I am amazed at the numbers of people standing around LFG all the time. Or the people who log in, say LFG, and 10 minutes later, log out because they have no group. Forming a group does not take a genius, I promise. Here is the way I do it. Others may have different strategies, but I always get compliments from the pick-up-groupees.

Step 1- Get an MA. I like Paladins because they can stun to hold agro. Shadowknights can, too, but I don't know any. Warriors are also good here. If you can, this is one of the slots where it is good to pick someone you know or have grouped with before. If not, you just have to be extra careful to help them hold agro.

Step 2- Get a cleric. This is hard because clerics can be scarce. If none are LFG, do a /w all cleric . I go through all the clerics 5 levels below me to 2 levels above me, beginning with those closest in lvl to me. I send tells to any cleric in an area where you know they're not fighting. That's the Nexus, POK, POT, and really lowbie zones. Bazaar is tricky because they're often AFK. This takes time so have patience.

Step 3- Get a slower. This is just like step 2, only you can chose between an Enchanter and a Shaman. It's easier to find a shaman, but sometimes you need a Chanter for mezzes. Consider your planned upon camp. This is one class where you can not skimp on lvl. If slow does not land or the add cannot be mezzed, everyone dies.

Step 4- The Alternate Caster Slot. I'm a druid, so this is my spot. This is where you consider things like debuffs, ports, and back-up healing. A wizard would also work here.

Step 5- Puller. This is a monk or a ranger. Other classes might work but I always have a ranger so I have not experimented much. Chose someone with enough hitpoints to take damage while the MA gets agro.

Step 6- Alternate DPS slot. Any DPS is good. Pet classes are good because the pet is dps and the caster has nukes. The more DPS, the better, regardless of hitpoints.

There you go, how to form a group in a nutshell. If you have suggestions for improvement, I would be glad to hear them. I use this technique every time I group. It takes a while to set up the initial group- finding the right people can be challenging. But if you take the extra care to get a good balance, the group runs smoothly.

One more thing. This is important. Don't Ever assume the people you've just picked up will understand their role in your plan. I always tell everyone what I expect. I tell them who is MA, who pulls, who loots, who slows/hastes/mezzes, who is extra dps, who heals. I tell them what I will do for them. If the MA sends me a tell that the chanter isn't slowing fast enough, I send a tell to the chanter. I am always polite, but I am focused. As long as people are doing things my way, the groups run well.

It may sound harsh, but the people I group with really appreciate it. Especially when we're running like a well oiled machine and the xp is rolling in. I get tells from them, weeks later, to see if I want to group again. The worst kind of group is the one where nobody knows what's going on and nobody wants to make decisions. After I decided that wasn't going to happen to me anymore, things got better.

Bianca

Flushed from schooling a punk Kunark dragon, we decided to try GoB's might against Sontalak. For a dragon raid, you have to love being able to walk right up to it and start smacking it around. The down side is that we got smacked back. Hard. MA/SA/TA never got solid agro so he started ping ponging around and eating people. We got him down to about 70% before wiping. Primal Evolution watched with amusement and then slew him. At least they let us take a crack at it first...

Bianca has been crushed with school work, so it took until Wednesday night for us to complete her epic quest. Finally. This was a longer road than we thought when we started it back in the fall and it is still one of the easier epics to complete. We duoed most of it, needing a stong group for the Dark Elf Corruptor, two groups for the City of Mists and a light raid for Faydedar and VSR.

Check it:

LORE ITEM MAGIC ITEM NO DROP
Damage: 20
Delay: 30
Ratio: 1.5 Amazing
Str: +15 Sta: +15 Wis: +20 Magic Resist: +10 Fire Resist: +10 Cold Resist: +10 Poison Resist: +10 Disease Resist: +10 HP: +10 Mana: +90
Weight: 3.0
Weapon Skill: One Hand Slash
Classes: Druid
Races: Halfling Wood Elf Half Elf Human
Inventory Slot: Primary Melee

Somewhere along the line late last week, maybe Sunday night, I think, we both dinged 56. Yay! I got several new spells including the much anticpated group ATK buff Mark of the Predator.

Can you have too many Black Reavers? Yes, you sure can. Follow me, gentle reader, to an afternoon raid into the City of Mist on last Friday...
We have had repeated difficulty obtaining the castle camp because of it's value to cash farmers. In the era of PoP, this is an easy camp, not the feared stronghold it once was. So, to ensure at least a reasonable crack at a jade reaver for Bianca, we planned on a noontime assault. We also had hired a rogue since we had no firm commitments for any of the guild rogues (being a ?good? guild, we have few enough as it is). We tried not to leave anything to chance. We had a euro time guildie on hand to tank (62 level warrior) and drive-by KEI (he has 62+ enchanter as his alt). We had a 62 Cleric on hand for healing and buffs, so all was good.

We were a bit late in getting there, but had no problem getting the camp, as expected, the zone was all but empty. Still, though, it was a little close, while we were preparing to open the castle, a dual boxer showed up, he wanted to use the castle area to PL a Cleric, but was not interested in Black Reavers.

