch to our belts.

Having killed him several times now (6?) I can honestly say I don’t think I will ever get sick of watching him die. The time and effort need to get into his chamber is such that he needs to die about 100 times more to pay me back.

That was pretty much it for the pickup raid that night. SA went on to do a couple of MOB’s in Vex Thal later on but I was knackered and decided to call it an early one and logged about 12:30am

Friday I logged on full of pep and verve, stocked up with rum and whiskey, Coca Cola and ice, fully loaded and good to go. We were rewarded for our patience with all the stupid patch crap we have had to put up with in the last two weeks by a full Sol Ro Tower pop and an appearance by your favorite god and mine Agnarr the Storm Lord. Hey, anyone who keeps Karana caged and tortures him isn‘t all bad in my book!.

First up however was a run at one of my favorite zones, Sol Ro Tower. We headed straight towards Arlyxir the Phoenix. To get to him you have to clear a whole bunch of trash..

nothing gets really fascinating until you get to Galremos. He is quite a cool looking MOB and as you kill him he spawns little MagMites. So what I hear you say?, many mobs spawn adds as they die!, well the cool thing about Galremos is he gets smaller as he spawns them!.

Galremos

Once you get past him its time for Arlyxir, she knew we were coming, she was waiting for us.

She has met us once before and I don’t think she fears us yet, she will learn, oh yes she will! And like all MOB’s that try to stand up to the Armada, she ends up face down in a pyre of her own fire.

Next up we headed back towards the Protector of Dresolik. All of the SA Necromancers were frantically asking me to link the Wand of the Firestorm that had dropped from the Protector last week. We were, at this point, under the impression that he dropped the Wand every kill. Unfortunately we were disabused of this notion later on in the evening.

On the way through to The Protector we ran into the Trash Nameds again, LOTS of them. They sure look cool, but couldn’t they drop something for gods sake?, maybe a random piece of Ornate armour per named?. They aren’t exactly one group-able so it wouldn’t hurt the flow of Ornate into the game. Hell even the rarer pieces for trade skills per kill would be nice.

Instadis

Quazlith

Veleroth

Grezou

Naelizar in the middle of a full raid spell storm

Finally we make it to the Guardians of Dresolik. This time the clearing of them was a lot more efficient and we popped The Protector in record time (and no ugly summons for me!)

The Guardian of Dresolik

and then came the Protector, oops he fell over! So Sad

I\’m sure it took us about half the time to clear through to Dresolik than it did last week. So far we had dropped 2 named’s, a bunch of Mini’s and the PhatLewtz was beginning to flow again. Finally for Sol Ro, we headed to Xuzl’s lair and dropped him, hard and fast.

Once we were done with them, we had reports that Agnarr had popped. We still had a reasonable amount of back flagging to do for Agnarr, so Kez called the raid to BOT. We all made it to the Bastion of Thunder in record time, formed up and were inside within minutes of the call. Now usually the break into the first level is chaotic. There is Wizzies nuking the portals, offtanks taking on the roamers and Pooby smacking the resident named and people running about all over the place.

As soon as we went in I knew this Agnarr run was just going to be different. The Wizzies took out the portals fast, offtanks held their MOB’s, assists were called fast and clearly, we cleared the trash and started in on the Named within a minute. Within 2 minutes we were medding and getting ready for the next level of the tower. It was awesome to watch, like a well oiled machine in perfect motion. I doubt there is another Guild in the game who could have done it any better, as well maybe, but not better.

Evynd Firestorm

The same thing happened again on level two. We popped in and just laid the smack down on everything in the zone and without pausing for breath we were in level 3.

Emmerick Skyfury

Skyfury is in the middle of that somewhere..

On level 3, Jolur Sandstorm gets ganked, trash is dealt with, Agnarr is parked. Rest, rebuff and GO!.

First pop from Agnarr

Second pop

And the nastiest of them all, Pop number three

and without even trying we had cleared Agnarrs tower, smacked Agnarr and freed Karana, Freeing him is wrong I know, the dev’s must laugh their asses off every time someone clears the Tower.

A God, 2 seconds from death

To be honest I couldn’t believe it. It was so easy it felt almost like farming. Agnarr just got Dropped good and proper by us. I kept thinking, Xegony, Cornaiv, Fenin Ro, The Rathe, be patient, Southern Armada is coming for you too, we will be there soon. We already know we can kill Rallos Zek the Warlord as we got him to 2% in our first real run at him. We just need him to pop in our time zone to have one more go at him.

After Agnarr died I was lieing flat on the floor watching my monitor from the supine position, it was around 2.30am at this point and the Rum was catching up with me so I logged and headed to bed.

Saturday was another big big day with the good folks over at Unity. I logged in to find them forming up in the Plane of Earth, so I headed over and joined the raid. First up was the Ring of Mud which we just splattered everywhere. It was over so fast all I had to take a screen shot of was a dead Monstrous Mudwalker.

A quick run across to the Ring of Dust and a fast clear of the biggest Crocodile I have ever seen, Tantisala Jaggedtooth.

The Ring of Dust involves clearing 50+ trash mobs out of the way to spawn the Triumvirate of Soil.

An Earthern Warden

An Earthcrafted Assassin

The Triumvirate of Soil

I managed to miss the spawning and death of the Named at the end of this ring as a member of the Triumvirate took a hearty dislike to me and left not a lot but a bloody smear on the wall.

So that was two rings done quickly, Unity then decided that although doing the remaining two rings would spawn A Mystical Arbitor of Earth for the POEb entry, they would rather do a little more loot farming. So we all headed over to the Plane of Fire for a Phoenix kill or two.

I still love the look of these things, they really are magnificent as they hang in the air waiting for us.

First kill is Jaxoliz Dawneyes, Unity have this down to a fine art now, the first kill was a little lumpy, but the second was as smooth as silk.

Jaxoliz Dawneyes

Criare Sunmane

And for the final pull of the day, incoming was Magmaton who died with not a single casualty on the Unity side.

All in all this was a hell of a big week for raids. The loot is still flowing into SA. We have stepped up beyond the back flagging and we are starting to see the rewards and get a clear taste of what awaits us in the Elemental Planes proper. Come on Rallos Pop you bastard so we can step up!.

Little things I have been doing during the week, I have finally finshed my Howling Stones Master Key!. It only took me about 5 deaths hehehehe. Not only does it open every wing door, it appears that it opens every door in the zone!. If anyone wants to go anywhere in HS just let me know. So next quest to start on is the Chardok Rings quest. This defeated me on Karana, but with a Master Key and the aid of some friends I will finish it on Prexus!. And last but not least, an updated pic of what Ulaa looks like with her new Glowy Wand!

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty Seven

28/08/03 Week TwentySeven

Well this week was a huge one. The server pop god’s smiled on us and we managed to drop several large scale targets. I am very very very happy that we are coming to the end of backflagging. Happy, happy dance!. Now there is nothing wrong with killing the same mobs over and over, hey I would spend a lot more time in Ssra than we do with no problems, and I am hoping we get to spend a lot more time in Vex Thal, but its the kind of “you must do this” attitude that annoys the hell out of me.

Its also really annoying to see people pop up in /gu that haven’t been online since I moved to the server and say “we need to kill XXX MOB because I don’t have that flag yet”. The fact that we have killed that mob 10 times over the last few months seems to have completely escaped their notice, mainly cause they didn’t show up for those kills. So off we go to kill XXX MOB for them, they get that flag and five minutes later someone else now needs a kill for YYY MOB that we have also killed 10 times. Its never ending.

However having said that, I have also turned up to every single flagging raid for months and stayed as long as I possibly could for all of them, so that as many people as possible could be flagged. I will continue to turn up for all flagging raids if I physically can. My personal motto with EQ is “everyone comes along for the ride”. If that means we are still backflagging next year, well that\’s just the way it is. Hey at least I could start to Back Flag my tank!. There is in fact a reason for this little rant which will come at the end of this update.

First up. I have been significantly sick this week with quite a savage little chest infection. Monday night was this weeks first raid. I went to work Monday day and was told to go home (Well actually they pushed me out the door and told me not to come back at about 3.00pm) So I had Tuesday off which of course meant much much EQ goodness.

First up Monday was another significant backflagging session. This weeks target of choice was Carprin Deatharn and Bertoxxulous.

First up we very quickly dropped Tallon Zek.

Tallon

Then we headed out to the Crypt of Decay and piled into the Carprirn cycle. Again this is another of those “didn’t this guy use to be hard?” type MOB’s.

We dropped Carprin hard and fast and moved onto the ‘Guy I’ve never seen’. The officers worked this one hard, to make absolutely damn sure no-one died and we had no wipe. It worked and we made it past him with no mishaps. Normally we wipe at least once on this guy and end up with a really nasty CR

Next up came Bishop Toluwon. Now this is the gimp guy in the middle of the run. For some reason SOE chose to put this gimp in the middle of two nasty boys. Maybe they thought you would need a wee rest in between Vindor Mawnil and his buddy Raex Pwodill.We ganked the Bishop and then Pooby one rounded Vindor and Raex and we continued on our merry way.

Vindor

Bishop Toluwon

Of course after that all there is left is High Priest Ultor Szanvon. 2 druids and a ranger could kill this guy naked.

We all gated out and proceeded downstairs to start the Bertoxxulous ring. We started off and I knew from the get go that this one was going to be special. The DPS we were displaying was INSANE!!. Bert must have been cringing in his little room and whining “oh shit not SA again!”.

We absolutely powered through the Named MOB’s and just chewed through the trash. I don’t even think we lost any ‘chanters, the yard trash just didn’t get a chance to hit them!. I got a bunch of remote Screen Shots of a load of the little named’s. They aren’t that good cause they are taken using a telescopic sight from across the room and they are out of order, but you get the general idea.

Akkapan Adan

Wavadozzik Adan

Zandal Adan

Pzo Ardan

There are in fact 12 of these chaps. They are the 12 Kings of Ancient Lanxvorm who were corrupted by that nasty God Bertoxxulous. Last but not least came Bert himself. I actually really enjoy this kill. Its fast paced and if you get it wrong you pay for it, so when it goes well its a really good feeling.

Bertoxxulous

We not only killed him, we did it so fast that Poobies defensive didn’t have time to run out!. Quote of the week goes to Pooby for an immediate:

“Woot I lived!”

as soon as Bert died. Once again we had 40 minutes spare. We cleared the whole ring and nailed Bert in just under 1 hour 20 minutes and did it with ease. We could have done it faster but the MOB’s just don’t spawn fast enough.

That was Monday. It finished up about 2.00am and we all logged out well and truly satisfied. Nothing like a good Bert Ganking to make your day.

Since I was home Tuesday I decided to see what Unity were up to. As I logged on they were forming up for a shot at Rallos Zek the Warlord in the Plane of Tactics. Unfortunately he wasn’t up, so Unity called a Raid day off and set up a rolling watch on the RZtW spawn. So instead I spent the day trying to learn to pull the Plane of Earth and dieing a lot but having a blast!.

We had a patch Tuesday and as usual the post patch, patch early on Wednesday. I logged in at about 11PM after some pessimistic rumblings with Kezlar about whether the servers would be up in time to raid. And guess what, a fully popped Vex Thal!. This time instead of fighting through to the blob room we tried the DA/Selo’s Run in and FD trick. After each Necro ( and there are a LOT of us) had died an average of 3 times each, we finally put 3 Necro’s on the ground successfully FD’d. Then it was decide not to use us *sigh*. So I spent the better part of an hour FD’d in the Blob room waiting for the raid to catch us. Not that a DA run or 5 isn’t good for the adrenaline buzz *grin*

Eventually they did get to us and we formed up and quietly beat the Blob to death.

Kaas Thox Xi Ans Dyek

Next comes the boring part of Vex Thal, fighting your way to the meat of the encounters. So we crashed our way through the corridors to Diabo Xi Va.

