Logged straight into Garakk, ran around all the POP zones, got a wee group in Plane of Justice exit and started to bash stuff. Man I wish there was somewhere else I could go as a tank and stand a reasonable chance of getting a group. Unfortunately I think I am stuck in POJ till at least 54 when hopefully I may start to get groups in Plane of Valor / Plane of Storms etc. I am not asking to be power leveled or anything silly, just an alternate location where I am possibly going to find a group for XP that doesn't involve the POJ exit. Oh and Garakk got himself a Trial rune!. Just need to do the hand in for the flag!
I am going to try and get Garakk a Sebilis key this weekend as well so I have another location I can check for groups. I am also going to get a 3rd key so I put a tracker in there as I am going to be needing sinews from Trakanon shortly.
As I was standing toe to toe with nasty prisoners in the Plane of Justice and handing them the beat down they so richly deserve, the Guild message of the day came up. "Raid target today will be the Tower of Solusek Ro, all 5 Mini's are up" WOOT!, flaggage and not back flagging!. I had managed to be in on a Xuzl kill a month or so ago in a pickup raid but had never been able to tag along on any other mini raids. I told my group I needed to go and logged into Ulaa and ran into the Tower.
We formed up fast and started to clear the trash. I really,really wish I could somehow get a good shot of the views of this zone, unfortunately I would have to do it as a separate linked page to be able to do it justice. I would have to leave the ScreenShot at its original resolution to really get the effect and the file would be huge. Suffice it to say that its magnificent. The massive stone pillars stand amidst the vast pools of lava. Huge staircases rise high into the distance that almost seems to shimmer in the heat haze.
The first significant MOB we came up against was a Magma giant.
There seem to be a number of these guys scattered about the zone. We ganked several of them on the way to our first target, The Protector of Dresolik.
There are also a large number of trash named's on the way, kind of an oxymoron really, a trash named.
I got more pics, but I will limit them to two as they are all largely the same. One question, Dresolik has Guardians and a Protector, who and where is Dresolik himself? NOTE* this question is answered here*.
We ganked a butt load of these guys, they must have significant HP as even with a full raid beating on them their HP bar was dropping very slowly.
For some reason as we were getting to the last of them, myself and Sorchak were summoned to the back of the room we were fighting in and I got beaten like a red headed step child. I have no idea why. I managed to get an FD off and lay there as the Guardian that summoned me made his way back to the main raid for his beating. I was just thinking of popping up again and rejoining the raid when The Protector popped. Guess where?, right on my head of course.
I knew he was about to be pulled so I just stayed down. About 2 seconds before the pull was inc, a spell hit me, broke FD and the Protector dropped me in half a second. I died, and I have no idea how any of the sequence of events began, why I was summoned and/or what broke my FD, but it was unpleasant.
I am still grinning today. I have had 4 1/2 hours sleep, had a busy day at work and I am STILL grinning!. Why you ask?. The Protector was gracious enough to drop a Wand of the Firestorm and the officers of Southern Armada were kind enough to award it to me!. Why is this significant you ask?, simple really. The Effect on this item is the best DOT enhancement in the entire game and it is unique to the Wand.
Plus it has little fire effects!, I have sooooo wanted a something with little effects dripping from it. I didn't really care what the item was as long as it had a little graphical effect :). Many, many people said many very nice things to me after I was awarded it. /bow to all of SA, thank you!.
We ported out and back to the zone start and began to fight our way towards Rizlona. Another couple of hundred MOB's tried to bar our way and were summarily executed.
These models are just so cool. It would be awesome to be able to take a tour of all of these zones, completely invisible to all of the mobs with full spell effects on and just take pictures.
Finally we make it to Rizlona and pull her...
Ooo this is going to be easy!
One thing I vaguely remember reading about many moons ago is the human that turns into a Dragon when she dies. POP this is her!. Took me a bit by surprise I can tell you!. One minute the human is dieing and the next there is a Dragon right in my face!,
Thank god it didn't take the tanks by surprise!, they thwacked her good and proper!. So once again we ported back to zone start and headed back towards Jiva. Much much trash was cleared until finally we came to Galremos.
Getting to him was tough as you have to deal with pulls of 5-8 MOB's at a time. Once you get to him tho he dies easy. Finally in this tower is Jiva himself.
Ooo-er Man Boobies!