Yay! The first was hurdle down. Black Reavers are not especially hard for a strong mid 50?s group. We had almost 2 full groups in camp and we handled them pretty well. Since the Rogue was not familiar with the zone, and we had no Monk, I was the puller. This went OK; except for the time I got two Black Reavers on the elevator with me. Well, we do have an epic Cleric?

By 1pm or so, we had cleared the 4 easily reached Black Reavers and had gotten Bianca her Jade Reaver. Our goal for the day was 3 Jade Reavers total though, so we were going to hold the camp for at least one more spawn cycle (2 hours). We pasted the time pulling (training) trash to the throne room. The trash mobs had decent cash, if nothing else. We also got one of the guild Shamans his books from Lord Ghosik. We had a tense few minutes when a Mage pet agroed Lord Rak?Ashir, the Shaman bad assed epic mob. His Rain of Fire effect would kill us all fast. We managed to get the situation calmed down before anyone died, but we had to be careful in the corridor behind the throne room where we left him parked.

During the wait, we also had a rotation of personnel. Add Sparkes (63 Enchanter), Seyah (63 Epic Cleric) and Tinv (65 Rogue), minus Spiritene (our previous Cleric), Willius (the Shaman) and a few others. This turned out to be a useful set of folks when the second set started. Sparkes and Tinv were trying to find a way to agro the back Black Reaver and get it to path to the throne room when the throne room Black Reaver spawned. That was quickly disposed of as well as the pair from the top of the elevator. Though one of those coughed up another Jade reaver, woot! OK, not pretty, but two is better than none, it is 2:45pm. I am thinking we get that last easy Black Reaver on this set and then try to get this group to go kill Faydedar to finish Bianca?s epic. Looked doable, I was going to have to log by 5:00pm to get the kids from daycare and I was not going to be able to be present for another round of spawns.

Nice though and wrong as well. We started fighting the last Reaver in the hallway for some reason. I think Sparky?s DC pet grabbed agro and we just did him there. Then it chain spawned a second. Cool, kind of a bonus. Then a third. Cool, this is fun. Then a ninth, rut roh. The hallway trash is spawning and we are getting adds all over the place. This is where Sparkes shines. He mez parked half a dozen mobs, shrunk a dire-charmed fog golem, gave it two weapons and fed him the mezzed mobs. The main characters could then concentrate on the ever lengthening Reaver chain.

Then we got help from the Dual Boxer. He had gotten inside on one of the player rotations and was working one of the upstairs rooms until the Cleric he was power leveling died. Seyah was willing to rez him once we were done. After 30 minutes of waiting, he came to see what the hell was keeping her.

The chain just kept on going and going. We started making plans to evacuate out if it didn?t end soon. Bianca was the only porter, but several people could gate. We were going to come up one space short, but Tinv could Escape (or just train the zone). So all was set. Then, after the 95th Black Reaver, the chain finally ended. The melee players experienced a severe attack of vertigo as it ended. It was now 5pm, we had been fighting nonstop for over 3 hours. Nonstop. Even in raid mode with the average level of 60, I got 12%. Unbelievable. We killed the DC pet, rezzed the DB Cleric and ported out.

Whew. Bi has we Reaver and all we have to do is fry a punk Kunark dragon to finish off her epic. We also got a Jade Reaver for a friend and one for the guild bank. Everyone was happy but tired.

Bi was out of town and the kids were safely bedded down, so it was time to check in on EQ doings. Well, I was just in time to catch the last boat out to NToV for a little dragon schooling. I had had too bad a headache the nght before to play and EE had gone to NToV and wiped several times. Tonight everyone was up for a little revenge.

And revenge was what we served up in spades. We had a typical CotH break in with us jumping to the steps outside Eashan's room and then fighting around the lava to the good stuff in the back. Even skipping the gallery and the hub, this is still a 90 minute ordeal.

Then we are ready with the real dragons, first, the triplets. The first pull is Zlexak. He makes any Kunark dragon look like a total pussy. He has a 1250 HP AoE with a disease based slow component (65%). Positioning is so key. With an AoE like that, the casters have to be safe form the AoE or they are all dead and then you are too. Even though we beat him, it was a long fight and somewhat of a near thing.

After him the other two are easy: Sevalak and Cekenar.

Then we moved much further in and did another pretty easy dragon, sadly, I forgot it's name. The final fight of the night was Lady Nevederia easily the most annoying fight of the night. She is permarooted and has this spin affect AoE. So even though her AoE damage is not that high, it takes FOREVER to kill her. Tip: Use F9 to switch to a camera view or you WILL puke on this fight. At level 56 with resists pushing 275, I resisted exactly 1 AoE.

Nothing left but the wizzie party trick, of course, it was 2:30 am (again). /sigh

I seem to be thinking more and more about the things I don't want to do in Everqyest anymore. This is probably due to the toll that unrestricted EQ can take on a body. Here I am at work on 5 or less hours of sleep (again). And, I didn't even intent on playing that late last night /sigh. So, on with the story.