Diabo Xi Va

The Diabo dropped (amongst other stuff) the Staff of Lost Rituals. This is one of the great and legendary items for all Necro’s. One of the items every Necro worth their salt dribbles over when they hear about. The officers were in fact kind enough to award it to a Necromancer rather than one of the other, I’m sure equally deserving, classes. Big Grats on the Book On a Stick Sorchak!. See now You is Uber! 🙂

I logged at this point. As the officers were dividing up the PhatLewtz a pull went wrong and we had BIG troubles. We came very very close to wiping before the Lewtz were even allocated, with about 6-7 big ass MOB’s in camp and happily dropping our tanks, Nymeria (Oh Lime Green One) stepped up and saved our asses /bow. I didn’t get any pics as I was too damn busy trying to survive and not get anyone else killed. I think I got to bed at about 3am and dreamed many good dreams of PhatPhat Lewtz and Aten Ha Ra.

Thursday of course then rolled around and feeling like spattered crap with the nagging feeling that my chest infection was not happy with all this lack of sleep and the absolute and clear knowledge that the GF was NOT happy at all, I headed for Ssraeshza Temple.

There was much much goodness up for Thursday but I just knew I wasn’t going to be able to hang out for much of it. First up came the Cursed cycle.

A Glyphed Serpent

Vyzh`dra the Exiled

Vyzh`dra the Cursed

We powered our way through the cycle and headed to the Plane of Tactics as the Zek Brothers were both up. We haven’t done Vallon for quite a while so we decide to hit him first, just for a bit of a change.

So this is what Vallons death looks like?…

Of course he has to be difficult..

but he dies in the end anyway. It was just after Midnight at this point and I had to log. I really really really REALLY didn’t want to. If anyone ever figures out a way for me to turn playing EQ into a full time job. Please let me know. As I was logging an officer asked in /GU if I needed any of the HoH trials (which they were off to next). I replied in /GU (perfectly reasonably I thought, maybe I was wrong) that in fact I had all the flags I needed short of the plane of Time.

EDITED: Didn’t need to make those comments. I shan’t make them in the future.

SA continued on for the night and cleaned up Tallon Zek, the Princess Trial, the Villager Trial, Ryda’Dar, Vindi, the Statue, the AOW, and the XTC!!. What an utterly great night and i had to miss it :(.

If I am a very good boy and eat my wheaties, maybe there will be another impromptu raid session tonight!. Oh and WOOT!, I’m up to date with updates again. NOTE* Edited these comments. They were made when I was still pissed off. Wont do it again.

Friday, sick as a dog. Got home from work, slept, no EQ.

Saturday Morning. Logged in to find the good folks at Unity all tooled up and ready to go in the Plane of Fire. Grabbed a quick COtH to the raid. I HATE being COtH’d, every time I see “you have been summoned” I think its the start of a MOB beating on me!

There was a bit of a delay as we waited for more people to logon, once Unity were set to go they started pulling the named Phoenixes. Now these birdies look absolutely awesome. They hang in the air above their platforms, flames leaping from their bodies, you can almost feel the hot air stir from the massive movement of their wings.

Jaxoliz Dawneyes

They come in fast and they hit like over loaded Mack trucks, but damn they are beautiful to look at.

There are several of these massive, beautiful birds, so next up was Criare Sunmane.

Oh dear, he noticed that DOT….

Thank god for AE taunt…

Then came Babnoxis the (Bitch) Spider Queen . My GF saw her on the screen over my shoulder and left the room and refused to come back till she was gone.

I think I am going to learn to hate the Spider Queen. She has an AE mana drain dot that appears to be unresistable. I loaded up what I could on her, but by about half way thru the fight I was OOM. All I could do was land an LifeBurn on her and then wait to die because of course the recourse didn’t land and I got nailed with low HP aggro.

One thing that does piss me off about the Plane of Fire is that although I realize my fire based spells aren’t going to land, why do my poison based spells get resisted so much?. Basically I could only land Dark Plague and Saryrns Kiss. My true damage spells, and the mainstay if Funeral Pyre is resisted, is Blood of Thule, and BOT too doesn’t land. I am hoping we get better luck with these new “curse” spells that are coming with LDoN and they will allow us to do some real damage to mobs like those in POF

Next up was Quavonis Firetail.

Finally came Magmaton. Now this guy is a monster. He seemed to be really hard to pull as well. The Unity pull team wiped completely the first attempt at pulling him and only one monk was alive to get him to camp on the second try. It appears the pathing out of his lair sucks big time.

3k per hit, triples, rampages. He is very evil. He died tho, so we must have been doing something right!. Now can someone explain to me why there is a frog in the Elemental Plane of Fire?. Don\’t frogs need to stay damp and slimy?

Pyronis
Image shamelessly stolen from Illia’s as I didn’t get a good shot

At this point Unity decided to have a go at the Generals. Now this involved moving from our little spot and a run across the entire zone. You just know what is coming don’t you?. Yup, after the Rogues dragged the 3/4’s of the raid that died and the Clerics had rezzed us all, we were formed up at the Picnic Tables (So that’s why they are called that, I wanted to setup some chicken, cheese and red wine and just lax out for the day!)

Unity pulled General Reparm first. Now barring a few deaths Unity had just been powering through the previous Mini’s. Even against Magmaton they had only lost one tank when his DEF dropped. This guy dropped at least 3, maybe 4 9K HP tanks in seconds. They finally got a slow on him and the DEF tank of the moment breathed a sigh of relief and called assist. He doesn’t have a lot of HP, but damn he hits like a train, one of those really, really massive ones that is miles long.

I have to say I am really looking forward to hitting this zone with Southern Armada. The MOB’s are reasonably easy to kill (compared to Gods like Agnarr or Bertoxxulous) and drop very nice loot. Unity walked away with about 10 pieces of Elemental armour in about 2-3 hours. In addition the challenge is still there with some nasty nasty MOB’s that will fuck you up if you aren’t paying attention. I think SOE did a damn fine job with POF, the mobs look awesome and the zone is well balanced from what I have seen so far.

Unity was going to hit a few more of the Generals, but for some reason called it off and headed to POE to do the “Vine Ring”. This is the ring that SA had attempted a week or so ago with a half-raid. Basically you seem to kill about 18-24 trash mobs on the big platform. This triggers the ring start. Then you get 12 mobs that hit like Vindi (yellow con to a 65) and finally, once you have cleared the 12 you get Derugoak Bloodwalker. This is a real test of the skill of your pull team and your mezz/offtank team, get too many of these guys at once and its a fast wipe.

From what I can see the only reason that you would do this ring at all is that the named drops a LOT of Runes and the Elemental Silk, Leather, Plate and Chain Bracers. For this reason I can see a lot of him in our future. Derugoak hits like the Avatar of War but has about 20% of his HP.

That was about it for Saturday and the guys from Unity started to log. Later on myself and Nemean (who sucks by the way) tried a couple of times to interest people in a quick hit on Sol Ro\’s Tower. We had confirmed that 4 of the 5 named Mini\’s were up, but we were short of DEF tanks. It hurt to have that much fun and PhatLewtz sitting there and not be able to touch it. Note to self, Ninja a couple of planes maps and read up on the Mini\’s and what is required for them. They shall not evade me again!

On the other hand I dinged Garakk to 52, bought him a new BP and put a big hole in the level as well. 55 and Defensive is not far away!.

I stayed on late on Saturday as Garakk, because the GF was working a night shift and had a blast smacking stuff about in the Plane of Justice!. Sunday I logged on very late and went to Ssra to help Geno and Wolfe get a BOT some XP. After 3/4’s of an hour or so I got a tell from Axixs to help come and him get 65 (he was 20% away!) and I headed to Sol Ro’s Tower. We formed up and spent several happy hours wacking these guys. Ax dinged 65 and I finished Fury of Magic 2!

My apologies for my finishing comments in the first part of this weeks update. It wasn’t needed and I shan’t do it again. A good rule of thumb, when still pissed off, don’t post stuff to the web.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty Six

18/08/03 Week TwentySix

And the lord of the Phat Lewtz Looked down and he sayeth:

“The devoted mendicants of Southern Armada have sacrificed many Pallies and allowed the death of many many Shammies, thus I shall reward them!”

Ssraeshza Temple crashed minutes before the raid was due to start. *BIG Evil Grin!*

I’m not sure why, but for some reason Alltear was very very happy during the Ssra raid, maybe it was the positioning of Laurwen?. I knew there had to be SOME advantage to being that short.

Raid was called and of course we all headed straight for the Temple. First target was the Emperor. Kez says “Bring me Snakes” and we did. Straight in, no muss, no fuss, dead snake.

As you do during a raid, we were discussing the physical attributes of the fairer members of the species and wondering whether Halle Berry or Lucy Liu’s forward weapons were in fact real. The conversation was on a reasonable level right up until this popped up out of nowhere!.

Simis gets the official title of most Politically Incorrect lizard in the guild!!. I just about fell off my chair laughing at that!.

A quick run downstairs and I completely failed to get screen shots of a Glyphed serpent, Vyzh’dra the Exiled and Vyzh`dra the Cursed. Even tho I don’t have screen shots you will have to take my word that they died. I promise they did!. I know, I’m crap, hey we were killing Snakes! I got excited!. I was hoping for a shot at the High Priest, I’ve been carrying Star Rubies around for 4 months ( I may forget my resist gear, or coffins, or EE’s or my head if it wasn’t screwed on, but I ALWAYS have the Rubies on me ) just in case we could get another shot at him.

Lord Mithaniel Marr, Lord of Goody Two Shoes Poofy Pally boys had popped, we have been having some trouble actually finding him up so we abandoned Ssra for the minute and headed to the Temple of Marr. We zoned in and for once the 85/15 thing worked for us, instead of against us and we quickly had a full raid.

The Emperor had been kind enough to drop a Kodiacs Robe of Heightened Focus and it had been awarded to a filthy Gnomie Wizzie.

Anklebiters, just say no.

Then it was discovered we had Twin Gnomies! Identical in every respect!, well with the exception of their Ugly faces! (Comes from all that ankle biting!) Mithaniel isn’t quite as annoying as many of his contemporary bosses, in that there aren’t 10 bazillion trash MOB’s on the way to his room, there are however several rather nasty named’s in the way.

Edium, Guardian of Marr

Halon of Marr

and finally Mithaniel’s body guard with the stupid froggie model, damn he takes me back to the Days of Guk!

Ralthazor, Champion of Marr

I don’t know what it is with MM, SA can drop Bertoxxulous in 1hr 20mins, we can take out Agnarr in 51 minutes, we dropped the HP with 24 people, but for some reason we have real trouble with Agnarr. I wonder if its the same for other guilds? With a little clever pulling, some extremely fast healing and CC we managed to pull MM alone.

Once we get him alone we can kill him easily. Its singling him out that is the tough part. I still think he is the best looking Boss Mob in the game so far. Although I have been told the Sol Ro Tower Mini Bosses look awesome I have yet to see them. Mithaniel died *sad* and for the second time in a row he dropped the Uber Belt!

At this point the rest of the raid headed out and back to Ssra. It was 2am for me so I decided to go and have a wee lie down. SA went on to drop Rhag 1,2 and the Arch Lich.

During the week I was also very kindly invited to join a POEarth group. (Ok I begged, whined, pleaded and generally made myself irritating) My first ever Elemental Planes group woot!. The Elementals are awesome fun and fantastic XP and the MOB models are all new and interesting. We set up on one of the Platforms and proceeded to pull everything we could see. Hopefully it wont be my last!

An Earth Initiate

A Vekerchiki Warrior

A War Shapen Earth Emissary

Despite being knackered due to getting 41/2 hours sleep and then being incredibly stressed by false reports of a worm inside my systems I wasn’t going to miss the Guilds first Vex Thal raid. Apparently something needed to be done on the Prexus server so SOE decided to drop the server for 15 minutes or so and kindly fully popped VT for us!.

