Dragons must die. Well, right after the big spider.
We form up in LS and kill off the big spider event first for 9 more shards. Sadly, I don't get one, but Bianca does. That morning we started on the DoN progression tasks. Pretty straight forward, we should be caught up to the rest of the folks pushing the progression in a week or two.
Afterwards it's off to Rikky the dragon. Rikkukin the Ancient. PITA dragon. Well, it took 2 (more) tries, but we smacked him down in what we believe to be a server first. The loot is very sweet and 2 items went for 200 (the max) and one for 150. Our new start appears to work well, we got close on the first try (6%) and bet him easily on the second try. Looks like we will be seeing more of him.
Then it was time to try the next Dragon in the progression, Kessdona the Enlightened. Very little info on this one, be we jumped in with our customary verve and promptly got owned. Well, it wasn't that bad, but we didn't come close to beating her. However, we got all the info we needed to form a strategy. Unfortunately, it was getting late and lots of folks logged so we couldn't try her again. I expect we will be back though :)
Follow along as Finavar and Bianca explore the Everquest world of Norrath on EMarr
Monday, March 14, 2005
Saturday March 12th
YAY, an off day finally.
We spent 10am to 3:30pm in Vxed so I could work on my CBQ belt quest. Alas, to no avail. The drop rate appears mythical, we crawled the whole thing, wiped only once, got 3.5 AA, but NO SHELLS. WTF? I am very upset about this, I have 50 raid points into the rest of the quest, it's all I need to finish things off.
Bi went to visit her Dad, I went to a bookstore and we met for dinner and a movie, no EQ, nice evening.
We spent 10am to 3:30pm in Vxed so I could work on my CBQ belt quest. Alas, to no avail. The drop rate appears mythical, we crawled the whole thing, wiped only once, got 3.5 AA, but NO SHELLS. WTF? I am very upset about this, I have 50 raid points into the rest of the quest, it's all I need to finish things off.
Bi went to visit her Dad, I went to a bookstore and we met for dinner and a movie, no EQ, nice evening.
Thursday March 10th
Epic raids. Otherwise know as the gay-ass Bard Dragon hunt.
We start off in WoS and promptly wipe to the Girplan Gaurdian as we get there. Then we smack him down in round two. Then it's off to Dragon's Necropolis (yes, the other side to the freaking world) for bard epic stuff. This is for the shill Preathen and while he has read up on the script, he hasn't led a raid so it takes forever to set up and beat the relatively simple dragon. Then we do the previous step for Lazylegs and find, after some more pissing about, that we can't spawn the first dragon yet. Oh well, TL and bed.
We start off in WoS and promptly wipe to the Girplan Gaurdian as we get there. Then we smack him down in round two. Then it's off to Dragon's Necropolis (yes, the other side to the freaking world) for bard epic stuff. This is for the shill Preathen and while he has read up on the script, he hasn't led a raid so it takes forever to set up and beat the relatively simple dragon. Then we do the previous step for Lazylegs and find, after some more pissing about, that we can't spawn the first dragon yet. Oh well, TL and bed.
Friday March 11th
RSS again, this time for Feratha, the 2 headed dog. Another easy kill. Since we had a good tank line up online, Grish decided to give the King a shot. After 1.5 hours of prep, we ran in and wiped in the classic 30 seconds. Not too surprising as we had very little hard information on the script. But, it was painfully clear that we didn't have the numbers we needed and all the waiting around getting stragglers in made it really tedious. So, we didn't try again. Instead Grish decided to farm the first part of Inktu'ta, at 10:30pm. Nahhh, we went to bed instead.
Wednesday March 9th
Started a bit late in RSS for Chailak. Easy kill, nothing else up, so off to Qvic. PE/AV, someone was there and pissing and moaning, so we cleared to Inkut'ta to work on that some. Cleared the big trash and the first event, but didn't have numbers to do much else.
Tuesday March 8th
An off day for us. We had the WW meeting until 7pm and then needed to eat. So instead of cramming something in front of the computer and ingoring the kid, we went out and had a decent meal and then chilled to 2 episodes of Bab5. A much needed break since our usual off night, Saturday, was spent on a full clear of PoTime (7.5 hours).
Monday March 7th
The night was spent in DoN land.
