Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Seventeen

19/06/03 Week Seventeen

Well Tuesday kicked off with a blast! Prexus went down (again) early Tuesday afternoon, so be the time we logged on LOTS of goodies were starting to pop! First up was a little side jaunt to Sanctus Seru. We started a little early as we were concerned that someone may get the jump on us after the server up.

We didn’t need to worry too much, I have yet to see anyone form up and attack faster than Southern Armada, so once in the zone we went hell for leather at him and down went Lord Inquisitor Seru.

Now a lot of people in SA already have Horsies, but it has been my dream since I was on Karana to own a top end horsie. I used to peruse the various web sites out there looking and dreaming at MOB’s and Gear I never ever thought I would see or own. Last week I finished my Emperor Key, something I would never have believed would happen, on Tuesday I was awarded a Black Ornate Chain Bridle.

Not only is it the fastest Horsie there is, but its Black!, and its a Horsie! and did I mention I have Funeral Pyre?! WOOT! *Does the happy Necromancer dance*

Anyway, sorry, where was I?. Next up we were called to the Lair of Terris Thule. Unfortunately there was a wee miscalculation somewhere and she wasn’t actually up. So after a bit of searching the next target was called.

Saryn is up in the Plane of Torment! WOOT A Flagging!!. This is one cool looking zone. The whole place is iron, chains and blood. Personally I really, really do not ever want to meet the guy who designed this zone. We zoned in, formed up and started the fight towards the tower. I have to say, god DAMN but there is a lot of yard trash to clear to get to the Big Nasty. However the mobs look really cool. Kudos to the designers on this zone.

Boruk Skin Harvester

Servant of Saryn

Blood Soaked Guard

I didn’t get an exact sequence of events and mobs as a lot of the time I wasn’t always sure if what we were up against was a named or just a normal mob. The ones I was able to identify though were:

Ta`Grusch the Abomination

Salczek the Fleshgrinder

The Abomination was a fun fight, he came with no call so we didn’t expect him at all. He still got handled and dealt to though, but it got a bit exciting there for a second.!

I didn’t get a shot of Maareq the Prophet for two reasons, he’s human (Booo) and I never saw him. Another face the wall and chain cast DOT’s fight YAWN. He died and we all ported up to the room of The Keeper of Sorrows. Strangely after what you have to go through to get to the Keeper he is somewhat of a gimp fight. But oh well, its all good as I have one more flag to add to my collection! Only one flag to go (Bertoxxulous) and its Rallos Zek time!. He is going to be a serious bitch of a fight. But like RD I am going to laugh my ass off when he goes down.

Just to top the night off Saryn herself wasn’t up (we had wrong information on what causes her to spawn), so no final flag. So we had a wander though her room, looked into her underwear drawer and played with her pet. A crow with its eyes ripped out and the sockets bleeding is one hell of a pet!

SorrowSong

So with no Saryn a lot of people started to log as it was getting late for some. It was about 2.00AM for me and I seriously considered logging but just as I was thinking about it Kez called “Cursed Up” and off to Ssraeshza Temple. After all, who can pass up an opportunity to kill Snakes unless its at gunpoint?. So with a seriously reduced raid force off we went.

The trackers were having a field day. Everything was popping, XTC was up, 2 Rhag’s, Cursed, ArchLich, High Priest, all we needed was the Blood to pop and it would have been a full house!. I think if we had had all this goodness up at raid start we would have hit Ssra hard instead of Saryn. Ah well. The usual suspects died in the usual manner.

A Glyphed Covered Serpent

Vyzh’dra the Exiled

Vyzh’dra the Cursed

Lots of PhatLewtz dropped, including the best range item for casters in EQ. But at this point it was 3.00 AM and I already had a Horsie from tonight’s festivities so I logged and camped pretty much straight away.

Now its time for a rant. If you don’t want to read one then piss off. I really don’t know who actually reads this so as far as I know its just me, so I get to vent a little.

HOW the fuck do you get to be 65 and in a raiding guild and NOT KNOW the rules of fucking raiding?. Ok I know I am still pretty new to high end raiding myself, but I know enough about it to have written this guide to Necro raiding for the low-end a while back.

What the fuck is up with mezz breaking?. NO-ONE breaks mezz but the MA, NO-ONE. There is NO fucking excuse for this kind of shit at this level. NONE, nada, zip, shit. I learned about how to make an /assist key and what it was used for on my first fear raid 3 years ago for fucks sake.

I think the most basic rule for raiding can be expressed in this simple little phrase.

You can fuck about before a raid and you can fuck about after a raid. Do Not Fuck About During a Raid.

Do not wander about, do not chat in /Raid, do not break Mezz, do not try to take aggro off the MT, there’s a whole fucking list of them. The most basic is pay fucking attention!!.

Cant see the raid calls amongst the spam?, then make a new fucking window and separate out the RS so you can see it clearly. I have 5 windows open all the time so I can keep all my information clearly separated and understandable. There is a shit load of information coming at you during a raid and you need to be able to see it and assimilate it fast. Actually just go and read my Guide or go and read this Guide or even the one thats posted on Southern Armada’s web-board!.

Both of them are written from a Necro’s point of view and both of them are aimed at the player going on his first raid, but it seems that some of you fuckers need a refresher course. The Officers and Guild Leader of Southern Armada put a SHITLOAD of work into keeping the guild alive and sorting the next target, pulling, research on tactics etc etc. If you want to fuck about then piss off, cause you are wasting the time of 60 other people who are there to be serious and move ahead in the game.

I am by no means an expert raider or even a hugely experienced one, but I listen, I pay attention, I TRY to get better and learn from those who know their shit. I try to learn from my mistakes and don’t make them again. If you want to raid then pay fucking attention,if you dont want to raid then why did you turn up?. If the call is to go left and hug the wall, then do it, it’s really not that hard.

Not “Oh they didn’t mean me, I’m just going to wander off and look at this interesting mob over here” or “I’m bored while the raid is sorted so I’m going to run around people in ever increasing circles”. If you aggro a MOB then DIE FFS!. Do not fucking bring it back to the raid. Do not run around panicking. There are people who’s entire job is looking out for this shit to happen, running around just makes it harder for them to bring the mob under control!

Ok I feel better, sort of. We will see what tonight brings us.

Friday.

Well tonight brought nada for me. I logged in a little early to see if I could grab a bit of XP or help someone with a shard camp or something similar. 5mins in LD. Damn oh well not unheard of. Log back in, trying to get to Acrylia Caverns for a shard camp. 5mins LD.

Crap try again, 7 mins, LD. Rats, log to an Alt, 5 Mins LD. Raid is called, 8 Mins LD, get to Raid, LD while waiting, LD again while Raid is setting up, LD again just as we engage. FUCK FUCK FUCK. Nothing I can do about it, it must have been something local to me as the next day it was pretty much gone.

So I logged to an Alt and sat and listened while the rest of the Guild got to go on the first Southern Armada attempt at Bertoxxulous. With a sum total of 4 clerics we not only made it to him on time we engaged him and didnt do too badly before the wipe. With a full raid complement of Clerics (And Me!) we will take him easy.

While all this was going on I was still going LD every 5-15 minutes while I was playing my Alt. I would have been a serious impediment to any raid 😦

Saturday was a bit better as I managed to get the last two shards I needed to finish my VT key! WOOOOOOOOOTTT!. All I need now is the rift from the Emperor Ssraeshza and I am Vex Thal keyed!. Thats another EQ dream realised! I am going to look up what I need for the Veeshans Peak key next and attempt to do that, some of it is soloable I know so I really want to give it a go.

Being keyed for places like Veeshan’s Peak, Vex Thal or the Emperor’s throne room are dreams I have had since the reports of those places first started to appear. My chances of seeing this stuff on Karana were absolute Zero. On Prexus where a jaunt through the current VP would be a warmup excercise for SA, the chances are very very good. 🙂

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Sixteen

15/06/03 Week Sixteen

This week started off with a wee romp through the Bastion Of Thunder in an xp group. We dropped three out of four Tower mini bosses. I have killed them so many times now I feel I know them by their first names.

Gaukr

Laef

Oreen

First Guild raid of the week was Tuesday. The usual warm up in Crypt of Decay was Overlord Banord “Someone has cut my earlobes off” Paffa, he was snapped up good and hard…

Since we were in the Crypt of Decay anyway, we decided to do a run through the Carpin Cycle.

Raex Pwodil
Vindor Mawnill

Bishop Toluwon

High Priest Ultor Szanvon

The cycle went just about flawlessly. Then it was time to hit the Plane of Innovation for some Manaetic Behemoth. Unfortunately we got a bit cocky, one spidey made it into the room and bang all our Tanks and Clerics were dead. We still managed to take him down to about 13% with only the casters, one tank and druids healing, before we went down.

That was pretty much it for Tuesday. Lots of Guild Flags obtained, not much in the way of loot.

We were originally going to be raiding on Thursday after the big Wednesday patch. Then of course we had the Great Prexus Crash of ’03 and rollbacks all over the place. I lost a butt load of Shissar bane weapons (I had about 6 drops in Ssra in about 30 minutes, including the extremely elusive Shissar Ulak. Attann lost not one but two 2nd floor key pieces which sucked ass.

I was sent out of town by my company on Thursday and worked my ass off to make sure I was back by Thursday night. I was on the road at 6am and didn’t get back till 8pm to be in time for the raid. Fuckit. So raid ended up being Friday night and what a raid it was. There was LOTS of great targets up!