Another port back and run through butt loads of trash to get to Arlyxir the Phoenix. I turned spell effects on for this guy to try and get the the full effect, he is beautiful. I wonder when SOE will learn that by tethering a MOB to its room you have effectively gimped them?.
Ngah Ngah cant touch me gimp boy
We ported out again and started to get ready for Xuzl. Now I know he is a fast kill, we would have dropped him in about 30 minutes tops. But as I already have the Xuzl flag and it was after 2.00AM, I had to pass and head for bed. We also have another raid tonight, hopefully there will be some Vex Thal goodness for us tonight!. Man I am going to feel like spattered shit tomorrow morning after two heavy raid nights. At least I can sit down with my bottle of whisky on Friday night, relax and raid in comfort in the secure knowledge I can sleep in the next day!.
I just have to make comment on the amount of PhatLewtz flowing into the guild at the moment. We have become so powerful and so much more organized that we are capable of blowing through MOB\'s that 6 months ago would have held us up all night. This means that on any given night we are getting multiple significant drops, the DPS of the guild has just gotten insane over the last few months.
Armor and weapons are being heavily improved by all tank's, Kez and the officers are putting in huge work researching and learning the next target set, Kez is going on his infamous little "shopping trips" and handing out fantastic stuff to everyone he can, people are getting items and handing them in or making items for fellow guild mates for free, most of us casters are approaching full spell books, in short we rock and we are getting even more powerful almost daily!
To leave you with one final thought; What makes the guild stronger, makes me stronger. Vex Thal tonight!
No Vex Thal :(... Emperor!. Logged in amid much debate about whether another guild had gimped the Vex Thal warders. In the end it was decided to head to Ssraeshza Temple as the Emperor was up. So we zoned, formed up, and the raid was split up. Some of us headed to the Second floor to drop a commander, some of us fought up to the 3rd floor. In the end the two raids came together and we spent quite a bit of time smacking snakes around for 3rd floor pieces.
Ooo err a snake!, how unusual!
Finally, after we had keyed about another 6 people we headed into the Emperor's room.
It looks so pretty and so peaceful...
We sorted ourselves out and Kez made the call,
And lo we brought him SNAKES!
Once everything was under control and we were good to go, we gathered in the Emperor and added another notch to our belts.
Having killed him several times now (6?) I can honestly say I don't think I will ever get sick of watching him die. The time and effort need to get into his chamber is such that he needs to die about 100 times more to pay me back.
That was pretty much it for the pickup raid that night. SA went on to do a couple of MOB's in Vex Thal later on but I was knackered and decided to call it an early one and logged about 12:30am
Friday I logged on full of pep and verve, stocked up with rum and whiskey, Coca Cola and ice, fully loaded and good to go. We were rewarded for our patience with all the stupid patch crap we have had to put up with in the last two weeks by a full Sol Ro Tower pop and an appearance by your favorite god and mine Agnarr the Storm Lord. Hey, anyone who keeps Karana caged and tortures him isn't all bad in my book!.
First up however was a run at one of my favorite zones, Sol Ro Tower. We headed straight towards Arlyxir the Phoenix. To get to him you have to clear a whole bunch of trash..
nothing gets really fascinating until you get to Galremos. He is quite a cool looking MOB and as you kill him he spawns little MagMites. So what I hear you say?, many mobs spawn adds as they die!, well the cool thing about Galremos is he gets smaller as he spawns them!.
Once you get past him its time for Arlyxir, she knew we were coming, she was waiting for us.
She has met us once before and I don't think she fears us yet, she will learn, oh yes she will! And like all MOB's that try to stand up to the Armada, she ends up face down in a pyre of her own fire.
Next up we headed back towards the Protector of Dresolik. All of the SA Necromancers were frantically asking me to link the Wand of the Firestorm that had dropped from the Protector last week. We were, at this point, under the impression that he dropped the Wand every kill. Unfortunately we were disabused of this notion later on in the evening.
On the way through to The Protector we ran into the Trash Nameds again, LOTS of them. They sure look cool, but couldn't they drop something for gods sake?, maybe a random piece of Ornate armour per named?. They aren't exactly one group-able so it wouldn't hurt the flow of Ornate into the game. Hell even the rarer pieces for trade skills per kill would be nice.