First the dragon. We beat him the first time a week or two ago. A fast and fun fight, we farm him every 5 days. Then it was on to the next dragon in the progression Rikkukin, or as I call him Rikky. Rikky is a PITA. He has 3 AoE, 4 really, casts them all the time and and flips all over the place. You got the DoT, tough enough as it is, but not too bad. Then there is the "breath weapon" AoE and then two forms of focused rampage (for 5K and 7K). Oh, and he AoE blinds and will occasionally cast a spell that turns melee damage into health.
Is that sick or what? Now, he warns you about these things in emotes. You have (or at least you should) to put up another chat window and through "other" into it so you don't miss the emote that will let you avoid some of the fun. Well, we tried this 3 times in 3 hours and failed at them all. The delay isn't the script, there is no trash or lockout, it's the MGB timers. You need to have some MGB heals, Paragon, etc. And it makes no sense to try again without them if you failed with them. So we wait and wait and ponder about getting SoE to give us a way to lower that reset time.
First the dragon. We beat him the first time a week or two ago. A fast and fun fight, we farm him every 5 days. Then it was on to the next dragon in the progression Rikkukin, or as I call him Rikky. Rikky is a PITA. He has 3 AoE, 4 really, casts them all the time and and flips all over the place. You got the DoT, tough enough as it is, but not too bad. Then there is the "breath weapon" AoE and then two forms of focused rampage (for 5K and 7K). Oh, and he AoE blinds and will occasionally cast a spell that turns melee damage into health.
Is that sick or what? Now, he warns you about these things in emotes. You have (or at least you should) to put up another chat window and through "other" into it so you don't miss the emote that will let you avoid some of the fun. Well, we tried this 3 times in 3 hours and failed at them all. The delay isn't the script, there is no trash or lockout, it's the MGB timers. You need to have some MGB heals, Paragon, etc. And it makes no sense to try again without them if you failed with them. So we wait and wait and ponder about getting SoE to give us a way to lower that reset time.
Sunday March 6th
Into Qvic and Inktu'ta.
We got an early start, but AV had an even earlier one. They had just beaten Uqua the first time and are practically beside themselves to farm Qvic. We show up for our usual pre-serious raid mini smackdown to find them sitting on the spawn point of one of the minis. Considering at least half of them are probably AFK and almost everyone in the guild 2 boxes (or more), if the mini did spawn, they would probably wipe on the spot. The usual pissing and moaning ensues and then a mini spawns, not the one they are waiting for, but another one. And they move to take it. After watching them half wipe to trash in there zeal to get to it, we decide to relieve them of the burden and move past them and clear the temple.
At that point, they decide that the right thing to do isn't finish rezzing and rebuffing and move back to their original camp, it's to train us with the name we were pulling anyway and the last 2 mobs in the temple. Needless to say, that really wasn't even a challenging pull and we had that completely under control. So, one of their rogues, whose name escapes me, trains us with about 6 more. This caused a bit more of a stir, but they got handled with a minimum of casualties. Back to the named. A few folks had her in the corner and were applying the beat down, so I joined in. When the mob hit zero health, I took a beat down from behind. Apparently, AV got completely distraught over the fact that we handled the first 2 trains and brought a third right at the end so they could ninja the loot. Too bad they wiped to the train too....
Rezz and rebuff, listening to much more pissing and moaning (both in guild and in public). We let them have that mini, we move to another that had just spawned and kill it, then move to the Inktu'ta tunnels and clear down to that.
Inktu'ta is our current road block, beating it will give us access to Txevu - Lair of the Elite, a bit of a loot zone for GoD and the next to last zone in the progression there. We want to get in there, farm that a bit and then more on to Tacvi, the final zone in Gates to close out that expansion. After which we will have to decide whether to push through the MPG trials and into Anguish or focus on DoN. Frankly, by the time we finish GoD, we may also be done with DoN. Unless there is more content than I have seen or read about, I give us 4-6 weeks before finishing that up.
Anyway, Inktu'ta is a pain-in-the-ass zone. It is really 4 trials linked sequentially. So far we have mastered the first and have that on farm status, but have struggled a bit with the strategy for the second phase. We have beaten it, but it takes too long. I expect we will have that down on the next run though.
We got an early start, but AV had an even earlier one. They had just beaten Uqua the first time and are practically beside themselves to farm Qvic. We show up for our usual pre-serious raid mini smackdown to find them sitting on the spawn point of one of the minis. Considering at least half of them are probably AFK and almost everyone in the guild 2 boxes (or more), if the mini did spawn, they would probably wipe on the spot. The usual pissing and moaning ensues and then a mini spawns, not the one they are waiting for, but another one. And they move to take it. After watching them half wipe to trash in there zeal to get to it, we decide to relieve them of the burden and move past them and clear the temple.