First up we headed to Ssra cause the Cursed was up. We ended up head to head with another guild and basically did a /rand for the spawn. Thanks to Kez’s marvelous roll of a 2 we lost and set off to the Halls Of Honor and the Villager trial!.

Once that was done it was time for something new and interesting. The Lord Mithaniel Marr was due a little visit from us in his Temple. But first, the Avatar of War showed his ugly Puss in Kael Drakkal and was righteously ganked. One again he was kind enough to drop TWO (count em) TWO Blades of Carnage. We will be giving them away to twinks soon!. Oh Kez, my level 15 Froggy Warrior needs a BOC!

For some reason the pull team decide that just pulling the Avatar of War, Statue, Idol etc etc wasn’t exciting enough. So they started pulling multiples. We got Vindi and five friends, Statue and 3 friends etc etc. It was fun!

Friends

Vindi

Statue of Rallos Zek

Idol of Rallos Zek

The Avatar of War

Then its time for Lord Marr. The entrance to his temple is pretty impressive. Very Greek, or should I say very Melbourne?

He has some big ass pussycats guarding him. They are very cute, but they hit very hard.

and Lord Marr looks Kewl!

Now that was a hell of a good fight!. Thanks to some fantastic (or should I say Lucky?) pulling we got Marr split from his guards and all alone. After that it was all over bar the shouting. Once Marr was down it was time for the Plane of Tactics and our old friend Vallon Zek.

For some reason this week I have also managed to miss 2x Seru kills and a Cursed kill. Basically I have been doing faction farming with the GF. Well no more!, no more I say!. This week there shall be much killing and I shall get my Horsie! I know the Emperor drops one as well, but Seru’s is black, and well, I’m a Necro, and well, you know, its black!.

Oh and hopefully we may get a shot at the Emperor Ssraeshza soon. I finally managed to finish my Emp Key this week (Thanks to the phenomenal Geno and Attann) so I will be able to go to the kill. I have 3 more Shards to go for the VT key and I think I know how to get one more, so should only be 2 shards soon.

Raid night tonight. No idea what’s going to be up but I bet its good!

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fifteen

08/06/03 Week Fifteen

Well last week was a real mixture for me. I had both an extremely good week and a extremely bad one. Everquest, like life, delivers the good with the bad, sometimes in a single helping. Well first up, Monday after the long weekend, not looking forward to going to work with sand in my eyes, but hell I ain’t going to miss a raid day either!. Last week was a week of much backflagging after we found out that the changes to flags for POP would not affect story line progression. BUGGER!

So first up was of course Crypt of Decay and Overlord Banford (I have no ears) Paffa. He of course got dinked in short order as we waited for everyone to logon and kick off the raid proper.

Once again Banford Paffa utterly refused to gift the Southern Armada Necromancer community (9 raiding Necro’s on most nights) with an Earring. We have had one out of, ooo I dunno a bazillion kills!?. Come on, I mean look at the pic, the fat bastard clearly has 2 ears!!.

After Paffa snuffed it, Kez decided we would venture even deeper into the Ruins of Lxanvom and we kicked off the Caprin cycle with a decisive nailing of the ugly,one eyed, hits-like-a-mack-truck swine himself Carprin Deatharn.

Carprin was a little messy but he died all the same. The pull got a little crazy as the puller got stunned on the inc and went down, bringing adds in all of which got off tanked nicely. If I was a MoB that lived in COD and I heard a guild with 6 active Pallies was inc, Id be pissing off out the back door as fast as possible.

“Yup, I know they are inc Carprin old mate, just gotta log and umm, polish my bones a bit so they are all nice and shiny for the fight!, you stay right there and hold the fort!”

After that came the fight with the mob I have never seen. I wont say much apart from to post this pic. Anyone who has ever been through this fight knows exactly what this means.

Skelly Train

That’s the first HALF of the train going back to the room.

We reformed at the GY and fought back in, to pull Raex Pwodill. Something was going weird with aggro that night and we had lots of thru the wall aggro resulting in another 2 wipes. We wiped the first time when we got both Raex and his buddy Vindor Mawnil at the same time.

We came back in and splatted Vindor on the second attempt, but 30 seconds before the pull was due Raex got aggro’d through a wall again. Second wipe. At this point it was close to 2.30AM and I really needed to sleep so I had to camp. SA went back into COD and forced High Priest Ultor Szanvon to bow down and finally got the flags!.

Thursday was a different kettle of fish entirely. The Kill list from Thursday would make most guilds of our size just wet themselves with envy. First up is the typical warm up kill, Overlord Banford (The Aurally Challenged) Paffa.

Next up was a run up to Drunder the Fortress of Zek, to see Vallon Zek, I mistook him for his brother Tallon (who always kills me) when the Target was called and mentioned not to bother rezzing me until after the fight as he would only kill me again straight away. My mistake was pointed out to me in /gu and much hilarity at my expense ensued. Ah well, we ganked him. As smooth a take down as I have seen yet.

Vallon Zek quaking in his boots.

Vallon Zek multi boxing in an attempt to cheat

It didn’t do him any good and he went down before the flashing blades of Southern Armada.

Next up, Plane of Valor and Aerin`dar. Now for some reason we always have a problem getting to AD. He’s kind of like Grummus, no matter what we do, there is always a train, there is always deaths and Rezzing and its never anyone’s fault. Its really simple, use the fucking wall, don’t run across the middle of the zone and when fifteen level 60 mobs turn up at the switch on your trail point blankly at yourself and say “It wasn’t me”. Just use the wall, that is all, thank you.

So for more Flaggage, we dropped AD like he was a pair of week old underwear.

Looted, dropped down the zone well, ran down the tunnel, zoned into Halls of Honor and headed over to see Aerin`dar’s big brother Rydda`Dar. Now RD is a MOB you have to always be on the top of your game for. If you aren’t he will ream out good and proper in no time. I have been told that even Elemental guilds can have trouble with him and I believe it. He is a big ass nasty Dragon with a damage output to match anything we are likely to meet on the way to the Elementals.

But when you know you can run up and sit in his mouth, or when even a Pink Power Ranger can kill him..

then you kind of lose the fear of him!. 3 in a row woot!!.
I hate that Dragon and ganking him gives me a great sense of satisfaction.

Quote of the week comes from Garaneb immediately after we dropped RD:

“Can anyone tell me how long I have been melee’ing with these cups?”

After RD we were feeling a little lost, nothing worthy of us was up. Bert, MM, Saryn, Agnarr, all dead damnit. So we decided to do a bit more flagging and headed off to see Grummus!. So off to Plane of Disease. First up of course the run across POD, see comments for run to AD and apply here. Use the fucking wall, its really easy.

Gryme the Crypt Guardian dies fast…

Aramin the Spider Guardian follows suit…

Grummus is by now terrified and is trying to hide…

Hiding didn’t seem to do him much good and he fell over shortly after this pic was taken, strangely he didn’t seem able to get up.

What now I hear you ask?, what else is there on the nights feast of MOBs? Tormax of course!. Everyone zoned through to to CODb from Grummus and raced for Kael Drakkal in case someone else should notice him and kill him. Well they didn’t, we formed up and within about 10 minutes King Tormax was inc, and in 13 minutes he was dead!.

I like killing Giants even more than I like killing RD, so this night was just getting better and better!. In addition to Tormax we also pulled and killed Derakor the Vindicator. I didn’t manage to get a screen shot of him as he came with about 5 friends and it was all a bit confusing for a bit, then he was dead before I managed to hit the button lol.

I’m hoping one day to max out Yelinak faction so I can go for White Dragonscale Boots. They are easily the best caster boots in EQ short of the Elementals. Apparently you can raise Yelinak faction by killing Vindi and KT only. Well I’ve killed Vindi a lot and KT twice, so I must run to Lord Yelinak one day and check my faction against him. I would guess that one more KT kill would put me at Ally.

What a night!
Paffa
Vallon Zek
Ryda’Dar
Aerin’Dar
Tormax
Grummus

It was over at that point for Thursday night, but Friday night we had a very welcome surprise. Seru was up!. This is where my week started to unravel. We fought into Sanctus Seru with no problems.

Seru himself…

I was put into the MT group. Me, 2 clerics, Bard, 2 Main Tanks. This is where I fucked up. I took from earlier conversations that I would need to heal the clerics as they would be inside the AE, so I loaded up ZToV, a disease based group heal. I also knew I would be Mind Wracking a mezzable caster mob pulled into camp to keep the Clerics topped up.

Mezzable…

I looked at this situation and figured I would also throw out DOT’s at Lord Inquisitor Seru. So I knew I would be switching between targets and that I must NOT dot the Mezzed MOB or we would have a level 50ish unmezzable MOB in camp in the middle of a long ass fight that needs good control to complete.

You just know whats going to happen…

First up Seru got pulled, I waited for the MT to call aggro and cast ZToV. I promptly got roundly cursed out by the MT for taking his one and only Free Buff slot. Thought to myself, oh Fuck, drop out ZToV. At this point I now have MindWrack on the mezzed and DOT’s on Seru. You just know what’s coming next don’t you?!. Yup I dotted the Mezz MOB. Idiot idiot idiot.

I was very very lucky in that I only cast a 54 second DOT, The Pallies stepped up and offtanked till the dot wore off at which point the Chanters promptly got the mob mezzed again. During that time, the Mezz mob beat the shit out of me, I managed to get an FD off at about 20% health, I think I distracted the Clerics enough that they dropped the rythym of the CH chain and the Main Tanks got down to 50% each and we quickly lost one. In other words, one slip of attention and I damn nearly wiped a full raid. If I had, I think I would have had a great deal of difficulty logging in again for a while.