Naelizar in the middle of a full raid spell storm
Finally we make it to the Guardians of Dresolik. This time the clearing of them was a lot more efficient and we popped The Protector in record time (and no ugly summons for me!)
and then came the Protector, oops he fell over! So Sad
I\'m sure it took us about half the time to clear through to Dresolik than it did last week. So far we had dropped 2 named's, a bunch of Mini's and the PhatLewtz was beginning to flow again. Finally for Sol Ro, we headed to Xuzl's lair and dropped him, hard and fast.
Once we were done with them, we had reports that Agnarr had popped. We still had a reasonable amount of back flagging to do for Agnarr, so Kez called the raid to BOT. We all made it to the Bastion of Thunder in record time, formed up and were inside within minutes of the call. Now usually the break into the first level is chaotic. There is Wizzies nuking the portals, offtanks taking on the roamers and Pooby smacking the resident named and people running about all over the place.
As soon as we went in I knew this Agnarr run was just going to be different. The Wizzies took out the portals fast, offtanks held their MOB's, assists were called fast and clearly, we cleared the trash and started in on the Named within a minute. Within 2 minutes we were medding and getting ready for the next level of the tower. It was awesome to watch, like a well oiled machine in perfect motion. I doubt there is another Guild in the game who could have done it any better, as well maybe, but not better.
The same thing happened again on level two. We popped in and just laid the smack down on everything in the zone and without pausing for breath we were in level 3.
Skyfury is in the middle of that somewhere..
On level 3, Jolur Sandstorm gets ganked, trash is dealt with, Agnarr is parked. Rest, rebuff and GO!.
First pop from Agnarr
And the nastiest of them all, Pop number three
and without even trying we had cleared Agnarrs tower, smacked Agnarr and freed Karana, Freeing him is wrong I know, the dev's must laugh their asses off every time someone clears the Tower.
A God, 2 seconds from death
To be honest I couldn't believe it. It was so easy it felt almost like farming. Agnarr just got Dropped good and proper by us. I kept thinking, Xegony, Cornaiv, Fenin Ro, The Rathe, be patient, Southern Armada is coming for you too, we will be there soon. We already know we can kill Rallos Zek the Warlord as we got him to 2% in our first real run at him. We just need him to pop in our time zone to have one more go at him.
After Agnarr died I was lieing flat on the floor watching my monitor from the supine position, it was around 2.30am at this point and the Rum was catching up with me so I logged and headed to bed.
Saturday was another big big day with the good folks over at Unity. I logged in to find them forming up in the Plane of Earth, so I headed over and joined the raid. First up was the Ring of Mud which we just splattered everywhere. It was over so fast all I had to take a screen shot of was a dead Monstrous Mudwalker.
A quick run across to the Ring of Dust and a fast clear of the biggest Crocodile I have ever seen, Tantisala Jaggedtooth.
The Ring of Dust involves clearing 50+ trash mobs out of the way to spawn the Triumvirate of Soil.
The Triumvirate of Soil
I managed to miss the spawning and death of the Named at the end of this ring as a member of the Triumvirate took a hearty dislike to me and left not a lot but a bloody smear on the wall.
So that was two rings done quickly, Unity then decided that although doing the remaining two rings would spawn A Mystical Arbitor of Earth for the POEb entry, they would rather do a little more loot farming. So we all headed over to the Plane of Fire for a Phoenix kill or two.
I still love the look of these things, they really are magnificent as they hang in the air waiting for us.
First kill is Jaxoliz Dawneyes, Unity have this down to a fine art now, the first kill was a little lumpy, but the second was as smooth as silk.
And for the final pull of the day, incoming was Magmaton who died with not a single casualty on the Unity side.
All in all this was a hell of a big week for raids. The loot is still flowing into SA. We have stepped up beyond the back flagging and we are starting to see the rewards and get a clear taste of what awaits us in the Elemental Planes proper. Come on Rallos Pop you bastard so we can step up!.
Little things I have been doing during the week, I have finally finshed my Howling Stones Master Key!. It only took me about 5 deaths hehehehe. Not only does it open every wing door, it appears that it opens every door in the zone!. If anyone wants to go anywhere in HS just let me know. So next quest to start on is the Chardok Rings quest. This defeated me on Karana, but with a Master Key and the aid of some friends I will finish it on Prexus!. And last but not least, an updated pic of what Ulaa looks like with her new Glowy Wand!