I signed on about 8:15pm (late for me but I had to Joseph down to bed first and finish up some paperwork before I could get sucked in). The guild was just then mustering in ToV for Aaryonar and friends. Ah, WTF, Bi is at school late, I got nothing better to do and Aary is right at the front of NToV. So I jump in the channel and arrange a ride so I don't have to DB Bianca (Yay!).

Even though I am now max KoS and Camo dropped twice, I make it through CS and WW without incident (I am still going to pay those blue bishes a visit one of these days). I get grouped up and ready to roll in short order. One of the shameful advantages of coming in on the next-to-last lift is that there is a whole lot less waiting for something to happen. Normally, I am one of the first 5 or 10 folks there since I hate being late. There is a big turnout too, lots of GoB folks by the time I checked the raid window, there were 54 peeps in the raid, average level of 60. OK, so I am *still* dragging the average down. But, there is a 46 and a 50 in there. I am sorry, but that is pushing it a little. At least the 50 is a cleric...

Off to work, clearing the gallery and hub is no problem. This group can take three drakes no problem. Then we move down to the room where we can pin Ikatar and take his lunch money, rebuff, pull trash, pull him and kill. We are rocking. But the hub is respawning, time to move on. Kill the respawns, move back upstairs, get invised and move to the next 'safe' spot by groups (read mobs).

Well, as you might expect from such a large rabble, someone's camo drops and they decide they don't want to die like a man and instead train the raid. Not a big deal, we weren't really ready to fight yet, but only 3 or 4 people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time took a dirtnap. Rez, rebuff and on to killing chickens.

Once the chickens are out of the way, we pull Eashan of Sky. Didn't expect them to be up, but we had to kill her because we use her spawn room as the fight scene for Aaryonar. She went down pretty quick, some punk 250 point AoE, only a couple of regular drakes as gaurds. Not even a challenge for this raid force. Of course the chickens have some kind of insane spawn rate, so it's back to killing.

The 4 lines I see in my spam window is:
An Elder Wyvern begins to RAMPAGE
A Shard Wyvern begins to RAMPAGE
An Ancient Wyvern begins to RAMPAGE
An Elder Shard Wyvern begins to RAMPAGE

Uh oh. Four incoming, minimum and from the back too. One of the monks goes, "DAMMIT" in the raid channel. Me thinks he pulled that accidentally.
Well, this is neither a good time or place to hose the raid and about half the casters die immediately. I jump off to the side and look for a plan to happen. It doesn't, so I figure that if this is a wipe, I may as well bloody my swords. I pick one looking the other way and start whacking away. Well the 'healer' in my group died on the initial charge, so I knew I only had a while before this was going to end and I wasn't disappointed.

Amazingly, the remainder of the raid managed to get things under control and kill off the wyverns. I like to think that the 45 seconds of quality time I spent with one of them had some effect. I know, probably not, but please allow me my illusions :).

After a suitable time spent rezzing and rebuffing, it was back to random spawn and chicken killing. Then setup for Aary. This is a pretty straightforward matter of proper positioning. You have to get the casters shielded from the AoE pronto because the effect is a mana drain and a slow. We nailed it easily last week and with many more people, this should not be a problem.

Weeeeeell, famous last words. A flurry drake came with Aary and proceeded to execute casters and, well everyone. The CH rotation never set in so the MA/SA team died to Aary while the drake did the rest. Then, since Aary was not under control, he started wander around and basically finish the carnage. Fortunately The Voices (Tinv) managed to escape and at least one cleric got camped. OK, well that was bad, but we can do better. Get everyone back up, the raid channel is all about blood now. I should have quit while behind, but I was flushed from actually getting to roll on loot for the first time in NToV (I rolled on gauntlets from Eashan that, amazingly, didn't get claimed) and the fact that we were almost done. Actually, I should have left after Eashan like Hikanur and Giltaav, when it was midnight.

OK, take two, we have this for sure. Clear the chickens: check. Pull Aary, hold the flurry drakes please: check. There goes Aary, like a good dragon to the slaughter. Wait, he didn't actually go... Crap, here comes another wipe.

Something stopped him on the way by and he stayed in the big area and munched on casters. The MA never had a chance to get agro, for all the good it would have done with no healers, or at least none with mana. I just started swinging on the theory that with a dozen down already, we might as well either go out fighting or, perhaps enough melee were left to tank him down. Yeah, well, I get summoned almost immediately. But, he was pinned in the corner and now I am behind a firepot, alive, no mana and no way out. I look up and see dragon belly. Nothing for it but swing away, someone may find my body someday....

Well eventually, Aary gets unpinned and goes off to kill shit (us). Now, I can only listen helplessly to the carnage and catch glimpses past the firepot. I figure I am on his hate list, he will get to me eventually. And he does, at least this summons was OUT of the corner. Right into the center to die like a good Ranger. Aary max hits around 650 BTW. /sigh, /consent Tinv.

Rez the raid and TL us out of dodge, it's 1:30am EST. And no more NToV on a work night.

First go to PoK (I think this is a PoP recipe too, heard it only works here) and go see Caden Zharik at -350 +750. He sells fishing grubs for a few copper. Buy lots. Next run down to the planar brew barrel at +10 +200. Nearby is a barbarian named Perago Crotal. He sells flasks of water for just over 2 silver each. Buy lots of that, too.

