Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fifty Seven

22/03/04 Week Fifty Seven
Well not a hell of a lot to show for this week. We logged in and the call was for the Plane of Air and Xegony. I was so happy!. I've been hanging out for a Xegony kill because she drops two of the best Int caster items in the game pre-Time. So we formed up in the Plane of Knowledge at the POAir zone line.


Unfortunately the one guy who had a full key has retired and there was no way to get hold of him. So in the end it was up to Xardan and Genosin (and a great job they did) to suicide their way up to the isle. So after much waiting about we finally had the COH in place and the necros began to be pulled up to the isle for summoning.


Now on Prexus there is a channel called Barbraid where the unguilded gather and some of the more talented of them run raids for flags. So far they have been successful in clearing most of the Tier One and Two flags but they are wiping on the Tier Three (where it starts to get tough). I've been on a couple of Barbraid raids with my alt. They suck. people not paying attention, people actually arguing with the raid leaders, people generally dicking around, people who fundamentally cannot play their class.


Being on a Barbraid is like being back on Karana. Its a nightmare you just cant wake up from. Now someone had announced not only that SA was doing Xegony in Barbraid, they had also announced our chat channel name and that it was a free for all. We had every gimp dick head and his best friends drunk brain damaged cousin show up. Now some of them were invited (people from other guilds at our level, Talionis, Unity etc) but a lot of them weren't.


I think Kez and the Officers decided that we were having a "be nice to idiots, freaks and morons" day. I have no idea how they managed to stay so patient but after THREE AND A HALF HOURS of prep we were ready to engage Xegony. To illustrate why I wrote that in caps, our first Kill of Xegony took 3 hours in total and that included 2 wipes!.

Finally we were in place and we began the event. To be honest I never really had any doubt that we would kill her even with all the twits in the raid. Pooby got Boobie Mezzed at one point and died. But the slack was nicely taken up by Nymeria and the CH chain didn't miss a beat in the change over. Pooby was back up fast and reinserted as MT. The chain switched back without dropping a beat. I really don't know how they do that but full /props to the Clerics!.


We had enough SA people on the ball to absorb any potential mistakes. Anyway she died. It was good. Many alt's and people who missed the first time around got their keys. Several people completed their Time keys!.

So she was dead, Excellent now bring on the PhatLewtz!. I was sitting there slavering in anticipation. I just about cried when Kez announced she had dropped 2x Exquisite Phoenix Feather Mantle. 

Now first off Yay the tank classes. Happy for them. But WTF?. That's 4 of those in 2 kills!. She drops Vest of Phoenix Feathers and Xephyrus, Wand of the Flowing Wind. The BP is about the 2nd or 3rd best Int caster BP in the game and the Wand, well it just plain rocks.

I'm by no means massively Lewt focused and even if either of those items had dropped they possibly wouldn't have come to me anyway. But come on! 4x Exquisite Phoenix Feather Mantle? I demand a re-roll!, the Random Number Generator is broken!

Tuesday they patched in the new DirectX9 graphics engine. They didn't patch last night but I know many people have having huge issues so whether we will get to raid on Thursday and what is likely to be up is going to be a matter for the patch Lords at SOE.

Well sure enough Thursday rolled around and they announced a patch. I swear SOE has access to our message boards and places patches just so they can stuff us around. So we logged in for a really fast Fenin Ro kill in the Elemental Plane of Fire. Normally we don't get any loot off the trash named's on the way through to Fenin. But for some reason Thursday proved especially fruitful for us and we actually got 2-3 pieces from them.

Azobian the Darklord

Hebabbilys the Ragelord

Now once again we had a whole bunch of non-SA on the raid and once again it took forever to get them organized. Do other guilds normally take 2 hours to get sorted? How do their raid leaders put up with it?. The most time we wait for anything is for everyone to reach the setup spot. Once everyone is there we just buff and go. The amount of crap generated by having all these other people on the raid is just insane.

Anyway.

We sorted it all out and began the pulls. We were moving pretty fast as we didn't have a lot of time before the servers went down. Before we knew it all the trash was clear and we were setting up for Fenin Ro. I was bloody impressed actually, we cleared to Fenin in an absolute record time for us.

So we were there. He was there. We pulled him. He died. It was all good. Plus we actually got decent loot. rather than getting the crappy end of the RNG we actually came out on top for once!.

Fenin Ro 

Dead Fenin

Once Fenin was dead we ran back to the Picnic Tables and the pulls began from there. It was all very tiring and to be honest I was pretty much asleep at this point. We cleared out to the Archway and began to pull from the wasteland. There were a couple of other named's we pulled, Magmaton was one I think and there may have been a General. I'm not sure as I was fading in and out at this point.

The pullers were doing a fantastic job as the DX9.0b patch has screwed a lot of pathing in the zone. MOB's were getting caught on pebbles, small shrubs etc. and actually getting them to the raid seemed to be a real pain in the ass.That was pretty much it for the raid anyway and we camped as the servers were about to come down.