Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Nineteen

03/07/03 Week Nineteen

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

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

Overlord Banord (1/30) Paffa

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

Servant of Saryrn

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

Salczek the Fleshgrinder

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

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

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

The Acolyte of Affliction

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

Maareq the Prophet

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

The Keeper of Sorrows

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

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

Saryrn has been Poobied.

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

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

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

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

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

Statue pulled....

shortly to die...

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

The Idol of Rallos Zek

The Avatar of War

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

One of many

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

He's a Pussy really..

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

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

Oops!.

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

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

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

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

He cant be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

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

Lord Inquisitor Seru

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

Nevor Jikman

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

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

Trakanon

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