Agnarr Redux

Agnarr was so much fun, we did him again. This time Mallo RL. A little sloppy, but he got put down gently. Grats Giltaav for the Bow of Storms (there was other loot too, but that's the only things a ranger would care about).

Saryn Falls on First Attempt

This was a great day for GoB and shows what we can do when luck and attention factor into a raid. Luck as in the trigger was up. Thanks Tristairn for showing me how to check this mob (who wasn't up that day). I tried myself to track it myself the next day and I needed someone to help pacify some see invis mobs. No problem, Seyah just got on and was looking for a Saryn report. My answer was come pac some mobs and I will tell you. :) Unfortunately, Seyah didn't listen to instructions so well and got caught in a spider trap. I jumped in to save her and got killed, oh well. Saryn was up, BTW.

Knowing this was in the offing and our next Big Step (tm), GoB assembled quickly (for GoB). I must say that there are some pretty cool mobs in this zone and no, I don't expect to want to exp here. I won't go into the details of all the mobs of this encounter, look them up. I just want to say that everyone was on the ball, paid attention to Krushh and despite the fact that we really only had a vague idea of the details of the encounter, we put her down fast and clean.

Definately one of those you can remember as a good raid. Plenty of loot dropped to, which is nice.

Agnarr In Flames

Post Huricane we got on and found Krushh ready to raid. Despite a lot of missing East Coasters, we put together a formidible force and descended on the Bastion of Thunder for a little smack down of Agnarr. Knowing the encounter sure was handy. For instance, knowing the tower is a hot LZ meant tanks and healers in first, us more fragile types second. The first mob is a huge fire giant with a bunch of summoned adds. No problem. Despite only having two wizards available to smoke the portals, the adds weren't a problem. We did have several excellent enchanters and they had everything locked down quick. The next floor is the storm giant. Whirling rock adds, huge weapon procs, etc. The fight happens on a huge platform a lot like the PoJ Trials room. Awesome sight if we weren't so busy. Then it's on to Agnarr himself.

Lost Dungeons of Norrath Temporarily Halt PoP Progress Raids

Well, LDoN is out, and it's the coolest expansion yet. I am just blow away with VI and how each expansion seems to address a lack in the game. They are a favorite punching bag of EQ players. And, to be fair, the game is buggy and quirky. Yet, they seem to genuinely care about addressing these issues. This is exta amazing when you consider SOE has just released two huge new MMORPGs (SWG and Planetside) and there is the EQ2 project set for a Spring '04 release. Anyway, back to LDoN. It's very cool. Distracting enough that we are not really going to get a raid force together easily until people get a chance to try this stuff out a bit.

Wednesday night we got on early, we had promised Gaerett that we would do an adventure with him early in the evening before the usual raids began. We met in EC, put together a group and headed off. We had Yaskel, a GoB enchanter and Muzzic. This turned out to be a pretty powerful combination. Our mission was to break into a dungeon and kill the boss in 90 minutes. What is cool is that the dungeon is supposed to be balenced against your group's levels and skills. I pulled and brought everything I could for an hour before we located the boss. Everything in the dungeon appeared to be in the 58-62 range level wise. And we plowed through things pretty fast. The boss doesn't spawn until you kill 60% of the mobs. Once we got him to spawn, pull pull pull to him. The enchanter was awesome. Since it was an indoor zone, I couldn't Harmo and some pulls were 3 or 4. All were locked down quickly, although, I did die 3 times overall. I didn't bring the eight mob train into camp.

The Boss was level 66 and pretty mean. We clear to him, set up and pulled. He killed Gaerett pretty much right away. Just boom, dead. He killed Bi right after Gaerett, probably from heal agro. At that point it was choas. No healing was coming. The pets tanked him down while I nuked and shot as fast as I could. Yaskel and the enchanter DoTed and nuked. Eventually all the pets were dead, Yaskel FDed and I tanked (heh) him the rest of the way. Once I had agro, Yaskel stood up and Lifeburned him to death just as he killed me. Ding, 51 points.

CR is interesting. Yaskel Necro-rezzed Gaerett and he got us up. Sucky part was, no loot. Killed the rest of the guards, no loot there either. We got a +6 vs Cold Augmentation (won by Gaerett) and +6 vs Disease Augmentation (won by Bi), that's it. Well, we also got about 75% of an AA.

Overall, this was very fun. I really like the time pressure dungeon crawl. There is no mob respawn, no one else in the dungeon. This has the feel of Diablo 2 combined with the best parts of EQ. I see me doing a lot more of these. One more thought. This is Hard. It was a lot of fun, but the timer is merciless. There is no time to med up, learn to meter your mana. No bleeders on melee, you can't afford the mana. As I see it, an enchanter is a MUST. CC, clarity, NDT, SoV, all required. You are down there too long for most buffs to see you through the adventure. You also need a rezzer. So, a cleric or a paladin (or necro in a pinch, but EE are Very expensive).

Bertox Falls to GoB -- Twice

Finally, on the fifth (or sixth, I lost count) try, GoB bested Betox and his minion. Same tactics that we had been using on the last two tries, things just sort of clicked. Also, people were done wiping to him so there was very little screwing around. Almost everyone who participated had been on a prior attempt, so there was less flailing about as people learned their roles. If we can keep this kind of focus, Sol Ro will be our playground soon.

On Saturday, Mallo lead a reprise raid to 1) prove it wasn't a fluke and 2) flag some of the euros who couldn't stay up late for the first (successful) attempt. That one wasn't so clean, but they did win.

Exping in Hate

We finally got everything lined up to venture into Hate. My first trip since the revamp made it an exp zone. Still images of horrible wipes played in our heads as we zoned in and looked cautiously around. I have an excellent map of Hate created by Rangers coming to look for the Shattered Emerald of Corruption to complete their epic. I had the spawns I wanted to pull, the spawns that will add, the pull routes and the camp all mapped out. And all the info was perfectly on. We had abolutely no trouble dispatching many of Inny's minions. Sadly, we only got one mini on my list to pop and she didn't drop the gem. I didn't figure I would be that lucky. Since I had the boys, we only stayed about 2 hours. However, they were 2 good hours. We got 10% real, level 65, exp. Plus, I split about 1500pp among the group. Everything drops cash. Plus there are some nice (non-epic) quests to be done there. Also, since it costs 62.5pp per group to port in, there was no one else in the zone.

Pathing, though 'fixed', is still odd at best. And everything there HTs or casts or otherwise abuses the puller. Well, that is what heals are for :) We will be going back. In fact, at least until I get my SEoC, it will me my prefered exp spot (if a wizzie is handy).

We Are Uber Now >> DING 65 <<

We got to exping on Sunday night. Seems like we ran out of targets after a weekend of raids. No problem for us, we were playing around and then got invited to exp a bit with Sparkes and Fayeth. We really like them, they are nice, they exp efficiently without stressing and pressing. And we manage to amass a good bit of loot as well. There are few people who understand the game as well as Sparkes. He was telling me about this different version of Tactics that gets loaded sometimes. The spawn rates and times are different. Wow. As the puller, this is the sort of stuff he would learn. I have probably as deep a knowledge of the Desert in PoS, where we go when nothing is open, but he is a really great player as well.

You may notice that enchanter, cleric, druid, ranger, no tank. With Sparky, tanks need not apply. He will charm something, haste it, maybe even give it weapons if he is feeling bold. The baddest trash mob in the pit of Tactics is the War Boar and that is what he uses. I estimate that it is doing about 500 DPS (i.e., about 6x my melee DPS, 2.5 times my TS archery DPS). Exping with them is more dangerous, probably a lot more dangerous, but more fun. There are also Young War Boars. They are low enough a level that Bianca can charm one. So Sparkes will bring her a present, Tash it and then let her charm it. She then shrinks it so it's really small. Very cute. She walks around with this little baby boar, that is good for 100 DPS, maybe 150. My job in all this is to snare the pets when charm breaks. Gives them a chance to get far enough away to let Sparkes reTash it and Charm it or stun lock it while Bi charms it. A setup like this gets us about 10-15% exp an hour.

All was going well and then Ripert showed up. Ripert is a necro, and I don't know a whole lot about high end necros, but I have seen them in action and they are awesome. There must be a downside somewhere, but not that I have seen. He quickly added a Tortured Soul (undead) to our arsenal of pets. That was good for 250 or more DPS. After that, we were killing boars and wraiths on the "crunch it, they'll make more" plan. They lasted about 1 minute each.

So, before we knew it we were close to Dinging. I was about 5% behind Bi thanks to the 5 death TZ raid, so she had to go AA for a bit so I could catch up. Then we Dinged, for last time, one mob apart. Very cool. The group, though tired, stayed on another 20 minutes to pad our level and finish up the AA Fayeth was working on. All in all, after shutting all things down and checking on the boys, I got to bed at 3am. Ugh.

Tallon Zek Sneers At GoB from the Grave

Sunday am checked Balinvar and noticed Mallo running a TZ raid. I knew one was likely and it was the reason I was keeping an eye on things while getting stuff done around the house. Bi was just emerging from her coccon and I got us into the raid as late adds, running on in. There were 5 rangers in the raid, so I felt it was a lock that the bow would drop today. Last two raids were just me and Luniel. The TZ takedown went fine, but slow. I remarked to Bi during the fight that this was taking too long.

"Why do you say that?"
"Trueshot just expired (i.e., 2 minutes had gone by after I found my spot and tested the range)"
"What's TZ at?"
"60%"
"Oh, is that bad?"
"Should be dead or close by now"
"Oh"

Overall, it took 5 minutes to get him. Not bad, except that the room is on an 8 or 10 min timer. A Gliden Deathblade added from the stairs area right after TZ fell. It was one of those annoying splitters. Note that the stair area is the healer area, so many of them were dead too. One ore two tanks, we did the best we could, but too many were down and we couldn't lock it down. Total wipe. Well, don't that just suck. Dead TZ with loot and a 30 minute timer running and 12 level 68 trash mobs between our naked GoB party and him.

Mallo and some others made a dash through and while they all eventually died, Mallo did manage to check the corpse. He got the spells off and linked the bow, it was there. "Rangers, get SoW and follow me. First one to make it to the corpse gets the bow." I had SoW, but it was old, I zoned out refreshed and ran back in. Mallo and the others had gone, it's OK, I found their corpses part of the way in and added mine to them. Actually, I added 3 more to that one. My last run in, Tristairn and myself made it to TZ's room w/o agro, but the body had poofed about a minute before. /cry The most amazing sight was the carpet of bodies from the ZI to TZ's room. All the rangers left at least 4 or 5 corpses each in there. Plus a number of others who tried to help out.

