Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fourty Eight

21/01/04 Week FourtyEight
I was sitting at work, as you do, very quietly trying to avoid being noticed and actually given something to do, as you do, when I happened to surf by the Southern Armada web site. While there I noticed a post that mentioned that Xegony would be up and that those who were interested in having a go at her should logon tonight.


Sure enough, all atremble I got home Monday night, logged in and like many others asked for an update on Xegony's status. She was still up! So after doing a bit of pissing about and waiting for enough people to logon, I headed over to the Elemental Plane of Air.


We COH'd up to Xegony's isle. This was Southern Armada's first ever shot at her and we were all just crawling all over each other with excitement. We formed up, strats were called and Xegony was incoming!. Our first run at her we slowly battled our way through the first two waves. It was a bit lumpy with adds in amongst the Clerics, Pooby and Nymeria (our two MT's for this fight) going down rapidly thereafter.


Attempts were made to salvage the fight but Kez called the restart, so we reformed, rezzed, rebuffed and kicked off again.

Second run, we ended up in trouble in about the same place, just after the end of the second wave. Up till now the 10 Necromancers on the raid had all been hanging about the clerics and mana dumping to them. We were also combat rezzing people back into fights and mana dumping to bring dead's back up to speed asap. It was suggested we split up leaving 5 of us with the Clerics and 5 off to add DPS to the mobile groups. The five largest mana pools stayed with the Clerics and the rest ran off to Nuke stuff. We definitely noticed that waves were dieing a lot faster with the 5 additional high DPS toons pumping damage.

Everything else went well, adds were being controlled, Cleric rota was smooth, interception groups were moving about without aggroing additional stuff or running through Xegony's hit box. It was all going really well, then Pooby went down. Not sure why. I was in the Cleric Channel and the Rota switched over to Nym without missing a beat, no one dropped out or missed a call. It was weird.

So anyway, restart was called, we reformed and got ready to go again.

Third try was the charm. I know its a computer game and I am nowhere near any other players physically but I swear I could "feel" the whole of SA pull their chairs closer to their monitors, roll their sleeves up, top up their drinks and settle in to get this done. After the first two runs we knew we could do this. The CH Rota was more than capable of handling the damage from Xegony, the raid DPS was enough to handle the waves of adds and we were getting them split and off tanked nicely.

So we knew now that we were more than capable of handling the fight. We hunkered down, settled in and started again. The shot below is Xegony being nuked down to spawn an additional wave, I love the new spell graphics that were introduced a month or so ago. they are so pretty. Unfortunately the killing of Xegony has to be very, very controlled so no DOT's.

When we made it through the third wave and everything was smooth as a whistle I knew we had her. Having spent the entire hour or so of this fight in the CH chain channel, I have so much more respect (if that's even possible) for the job that the CH Clerics and Trundle as CH lead actually do. I have no idea how you do it guys but my hats off to you. Wow. A seamless 1-2 second CH chain for 45-60 minutes, you guys just rock. People drop out due to LD, getting killed, whatever, doesnt matter, the chain absorbs the change and keeps right on going.

My Job was essentially to keep mana dumping to the members of the chain and keep Crippling Claudication on Xegony. Its not a thrilling job but one that has to be done. I was basically picking a cleric, throwing 5-6 dumps at them, then the cleric next to them, then next to them, till I got low on mana, sat to med for 2-3 minutes and started again. The Clerics actually finished the fight FM!

Kez got a little excited during the fight and the quote of the week goes to him for this little gem.

Kezlar tells us: "south team will now move to north - there will be no more wouth adda aftes tot"
Yup ok Kez, I will get right on it!, whatever it was you said !*grin*

Finally we get to the good bit. Xegony is under 20% and the Nuke call is made. All the Necro's are life burning, I am nuking for all I am worth and the bitch is just dropping. 5,4,3,2,1 DEAD. Our second God in two weeks! 2 down, 2 to go!.

I have to say, although it was a damn good night for the tanks lootwise, for a MOB who drops at least 3 of the best caster items in the game her lewt on this occasion sucked ass. Bitch. Its ok tho, she is definitely on the farm list and we will see her many many more times I am sure.