We zoned in and got a quick reminder to never take anything for granted with a near wipe. We sorted ourselves out, started to take VT a little more seriously and moved a little deeper into the zone. I kept thinking to myself “I’m in Vex Thal!, I’m IN Vex Thal, I’m Raiding VT!” Another first for me and another one I never thought I would ever achieve!. *Hug* SA.

I have to say this has to be one of the best looking zone’s I have seen so far. The architecture is just awesome. After clearing the same number of Trash Mobs as you need to to get to Saryrn we got to our first Named, he looks just like his cousin the Itraer Vius and died about as easily.

Thall Va Xakra

Lewtz, Phat, Phat Lewtz. Oh Lordy I hope we get to hit this place a few times. I can see why guilds stayed here and just farmed the place. We continued to move through the zone and made it to the second boss, a big blob. The pic is crap but what can you do with a flat grey mob on a grey background?.

Kaas Thox Xi Ans Dyek

Hopefully one week soon we will get to hit this place hard and go all the way through to Aten Ha Ra and completely clear Vex Thal. I logged after Puddle Boy, after the previous nights raid I was falling asleep at the key board. One more raid this week, Thursday and a mini raid against POEarth Mini’s (hopefully) Friday night as well. The GF is going to hate me this week.

Well Thursday came and went, no Rallos Zek the Warlord for us. *Sad* The bastard just refuses to pop for us, we just need one successful run at him and we can move past him. We just need to drop him once to “prove” we deserve to be in the Elementals, then we can move to Sol Ro Tower Mini bosses and into the Elemental planes themselves. Elemental armour *droooool*. OK I don’t know if that’s the case at all, but that’s what I am hoping anyway.

I managed to get one quick Plane of Earth group before the raid on Thursday and proceeded to knock off a bunch of MudMen, Goddamn Dillo’s and these guys…

A Vekerchiki Warrior

But since Rallos wasn’t up and she was, we headed to Terris Thule’s house and smacked her. She was hanging about the place like a bad smell anyway.

Come and play SA…

Terris Thule

She fell over dead, it was a bit of an anti-climax really. You spend all that time prepping, fighting to her, setting up, and she just falls over. She dropped so fast and easy we decided that we needed some punishment to remind ourselves that POP gods are NOT easy to kill. So it was off to the Plane of Torment and Saryrn for the night for some serious self flagellation.

Now I really like the Earring she drops (why is it that all the decent focus items pre Elemental planes are Pri/Sec or if not pri/sec drop rarely off insanely annoying to kill Gods?) So there was much killing of yard trash, hours and hours and hours of it.

Trash…

More Trash…

Even more Trash…

Finally a Named!

And another named…

and another…

Are we there yet?

Finally!

One thing I would like to complain about. Stealth fixes!. I know how Sorrowsong was supposed to work, he was supposed to path around the room casting AE silence on everyone and making it hard to heal, nuke etc etc. Well he has never worked this way. He either sits in his little corner and/or paths around the room and casts nothing.

Well some time in the last couple of weeks the “kind” people at SOE fixed him. He now acts exactly as he is supposed to. Where was the patch message?, where was the information that Sorrowsong was now acting as intended?. When were they planning on telling us?.

Didn’t matter, we ganked the pair of them anyway after the initial surprise (WTF?, I’m Silenced!) but it would have been nice to know ahead of time.

Sorrowsong

Saryrn

Unfortunately Saryrn picked that night to not drop her marvelous little earring and the collective howls of the Necro’s could be heard across Norrath. That was pretty much it for Thursday. Hours of wading through Trash and then 5 minutes of fun killing Saryrn. Kind of like the average first date I guess.

I took Friday off as I had a wee chest infection and needed to sleep. So I spent the day XPing ( Garakk is 6% from Level 52 and struggling to get further. I HATE pickup groups grrr ). One thing that is interesting about being a lower level and grouping with people is to get the perspective of the lower end again. Very rarely when playing Garakk I will meet someone who knows the guild tag, or some of the other higher end guilds on Prexus, but most people don’t know and don’t really care beyond a kind of general “they are all uber assholes” attitude.

They are really happy that their guild has just started to kill in Kael Drakkal or are about to go to Plane of Hate or kill Grummus for the first time. It really brings you back down and gives you perspective on the game again. Its not all about the high end and the endless grind for AA’s, Uber items and the next MOB on the path to Time. Its about fun and meeting new people and sometimes its about the little guy, not about Uber_Guild_57. It makes me think it would be huge fun to tank a Dragon or some other Uber Mob for some lower tier guild, after all its something I have never done!.

Saturday I logged in to find I was too late for Rallos, the good folks over at Unity were waiting for Talionis to pass. There were about 90 people in the raid channel so I figured I would wait for the next target. In the meantime I went down and ganked the Pained Soul for an hour or two. Hunting the Soul kind of like picking at a scab, you know it isn’t going to do you any good and its vaguely painful but you just cant stop. So after an hour or two of that, watching Unity nail Rallos and then sort loot/flags etc they called the remainder of the raid to the Plane of Air. Woot! a new zone!.

We zoned in and started to clear through the trash.

Castellan of Air

Temple Guard

I have to say I this is another zone I cant wait for SA to start hitting, some of the MOB designs are just beautiful.

Phoenix

Servitor of Xegony

Djinn

This zone is a Necro’s heaven. NOTHING I cast was resisted. We cleared through the zone to a boss MOB whose name I missed. He cant have been too tough as I don’t even remember the fight. It just seemed like a guard with slightly more HP. We then ran quickly back to beat the re spawn and had a go at the Avatar of Smoke.

This guy spawns 3-4 adds with a 600point lightning AE each. Very nasty, we managed to get him to about 10% or so before we wiped. It was a first run though so I’m sure Unity will do far better next time. That was then about it for Saturday.

Now I would like to take a moment and philosophize on the color co-ordination of Tanks. In General they don’t have any. Now most classes took the addition of custom colors into EQ with a grain of salt and with the exception of Pink Power Rangers and the odd Pink Pally *Cough* Unity*Cough* most classes stayed in relatively normal colors. Not the Tanks, as a class they just went hog wild. Now normally I don’t like to generalize about classes and the people that play them but in this case I can fairly safely say that all Warriors are color blind.

I can honestly see the point of the lime green, and the blue kind of works, but isn’t the pink hat just a LITTLE over the top?

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty Four

04/08/03 Week Twenty Four

Wow, what a night. Just wow. Southern Armada’s demonstration of DPS and control against Bertoxxulous would be I believe, second to nobody. Maybe KTF could do it faster but not with more style.

First up. The traditional Banord “My Loot table is up my ass” Paffa smacking. I have completely blown out my merit this week, I don’t even want him to drop the damn earring for me. I just want him to drop it to justify the continuous and extensive beat down we have laid on him. There is a number of Necromancer’s in SA who DESERVE that earring and that fat bastard should drop it.

Now since we were in the Crypt of Decay and Bert was showing his ugly face we decided to get revenge for last weeks little fubar. We kicked off the event and just powered through it. We dropped the Ten Kings inside of 65 minutes. Within 70 we had added Bertoxxulous to that total. Just wow, it was smooth, it was clean and it had style. What a Kill!. I actually managed to get a couple of pic’s of the various Kings as well.

Darwol Adan

Pzo Ardan

Meedo Adan

And finally the rotting, skinny swine him self…

Bertoxxulous,
God of Disease and all things smelly (Dwarves)

I actually really like the Bert run, its fun, its challenging and it really sorts out who can and who cant when it comes to Guilds. You get it wrong once during Bert and its a wipe, as we proved last week.

Now each of the 10 kings has a chance to drop at least one fairly decent item, its a small chance but its there. Last night we just about got them all!. Mallee got one of the coolest toys I have seen in game so far. I didn’t turn on spell effects so you cant see the cool blue flame dripping off it!. Grats mate!, you deserved to upgrade that sword 🙂

I, mean while managed to replace the crappy shoes I had been wearing with a brand new (well rotting and diseased really) pair. I really wasn’t expecting that at all!. I figured after last weeks shield upgrade I would be out for quite some time!. I think I now have all of the focus items including the incredibly rare (6 on the server I’ve been told) Burning Affliction 4 item, the Ceramic Shackles of Torment. That’s the item that looks like a black sword with red runes I carry in my Primary. I have never owned anything in the Game that I get requests to link. The Shackles I get link requests for every day.

I was talking to a young Nec who had sent me a tell asking me a question and during the course of the conversation he came out with “Everyone knows the Uber Necro’s of Southern Armada”. Apparently the 10+ active raiding Necro’s in SA are well known around the server. We find it quite funny to do a “/who all necro 65″ and ninety percent of the names are SA.

Wow!, 6 months ago I was just a young-un yearning for the “high end game” without really understanding what that meant. Now I’m an “Uber Necro” in an Uber Guild. Holy shit how did that happen?

Anyway enough rambling, more Killing. While we were dropping Bert, Paffa showed his fat ass again. He peered into the darkness and thought “Oh Goody, Southern Armada isn’t here, I can come out and pretend to be a big man for a little bit”. A very stupid idea Mister Paffa, very stupid indeed. We zoned out, back in and smacked him.

Next up was Bastion Of Thunder Tower’s. There is so much trash in the way before you get to the fun stuff..

Vann Militis

along with a smattering of named’s…

Iri

Now maybe it was because we were already pumped from killing Bert but the clearing of trash seemed to go a lot faster than usual and we very quickly pulled and killed:

Kuanbyr Hailstorm

a quick change of Towers and it was time for Eindride Icestorm

The rest of SA decided to keep going and I believe they dropped the remaining 2 Tower Bosses in short order. At this point it was close to 2:00am and I decided it was time to log. This Thursday’s Raid is going to rock!, we have a big patch Wednesday so we should be able to get the drop on much Gankable goodness including multiple runs at Rallos. (Sol Ro Mini’s please please please!)

Wednesday, patch ran for a million hours so no post patch Ganking. Then of course there is the traditional post patch, patch because SOE couldn’t get a patch right with a gun to their head. We managed a quick run across to Sanctus Seru for a fast Lord Inquisitor Seru drop and that was about it.

He died, I logged, there wasn’t a lot more to it so I was really hoping for big things on Saturday. Along with a butt load of dicking around and waiting, I pretty much got big things!.

I had a largely quiet weekend this week. All the Sydney peeps got together for some heavy drinking on Friday night. So Friday I logged in, checked all the usual solo spots (camped), checked for any groups (no, all full of bots, its weird, 2xbotting just wasn’t done on Karana, on Prexus its incredibly common), talked to a couple of friends, checked to see if my VP key Mob was up (nope and camped anyway), thought casually about logging in my Tank (Woot he’s across!!) and decided to log off and feel depressed cause everyone was drinking and I couldn’t go. 😦 WAAAHH!! I want my drinking buddy back!! *sulks*

Say hello to my leetle friend!
Garakk Grimsoul

So I had a pretty quiet night Friday. Saturday was a different proposition!. Logged on late to find Unity doing RZ and already 90% of the way through. So I ran around and did some of those housekeeping things you always need to do, Food, Water, ‘Dots, Bones etc until they were finished with the kill.

Initially the Unity raid Leaders said head for POEarth, then they changed their minds and we all headed out to the Tower of Solusek Ro because Solusek Ro, the Burning Prince, was up and preparing himself for death!. Zoned in, formed up, fought our way through the trash to Sol Ro’s room. Now I am not flagged for Sol Ro’s room, you need to kill all 5 mini’s and I haven’t managed to get into a pickup to do that, and a hell of a lot of other people weren’t. The raid leaders of Unity (/bow to Xomax) put a hell of a lot of time, effort and sweat into making sure as many people as possible were in that room for the fight.

After all the Drama of getting people in to his room and a lot of waiting we were finally ready for Sol Ro himself.

He’s waiting for us!

A Close up of his Highness…

We cleared his guards, waited a bit more, prepped and Sol Ro was Incoming!