Mallo remarked that he hadn't died like that since Hate CR days. My hat is off to all those who tried to get one of us in there. And to TZ, "I'll be back."

Ding 64

It has been a while since we heard that noise on regular exp, but there it was. We have been grinding away hard when our raiding allows and we both have something in the low 40s of AAs. Almost all of the must haves are out of the way for me (just 7 AA to go to AM3 with EQ and IC in the bag). Bianca took MGB with her big buy and needed to level up to something worth MGBing. At 64 she got to scribe Protection of Seasons, so that is one. Her other useful MGBable spell is Protection of the Nines at 65. We decided to level up to 64 and then straight to 65 so she could have those spells available for raids. Also it will end the endless arguements about whether we should be doing AA or regular exp. We wanted to level slowly and get the low hanging fruit AA and be sure we had all our spells for the coming level first. That isn't likely to happen for 65 anyways as GoB won't allow us to roll on Rune drops until we are 65. Damn few people are gonna be selling the 3 rune only Ranger spells as I am sure the guilds that have an excess of Rune are going to turn them in on Wizard, Echanter or Cleric spells to sell for big pp. As I appear to be the only active ranger in EE ATM, I am not going to get dupes from the other 2 65 rangers either. In fact, it's been a slow patch for rangers in GoB in general. Besides myself, the only other regulars seem to be Luniel and Buganose.

Agnarr not yet affeared of GoB

Monday evening's raid brought a semi-bungled Airen'Dar raid where we were attempting to backflag some folks. It took forever to setup. This is typical of some raids. Eespecially when we try to move too fast and allow late adds. We waited for a long time to get everyone in and then position folks 'just so'.

Even so, we were short a certain amount of firepower so the dragon lived too long. What that means is that all the mindless minions became active. It also means that almost everything that could qualify as a tank was killed in the dragon fight either outright or soon afterwards by the AoE. We did get the dragon down, but clearing the minions was a major PITA. Basically Jaered would chain root one while Buganose and I would shoot it to death. Due to the very wierd agro nature of these creatures, none of the three of us would every get agro. I personally participated in the death of 4 minions in such a fashion. I have no idea what happened elsewhere, but we eventually managed to get them all down.

But! Not before someone clicked on the floor in the center and dropped most of the live DPS into the lake underneath. Fortunately, there is a ladder back up. Unfortunately, you can't climb it while Leved or while shrunk. While fixing Lev is easy. Shrunk is not. Eventually, I cast wolf form on myself and then clicked it off. That effectively unshrunk me and I was able to get out.

OK, this was longer and more tedious than I have recounted here, but the worst part is that by the time the last living cleric started rezzing the other clerics and got the raid standing, the projection had despawned. No one got back flagged. What a crime.

The good news is that this was really a filler raid. Waiting for the westies so we could go try Agnarr, the boss of BoT and the imprisoner or Karana. Unfortunately for us, we weren't really sure how to do the event. We managed to get into the tower but, the LZ was Hot. A named giant and 4 portals bringing in a supply of elements. The elements would not snare or root, some could be mezzed, some not and charm wouldn't hold long. Oh, and one of them could see invis. Things sorts got sorted out and we got the giant down (/flex), but the majority of the tanks were again dead. Eight or ten elementals ran around and smoked all the rest of us.

The event has a 2 hour timer, so we were under the gun to get the riad rezzed and back up. So, actually, no rezzes. Run in and loot your corpse, quick buff and jump back in. We got in and managed to knock down the remaining elementals and prepared for the jump to the next floor. To get there you have to hail an NPC and say 'transport'. Assuming that we would get another warm resception, we all jumped at the same time. This was much more effective even though Mallo accidentally agroed the mob.

Unfortunately, even forewarned, we were not really ready for this floor. This part of the encounter is generally considered the hardest part of the Agnarr script. And it's easy to see why. The giant has a big AoE, there are adds and the 4 portals make it worse. I disced on this giant, but kept having to run from the adds, so it wasn't very effective. Eventually, I started nuking, the giant was in the 30's, but the raid was wiping. I got summoned and spanked. /sigh

This time, we rezzed (both corpses) and loot up. But, it was pretty late already and no third try was attemped.

An Update

It has been a busy few weeks at work, so I haven't been able to update this regularly like I usually do. But it has also been a busy few weeks in game for EE and GoB. We are strong enough both in terms of bodies and in terms of raiding experience that lots of new things are open to us. The biggest single thing that has impacted Bianca and myself is getting flagged for the Plane of Tactics. Since killing the Behemoth is so hard and requires a good raiding guild, there is less 'rif raf' flagged to get in there. The ZEM is at least as good as Halls of Honor, and, unlike HoH, there is decent (droppable) loot too. In the two weeks where we have been hitting it hard, we have leveled up to 63 and gained 11 AAs. All while raiding pretty hard and not playing as much as we were in May. Generally, you can get an AA every 70-90 minutes even at level 65. So far I have finished off Archery Master 2 and Inate Camoflage. I am not sure if I am going to climb the AM3 hill next or start working on the tanking AAs (Natural Durability, Combat Agility, Combat Stability) or DPS AA (Ferocity, Fury of the Ages, Punishing Blade). That is 72 AAs right there, that ought to keep me out of trouble for a while.

Bianca has been similarly busy getting Radiant Cure 1 & 2, Spirit of the Wood and now saving up for DC for soloing and douing fun.

The Villagers Trial

This is the second of the three HoH trials for access to the Temple of Marr. Triggered by killing Rhaliq Trell in the NW basement camp. That spawns a Custodian of Marr, killing him spawns half a dozen villagers in that room and 4 or 5 hard mobs in each of the outer two rooms. You need to kite them or they come running in and rub out the villagers. If all the villagers die, you lose. I think you also get a hard mob running into the first room right off the bat too. The raid kills him, moves to the doorway of room two, peal off one of the kited mobs and rinse and repeat.

Pretty straight forward, as long as the kiters stay alive and the raid doesn't bog down. We had a typically rocky start and Bi died right away (she was kiting) and Jaered ended up with 3 mobs on him, but we got things locked down pretty quick. The raid was around 40 people, but pretty much most of GoB's 'A' Team. Only one person under 62 or 63, everyone did their job and we won.

Only the Dragon awaits. He is considered the hardest trial and Marr's last hope to keep GoB from coming for him.

The Maidens Trial

This is the first of the three trials you must pass to gain access to the Temple of Marr. You can do them in any order, but this is generally considered the easiest. It is triggered by killing Alekson Garn in the back room of the SW baesment camp. When he dies, a Custodian of Marr spawns. Killing him spawns 5-7 'Crazed Norathians' in this room and in each of the other two rooms. There is also an untargetable maiden in the center of the other two rooms. If the mobs get to the maidens, well Bad Things happen and you lose.

Pretty simple strategy to solve this on. Actually there is a great writeup on the web at:
http://www.scienceofwar.net/strats/aleksongarn/ which we more or less follow or did the same thing as. The very first time we tried it, we lost quick. The kiters couldn't get control of the mobs in time. Second time, 7/22 I think, we won quick and clean. On Saturday, it was sloppy (too big a raid, IMHO) 36-40 seems to be as big as you need. My opinion is that 2 or 3 clean wins is better than bumbling through this.

Drops one or two good loot items and random parchements, of course. Not something I would farm, but nice enough.

The Carprin Cycle is Solved by GoB

The Carprin Cycle is a sequence of 6 mobs that get 36 flags for the raid if you succeed. Getting flagged here allows you to enter the basement of CoD and participate in the Bertox script. Bertox is a biggie for progressing in PoP. This is pretty hard, we test drove it about 2-3 weeks ago, killed the first guy relatively easy and then got *smoked* on the second guy. Here is a run down of the event (from The Safehouse website):

Carprin Deatharn
-- Hits for 1200ish
-- Not rooted
-- Procs 3500 HP lifetap
-- Unslowable
-- Has 3 mini-named that spawn when he is agroed. Should off tank Carprin and kill all 3 then kill Him
-- If you kill him without first killing his babies (and you must agro all at once or they repop) he seems to take alot longer to kill than if you kill babies first
-- On his death Avhi Escron spawns in the next room

Avhi Escron
-- Hits for 1600ish
-- Rampages
-- Unslowable
-- Rooted
-- Any time anyone (pet or player) dies or FDs 4 skeles spawn
-- On his death Bishop Toluwon spawns in the next room

Bishop Toluwon
-- Really easy, lived maybe 50 seconds.
-- Rooted
-- On his death Raex Pwodill, Vindor Mawnil, and High Priest Ultor Szanvon (untargettable) spawn in the same room

Raex Pwodill
-- Hits for 1600ish
-- Rampages
-- Unslowable
-- Procs 5000 lifetap
-- Is not rooted

Vindor Mawnil
-- Hits for 1200ish
-- Flurries
-- Slowable
-- Procs 5000 lifetap
-- Is not rooted

High Priest Ultor Szanvon
-- Becomes targettable on Vindor and Raex's death
-- Rooted

On our second try, we had the right mix of people and focus and with the exception of the unrooted mobs near the end, it was a near flawless execution. Bianca and I were lucky enough to *just* qualify for a flag (going from the top down in levels). We are going to need to do this event several times, 36 people not being anywhere near enough for Bertox. It was a fun fight and each boss drops one peice of (droppable) decent loot. Nothing worth farming, but a nice reward considering you need to do this a bunch to get all the folks flagged.

Vallon Zek Falls

Vallon Zek is a wussie. Plain and simple the hardest part of this raid is getting back to him. There are see invisible mobs and they AoE dispell 2 slots. Annoying. Also, they are far enough away from the ZI, that a ranger can't really check these mobs easily. You need an SoS rogue or a lot of luck.

You need Vallon and Tallon Zek for the Rallos Zek encounter. You get back there and kill the fake VZ, 6 more spawn in the center of the room. If you kill the 'real' VZ *last* encounter over. Otherwise, you get a 6 spawn again and again get to figure out who is 'real'. Annoying but there are tricks. Took us 3 trys to nail it.

Was an easy off tanking fight and I didn't even use Trueshot. Loot table for this guy is very good. Worth farming.

Aerin'dar Falls to GoB!

Wow, we are on a roll now. A Tier 2 boss mob falls easily on the first try. Last night we logged in at 9pm just as the AD raid was called. Rushing to PoV to the usual chaos of group formation in an unfamiliar spot and for the first time in forever stressing resists.