Finally, kick smithing temper folks off the brew barrel and get to work. One fishing grub and one flask of water make a Fetid Esscense, which can be sold for just under the cost of a flask of water.

Saturday evening was spent crawling around ToV. Though we had been there before to test our mettle against Aaryonar, this time several Named were up. This is now several days in the past, so I am not going to relate too many details. But, suffice it to say that it was a very successful raid, nothing dropped of particular value to me, but that was OK, it was FUN.

One thing to note, after Aary, most of these guys are PUNKS. Including one that if you had descibed I would have told you you were mad to suggest we could do him. 1250dd AoE, disease slow, etc. Yeah, but fragile. He went down quick.

Bianca covered Friday's attempt at exping, so I won't go into it. Saturday, I spent some time working around the house. So, it was afternoon before I got online.

Gaerett wanted to explore the new zones some more and I had just read about directions to Hate's Fury and other zones and wanted to explore. So the two of us set off. Actually, I dual boxed Bianca for porting and buffing since she was at work. I didn't want to take her on an mission of exploration since if it fell in the pot, I would get her killed and unhappy.

So, we porting into Gunthak, buffed up and set off for the caves. On a whim, I brought Bi into the caverns and camped her out camoed. This turned out to be a very good idea, as we shall soon see.

Ok, the first step was down into the caves and take the second left, first right and zone into Nadox. Once there, lev doesn't work and you have to swim through lava to get to the rest of the zone. It isn't as bad as you might expect, probably on purpose, reward the adventurous. There are other ways into the zone, of course.

First part, no problem, been there, done that. We decide to run to the Hate's Fury area. Over the bridge, down the center tunnel. Still Camoed (I am stunned), then across a huge room full of mobs, none of whom see invis, our luck is holding. Dash across, camo still up. Next room, similar, need a left exit here and down some stairs. Dash again, camo still up *boggle*. All is good. There is the trail, just like in the notes. Turn left and run for it. Ok, stop here. There is the docks, our target is the big ship at the ned. BTW, that wandering Troll nearby can see invis...

This ain't the punks of the Gulf of Gunthak either. We lay into it, but it take both of us hard to kill it. Just as we get it low, another wanderer comes along. I root park it and tell Gaerett to hurry. He had to Lay of Hands to heal and we finish it just as root breaks. But, Gaerett is at 20% and I am at 50%, there is no way we are going to kill this. I don't have KEI either. No root and rot. Plus the wanderers are probably on some insane spawn timer anyway.

Ok, so I root it again and try to Camo Gaerett, no go. Only works outside. Crap. Reroot and DoT. Hmm, OK, new plan, we need help. I chain root while I have Gaerett camp out. Then I camp out. I bring up Bianca, mem Lessor Succor and a DoT (Engulfing Roots already loaded). Run her in invis, praying it doesn't drop. Gaerett is listening in with an alt, fingers crossed. I reach the spot without issue, my pulse must be running at 130, at least.

I wait until the wanderer paths as far away as possible and the tell Gaerett, "OK, camp back in." Meanwhile I bring in Finavar. As soon as Finavar is groupped up, I start the Succor. Gaerett arrives to an invite and we are GONE. Bye bye trolls, "we'll be back."

That was as exciting as EQ has gotten for me, I had a capable character, OK, two and a friend and had to think my way out of a jam without calling for a rez or the guild. It was fun to explore. Also, there was only 6 other people in the zone. I LOVE that.

Lessor Succor takes you to the Torrigon Mines zoneline. I have NO idea how you would walk here. There is this big temple looking thing with a dodgy path over a HUGE drop to lava. I have also read that the 6 mobs here will spawn a charm dropping named if you work them over long enough. So, well, here we are. May as well give it a go. Bi has no KEI, but I leave her in and grouped so I can take this as regular exp. Nice static camp with a handy zoneline, should be no problem.

And it wasn't. I could single pull the mob easily and they only took Gaerett down about 20% each. Bi had a net gain of mana after each fight. The last two though were far away over the dubious path, out of even uber bow range. I had to hop scotch a few rocks in to target them and argo them to us. They never fell, I am sure Finavar would, he trips over level ground.

25 minute timer, so we were working on our third round, no named yet, when a bunch of Thunderwalkers came in and basically stole the camp. We argued with them, but they didn't leave until they killed all the mobs and left us waiting 25 minutes for a respawn, they were only shopping for named drops. So, we felt certain that we would see them again in 25 minutes.

Sigh, bishes. The game has this too. Counters the excitement of exploring new zones, I guess.

I don't know what is with the guild this week. All they want to do is raid. I logged in Friday night, and everyone wanted to raid even though they hadn't found a target. Seeing possibilities of waiting hours for someone with a clue to come, I formed up a group for Nightmare.

We actually had a decent group. After grouping with Candra and Galain the other day, I understand the values of the Magician class a little better. The pet is like a tank, and the caster is like a wizard. 2 for the price of one! And the Magician can summon all sorts of cool jewelry to make me cast faster and use less mana and my nukes hit harder. So we were rocking along, when Finavar pulls 3 to camp. Of course we all die.