Oops wrong position…

Now that’s better, stay there…

I ended up on the ‘page list as he was dropping tanks like flies at one point, it came very close to a wipe and Unity was combat rezzing people back in, but damn they recovered beautifully and took him out. One round of 1800 swats from him and I went Splat. However I was rezzed back in facing the PP, hailed him and DING! Plane of Fire enabled!.

I zoned in just to say I had done it, completely forgot to take a Screenie and zoned out. That was about it. There is only one spot to solo in POFire and its pretty much perma camped by Necro’s, so until Southern Armada starts to raid into the Elemental Zones I probably wont get to go back into them a lot.

Someone objected to last weeks screen shot of a single mob being engaged by a group with all graphics on. They said it doesn’t really show what a fully engaged MOB look’s like during a raid. So lets correct that. Play spot the MOB with me. These are two screen shots of a MOB in Sol Ro’s Tower fully engaged by Unity, taken from (subjective) about 60 feet away. Can you see the MOB?

And happy birthday to me!

This is my sixth month on Prexus WOOT!

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty Three

30/07/03 Week Twenty Three

I had an unpleasant interchange with a person on Monday night which caused me to log out immediately, or I was going to say and do very nasty things. So I logged in on Tuesday feeling a little down, but after a chat with a couple of people (thank you) I perked right up. I was looking forward to Tuesdays raid because I was fairly sure RZtW was going to be up. There was in fact much PoP goodness up, but Kez first called the raid to the Plane of Disease for a little FatBoy back flagging.

I of course did the obvious and ran straight to the Crypt of Decay for “I have no ears” Banord Paffa. It wasn’t till I zoned in and was wondering where the raid was that I realized.. DOH!

This was as clean a Grummus kill as I have seen so far. Absolutely flawless. I think we lost a hippy treehugger during the Grummus kill itself but that was it. First up of course we needed a key so Gryme the Crypt Guardian had to die.

Then a quick run up the stairs, smacking some nasty undead about (I couldn’t even get a nuke off they were dieing so damn fast) and it was Aramin the Spider Guardian’s turn.

Finally we ran down and Grummus died. I think from entering the zone to Grummus down was 45 minutes tops.

One thing I did notice about Grummus this time that I have never seen before. When he runs, he prances!. I have my suspicions that our friend Grummus may in fact be a little light in the loafers! No real bloke would ever be caught dead running like that. I wonder if he and Berty get together and have little pajama parties now and again?!.

In the 5 or 6 times I have now seen Grummus Killed I have never seen him drop a Pus Covered Beetle Carapace. Finally last night he did, and I won it woot!. So now my transformation to a warrior has begun!. I have the Sword, I have the Shield, now all I need is the Body Armour to complete the look! Well technically the Body Armour is a robe but dribble dribble drool drool anyway.

Next is the MOB run we have all been waiting for. Southern Armada’s first run at Rallos Zek the Warlord in the Fortress of Zek. We formed up and set up for the kill. We managed to get to the 2 triggers with little or no effort.

Decorin Berik

That’s when it all started to go wrong. It was announced over and over and over how the next part of the script was to go, it was announced again and again to turn attack on assist off and many other things were heavily repeated. These things were still happening. If you don’t want to pay attention during the raid, why the fuck did you turn up?. The Necro channel started to get very pessimistic before we had even pulled Tallon Zek. First run was ugly and we wiped nasty style.

Fast reform, re-pull the triggers and Tallon Zek again. This one was Flawless. This is the Southern Armada I LOVE to watch. Everyone pays attention, does what they are supposed to and the MOB dies like it was an Orc_Pawn_01 in East Commons.

Perfection. Unfortunately the script was bugged to hell and within 2 minutes we had Vallon, 4 Guards and 5 MOBS between us and Vallon’s room on top of us. Second wipe. Ah well, reform and getting ready to go again, Vallon back in his room, rezzing happening, and POP, the dead Tallon is on top of the raid, where he had no right to be. Third wipe. At this point it was determined that there was 2 Vallon’s up and Tallon was back again, so we decided to call it a bugged script and settle for the night.

S.A headed out at this point to drop Tower Bosses in the Bastion of Thunder, it was close to 1:30 AM again, so I logged. We were hoping the Emperor was going to honor us with a visit on Wednesday night, unfortunately he declined. There was lots and lots of Ssra flagging going on as well, unfortunately I was in the first XP group I had managed in 3 weeks and I wasn’t going to give it up. I am really hoping that we get to take a lot more runs at Rallos Zek. I am elemental flagged and all that, but I really really want to drop him with SA. Kill him a few times, a bit more back flagging and hopefully we can move on to Sol Ro’s Tower and Sol Ro himself!.

Always Remember: Everyone comes along for the ride.

Friday, bottle of Rum and 2 bottles of Coke, Ice in the Ice bin, and I’m good to go. First off is a quick run down to Kael Drakkal for some killing of Giant royalty. Now personally I am never happier than when killing Giants so I was really looking forward to this. A quick port to the Wakening Lands, and its time for mass giant death. One of my favorite calls in EQ is “inc lots”, the pull team didn’t fail us and brought pretty much every giant between the Throne Room and the Wakening Lands zone line.

I remember seeing one of the Karana server Uber guilds in action about 2 years ago. I was just hanging at the zone line when I heard Novae were incoming to kill Tormax. At the time I needed the faction hits so I contacted the raid leader and asked if I could hang out for faction. The raid leader kindly acquiesced and I stayed to watch them enter the zone. Thing that amazed me number one: One of their Monks hung out at the zone in at Wakening to tank the two guard giants, why?, for fun. I was stunned, a Monk tanking a Giant?!, wow.

Thing that amazed me Number Two: Their pull team just pulled everything in the zone including Tormax and killed it at the zone line. At that point I had never seen anything like it (considering my guild had just graduated from killing Vindi for the first time). Now I not only get to see the same thing I get to participate, which is even better!. I often wonder is there some young (60-) toon standing around watching us do the thing’s we do and saying to themselves, “Wow I wish I could do that some day!” and being amazed at players who can take MOB’s like Tormax out with such style.

Tormax, King

I am about to bring my Warrior across from Karana (Put the application in on Sunday). I will have to park him in KD just in case Vindi’s breastplate drops!. All our tanks have better and Derakor the Vindicator is such a sucker…

Next up, a quick run across the world, damn I love the POP book system, and up to Terris Thule’s hangout. Quite a few of her Guards decided to dispute our right of passage. This was a very, very foolish idea as they died thick and fast.

I so want this model as the 65 pet. And I want my horsie to look like this when I go into Skelly form while riding. Somebody at SOE make it so please.

Terris was the first mob I ever experienced a wipe with, with Southern Armada so she holds a special place in my heart *sigh*. Not enough to stop us Ganking her though. I really enjoy this fight, it’s a lot of fun.

Terris Thule

Once she was dead and the PhatLewtz had been handed out, we had time for a quick Zek smacking in the Fortress of Zek and Tallon died hard. I didn’t even cast on the bastard, had full HP, didn’t get near him, I was just taking an SS for this weekly tome and the bastard detonated on me. I think I’m just going to stay outside the room from now on, maybe run in when he is 50% and he is fixated on someone else. I WILL figure out how to survive him!

We then headed to the Crypt of Decay for an attempt at Bertoxxulous. I was really looking forward to this as last time I never got a chance to actually see him in action, this time I was planning on wandering around the corner to get a screenshot of him.

Unfortunately as a Necro you don’t get to see a lot during the Bertoxxulous ring fight. Its basically face the wall and Nuke, or if it gets really interesting you get to mezz a mob for 5 seconds until the Chanters get to it. I did manage to get one screen shot of one named King.

Kavilis Adan

SA was not on form during the fight. I kind of compare it to a drunk professional boxer facing off against a talented amateur. The amateur is still going to get his ass kicked, there is no doubt about that, but he manages to get a few damn nice smacks in against the Professional. It was messy, lets say that.

When I write these weekly ramblings I tend to try and be as general as I can about the encounters we do. I don’t want to give away tactics or specifics about an encounter in case I spoil it for someone. However I think I can safely say this without ruining the Bertoxxulous ring event for anyone. When you finally get to Bert himself and you move to his room for the pull, don’t get up and stand on the fucking tombs. Try it, its not nice. Wipe. Damn it two hours, 144 Man hours completely wasted. Ah well, shit happens and we will get his ass next time.

Wipe out…

Saturday was fun. I joined up with the kind folks over at Unity for my first run at the Elemental Plane of Water. WOOT! My first time raiding an Elemental!. We formed up in the little beach thingy and moved into the tunnels. As would be expected in such a place most of the MOB’s are water based creatures.

A Barracuda

A Great White

Now the MOB’s themselves aren’t too hard, yard trash is a bit like the BOT Giants in terms of hardness. What makes this zone tough is the fact that its all underwater. Go and get your Enduring Breath item now. Maneuvering and positioning in here is a whole new ball game. You have to be tight and well controlled as moving through the zone is all about short sharp moves. If this was a regular dungeon I would say its a well designed dungeon crawl. The trick in here is to keep moving or you will never beat the re spawn.

First named up was Grioihin the Wise. He isn’t that tough but he’s got a NASTY AOE unresistable stun that makes it hard for the tanks to hold aggro and the clerics to keep healing the tanks.

Incoming Grioihin the Wise

He went down, messy, but he died. Half the raid wiped, we started rezzing people in, make sure the first thing you do is loot your EB item, or like me you are going to die and have to be re rezzed *self-smack*. We reformed and ventured even deeper into the zone, we got lost at one point and had to backtrack but we ended up visiting Hydrotha and nailing his fishy ass to the wall. This guy is tough, he has the HP of some of the Ssra mobs with 5 times the damage output and a slow proc on the MT.

We ventured even further in and found this guy. Fishlord Craiyk. I don’t know if he summons mobs, just agro’s them or is just a pain in the ass. But DO NOT talk to the little bastard. Someone did and we ended up with a nasty named and half a dozen of his friends. That was the end of that and it was a rez at the GY time.

At that point I had to log, so I got my rez and headed out after DMFing the entire raid again. I am off tonight to go camp the words for GDMF *sigh*.

I also managed to get into a Sol Ro Tower group or two this week, killing a lot of these guys.

A Sentry of Ro

Someone asked my why I never have spell effects turned on during my screen shots. They said that the pics would look really cool. I do have all models turned on which is tough enough, but with spell effects on you get the following. This is a screen shot with only one party casting on the mob.

With a full raid casting, quite often you simply cannot see the mob. It disappears in a welter of spell effects. It is pretty, yes, but it also turns my PC into a slide show, and my box is reasonably high end.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty Two

24/07/03 Week Twenty Two

Well Tuesday was not a good day for the Guild. We logged in and the scouts went out. Tracking Bots in Ssra, Kael Drakkal, The Deep, POD, POTac, HOH, POV, COD, HOT, Sol Ro, all reported back nada. There was nothing up anywhere at all. A whole raid of pissed off, mostly drunk, some slightly stoned Aussie’s and Kiwis wondering what the hell to do next!!.

Kez sensed this (Jedi senses tingling!) and rather than call the whole thing off led us to the Deep where we proceeded to lay the smack down on the Burrower Beast.

Is it just me or is this getting easier and easier?. After that, and all of us praying for Rallos Zek the Warlord to pop (he didn’t) we decided to hit NToV. Now normally I would be the first bastard in line to go and keel everything in NToV as I only ever did one (very unsuccessful) raid into there on Karana. I would love to have wandered through and slaughtered Dragons left right and center.

Problem is my Boots suck major assage. The two best boots in the game for Necro’s outside of the Elementals are White Dragon Scale Boots and Decayed Shoes of the Plaguebringer. The Shoes of the Plaguebringer drop from Bertoxxulous and we are very very unlikely to see another pair. The Dragonscale boots require Ally faction to Lord Yelinak to do the hand in of Tormax’s head. Guess what an NToV crawl is going to do?, you guessed it, trash my faction with Lord Yelinak. 😦 As I am far more likely to see KT’s head than I am a pair of Bert’s shoes, I decided to err on the side of caution and not continue the raid. If I ever replace my crappy boots and they call another NToV raid, I will be there.

