Due to unavoidable RL shit I had to miss Tuesdays raid. I elected to log for that raid and deal with said RL shit rather than ignore it and maybe have to deal with it during the Rallos Zek hit.
I managed to tag along to the first kill of the night. Mr Overlord Banord 1/33 Paffa still has no ears, *sigh*
But that was it. I helped a few new guild members make it to the HOH zone, made sure they got into the raid and there was someone to look after them, basically made sure all was good and had to log. Unfortunately real life intruded on EQ and I had to go and sort it all out. So no Update for Tuesday.
There was a failed Lord Inquisitor Seru raid in Sanctus Seru the Sunday before as well. Please let Pooby get aggro, please please please. Don't cast until the assist is called. If that means that the MT forgets to call assist and you never get to cast anything. Then so be it. Stand there with your thumb up your ass but do not cast.
Wednesday we formed up about 3-4 groups and headed into The Temple of Solusek Ro. I have only been into Sol Ro's tower once before. I managed to hook up with an SA group to pull some stuff around the entrance for a couple of hours. This time we ventured quite a distance in and headed to the lair of Xuzl. He's a bit of a girly man really, but he, and the area he is in look awesome!. Sol Ro's Tower is just an amazing zone to be in. I would like to spend a lot more time in there, organising groups for the Tower is, however rather hard.
It actually went a little sideways on us at first, but the recovery was brilliant once again and we took him down with true SA flair. I am not sure exactly what happened but the raid leader called for us all to get out of the room and prepare for a wipe. So I headed out of the room as per instructions, then the call came to all run back in, get up on the platform and continue the fight. We did exactly that and he went down.
So that's one less Flag I need towards an Elemental plane. 4 more SolRo Minis to go and its time for a run at Sol Ro himself!. I hope Kez is back tonight, we miss you kez, get your ass back online. We will be doing more back flagging tonight I think. I logged on last night to help out with Bastion of Thunder Giant killing and back flagging and that issue that I thought I had dealt with on Tuesday night came back to bite me again. So after about an hour of Giant killing I had to log again.
The GF is out for Friday's raid, so as long as I have a good connection (and with the servers as shitty as they have been lately there is no guarantees) I will hopefully be online for the whole raid. What annoys me most is that I make a commitment to help out, to be online and do something for other people and I get interrupted because its "just a game and you can turn it off anytime". No amount of explaining that there are 40-50 other real people also involved in what I am doing ever seems to sink in,
Kez is back!! woot!. Welcome back boss!. I logged on and straight to Overlord Banord 'My ears fell off again" Paffa (1/34) in the Crypt of Decay. Guess what, bloody Cloak. I am beginning to believe that the Earring has been removed from the Drop Table. Either that or its so stupidly rare as to not be worth killing him for.
Since we were in Crypt of Decay anyway we decided to take a run against the Carprin Cycle. We kicked off the cycle, the pulling team and off tank team did a marvelous job and Carprin Deatharn and his assorted undead buddies went down in quick succession.
Next up is the Mob I've never seen and the Mob that gives us the most trouble out of this whole run. Once again we wiped against him and had to fight back to Ahvi Escron's room. As is also standard practice, the second run against him he was dropped with no problems. Next up is the massive damage output of Raex Pwodil. SA handled him beautifully and he snuffed it fast and clean.
Then comes Vindor Mawnil (I can now spell both of those names without having to refer to Allakhazam's first!). Both of these two can pump out huge damage. One Rampages a lot the other Flurries a lot and both of them are capable of one rounding a fully raid buffed main tank if your heal team is not very very tight.
Then its a quick run around the corner and drop the rather pathetic Bishop Toluwon. If you can take Vindor and Raex this guy is gimp. We had a monk tank and dropped him rapidly.
Then its the final MOB in the run and the flag boss, High Priest Ultor Szanvon. In comparison to Raex and Vindor he is a girlyman.
Ding!!, a bunch of people got flagged for CODb!. Yay!, less back flagging to do later!. This whole run is a classic example of how SOE fundamentally doesn't understand the bullshit they constantly spew about "Risk vs Reward". I don't know whether they think the flag is the reward or not, but for the difficulty, damage output and level of the MOBs in the cycle, they should drop something halfway decent. Instead you punch your way through the whole cycle and get stuff that goes straight to the Guild Mule because not even the Newbies want it. Its utterly ridiculous.
Next up, Halls of Honor. We figured since we were on a flagging run we should do it properly. We quickly ran through the Princess Trial (4rooms),
Then the Villagers (12man) and finally Rydda`Dar. I still love killing this dragon. I get the butterflies every time we engage because he will still own you if you make even a little mistake. It was a messy take down for us. But a kill is a kill.
That was about that for Friday. Lots of back flagging got done, grats to those who finished up their flagging and thank you to those who made a special effort to be there for the back flagging session as well.
