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).
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