So very reluctantly I logged out and went to bed. I surely hope tonight brings us more luck.

The raid continued on and thoroughly trashed everything in NToV, drops are were fast and many and Grats to those who were there.

Well Tuesday night once again the scouts went out. The Euro/American Guilds again hadn’t left us a lot. Mithaniel Marr was up and The Emperor was due but that was about it. We formed up in Crypt of Decay for a little early Paffa Gankage. I don’t think the fucker drops the Earring anymore, this means he needs to be killed over and over for sheer vengeance.

Fat Waste of Time Bastard

After that we hung about for 5 minutes or so while the officers decided what to hit next. The Blood popped in Ssraeshza Temple and that made up their minds, off to Gank the Emperor!. So, much porting, running, galloping later (did I mention my Black Horsie!? WOOT!) and we were formed up in Ssra. Fight up to the third floor and kill off as many named’s as we can for an hour two and get a few more final key pieces.

With a couple more keys done and the raid numbers expanded even further we moved into the Emperors Room. Set up, pre target, move in and Kez tells Hilly “Bring me Snakes :)”.

Doesn’t he have a way with words !! Arrows fly, the Blood of Ssraeshza comes, Crowd Control does their thing, Hilly calls Assist, the Blood dies, adds under control, Emp due to pop. Kez goes LD. Err bugger, never mind, we know what we are doing right!?.

Clerics move to Position, Lucina is in place and ready with weapon shield, Pooby has Def ready and AE taunt good to go. POP Emp is here.

Err aggro?, who has it?, oops Malina down, where’s Page?, its on that druid, err no its not cause he’s dead, now its on that cleric, err nope he’s dead too. Pooby runs over (Cause Emp is standing with the casters) and tries to drag him off and over to the fight spot. Nope he doesn’t want to move, he seems happy where he is.

Where is healage?, its dieing a lot from Rampage it seems. Necro’s are rezzing, damn out of EE’s, Pooby down, Hill tanking, Emp in with the healers = BAD, move his ass out of there, Pooby up, buffed and gtg, Necro’s dumping to Healers and CC as they come back from Rezzes, also keeping damage streams on the Emp at the same time.

Pooby gets aggro, healers get back online, CC seems in control, Necs have a chance to med, Wizzies are just doing the wizzie thing and nuking the crap out of Emp, Necs have start an LB chain, rangers are going hard out, a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat again.

The PhatLewtz flowed from both the Blood and the Emperor himself!

Now one man has moaned, whined, bitched, yelled, screamed, niggled and just generally annoyed the hell out of everybody about a particular piece of loot for the last 5-6 months. Well last night he was rewarded (after the Necro’s spent most of the night telling him how it wasn’t going to drop cause we/he sucked) with Koadic’s Robe of Heightened Focus. Grats Xinen mate!, well deserved! The Necro’s as a group (Bar one cause we couldn’t let him have it completely unopposed) all stayed out of the tells for that one cause we hate to see a grown Wizzie cry, Druids on the other hand….

Before Die Job

After Die Job

In fact that means Xinen has had 2 drops from successive Emperor kills! Lucky bastard!. Kodiacs is easily one of the top three robes in the game and every dress wearer in the guild is envious as hell.

We succoured out to the Zone line and started to form up to have a go at the Cursed. I was quite ready to hang out and stay for this one, but prep time stretched and stretched and I realized it was after 1:00am and I was just about asleep at the keyboard. So I called my Goodbye’s, logged and headed for bed.

This weekend was awesome. I didn’t get on till late as I had to do some remote work in Whangerei (don’t worry most Kiwis can’t pronounce it correctly either). Once I had finished the work I logged in and checked in with the nice folks in Unity. They were just forming up in Tactics to hit Tallon Zek. I figured what the hell, today is a good day to die and joined up with them. They formed up, fought their way in ( HATE those goddamn splitters and their damn debuff’s) and promptly dropped Tallon.

I am actually seriously considering buying or pursuing the words for Group Dead Man Floating. DMFing 70+ raids one by one is a pain. But its kinda fun to get buff requests as a Necro. Those who do it all the time probably hate it but as a Necromancer I kind of enjoy it.

I survived Tallon!, that’s twice!. I think I get it now. No DOT’s, just Nuke the hell out of him and FD a lot. I got caught in the periphery of one of his blasts but tapped the hp back and it was all good. Not a lot else was up and Unity leadership was casting around for a target. I was on my hands and knee’s in front of the PC praying to the Gods of EQ that Rallos would pop. We had a sacrificed a pally (or three) to them during the Tallon Zek fight so I figured that must be good enough!.

Nope, still not up so they decided the next fight would be in Halls of Honor to visit Mithaniel Marr. Just as I was about to zone into Halls of Honor and head to MM the officers called “Rallos Zek is UP!!”

Woot! so we all run back to Tactics, the call is going out in /GU and Southern Armada members start to head towards Tactics. As we zone in we realize that there are a number of Talionis people formed up in zone as well. The buffage was short and sweet and we start to head up towards RZ and the triggers. Words are exchanged at various points by Unity and Talionis until it is requested in /RAID that no-one says anything to any member of Tali.

I believe the raid leaders comments were something along the lines of “Let our deeds speak for us not words”. Good call. Much negotiating went on in the back ground, at one point we were waiting with the TZ trigger and Tali were in the other corridor with the VZ trigger. In the end the Unity and Talionis officers worked out a deal. Unity and SA all zoned/gated out and waited for Talionis to take a shot. They took out Tallon and then failed on Vallon. Now it was our turn.

First up we cleared through to the triggers, pulled them and had them in place. Unfortunately the Chat Channels chose that point to go down. Oh well, we continued on clearing trash, then it was discovered that there were 2 Tallon Zek’s up. It was looking remarkably like the script was bugged. Of course at this point I am sitting there sweating, sooooooo close to Rallos again, and with all the grief from Talionis and SOE side problems it wasn’t looking good for the kill. So we all logged out completely to try and restart Channels and reset the script. It worked yeah!.

Tallon about to die….

Vallon’s about to die….

Rallos is about to die…

And finally the big bastard himself!

And that was that. Rallos Zek the Warlord owned, the Planar projection hailed, the Chief Librarian informed of the Death of Rallos, the Seer consulted..

and for the very first time I zoned into the Plane of Earth,

then the Plane of Air,

and finally the Plane of Water.

I did a quick check of the Guild to see where everyone was and noted several people had also zoned into POEarth. So I headed back there to see what they were up to just in time to see them kill a few MOB’s from the Plane.

A Needlescale Hatchling

A big tree who’s name I didn’t get…

After that I was a bit lost. Unity were continuing on raiding but I didn’t really feel like doing that. So I ran about to various places looking for a group. Sent tells out to all the guildies I could and got “No, FG” all round. Ah well, these things happen, checked all the solo camp spots, all taken, everyone on my friends list is either FG or otherwise occupied. I keep trying to get groups in Sol Ro’s Tower. Not so much because of the Ornate drops (tho they are a bonus), more because the zone just looks so amazing and I really want to see a lot more of it. I cant wait for SA to start hitting the place regularly so we can have a good look around.

I had a good chat for a couple of minutes with one of the Unity officers while I was sitting in POW wondering what to do next. Finally Boobs saved me! “Come help me with my Epic” she says!. So we ran around to 4 zones, handed stuff to various Scouts which spawned various Monsters, which we promptly killed.

BIG Spidey!

BIG Doggie!

That last one was actually a pain in the ass. He managed to kill me twice, I really hate MOB’s that Blind. Reminder to self, never go up against a MOB half assed, especially one you don’t know!!. Once the MOB was deaded, Boobs looted it, we got some bit’s, we ran back to some other guy and handed it all into him. I wish the bloody Necro Epic was even half that easy. That was a fun way to fill in an hour or two and once we were done I decided to head back to Sol Ro again and try my luck.

I met up with Mallee and she showed me how to aggro kite the nasty Guards around the lava fountain. That was fun till we ran into two bugged 20K hitting, summoning MOBs in a row and that was shut down rather rapidly. So its back LFG. I ended the evening soloing in Halls of Honor for some reasonably decent XP.

I have a problem. I have now achieved nearly everything I ever wanted to in EQ. I have killed the Emperor, I have a Black Horsie, I have a (near as makes no difference) full spell book, I have zoned into the Elemental Planes. The only thing I haven’t done is fought in VT (coming soon). I have never really even considered zoning into Time, it was always just an impossible dream, now its actually possible I will have to think about it.

The only other thing I have really really wanted is to break the 3K HP mark, but that’s really a loot-centric thing and its just not me. I need a new goal for Ulaa. I’m currently doing my VP key (somebody tell me there is a secret way to spawn the bloody Pained Soul Puleeeeese!). Maybe my goal should be to max out AA’s?. maybe to lead a raid?, I shall have to think about it.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty One

07/07/03 Week Twenty one

Due to unavoidable RL shit I had to miss Tuesdays raid. I elected to log for that raid and deal with said RL shit rather than ignore it and maybe have to deal with it during the Rallos Zek hit.

I managed to tag along to the first kill of the night. Mr Overlord Banord 1/33 Paffa still has no ears, *sigh*

But that was it. I helped a few new guild members make it to the HOH zone, made sure they got into the raid and there was someone to look after them, basically made sure all was good and had to log. Unfortunately real life intruded on EQ and I had to go and sort it all out. So no Update for Tuesday.

There was a failed Lord Inquisitor Seru raid in Sanctus Seru the Sunday before as well. Please let Pooby get aggro, please please please. Don’t cast until the assist is called. If that means that the MT forgets to call assist and you never get to cast anything. Then so be it. Stand there with your thumb up your ass but do not cast.

Wednesday we formed up about 3-4 groups and headed into The Temple of Solusek Ro. I have only been into Sol Ro’s tower once before. I managed to hook up with an SA group to pull some stuff around the entrance for a couple of hours. This time we ventured quite a distance in and headed to the lair of Xuzl. He’s a bit of a girly man really, but he, and the area he is in look awesome!. Sol Ro’s Tower is just an amazing zone to be in. I would like to spend a lot more time in there, organising groups for the Tower is, however rather hard.

Xuzl

It actually went a little sideways on us at first, but the recovery was brilliant once again and we took him down with true SA flair. I am not sure exactly what happened but the raid leader called for us all to get out of the room and prepare for a wipe. So I headed out of the room as per instructions, then the call came to all run back in, get up on the platform and continue the fight. We did exactly that and he went down.

So that’s one less Flag I need towards an Elemental plane. 4 more SolRo Minis to go and its time for a run at Sol Ro himself!. I hope Kez is back tonight, we miss you kez, get your ass back online. We will be doing more back flagging tonight I think. I logged on last night to help out with Bastion of Thunder Giant killing and back flagging and that issue that I thought I had dealt with on Tuesday night came back to bite me again. So after about an hour of Giant killing I had to log again.

The GF is out for Friday’s raid, so as long as I have a good connection (and with the servers as shitty as they have been lately there is no guarantees) I will hopefully be online for the whole raid. What annoys me most is that I make a commitment to help out, to be online and do something for other people and I get interrupted because its “just a game and you can turn it off anytime”. No amount of explaining that there are 40-50 other real people also involved in what I am doing ever seems to sink in,

Kez is back!! woot!. Welcome back boss!. I logged on and straight to Overlord Banord ‘My ears fell off again” Paffa (1/34) in the Crypt of Decay. Guess what, bloody Cloak. I am beginning to believe that the Earring has been removed from the Drop Table. Either that or its so stupidly rare as to not be worth killing him for.

