Vanguard Southern Armada Raids Week Thirty Four

15/10/03 Week ThirtyFour
Well last Friday’s raid just didn’t happen. We should have known really. Typical SOE patch process seems to run something like this;

1. Throw some Code together from all the bits and pieces you have tried out at various times and in various combination’s that you may or may not have tested on the Test server. If you did test it, completely ignore anything sent in by the people on the test server as to any problems that they may have had with the patches.

2. Put the patch code live and completely fuck up everything, emergency patch to fix the really significant fuckups within 12 hours. Deny any problems at all.

3. Second emergency patch to fix the fuckups we either didn’t fix with the first emergency patch or that we actually caused with the first emergency patch. Continue to deny any problems at all.

4. Refuse to admit that anything changed, refuse to admit that we broke anything at all and to all the people now reporting errors with EQ that they have never had before, cut and paste a “Its your fault not ours” standard reply on the tech support boards.

The gist of this is that I gave up trying to log on at 1:30AM my time and went to bed. SA managed to get a few people on after the patch and had a go at a couple of the POE rings. Monday nights attempt was a lot better. I am studying at the moment so I logged on quite late to see what the targets were, rather than my usual logon and try and get a group or two before the Raid.

First call was to the Elemental Plane of Fire for Blazzax the Omni Fiend. We have never done this MOB so I was really looking forward to this kill. We all headed out to POF and zoned in, I hung about for the first 20 minutes or so to DMF any people zoning in, and then Usurp volunteered as the COH mule and I headed into the castle.
We set up and began clearing the trash.

A Magma Rocklord

As we were prepping for Blazzax, a stroke of luck!, POP hello Criare Sunmane. As we were already set up for the OmniTwit we pulled our first Phoenix!

He died pretty fast, but not before my first death of the night and after eating a few tanks. For some reason our DPS last night just sucked. We had about 60 on the raid but we just didn’t seem to be pumping the DPS the way I know we can. So after rebuff, we got reset and inc was Blazzax the Omnifiend!!. Unfortunately we slightly underestimated the range of his AOE.That was death number two for me. Its all good, as they say death is a learning experience, so after a bit of adjustment of tactics we pulled him again. This time he was going to die! I do love this model!, this is SUCH a cool looking mob to fight.

Now many people ask me, where do we get our ‘Leet strats?, do we have spies in other guilds?, is there a secret message board that Uber Guild leaders post on?. I cant answer for any other guild, but I can tell you where SA gets their strats. Now this is a secret and you cant tell ANYONE got it!?.

The secret is in fact a person!. There is one person in the guild who is able to extract secrets from Mobs, he can charm them, talk to them, get them to tell him about their friends and how to kill their nearest neighbors!. After every kill he moves to the corpse and communes with the dead spirit of the Mob.

He is Attann the Ass Whisperer!

And that’s how we get our Strats! After the PhatLewts was handed out we headed out to visit “The Wise” in the Elemental Plane of Water. I hate POW. Its even laggier than normal. However, the one and only good thing about the zone is that nothing in here resists anything I can throw at it. So at the end of the Wise fight, shortly before I got summoned and mashed into paste I had FP, BOT, DP, SK, EBolt all running on Grioihin the Wise.

With around 1k a tick running on Mr Wise, BOT wore off, I stood up from FD to recast and *Summon*

Eeeek! he is WAY to close!

Splat.
Now this was a damn messy, but a really fun fight. Any fight I can REALLY lay the hurt on a Mob is fun to me. The AOE stun he has makes life a little difficult tho and we ended up feeding him tanks again, but hey that’s what tanks are for 🙂 The raid reformed and headed to POAir for some beatings of name’s over there. It was still relatively early, only 1.15AM but of the team of 5 that I work with, we are down 2 long term and another short term. So there is a need for me to be relatively awake and paying attention in the mornings.

So with much regret I logged and left SA to the next set of targets. Hopefully this Friday will be huge!

Yes I know I am damn late. I am about 10 days behind on raids at this point. People are saying ” are you not maintaining the web site anymore?”. Well actually I am, but at the moment the team of 5 that I work with on a regular basis is down to 3 and one of those we are missing is the boss. Add to that a rather nasty outbreak of the W32/Nachi worm in a regional office this week and its been a hell of a ten days or so.