A slight segue here. We were at the docks, which is a hard camp to get anytime, let alone a friday night. I don't know why the zone was so empty, but I was not going to lose this camp! So the idea was to get back to camp asap.

Of course that didn't happen. The rest of the group wanted to wait at the Graveyard for the bodies to pop. So we did, because even if we had gone back to the docks, the bodies would still go to the GY. So we got rezzed, ran back to the docks, and all died again.

This time, I sent a tell to a cleric in the zone. I told him to run to the docks and rez everyone before the fiasco could repeat itself. Unfortunately, he rezzed us despite the fact that the mobs were still there. I died again. We did eventually get it back together, in time to do some serious xping for an hour and a half. Then we had to go to bed.

O, back to the raiding thing. So meanwhile, the guild finds a target in the form of 3 NTOV named. They call in Gob, they call in everyone, they go off. Several times they are on the channels getting pissy because everyone is not there. As if we could play all day... I mean, geez. I had been on so many raids that week that I hadn't had time to exp even once. So that made me a little cranky. Luckily, nothing I wanted dropped from the named.

Bianca

With all the pieces finally in place, I was able to do the last set of turn-ins yesterday and I received Swiftwind, the first Ranger Epic Sword. Now, I just need to kill Innorruk until he coughs up a SEoC and then I can get Earthcaller as well.

Too tired to really do anything imaginative, we went to the GoB raid on Ixi (x3) in Burning Woods. Actually, Finavar was already there from the Swiftwind turn-in, so it was easy.

When the raid started there were no monks on hand and I was the only Ranger, so I got assigned pull duty, which is cool. Unfortunately, the Cleric did the turn in before I was ready and no one had any idea *where* Ixi spawns. That was a little messy. The second time around (72 min later) was much better, they still jumped the gun on the turn-in, but I now knew where to look and I found Ixi right away and pulled him in. For some reason Pato wanted to watch the final pull phase, for adds, I guess. But, Ixi can see hidden rogues, so dead Pato. And almost dead Finavar. I turned around to see Ixi killing Pato, but that didn't take very long and I was too close now. I finished the pull with 300 hps. Unfortunately, the cleric in my group, Spiritene, healed me before the MA had agro, so Ixi killed her before he came all the way into camp.

Not pretty, but the might of GoB killed Ixi in about 20 seconds, so there were no other deaths. They were going to do Ixi again, in 72 minutes, but I couldn't stay awake after back to back nights of 1:30am, so we packed it in.

It's time to explore some of the deeper zones in the LoY expansion. Here is the notes for getting to the high end zone:



To get there:
From the nadox entrance follow the lava till you reach the bridge,..go up the left bank. Infront of you should be basically 3 caves. Two close together on the left and one kinda far away on the right. Invis up and take the middle cave.
The cave should lead down into a very large room filled with those Luggard things. Con everything straight in front of you and make sure nothing is able to see invis. If your clear run straight across to the next archway. This should put you in another short tunnel opening to a brick type hall.

The mobs in this hall seem to be two types. Undead and not undead. So invis'ng might not work here. It's wise if you have the time to clear the mobs before moving, but if you can't you can try to pacify the mobs and walk by them with no agro as we did. Either way you want to stay on the left side and head down the hall and turn left. You should see a flight of stairs going down left and right. Doesn't matter which way you go,..both just wrap around.
Once down the stairs you should be facing a VERY large cavern. Something out similar to the movie goonies where the pirate ship way. None of the mobs here saw invis,..that was for us though may be different for you. To your left you'll see a trail that goes up the cavern wall. Head up the trail.


If you follow the trail you should be at "the docks". Go onto the docks and just follow the docks till you see the ship. It has a big sign on it that says "Hate's Fury". Just zone in like any other zone.


Once in the zone your basically in a pirate ship. It's pretty cool. The first room you have two choice. To go down into a hatch that is black. Or up some stairs. The mobs here are of four types. 1-Undead 2-Luggards 3-Troll Pirates 4-Mice. Undeads are mixed in so they can see invis,.so be sure to con everything. The undead mob agro range seems to be small.
There are a number of large rooms where groups can set-up camps. The ones I can think of off hand would be...
1-Globe and Tresure room
2-Upper Deck (poop deck)
3-Cannon Room
4-Kitchen
5-Weapon Room
6-Luggard Room


The halls seem to be pretty free of wandering mobs but we did see the ocasional one or two.

It was the night we had waited for, testing the mettle of GoB against the entrance mob of NToV, Aaryonar. This guy is the litmus test of a raid force. If you can get past him, you can do most of NToV and all the respect and cool loot that comes with being able to kill high-end dragons. Unlike WToV and HoT, this loot is not quest armor, it's the real thing.

Our trackers found Aaryonar up early on Wednesday morning and the word went out that if he was still up at 9pm EST, GoB would try him. A few months ago GoB tried him and wiped hard, three times. It turned into a brutal 8 hour CR. But, we had done more than 20 trips to HoT since then, training folks in dragon killing, farming better gear. Epics were completed, levels attained, etc. In short the force entering NToV last night was much more powerful than the one that was cast contemptiously aside last time.