Tuesday's raid saw us get another shot at another God, tho not quite as successfully this time. First up was a run at the nasties in the Plane of Fire. We have this down to an art now. Run in, form up, pull nasty phoenix, kill it, get another. Its a lot like being in an XP group.

Jaxoliz Dawneyes 

Criare Sunmane

Druav Flamesinger (again)

Tonight we got our first shot at the Avatar of Water, Coirnav. This is the last nasty bugger I need to complete my key to the Plane of Time. I have killed Fenin Ro and Xegony with Southern Armada and The Rathe Council with the good folks at Unity. Southern Armada will drop the Rathe Council no problems. All we need is a clear shot and enough Chanters online and RC will die to us like Gnomes do to a MOB. The only trouble we are going to have, and its the same with every guild at this point in the game, is Coirnav.

Killing the Avatar of Water is all about pure DPS, you need lots and lots and lots of it, applied concisely but massively.

So we formed up in the Plane of Water and COH'd down to Coirnavs room. Now this damn zone is buggy, laggy and generally hellish at the best of time's, but Coirnavs room has a lag factor second to no other area in the game I have yet been to. So once down there I logged out, turned off all models and any pretence at having a decent graphics card (IE I turned all options OFF). Logged back in and it was marginally better but it was like being back at an old Fear raid.

I know a lot of people disliked the Luclin Model set, but I have to say the old models were just SO damn ugly. I couldn't go back to looking at the game like that again. I am really hoping that the new spell effects engine they have put in place along with the new effects themselves are going to be a forerunner of things to come.

There has been a rumor of a new graphics engine for the last few months, the screen shot graphics I have seen look just amazing even on the old zones. I can understand that graphically rebuilding the entire game is a massive task but I hold out the hope that it will not only improve the overall look of the game but may even improve its graphical efficiency. Lots of people say that EQ is "dieing" or that SOE is going to shut it down. I honestly don't believe that.

I think if they can work out the tangle of legacy spaghetti code in the back end, document it all properly, rebuild the graphics and code to bring them up to a more "modern" standard then they can continue to upgrade graphics/game engines and keep EQ going as long as it still makes money. It still has the largest and most detailed content set of any game around and will do for some time to come. I may still be playing this game or its descendent in my 50's and remembering the "good old days"

Anyway, we formed up, setup, starts were explained in detail, this a complex fight and needs to be done fast, so everyone needs to know what they have to do before it happens. Once we were all in place the Guardian of Coirnav was inbound and the event was on!.

Unfortunately, for various reasons which we will have sorted for our next attempt it didn't work. We ended the fight with the first 3 waves dead but the boss mobs all in camp. This is what's technically known as a "Bad Thing" (TM)

That was pretty much the end of the raid for me. SA went on to take a run at a couple of Avatars in Air, but as it was about 1:40am I figured it was about time for me to hit the sack. Just getting to the Avatars would have taken longer that 45 minutes.

I think it was Thursday I was in a Fire Group which was chomping through the local fauna nicely when Rainbird asked for help to drop the final named for her key piece in the Plane of Storms. So we all headed over there and efficiently dropped Zertuken the Unyielding. I also managed to get Garakk a Key piece as there were a couple of spares. One more step along the road to keying a second toon. I know when we hit Time that the 85/15 thing no longer works so there will have to be a bit of back flagging to get everyone properly flagged. I will try and get Garakk flagged to at least Sol Ro at that point.

Thursdays raid didn't really go well for me. I was a little late die to finishing the last 200 combines of my Halas Meat Pies. I headed over to the Plane of Air, zoned in and died. Damnit, that's ok, it happens. Send a tell, get a Rez, zone in, start looting body, die again. FUCK. Ok now I am a bit pissed off. Get a second rez, collect both bodies, sit to mem spells, dead again. Oh ffs this is getting stupid. Now I am really pissed off. 3 Deaths and I have yet to actually cast a fucking spell.

Anyway, I sort another rez, get rebuffed for a third time, manage to get spells memmed without dieing and rejoin the raid. Several named's died during this period but the only one I managed to get a shot of was Inlokher the Warlord.