Just goes to show, one mistake, one distraction and you can fuckup the night of 50 other people. I spent the rest of the night berating myself and calling myself bad names. Once the Mezz mob was back under control I also de-memmed all the potentially damaging spells in my line up, targeted the mezz MOB and did nothing but MindWrack the rest of the fight. Rule Number one, and one I should damn well know by now, pay attention, don’t ever get sloppy.

Seru died and that was that. Sunday got a lot better, I joined an SA group in BOT, we were happily killing away when Gara noted that nameds were up. So after a bit of running about the place, we dropped 3 out of 4 named’s. I won the roll for the only Rune that dropped. After the group broke up I ran to the Necro spell guy, did a long silent and fervent prayer to the Loot Gods, reminded them that we had sacrificed a Pally to them earlier in the evening and handed in the Rune.

Woot!
Blood of Thule. That’s the last I needed, bar the “Nice to have but not really bothered” spells like GDMF I have a pretty much full spell book!.

Got a wee problem with The Litte Red Fire Engine. He isnt Red anymore.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fourteen

25/05/03 Week Fourteen

Well the week started off Monday night with a relatively relaxed and mellow named killing in Bastion Of Thunder. We were already in the Bastion doing some XP’ing and Gara noted that 3 of the 4 named’s were up (Yay Tracking!) he dropped out of the XP group to set up a named killing group. Once the named group was setup I dropped out to join them. First up was Gaukr Sandstorm in Deep South.

After him we invis’d over to Hreidar Lynhillig’s house and prepped for him. He knew we had a Pally tanking for us so his back was to the wall from the beginning!.

He put up a good fight, but eventually he gave up and went and stood in the corner like the bad little boy he was. Trying to hide didn’t do him any good tho, he died and gave up a Rune!.

Third but not least was Laef Windfall. He gave it up like the girly man he looks like. Prancing round in just a Toga!, he deserves to die!, pervert.

Tuesday was raid day and I was looking forward to it, hoping like hell that we would get another shot at RD. Of course at 4.00PM the companies Gateway fax server fell over. At 4.05PM a server was dumped on my desk and I was told it needed to be built by 6.00PM. Basically this server accounts for 100K$ a day in revenue for the company so it MUST be up and functioning. I got it built by 6.00PM but had to hang out to help with the re-build and configure process. So I didn’t get home till about 11.00PM. I did some quick factioning with the GF and logged on.

ALT-G showed me the guild was in Halls of Honor, woot A chance at Rydda’Dar!. I asked in /GU if there was still time to get there and was told, there was. Off to HoH for some Dragon Hunting!. Now we have recently had a few server transfers from The Hand guild on Xev (Welcome Guys!) and we had a couple of people from Unity there, so we had about 10 or so people more than we would normally have had at an attempt at RD.

This Dragon has only been successfully killed on Prexus by 4 other guilds, all of whom are well ahead of us in the race to the Elementals. So for Southern Armada not only was this Revenge, it was a BIG step up. If you haven’t guessed by now, not only did we kill him, he was pwnt!

Incoming!

Kiss My Ass Dead Fat Dragon!

And to really rub it in, a close up…

After much rubbing it in, self congratulation and division of PhatLewtz and everyone getting our flags, we headed to the Plane of Innovation and the Manaetic Behemoth to do a bit of back flagging. Behemoth was the old roadblock for us, now we move in and just Nuke him hard and fast. We seem to have a bit of a problem with the post Behemoth spidey control tho as a whole bunch of nasty ass spideys got into his room and went Boom!.

So now all we gotta do is nail Rydda’Dar again to prove it wasn’t just a fluke and to backflag those who missed this raid. Once we have done that we will be taking a little visit to the Temple of Marr, where Lord Mithaniel Marr is going to get a Beating!.

During the course of last week I was also awarded a Sharp Claw Ahlspiess which is a nice replacement for my Ceramic Gavel of Justice. The Gavel was a loaner from Neulaelae and so I had to return it rather than hand it in to the guild. I also managed to be awarded a copy of Word of Terris. One little bit iof a rant. I am very happy to have this spell in much the same way I would be very happy to have GDMF. Its not a spell I will probably ever use, but its nice cause it fills out missing spells from my spell book.

This spell is a classic example of the developers at SOE simply not playing the same game as the rest of us. During the recent nerf of charm all the classes charm spells had their resist levels massively reduced as well as the experience gained from using such spells to kill MOB’s. Effectively this was a Necromancer nerf. Ah! I hear you say, here comes a typical Necromancer whine!, yet hear me out.

All other charming classes have some form of debuff which enables them to effectively lower the resistance’s of any mob they wish to charm. All classes except the Necro. We do not have a useable debuff that would land on any mob we would be likely to actually use this spell on. After the nerf you still see Druids and Chanters charming mobs and then using them to kill other MOBs all over the place. Necro’s?, nah, for us this spell is un useable unless the MOB is debuffed by another class first, and even then it breaks fast and alot.

If they didn’t want people using this spell to solo and gain fast AA’s, all they needed to do was to reduce the XP related to solo use of said spell, in typical SOE fashion they went completely over the top and nerfed the spell into essential uselessness. Grats the back of my spell book.

Ah well, that means I am now only looking for the two spells I actually do want, Blood of Thule and my 65 Pet!. Actually the pet is a better example of the lack of thought that SOE uses when it comes to EQ. They say they want people to group rather than solo, yet by adding a 12 pt DS to the 65 pet they have effectively aided the soloists and farmers without helping grouping Necro’s one bit. How the hell is a 12pt DS going to help my pet in POP?. If my pet becomes the focus of any thing’s attention in any POP zone it will last about 2 ticks, 12 seconds or so. And no 12 point DS is going to help it one bit.

Yet this same 65 pet, the absolute penultimate Necromancer pet in the game, hits at the same frequency, for the same amount, with the same atk level as the 61 pet. To all intents and purposes it IS the 61 pet. But now it has a 12 point DS. I ask you, why do they even fucking bother?. They were doing a great job of ignoring the Necromancer communities proofs that the 65 pet was sub standard, just like they did the 59 pet for near 2 years. I still really want this pet, why?. Because. As I said above, it is the Necromancer’s ultimate pet!

If they seriously wanted to do something to upgrade the pet it was an easy fix. Give it the same damage as the 63 pet does from the rear, but from any angle. So the pet progression would look more like 61=Warrior ( good if you do need tankage) 63= Rogue (good for groups) 65=Monk (Good for raids and for groups due to decent HP, AC, resist and sheer DPS, still not useable to solo tank with in POP). Its really not fucking rocket science.

Friday was one of those raids where you look back on it afterwards and think “Now thats why I moved to Prexus and joined Southern Armada”. We started out with a quick Shei kill in Akheva Ruins just to get the blood pumping.

Shei Vinitras

I remember seeing the stats on a Flowing Gossamer Cloak back when I was on Karana. I never ever believed I would one day own one!. Yup Shei was kind enough top let me have it from his broken and bleeding body!. On the way in Xardan was also kind enough to let me have my Pet!. I really really appreciate that, because I know how much that particular spell still sells for on Prexus and I know what he passed up to give it to me. /bow Xardan, thank you mate.

From Shei it was onto Halls of Honor for another shot at Rydda’Dar. Now I was a little apprehensive about this kill, we had done it once, could we do it again?, or was the first time round just a fluke?. I needn’t have worried. Not only did we nail that fat Dragon bastard, we did it with STYLE!.

Rydda’Dar

After that there was some Villagers needed rescuing. Much like the Princess it is my opinion that these villagers must be particularly stupid as they do seem to need rescuing. a lot!.

First ya kill this guy…

Then a whole lot of these guys spawn…

once you have killed all of them, then a named spawns, kill him and Voila! a flag!.

At this point it was getting fairly late and people were beginning to get tired. It was getting on to Midnight for me as well, but its Friday and its raid night so I don’t care!. The GF has long gone to bed and its just me and the Raid out killing stuff. So we figured lets go kill us some Zeks!, Yup both of them up at the same time!.

So off to Plane of Tactics, form up, race in, engage, *sigh* well I lasted 20 seconds against Tallon this time. People are even warning the Raid, stay away from Ulaa!. I have survived one damn fight against the bugger, I think I’ll just Nuke from now on.

Tallon Zek

Next up was big brother Vallon, everybody was home tonight!. Vallon is a fun fight, I always enjoy it cause its an in your face sort of fight. To me its a good test of a guilds discipline, because its in such a tight area its a kind of one slip and your Raid is dead type of fight.

Vallon Zek preparing to engage

Vallon Zek trying to cheat and bring his buddies!

The result of cheating!

I know the pics are shite but its dark in that damn room!.At this point a lot of people left, I was still hyped so i stayed and we headed down into the dungeons of Tactics to kill a mob I’ve never seen!. Zone into Tactics, drop down into the pit, kill a lot of nasty mobs…

and finally you get to a big room that I think is supposed to be an armory. I don’t know if it is, but there was a lot of this stuff hanging around the walls of the room…

Damn if only the armour on my froggy twink looked half as good as that!!. Oh well. One thing that does suck, around this room are scattered a bunch of NPC’s who are Non-KOS to everyone, unless you have some sort of illusion up. If you have any kind of illusion form on you they will attack. NOOOOOOOOO!!, damn it no Seduction of Saryn! All the Necro’s in the raid were spitting tacks in Necro channel, we HATED not having SoS up!. We all felt like Wizzies having to rely on KEI and VOQ, it sucked ass.

Oh well Targrin Maldric died anyway…

and on the way out so did his pal Glykus Helmir.