This was a long one though. Now that we have trashed our faction, we had to pull the gallery and the hub before we could even enter NToV. That is over 20 HoT class drakes and wurms. And, you can't single pull most of them even with 2 monks. Then, you have to worry about back spawns, so you have to keep moving. But, the monks kept dying. So the rogue had to drag them out, we had to get them rezzed and rebuffed and back to work.

Once you get into NToV proper you have to deal with the rapid spawning chicken infestation. Wyvern hatchlings of various flavors abound, come in bunches and respawn every few minutes. Once we set up to pull Aary and his guards, I was placed on chicken duty. A whole group of high DPS folks and a cleric were on this. They are small and only level 46, but they are dragons, and need to be dispatched rapidly. While up they will harass medding casters destracting them from the important job of killing large dragons.

So, after a long long fight, Aaryonar succumed to the might of GoB at about 1:30am. The loot you ask? Well lookie here:

Reaper's Ring
Rocksmasher
Also, Aary's two gaurds each dropped a Silent Fang Necklace

On the way we had to do this other punk Ikatiar the Venom . He dropped 2 Ancient Wyvern Hide Tunics. It was a good night to be a monkie and a good thing too considering the number of times they died.

OK, I have a Jade Reaver, now what? A lot of running around is what. As I work on completing part 1 of my epic quest, I keep thinking about the people who figured it out the first time. I mean, I am following a walk through that is pretty complete, in fact I created my own walk through by synthesizing several different ones and leaving out steps that are unnecessary. So, how did someone find this quest? Looking backwards at some of the parts, I can see things that might have tipped off the original questers. But, still... there is a lot of running around finding stuff out. My boiled down version has about 50 steps to it and the Ranger one is comparitively easy.

It is easy to dismiss the early questers are geeks with no life. They probably stayed up for days when Kunark was released locating the quests, the cool new mobs and gear, etc. While that may well be true, there is still a certain about of dedication and analysis that went into solving these quests and my hat is off to them.

It took 8 hours of camping on the third attempt to get the camp, but Finavar now has a Jade Reaver. The details are too lengthy and tedious to go into now. Hopefully, I will be able to do some turnins tonight and come away with Swiftwind.

Monday madness. I had to work late for a STUPID meeting and didn't get home until after 6pm thanks to all the traffic from the lemmings that have real jobs and regular 9-5 hours. I had planned a farming trip to Cazic Thule for 7:30 to 10:30 with Drayal, Irislilly, Eillial and two players to be named. The goal was to get more Tae Ew blood so that Aryllyian could try again to make a Tae Ew Chain Tunic for me since the whole Skyshrine thing didn't work out for the chain class people.

I get on a little after 7pm following dinner with Jess. Drayal, with his typical impatience is on me immediately: who are the others, where is the tank, I am holding this camp myself, come quick. Arg, I immediately stress. But, i found a paladin and a bard at loose ends and get them headed to CT all the while I am running there myself. Bianca had too much homework to play, so I actually had to run rather than get ported (*gasp*).

Also, we are now compressed since Krushh scheduled GoB to do the Hedge Maze event in PoN at 9:30. Aryllyian and Iris are expected there. I would also like to go, but it is limited to 18 peeps. Surely they will run it a few times.

This is where the madness begins. We now only have about an hour and a half. Still, no problems, right? I got two drops in two hours with a much less powerful group. Well, no. Drayal takes a dirtnap early, then we get trained, then the MA goes AFK for 10 minutes. Drayal keeps pulling warriors, not casters (who drop the blood). Grrrr.

We leave. One blood. /sigh. I am doomed to never have the AC to hang in the higher end game. Off to PoT to setup for the hadge maze event. In the end, there are 21 people, the event has a limit of 18. I don't make the cut. But, no one really says as much, nor is it clear that this is only going to be run once. Once it does, I melt. WTF? I raid my ass off for the guild and some punk 55 wizzie that has been AFK for 6 months shows up and gets a slot ahead of me? This smacks strongly of last week where a 60th level rogue reguilds right at the start of a HoT raid and wins chain arms, the first I have ever seen drop in HoT, over me as the only other roll. All within our policy, but I got frustrated then too. BAH.

I get into a long tell session with Ary because he is the only person on who might even remotely care. Well, this is the bottom. Now he is mad at me for flipping out (yes the Ary of deguilding twice in a month). As it turns out, he had been farming CT ALL DAY ALONE and had 13 blood. He sandbagged me and pretended to not know anything when I showed up. As is turns out they (he and Iris) were going to surprise me with a tunic, but they couldn't get it done before I got online, so were going to do it later. Now, I feel like a COMPLETE ASS. This game has driven me to MADNESS. Time to cool off.

Bianca is done homework now and to cool off we go get her Corrupted Deepwater Barracuda from the LOIO. That bastard has evaded us twice before in a long and boring camp. But, this time we are armed with EB items and the knowledge that the fish is an ANIMAL so our fear spells work. This allows us to solo them and kill twice as many to get the tainted to spawn. Success after an hour of swimming. Convienently, this happens right as the PoNB raid breaks up. So it's off to meet Iris and Ary and attempt another chain tunic.