So we headed up to the Trigger for the Avatar of smoke taking in Pherlondien Clawpike on the way. So I have now been in the raid about 5 minutes. I have cast ToM about 3 times total and *SMACK* we get an add rom the back and guess who he decides to smash, Yup, my fourth death in about 15 minutes. Ah well, these things happen, you can either take them in your stride or get all pissy and log which is really just cutting off your nose to spite your face. So I gathered up my shit and started again.

The first Avatar we nailed was Wind. Around this point there was an emergency patch notification that the servers were coming down in an hour. So we very quickly scurried across to the Avatar of Smoke, dropped him as well and that was that for the night.

Dead Wind

About to be dead Smoke

I also managed to pick up a second piece to my Xegony Key. I think I need one more to complete the key quest. I have not only started the Aid Grimel quest (yes I am nuts and after about a week of Baking I am beginning to realize just how tough this is going to be) I have decided my aim is to get every key in the game that I can.

That's it for me for the next two weeks. I am off up to the North of New Zealand to lie on a beach, drink beer and generally do nothing. So there will be no more updates for two weeks. I am however planning a big "Year in Review" update for week 52 which will be my one year anniversary on Prexus.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fourty Seven

15/01/04 Week FourtySeven
Saturday afternoon, as I was stuffing about trade skilling I saw that the good folk over at Unity were forming up for Fenin Ro. Now we had tried Fenin a couple of months ago and failed due to a lack of Clerics online (we got him to 80% with 4 clerics and 2 bots). I wanted to see how Unity did the kill, just to see if we were doing it radically differently or to see if I could pick up some tips for whenever our next shot would be.
So I headed over to Plane of Fire, joined up with Unity at the picnic tables and Unity did exactly as I expected, They smoothly fought their way past the triggers and named's and took out Fenin Ro the Tyrant of Fire. No real surprises, nothing unusual or innovative in their technique, just a clean take down.

The Southern Armada's next raid was Tuesday night. We formed up and the call was for a single ring in the Elemental Plane of Earth, then the Arbitor of Earth and finally a few shots at the Elemental Plane of Air. So we all headed over to Earth, setup, and begin to pull and kill the Ring of Dust.

Do I have some spinach in my teeth?

We ran through the ring with no major hiccups and quickly downed a Perfected Warder of Earth.

I think someone must have already cleared all the other rings and thus we only needed to drop the one ring in order to spawn the Arbitor. We fought our way across the zone until we reached the Gemmed Guardians who guard the entrance to the tunnels of the Mystical Arbitor of Earth.

Finally we reached the Arbitor and with no fuss we dropped him. This stuff is getting easier and easier for us. After a bit of a rocky period post SA reaching the Elemental Planes, with lots of people stepping off and having a wee rest from raiding, SA is nearly back to its old self. MOBs like the Arbitor are smoothly and serenely ganked with no problems. We are ready to kill Gods now, the remaining farming between us and getting a shot at RC, Xegony, Fenin, and Coirnav is just going to make us killing them even easier.

Mystical Arbitor of Earth

Getting Funky!

Surprisingly after the Arbitor fell over, the call was not to Air but to the Elemental Plane of Fire instead. So we TL'd our asses out of Earth and headed across to SS1 where we proceeded to lay the smack down on the evil Quavonis Firetail, he was so embarrassed about putting up such a poor showing against us that he was determined to hide his face.

Druav Flamesinger. What can I say. Dead. Again.

Once the Raid Leaders had determined that we had cleared Fire of all available targets, it was time for the Plane of Air. First named up was Pherlondien Clawpike, an ugly MOB with a stupid name and phat, phat Lewtz.

Next up, after several tens of thousands of yard trash MOB's got stuck with sharp bits of steel, it was time for the Avatar of Wind. At this point a lot of people were logging and I think the Avatar was as embarrassed as Firetail, as we killed him with only about half a raid.

That was it for me and about 2:15am I logged and crawled off to my incredibly hot and muggy bed.

The Trackers of Spawn times had determined that there was a strong possibility of Fenin Ro popping for us on Wednesday which was technically a non raid day. I was logged on and running around in LDoN adventures, many others were logging in and out to check as we waited for Fenin to pop. It was getting on for 10:30pm and I was beginning to wonder if it was going to pop early enough for us to get a decent shot. And then..