Since we were in Crypt of Decay anyway we decided to take a run against the Carprin Cycle. We kicked off the cycle, the pulling team and off tank team did a marvelous job and Carprin Deatharn and his assorted undead buddies went down in quick succession.

Next up is the Mob I’ve never seen and the Mob that gives us the most trouble out of this whole run. Once again we wiped against him and had to fight back to Ahvi Escron’s room. As is also standard practice, the second run against him he was dropped with no problems. Next up is the massive damage output of Raex Pwodil. SA handled him beautifully and he snuffed it fast and clean.

Then comes Vindor Mawnil (I can now spell both of those names without having to refer to Allakhazam’s first!). Both of these two can pump out huge damage. One Rampages a lot the other Flurries a lot and both of them are capable of one rounding a fully raid buffed main tank if your heal team is not very very tight.

Then its a quick run around the corner and drop the rather pathetic Bishop Toluwon. If you can take Vindor and Raex this guy is gimp. We had a monk tank and dropped him rapidly.

Then its the final MOB in the run and the flag boss, High Priest Ultor Szanvon. In comparison to Raex and Vindor he is a girlyman.

Ding!!, a bunch of people got flagged for CODb!. Yay!, less back flagging to do later!. This whole run is a classic example of how SOE fundamentally doesn’t understand the bullshit they constantly spew about “Risk vs Reward”. I don’t know whether they think the flag is the reward or not, but for the difficulty, damage output and level of the MOBs in the cycle, they should drop something halfway decent. Instead you punch your way through the whole cycle and get stuff that goes straight to the Guild Mule because not even the Newbies want it. Its utterly ridiculous.

Next up, Halls of Honor. We figured since we were on a flagging run we should do it properly. We quickly ran through the Princess Trial (4rooms),

Then the Villagers (12man) and finally Rydda`Dar. I still love killing this dragon. I get the butterflies every time we engage because he will still own you if you make even a little mistake. It was a messy take down for us. But a kill is a kill.

That was about that for Friday. Lots of back flagging got done, grats to those who finished up their flagging and thank you to those who made a special effort to be there for the back flagging session as well.

Well Saturday was both a lot of fun and one of the most frustrating days I have ever spent in EQ. It started really really well, I logged in and joined the Unity raid channel to see what was going on. Unity was prepping to kill Grummus. Now I haven’t killed the fat bastard for a while and it was that or more camping the Pained Soul in Trakanon’s Teeth. So I rang an NZ SA member who I knew needed Grummus and told him to log on. We headed out to Plane of Disease, formed up, ran in, and the first to die was Gryme the Crypt Keeper.

Up the stairs, through the door and Aramin the Spider Guardian dies.

Finally a very quick prep and in we go against Grummus.

Next up we were going to hit Carprin, but oops, SA had dropped him the night before. Then it was maybe HOH, but OOPs we cleaned that out as well. So they called Aerin’ Dar and off we all headed to the Plane of Valor. The first attempt was made up just about entirely of Unity alts and it failed. After a fast reform and rebuff the second attempt was perfect and AD went down cleanly.

After about 5 minutes waiting around the Unity raid leaders called Rallos Zek!. Holy shit!, he wasn’t supposed to be up for another 24 hours as far as I was aware. I knew Unity had dropped him for the first time the week previous, I had never even seen him so I decided to hang out and see how they went. Everyone logged their alts, brought in their Mains and we formed up in Drunder. For Unity this was a damn fast form-up. Normally they take a while to get sorted but this was lightning quick. I should have known at this point that this wasn’t the same Unity I had experienced in the past.

We fought in, grabbed the two named triggers and when in position Unity dropped them. Tallon Zek was inc. Now this is where I have seen the previous runs I have been on with Unity fall apart.

Not this time, this kill was smooth as silk. Next up, Vallon Zek.

Again, went down like a virgin on prom night. Unity lost 3 people in both fights. Now one of the interesting thing’s about being a server transfer is that you don’t know anything about guilds and reputations on a server. You don’t know the servers “History” as it were and people are very often willing to tell you all about a certain guild or toon. Now I had heard that Unity was originally neck and neck with Keepers of the Faith for the number one position on the server. They had a bunch of core people leave all at once and were severely knocked back.

I have also heard it bandied about in exp groups (by people in Guilds I have never heard of or who are nowhere near the level of Nameless Order, KTF, Unity etc) that Unity was finished, their Glory days were over and they may as well give up. I will tell you one thing, based on what I saw Saturday, those people are about to be eating their words because Unity’s performance against Rallos Zek was easily one of the smoothest demonstrations of Power I have seen yet. I really wish I could have seen them at their height.

Unity is definitely back and headed to Time. If they can continue the current level of dedication and discipline then IMHO Unity are definite contenders.

Finally we made it to Fake Rallos, engaged, handled the adds beautifully and all Evac’d out to the Zone in ready for real Rallos.

Not a single death in the whole fake Rallos fight, clean as a whistle. Raced in and down to Rallos Zek the Warlord. Sorted charming, add teams in place and off we went.

We made one mistake. The Raid leader forgot to call Full Burn. That was it. We failed with Rallos at 8%. Unity decided to make another run, it was very very late for them so all Kudos that they all stuck around. We reformed at Zone In and raced for the triggers again. There was initially some concern that Tallionis were in zone and forming up for a run at RZtW as well, but they were in fact after the “real” Zek brothers.

So after a bit of pissing about we headed back to Tallon Zek.

Then big brother Vallon:

Back to Fake Rallos.

This one was a little messier. Unity was getting tired and it got a bit sloppy, but we were back at the Zone In in good time, reforming ready for the run at RZtW…

Link Death.

The whole fucking raid went Link Dead, in fact I think most of the population of EQ went LD all at once. I spent 20 minutes frantically trying to get back in to rejoin the raid. I got 1018 errors, 1017 errors and 1001 errors. In fact the entire gamut of errors. I finally checked into CHAT to find the whole game LD. At this point I logged in frustration. I knew the raid wasn’t going to complete as the timer would have run out.

The penultimate of EQ is the Elemental Planes. I need one more Flag to make it into the elementals, Rallos Zek the Warlord. I never even dreamed I would be this close, never in my wildest imagination did I think I would make it to the Elementals. To be that close (Unity took him down the next day, first run, so we would have taken him out on Saturday) and to have it snatched away was frustrating beyond belief. I logged out and walked quickly away from my PC before I decided to break something.

The next day (when I cant logon, Sundays are GF time) Unity and SA took out Rallos and about 15 people from SA were Elemental flagged. I was so frustrated when I read that, that I couldn’t logon. I logged on again on Monday, died to an LD on a pull and logged out again. Raid night is tonight and I will be there. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, but my tolerance for general XP’ing (and all the frustration with constantly being knocked back when trying to set up/join groups) is very very high right now. Most nights I just end up camping some piece of shit key mobs or doing Green farming anyway, there isn’t a lot of fun in that

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty

07/07/03 Week Twenty

This weeks images are a bit larger than normal. They are all still under 20K and the same size as usual , but it was a flagging night, so I tried to get decent close ups of stuff. Apologies to those on Dial-Up. First up, a quote from group chat a week or so ago. We were forming up to venture into CODa and Elly got a little frustrated with his 2nd PC’s logon time.

For those who (Like me) need glasses.
Ellyrion tells the group: “My 2nd PC is slow as fuck”
Metalex tells the group: “upgrade”
Ellyrion tells the group: “I’ve seen old ppl fuck faster”
Caniella tells the group: “I really don’t want to think about that”

I have to agree Cani, I really don’t, but it gets quote of the month from me!!.

Well last night was an adventure!. We had examples of Southern Armada at our best and at (from what I have seen so far) our worst, sometimes at the same time. First up. Shei Vinitras. Flawless kill. I LOVE running all the way through Akheva Ruins and just AOEing all the trash on the way.

Next up Agnarr!!. WOOT a flagging, a flagging!. So we form up outside BOT in the courtyard. Someone manages to aggro the statue’s. Not sure how that happened but we quickly dealt with them and started to move in. Geno DA’s in and pulls the trash out from zone, we deal with the Portals and adds and turn on Evynd Firestorm. It was a bit messy and at one point I seriously thought we were going to wipe. We had adds all over the place, uncontrolled, Pooby down, Hill down, Nym tanking the Named, healers going down. We brought it back under control and I hoped that would going to be the shake down of the night and it would be nice and smooth after that.

Evynd Firestorm

So we take down the first level of the tower and rez, rebuff ready for the second. Geno DA’s in to pull trash away again and goes down!. Pooby is on the named and keeping it entertained, CH chain is flowing nicely. 30 casters are standing there, thumbs up their butts looking for a target, no Second Assist!!. I am standing around ready to unleash some serious unpleasantness, I’m FM and can see at least 3 targets that the Chanters have under control and cant do nada!

It got sorted, Pallies stepped up and we rapidly took out the whirly stone thingies and started on the named. This is a fun kill. The AE’s are so nasty that its really a ranged fight. So with the target designated, Pooby keeping aggro I just chain dotted the hell out of him, ended the fight at about 30% mana.

Image shamelessly Stolen from Illia’s cause I didn’t manage to get a good one.
Emmerick Skyfury

We got a “well done, as flawless a kill as I have ever seen” from Geno!!!!. Wow!. Finally we make it to Agnarr’s floor. Everybody knows what to do, we are fully buffed, we are pumped from the last couple of fights, Geno calls it and we Engage!. Of course it all goes completely tits up. Pooby down, Cani and Trundle down, Geno down, confusion over Second Assist calls and targets, most of the Rangers and Druids kiting Agnarr down, Wizzie’s down, half the Necro’s down. We have 4-5 uncontrolled Adds running amok inside the raid, Agnarr wont stay controlled and Hilly and Panolen are doing a fucking beautiful job kiting him.

I looked up and less than a third of the raid is still standing, bodies everywhere, Agnarr rampaging, adds just dropping people in one round all over the place. We are fucked. Then, the Guild took a collective deep breath, dug deep and recovered. This is to me the difference between a Guild and a Raiding Guild. We may only raid 2-3 times a week, but nothing gets in our way. Thats our reputation. We are the little guild that does more with less. The only difference now is we arent so little. People stepped up to do their jobs, thought outside the box and just said to themselves “This is NOT going to beat me”. Many many guilds would have just taken the wipe at this point or had somebody do something stupid and complete the wipe. Not Southern Armada.

I was dragging (trying to, consent damnit), Combat rezzing started, Necro’s are dumping to Clerics and throwing out Dots and Nukes as the off tanks got the Adds under control, Malina did an absolutely fantastic job keeping the named Giant out of the way, Panolen kept Agnarr occupied until Bilb (after his Rez) could get his AA boosted root on him and fix him in position.

Slowly we dragged ourselves back from a wipe, toon by toon we came back, until we had a room clear of Adds and Portals, Agnarr rooted against one wall and a fully rezzed and ready to go Raid. I couldn’t believe it. I was fully stunned, that was a better feeling than dropping Ryd’dar the first time, that was Southern Armada in action. Kez was right to stop recruiting after all the guys from Xev came across, to allow everyone time to get to know one another. If last night was anything to go by, I would say the shakedown is nearly complete and SA is close to being ready for Rallos. Having said that, we should never have gotten that close to a wipe in the first place. No ones fault. Geno’s strats were perfect. I think with Kez away and others having a rest, the few left in the officer corps are just about stretched to the limit. Once we were recovered however, Agnarr didn’t even rate a blip on our radar. He is another one who spawns adds as his health drops :

Ekil Thundercall

The final add is Hibdin Cyclone and he is apparently a major pain, un-slowable and a massive damage output. Geno tanked him and we just blew him away.

Hibdin Cyclone

Finally the swine we were there for, Agnarr the Storm Lord. Ganked.

So we all ran upstairs to see Karana. It really is a kind of a cruel joke on the part of SOE to make the most hated God in the game, be the one you have to rescue. I was so looking forward to killing Karana for all the times I spent lost on his Plain’s or just going round and round in circles in his damn rain.