I may be a bit confused as to who/what we were killing at this point. There was a lot of whiskey and it was about 2.30AM, so if I am wrong, let me know. One last thing, quick update I know but its been a hell week at work. I REALLY want one of these pets!!

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Thirteen

22/05/03 Week Thirteen

Normally I would be swearing and cursing at SOE for them patching on a raid day. However, not this week, this week I love them. We all logged in on Tuesday and there was much killing goodness to be had. First up was Ssraeshza Temple and the bad, evil snakes. We all got there in just about record time and formed up for a quick shot at Rhag Mozdezh (AKA Rhag2)

Now when I was on Karana I used to dream about killing this guy as he dropped my Spell the most often. I researched him, read up on him, talked to people about him, all in the hopes that one day I would get to kill him. This week, not only did he die, he died good and fast as well.

Rhag2

Most of Ssrae is perma dead on Prexus so we figured while we were in the zone we may as well do our best to clear out all the named’s. Close by we could see Arch Lich Rhag’Zadune cast messages and we had never killed him. So we ran to his room, prepped up, got very very ready, made sure we all knew what we were doing, went over the strat again, double checked to make sure we all knew what we were doing, engaged and GANKED the motherfucker.

Another dead Snake

The tanks had one standard comment all night, they repeated it for every single target “I thought this guy was hard?”, Snakes 0 Southern Armada 2. Next up was Xerkizh the Creator. He knew what was coming and if he wasn’t perma-rooted he would have been running away screaming like a little girlie. As it was, he couldn’t run away and we keeled heem deaded.

A fat girlie snake ready to die

That was about it for Ssra, nothing else was left to gank. We even killed all the key bearing stuff on the way in and out. Pretty much all the loot so far had been Monk/Wis caster stuff and much grumbling was being heard from the Tanks. The Little Red Fire Engine was even heard to mumble “Grunt, grunt, dribble, whine, moan, grunt!” (What do you expect he is a Tank after all?!) So it was decided by the all powerful Kez (We worship at his feet!) that we would head off to say hi to Seru again.

So after a wee run and a bit of Portage we assembled in Seru and ran in to his room.We killed him in about half the time we took last time and I don’t think anyone died. The Guild Necro channel was used to great effect to work out who was casting what on whom and when. It worked damn well and Team Funeral Pyre decimated Seru. In most fights the Nec’s get to cast a couple of dots but very very rarely ever run out of mana. On this one I ran out of mana and had to sit to med.

ZevFeers Theft of Vitae on Seru to keep the group and me healed. Funeral Pyre (WOOT!) Dark Plague, Ebolt, running in a constant cycle with LOTS of FD’ing in between to keep Aggro on the tanks. But this time it went absolutely perfect, not one single problem.

Lord Inquisitor Seru waiting for us

Seru, waving to Genosin and running over to us eager to be Ganked!!

Then he finds out why Ssrae is terrified of Southern Armada…

And that was the end of Monday night. What a Blast!. Its obvious that SOE has been reading our MB as they have scheduled another patch for Thursday, so Friday’s raid is going to rock as well!.

Friday we found out someone else had already killed Seru, Bastards!. So we had to settle for a bit of Akheva Ruins Pharmage. First up was our old friend The Itraer Vius. He was kind enough to drop a rather awesome Ranger Stick which all of our Rangers were just too damn Uber to want!

Since we were there, and he was as well, Shei Vinitras died and kindly left me his Mantle.

Then it was off to Halls of Honor again for our weekly shot at Rydda’Dar. I Really Fucking Hate This Fucking Dragon.

Rydda’Dar 5
Southern Armada 0

Now the trick with Rydda’Dar for a Necro, is to stay alive, yet to be absolutely skirting the edge of summoning (Did I mention I have Funeral Pyre? WOOT!). You want to be pumping out as much damage as you can without over-aggroing. Its a very fine line believe me. So I’m in there, I’m landing DOT’s all over the place, throwing out Taps and Nukes, he starts to go down really fast, then his HP droppage slows down, but its still dropping. He is at 1% woot!, fire off a Neurotoxin, Interrupted, Neuro, Interrupted, Low on HP, switch to a Touch of Mujaki, Interrupted, summoned, dead.

I zone back to bind, he is in Deathwalk at 0% but he didn’t die. I was on my knee’s in front of my desk banging my head against my keyboard in frustration. I’m glad I had all that whiskey cause it didn’t hurt, much. Zero fucking percent. Unbelievable. I Hate That Fucking Dragon.

So we decided to head over and save the Princess. She must be a particularly stupid bitch as she seems to need saving a lot. I didn’t get a whole bunch o Pic’s just the one of the last twit

Freegan Haun

Then it was off to Plane of Tactics to lay a smackdown on Tallon Zek. This is another encounter that frustrates the hell out of me. I always die. I think I have survived one encounter with him. I cannot figure out why, I always watch where the next arrow is going, I run around after each cast, I avoid the clerics and the MT, I FD after every cast, I try and stay away from any other players. Yet somewhere in the fight I always get LOADING PLEASE WAIT…

Its a fun fight and I always really enjoy it, yet I cannot seem to survive it. I gotta keep turning up for it cause he drops my necklace. Most high level Casters are desperately after FT Items. Necros don’t really care about FT (Its nice but I don’t get Hard over it) but regen, oooo regen!, now that gets me all excited. Regen, DROOOOOLLL.One of these days I guess.

And lastly but certainly not least, the powers that be have decreed that we are going to kill the Emperor, so I have spent every session where I would normally be XP’ing in Ssrae farming for Emperor Key bits. At the moment if Im not in Ssrae then Im in various Luclin zones farming for Vex Thal Key Shards. I currently have zero Emp Key Bits and Six VT Shards. Im doing well on the VT shards but have lost roll’s on 4 Emp key pieces. Oh well it isnt called a time sink for nothing.

So there will be lots of these guys in my Future.

Royal Guard

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twelve

19/05/03 Week Twelve

Well my 3 month anniversary on Prexus came and went with pretty much a mixed bag. Lots of SOE patches kind of fucked up the raid schedule so the week was kind of “Bitsy”. It started off Monday night with a wee visit to Halls of Honor to do a loot trial. Executed flawlessly by SA the nasty swine holding the Princess captive got nailed.

These guys die a lot

I am not going to make a comment on the next fight other than Rydda’Dar must DIE! I hate this fucking Dragon.

Rydda’Dar 4 SA 0

After that one, a lot of people left. I think RD kind of depresses people when we wipe. Especially when we get him so damn close (10% this time) and still fail. We are perfectly capable of killing him, I think we just need a little bit of luck and some further refinement of Strategy and we should be good to take him down.

Anyway. We made our first Guild attempt on Agnarrs Tower in Bastion of Thunder as well. I’m actually a little pissed that you in fact have to SAVE Karana. I know I was personally looking forward to ganking Karana over and over and over for all the hours I have spent lost in his fucking rain. We tried it with about 30 people. It didn’t go so well and after the CR at 1:30AM I logged.

Evynd Firestorm

Next scheduled raid was changed to Thursday as they had a patch on Wednesday. Of course they decided to have an emergency patch on Thursday as well *sigh*. so we all logged in anyway and ran off to Ruins of Lxanvom for a little bit of Paffa maiming.

Overlord Banford Paffa

Since we still had about 20 minutes before the patch we figured what the hell and did a wee named trawl through COD.

Plague Lord Hetral

Assasin Kakoo

Shortly after that the servers came down. I logged for the night, I tried to get on a bit later but got “servers congested” for half an hour and went to bed.

Friday dawned bright and clear after a patch and I logged in at 9pm. Friday’s raid was an unusual one for me, as I had a mate come over to check out EQ. He has been hearing me bitch moan and whine about EQ for years and finally decided to come and have a look. I told him any raid night was going to be best. So about 8.30 he showed up clutching a couple of bottles of coke, for which I was able to provide a lot of whisky.

We settled down for a few drinkies and saddled up for the raid. First hit was in Akheva Ruins and Shei Vinitras, on the way through we ganked The Insanity Crawler instead of our usual hit of the Itraer Vius (Mainly cause IV wasn’t up).

Insanity Crawler

Shei Vinitras

Then it was off to a new zone for me, Sanctus Seru. I have entered the zone once before to do a CR for a guildie but I have never ventured more than 10 feet or so from zone in. Not only that we were about to do one of the legendary Mob’s. It is said in EQ Lore that if you can kill Lord Inquisitor Seru then you can definitely kill the Emperor of Ssraeshza Temple. Basically this is the kind of thing I signed up for.

On Karana I had never even entered the zone, Sanctus Seru, On Prexus I was not only zoning in, we were about to kill Seru just to see if we could!. Well guess what, its a long ass fight, and he is DEAD!. I was rezzed back in half way through the fight before it was pointed out to me that Zevfeers theft of Vitae will stick on him. But he is dead and now officially on the list of Gankable Mob’s.

Lord Inquisitor Seru before…

It was an unusual fight only in that it took so long to get to him and set up for the kill. Normally we just kind of run in and spend about 10 mins pre-fight buffing and go. So my mate was sitting there saying ” what, this is it?, 30 mins of staring at a screen? this is what you have been talking about for 4 years?” I assured him that this was an unusual situation and we continued on.

After some AWESOME PhatLewtz, (the Little Red Fire Engine got some crap blade in recognition of his fine dieing skills, he seemed pleased with it 🙂 Grats Mate!) was awarded by Kez (here Horsie Horsie come to the nice Necromancer) we all spammed screens with gratz’s and headed to the Plane of Tactics to send greetings from Southern Armada to the Zek Brothers. First up was Tallon Zek. At this point we only had about 26 people left and we wiped with him at 1% hahahahaha. It was ok, he only escaped death by about 10 minutes as we went right back in and nailed him anyway with 3 fewer people.