*POP*

A Guardian of Doomfire is INC and Fenin RO is going to die!

There are many named's on the way to Fenin. Most of them drop no loot (except rarely) and yet are every bit as tough as named's in other Elemental zones. They have been known to trip up over eager or unprepared guilds. Basically if you cant take out these guys you have no business attempting Fenin Ro

Reaxnous the Chaoslord
Missing image

Azobian the Darklord 

Javonn the Overlord 

Hebabbilys the Ragelord 

Finally we had all the named trash cleared and were into the Council of Fire. The first to die was Chancellor Kirta.

Then came, and fell, Chancellor Traxom.

Warlord Prollaz
Missing image

Omni Magus Crato 

The council fell as smooth as silk. In fact as we warmed up, they died faster than ever. Finally, close to 2:00am, after a few moments to explain strat, prep and rebuff it was time. Fenin Ro is inbound!.

With the crew we had online I had no doubts at all that he would die. What I really didn't anticipate was how cleanly he would die. I killed him with Unity on Saturday and they have taken him down many, many times. This was our first shot at him and I have to say, if anything it was smoother that even Unity did it.

I knew we had him at 80%, everything was ticking over flawlessly, heals were going in smooth as silk, the Necro's were landing everything and Nuking in between. Even the Wizzies were managing to not get summoned and keeping focus on the MT. If anything this was, for us a very conservative kill. I know I was being extremely cautious about my aggro and was FD'ing after just about every single DOT. I suspect as we do him a few more times and get a bit more confident, this kill will get faster and faster.

This was close to a flawless kill. We lost one Monk on the pull (as you do) and that was it. Pooby stayed up the whole time, even after /def expired and we never had to do a tank switch.

/cheer Pooby
/cheer the Heal teams
/cheer the Pull teams
/cheer Southern Armada

One God down. Three to go.

The Final Humiliation
Fenin Ro the Tyrant of Fire as an SA Necro Pet

So two days in a row it was an after 2.00am bed time. I need to sleep now. Friday is our next raid. So its going to be me, Bourbon, and whatever the Lewt Gods bring us.

The Southern Armada Fenin Ro Crew

Friday,
there were after work drinkies, then there were after work drinkies drink's, so by the time I got home I was pretty pissed. I logged in, did a quick LDoN adventure for some fast points and headed to the Plane of Earth for the first raid. Beyond Horror, I still haven't actually bought anything in LDoN. The only additional item I actually give a crap about, I am still 200 points short of, I will get there but Im not too worried.

First up the Ring of Dust. Many many Devotees give their lives in the cause of Southern Armada's pursuit of PhatLewts.

The of course comes the boss, a Perfected Warder of Earth. He cant be that perfect, he keeps dieing.

Then the Ring of Vine *yawn*. At this point the booze and the fact that my computer room is small and very very muggy on this night starts to catch up with me.

Ring of Mud. A Monsterous Mudwalker prepares to die. I'm having trouble focusing at this point.

Ring of Stone. Peregrin Rockskull prepares to die horribly. I am consuming vast amounts of water in an effort to stay awake and fend off my hangover

Coat and Shoes MoB. Tanitsala Jaggedtooth the biggest crocodile the world of Norrath has ever known shows Pooby the soft spot under her belly. She is sick of dieing to us and figured she may as well make it fast. Luckily I use EQWatcher advanced, I have it set to speak to me when DOTS wear off. So on this raid I was casting all my dots, FD'ing, standing, sitting to med, sleeping and waiting for EQwatcher to say "Horror is off" before having to wake up and actually do something about it.

So quite literally I can say I have done Earth Rings in my sleep.

That was it for me. It was only about 1:30am but I simply couldn't stay awake any longer, hell I wasnt awake anyway, the booze and the heat were combining to send me off to dreamland. So I made my apologies and logged while SA headed off to drop the Arbitor of Earth.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fourty Six

06/01/04 Week Forty Six

And Lo the Lewt Gods looked down and they saith "all the American Guilds shall go back to school/work etc. Thusly they shall not be able to kill all of the good spawns and give The Southern Armada a good shot at them. And they did, and it was good. Verily"

Monday was a very, very good day for us. The PhatLewtz just rained from the skies and we plowed through content like it was Kunark Dragons. First up was much goodness in the Elemental Plane of Fire. For various reasons it seems that the other top guilds on the server were hanging about trying to cockblock each other and left us with all sorts of goodies up!

