Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty

07/07/03 Week Twenty

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

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

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

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

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

Evynd Firestorm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ekil Thundercall

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

Hibdin Cyclone

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

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

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

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Nineteen

03/07/03 Week Nineteen

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

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

Overlord Banord (1/30) Paffa

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

Servant of Saryrn

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

Salczek the Fleshgrinder

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

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

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

The Acolyte of Affliction

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

Maareq the Prophet

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

The Keeper of Sorrows

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

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

Saryrn has been Poobied.

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

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

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

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

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

Statue pulled….

shortly to die…

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

The Idol of Rallos Zek

The Avatar of War

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

One of many

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

He’s a Pussy really..

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

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

Oops!.

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

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

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

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

He cant be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

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

Lord Inquisitor Seru

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

Nevor Jikman

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

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

Trakanon

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

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Eighteen

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

Brynu Thunderclap

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

Decorin Berik

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

Tallon Zek

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

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

Laef Windfall

Hreider Lynhillig

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

Banord Paffa

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

Terris Thule waiting for us…

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

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

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

Knight Of Decay

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

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

Bertoxxulous Dead

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

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

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

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

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

Blood of Ssraeshza

Engage!

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

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

Dead Fat Snake Bastard

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

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

Ometiklan
(High elf Pally)

PinkPower Ranger

Lyrique

Random Weirdness

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

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

Lord Inquisitor Seru

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

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

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

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

A Flayed Horror

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

Earless Fat Bastard

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

Boruk Tormentor

Kaniz Tormentor

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

The Acolyte of Affliction

Ta`Grusch the Abomination

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

Maareq the Prophet

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

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

Saryrn waiting…

After telling her that Terris Thule is cuter…

Flawless

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

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

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

A Protector of Ro

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

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

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

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Seventeen

19/06/03 Week Seventeen

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boruk Skin Harvester

Servant of Saryn

Blood Soaked Guard

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

Ta`Grusch the Abomination

Salczek the Fleshgrinder

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

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

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

SorrowSong

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

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

A Glyphed Covered Serpent

Vyzh’dra the Exiled

Vyzh’dra the Cursed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Sixteen

15/06/03 Week Sixteen

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

Gaukr

Laef

Oreen

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

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

Raex Pwodil
Vindor Mawnill

Bishop Toluwon

High Priest Ultor Szanvon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friends

Vindi

Statue of Rallos Zek

Idol of Rallos Zek

The Avatar of War

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

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

and Lord Marr looks Kewl!

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

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

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

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

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fifteen

08/06/03 Week Fifteen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skelly Train

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

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

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

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

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

Vallon Zek quaking in his boots.

Vallon Zek multi boxing in an attempt to cheat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gryme the Crypt Guardian dies fast…

Aramin the Spider Guardian follows suit…

Grummus is by now terrified and is trying to hide…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seru himself…

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

Mezzable…

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

You just know whats going to happen…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fourteen

25/05/03 Week Fourteen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Incoming!

Kiss My Ass Dead Fat Dragon!

And to really rub it in, a close up…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shei Vinitras

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

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

Rydda’Dar

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

First ya kill this guy…

Then a whole lot of these guys spawn…

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

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

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

Tallon Zek

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

Vallon Zek preparing to engage

Vallon Zek trying to cheat and bring his buddies!

The result of cheating!

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

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

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

Oh well Targrin Maldric died anyway…

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

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

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Thirteen

22/05/03 Week Thirteen

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

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

Rhag2

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

Another dead Snake

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

A fat girlie snake ready to die

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

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

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

Lord Inquisitor Seru waiting for us

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rydda’Dar 5
Southern Armada 0

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

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

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

Freegan Haun

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

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

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

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

Royal Guard

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twelve

19/05/03 Week Twelve

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

These guys die a lot

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

Rydda’Dar 4 SA 0

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

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

Evynd Firestorm

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

Overlord Banford Paffa

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

Plague Lord Hetral

Assasin Kakoo

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

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

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

Insanity Crawler

Shei Vinitras

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

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

Lord Inquisitor Seru before…

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

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

Tallon Zek

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

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

Praesertum Rhugol

Behind the pets is Praesertum Vantorus

Praesertum Bikun

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

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

Ssraeshza Temple

Snake Guards

Advisor Zekuzh

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

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

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Ten

05/05/03 Week Ten

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And after about 20 minutes, so did the THO.

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

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

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

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

The Itraer Vius is ready for an Oggie Pumping…

Shei Vinitras, waiting for us…

Shei Vinitras, the Kill…

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

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

Formed up and attacked…

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

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

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

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

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

Vallon Waiting to die

Vallon Engaged

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

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