Tallon Zek

I logged before the second attempt. Myself and my mate had been drinking fairly heavily at this point and I could barely see the screen. So I logged about 2:30 am and pretty much fell asleep on the keyboard.

Logged in Saturday to do some XPing, which I did and am damn close to ND3, and since the GF was out decided to join an SA pickup raid to Sanctus Seru to kill a few named’s. The three named’s also have the potential to drop a Horsie (albeit not as nice a one was the Lord Inquisitor.) but a Horsie none the less. After my experience there over the next 6 hours I have to say that Sanctus Seru is one of the nastiest, buggiest, most unpleasant zones to enter I have ever experienced in EQ. If you have any plans to go there, my advice is, don’t.

Praesertum Rhugol

Behind the pets is Praesertum Vantorus

Praesertum Bikun

For the crappiness of the Zone and the shittyness of the drops I would personally happily never go anywhere near this place again. However as a couple of Guildies still need to finish the Earring of Veracity quests I guess there will probably one or two more trips back there. Oh well I must be close to maxxing Katta positive faction. I’ll be chucked out of the Necromancers Union for that.

After Seru we headed off to do some 3rd floor farming in Ssraeshza Temple. We are after a couple of Keys to the Emperor. Why I hear you ask?. I don’t know ask the Officers. Where they say go, there goeth I!. I can hope its cause we are going to put the big hurt on the Fat Snake himself!!. I didn’t get a key part as I had to log. It was 1:30am and I had been telling the GF I would be off “In just a minute” for an hour and a half. Hopefully I may be able to get one next time.

Ssraeshza Temple

Snake Guards

Advisor Zekuzh

So for me it was the end of the week. I know SA also dropped AOW and Statue on Thursday but I missed that one as I couldn’t get on.

Oh and somewhere in there (Monday I think) An Evolved Burrower died as well.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Ten

05/05/03 Week Ten

What a week!!, the beginning of the week we had a great raid, this was then topped off with SOE deciding to drop the servers for a patch on Wednesday. Of course you know what that means right?!, yup MOB’s all over the place after the servers came back up and a raid day changed to Thursday!. So I managed 2 personal firsts this week, participated in a guild first and received a spell I have been wanting since Luclin was released. Its the best DOT a Necromancer can get.

So it all started on Monday, the UI that I have been using forever, decided to die. I zoned into PODisease and crashed to desktop and couldn’t log back in. I could log in any other toon but not Ulaa. So after a lot of help from Kez, I reset my INI back to default and was finally able to logon. Of course all of this happened 5 minutes from Raid time (actually it was about 2 hours that I was trying to get back in). First things first,we head off to Halls of Honor cause Rydda’Dar is up. We failed at 40% last time so we determined that we weren’t going to fail again.

Can you believe it the bastard denied us at 1%. One single Gods Double Damned Percentile. ONE Extra tank, ONE more Wizzie, ONE extra Nuke and he would have gone down. If ONE person had stayed alive another 20 seconds the various DOT’s would have burned him down. GRRR, you’ll keep mate, you’ll keep. I have been told and read a lot of comments along the lines that if you can take down Rydda’Dar you can kill anything short of the Elementals. Well we proved we can kill him, 1% is nothing, he will die, oh yes he will.

Next on the list was Shei Vinitras in Akheva Ruins. Four armed Gimp boy was waiting for us, he and his little friends were all fat and fine and cuddly and decided to fall over for us. I think anything we could find after Rydda’Dar was basically doomed Monday night, as we were all so pissed off at the loss.

While Kez was doing one of his “I just slaughtered half a dozen Newbies and am going to hand out all their gear to the guild” sessions, he said a curious thing along the lines of “I went out shopping while drunk with the company cheque book the other day…” which he followed by “Send tells for Spell: Funeral Pyre of Kelador.

For those who don’t know, this is the best DOT for Necromancers in the entire game. It was introduced to the class as part of the Luclin expansion and originally ONLY dropped off Rhag2 and Rhag3 in the Ssraeshza Temple and even then were insanely rare drops. Eventually after much yelling and screaming SOE realized that it was a bit rare even for them and also placed the spell as a drop on several other Luclin Mini Bosses. Unfortunately they then made the drop from those Mini’s EVEN MORE rare than the drops from the two Rhag’s. So basically this spell is insanely difficult and/or expensive to get your hands on as a Necromancer.

I had pretty much given up on ever seeing it drop and determined I was just going to hang on and wait and see if it dropped from the IV (Who can drop it) or the Va’Dyn. I don’t know where Kez and SA got it or how, but I am eternally grateful. I was awarded Funeral Pyre of Kelador Monday 28th April around 10:30PM. Just Wow.

So after Shei Vinitras snuffed it we headed off to The Deep to visit our old friend the Burrower Parasite. After having victory over Rydda’Dar snatched from us at the last moment, the Parasite was in for a Ganking, so we ganked him and it was good.

It was getting late at this point and I was going to log, but Kez said Thought Horror Overfiend was up. Now personally I believe that the THO deserves to die just for being such a long boring fight. I am in a lot of ways glad I missed the “press Attack and go AFK” period of EQ raiding. The THO is SUCH a boring fight. The POP bosses are a hell of a lot more fun and a lot more challenging. So basically a bunch of the THO’s boys got trampled.

And after about 20 minutes, so did the THO.

logged 2.00am or some such, BIG grin on my face.

I logged in Tuesday for some XP, sent tells to a few guildies with no success, sent tells to a few people in the lfg tool, no success, ran through half a dozen zones broadcasting lfg with no success. So I ran off to Ssra to join the Little Red Fire Engine and try and help him get pieces for his Emperor key. For once the LRFE didn’t die however the results of that little foray can be found here.

Patch was announced Wednesday and the servers brought down Wednesday night our time. Kez made the call to change the raid day to Thursday. We all logged in Thursday night, a lot of MOB’s were already dead including Rydda’Dar (Grats to Unity on a comprehensive Kill), but a lot was still up and breathing (a very temporary state of affairs)

So off to Akheva Ruins to start the night with a little Shei warm-up. As usual I got within one zone of The Deep, realized I was going the wrong way and had to turn around and head back. *Dumbass*. We have come up with a new method of getting to the names in Akheva, we form up, set up AOE’s and simply pull everything in our way to one spot and kill it all. Its a remarkably fast and efficient method of clearing through the zone.

The Itraer Vius is ready for an Oggie Pumping…

Shei Vinitras, waiting for us…

Shei Vinitras, the Kill…

Then came the call I have been waiting for, “Tallon Zek up get to Plane of Tactics” woooooototototototoooootooot!

A Flagging a Flagging!. Gated out of AR and head to POTactics. Zoned in and started to DMF everyone. We formed up for the fight inwards killing a few Oggies in the process…

Formed up and attacked…

The last image is TZ dead just before he fell over. I had a wee problem during the fight. I ran in, sending pet immediately, cast, resisted began to cast again and got bounced by one of Tallon’s arrows. Began to turn around to see where the hell I was and got bounced again, so I was completely disoriented at this point. Unfortunately I got bounced up onto the little balcony where an Oggie Guard was still hanging about. I didn’t know he was there, I noticed that I was at about 20% hp after the AE arrow and ran back down to the raid to tap RZ a bit.

Of course I managed to bring the Oggie with me. Anyone who has been on a couple of raids knows that the absolute worst thing that you can do is train a raid. First rule of raid moveage in places like POTactics where bringing the wrong mob can wipe a raid, is if you get aggro, stand and die. I have known this since my first Fear raid. I got down from the balcony and got a tell from Genosin to “Die”, Goddamn he is in-fucking-credible.

I am so glad he is a member of SA and not another guild, he is MT for this fight, is concentrating on keeping aggro or we ALL die. He can still keep an eye on what the rest of the raid is doing, see what’s happened with me and figure out what is about to happen before I can even realize what I have done and send me a tell. No wonder he is regarded as one of the best Shadow Knights on the server. He may be one of the best players I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Anyway so I stopped and waited to die. The Oggie completely ignored me and headed to the raid where (I think, though I am probably wrong and feel free to point it out to me) Ainya mezzed it fast. Anyway, long story short, Tallon Zek Bowed down before The Southern Armada. I didn’t think that anything else was up, I figured we would probably go and do Bastion Of Thunder tower bosses and was planning on an early one when Kez called “Vallon Zek is up!” WOOOT!

A Flagging a Flagging!. A quick port back to the Zone in, and we raced up to Vallon’s room. Now Vallon Zek is, I believe, a real test of your Tankage. You need to have some seriously well equipped and disciplined tanks and a tight slow/heal team to take him. I think the tanks did a fucking fantastic job on our first run at Vallon Zek as a Guild. Grats and Kudos go out to Ould. LRFE, Kemdell *It was worth the move wasn’t it mate 🙂 *, Genosin, Mewkus and Pooby. TZ is a Caster/Range fight, RZ is an upclose and personal Tank fight.

Vallon Waiting to die

Vallon Engaged

The view that many guilds would crap themselves over.
Vallon Zek is Incoming!