OK, I have to rant a bit. How in the hell can a group of people, average level 62 not know how to move from the zone in to another safe spot without getting agro? It boggles the mind. You didn't know Wolf Form is a bad idea?!? Are you an idiot. Wolf form is ALWAYS a bad idea in PoP and in so many other places that I rarely bother casting it anymore unless I am KoS anyway and prepared to fight everything. You didn't notice that skeleton is UNDEAD and sees through your inivis? How, exactly, did you get to be 61? I realize that, being a ranger, I am used to running around mobs and have a real good idea of what is dangerous and what is KoS, but the people that drew agro were Rangers and Druids, for the most part. Finger twiddlers, I can almost forgive, but they know enough to closely follow someone who knows where they are going and what they are doing. OK, AND if you do bungle (let's call it what it is) and get agro, SAY SOMETHING. We have a raid force that can dispatch anything in the zone with ease, call it out and kite it around to the MA. We wasted 15-20 minutes last night fighting trash and still had to camp to keep mobs from warping through the walls to get at people.

So, we buffed up in the (now) safe room and clicked into AD's chamber. Big open space with plenty of room to kite the gaurds. Except the lag was brutal. I was in Team Shoot (5 rangers and a 54 cleric). The Cleric was too low a level to get anywhere near the AoE and by hanging with us should be pretty safe since we easily outrange it. Except of course, the dragon turned and moved and we all got hit. The AoE is a 500dd, fear and a 7 tick 700dd DoT. Do that math. Death cleric and 3 dead rangers. Me and Giltaav survived and continued plugging the dragon which was about dead by the time I reacquired him. Woot. Pretty nice kill, now we had several guards to clean up, rez folks and get our flags. AD dropped Wrath of Mithaniel (Nalitra claimed), Honorable Longsword (Tigon claimed), a SP, and 4 EPs.

8th Shawl and more

Sunday afternoon was slow and we had finished all our chores, more or less, so we decided to play a little EQ. Before we could head off and do something constructive, Aleksey asked us to assist him with his 8th Shawl turn in fights. This is all pretty easy for 60+ people since it was a Velious designed quest. But, we could only come up with 9 folks and it took a certain amount of herding to get everyone there and ready. Aleksey decided to DB his paladin for some extra DPS and Vanelina DCed a Frost Giant for the same.

Despite the low numbers, if worked OK. Tigon, Tristairn and myself offtanked giants and wolves as they spawned and we beat things down pretty quick. The shawl is pretty nice, FTIII back item, so we are happy to help finger-wigglers in the guild get it. Some nice loot drops on the way too, but nothing that any of us could really use, so it all went to the guild bank. While I was waiting in the gnome village for the dwarf to show up and end the quest I hit track. We were the only people in the zone, not too unusual, Iceclad Ocean is pretty out of the way these days, but there is usually someone camping Lodizal or Stormfeather. No turtle, no surprise. His spawn is dialed down quick on a server reset and whoever gets it farms it hard. The loot still fetches 10-20K pp and he drops 2-3 items. However, Stormfeather was up. WHAT?!? I looked again. Yep. I couldn't even speak. He is a legendary spawn with no real known pattern, just a long, boring contested camp. I never really had the patience to sit there and wait for him, so even though I had the map part from the wolf and the part from Lodizal, I never figured I would finish the quest because I would never sit there for 18+ hours only to get KSed at the last moment. Nope, he was still there. I raced NE to him and beat him down quick as can be. Then I looted the map and cheered as did the rest of the raid when the realized where I went.

Now I had to finish the quest. Off to Great Divide to hunt Tizmaks and then turn in meat for the final piece. That took way longer than it should have. I ended up zerging the Tizmak caves (they are all green anyways) to get the last piece. Damn Bloodmaw was agro to me and almost died on my damage shield when I tried to turn in. I ended up sneaking even though Alla's said that didn't work. THEN, I had to run from the bottom of GD, through all of EW to the NE corner of IC. But, it's done (and 2 bank slots freed up for another quest):

Eyepatch of Plunder
LORE ITEM MAGIC ITEM NO DROP
AC: +10 Str: +10 Dex: +10 Magic Resist: +6 Fire Resist: +6 Cold Resist: +6 Poison Resist: +6 Disease Resist: +6 HP: +50
Weight: 0.5
Classes: All Classes
Races: All Races
Inventory Slot: Face

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Effect: Captain Nalots Quickening
1: Increase Attack Speed by 20%

Type: Triggered
Charges: Unlimited

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A very nice upgrade to my Platinum Ruby Veil.

It's been a good week. Finavar has had major upgrade to two of his weakest slots and a bragging rights upgrade to his chest. Net HPs up about 300.

Manaetic Behemoth and Terris Thule

Two of the Tier One bosses, both complex fights tactically, one we have mastered, one we have not. Saturday, for the fourth time, GoB engaged the MB and again, we lost. This time we wiped at nine percent, but our fate was sealed at 60% when he started to ping. I won't go into the details, but I was shooting from my assigned posistion and we were making good progress. Agro was solid on the MA, heals were landing, MB was burning. Then he pinged towards the cleric group and we all got hit by the AoE. Nine hundred HPs a tick. I received one CH at 10%, but it didn't matter. He was at about 45% when I went down, but it seemed foregone at that point.

No way to recover and engage MB again before he despawns, so we had to look for other targets. Terris Thule was still up from the botched Mallo raid the night before. So off to PoNB we go.

This fight, though everyone is in the same room, is more complex than the MB fight. You have spawns at 80% and 30%, an AoE at 50% and a non rooted mob that doubles (me anyway) for 977. Well, GoB is 3 for 5 on TT and if not for the blown AoE call on Friday night, we would be 3 for 4.

Good news though, on this fight she dropped a Sable Lined Mantle. As one of like 4 chain classes on the raid, I won it easily for 44 points. Almost broke on GoB raid points, but this is a HUGE upgrade from my Jade Inlaid Spaulders

Sable Lined Mantle
LORE ITEM MAGIC ITEM NO DROP
AC: +18 Str: +12 Sta: +10 Wis: +8 Magic Resist: +5 Fire Resist: +5 Cold Resist: +5 Poison Resist: +20 Disease Resist: +5 HP: +75 Mana: +75
Weight: 1.5
Classes: Rogue Shaman Ranger
Races: All Races
Inventory Slot: Shoulder

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Effect: Vengeance I
Slot 3:Increase ATK by 5
Type: Permanent

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The Chain Drop I Have Been Waiting For!

I have been very remiss in updating this log, but, for various reasons, it hasn't happened, oh well. Monday Krushh got back early from a vaction and wanted to raid. I had had a free weekend and spent it decadently exping, so I was really ready to raid. After some discussion, the BoT towers were selected and off we went.

I have been looking forward to the BoT towers ever since the last patch. Prior to that patch the tower bosses would drop a rune (I can't roll on, only level 65 folks), a spectal parchment (I can't roll on that either, level 63+ folks) and some key piece, or very occasionally an ornate pattern. Now looking at their loot tables on Allahkhazam, there should be some nice stuff there. Well, since the patch, they (reportedly) have been dropping an item from their loot table, and a pattern and rune every time. Each tower is essentially a seperate raid and not of them takes very long, so this is ideal for a weeknight.

Tower one was the Arena tower with Soandso Thunderclap as the boss. Never beat this guy. I had been here on one trip and we wiped twice trying, we were simply undermanned to be trying him. This time we probably had too many folks, close to 50. He got laid down fast and easy and dropped some caster item and an ornate chain BP pattern!

Now, I have been waiting for something to drop that is worth a damn for a long while and at the start of the raid I was tied for 7th for the most banked points in GoB, time to buy me something cool. So, I claimed on that. It ended up costing me 71 points, a bit much actually, I was planning on 50ish points, but the other contender had almost as many points as me so it got bid up a bit. Still, for someone who was borrowing a Tae Ew tunic, this is a huge upgrade! Check it:

Planestriders Hauberk
LORE ITEM MAGIC ITEM NO DROP
AC: +50 Str: +8 Sta: +7 Agi: +7 Dex: +8 Wis: +10 Fire Resist: +8 Cold Resist: +12 Poison Resist: +8 Disease Resist: +12 HP: +100 Mana: +80
Weight: 10.0
Classes: Ranger
Races: All Races
Inventory Slot: Chest

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Effect: Warder's Protection
1: Increase Damage Shield by 21
2: Increase ATK by 70
3: Increase AC by 13
4: Increase Max Hitpoints by 75
5: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 4 is effect 'Max Hitpoints' and < 10000
6: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 1 is effect 'Damage Shield' and < 700
7: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 3 is effect 'AC' and < 200
8: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 2 is effect 'ATK' and < 100
Type: Triggered
Charges: Unlimited

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Yay me! LOL

Dear Finavar,
I hope this missive finds you well, and in possession of your armor again. We got separated in the Factory last night and need to arrange a rendezvous. I won't have time to run back to the guildhall, but I know you would have gone there to recover from your resurrection. If you got one.

Let me relate to you what I remember, so we can avoid this in the future. Last night was a disaster, and I was extremely lucky to make it out alive, with the remnants of my group. If only we hadnit gotten separated, I am sure you would not have died. Anyhow, I should start at the beginning if we're going to figure out what went so wrong.

We arrived in the Plane of Innovation yesterday evening in response to the summons of Mallo, a raid leader, and the leader of our brother guild, the Coeur de Lion. By "we" I mean the Elven Elite, the Coeur de Lion, and our Allies, banded together for common cause into the Gathering of Banners. Though the call came unexpected, we had been preparing for many weeks for this day, and we ready to go at a moment's notice. Everyone was eager to begin, so we formed up our units and fought into the factory entrance. Actually, mowed is more accurate. The evil machines fell swiftly to our blades and spells.

Once inside the sealed building, we regrouped to wait for Krushh, the only GoB raid leader to have previously attempted this mission. His leadership abilities and tactics skill could make or break the fight. Suddenly, Mallo got word that the three Magnetic Prototypes were planning a surprise attack! He knew we had to act quickly and decisively, and there was no time to buff. Our only chance was to take them down, concurrently. To prevent them from coming together and destroying us before we had even begun.