General Druav Flamesinger was the first to die. As usual he died pretty fast, but for once he didn't drop the Sword of MezzBreaking and instead dropped a rather sweet mask.

Quavonis Firetail came in rather earlier than I expected, one second I was chatting in group, the next a Phoenix was swooping down on me!. He went down FAST, faster than we have ever dropped him before.

Thirdly was the bitch. Babnoxis Queen of Spiders.

Last but most certainly not least was the mega tank General Reparm. Not only did he die. But he died flawlessly, yup that's right, we didn't even deign to sacrifice a Pally. A perfect kill.

That was it. We whacked 4 named's in Fire in less than an hour!!. So next it was off to the Elemental Plane of Earth for some rings. Kez decided we need to do at least one more flagging run at the Arbitor of Earth, and as all 4 rings and the Handbag and Shoes mob was up he figured tonight was as good a night as any.

Now many people have bitched that I don't tend to post any details about the Earth Rings. Mainly that's because they are so damn boring. But for the Whiners here is Ulaa's quick and dirty guide to getting flagged for POEb.

Step 1: Kill the ring of Mud
Step 2: Kill the ring of Stone
Step 3: Kill the ring of Dust
Step 4: Kill the ring of Vine
Step 5: Kill Tanitsala Jaggedtooth
Step 6: Kill the Arbitor of Earth
Step 7: Hail the PP

There you go, all the information you could possibly need!. Of course the first thing you need to do is kill LOTS of these:

Then prepare yourself to kill lots of Trees:

Then LOTS of Armadillo's:

There aren't quite as many of these guys to kill but there is still enough of them to be annoying.

Once you have killed all of that, you can now start on the rings. Remember of course that you will have to go back and kill the preceding MOB's many times over before finishing the 4 rings. So then its time to kill Mangled Vegerog's, lots and lots and lots of them. They come in groups, they hit really hard, they are mean. Kill them fast.

Once you have cleared all of those guys, Derugoak Bloodwalker will come running up, yell "Tag you are IT!" and then run away again. Of course his 'tag' does about 3K of damage so its a good idea to be well and truly ready for him!.

BTW Kez, I won the bet, where is my 100pp!? Kez put up 100PP for the first one to be summoned by Derugoak Bloodwalker, now NO ONE can generate aggro like a Necro, so I gave it my best shot and about 10 seconds later I was the first pinkish smear in the mud. Shortly thereafter, one by one all of the Necro's (and one Wizzie who really wants to be a Necro) on the Raid (11?, 12 of us maybe?) got summoned and splatted.

Once you have finished the Vine Ring, its time for the Dust ring. Go and find a couple of hundred Dust Devotee's and clear them out.

Once all the Devotee's are dead, pull in the assorted named's and kill them all, finally you are left with a Perfected Warder of Earth.

Tired yet?. You are only half way through at this point. Next up its the Ring of Mud. First up kill a lot of Sludge Lurkers. Not as many as the number of Devotee's you have to kill, but they are considerably tougher.

Once all the Lurkers are dead its AOE time!

Then of course its named time, a Monstrous Mudwalker is INBOUND!, kill him and that's the Ring of Mud done. Now you are of course going back and killing MOB's one through four at least 20 times between each ring aren't you?!.

Next its time to break it up a little. So the "HandBag and Shoes" MOB is ready to die. Tanitsala Jaggedtooth has kept the guild rich, once she is skinned and cured, there are jackets, shoes, boots, handbags, hats, coats for everyone in the guild and tons left to sell to others!

Now we are ready to kill the last ring. Its time for the Ring Of Stone. This is the best ring in the Zone for me cause we get to run into the middle of a huge pile of MOBs, who are all deeply distracted by the Chanters they are trying to kill, and cast my rather pathetic AOE. Woot its a blast!