I had a really good shot of a dead Vallon as well but I lost it and have no idea where I put it. Hopefully its still at home so I can fix this up Monday. Man what a night!, what a week!. There was much much PhatLewtz!!. This is why I moved to Prexus in a nutshell. There is no way in Hell I would have been 64, equipped with Funeral Pyre or able to enter these zones let alone be in a guild that was definitely on its way to the Elemental planes if I had stayed on Karana. Thank you Southern Armada! /bow to you guy

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Eleven

04/05/03 Week Eleven

What a weekend. I logged on Saturday with every intention of getting at least 50% through 64. (I was at 18%) So I logged on and went through my usual routine trying to find/put a group together. Got a group in Plane Of Storms (NASTY wipe, Ebay Monks are BAD!) and during the CR I saw Brae in /GU saying there was a pickup raid going on in Plane of Disease for Grummus.

Now this is a flag I REALLY need. I was having visions of Southern Armada being up in the Elemental planes farming the place and me sitting on my ass in Plane Of Tranquility because I still didn’t have this one damn flag. I have had 2 tries at Grummus already at this point.(I didn’t post the last failed raid as it wasn’t an SA/Unity raid.) Two chaps from Unity (Raurck and Fnorian) ran one last week which was a wipe, and the other was the SA raid which wiped. Now if anyone has ever had a bad experience in a pickup group, try a pickup raid, its a nightmare come to life.

So after my Rez in Plane Of Storms I run my ass to POD for the start of the raid. I KNEW this was going to be bad when I saw people openly Cybering each other in Raid Chat. People were running all over the place aggroing mobs, ninja buffing the tanks, talking shit in /RS etc. etc. I just knew this was going to be a bad idea.

Anyway we run the raid to the castle, form up and move in. People aren’t paying attention to the Move Leaders or the Raid Leaders. People aren’t assisting, people aren’t waiting for the attack call. Oh God this is going to suck. We Pull and Kill Gryme the Crypt Keeper.

We move through to Aramin the Spider Guardian.

People are dying left and right and we aren’t even at the hard bit yet. They aren’t waiting or assisting or well anything /cry. After 2 hours in the pull room waiting for people to stop DICKING AROUND we finally move down to Grummus. They even fucked up the pull. Raurck had said over and over and fucking over “when we move everyone stop on the middle ramp, only the MT and his heal team to move down, on the assist call ONLY THE MELEE move down to engage, only on the second attack call does everyone else move down” simple Right?!. I am a Caster, thus I wait for the second attack call before moving down, easy.

Grummus knows we are coming…

Ohhhh noooo that was way to complex for some of these morons. We moved down and about 20 people who were not MT or in the heal team immediately attacked Grummus. Within about 20 seconds I saw this:

Not a Good View for a Caster still waiting for the engage call..

So after the wipe Raurck is being very very polite, saying “Im sorry we wiped, I will be running these raids regular and we will try again, but if everyone could do me the favor of listening to the instructions next time we will do much better.” Basically he was being MUCH more polite than I would have been. One guy actually started to abuse the raid leaders!!, his parting comment was “the raid leaders didn’t explain anything and therefore it wasn’t the raids fault it was the raid leaders. WTF???? was this guy in the same raid as me?, oh no he wasn’t!, he was one of those fucking around and NOT PAYING ATTENTION!!!!!.

For those of you who need it read this. Its only basic, but they are rules to live by and if you follow them you might even get invited back to another raid.

So I join the Unity raid channel (after sending a tell to a Unity officer and asking nicely) and head off to Plane of Valor where they are forming up to hit Aerin’dar . We nailed him which made me feel much better after the Grummus wipe. The difference between those serious about the game and their skills and those who aren’t is just incredible.

So after killing everything on the way to Halls Of Honor and getting all the people who needed it flagged the Unity Raid Leaders are trying to decide what to hit next. People from SA were beginning to log in at this point and are asking what Unity is about to hit. Then Vanion announced it. Unity has a large number of members who still need the Grummus key and so do SA, so we are off to hit Grummus!. If I could do backflips, at that point I would have. WOOT!

Off to Plane of Disease.
Gryme Again

Aramin the Spider Guardian was of course dead at this point so straight down to Grummus, we set up, tactics were called, we engaged.

The engage was a little messy, but Unity handled it with ease and Grummus got to Kiss My Ass!.

So there was a flagging!. We all zoned into the Crypt of Decay for the first time and Unity declared the next hit was going to be the Carpin/Church run for the Lower Crypt Flag. Oh my god!, 2 flags in a day!.

So we zone into COD clearing our way through a lot of these guys to get to Carpin Deatharn .

When I say a lot I mean it, COD is absolutely crawling with the Undead!. We set up for Carpin, pulled him and his 5 Death Knight Guards and proceeded to mash him into Undead Dust.

The next in line was Avhi Escron. I didn’t get any screen shots of him as he is a ranged fight in a separate room, but I did get a Screen shot of the first wipe of the night. If someone dies during the Avhi Escron fight 4 skellies spawn. It appeared that someone managed to transfer aggro to the casters so we had massive numbers of skellies rampaging through the room. So shortly before I died I got this shot.

Now apparently once you kick this cycle off you have quite a bit of time to complete it. So we reformed and headed back in, fighting through all the respawns back to the Avhi Escron room. A little bit more fighting and we got to Bishop Toluwon.

He snuffed it easy and we ran back to the prep room to make ready for Raex Pwodill.

and then Vindor Mawnil.

These are two damn nasty MOB’s. Get them wrong and they will eat your main tank like he ain’t there.

So we pull the remainder of the High Priests guards and get ready for High Priest Ultor Szanvon.

At this point something went badly wrong. We set up, engaged and somehow aggroed a MOB through the wall. Halfway thorough the fight with everything going perfectly, a train, the likes of which I haven’t seen since my days in Lower Guk pre Kunark, comes rampaging through the raid. Wipe Number two. Reform, fight back to High Priest Ultor Szanvon and this time we nailed his undead ass.

So after receiving my flag I gated and logged. It was a damn loooong day (14 hours pretty much) and the GF wasn’t talking to me by the time I logged off. I am still in deep crap up to my eyebrows even now. But what the hell, 2 flags in a day!.

Thursday 08/05/03

I am buggered. I think I have averaged about 4 hours sleep a night since Monday and the GF is simply not talking to me. What have I been up to you ask?. Well lets make this short and sweet.

Monday Night:
The Deep
The Burrower Beast:
Ganked:

Plane of Tactics:
Tallon Zek:
Ganked:

Halls of Honor:
Rydda’ Dar
He Ganked us with 37% to spare
I am going to be so happy when he finally goes down

Ruins of Lxanvom: (COD)
Overlord Banord Paffa:
Ganked:
Grats X on the Earring you lucky bastard!

At the end of the raid I /conned my GF and she was Dubious so I slipped into blissful slumber.

Tuesday dawned after about 5 hours sleep. Went to work, its sucked as the whole damn Domain has been collapsing around our ears for the last 2 weeks. Raced home and joined a COD group. Man we just CHEWED through that zone! we cleared out all the undead 3 times completely, including the Elites and a couple of named!. If I can get a Pally as a tank then COD is definately my new favorite XP zone!.

I logged Tuesday at about 1.30 in the morning and /conned my GF again. This time It was Threateningly. Bugger, well I will just not play EQ tomorrow and spend time with her then!.

Of course when I got home Wednesday she wasn’t home and I was bored so I logged in. After some initial problems setting up a group, Garaneb and I managed to pull an SA group together in the Bastion of Thunder. At first we just killed ordinary giants which is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Then Garaneb noticed a couple of named’s up. So with a full SA group we rapidly Ganked:

Hreidar Lynhillig

Laef Windfall

Wyborn

and Oreen Wavecrasher

and not even one death!. No wonder Sony has changed the loot tables on these guys. In the whole night we got 4 Spectral Parchments (Grats Me and Mallee!) and that was it.

Now at this point i was going to bed and do some faction work with the GF. I knew Kez was planning a High Priest Raid and I WAS GOING TO SLEEP!. Oh yes I was. I was NOT going on the HP raid. Now I have had some good chats with Kez and the one thing he knows about me is that there is three things I just cannot resist. Number one is Killing Giants, Number Two is Killing Snakes and Number Three is I hate being beaten by a MoB.

So he says come on we need to gank this punk cause he’s reamed us the last few times we have tried him and he is not often up. So I’m wavering. Then he says I have a couple of spells for the guild Necro’s (Goddamn but that spell is rare!) . I am resisting, but hanging on by my fingernails. Then he says I have a Cunning Plan and it will only be 90 minutes!. That puts log off just before 1:00AM, I can still get about 7 hours sleep! Woot I’m in!

Off to Ssraeshza Temple. XTC is up so we race off to see him. set up, engage, tanks go afk, have a smoke, watch TV etc etc. Damn he’s a long fight. Once again, my view of Xerkizh The Creator.

XTC falls over, we all rub our eyes, slowly wake up and off to visit the High Priest of Ssraeshza Temple. Setup, Plan, Engage! 30 minutes or so later he dies. Southern Armada Engaged with 31 people including 4 Bots and in a nice safe controlled fashion took out the High Priest with only one death. Someone said the other day we are “fighting above our weight”. I guess this would prove it.

Guards

High Priest

Snakey boy was holding a blade but it wasn’t Mindpuncture. Ah well, next time snakey boy, and there will be many next times!.