Luckily, the Prototypes did not know or hidden strength. We were, in fact, 2 raids, not 1, with far more than the 72 people who usually put in an appearance at these things. Therefore, we were able to divide ourselves into 3 groups for a massive preemptive strike. We were assigned to the center company, led by the warrior, Kenelan. We charged our target, The Magnetic Prototype X, with lightning speed, but quickly a stiff spray of oil slowed our attack. It didn?t stop us cold, but motion suddenly became a test of endurance as we trudged further in. Fighting against the sticky substance, we engaged the huge machine. Several times we were rebuffed by the waves of hot oil, which sapped our health and ability to attack. But Kenelan was strong, and our forces powerful. My own group was hurt, and while their wounds needed tending, I knew the fastest way to end their pain would be to destroy the source. Praying to my Goddess, Tunare, I evoked the energy of Wildfire to my aid. Though the cost was high, and the concentration long, I threw the fierce blast of fire at the machine. Hit! Cogs and bolts rained down from below as the massive beast took its last step. With a thunderous crash, it hit the ground, throwing off electric shocks and sparks. It whirred and clicked a few times, and the construct fell silent. Finally I was able to heal the hurts of my friends, acquired in the arduous fight. As we washed off the oil and cleaned up, word came from the other groups that they had been equally successful. A great cheer went up through the ranks.

We were able to confiscate one of the coveted healing hats from a downed Prototype, but it was hotly contested. Though I wanted it badly, I did not want to claim against my guild mates. Luckily, it went to my friend, Lorrelei, who is sure to make good use of it. Rest assured, though, I will be back for my own. Not today, perhaps, but it won't be long now.

About this time, who should appear but the long-awaited Krushh, who causally strolled into the factory and surveyed the damage? Actually, strolled is the wrong word for Krushh's size and mass. He stomped, and the floor shook, but we politely ignored that and greeted him as befits the raid leader of the Elven Elite. Mallo remaine d the l eader of this raid, but he and Krushh had a quick conference, and then called us to begin buffing.

We followed Mallo to a hallway, outside the Behemoth's room. By now, surely, he knew we were coming, but he could do nothing. Yet. The Behemoth may be named for his immense size, but that is more a weakness to him than strength. His true strength is his magic, a powerful area effect that throws you though the air and drains your mana as it takes your health. His mobility is limited, but he can hurt many without touching them with his blades. To maintain his power, the Behemoth has an army of spider creatures, who bring him energy. The energy comes from four adjacent rooms, and is carried by the spiders to the massive one by means of an explosion, which is more dangerous that the magic of the actual monster. In order to even approach him without dying, all of the spiders must first die, and any new ones must be killed immediately, before they can carry that deadly energy to our enemy.

With this in mind, I volunteered my group to take one of those 4 rooms of spiders. The spider-killing job, while not glamorous, is very important. If even one spider lives to get into Behemoth's room, the entire raid will die. It is hard, tedious, and demanding, but I was sure my group could handle it. Switching out Zoari, a beastlord, for Nanbkek, a tank, I took Vicktore, Nalitra, Nanbkek, Finavar, and Gorde to the Northeast room. There we were joined by several groups from Raid 2, Including Inyiin, Saranthasala, Pochette, and several others I knew well. Most of us had been here before, and were hoping to do better this time.

The Behemoth cannot be killed until no spiders have reached him for several minutes. Only then does his power drain just enough to even get him in target. So we killed spiders, which came faster and faster. Finavar, you took Faltigoth to use your trueshot skill against the Behemoth. You left early in the fight, and neither of you ever returned. I knew that was a bad sign, as you had promised to come back to my side once your discipline was done. I know you would not leave me without some dire reason. You must have been prevented from returning by some evil force. So I do not know what happened in that great fight. I do know that our spiders were dying easily, and I sent a number of people back to the big room. I got reports that the behemoth was almost dead, but that so was most of our force! How could this happen? I sent more and more of our people to that room, none of which returned.

Suddenly, I was rocked by a huge blast of air, which threw me though the air. Bruised, I pulled myself together and memorized the evacuation spell from my spell book. That blast meant that Behemoth was loose, no longer pinned against the wall and under Krushh?s control. But wait. I can't cast succor, that would only take my own group, and I have people from Raid 2 to under my care. If I left them, I would live for certain, and they would certainly die. Sadly, I memorized a different spell in its place, the spell that imparted us with the fast moving Spirit of the Wolf.

Quickly we left that room, rushing along the corridor. Somewhere along the way, spiders attacked a young shaman. I knew if we stopped to heal him, the spiders would attack us. I gritted my teeth and yelled for my people to come. We had to let him die, in order for the rest of us to get away. This made me angry, but I knew the spiders would not have attacked him unless he had first diverted them from their primary focus.

We met up with another small force, and banded together to fight our way out. When we finally stopped to rest, I examined the group. We were missing several, weary and dispirited. There was no going back that day; the Behemoth would not be sitting there waiting. He would run away. I knew we had wounded him grievously, but he was not dead. Alone, somewhere, he sits and licks his wounds, and heals.

I don't know what happened after that. I made my way back to the Plane of Tranquility to find you, fo r sure l y, if you were alive, you would have passed this way. I could find no footprints, but I did find the remnants of some summoned arrows, the kind you favor. By this time, I was so weary I could hardly see, but I made my way towards the Plane of Knowledge and our guildhall. If you had come this way, that is where you would go, knowing I could find you there. On my route, I somehow stumbled across some brush and tripped. Looking about, I could not recognize my surroundings. I knew I was too weary to find my way home and decided to rest a short while. Surely a tiny nap could not hurt, and you would be safe at the guildhall.

When I woke, I found myself in a place I knew. I had somehow made it to the Plane of Storms. I blinked my eyes, wondering how long I had slept, when I recognized the cause of my awakening. Unbeknownst to them, a pair of Iksar, bearing the markings of the Altruistic Valorians, had used my hidden corner for a secret meeting. I cannot write down what they said, lest this missive fall into the wrong hands. All I can say is that they have plans to kill every single frog in this place. While that seems a small thing, should they succeed, they will spawn a cycle of events that could land them with an object of amazing power. We must not let this happen! With that kind of power in AV, they would surely try to destroy us. If we had that power, perhaps we could destroy the Behemoth and gain access to places they cannot follow.

Please come quickly and bring enough fighters! We must destroy the frogs and get that object before they do. We must not fail again. I will await you in the caves and gather more information about these frogs.


I await you, my love.

Bianca

Grummus Falls to GoB!

The scourge of the so-called "Plane of Disease" fell last night to a lighting strike by the Gathering of Banners alliance. In it's third expedition to the fortress, GoB finally succeeded in pentrating the defenses clear to the heart of the caslte, slaying it's keeper and opening the portal to the crypt. This will pave the way for strikes against an even greater evil, Bertoxxulous.

Previous expeditions to dispatch Grummus had met with failure. One attempt managed to greviously wound the great keeper before being routed. This time, however, the leaders had come up with a plan that incorporated all that they had learned in the defeat of the previous attempts. The force they had assembled was perhaps the strongest one GoB had ever assembled and they executed the plan perfectly.

After the slaining, the force opened the portal in the crypt and scouted the entrance ways. Time did not allow extensive explorations, but there will be numerous small missions over the coming weeks to probe the defenses and locate the powers of this loathsome place.

Sunday was one of those days. We had nothing in particular to do and didn't have the kids. So, we woke and played EQ and went to sleep, 11 hours later. LOL. First, after breakfast, we attended a Ring War for Krastus. That went smoothly even though the setup was a bit chaotic. Frankly, it's not a challenge for 50 people, average level 61. During that, we setup an exp group for afterwards where everyone got an AA point. That morphed into a BoT key farming raid that was semi-successful in that everyone got all the common drops, but none of the named were up to all us to complete any keys. Then, Krushh led a BoT tower raid where we got two of the tower bosses. Not bad. All in all, we earned 5 points and had a lot of fun.

So I tried my hand at RLing with EE. We headed over to Ssra to farm some Emp key parts. Particpation was lackluster to say the least, but we did manage to get started before the PST folks showed up. Then we tried to split into camps, but no one wanted to go to a Com camp, they all had better places to be and left the raid. We ended up AoEing the mines for a while. The net:

3 pouches
2 shards
1 Metal
Well, it's a start. We need to get more participation and enthusiasm going or we will never finish this quest.

1. The MA's (main assist) job is to grab and hold agro. Everyone else's is job exactly the opposite. So, all melees should also keep the farthest distance possible from a mob to hit it.

2. Assist and then Attack ONLY AFTER the MA call goes out. If you don't see the call, DO NOT ATTCK. It will become apparent that the call was not heard when the MA is at 10% health and he is soloing the mob.

3. If you don't know, ask. If you don't know ASK. IF YOU DON'T KNOW, ASK. Do not assume anything, and DON NOT ask the Raid Leader, that is what your group leader is for, if they don't know THEY will ask the raid leader.

4. Between fights, hang near your group leader. They will be the target of group buffs and refreshes.

5. If you see an uninvited mob sneak in, TELL SOMEBODY. Piss it off, but DONT hurt it, Its not that mob?s time to die. Beg, taunt, non-damage spells, SIT ON IT if you have to. Taunt an add only if you have the HPs to survive a beating while the group focuses on another mob. Druids, mages, and wizards need not apply here, although wizard root is a viable option. Druid root has a damage component which will break an enchanter's mezz - don't use it for parking if there's an enchanter trying to do crowd control.

6. Backup to the Kill Area after EVERY kill. Doesn't matter if there are 3 more mobs mezzed and waiting. Move back to the kill area after each and every kill. If you are not sure where or what the kill area is ... see number 3. (Note this exclude the Pull, Mezz and Tag teams)

7. Less is more. lets keep our messages to each other clean and clear. 30 people in a channel don't need to see your 'assisting the MA' hotkey. It is expected. When considering your messages think about whether anybody will take actions based on your message. Please turn off your cute emotes, or limit them to your group.

8. If you have to AFK (and you will, this raid is too long), be sure to auto-follow a member of your group. Preferably a caster. And tell them so they know to not drag you into a pit or something. Also tell them when you are back :)

9. Casters move up to melee range to cast. If you get agro stand and let the MA regain, don't nuke early or too hard at once. And don't sit down right after casting either, you need to drift down the mob's hate list a bit.

10. When the raid leader sends out who the MA and SA will be over the channel, you should set up two hotkeys:
MA: /assist (MA's name)
SA: /assist (SA's name)

11. The three prime things to expect on a raid:
-- No loot
-- No XP (Kinda fixed with raid system)
-- Possibility of many deaths

12. /assist off should be everyone's default assist setup. That means when you hit assist, you don't automatically attack.