To be honest at this point it was around 2:30AM and I went LD right before the named got pulled. I tried to get back in for about 5 minutes, looked at my watch, looked at the 1018 message clearly displayed on my screen and gave up and went to bed. SA went on to happily clear the Ring and then promptly dropped the Arbitor. So you will have to figure out the Arbitor tactics all for yourselves!. Woot Flags all round!

I do have to say Thank you Lord Innoruk, there will be a lot fewer Earth rings in my life. Now the bulk of the guild are POEb flagged we can start having a go at the named's in POEb!.

Tuesday, I got home from work thinking "I am tired after a long raid last night. I shall have an easy evening and then log early and go to bed." But NO!. First thing is I get a tell "Want to go to VP?" Hell yes!. I got my key to Veeshan's Peak a week or two ago but beyond zoning in I haven't used it. So myself and the two mighty Pallies Ometiklan and Ellyrion head over to VP. No one else wanted to play with us.

We zone in, clear the entrance, and Elly has to log. So Omet organizes a few more to join us and after a bit of a wait they arrive. So with a little preliminary set up we pull Hoshkar.

Unfortunately even with 4 of us we didn't have enough DPS and eventually he wore us down. So a quick wipe, reform, call for reinforcements and with a full group we pull him again.

This time we happily snuffed him. I thought maybe that people had just come to drop the one dragon, but I am learning that once SA gets a sniff of Dragon flesh it becomes an addiction and they cant stop. Or at least that's true for me and the rest of the group seemed happy to continue the Dragon slaughter. So we fought our way further in with the help of some guesswork and old maps and the next to die was Silverwing.

Then we headed over to the lair of the mightiest Dragon of the Kunark Era, Phara Dar! Now it turns out that Phara Dar is behind a locked door. But with the help of a some smart thinking by Genosin and a co-operative Racnar we actually got past the door and headed down to see the mighty Dragon!.

The door that could not stop us.

Initially we were a bit worried, Phara dar in her day was a massive MOB to kill and we weren't sure if, even now, we could do it. We needn't have worried.

Something I didn't know, Phara Dar is the only Dragon in the game I have met who has a room for her treasure hoard!.

A quick pause to take some pics:

The Veeshan's Peak crew. L to R
Ulaa, Genosin, Maltalbus, Feninie, Bilbax, Ometiklan

Another thing I didn't know, you can zone out of Phara Dar's room straight to the Plane of Air (The old one, not the Elemental Plane) so we did that and proceeded to clear the first isle just for fun.

Now considering the difficulty of getting the key to get into Veeshan's Peak, considering that there was no gate/summon and no GM help for this Zone for at least 3 years, considering that there is no easy way out except to fight through, even for Kunark era MOB's the loot here is shite.

Why would you go through all the difficulty and potential loss of fighting here when you could get equally good, if not better items in Sebilis or Karnor's for a lot less risk and danger. I think the 'idea' of Veeshans's Peak, a high end raiding, difficult to get keyed for, Dungeon is a good one (VT was maybe a little too difficult and insanely boring to get keyed for but was along the same lines.)

There are so many dungeons like this scattered throughout the world, underutilized but with a good basic design foundation. With a little reworking this would be a fun crawl for a single 60-65 group or a full raid zone. As it is, its fun, I'm glad I did it, I will do it again just cause I like killing Dragons, but it is ultimately pointless.

Wednesday.

As per usual the opener was the Elemental Plane of Fire. Now there wasn't the same plethora of killing goodness that was up on Monday but we certainly seemed to come out at the end of the night with a decent amount of PhatLewtz! We were all really hoping for a shot at the Gods. I know I am getting a little frustrated at not at least getting to give them a go now and again and I'm sure others feel the same. Unfortunately on the server we live on there isn't a lot we can do about it.

The whole reason for a Wednesday raid was that Fenin Ro was possibly going to be up. Unfortunately Talionis got to him before we could.

I was chatting with some Necro's from other servers in a chat channel and when I said there will soon be 5-7 Guilds in the Elemental Plane of Time on Prexus they were amazed. The most any of them had in Time on their servers was 3.