Well Saturday was both a lot of fun and one of the most frustrating days I have ever spent in EQ. It started really really well, I logged in and joined the Unity raid channel to see what was going on. Unity was prepping to kill Grummus. Now I haven't killed the fat bastard for a while and it was that or more camping the Pained Soul in Trakanon's Teeth. So I rang an NZ SA member who I knew needed Grummus and told him to log on. We headed out to Plane of Disease, formed up, ran in, and the first to die was Gryme the Crypt Keeper.
Up the stairs, through the door and Aramin the Spider Guardian dies.
Finally a very quick prep and in we go against Grummus.
Next up we were going to hit Carprin, but oops, SA had dropped him the night before. Then it was maybe HOH, but OOPs we cleaned that out as well. So they called Aerin' Dar and off we all headed to the Plane of Valor. The first attempt was made up just about entirely of Unity alts and it failed. After a fast reform and rebuff the second attempt was perfect and AD went down cleanly.
After about 5 minutes waiting around the Unity raid leaders called Rallos Zek!. Holy shit!, he wasn't supposed to be up for another 24 hours as far as I was aware. I knew Unity had dropped him for the first time the week previous, I had never even seen him so I decided to hang out and see how they went. Everyone logged their alts, brought in their Mains and we formed up in Drunder. For Unity this was a damn fast form-up. Normally they take a while to get sorted but this was lightning quick. I should have known at this point that this wasn't the same Unity I had experienced in the past.
We fought in, grabbed the two named triggers and when in position Unity dropped them. Tallon Zek was inc. Now this is where I have seen the previous runs I have been on with Unity fall apart.
Not this time, this kill was smooth as silk. Next up, Vallon Zek.
Again, went down like a virgin on prom night. Unity lost 3 people in both fights. Now one of the interesting thing's about being a server transfer is that you don't know anything about guilds and reputations on a server. You don't know the servers "History" as it were and people are very often willing to tell you all about a certain guild or toon. Now I had heard that Unity was originally neck and neck with Keepers of the Faith for the number one position on the server. They had a bunch of core people leave all at once and were severely knocked back.
I have also heard it bandied about in exp groups (by people in Guilds I have never heard of or who are nowhere near the level of Nameless Order, KTF, Unity etc) that Unity was finished, their Glory days were over and they may as well give up. I will tell you one thing, based on what I saw Saturday, those people are about to be eating their words because Unity's performance against Rallos Zek was easily one of the smoothest demonstrations of Power I have seen yet. I really wish I could have seen them at their height.
Unity is definitely back and headed to Time. If they can continue the current level of dedication and discipline then IMHO Unity are definite contenders.
Finally we made it to Fake Rallos, engaged, handled the adds beautifully and all Evac'd out to the Zone in ready for real Rallos.
Not a single death in the whole fake Rallos fight, clean as a whistle. Raced in and down to Rallos Zek the Warlord. Sorted charming, add teams in place and off we went.
We made one mistake. The Raid leader forgot to call Full Burn. That was it. We failed with Rallos at 8%. Unity decided to make another run, it was very very late for them so all Kudos that they all stuck around. We reformed at Zone In and raced for the triggers again. There was initially some concern that Tallionis were in zone and forming up for a run at RZtW as well, but they were in fact after the "real" Zek brothers.
So after a bit of pissing about we headed back to Tallon Zek.
Then big brother Vallon:
Back to Fake Rallos.
This one was a little messier. Unity was getting tired and it got a bit sloppy, but we were back at the Zone In in good time, reforming ready for the run at RZtW...
Link Death.
The whole fucking raid went Link Dead, in fact I think most of the population of EQ went LD all at once. I spent 20 minutes frantically trying to get back in to rejoin the raid. I got 1018 errors, 1017 errors and 1001 errors. In fact the entire gamut of errors. I finally checked into CHAT to find the whole game LD. At this point I logged in frustration. I knew the raid wasn't going to complete as the timer would have run out.
The penultimate of EQ is the Elemental Planes. I need one more Flag to make it into the elementals, Rallos Zek the Warlord. I never even dreamed I would be this close, never in my wildest imagination did I think I would make it to the Elementals. To be that close (Unity took him down the next day, first run, so we would have taken him out on Saturday) and to have it snatched away was frustrating beyond belief. I logged out and walked quickly away from my PC before I decided to break something.
The next day (when I cant logon, Sundays are GF time) Unity and SA took out Rallos and about 15 people from SA were Elemental flagged. I was so frustrated when I read that, that I couldn't logon. I logged on again on Monday, died to an LD on a pull and logged out again. Raid night is tonight and I will be there. I wouldn't miss it for the world, but my tolerance for general XP'ing (and all the frustration with constantly being knocked back when trying to set up/join groups) is very very high right now. Most nights I just end up camping some piece of shit key mobs or doing Green farming anyway, there isn't a lot of fun in that
No comments:
Post a Comment