13. Do what the raid leader asks you to do without arguing about it. When he says, "Paladin, go help pull Cazic Thule and take the Death Touch for the regular pullers!", just go do it.

14. Listen and PAY ATTENTION - If you can't chat and watch for instructions at the same time, don't chat.

15. Be on time, Be On Time, BE ON TIME!!!!! If you are late, don't expect for your place to be open unless pre arranged. If you might be close to getting there on time camp in the meeting spot the night before. If you are late I will replace you with someone that can be on time. If you need a port, make sure you are on 30 min before the raid for a port, we won't send anyone for you 10 min before a raid, you'll have to find your own way.

Advanced Raiding tactics

Mob Positioning

Surround - This is typically done on smaller mobs. The smaller the mob is the more sides we need to be able to hit from in order to get all our melee in rage. The MA should be in the front, rogues will be in the back. Ideally they don't have to move. Now we will need the bigger tanks who can handle a little repost damage to be in the front as necessary to offset rogues and lighter tanks push from the back. As much as possible people should be fighting from the sides. BOTH sides to counter the push from the other. If you find yourself having to step forward into a mob, run around to the other side. In an ideal situation the mob doesn't move at all. At the least we must avoid moving it into casters (hard to walk over them), too far from the healers (healers hate that), or into a wall.

Pin - This is often done on really big mobs like wurms and giants. It can only be done in a place where the wall is flat. A curved wall of any sort and a pinned mob can be pushed through it, bad news. In this case again we will have the MA in the front, rogues in the back, and everybody else on the side. If the rogues are pushing enough that the MA is backing up, again we will want big tanks to move around to the front and help hold it steady. At times it will get pinned in the wrong spot, and we'll want to move it, these same large tanks should be ready to move to the back or front as necessary to move the mob, then off to the side when the position is right.

We will do this to the King.


Lag

As we get a lot of folks into the fight or group of mobs you will notice performance coming right to the ground. This will kill us. If a healer is lagged they won't see someone is hurt, CH circle will get behind etc. Even if a melee is lagged, you might not get the message that you are rampaged until you're actually dead.

We should all know how to turn off luclin models, spell effects, spell particle density, 3D sky, PC names off, dynamic lights off etc. One thing many people don't know about is a little file called 'datarate.txt'. This file lives in your EQ directory. By default it reads '5.0'. That's all there is in this file. This is set up for a dialup 56 modem. If you are on broadband, up this to 9.0. Trust me you'll be amazed. BTW, if you go over 9.0 it doesn't know what to do so it actually uses the default of 5.0.


Gating Mobs

A mob that gates away from a raid is BAD NEWS. The mob will then typically start summoning people and making a huge mess of things. First, to avoid gating there are couple things we can do. We can try to interrupt with bash. They won't stun mobs 55+, but it can interrupt. Watch for the gating message and give it a whirl. Second, we nuke. Mobs typically gate at about 10% health. The gate spell should take 4 seconds to cast. During that time we need to do 10% of the mob's damage. If casters save their nuking towards the end of a fight like this, we get fewer gaters.

The second part of this is what to do IF the mob gates. If you are summoned, let everybody know you've been summoned. Type /loc immediately. If you know your way back to camp, run. The raid leader will then either decide to charge or camp. If camp is called, you know what to do, park it and /camp fast. Then log in to an alt and join the raid channel. If charge is called, follow the puller and or the MA. Try not to pass them.

I couldn't get on until about 10pm, but we made the most of it and got about 1 AA in 2.5 hours. Not amazing, but safe and steady.

Keys, flags and quests. That is about all we are doing these days besides farming NToV. We are simultaneously working on VT Keys, Ssra Emp key, BoT key quest, HoH key quest, PoT key quest, I still haven't done much with the VT key and we need the ST key.

Well we got our BoT flag and checked that place out on a short little raid Wednesday night. What a scary place. We tried a tower boss and wiped twice. Ouch.

Hard grinding for the 2 nights we got a chance to exp this week. But, goal achieved, both Bianca and myself got the title of Baron(ess) for our 6th spent AA point. Now, step two :)

Krushh decides we need to hit Ssra again and get some insignias. We have never ventured that far into Ssra, but it's time to get some key pieces from the 3rd floor. That is a bit of a challenge to pull through. But we manage and we kill the three mobs that drop insignias. Very cool. We need a better system for Ssra and I think I am the one that is going to come up with it. We have to hit it hard and fast. For some reason, people don't like the zone and we need to have focused farming here or we will never finish.

Another romp through NToV. This time we get to split it with PE after we will Aary. We get Iky, Aary, Vyemm, Koi, Mir and Joeg. Notice, no Eashan or Nev? Not up, only to dragons that I want. /sigh

An emergency patch sent us back to NToV the next time. This one was a bit of pain, OK, it was a great deal of pain. We tried to rush and this caused all kinds of problems. One of them was that Iris and Ary died in WW enroute. Tinv decided to CR them while we were actively fighting and Mallo, pissed off or confused about the real issues, wouldn't let Tinv roll on uber_rogue_lewt01. This caused all kinds of hue and cry and, of course, Tinv left. The fireball on the boards over this could be seen for miles around.

While all this was happening, PE started zoning in and tried to leapfrog us. Then the screwed our pull of Aary and caused a wipe. Mallo talked it over with them and he decided that we would collaborate on Aary and then PE would take Left side and we would take the right. Lots of unhappiness here too. I didn't like it, but I felt leaving was detrimental to our overall cause and my personal goals, so I stayed.

We killed Aary and then proceded to kill the things that were up on our side. It was 'OK' after that, but we still wiped to Dargan by, IMO, rushing that pull. After the CR, we ported out, it was too painful (and late) to continue.

So, I am sitting in the Nexus chatting in tell with Seyah over the events and she invites me on a stealth run to kill Rhags 1 who is up in Ssra. Now, it's a bit after midnight already, but I am wide awake and Bianca is already sound asleep, so, I say sure. Our hand picked strike force of 9 zones in and attacks Rhags1. Well, it's so easy with 30 people, it takes quite a while with only 4 are melee classes :) Despite discovering that I can pull agro off of Ceaorn nearly at will, we get it done and Jaered wins the RGC drop we have been looking for.

We are standing around after the kill and Sparkes asks, "anyone want to kill a vampire for me?" Well, now it's like 1:30, and I am starting to feel tired. But, Sparkes is cool and has helped me in the past, so I say "sure", cusring the left coasters. Turns out the guy who needs to be dead(er) is the only thing in Katta that cons red to me at 60. Hmm...

Fortunately, only Jaered has been a bad boy in Katta and we can walk right up to him. No guards or anything and begin to lay the smack down on him. Well, remember the part where we have only 9 people? Still applies. Remember that Katta is a Luclin zone and Luclin bosses have millions of hit points? Still applies. OMG this takes forever. 29 minutes and 30 seconds to be exact. But in the end, Sparkes got this shiny new robe (+15 INT, +100 CHA). Now, it's 3 am, "Laenyel, bind please." Bye bye.

Time to work on these Lucid shards for the VT key. Vanelina and Turgut grabbed me and we headed to DSP to kill tribals and try to get the hoppers to spawn since they drop shards more commonly. Bianca wasn't home for some reason and so, I dual boxed her since most of this was green. I got Gaerett to join us and he mass pulled while Turgut and Vanelina AoEed the results. The best part came after sitting around deep in the caves chatting and such and waiting for respawns. After a while Gaerett goes off and says time for a run to the entrance and back. He is gone a bit and the says in group, "13". To which Turgut says, "no way." Gaeretts health takes a bit of a bump and her replies, "13" clearly too busy to bang out any real response. Before long he showes up with 13, basically all the tribals from the entrance to the main cave. Which we then dispatch in an amazing display of carnage. By this time I have Bianca's hot keys setup and she is AoEing in synch with Turgut, it's cool. Two shards dropped just on that pull. We never did get the hoppers to spawn, but we did get all three shards we came for, so all was good.

Then we set out for Seru to get the shards we needed there (5 in all). I had never been to that area of the zone, but I have long been interested in killing those sanctimonious bastards, so it was satisfying. It took a couple of hours to get all 5 shards, but we did manage it. Also, got about 1500pp in cash (those boys are LOADED).

Now, I have 3 shards and the orb. I plan to be done the key (minus the emp piece) by the end of June.

So, we were buffing up for a Junk Dragon Raid when Seyah starts chatting me up. We have had some attrition in the ranks, as is pretty normal and she is looking for a few new officers. I kinda see where this is going very quickly, but let the drama unfold. Seems that being an officer is pretty much what I imagined it would be: access to the GL, read the forums, advise, check out recruits, guild/deguild as appropriate, etc.

So, I say, "Sure, I'll do it, you can always fire me if I am too much of a Pain in the Ass." To which she laughs thinking I am not serious. :) So, next thing I know, boom, the little box appears, "Seyah is offering to make you an officer of the Elven Elite, do you wish this?" I click 'Yes' and away we go...

The raid was OK. Nothing in it for me other than killing lots of stuff fast and a dragon that needs feathered at the end. But I like the run. We are getting faster at this sort of thing.

Another random NToV run on patch day. Again we kill Nev and again the bitch doesn't drop my cloak.

This is how you get throught skyshrine. I am posting it here because I can't go there at the moment, and I am tired of having this piece of paper sitting around.

1. From Cobalt Scar, Zone in, and go across the dining room through the door in the back.

2. take the 1st right

3. You're in 3 big connected rooms. Go to the last one.

4. at the right corner, take the path, go in, take first actual turn, follow path.

5. at Room with the pool and many golems, there are some hidden stairs on the left. Go up.

6. take the ramp up to the left.

7. Follow until you see a big ramp on the left. take it.

8. Go past 3 wyverns and through the door.

9. Go over the green bridge.

10. Take big long ramp to the top. See a foggy door.

You're in the maze. You have to run over 4 translocators. Here is how you get to them.

1. stay on the right wall until the first one.

2. Stay on the left wall until the second one.

3. go straight to the third.

4. Turn around 180 degrees, walk out

you're now in a big room. Go out the big door, click the sphere, and take the next door on the left. Hail all the dragons until one mentions the right class. O, and be very sure to give them the gems unstacked.

YAYYAYYAYAAYAYYAAY

I know it's not the top of the game anymore, but it still feels cool. We leaned on some friends and got Ary and Iris to tank and heal for us to get that last 10% to 60 on PoS Desert Giants. Thanks guys!