A wee piece of advice to any corporate types who may ever read this. There is no such thing as 100% protection against Virii. You WILL get Viruses, its only a matter of time. The question you must always ask is “What happens then?”. How will you contain the attack, how will you clean it up?, how will you even know it is happening?. Do you have a dedicated (or even semi dedicated) Anti Virus/Security officer? or do you rely on the typical “she’ll be right, it will never happen to us” attitude?.

Anyway enough of the real world, on to Everquest!(tm)

We logged in Friday and the MOTD was listing a bunch of targets from PoFire to Kael Drakkal. Kez made the call that we were going to have another go at Rallos Zek, so off the the Fortress of Zek we all traipsed. As I zoned in I brought up the Raid tool and checked numbers. Ooooo boy we were really light. Now for those who have never engaged him most guilds usually take on Rallos with 80+.

Those who are inside the raid do all the DPS, positioning of Rallos Zek the Warlord, healing etc etc. Those who are outside the raid do all the controlling of the Adds, kiting etc etc. Guilds who have been farming in the Plane of Time for a while have been known to do him with less than 50. Once again those guilds are 7 day a week raiders, VERY well equipped. We were about to engage Rallos Zek the Warlord with 56 in the Raid!

Now I have seen Southern Armada doing some amazing stuff with very small numbers, so instead of doubting Kez, I simply put my mind to it and said “we can do this”. First up was the run through the Halls of Zek, clearing through trash, killing triggers and massacring our way past the Zek Brothers.

Tallon

Vallon getting rooted

Rallos Zek

The Tallon fight was a little lumpy, I can only assume people were still getting warmed up, maybe the beer was warm in Aussie and they were having trouble getting the first one down?, I really don’t know. But there was some damn fast rezzing going on before Vallon was inc. We got up to Vallon and obviously the beer had started to flow as that fight went extremely smoothly. Rallos Zek went down clean as a whistle (did we lose anybody?) and it was Rallos Zek the Warlord time!.

Unfortunately as the Pet getters were getting their pets they got a little over enthusiastic and started to wipe themselves out with an over pull. We were already damn close to time so it was Rallos INC ready or not!. I popped my pet from suspend and sent him in and just started laying on the Dots. I had even unloaded my survival spells (except FD) and was just laying the full load on him.

Slowly, slowly his HP dropped. Now I am facing the wall at this point so I had no idea what was going on behind me, but I gather it was a hell of a mess with massive numbers of adds everywhere and the kiters exerting Heroic effort to keep them away from the raid. We almost had the fat bastard!. I was finally dropped by Rallos himself, with him at 6%. SO CLOSE!.

So we reformed, Rezzed up and headed in again.

Second Tallon kill, Flawless
Second Vallon Kill, Flawless

Second Rallos kill, Flawless

And minutes later we were back at Rallos Zek the Warlord again. This time the Pet guys spent a little more time and didn’t try and wipe themselves. Once everyone was ready we pulled.This would have been a flawless kill as well. We did absolutely everything right. Positioning, Aggro control, healing everything was perfect. We managed to get him to 6% again before the adds overwhelmed us. We just didn’t have the DPS with the number of people we had exactly 56 on engage again. A little longer farming the planes, a few more high DPS weapons, a few more AA here and there and this guy will definitely be in the “farmable by 50” range.

I think Kez was a little disappointed that we didn’t manage to drop him, but I was happy as hell. I doubt anyone else at our level could have gotten him to 6% with the numbers we had. We will do him again many times I am sure, we need at least 3-4 more BoW’s for a start!.

Be proud Kez, be damn Proud!

Everquest Southern Armada Week Twenty Nine

11/10/03 Week TwentyNine

Due to the release of LDoN Kez has only announced a single Raid this week with a warning to watch out for the pop of Rallos Zek the Warlord. So Monday night was quite a short one. First up we headed to the Plane of Disease for a quick Grummus kill. I decided (with permission) to take Garakk on this run rather than Ulaa. Mainly because its a fairly simple kill for us now so I didn’t think Ulaa’s firepower would be missed and secondly cause Garakk still needs this flag, hell Garakk needs all the flags. I figure I will ninja them for him slowly.

So we formed up, and headed into the POD castle, pulled and killed Gryme for his key.