Now since I have been so very very tired this week I have missed many many opportunities to get Pics of The Little Red Fire Engines many many corpses. I must admit I died once during the Rydda’ Dar fight myself but I only managed to get a shot of the LRFE’s ankle as he zoned past me at high speed. I keep telling the guild Clerics “Rez the Necro in FIRST”. He seems to think I have something against him and I am out to get him. Of course this is complete rubbish. I love him, really I do. So the only new pic I have of the LRFE was supplied by X. Thank you X 🙂

MoB’s: 2
LRFE: 2
He wasn’t there for the Grummus/Carpin flagging on Sunday or the BOT fights (tho I did try and get him to come, he had knitting to do or something)

My GF now /Conns Red and ready to attack. But its ok, I blamed it all on Kez *grin*

And the best part of the week was:

To my one Fan: Sorry for the delay in updating this. I usually update this from work and on Monday my PC decided to have the big Death. So I have spent most of this week so far rebuilding into a usable state. I’ve also done all the upgrading I was avoiding on my old machine, so I am learning to use new versions of all my apps.

Well Fridays raid was time for another another baaaaaad day!. We all started off at Ruins of Lxanvom where we proceeded to lay the smackdown on Overlord Banford Paffa.

He kindly loaned me a great Mask as he lay dieing (Now gimmee the earring you fat bastard and I’m done with ya!)

It was then decided that it was time for us to try the Carpin Cycle for the first time by ourselves. While we had been beating up on Paffa lots of people had been waiting patiently outside. The officers zoned out and I think they were a little surprised at the numbers of people sitting outside the zone. Now I am one of those for whom this was a problem so I understand just how frustrating the flagging system can be. However, I listened to my elders and did what the officers suggested and I got flagged. . Up until 2 weeks ago I would have been one of those people outside. I quite like the flagging system but this issue was always going to be a problem for any guild trying to move up towards the Elemental planes.

Something needed to be done I agree, but I disagree with SOE’s method of fixing this problem. Opening the Tier two plains to all and sundry is a bad idea without major changes to the way named spawns and trials are done in places like HOH and COD. Guilds can be cock-blocked by a single vindictive player who “blows” a spawn.The good thing about the change is that we no longer have to “back flag” those without the needed flags, the bad things have yet to be worked out but I am sure they will be substantial.

There has been much debate on various boards as to these changes. Those “For” the change are largely those without the flags and/or those who no longer XP anywhere near the named zones. Those “against” the change are immediately labeled “elitist” and accused of wanting to keep people out of “their” hunting spots. Personally, as some-one who vowed to never solo again and thus doesn’t give a shit about solo spots, and who spends a LOT of time trying to organize groups in places like BOT and HOH, I welcome the change. There is nothing as annoying as needing a tank for a group, and none of the available tanks are flagged.

As someone who has now done a number of back flagging’s and was facing a butt load of them in the future (and nowhere near as many as some in the guild) I am pleased about this change.

However as someone who worked his ass off, begged, whined, pleaded, moaned, pissed people off, put up with shitty pickup raids in order to get his flags, I am not happy with this change. Whatever the proposed “reward” for already having your flags is, it better be fairly substantial, tho knowing SOE it will be half assed and badly thought out.

Anyway. it was decided that we would race off and do some back flagging before we would have a go at Carpin. So off to Plane of Disease.

Gryme the Crypt Guardian

Aramin the Spider Guardian

Grummus the Fat Bastard

Everybody zoned into COD. Yay that was 99% of the guild flagged! Have you ever had the feeling that its all just about to turn to shit?, that your raid is all about to go badly wrong?. I did and really don’t know why, we zoned into COD, set up, buffed and proceeded to pull Carpin Deatharn and his buddies.

Carpin went down like a bag of wet poo’s and we moved on through the zone. Our first attempt at Avhi Escron went all pear shaped. This is a close up of me FD’d shortly after the engage.

We reformed and re-engaged. Second attack went beautifully and the swine went down smooth as a babies bum! We moved on to Bishop Toluwon.

He died like the girly man that he is and we prepped for Raex Pwodill. Unfortunately this is where my bad feeling stepped up and it all turned to shit. A guild that can nail AOW with no deaths and handle High Priest with 31 people should be able to put the hurt on this guy. Unfortunately after he had finished kicking our asses I had to log as it was close to 2:30am and the GF had me booked very very early in the morning.

So it was both a damn good week and a bad one but on the whole I thoroughly enjoyed myself!

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Nine

28/04/03 Week Nine

Well, this week was one of extremes. EQ is getting a bit like that at the moment. You either have a fantastic week or a completely crap one. My week started off really badly. Logged in for the Monday Raid, Couldn’t join COD warm-up (Fuckit Im going to organize to do the Non Flag key Quest this week) then headed off to HOH to do a couple of the Loot Trials. Just before HOH started I began to go LD.

Now when I start to go LD its not just once or twice, it’s constantly. So after my 6th LD in an hour I decided it was time to give up. I logged in for the 7th time to find SA had finished up and headed to PoTactics to drop TZ. I was so pissed off I didn’t even say good-bye, just logged. What is most frustrating about my LD issues is that it has nothing to do with me. I cant do anything about it. I run a dedicated gaming machine set up to do nothing but play EQ, I read the tech boards constantly, I peruse all the gaming boards and I have tried everything anyone has ever suggested to fix the problem. Nothing works.

When I start to go LD the only fix is to give up and log off. Here is where Sony’s completely crap Tech support comes in, I am not the only one who has this issue. They have been detailed at great length on the Tech Support Forums. I have had the same issue on 3 different physical machines, 3 dial up modem’s, 3 ISP’s, an ADSL account and 2 different OS’s, AND YET according to Sony Tech Support this problem is entirely my fault and I must be doing something to make it happen. Strange that I logged on the next night and it didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen the night before either. What did I change on my system in those 3 days?, you got it, FUCKING NOTHING!!!

So during the week I did some basic XPing in POTactics where we killed us many many Piggies.

At some point it was decided to go and Keel us a Dwagon for an Epic. So we all ran off to Emerald Jungle (Where even with a damn in game Zone Map I managed to get lost *sigh*) and proceeded to engage Severilous. This is how the fight went for me:
Engage Called
Cast Splurt (4sec cast time)
Resisted, Bugger
Begin to cast Touch of Mujaki
Oh never mind he’s dead.

We nailed Sev in about 10 seconds tops with 2 groups *grin* we rock!.

So after a server down on Thursday morning we all logged in slavering with anticipation for the Friday raid. Surely there MUST be something decent up!. First off we head to Akheva Ruins for a little IV action. The Itraer Vius just makes for such a perfect warmup, he’s like a perfect woman, he’s always there, always willing and goes down as fast as you can get in the room!. Fat bastard REFUSES to drop my damn spell though. Oh yes, he drops lots of bloody Zevfeers Theft of Vitae, or Gift of Ageolisim, but will he drop Funeral Pyre?, no he damn won’t.

We also had one other little detail to clean up. Shei Vinitras had evaded us on our last 3 trips to AR, so we headed down to his room to try out the Tactics we had worked out during much discussion on the Message board. The pull team worked its magic and Shei proceeded to fall over on his four armed ass. I saw a post on The SafeHouse about Shei, where the writer said once you figure out the tactic, Shei is a gimp fight. Once you separate Shei from his guards….

the writer was right. Shei dead, one SA death.

With Shei dead and the raid nicely warmed up it was learned that the Avatar Of War was up so off we went to Kael Drakkal. SA hasn’t been able to get at AOW since Kunark came out, now we get him twice in two weeks!. Once again the pull team does a marvelous job and we down in rapid succession:

Derakor the Vindicator

Statue

Idol

And finally the man himself….

A perfect kill, only one death in the whole sequence. So after AOW we were really buzzed up, we had nailed two mobs that have evaded us for ages and were slavering for more. NOTHING was going to stand in the way of Southern Armada tonight!. So off we went to visit Rydda’Dar in the Halls of Honor. Now this dragon is another target that seems to be perma dead on Prexus so we were itching to get at him.

Unfortunately once we got there we found that about 15 or so people with us were unflagged. After about 30 minutes trying to get everyone in under the 85/15 rule, Kez said “Fuckit lets go kill AD” So off we headed to Plane Of Valour. We took down Aerin’dar a hell of a lot cleaner this time than last time. Another efficient take down later and AD was sitting in Dragon Heaven wondering what the hell just happened.

At this point the Little Red Fire Engine had to log, something about his hamster being stuck up somewhere?. So I only managed to get the two shots of his dead and rotting body!

LRFE 3
MOBS 1
Something is definitely wrong when the LRFE gets a 3-1 ratio, must do something about that.

So after everyone was flagged we headed back to HoH to nail Rydda’Dar. Unfortunately this was where our unbroken run ended, but RD was at 40% when we wiped. That’s cool, that makes him a very killable target by us. A little refinement of our tactics and he will fall, oh yes he will!.

At this point it was close to 3:00 am so I logged and headed to my little beddie byes for a good nights snoozin. So we got some awesome PhatLewtz! during the week. Unfortunately the GF was determined to limit my EQ game playing over the Easter/ANZAC weekend so I didn’t get to do a lot of XPing. Then on Saturday it all changed!. I logged in early Saturday morning and sent Big a tell in BOT, he invited me to head over there and join his XP group.

So off to Bastion Of Thunder I headed. We were killing stuff for a while when the Druid in the group popped up with “Nameds up”. So since BOT was pretty empty we dropped the nameds in East, West and North. Unfortunately I only got pics of the one named from North.

At that point the group started to break up and I went off looking for some more XP and boy did I find it. I found one of those rare, fantastic when they happen, rotating XP groups in the BOT courtyard. Most hardened EQ players will tell you that the average pickup XP group seriously sucks ass. Then, every now and again you get a good one, even with people rotating in and out of the group, you always seem to end up with decent players who know their jobs and are there to have fun.