Sadly, the dolt I am, I didn't have the level 60 spells on me. Oh well. But after dingage, Iris and Ary left us to our fates since they can't play too late. We filled the spots, again spending a lot of time recruiting, and kept at it. We did a whole lot of desert giants, something I am told normally takes 2 groups. /shrug

After the cleric and the random DPS person left abruptly for a raid, we decided that we were going to mess with the trash with just the four of us (QCenchanter on slows by then and Gaerett MAing). That worked well. Very well in fact, we got 1% regular exp per kill with no down time in between. Wow, that is nice. With it all EE and friends, there was no management issues and things went so well. I felt bad logging on that group, but until I figure a way to get paid playing EQ, I have a day job to worry about.

Overall, a good night, 32% regular exp. We switched to full AA at the end and got 2% per kill. Nice, I am all AA for a while now. Need some of those Ranger AAs.

We were cooped up in the house all day with two screaming (literally) children. So, it was with some relish that we turned on the PCs Saturday night. Stuff had to die in the virtual world, it was just like that. Bianca did her usual magic and got a decent group together in short order.

We headed to the BoT room in PoS and cleared frogs. I know what you are thinking, if you have never seen them. But they are big and mean. Max hit on me was 691. We did OK and learned this camp in short order. Unfortunately, since it was Saturday night, most of the guilds had raids going, including our own. But ours was in BoT, something we are not yet flagged for. So, people kept getting called away for raids and getting new people was slow. Exp on the frogs is pretty good, but our overall rate was something less than we hoped for. We ended the night in the desert area, but called it with 10% left to level. Somewhat disappointing.

Had the boys on Friday, so we didn't get started until they were settled down. Vanelina asked if we would like to help her and Turgut farm shards in the Scarlet Desert for a while. We were hoping to exp and work towards 60, but most people were busy already, so we said sure. This is something we want to work on anyway.

Turns out the SD was camped, so we headed to The Grey. The camp is pretty easy and I was able to tank the skellies no problem, especially with Vanelina slowing and crippling them. But, the drop rate was pretty slow. We got 3 shards in a little over 4 hours.

Last night we went back to clean up on the named that we missed last night and were left to us by the euros. This raid was somewhat less painful for some reason even though it was still a lot tougher than past NToV raids (and every bit as long). We got Koi, Lady Mir, Jor, and the triplets. We only left Vyemm up as we didn't have the DPS to take him down. Early on I was skeptical, but, by the time we got to the triplets, I argee, we were not fairing all that well. We had 2 gaters including Jorg.

Still, we survived and a decent amount of loot dropped although, not the better stuff in the loot tables for any of the named, as far as I could tell. I picked up as Baton of Flame from as the only other person who wanted had both claimed and won a roll already. Lots of the lower end loot is falling into the, "well, if no one else wants it" or "I will roll, but not as primary gear, I would use it for resists." I think that this is because many people spent their points early on and also they are seeing that PoP bosses and mini bosses are dropping as good or better gear. And, after 2.5 months in NToV, we are really about 3-4 clears away from getting the core group the stuff they want from here. Which is fine by me. This is uber Velious loot, but I think we should be harder in Ssra and pushing VT key farming. Also, ST keys and raids.

Last night was a little on the brutal side until the end. Guild night was planned to be a farming trip to Ssra. Camp the whole place and get key parts, ore and shards. We got on early and were going to help a friend in GoB get Faydedar for his wife's druid epic. But, he couldn't get the forces together, so we basically sat around in PoK for an hour+ waiting to see. I used the time to organize my spell book (kind of like the sock drawer) and buying the remaining 59 spell and all my level 60 spells since I am looking at hitting 60 this week.

We finally got moving to Ssra around 8pm and we got assigned the group to camp Com1 Left with Vlad, Rokken, Elelftheria, and Kyeneia. That went well until Vlad pulled his famous LD act on us. But, Bi could keep Rokken healed so we did it that way for a while. Then, Krushh wanted me to come to the basement and replaced me with Lilviati, or at least that was the plan...

Bianca didn't want me to go, for obvious reasons, including being short on DPS. But Krushh needed a tracker, so Rokken told to go, "those mobs don't see invis." Oh, yes they do. Bunglage on my part lead to a wipe on the group when Ele couldn't mezz the add and Bi could heal Rokken against two unslowed mobs.

The CR took almost an hour. I got pretty good at Gems, but a little frustrated. Seyah's Com1 Right camp fought over to us and got us up and sent me on my way with a ton of shiny new buffs. I met up with Inyiin and invised us up for the run through the basement. No problem, I am starting to get the hang of the tube thing. Headed to Krushh's camp in the mines, just as we get into the mines, it respawns, all of it. Inyiin, "hehe," and feign's. Dirtnap #2. Consent Inyiin, get drug to camp, rezzed and buffed. OK, that sucked, but I am at camp finally, after an hour. I immediately win an ore used to make bane weapons, so I am starting to feel better.

Time for the first AoE pull. Stand near the casters I am told. "These mobs have the undead UI," say Jaered, whatever that means. Well that means, hide behind the casters like a girl. Because standing next to them, but in front of them gets the everliving crap beat out of you. I was down to 400hps really really fast so I stepped away, and right into some stragglers. $%^@! It's not like I am a punk character anymore either, 4700 HPs buffed and over 1000 AC, poof.

Spiritene clicks me in and the room spawns, 5 sec total uptime on that one. OK, I have lost 2% in the last hour. I don't expect to get a lot of exp on a raid, even inhouse, but after the slow going up stairs, the long CR wait and 3 more dirtnaps, I am about done. Krushh switches groups with me, not real sure why right away. I get Turgut, Laenyel, QCenchanter, Spiritene and Vanelina. He get Jaered and Rokken. Well at least the cleric is in my group even if she will be watching Krushh.

Krushh goes out and pulls 10 skellies. Brings them into the enchanters. They alternate AoE stun which pulls them all in on the enchanters. Then Krushh goes and gets 10 more. Once they are in, he goes, "burn em." And they do. Turgut and Laenyel are criting machines and 22 skellies drop in 20 seconds. Just like that I am halfway back to Bianca, exp-wise. By the end of the night (about 6 AoEs total), I get 4% exp and 16% AA. Amazing.

While we are done there, we do the named Taskmasters as they drop pouches needed for the Emperor key. Usually you get 4 out of 7 and that is what happened here. Laenyel, Spiritene, Turgut and myself all got pounches. I need a ring from Com2 and an ensignia from some second floor mobs to complete the key. I would also *like* to get two more peices of ore. That way I can dual wield bane weapons and have a bow. By the time we are ready to do the Emperor, I should have at least AM1.

So, the evening sucked, but was made good in the end.

Last night was a little on the brutal side until the end. Guild night was planned to be a farming trip to Ssra. Camp the whole place and get key parts, ore and shards. We got on early and were going to help a friend in GoB get Faydedar for his wife's druid epic. But, he couldn't get the forces together, so we basically sat around in PoK for an hour+ waiting to see. I used the time to organize my spell book (kind of like the sock drawer) and buying the remaining 59 spell and all my level 60 spells since I am looking at hitting 60 this week.

We finally got moving to Ssra around 8pm and we got assigned the group to camp Com1 Left with Vlad, Rokken, Elelftheria, and Kyeneia. That went well until Vlad pulled his famous LD act on us. But, Bi could keep Rokken healed so we did it that way for a while. Then, Krushh wanted me to come to the basement and replaced me with Lilviati, or at least that was the plan...

Bianca didn't want me to go, for obvious reasons, including being short on DPS. But Krushh needed a tracker, so Rokken told to go, "those mobs don't see invis." Oh, yes they do. Bunglage on my part lead to a wipe on the group when Ele couldn't mezz the add and Bi could heal Rokken against two unslowed mobs.

The CR took almost an hour. I got pretty good at Gems, but a little frustrated. Seyah's Com1 Right camp fought over to us and got us up and sent me on my way with a ton of shiny new buffs. I met up with Inyiin and invised us up for the run through the basement. No problem, I am starting to get the hang of the tube thing. Headed to Krushh's camp in the mines, just as we get into the mines, it respawns, all of it. Inyiin, "hehe," and feign's. Dirtnap #2. Consent Inyiin, get drug to camp, rezzed and buffed. OK, that sucked, but I am at camp finally, after an hour. I immediately win an ore used to make bane weapons, so I am starting to feel better.

Time for the first AoE pull. Stand near the casters I am told. "These mobs have the undead UI," say Jaered, whatever that means. Well that means, hide behind the casters like a girl. Because standing next to them, but in front of them gets the everliving crap beat out of you. I was down to 400hps really really fast so I stepped away, and right into some stragglers. $%^@! It's not like I am a punk character anymore either, 4700 HPs buffed and over 1000 AC, poof.

Spiritene clicks me in and the room spawns, 5 sec total uptime on that one. OK, I have lost 2% in the last hour. I don't expect to get a lot of exp on a raid, even inhouse, but after the slow going up stairs, the long CR wait and 3 more dirtnaps, I am about done. Krushh switches groups with me, not real sure why right away. I get Turgut, Laenyel, QCenchanter, Spiritene and Vanelina. He get Jaered and Rokken. Well at least the cleric is in my group even if she will be watching Krushh.

Krushh goes out and pulls 10 skellies. Brings them into the enchanters. They alternate AoE stun which pulls them all in on the enchanters. Then Krushh goes and gets 10 more. Once they are in, he goes, "burn em." And they do. Turgut and Laenyel are criting machines and 22 skellies drop in 20 seconds. Just like that I am halfway back to Bianca, exp-wise. By the end of the night (about 6 AoEs total), I get 4% exp and 16% AA. Amazing.

While we are done there, we do the named Taskmasters as they drop pouches needed for the Emperor key. Usually you get 4 out of 7 and that is what happened here. Laenyel, Spiritene, Turgut and myself all got pounches. I need a ring from Com2 and an ensignia from some second floor mobs to complete the key. I would also *like* to get two more peices of ore. That way I can dual wield bane weapons and have a bow. By the time we are ready to do the Emperor, I should have at least AM1.

So, the evening sucked, but was made good in the end.

OK, our first extended exp session in Plane of Valor validates the rumors that we have heard: the exp there is sick. You can?t seriously consider exping anywhere else once you get a taste of Tier 2. There sessions over the last few days.

First, Iris and Ary took us on a guided tour of PoV and the usual camps so we would know what was open and what to look for. Then we camped ?LC? or left courtyard for about 2 hours. Even with extended downtime and slow kills due to (our) gimpness, we got like 14% regular exp.