Wiped Aramin the Spider Guardian out of our way and then nailed Grummus.

Now there is a reason that this kill has so little information attached to it and that is I had no fucking idea what was going on half the time. The view of Pooby between the legs of Grummus is about all that I managed to see of him. That is the view that most tanks will see during the course of any given raid. As I am a Troll and I am double shrunk 90% of the time I cant see nada. If I am beating on a MOB and a caster pulls aggro, to me the mob just vanishes away and identifying the MOB again amidst a sea of legs is damn hard.

I really don’t know how the regular full time tanks can do it, I certainly gained a new appreciation of how difficult their job is. I really like being a tank in groups, its fun to go toe to toe with a nasty, but I really don’t know if I would want to do it as a full time occupation as a raider. So as soon as the Grummus raid was over I logged back into Ulaa with a sigh of relief.

After Grummus we headed to The Halls of Honor to smack over Mithaniel Marr. Now Mr Marr is not my favorite kill, in fact I really hate it. It has less trash to clear than a lot of other kills…

A big Pussy Cat

There are a few named’s on the way to MM and they are relatively easy to drop…

Halon of Marr

There is the usual hypocrisy of the ostensibly “Good” people, they tell you one way to live your life and behind the scenes they are practicing all kinds of filth and degradation.

Leave that Cat alone you perverted Frog!

The reason I really hate this kill is this; we have one of the best pull teams in the game. Atann, Ainyarx, Geno and the boys can pull anything solo. They have the art of extracting a nasty mob from its friends down perfectly. However with MM they always have problems. Splitting him out from his guards is damn near impossible and often in the end comes down to sheer luck and the SOE “Random” number generator.

That is just wrong, it denies the skill and time the boys put into a pull and reduces it to luck. This time they had some of that luck and that, along with their skill and style bought us MM alone.

The Lord Mithaniel Marr INCOMING!

So with little or no fuss we quietly disposed of MM and headed out of the Temple of Wind. It was getting pretty damn late at this point but I was determined to hang on as long as I could. SA headed out to the Tower of Solusek Ro for a couple of quick Named drops. Now I know we have only been doing Sol Ro Tower for 2 weeks, but it really is getting faster and faster. We cleared though the Trash Named’s:

Generic Picture of Trash Named_001

Generic Picture of Loot Named (Jiva_001)

I like these kills. They are really fast to clear to and kill , and they drop guuuuuuud loot, I could happily go on farming them for some time to come. At this point however we started to head to The Protector of Dresolik. I think I got about 3/4’s of the way there and realized I was actually asleep, so I figured I should make it officially asleep and headed to bed.

During the course of the week I joined up with Genosin and Axixs deep in the newly revamped Greigs End to kill the Servitor or Luclin for A Glowing Orb of Luclinite.

We tried it the first time with no slower and I couldn’t keep Genosin healed using Zevfeers Theft of Vitae and Shadowbond, even with Laurwen throwing CH’s on Genosin as well. Laurwen and I were both running out of mana too fast. So we roped in Axixs for slowing and KEI (for Laurwen and Genosin) and we went again. The second time round we dropped him handily. We got the Orb and I managed to run Garakk into Griegs to grab the Sombrous Claidmore that also dropped!. Woot now that was a fun way to spend an evening!

I also managed to get Garakk on a fast Hedge run for my Terris Thule flag during the week, now being a tank on this run was a lot of fun!. 18 or so people is a good number to be a tank for.

Damn he is still ugly

Finally we get LDoN launched. I was half way through my Chardok Rings quest when the servers went down. I logged out in the Frontier Mountains having found and done the Sarnak Spy section. I AM going to finish this damn quest this time. Anyway LDoN launched and everyone and his dog was in an LDoN dungeon, I didn’t manage to get into a Dungeon group, but I didn’t exactly try too hard either. I will give it a go tonight tho.

Ah fuckit I was going to make this long and involved and really draw it out. But I cant do it I just want to show you now.