I had to buy the metal and molds for it and got 5 sets knowing (now) that he had 10 blood. We were going to succeed dammit. And he did, on the first try even. YAYAYAYAYYA FINALLY a real Velious class tunic. Check it: Tae Ew Chain Tunic.

I need some fresh air....

Bianca is not due home from work until 7:30, the raid is supposed to start at 7:00pm. Knowing how these things go, I dual box her to the raid and she makes it home in time to take over well before the raid actually moves out.

We just did a fighting run into Chardok on Wednesday for GoB, this one is inhouse for Spititene and Kelenan. They have the clever idea of bring mobs in in bunchs and having the wizzies and droods AoE them. I am sure this is a lot of fun if you are a wizard. Boring to watch and be told to stay out of the way of if you are a melee though. A lot of yelling was going on too since a lot of people were confused about what they should be doing on the raid (there wasn't a lot of explaination about this technique up front and it isn't something we use all that often). So, I got into a long debate with Drayal during the raid about how things are run and while I don't pretend to know everything, I know this could be better. I was a long and stressful conversation as these things tend to be better two people with very similar ways of thinking, both of whom are currently taking this computer game way two seriously.

We get down to the bedroom without incident, but not without the King's room getting agroed, so it was a bit of a hairball killing the King and then all 6 of the dogs that came with him. Of course, that made setting up for the queen pretty easy. 10 minutes later we pull the Queen and smoke her. She is supposed to be the badass down here and we were all encouraged to fire off all offensive weapons, balls to the walls. It worked so well, I got maybe 5 arrows off on Trueshot before I lost my target. No more than 30 seconds did the fight last.

Things went so well time-wise that we decide to stay for another round of the King and Queen. It is only 9:30, it's a 2 hour spawn so...OK. I had hoped to get out a little early tonight, but we are here and there is another warrior and cleric who could use the drops.

So we goof off with emotes and illusions, killing the wanderers and repoping gaurds until we get the King. He really is a push over for our guild now, even those who were left at this point. Next up the Queen. To avoid complications, we decide to go to her room and setup and attack once she spawns. Same deal: spawn -> poof. 17 seconds this time, I got two arrows off. Oh well, I was there for moral support at least.

Time to pack it in.

Well, it's Sunday afternoon. Bi is at work and the boys are back with their mother, so me and the dog settle down for a little EQ. I am hoping to get an exp group prior to the raid on the Chardok nobles that is scheduled for 7pm.

As I log in, Nanbkek is asking in guildchat if anyone wants to go to the Ykesha zones and farm for charms. Excellent, just the sort of thing we could do. Well, one thing leads to another and we have a small raid going. At it's height we have 3 groups including 2 level 63 wizards, 2 61+ epic clerics, 2 64+ monks, etc. People were clearly bored and didn't want to start anything too involved before the raid.

Things go OK, I learned the way into the Crypt of Nadox. Don't worry, I will add another post here soon about the entrances to the new zones. We get all setup and fighting which includes a lot of waiting around for people to show up before we get too far in or pull too much. Once we get a sizable force in place, Laenyel decides he and his 27 hit points are going to pull. Well, under the theory that he knows what he is looking for (much more so than us), we let him. All is good for a while.

Then we get a two or three pull, no big deal, this stuff is all about level 50 or so. Brekk root parks the adds and we go to work. Well during the fight someone comments "that pig is back." Knowing that in this crowd a comment like that could mean anything, I pan around a bit, half expecting to see some enormous fat woman in a mumu or something. Nope, a smallish boar spawned near us on one of the doorway guard spawn points. Cute, good graphics for once (for some reason the VI artists are really good at depicting fantastic mobs and suck at depicting real animals). Then I /con it...

"Ah...guys, that thing cons red to me." Nanbkek, our tank, concurs. The consensus is that we will get to it, no worries. Well, I am a little worried about this casual treatment. First of all, it's the only thing in the zone that cons red to me. I know I am nearly the lowest person on the raid and therefore the others aren't going to take nervousness by me very seriously. But, this zone was developed in the PoP era. Mobs hit hard for their level even if they are a little on the fragile side.

Well, just to be safe, I slide around to the other side of the mob we are fighting so I can keep an eye on the bacon. Doesn't take too long for someone in the party to blunder into agro range of the pig... Pandamonium ensues.

Unfortunately, SOE has been having a little router issue the last couple of days and I go LD right then. Not good. It takes me 20 minutes to get logged back in. I split the time doing dishes and vaccuming while trying to get a connection to the login server. I am sure I am going to be naked in the Nexus when I finally do get back, or, all alone in the middle of the new zone.

Wrong on both counts. There I am, still in the Crypt, full health but in the middle of an abattoir. Bodies everywhere, except for one contented looking pig, back on this spawn point. There is no one left in the zone including another party that was hunting nearby. I beat a hasty retreat to the river of lava to consider my options. Then Brekk shows up. Like me, he went LD before the pig got to him. He start dragging bodies to what looks like a reasonably safe place. Rokken shows up after hearing about the wipe in guildchat.