So first up was the two birdies. Jaxoliz Dawneyes was the first to die.

Followed closely by Criare Sunmane

And General Druav Flamesinger was the last target we dropped in Fire. These kills are beginning to feel suspiciously like farming, but what the hell, they drop some damn good lewtz.

As that was it for fire, we headed across to the Elemental Plane of Air which (apart from Xegony herself) was almost a full pop. So we headed over, formed up and started clearing the first isle. The first named we encountered was Baltaldor the Cursed.

I find Air quite odd in that you have a combination of insanely tough named's and then named's that you kill and didn't even realize that they were named's Baltador is one of those. There doesn't seem to be any sort of logical progression of toughness from the zone in MOB's to Sigismond.

Once clearing through the named's we finally get to the trigger and drop an Elemental Masterpiece.

With him dead we can no pull and kill an Avatar of Smoke.

We then had more un-noticed named trash. I didn't even realise we were killing Queen Silandria until the Raid Leaders called her loot.

It then appeared that we spent at least an hour killing Birds for no other reason that Kez doesn't like them

After Polly Parrot had died for the umpteenth time we headed over to start the Sigismond Event. Unfortunately its really hard to get pics of this event as the spiders involved are all quite small and transparent. Basically you pull and kill a bazillion baby spiders until you spawn an Archwalker.

Do that 3 times and you spawn Sigismond Windwalker . Oh and did I mention this is all on a timer so you have to do this really fast? Sigismond himself is really nasty. He hits like Reparm with the same 3500HP proc and casts an AE Silence as well. We fed him tanks for 30 seconds or so, he procced on the first 3 and dropped them immediately, then, once the heal chain caught the rhythm we fed him his ass.

I am also moved to mention that I just broke 6K raid buffed and 3500hp unbuffed!. Am I uber yet? *grin*. On Mondays Raid I was kindly awarded Miraguls Gloves of the Risen Souls. On Wednesdays raid I was also very kindly awarded a Gleaming Pendant of Xegony. At this point I am probably at zero or less for merit, but woot!. However with Raid loot coming in at the rate we have been seeing it recently I believe everyone has been doing hugely well in regards drops.

The officers are doing massive job and the guild is just increasing in power exponentially..

Also this week on Tuesday I finally finished the Spirit Wracked Cord quest that I have been doing for the better part of two years! Thank you muchly to Pano, Bilba and Elly who came across from Fire to help me kill the final MOB!. This week I have added about 220hp easily!.

That's the second run we have done at Sigismond, I have a feeling that although we now have a couple of Xegony keys there will be at least one more spider event in our future. By the way, no I don't get told this stuff by officers. Everything said here is PURE speculation on my part and is not to be taken as gospel/policy by anybody, at anytime.

When we first started Raiding Fire/Air/Earth/Water we were taking quite some time to clear through the zones and drop the Named's. A month or so of Farming the Elementals (OMFG just check out the PhatLewtz!) and we are just gutting these zones now.

Our DPS is through the roof, mana pools and regen are hugely improved, almost everyone now has full spell books, those of us who were relatively new to high end raiding now have a lot more raiding experience, the big bunch of Xserver transfers are now fully integrated and the whole guild is just ITCHING to get at Time. We are very ready for the Gods and I fully believe when we finally get a shot at them we will utterly gank them.

It was suggested to me once that SA is a "Lucky" guild in that we don't have anyone else (at the moment) raiding in our time zone. It was also suggested by the same person that if we did have that competition (we used to by the way) we wouldn't be anywhere near as advanced through the game as we are.

I would suggest in return that although we do not have time zone competition, we are in fact at the back end of a daily raid schedule that starts about 7am AEST and ends just before we log on to Raid. In other words KTF, NO, Unity, Talionis, ShA and FA all raid before us and usually manage to happily clear the best parts of the server on a regular basis.

This is not a whine, its a fact and part of life. I'm just not sure how this qualifies us as lucky. If we were at the start of that killing rotation, even with other guilds as competition we would be in Time now.

I would also suggest that if anyone can point out another 2 day a week Raiding Guild who is within 4 Kills of Time I would be very very surprised.

We are Ready for the God's
We are Ready for Time
Bring it on