How to Have one of the best nights possible in Everquest.
By Ulaa Grimsoul

1. Zone into The Plane of Tactics.
2. Pull triggers.
3. Kill Tallon Zek perfectly

4. Kill Vallon Zek perfectly

5. Kill The Fake Rallos Zek perfectly

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you The Southern Armada’s path into the Elemental Planes.
6. Rallos Zek the Warlord. OWNED

Not only did we do this as a pickup raid, not only did we do this without a full Southern Armada raid team, not only did we do this on our second ever run at him, not only did we do this as a 2 day a week raiding guild, but we did it damn near perfectly.

I was sitting in front of my monitor, all the DOT’s I could load running hard, with Rallos Zek at 2%, pounding my fists on my desk and bouncing up and down in my seat yelling “come on you MOTHERFUCKER!!”.

I’m sitting here at work 12 hours later and just thinking about this again has got a smile on my face and a thrill running through me. Southern Armada SNUFFED Rallos Zek the Warlord at 11.48PM NZ Time Wednesday September 10th. Fuck I love you guys.

Big huge respect to Servalan, Genosin, Attann and Wolfe for running one of the fastest put together and best led Raids I have ever been on. The pulling, the raid control, the off tanking, the discipline all excellent. I owe you guys so much beer it isn’t funny. See me in Sydney for major payback !

Everquest Southern Armada Week Thirty Three

09/10/03 Week ThirtyThree

Look its really simple. If you are NOT flagged for the the Sol Ro zone then you can get into the zone with the 85/15 raid rule. This rule will ALSO allow you to get into the Chamber of Sol Ro. However, once you get into the Chamber and disband from the raid if you are NOT flagged for the ZONE you must log out to a twink, or log in and out continuously before the 3 minute warning is up. Once everyone is invited into the chamber then you can be invited to the raid safely.

If you are flagged for the Sol Ro Zone, you only need to get into the Chamber under the 85/15 rule. Once you are IN the Chamber you can disband and just sit and wait for the next set of instructions as you will NOT get the 3 minute warning.

Its not bloody rocket science.

As you can probably tell I was a little frustrated at last Monday nights raid. Pay attention, listen to the raid leaders and if you get aggro stand and fucking DIE. After about an hour or two’s pissing about we finally managed to get everyone into his chamber.

He was waiting for us and this time the bastard had a sneaky plan!. His plan involved running throughout the raid and randomly smacking people down instead of focusing on Pooby. Unfortunately his plan was better than our plan and it was “Camp the Clerics”. We reformed fast, dropped the repops and pulled him again.

This time he died and not a bad attempt for a raid of 43 I thought. We handed out the PhatLewtz and headed out to the Elemental Plane of Water. I must admit I breathed a sigh of relief as I thought we were going to go and do Plane Of Earth rings.

Now although POE is boring due to the hours and bloody hours of clearing trash, POW is just an insane lag fest. I am going to have to spend a couple of thousand dollars to update my PC just to be able to raid in there.

First up we went for Hydrotha. He is a right pain in the ass because he has this nasty tendency to blind the MT and then bloody move. It makes it rather hard for the MT to hold aggro. We had gained a few people after the Sol Ro kill but we had lost a few as well, so we went into the fight with about 45-50 people in the raid.

Once again we needed to feed Main Tanks to the MOB and at the point we were about to feed him Pallies he died. According to EQWatcher I managed to do about 55K on him *grin*. Kez called for an emergency Rez of the MT’s “eyes”. I sat, memmed Rez, waited for Refresh, cast, and about 2 seconds later got a tell from a fellow Necro saying “I have rezzed him”, err bugger, so did I. I wonder if he got a 100% xp rez as he was rezzed twice?.

At this point due to all the pissing about during the SolRo fight, and the fact that Aussie is now 3 hours behind me so the Raid doesn’t start till 10PM my time, it was getting bloody late. I hung in for one last mini named A Hraquis Arch Magus (I think that was the name). We dropped him with ease. SA went on to do another mini I believe.

Raid night this week was supposed to be tonight (Thursday), fortunately the folks over at SOE have decided to have a patch tonight, so the raid has been moved to Friday night. Now this can be good and bad, sometimes when we logon after a patch the big American guilds have left us something, or sometimes we are just well placed for repops. At other times there is just absolutely nothing up. Its pure luck, but no matter what is up, we will find it and we will kill it, even if we have to do it with only half the people you are “supposed” to have for that fight.

We will find out Friday night I guess!. Me and my whisky bottle will be there!.

Nothing stops the Armada.

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