This week we have a patch Wednesday night and a raid Thursday night so the pickings should be good! Well last week’s Raids sucked ass in the end. Patch Wednesday was delayed to Thursday, so the raid was delayed to Friday. Then of course SOE fucked up the patch and had to emergency patch on the Friday. By the time the servers came up I was asleep. So sometime in the week I went along and helped drop Trakanon again and that was about it for raiding this week.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Nineteen

03/07/03 Week Nineteen

Tuesday night’s raid was pretty short and sweet for me. After Saryrn I saw the call for Tallon Zek when my logout countdown was at about 10 seconds. Too Late!. I was nearly out and absolutely buggered so I left it and went to bed. First up on Tuesday I did my little run into Crypt of Decay to check if Paffa was up. I’m sure there is some nasty see invis MOB in the little room just outside his lair, because my invis drops or gets broken every time I make that damn run. Well he was up and very kindly the officers decided he was the nights warm up.

This time I waited to take my Screen shot and got a view of the other side of Paffa’s head. This is to prove that he DOES in fact have a second ear that could potentially drop an earring. *Sigh* but not this time. We even had Mall sit the fight out because the only time an Earring has dropped was when he wasn’t there. Didn’t work.

Overlord Banord (1/30) Paffa

I get my hopes up every damn time. Its not even so much that I want one, which I do, don’t get me wrong, I just want him to drop ONE! So after yet another disappointment, we headed out to the Plane of Torment, to hit Saryrn again. Its seems to be something of a Southern Armada tradition, that, beyond flagging requirements, we always hit a tough MOB at least twice, just to prove the first one wasn’t a fluke. Not that Saryrn is a tough MOB, she’s not. But clearing all the crap to get to her is a pain in the ass. If you have never done this kill, you basically have 1-2 hours of Trash clearing and 4 Named MOBs to kill before you get to Saryrn’s room. Killing her is the easy bit.

Servant of Saryrn

Now I think I actually got screenshots of all the named’s and in order this time. First up is the Fleshgrinder. Now forgive me if I am wrong, but surely if you are designing an encounter you start with the slightly easier MOBs and move up to the hard ones in a sort of semi logical progression?. Nope, not if you are SOE, lets put the 1k quadding, AE Rampaging, 100K HP MOB at the start of the run!!. Ah well I guess it sorts out whether you should even be attempting the kill.

Salczek the Fleshgrinder

Next up (I think) comes Ta`Grusch the Abomination. Another huge damage output MOB.

Now in front of that big ugly ass MOB which is pumping out enough damage to drop an Old World God, stands Pooby. In a lot of cases all that stands between us and a wipe, is the Poobinator and the dedication and Skill of the SA Cleric team. /BIG BOW to you guys!. One of these days Pooby will make the magical 10k mark, oh yes he will!

Then comes the Acolyte, a fun fight cause of all the adds. If your CC team isn’t on to it, even if you can survive the previous two mobs, this guy will get you every time.

The Acolyte of Affliction

Another “spawn lots of MOBs as my health drops” Boss. Again, you better have damn good crowd control for this, one downed Chanty can mean 20+ adds in the middle of your raid. I still think its a bit of a boring Model though.

Maareq the Prophet

Next, and last before Saryrn’s room is The Keeper of Sorrows. Now this is a MOB I really don’t get. You make it through all the other very tough MOB’s, requiring CC, healing, high DPS etc etc, you get to this guy, who is the last thing in your way and he’s a Gimp. Straight up and down Tank fight. Odd.

The Keeper of Sorrows

Then you get to the good bit. I like this fight. It needs everybody to be on their game. Everyone has to be clear about what they are doing, where they are placed, what will happen next and the pace and speed of Saryrn’s death. We lost one player this time. 2 Kills, one death, that’s not half bad.

She knows we are coming, its all just bluster….

Saryrn has been Poobied.

A couple of days ago I was looking through Allakhazam’s (As you do) and I noticed this. Now I can only speak as a Necro (I have played a tank to the 50’s but that don’t count) and personally that’s one of those items that just makes me go all weak at the knee’s. If it had STA on it as well I would have started to drool at my desk. This run through Saryrn was kind enough to drop it for us. To be honest I am very happy Mallee won it. I think the officers made a good call, and damn that job has to suck, Grats Mall, that is an Awesome Earring 🙂

I have to say, the more we crawl through the Mid-Upper Tiers of the Planes of Power, the more I am enjoying it. Every encounter, or series of them, has a different flavor. Its obvious (or at least it seems so to me, maybe I am wrong) that they are training Guilds towards an end. As you progress through the planes the fights get longer, they require more and more “combined arms” co-ordination and more and more dedication from the players than ever before. I think the designers are essentially trying to weed out the “lesser” or “weaker” guilds with these progressive encounters. Sure you can clear NToV, but can you drop a BOT Tower Boss?, Terris Thule?, Grummus?, or if you can kill those, can you step up to Rydda`Dar?, can you concentrate and co-ordinate your people long enough to drop Bertoxxulous?, finally, can you put everything you have learned together and kill the Big Bad (as Buffy would say) and kill Rallos Zek the Warlord.

I have seen a lot of talk and discussion lately about the next series of “EQ Killers” on the horizon. Personally, I have put a shit load of time and effort into this game and I am not going anywhere till I can say I “beat” it. I have been playing 4+ years and now I am getting this close to EndGame there is no way I am leaving. I want to see POTime, I want to drop the Rathe Council, I want to break the 3k HP mark on Ulaa. There is still a lot to do and see.

I have also seen a lot of bitching and whining by the Uber Guilds about how the end game “sucks” and there is “nothing” after it. Well sorry but getting to be an “Uber Guild” means one thing, you finish the game earlier and you have a lot of time waiting around for the next expansion. You get bragging rights cause you were first and you get to tell the rest of us we suck. If you don’t like it, then stop playing 60 hours a week. Me personally, I still enjoy EQ and I have still got a lot of this game to see. Having zoned into and done a little hunting in Sol Ro’s Tower I have to say I am looking forward to the rest of the zones. The design of that zone, the “Look and Feel” of it are fantastic!. I cant wait to see POFire and POWater.

Friday
Night. Fucking Overlord Banord 1/31 “Necro’s can Suck my Ass” Paffa is first target. I went LD (oh what a surprise) as we engaged so no pic. He still didn’t drop an earring. Bastard. Next up was a run to my favorite Zone. I always do the port down to The Great Divide and then run through Kael Drakkal to the Wakening Lands side. Its a lot faster than waiting for a port in POK. So we form up, buff up and the pulls start. We just about have this down to a fine art at this point. I think we could almost bring everything between the pull spot and the Statue and just AOE it.

Statue pulled….

shortly to die…

Once again the Statue came with two or three friends and once again the off tanks stepped up and nailed them.

The Idol of Rallos Zek

The Avatar of War

Then it was a quick run to Halls of Honor for more backflagging. We set up for the Villager Trial fast, kicked it off and spanked it. We absolutely blew through about 20 level 60+ Named Mobs without even pausing for breath.

One of many

Then it was time for our old Nemesis Rydda`Dar. This Dragon, that once gave us so many problems, went down like Pam on Tommy.

He’s a Pussy really..

Then it was time for the big boy of the night. A quick run up to the Temple of Marr and the Lord Mithaniel Marr. Now once again this is a major crawl through miles and miles of Zone Yard Trash. However the yard trash here looks pretty cool. Some people think that these MOBs are doggies (Probably Canterbury fans) . I personally think they look like pussy cats. Level 64, hit like a freight train, pussy cats. They look like they should be curled up and asleep at the foot of my bed, purring and keeping my feet warm.

Once you clear through them you get the fun of killing off a couple of named’s. If the pussy cats hit like freight trains the named hit like having a small moon dropped on you. Get it wrong and you can have a wee oops!. The named’s died, but so did a lot of us.

Oops!.

Finally we were in place and it was time to go. The Monks were busy separating out Lord Marr from his various body guards. The biggest and nastiest of which is an overblown froggie model called Ralthazor, Champion of Marr. Now why didn’t they use a new froggie model?. The new froggies are all followers of Marr, the old froggies from Guk (same as this model) are not.

Killing Ralthazor isn’t hard, separating him from his guards is. The pull team did their usual flawless job and Ralthazor came alone. Unfortunately, during the maneuvering to separate Marr from his remaining body guards someone went LD, some funny aggro happened and we got Mith Marr and 3 of his friends.

That’s basically another oops pic. We attempted to recover in place and Geno and Attann did a brilliant job of playing Tag with the pussy cats to keep them aggro’d on the far side of the room. It would have worked as well if two of them hadn’t warped over to our corner and wiped the clerics and few tanks we had up by that time. Ah well chalk that one up to experience and bad luck. At that point it was close to 2:00am and time for sleep. I don’t think anything else was hit that night as a lot of people were starting to log at that point.

But the following night I logged on with the hope we would get a chance at another Raid. Sure enough our old friend Seru was up. Everyone gathers in POK for the Port to Sanctus Seru and start the fight in to him. Once again he was waiting with his back to us. What I want to know is how he ever managed to Challenge the Emperor. He is always looking the wrong way.

He cant be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Another not so good fight. He aggro’d to the wrong spot on pull, wipe went half the Casters and Clerics. We struggled on for a couple of minutes before the call was taken to camp. We reformed, pulled and ganked flawlessly.

Lord Inquisitor Seru

That was pretty much it for Friday. Just a simple quite kill. Saturday was July 4th in the USA so Unity weren’t really up to a lot. I managed to tag along with Cani and a couple of Non-USA Unity chaps and did a bit of killing for XP in the Halls of Honor.

Nevor Jikman

I also managed to tag along on a mini run to Old Sebilis to drop the Undead dragon Lord Trakanon. Now Trak may be well and truly old school EQ but I have never killed him, or even ventured that deeply into Sebilis. So about one and half groups of us formed up in Seb and started to fight our way in. It went pretty simply actually. Fight down to him, separate out his protectors.

and then a fairly simple Zerg Rush at him. Dead Dragon and one more Dragon ticked off the kill list!!.

Trakanon

He dropped a couple of BP’s neither of which I won (I was hoping for the Cobalt BP for my nasty Warrior Twink) and we all ported out and went our separate ways, another Dragon trashed. I did manage to be awarded a Trak Tooth, so I guess I should start my Veeshans Peak Key quest!.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Eighteen

24/06/03 Week Eighteen
Well since I missed out on the raid on Friday night I tried to join up with Unity on Saturday and Sunday for a couple of their Raids. First off, while waiting for the bulk of Unity to Logon we headed up to the Bastion of Thunder for all the named’s we could fit in. Turns out Talionis was already clearing most of the Tower Bosses as we got there so the only one up was Brynju Thunderclap. Unity dropped him pretty promptly.

Brynu Thunderclap

After that they decided to attempt the Rallos Zek encounter in the Plane of Tactic’s. Now this is one of the big ones. This is the roadblock on the way to Elementals for almost every guild in the game. If you can make it past Rallos, nothing short of the Elemental Planes Bosses is going to stop you. Unity has had numerous attempts at him but this was the first one I managed to tag along on. First up you have to kill a bunch of Yard trash, but there are a couple of named triggers you have to Memblur/Mez and Pull with you as you move.

Decorin Berik

Once you are in the right spot (The beginning of the Tallon Zek Encounter) you have then kill the triggers as fast as you can to spawn TZ. I hate this bastard. Once again I completely failed to survive and this time all I did was nuke!, actually the MT went down just as casters started landing Nukes and they pulled aggro. One TZ arrow amongst the casters and we were all dead.

Tallon Zek

We reformed and were about to venture back in when I got a tell from a guildie to come and help him out. So, a Unity raid may be fun but a guildie comes first. So off to Cazic Thule for a little casual Lizard Slaughter. After killing off a few named in CT I checked with the raid. Unity were deep inside Tactics and there was really no re-joining them. So the little group I was in headed off to do a bit of Shard farming for the Vex Thal key.