At that point, they decide that the right thing to do isn't finish rezzing and rebuffing and move back to their original camp, it's to train us with the name we were pulling anyway and the last 2 mobs in the temple. Needless to say, that really wasn't even a challenging pull and we had that completely under control. So, one of their rogues, whose name escapes me, trains us with about 6 more. This caused a bit more of a stir, but they got handled with a minimum of casualties. Back to the named. A few folks had her in the corner and were applying the beat down, so I joined in. When the mob hit zero health, I took a beat down from behind. Apparently, AV got completely distraught over the fact that we handled the first 2 trains and brought a third right at the end so they could ninja the loot. Too bad they wiped to the train too....
Rezz and rebuff, listening to much more pissing and moaning (both in guild and in public). We let them have that mini, we move to another that had just spawned and kill it, then move to the Inktu'ta tunnels and clear down to that.
Inktu'ta is our current road block, beating it will give us access to Txevu - Lair of the Elite, a bit of a loot zone for GoD and the next to last zone in the progression there. We want to get in there, farm that a bit and then more on to Tacvi, the final zone in Gates to close out that expansion. After which we will have to decide whether to push through the MPG trials and into Anguish or focus on DoN. Frankly, by the time we finish GoD, we may also be done with DoN. Unless there is more content than I have seen or read about, I give us 4-6 weeks before finishing that up.
Anyway, Inktu'ta is a pain-in-the-ass zone. It is really 4 trials linked sequentially. So far we have mastered the first and have that on farm status, but have struggled a bit with the strategy for the second phase. We have beaten it, but it takes too long. I expect we will have that down on the next run though.
Monday, March 07, 2005
Back to Work
It's been 15 months since we had an update. Largely this was because we end up being officers and then guild leader of EE. That was a ton of work and a lot of writing emails and posts. That left little time or energy to chronicle our adventures here. Things are a little calmer now and I am looking to get back in the practice of writing. Also, there are a few folks who might like to keep in touch with our doings in Norath even though they have moved on to other games.
I am going to start with Saturday night and move forward as I get time. I am also going to encourage Bianca to jump in when she can.
Saturday is usually a night off in Triune. We raid pretty much every other night, so that is a much looked for break to get back some exp and work on quests and other projects. Unfortunately, it was our turn in the rotation for PoTime. We had to raid or skip our turn, and give up Quarm. Generally, PoTime takes 2 nights to clear. We do phase1 - phase 4 one night and on our next turn, we have to redo p1 to unlock it and then got to phase 5 and phase 6 to finish up. This turn should be p5-p6, i.e., the good loot.
However, there was a huge server patch this week. Usually, SoE only resets Time if that zone itself is patched. So, after clearing p1, it became clear that the instance had reset and we had a full spawn, not just the last 2 phases. Well, it was early and even though the turn out was a bit light, Grish, our raid leader, decided we would aim for a full clear in order to keep us on schedule. And he offered a 5 point bonus for anyone who could tough it out to the end. Well, the good loot only drops at the end, and 5 points, while not a lot, was just enough to entice this greedy bastard to stay.
It wasn't the smoothest clear ever. As I noted, the turnout was a bit light and it lacked some of our A-Team. We had a hellish start to p4 that involved at least 2 partial wipes. But, we managed to pull it together and get the Zek brothers down plus Saryrn and Terris Thule. Then on to p5. This was where I expected us to hit the wall. RZ, Bert, Inny and CT. We were healer heavy, which is good for these big hitters, but low on the DPS, which is bad. However, each of these guys went down gently with only minimal casualties.
Now, it was late. Really late. Jess went to bed halfway through p5, we zoned up to Quarm at about 2am. And summarily beat him down with only 41 folks and less then a handful of deaths. Then it was time to do loot and TL home. Time, 2:30am, 20 points in the bag.