Rokken said, "you guys wiped to a pig?!"

"Dude, he triples for 350 and is red to me," replied Nanbkek having had his purple troll ass handed to to him with the cleric being the first to die.

Rokken kinda felt bad since he was going to be our puller and ditched us for unspecified reasons. So, he helps drag corpses. Then the other group starts coming back. They have with them an epic cleric and a KEI enchanter, so we get back on our feet pretty quickly.

Refreshed with new buffs, reinforcements pouring in, it's time for a pig roast. It doesn't last long this time. Now we are off and crawling through the tunnels properly. Nothing interesting is dropping and after a fresh batch of reinforcements arrive, we decide to try the next zone in. Rokken has intel from his cousin, who is soloing in the area, that an evac takes you to the far side of the zone where you can zone into the next zone.

So, we do that, all is good, but time is short, so after a very little bit of poking about, we evac out to prepare for Chardok.

Well, this is the day many in the Elven Elite and Gathering of Banners at large has been waiting for, leaving the Claws of Veeshan faction and hunting in the rest of the Temple of Veeshan. A lot of people now have complete sets of Skyshrine armor, or at least all the peices that are upgrades from the two months of hard farming in the Halls of Testing. Too bad that didn't work out as well for Finavar...but, that is another story. I am sick of that place, I am ready to take on bigger dragons. We met at the WW zone line at 8pm, grouped up and buffed. Our target was NToV even though none of the named dragons were up. The theory was that even killing trash will help us learn the pull points and give everyone a feel for the zone.

So, off we go to the Temple of Veeshan and arrive more or less enmass and zone in. I am fairly certain we scared the piss out of the guild that was at the zone in room buffing up for the Halls of Testing. All of a sudden 36 peeps zone in, lagging the crap out of the zone to boot, open the door that shouldn't be opened until you are ready and pulling the CoV friendly drakes in the gallery outside.

They came two at a time, of course, due to the way they are clumped together on their spawn points in the gallery, but they were no harder than their counterparts in HoT, so this raid had no trouble with 2 at a time.

Then, we started pulling the hub. Get this, nearly every other dragon in the hub dropped Kael quest armor (vaguely equivalent to the SS quest armor). We must have gotten at least 10 drops in half an hour. I won the chain legs I had never seen in 20 runs to HoT.

Of course, that is really a quest too. In Kael there are two types of giants: KromRif and KromZek. Right now, well before Friday night, I was max KoS to both. Killing dragons will improve your KromZek faction and eventually you will be able to turn in the quest armor. Unfortunately, these guys are a scandleous lot and they hang out with KromRif giants. The only way to improve that faction is to kill dwarves, a big no-no in the Elven Elite, even if I was so inclined. So, to do the turn in, I am going to need a friend to kite away the KromRif giants (killing them would be faction hits :(). Nothing is ever easy...

OK, so, back to the action. NToV is an awesome sight. A mixture of halls and a huge cavern (complete with a lava filled basin; take care on the walkways). Truely a worthy place for the elite of the dragon kind. None of those elite were up, they are on a 7 day spawn and usually die the day they spawn to one of the high end guilds. Still, we killed the unnamed gaurdians and named guard drakes. No loot and little exp, but good practice learning the zone and the safe spots and such.

To reward ourselves for trashing our faction to no good loot, we decided to zone into the Plane of Mischief. It's portal is in the back of NToV for some reason. After getting there through a bunch of 60+ guardians and, if they are up, 65+ level dragons, you get to this zone. Mostly low to mid 50's. What is it like? Imagine Alice in Wonderland on crack. I know, that sounds redundent, but trust me, it isn't. We didn't get much time to explore the zone because the run to the zone in agroed a couple of drakes and a bunch of people died outside. Of course, the zone out takes you to Cobalt Scar, not back to NToV, so there is a long CR ahead :(. We will be back.

Friday the 28th was supposed to be the last HoT raid for the guild. As it turns out, it didn't happen. The guild had gotten kind of slack about raiding HoT, we had done it so much. Well, the RL didn't think through the fact that this raid was scheduled for 8pm on a Friday night. Prime freaking Time. By the time we got killing force there, there was already 2 guilds there buffing for Hot. It only holds two guilds max.

As usual, Krushh showed up and saved the day just as people started melting down in guildchat about how it should have been done. We regrouped in PoK and sent the rangers out on hunting trips to find us worthy targets. My zone was PoI where I located the Junk Beast up, this was deemed a worthy first target and the guild mustered to slay it. I have not been too far down either path in PoI, only as far as the factory entrance. So, it was pretty interesting to burn through the mobs and get all the way down where the beast spawns.

The fight wasn't all that and I don't even remember what dropped other than it wasn't Ranger usable :). Next up was our old friend Vhaksiz the Shade. We have done him several times now and it has gotten a bit routine, still, a tough and challenging fight. I won Disembowler, the only melee drop the last time out. I was hoping Bianca would get the Heart of Vhaksiz to complete her Intermediate Magic Manual quest, but it went to Seyah.

And that was that, it was a little early by raid night standards (10:30 EST), but good to knock off early for once.