Late Sunday I also joined in dropping a couple of named in Bastion of Thunder. Goddamn I love Pallies, if ya cant get a Warrior, a Pally or SK will do just as nicely!.

Laef Windfall

Hreider Lynhillig

That was about it for the weekend.The GF has a really savage flu so I was able to be online a lot longer than I normally would on Sunday. This meant a lot more Vex Thal Shard farmage was possible and I managed to collect the last few pieces of my Key!.Monday and Tuesday were called as the raids for this week, mainly because we were hoping for a shot at the Emperor and he was due to pop at that point. So Monday I logged in and as usual we took a shot at Paffa in Crypt Of Decay while waiting for everyone else to arrive. We have killed him an average 1.5 times a week for 18 weeks. That’s 27 kills. We have had 1 earring drop. A 1/27+ ratio, come on SOE, don’t you think that’s a LITTLE rare even for an earring that nice?.

Banord Paffa

Next up was a little Backflagging. Terris Thule is actually a fun fight and I quite enjoy it, but this is getting to be a pain in the ass and I am beginning to feel the pain of the longer term members. The flagging system was a great concept but I really wish they had thought a little harder with how they implemented it. Ah well, a necessary evil because we need every warm body we can summon for the Elemental Planes!. So off to the the Bitch Goddess of Nightmares house to see what’s under her skirt.

Terris Thule waiting for us…

She had a wee accident, fell down and hurt herself *Sad*

Then Kez called Bert!. WOOT!. I Missed Bert last week due to connection problems, so I was really looking forward to this!. Back to the Crypt of Decay, formed up and started pulling. Now I didn’t get a lot of good screen shots of this one as the event is a hard and fast one. I spent most of it facing a wall and running everything through my hot key bank. /Assist Genosin, /Cast undead Nuke and /Mana Dump. The DPS in the guild now is massive.

My Nuke is a 5 second cast and often I had to interrupt as the mob was dead before I could land it. I
did manage to get a few very basic screens.

Knight Of Decay

Basically this is a two hour running fight. You kill the trigger Mobs and you have 2 hours to clear 12 Named Kings and finally Bert. If you don’t do it inside 2 hours Bert despawns. Each King has his/its own peculiarities you have to contend with and deal with. The pulling was a little iffy in some places as the monks had never done this event before so they were a little unsure of the “tricks” of it. Next time they will nail it I am damn sure. We have the best pulling team on Prexus bar no-one.

I managed to go LD immediately after the 12th King was killed but was lucky enough to get back in and be able to join the raid. Finally we pulled and killed Bert. Bert is cool, I loaded him up with all the DoT’s I possibly could and then started Nuking!. Wow, one more flag out of the way. I am one Flag (Saryn Kill) from Sol Ro’s Tower!! and an additional 2 flags from Elementals (Agnarr the Storm Lord and Rallos Zek the Warlord).

Bertoxxulous Dead

I am further along in the game than I ever thought I would be. It kind of stuns me sometimes to be honest. After 4 years of playing and effort I am actually at the point in the game where I want to be. I have now seen and taken part in content that maybe 5% of the player base ever will. So with Bert downed (and 15 minutes to spare) and the PhatLewtz handed out, people were starting to log. I was considering it, after all it was close to 1.00am my time. Then it came. The call I have been waiting to see since Luclin was released. “The Emperor Ssraeshza is up!, get to the Temple.

” Anyone who considers themselves even vaguely serious about EQ starts to drool when you say that name. It’s the “coming of age Mob” for any guild. It’s not so much about killing him, which in the age of level 65’s and Elemental Armour and items, really isn’t that hard for a lot of guilds. It’s about having the dedication to get the keys. It’s about racing every other Emp capable guild to get to him. For a long time he was the be all and end all. Sure there was Vex Thal after him, but beating him was the big one. Kez then says “90 Minutes tops for the Kill”. I should know better by now *sigh*.

When Kez gets his teeth into something, nothing makes him let go. Kez’s relation to time is a lot like that of the infamous “Microsoft Minute”. One Minute in Kez land, can equal hours in the real
world.

So of course there is no way in hell I’m going to log at this point. We stopped off at the third floor to kill the Named Commanders to pick up 3 final pieces for people and then zoned in. I Love that Message “The key to the throne Room to the Emperor of Ssraeshza has been added to your Keyring” WOOT!. Zone in and run into the Emperors Room. Its a really cool looking room, with all the colored lights and runes on the walls.

The trick to this fight is not only the Bane weapons you need to be able to even damage the Emperor, its the tight and effective Crowd Control and healing to keep his bodyguards in order. We buffed up, got ready and pulled the Blood of Ssraeshza. 6 mates came with him and with heroic effort the Crowd Control Team got them all under control and started on The Blood himself.

Blood of Ssraeshza

Engage!

Blood snuffed it fast and everyone ran to the Emperor. He popped a little sooner than expected and it was touch and go there for a while, but thanks to damn quick reactions from a couple of the raid force (Go Rangers!) and brilliant heal management we got him back under control and the Necs started to lay in the DoT’s hard.

Damn this is a long ass fight. But considering we had 41 people and only 3 Bane weapons we did Brilliantly!.

Dead Fat Snake Bastard

I logged off at about 4:00am. I felt really, really bad when I got up at 6:30am to go to work after about 15 minutes sleep. But it doesn’t matter, that’s one more item ticked off the EQ wish list!. I also managed to be one of the people who got a Rift from the Emperor. So on Tuesday evening this week I managed (with the help of several people, and big thanks to all of them!!) to finish my Key to the zone of Vex Thal, and hopefully one of these days Southern Armada will zone in there en masse and trash the place.

Now, last week after SOE fucked up the graphics animation patch (Surprise, Surprise) my graphics started to look seriously bizarre. I was seeing some very very bizarre skins.

Ometiklan
(High elf Pally)

PinkPower Ranger

Lyrique

Random Weirdness

And just for laughs, here is a couple of pics of me and My Horsie!! Not only is he pretty, he’s the fastest thing in the Game with the exception of a level 65 Bard with a focus item. Don’t I look Fabulous!

Tuesday we had a patch. Everyone decided to logon after the patch and I believe they dropped Lord Mithaniel Marr. However, after the effort on Monday night, and one hours sleep, followed by a ten hour day there was just no way. So I logged just before the patch and was asleep before my head hit the pillow. Wednesday we managed another mini raid. Lord Seru was up so we formed up for the hit in Plane Of Knowledge and gated in to Sanctus Seru . Lord Seru was in his usual position, facing completely the wrong way while we snuck in behind him.

Lord Inquisitor Seru

First time round we lost the main tank, the casters immediately gained aggro (as we do when there are 6 Necro’s dotting for over 1k per tick) and he charged us. The tanks managed to gain aggro back but by then we had lost about 1/3rd of the raid force. So we called it a fail, logged a cleric or two and took the wipe. Logged back in and the second run was absolutely flawless. In fact, I think he went down even faster than he usually does.

That was the end of Friday night. I gated and logged as soon as he went down. I had promised the GF a 20 Minute kill before the first wipe. So in the end I was about an hour later logging than I had anticipated. Much GF faction farming has to be done.

Next day I joined the good folks over at Unity for an attempt to grab a key for access to Saryrn. I was a bit late so I had to run up to join the raid in the Plane of Torment. I was hoping Unity were also going to take a run at Saryrn herself after the key raid but it wasn’t to be. Ah well, I got to see a whole section of the zone I had never been to. To cut a long story short, you have to travel through a nasty Boss MoB’s stomach’s to be able to finally kill him and get yourself a key. EWWWW.

The MoB’s look really cool though as you travel through the stomachs. Unity did the whole script fast and clean.

A Flayed Horror

Unfortunately the final part of the event was bugged and despite the valiant efforts of the 14 people who actually ended up ported to the right spot, we couldn’t quite take the final guy down. So I gated out after the Rez and went and did a little farming in Sebilis.Later on Saturday afternoon the officers sorted another pickup raid. Ellyrion and Servalan logged in, started organizing, and we all headed over to the Crypt of Decay. Once again Overlord Banord Paffa (1/28) has proven to have no ears. He’s got about 10 backs, 10 hands and 7 faces but only one damn ear.

Earless Fat Bastard

One of these days that fat bastard is actually going to drop an Earring. Simultaneously 9 Necro’s around the world will have heart attacks in sheer surprise and it will end up rotting. After Paffa went down there were more and more SA people logging in. So we decided we had enough for a hit on Saryrn, so everyone headed across to The Plane of Torment. We also had enough people who didn’t get the Dream Sequence key the last time that we decided to do the whole thing again. The toughest part of this kill (IMHO) is not so much the Named kills, its clearing all the crap to get to the Named’s.

Boruk Tormentor

Kaniz Tormentor

I managed to get some actual Shots of the Named’s this time, and I even think they are vaguely in order.

The Acolyte of Affliction

Ta`Grusch the Abomination

There was Salczek the Fleshgrinder in there somewhere as well. You fight your way through all of those and a bazillion tons of Yard Trash to get to:

Maareq the Prophet

He is a pretty nondescript Human model type who basically stands there and gets ganked. He’s a lot like the guy in the Caprin event that I never get to see. I cast on him from another room and that’s it. So anyway, he goes down, we all pile under the Cage and port up to the final guys room. The Keeper of Sorrows. I find this kind of a weird fight in that a lot of the MoB’s you have to face on the way to the Keeper are quite hard, but the Keeper himself is really a very easy, straight up and down tank fight. Not a lot to him.

The Keeper goes down, we all say our piece to the Flag guy and get ported back to Saryrn’s room. Finally!, the Arch Bitch herself!. Makes Terris Thule look like a well behaved church going type!.

Saryrn waiting…

After telling her that Terris Thule is cuter…

Flawless

A Flawless kill it was. We didn’t lose a single person, not even the Ninja Turtle Wannabe, tho we did try to get him killed by aggroing Sorrowsong too early and trying to drag him over to where the casters were so he could cast Silence on us. But all in all, a fun fight, the Chick MoB’s in EQ seem to have this thing about spawning add’s to help them. Now I know Rallos Zek does this as well. My question is this, is Rallos really a chick in Disguise?.

Of course the best part of this was a new Flag! After we all gated/ported out of Torment we all started running around fixing up flags. I had a couple of PreFlags I hadn’t completed and it took much running between the Library, the Seer and Tranquility before I managed to get it all fixed up. Course the first thing I did was head over and zone into the Tower of Solusek Ro. This is a COOL looking zone and it is huge.

Didn’t get much else done as it was getting on for quite late. So I gated out and went to bed. The next day I managed to get online a bit as I was sick so I was “allowed” a bit of extra time to play. There were a couple of people already in Sol’s Tower, so I sent them a tell and headed over to see what the zone was like for XP. I have to say, wow. This is definitely my new home. 2-5% XP per kill in a full group killing the entry MoB’s.

A Protector of Ro

We ventured in a little further and this is easily the most amazing zone I have seen in EQ so far. It is absolutely massive, it looks awesome (next time I’m turning spell effects on and it will look even better I’m told) and I think it will be a blast to Raid in. I also did one other thing in between all the raiding this week. I saw someone was organizing a run to see Lord Yelinak in Skyshrine. Now I have been to Skyshrine many times, but I have never seen Yelly himself. As I wanted to see how my faction was with him, I asked if I could tag along. After a LOOOOOOOOOONG ass run to get to him, there he was. One of the toughest MoB’s in Velious, and guess what!?, I’m his Ally!!). Woot!, now next time when we drop Tormax I can put my hand up for his head. Mainly cause I want these.

Next to the Boots that Bertoxxulous drops, they are easily the best Caster footwear in the game and Bert is just a little bit harder to kill than Tormax.

Oh and a wee message to Solusek Ro and Rallos Zek. Southern Armada is coming for you….