Next, we join a GoB BoT key farming in progress that subsequently turned into a aborted raid on a mini-boss. Even with over 40 people in the raid we got 4% in 2 hours, unheard of. We have laid waste to NToV for over 4 hours and gotten 1%.

Finally, last night. A 4-hour bloodletting got us from 58.62 to 59.02 in easy fashion. We were camped in OC (outer cave) killing Razorfiends and tree frogs. We had our normal exp lineup (Bianca, Gaerett, Qcenchanter and myself) plus Foofy, a kooky cleric that we grouped with a few times before in PoD and Ckmonkey, a true nut case (I personally think it?s required for all high end monks to be like this). She pulled like a nut and good-naturedly resented every moment something wasn?t being slain. We went until we couldn?t take it and it was getting late for me to be getting up early. In addition, we netted 4 talons, 2 Eps and an assortment of other crap that added up to about 381pp. We will be back.

I can't see any reason that we will not be 60 by the end of the week. The exp is just that good. Then, it's all AA for a while. This ranger needs AM3 and EQ in the worst way.

It finally happened! Bianca and I got flagged for the Planes of Storms and Valor last night. That is huge accomplishment and a huge relief for us. We were coming up against the wall where most of the people we want to play with are flagged and we were not. It is tough to ask people to give up the accelerated exp of Tier 2 just to hang with us and we are really happy to not have to do that any longer.

The Plane of Justice is a pretty cool zone, maybe the coolest Tier 1 zone. I had only been there once to group with some high level friends and I had to be DotH (drag of the helpless) to the camp in Death Row. So I hadn't seen anything except the GY and DR. The trials 'room' is just amazing. No other way to describe the rotating star field with the Tribunal standing in frequent judgement.

The guild turned out big time to help 4 or 5 of us get flagged. Many to buff and many just to cheer everyone one. After each run, which takes about 10 minutes, there is a 30 minute reset time. During the break in the action the monks keep us amused by screwing with the Tribunal or warping in guards and kiting them around. I think they had rezzed Inyiin about 4 or 5 times when we left. Rokken only once, I think, hard to say, he never stands still.

Anyway, the trial, this cool. I sort of cheated a bit. Not much, but some. I was second in line to go, so I targeted our Guild Leader and trial cleric Seyah before she went in with group one and then cast Bind Sight to her. Now I could see the trial room. From her, I targeted the prisoner and bound sight to him and watched the show. Kind of exciting to see the executioner coming to kill 'me'.

Four waves of four spawns. When a wave spawns the executioner begins walking to the platform. If you kill one of the mobs, he warps back to the back of the room and begins again. Once the fourth mob is dead, he despawns. You get maybe 2 minutes between waves. After the last mob of wave four dies, the Prime Execution spawns and AoEs your ass with a 250 pt AC debuff. He is supposed to hit pretty hard, but our tank didn't lose agro during my fight, so I can't say.

I used the same Bind Sight trick to watch Bianca's fight too and help her with targeting. Not that she really needed it, but she was nervous and it gave me something to do besides chewing my nails.

Our buff team gave me full raid buffs plus Primal Avatar, usually reserved only for the MA/SA due to mana costs. All I can say is that I want more of that. It doesn't stack with Force of Nature (20 ATK ranger buff) and Wolf Form is not recommended in PoJ, even still I had an ATK of 1631! Parsed the logs from those 13 fights and I did an overall DPS of just over 60, with a range of 40 to 114. I was mashing the assist key the whole time to be sure I was always on the right target and hitting at the earliest possible, so that probably accounts for the low side results since the 'fight' as far as the parser is concerned starts with the attack command and I started many OOR for a bit.

Even with a team that was all 63+ other than me, it was still touch and go there at the fourth wave. This is not an event to take lightly. However, if you want fun, I would suggest that it's possible to do the trial for practice and exp. I would like to see the other trials at some point too.

Wednesday was Patch Day again (we just had one last week). The plan was to get on early (for the guild) and head to NToV, we need a few more full clears of that place to achieve our goals there. Got on as planned, about 5:30 and DBed Bianca through to ToV while she cooked dinner. As I half expected, we didn?t really get moving until after 8pm. Only a small group of AS got in to NToV ahead of us. They killed Ikatar and Eashen and then decided to try Aaryonar (with 23!) before heading out. They wiped and bid us goodbye as we CotHed in behind them. Nanbkek and Jaered did a good job of getting peeps out to NToV, setup and grouped. Mallo showed up just as we were ready to start on Aaryonar and got things moving.
Aary went perfectly. We had a clean pull, good positioning, and smooth engagement. I was on chicken duty, which is fine with me. Heck, I can even tank them if they are slowed, LOL. Went down by the numbers with NO DEATHS! He dropped Hand of the Master, Katana of Pain and Circlet of Summer.

The named Drakes were dropping stuff like mad tonight. They often don?t drop anything. We had Shield of Thorns (Kyenia), Runed Fang Necklace, Silent Fang Necklace (Jotaro), Bow of the Silver Fang (rot!), Shield of the Protector (Smekal), and Ring of Superiority all drop.

Then we set off around the ring to the right. Lord Feshlak was first on the menu. He was a push over, again, no one died. I brutalized him with my regular pull arrows and no Trueshot. He dropped Boots of the Dread Dream, Amulet of the Storm and Staff of the Silent Star.

Dagarn the Destroyer, however, lived up to his name somewhat. We actually lost 3 or 4 people on that one and it looked touch and go for a minute. I used Trueshot with the Silver-Tipped Wooden arrows, but it was ineffective. I think his AC is a lot higher than Feshlak. So, I ended up in CC with him.

Next, we had a long pull up and over the hump and down to Lady Nev. Easily the most annoying dragon in the whole place. That 600 hit point spinning AoE is a PITA. Fortunately, with my acylia arrows, I could stay out of range and use Trueshot to wreak havoc. Unfortunately, I used them all up halfway through and had to go to summoned arrows (much shorter range).

Lady Nevederia is holding a Cloak of Thorns for me. It is the only piece I am looking for from NToV and there are only 2 or 3 better ranger usable cloaks in the game. I have enough points saved up (73+) to beat almost any ranger/druid on the raid at this point since people have been claiming shit left and right. Unfortunately, she didn?t drop it tonight. /sigh. She did drop Nevederia?s Horn, Nevederia?s Claw and Nevederia?s Left Eye. I won the claw, I nice 17/11 1HS item. I need to parse some log action to see if it bumps my DPS over main handing Disembowler. If it does, then I need to figure out what to do with Disembowler, it is a really cool sword and highly sought after, so it has some prestige. And, it is droppable. I would never sell something like that though, but I would hate to give it away either. I may save it for Balinvar or leave it in the bank for some special person/situation and make them really happy.

After that, we pulled the two members of The Triplets that were up. First was the badass: Zlexlak. First of all, you got to love the name and the similarity to Exlax. Then the 1250 hit point AoE is special. We lost a few here, but not many. He dropped a Dragon Skin Bracer? I think. I wasn?t going to claim anything and I had won a roll, so, honestly, I stopped paying so much attention to loot.

We pulled Cekenar next and after Zlexak, he is such a pushover. A 125 hit point AoE (with mana loss), eh. He had a lot of HPs though, so it took a while. He dropped Meljeldin, Bane of Giants (which, curiously, isn?t bane damage) (Vlad) and a sticker that isn?t in the loot table I am looking at that defaulted to Pochette (who had won something earlier, I think the Runed Fang Necklace) since no other rogue wanted it. Been a good two EQ days for her as she just got her epic yesterday.
Edit: It was the Dragonspine Rapier.

Mallo was almost beside himself that stuff this good is starting to rot. But it is a sign that we don?t need more than 3 or 4 more clears of NToV before we are at the point of diminishing returns here. The only other named up was Vyemm, but we were an hour from him and it was already after 12:00am, so we called it a night.

So, we are talking 6 big named, 6 named drakes and a boatload of trash in a 3.5 hour romp. Easily, this was the fastest GoB has ever moved through NToV. Palou, Mallo?s preferred puller didn?t even die once. By the end of the run we had 61 people with an average level of 61. And, frankly, if we take 5 people out, that would have gone to 63 or 64. NToV wasn?t designed for teams this strong. Group chat, I mean group boom were KSing monsters. Laenyel and Spindley were both criting for 6K all night. They might try to get more tonight, but frankly, we got the cream of the crop. And, Nev is my target so next week is the earliest I am headed back to that zone.

Logged in the afternoon in time for a Klandicar run. Yeah, even got a quick ride out to WW. Made it to the raid no sweat and got all buffed up. I was grouped with Seyah and Krushh, a rare treat, cause you get to know what is going on. Krushh and Ripert and then Seyah zoned out on a call and I followed. Remember the real slow zone loading problem? Bit me in the ass. Somehow a named dragon was parked on top of the DN zone out and I was almost dead before I had the UI back. In fact I died before I could really do anything. Since FFA is always a race, Ripert and I watched the dragon kill from the top of the hill, not buffed, so we couldn?t even get close. I tried to shoot him some, but, the AoE is tough with no resist. Bitter.
After that, we farmed in Ssra some. Still need a Com1 key and the Rhags were due up late Saturday night. However, the guild was itching to raid, so the farmers were pulled out and we did the Junk Dragon again. Meanwhile Aurore had Ssra to itself and killed the Rhags. Bitter.

Logged in the afternoon in time for a Klandicar run. Yeah, even got a quick ride out to WW. Made it to the raid no sweat and got all buffed up. I was grouped with Seyah and Krushh, a rare treat, cause you get to know what is going on. Krushh and Ripert and then Seyah zoned out on a call and I followed. Remember the real slow zone loading problem? Bit me in the ass. Somehow a named dragon was parked on top of the DN zone out and I was almost dead before I had the UI back. In fact I died before I could really do anything. Since FFA is always a race, Ripert and I watched the dragon kill from the top of the hill, not buffed, so we couldn?t even get close. I tried to shoot him some, but, the AoE is tough with no resist. Bitter.
After that, we farmed in Ssra some. Still need a Com1 key and the Rhags were due up late Saturday night. However, the guild was itching to raid, so the farmers were pulled out and we did the Junk Dragon again. Meanwhile Aurore had Ssra to itself and killed the Rhags. Bitter.

Wyture, a druid who used to be EE, posted something today. It made me upset. She left the guild because she thought they were biased against druids. She could never get a group, so she figured it was her class. She thought druids were inferior to the other classes in the high end game.