All in all, that was a silly thing to do, but the leadership wants to back off from the 4 clears of PoTime a month to 2 and needed to get back on schedule. Even though I am relatively new to high end raiding, I completely agree. Considering the loot that we are getting from Inktu'ta and Qvic, this place just isn't worth a lot of time. It's great to gear up apps, lord knows I got a lot here on my first few runs. All at the minimum bid of 10 points. But, other than a few flavor items, there is nothing here that I want. Certainly nothing I would pay more then 30 ro 50 points for. The high-end Quarm loot is still going for 100-150 points, depending on what drops. But, of the 30-40 drops we get on a full clear, most of p1 and p2 rots and nothing goes for more than 20 or 30 until p5.
Lots of folks are saddened by this and describe PoTime as a "fun" raid. When I question them on this, I get the sense that the real reason that they like it is that 30-40 items drop and you are likely to get something if you are interested. With nothing really here for me (except maybe the mythical Timespinner), I grudgingly do it for the new folks and am happy we are scaling this back. At least with the new flagging system we don't have to do even lamer content in order to do an app farm zone.
I didn't even bid on anything tonight. There were a couple of rings that were nice, but the bidding went over my personal limit before I could even jump in. Bianca got a nice ring (Ring of Evasion) for 10+ (she had picked up a 90 mana aug in Qvic earlier that afternoon(Glyph of Souls) which was gonna rot; this is the subject of a semi-rant to follow).
I am going to start with Saturday night and move forward as I get time. I am also going to encourage Bianca to jump in when she can.
Saturday is usually a night off in Triune. We raid pretty much every other night, so that is a much looked for break to get back some exp and work on quests and other projects. Unfortunately, it was our turn in the rotation for PoTime. We had to raid or skip our turn, and give up Quarm. Generally, PoTime takes 2 nights to clear. We do phase1 - phase 4 one night and on our next turn, we have to redo p1 to unlock it and then got to phase 5 and phase 6 to finish up. This turn should be p5-p6, i.e., the good loot.
However, there was a huge server patch this week. Usually, SoE only resets Time if that zone itself is patched. So, after clearing p1, it became clear that the instance had reset and we had a full spawn, not just the last 2 phases. Well, it was early and even though the turn out was a bit light, Grish, our raid leader, decided we would aim for a full clear in order to keep us on schedule. And he offered a 5 point bonus for anyone who could tough it out to the end. Well, the good loot only drops at the end, and 5 points, while not a lot, was just enough to entice this greedy bastard to stay.
It wasn't the smoothest clear ever. As I noted, the turnout was a bit light and it lacked some of our A-Team. We had a hellish start to p4 that involved at least 2 partial wipes. But, we managed to pull it together and get the Zek brothers down plus Saryrn and Terris Thule. Then on to p5. This was where I expected us to hit the wall. RZ, Bert, Inny and CT. We were healer heavy, which is good for these big hitters, but low on the DPS, which is bad. However, each of these guys went down gently with only minimal casualties.
Now, it was late. Really late. Jess went to bed halfway through p5, we zoned up to Quarm at about 2am. And summarily beat him down with only 41 folks and less then a handful of deaths. Then it was time to do loot and TL home. Time, 2:30am, 20 points in the bag.
All in all, that was a silly thing to do, but the leadership wants to back off from the 4 clears of PoTime a month to 2 and needed to get back on schedule. Even though I am relatively new to high end raiding, I completely agree. Considering the loot that we are getting from Inktu'ta and Qvic, this place just isn't worth a lot of time. It's great to gear up apps, lord knows I got a lot here on my first few runs. All at the minimum bid of 10 points. But, other than a few flavor items, there is nothing here that I want. Certainly nothing I would pay more then 30 ro 50 points for. The high-end Quarm loot is still going for 100-150 points, depending on what drops. But, of the 30-40 drops we get on a full clear, most of p1 and p2 rots and nothing goes for more than 20 or 30 until p5.
Lots of folks are saddened by this and describe PoTime as a "fun" raid. When I question them on this, I get the sense that the real reason that they like it is that 30-40 items drop and you are likely to get something if you are interested. With nothing really here for me (except maybe the mythical Timespinner), I grudgingly do it for the new folks and am happy we are scaling this back. At least with the new flagging system we don't have to do even lamer content in order to do an app farm zone.
I didn't even bid on anything tonight. There were a couple of rings that were nice, but the bidding went over my personal limit before I could even jump in. Bianca got a nice ring (Ring of Evasion) for 10+ (she had picked up a 90 mana aug in Qvic earlier that afternoon(Glyph of Souls) which was gonna rot; this is the subject of a semi-rant to follow).