I started Saturday at 63 +45% and ended it at 64 +7%. While in was in this group Unity and SA were joining up to drop Rydda’Dar, Tallon Zek, Rallos Zek etc etc. When those raids were called I was still slogging through to 64 and for a Necro, good XP groups are like hens teeth. You hang on to them as long as you possibly can. So I passed on 3 good raids, but I got 64 so its all good!! *grin*

So the week on the whole was a mixture of Good and Suckie. I got 64 but missed 3 raids, I got to go on some fantastic raids but missed the first time SA dropped TZ. Hopefully tonight (Week10) will be a good night as well.

Southern Armada Everquest Raids Week Eight

17/04/03 Week Eight

Well after last weeks efforts, we reviewed our procedures, prayed to the Gods of EQ, and after much soul searching decided that it was the Pally Sacrificing that wasn’t working for us. So we have switched. The official SA raid Sacrifice is now… Shaman!. Kezlar manfully stepped up to the plate and volunteered to be the guild sacrifice and what a marvelous job he did!

The beginning of the week was a little slow. We all logged in on Monday and the scouts went out, what was up?. Nothing, Nada, zip, zilch. Everything worth killing was dead. So we did the SA default raids and headed for the BOT Tower bosses.

First to fall was our old friend Auliffe Chaoswind, he dropped some DAMN nice gear.

To be honest I always thought the Tower Bosses dropped only Melee stuff. I didn’t realize they could potentially drop caster gear as well. WOOT I will certainly be a lot more enthusiastic about nailing them from now on! After Auliffe we headed across to Brynju Thunderclap. Thanks to the “new!” “Improved!” pathing the pull was a bit odd, but he died anyway.

And low and behold, MORE caster gear!, the melee’s were cursing by now *grin* so off we went to Eindride Icestorm.

I hate Einride, getting to him is such a pain in the ass!, There are so damn many giants in the way. But he died anyway and we figured what the hell, and set off for the earth tower. Now I’ve never done Earth tower, I’ve killed lots of Earth Giants in the 4way room, but never been in the tower. So we head in and start killing giants and associated beasties.

Now I still maintain that the easiest way to take a Giant out of the fight would be just to jump up and rip out that nipple ring. For some reason Pooby refuses to try this, he always mutters something about “tweaking nipples is just so ghey dude” and proceeds to beat the crap out of the giants in the traditional manner.

We also had a couple of baby nameds pop up in the run up to Kuanbyr Hailstorm.

Hailstorm is a fun fight as he pops almost immediately after a place holder so you really have to be ready for him.

Well that was that for Monday. A clean sweep through the BOT towers!. I managed to pick up a Sandstorm Gem during the raid, so I think I am now only one gem short of a tower key. Still need two spheres for Agnar key though. Nothing else was up so we said grats to the Loot Winners and we all went to bed.

Tuesday we learned that the server had come down during the morning our time, so we all logged on for a little impromptu raidage. I was XPing in BOT when the call went out. “AOW is UP, get yer asses to KD!” Wooot!, I’ve never killed the AOW!, I’ve seen him taken down but never been part of an attempt! Apparently he is pretty much perma dead on Prexus so SA had never had an attempt at him either!

So we headed off, formed up and in quick succession Pulled and Killed all the guards and nameds. Then came:

Armor of Zek

Idol of Zek

Statue of Zek

And Finally, The Avatar of War!

Its a long fight, one mistake and your raid is toast. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Avatar of War’s Corpse!.

Mewkus was MA for the bulk of the fight but with 20% to go he went down. I was in the Cleric channel, poised and waiting for someone to call for mana. So I was watching when with a 3 second CH chain going, as soon as Mewkus went down the Clerics switched to The Little Red Fire Engine without missing a beat!. Awesome job from everyone involved. What a team is SA!

Now normally here is where I would have a link to a dead Little Red Fire Engine image. However I have a sneaking suspicion he has started to bribe the Clerics, as he didn’t die. Hmmmmm, wonder how much its going to cost me to get them to start letting him die again. Damnit the Clerics in SA are going to be making out like Bandits!

So instead of a dead LRFE, I give you a LRFE with a Blade Of Carnage!! Fantastic Job mate!

Grats to all the winners of the PhatLewtz! The loot from Kael Drakkal certainly made up for all the caster loot the night before!

As we now had a full sized raid force and we were all buzzed from the kill we headed off to Ssraeshza Temple for another MOB thats pretty much perma dead on Prexus, Xerkizh the Creator. There was a bit of confusion during the run in and we had a delay as we were waiting for people to be dragged and rezzed. (sorry for the confusion Mewk). We cleared through to XTC’s room killing a LOT of snakes in the process.

Eventually it was all good and we moved forward to engage XTC.

Now a lot of Melee hate the Ssra fights as they pretty much position themselves, hit attack and go AFK. I can see that would be boring as hell. Unfortunately casters cant do that, we actually have to pay attention to the fight, refresh spells, watch for resists, manage aggro etc etc. So this is what I looked at for the 8 minutes or so of the Xerkizh the Creator fight.

If you want to know what its like to stare up a snakes ass, watch that picture for 8 minutes and you will know exactly what its like. Anyway, he died and he dropped some damn nice PhatLewtz!. Unfortunately Southern Armada currently owns no Mages. That sword you can see in the above pic is this. Grats the destroy button. What a waste.

Well we decided we still had a bit of fight left in us. It was getting damn late for me as it was about 1:30AM Tuesday morning at this point, but I made a coffee, threw some Incubus up in the MP3 player and we headed up to the High Priest of Ssraeshza. I think at this point everyone was just getting tired as it started to get a little messy. We cleared to him, had the room adds under control and isolated and it all started to go wrong.

Unfortunately at this point my Girlfriend got home, it was 2:30AM and I got “the look” (which any EQ player with a partner knows well) so I was forced to log , go and be very contrite and try and get some sleep at the same time. I felt like absolute crap the next day and wandered through my work day in a bit of a daze, but it was damn worth it.

Now I have been seriously considering the outfitting of Ulaa in the last couple of weeks. This is what Ulaa currently looks like:

What I would like to do, and of course this is going to very much depend on drops, luck, raids held and my available merit at the time of drops, is this:

Primary: Bone Bladed Dagger
Secondary: Pus Covered Beetle Carapace
Range: Mind Puncture

The major reason for that is a BBDagger is probably the best prime/offhand weapon I am likely to see for a long time.(I cant believe I wrote that, holy crap 5 months ago I wouldn’t have even dreamed of a primary Item better than my heart!!)The Carapace (apart from looking cool) has decent stats and has Affliction Efficiency IV.

For a Necromancer the four foci you really want are Affliction Efficiency IV, Affliction Haste IV , Extended Range IV and Extended Affliction IV. These four foci would mean my DOT’s are cheaper to cast, cast faster, cast from a longer range and last a lot longer.

MindPuncture is simply the best caster Range Item I’ve ever seen or heard of. That basically sorts out my Prime/Off/Range for the foreseeable future and gives me one of the 4 focus Items I really need to be operating at Max efficiency.

I have currently borrowed a Ceramic Gavel Of Justice for my range slot, this item also has AEIV. But its not mine and I would need to replace it eventually. AEIV has made a massive difference in the amount of available mana I have during raiding. As the bulk of what I cast will always be DOT’s, the reduction of the mana cost on all dots by 25% is a HUGE saving. Thus I always have that much more mana to throw out mana dumps or spells like MindWrack, Nukes etc.

I have all the bits to finish the quest, unfortunately Gnomes don’t like me a lot, so its off to do more faction farming. Damnit I hoped I was through with all that after the 3 weeks spent killing Goblins every damn day in Droga for Chardok faction. However the Cloak is worth it.

Mobs 0
Little Red Fire Engine 2
LRFE survived untouched.
If it wasnt for all the PhatLewtz this week i would suspect that there was a fundamental imbalance in the laws of the Universe.

Well Fridays raid sucked. We formed up in POD for my first run at Grummus. I was sooooo excited as I have never killed the fat bastard before and unfortunately today wasn’t going to be the day either. Apparently the fat bastard’s spawn was changed so we had to figure out the best way to pull him and try and kill him at the same time. They only changed 2 things it seems, how far you can pull him out of his room and the speed of the repops of his guards. Piss me right off, I want that damn flag. I am so sick of sitting outside COD waiting while the guild kills stuff in there.

Unfortunately those two little things caught us by surprise both times. So we formed up and headed to the castle in POD. Ran in (with the aid of a massive train) and setup to kill Gryme.

Now Gryme went down faster than the Little Red Fire Engine normally does. So we moved further in and nailed Aramin. (My GF was behind me yelling “kill the spider kill the spider!”)

We moved up to Grummus’s room and after pulling and killing all his guards…

we were ready for Grummus. We pulled him and he yo-yoed back to his room, first surprise there. So we figured we would have to rush into his room to be ready for him, In went the Zerg rush, aggroed a healer, lost control of aggro, wipe. Bugger, reform, race back into the castle, kill down to Grummus room, race in, fight is going well,,,,

and the damn room starts to repop. He was down at about 50% when I got nailed from behind by a Guardian Knight of Pestilence . No-one was expecting the repops to come so fast. Thing they changed number two. After that we were all pretty buggered so the raid pretty much broke up.

For a little light relief and just to make us all feel better about ourselves we headed off and put the hurt on our old friend Chaoswind.

This weekend was a long weekend (Easter) and unfortunately for many and various reasons I didn’t get on much, when I did the damn server crashed. SA set up a pickup raid on Monday night and went off and nailed the Cursed. there was much PhatLewtz! (which I cant link cause they havent updated the main page arrgh!) to be had, but unfortunately since no-one rang me up and told me that the raid was on I wasnt there so Im not going to write about it. *pouts