Ok, so why am I getting all the groups, all the xp, and cool loot on raids? Am I an extra special druid? Or is it that I work my butt off putting together a group every damn time? I am so tired of people complaining that things are not handed to them on a silver platter. Finavar and I spend hours and hours discussing tactics. He researches new places to go. I figure out what classes we need. We go. We die ALOT. But we don't sit around whining in guild chat that no body wants to group with us.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's the person, not the class. If you can't get a group, you probably couldn't get one as a cleric or an enchanter, either. At least, not with the same people more than once.

Don't whine at me! Don't ask me to do for you what is hard enough doing for myself. I do get a lot of help from the guild. More than I deserve. But I don't expect them to do the work for me! I (with Finavar's help, of course) organized the raid that got me my Jade Reaver. And Finavar's. And Heng's, too. O, and one for the guild bank. And then I went back to help some other people get theirs. As for groups, I make my own. Nobody asks me to join their group, ever. But many people ask to join mine. Stop whining at me, get off you butt, and get it done.

Bianca

We are trying to make the next step in power to hit harder targets. Right now, we are farming NToV when we get a shot at any of the named and trying to get ST keys when we get that shot too. We are going to need primal weapons from ST to have the DPS needed to break into the high-end PoP zones. We are also going to need gear from VT to handle the 2K AoE and other nice features of those encounters. To get into VT, you need to be able to kill the Emperor Ssra. But, Ssra and VT shard farming hasn?t gotten the attention that NToV has, probably because they are ?harder? (i.e., you can?t just zone in and kill shit, you need to sit in long camps getting keys) . But, now the push is being stepped up, yay.

Today was a Server Reset Day, which always gets us rangers flushed out and about looking for FFAs. PE had beaten us to NToV (again) and none of the first brood were up (ST key holds). PoI targets were also engaged, so we headed for the Shade in PoN. Enroute we got information that Rhag1 was up in Ssra and if we hurried, we could take a shot at him. Ssra is currently a highly contested zone with a couple of other guilds our size trying to make the move up another notch in power.

Who comes up with these names? I know they are trying to add to the flavor of the game, but I have trouble with Latin rooted English and then EQ throws Rhag Zhezum at you. Colloquially known as Rhag1 since he (it?) spawns on the first floor. He is a punk, perma-rooted, no AoE, slowable. I used Trueshot on him and hit a new high crit of 516 with acrylia arrows. ¾ of the way through the fight Krushh says not to use offensive disciplines because killing this guy spawns Rhag2 (Rhag Mozdezh) and he is harder. Great. Too late.

As it turns out, that was fine since it took us long enough to clear to Rhag2 that TS was back for me. This time I used mage summoned arrows and they didn?t hit near as hard. We had a mage in our group and she mistook an exclamation I made about no arrows (referring to the emperor fight since you can?t make band damage arrows) as that I was out of arrows. She gave me a quiver and 6 stacks of arrows. I felt compelled to use them (also, acrylia arrows are in short supply and expensive).

Rhag2 isn?t slowable, but still went down pretty quick. The loot from both was good even though there was nothing for me personally. We definitely need to get on these guys? dance card on a more regular basis. Although I can see how tough it will be since there were TWO other raids in the zone at the same time, over 150 people. I was stunned the zone didn?t crash.

Killing Rhag2 spawns Arch Lich Rharg'Zadune, but you need a key to get to him and no one on the raid has that key as yet. IMHO, just as well as it was approaching 1am EDT, late enough for this little ranger.

I was starting to think this wasn?t going to happen. We have been grinding hard towards this goal for 2 weeks, trying to squeeze in some exp time around the raids here and there. Last week was really busy and we had to end one exp session at 3:30am while still 8% or so away. Monday night we had a sweet exp group in the castle of PoD when the guild decided that they wanted come and do Grummas. 2% from level, gah! Some after two wipes, we are 3% away and it?s 1:30am. Time to pack it in.

Tuesday night we got an early start because it is guild night and we are committed to doing that. So Bi begins the pickup group creation while I whip up some grub. The group goes together pretty quick and since the top of the castle is PoD is camped, we head to the factory in PoI. Aurore just wiped on the Behemoth, but the factory is open. You need a feign death puller to do the golems. It is a must. Best we could do though was a GoB 53rd level SK. That didn?t work so well. She died on every pull. Then, we tried pulling with a 62 druid, that didn?t work either.

After a shuffle of personnel, we find the castle is open and we are ready to give that a try. I am vibrating in place because I can see this not working either, it is taking a while to get everything lined up and guild night raid hour is approaching. Finally, the people are in place and we run out to the castle, pull it clear and run in. Then Irislilly (cleric extraordinaire) comes by and buffs us. Virtue sure makes this camp a little easier especially when the cleric is a little on the low side. So, we get started in earnest about 9pm, still 2% from level with a lot of static in guildchat about raiding. We are going to level before any raiding.

Three uneventful hours later, we have made 15% into 58, plenty of padding to secure the level. Woot.

As you can guess from the title, this was not a successful run. I was pretty jazzed about this raid even though it ganked my exp group in the same area right short of level 58. GoB has tried Grummas a few times and failed. It seemed like confidence was high on the tactics this time. Killing Grummas and hailing the planar projection afterwards will get you flagged for the Crypt of Decay, a cool zone.

You start by killing Gryme the fat biker dude who drops a No Rent key that opens the castle proper. Then you kill trash and then Aramin the Spider Lord, more trash clearing to the guardians near the crypt. Once there, you have about 12 spawn points to keep clear with very, very short timers.

We had a full 72-person raid with several extras hanging with us for flags. We were going to go in level order for flags until all 72 were used. Assuming we won. Which didn?t happen.

As we were all set, a paladin wandered too close to the bottom of the ramp and agroed Grummas. Well, so much for planning, CHARGE! It almost worked too. The guards from he back room really blew it for us. We had Grummas down to 15% at wipe.

Reset. Lots of pissing and moaning. Some personnel changes and in 30 minutes we start clearing our way back in. Confidence was still high. We almost got him last time and we weren?t even really ready. This time, for sure, we would get him. Except, it was getting late and people were, IMO not very focused. Lots of chatting and emoting and such.


We get to the top of the ramp and rebuff, but for some reason, stuff just is taking too long, repops keep interrupting the buffing and all. Eventually, we charge. Bad idea. Repops right off the bat, clerics all die early, quick wipe. We barely dented him. I camped at 1:30am with Rez effects. Oh well?

At the end of a LONG weekend with the boys we need a break from reality and decide to play some. Not on more than a few seconds when Krushh gets on looking for action (you know how BHE can be). We decide to go do Vindi for an opening act. Man, I remember touch and go kills on him, now, he went down with 0 or 1 deaths. And fast. No breastplate though, boots and head is all. Still early (9pm), we decide that the Junk Dragon needs dead to get most of the rest of us factory flags. Excellent! I have been wanting this flag. Access to one of the two remaining Tier 1 exp areas that don?t take personnel that you aren?t going to get in a pick up group (at least, we are not).
Clearing to the dragon is a pain, very similar to Follow the Gnome in CT. The long march was only relieved by the stowaway that got accidentally invited to the raid by being LFG at the PoI zone in as we were getting organized. He was a complete ass and was eventually desentioned to the zone in by our wizzie crew after mouthing off to Krushh and breaking several mezzes.

The Dragon was not a tough fight for GoB either; I used Trueshot on him and only got to swing half a dozen blows after it wore off before he died. The loot was good, if you are a dress wearer. Nothing much for me, but the flag was what I wanted.

Gah, another day w/o EQ, I think I am getting the shakes. I have a million things to do tonight to prepare for a busy weekend with the boys, but I *will* get on tonight. Mallo has posted a teaser about a raid. Undoubtedly, it will be another obscure high end mob in a zone no one goes to where we will wipe spectacularly. I am good with that. Taking a crack at the boss of Akheva the other night was cool even though it wasn't the tightest run raid and looked doomed from the start. I put up with the politics and BS because this is the ONLY way Finavar will ever get to see highend content. I remember when I was starting out in EQ and Bi was telling me that her highest character was 25 after a few years of playing. I thought that 25-30 was fine and was sad that there was some serious high-end stuff like Vox and Nagafen that I would never see. Then we got into this guild...and they don't raid punk crap like that. And the rest is history.

Ack, I have fallen off the boat and not updated in a week! I wish I had something interesting to report about our adventures, but there really isn't anything huge to report.

Friday we joined a GoB raid on NToV, convienently got a CotH right to Aary's pit, no two hours of pulling trash. YAY. PE was also in NToV, so we negotiated a plan where GoB when Left and PE went right. Frankly, they expected us to spend all night wiping to Vyemm leaving them free reign. Unfortunately for them, Vyemm went down by the numbers. As did Lady Mir, Koi, two other unremarkable dragons and finally Lady Nev. Lots of cool loot, none for us though :(. Oh well, there is always next Friday.

Sunday was one of those PAINFUL exp group nights where we had to dig out the pieces parts and band something together. It took 1 hour 35 minutes to get 6 people more or less qualified to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide in the same place and then to a fairly lame PoD camp. All in all, 3.5 hours of work and just 10% of level to show for it.

Bi has a ton of projects due this week, so we may not actually be on much sadly. I really want to level up to 58.

I need to finish up fletching. I have been putting it off because it's slow and expensive. But, I need to be able to make Acrylia arrows and Nightmarewood Compound Bows. So, Saturday afternoon I decided to try and trival the last arrow you can make from storebought components: Silver-tipped Steel-shafted arrows. They cost approximately 150pp for a set of stacks of components. And, if all goes well, you lose about 23pp on the sell back + 6pp per failure in the batch. The recipe trivials at 202. After that, only acrylia arrows (or bows) will be skillups. Bow are just too expensive to even contemplate and acrylia needs to be farmed and smithed.

So, click, click, click. After 3 hours, I made it from 192 to 200. I have no idea how many arrows I made. I burned 500pp, so it looks like roughly 3000 combines. All I noticed is that my eyes hurt, my wrist hurt and I think I am dumber for trying. Once I had 2 skillups in the same batch, once I went over 100 combines w/o a skillup. EQ is heartless, capricious and completely too time intensive. I averaged around 80 combines per skillup, I think.

Then, as a slap, I ran out of arrows on the first Prototype in last nights raid and that good for nothing mage never summoned me any arrows. Even though I gave his rogue many stacks. Ah well, some guys were never meant to be dresswearers... So, after we wipe on the 3rd Proto, I run and get arrow pieces and while waiting for a rez. Needless to say, I got a skillup in the first 5 combines. /sigh