Everquest Raids Southern Armada Week Seventy Eight

27/08/04 Week Seventy Eight
After clearing Ikkinz 4 twice now, we had enough people flagged to have a go at the next step up, Uqua the Ocean God Chantry.


We formed up in Yxtta and made our way across the zone to the entrance of Uqua which is an instanced zone.


We zoned in and immediately got hit with the zone wide AOE which is -300 to all stats. Its odd to have an int of 55 and I obviously take a big hit in my mana pool, but it's unresistable so there isn't a lot you can do about it. So we buff up with as many stat buffs as we can and begin the pulls.


The first pulls were extremely lumpy and we managed to wipe the raid twice within minutes of beginning. There is a trap close to the entrance, if you set it off you get 5 nasty MOBs inbound at once. You have to get all of them off tanked and under control as soon as possible or really bad things happen.


Here's the thing about Uqua; you cannot let anyone die, ever. Every time someone dies two things happen. The first is that a quad 1k hitting ghost spawns immediately. If you don't get the ghost under control quickly you soon have 2, then 3, then 4 of them on your hands up to a maximum of 8.


Once you have 2-3 of them rampaging plus the original pull, you basically are going to wipe.
The second thing that happens is that every mob in the zone gets very slightly tougher. Wipe too many times and the Mobs that are quad 1K hitters will end up as quad 2k hitters, and that's just the trash.


So once we had reformed after the first 2 raid wipes we slowly began to make our way forwards. We made it to the first of the Gas chamber rooms and managed to wipe again. Without giving too much away, you have to have the entire raid in a small room where a request is asked of the raid.


Answer the question wrong and 3 waves of 5K AOE's kick off. We figured out how this little trap worked after the first wipe and reform and got out of the room pretty damn quickly.


Beyond the first Gas chamber room is another trap and here is where we came unstuck. I logged at about 1:30am after our 3rd wipe in exactly the same spot. We just couldn't get the adds under control and people were dieing on each new pull. I was FD'ing and trying to stay alive after the wipe but the AOE kept popping me up from FD. The longest I managed to survive was 3 waves of AOE, but after I was down the third time someone got up and aggroed the MOBs. Once the person was dead there were about 5 Mobs standing around right on top of me. So once the AOE went off and I popped up, I was splatted.


At 1:30am I was insanely cold and shivering. That's with 2 gas heaters and a fireplace trying to keep the house warm. New Zealand has been hit with an ongoing series of vicious cold snaps in the last few weeks. Most of the country seems to be deep under a blanket of snow and ice and its really hard to sit in a room in front of a huge pane of glass which is sucking the heat out of the room (nice in summer of course) when its so cold you can see your breath.


Our Time raid went off as per normal. We actually started a little late due to delays in Tier 1, but we utterly blasted through Tier 2 and 3 and ended up close to on schedule. Bertoxxulous still refuses to drop the Veil. He dropped 2 a couple of weeks ago and has since made up for it by refusing to drop any more. Once again I had to log early due to the cold and was in bed by about 1:45am.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Seventy Six

19/08/04 Week SeventySix

Ikkinz Trial 4
This was our first attempt at trial 4 but we had successfully completed Trials 1,2 and 3 in the previous weeks with very few problems. Trial 4 however is supposed to be like the TZ/VZ encounters in Time in that they tend to stop Guilds dead in their tracks for quite some time.

The only thing we knew about this raid was we were going to need a Research Book (and I thought got the wrong one and had to go and get the LOY one in the middle of the raid - DOH. Turned out it didn't really matter which Research Book it was.) and a Tailoring kit. So I headed off and grabbed both of those and we formed up into Ikkinz 4.

We initially got the entrance wrong and had to run around the temple a bit looking for the right one. We finally found it and as we zoned in we received the following inspiration words from our much Esteemed Leader, the Great Bear, Kezlar.

"By the way guys I have nfi how this trial goes so the tactics tonight are suck it and see"

For those of our American friends who don't swear cause you are too damn pristine 'nfi' means 'No Fucking Idea.'

Now we had sort of been following the same tactical procedure for the first 3 trials so to be honest this wasn't too much of a surprise. At first I thought that this trial was going to be as boring as the first 3 and we would mostly cruise through it with only the odd MOB presenting some little challenge. Then we ran into the Altar Overseer.

Damn it I'm going to have to start writing the encounter names down again. Basically we engaged one particular stone looking guy, no difference from any of the other stone looking guys we had taken on recently, and he utterly ganked us. The entire raid was down literally within about 30 seconds of the engage. He had some god awful AOE we just weren't expecting, the adds he called in we expected, we just didn't expect them to be quite so evil.

So we reformed after the wipe, readjusted our tactics and charged in again. This time we took him down fairly smoothly, but the sudden shock definitely shook me up.

We have been in "farm" mode for several months now, so running into something capable of taking us out as a raid that fast was definitely a wake up call. Suddenly GOD was a looking a bit more interesting.

We continued on with the raid and didn't really have any more issues till we hit the final Boss, the Keeper of the Altar. I had been nodding on and off all night for some reason and after the first wipe against the Keeper I basically fell asleep waiting on the raid reform. I woke up at 2:30am face down on the keyboard which was making a "Get your fat head off me" beeping noises.

Its the first time I have actually fallen asleep on a Raid. I've nodded, I've dozed, I've "rested my eyes" but I've never fully gone to sleep before.

At that point I logged. Southern Armada went on that night and dropped The Keeper of the Altar. So basically in 4 raids in a row we have cleared the Ikkinz trials.

Now Wolfestar said something on our boards the other day I thought I would share as I think it sum's up one of the faults of the GOD expansion rather well.

Wolfestar quote

I've been trying to think why GoD to me seems so flaky. It's not the flagging system, or lack of different mob types. It's not even the high difficulty, or the fact we should have been level 70 to do it. I actually like the Ikkinz instances, even though they are the same map and models.

It suddenly dawned on me this morning. It lacks a sense of place.
I couldn't even tell you the name of the continent it's set on, or why it's only just been discovered. Or where it is in relation to the other continents.
Kunark, Velious, Luclin and PoP all had a clear history, and location. They could be mapped in relation to their neighbors - Odus, Antonica and Faydwer. (Granted you had to hold a tennis ball above the map and say Luclin for that one, but you know what I mean ).
Remember printing off tons of maps, and then using them to navigate from Qeynos to Freeport? That to me gave it a tangible reality.
To me, this lack of place is why it's out of step with the rest of the game. I'm still having loads of fun in EQ, but I think Sony stuffed up the basics.


I agree wholeheartedly. GOD is "nowhere" in particular, if you drew a map of the continents of Norath, with connection maps to the Old and New Planes, Luclin etc you could do it and have some good idea of where it all fit into the physical layout of the EQ Universe.


Yet I have absolutely no idea where GOD or OOW is set. Is it a Plane?, a Continent?, or some until now undiscovered Moon?

Time on Thursday was a full clear.

Tier One
Tier Two
Tier Three
Saryrn
Terris Thule
Tallon Zek
Vallon Zek
Bertoxxulous
Cazic Thule
Rallos Zek
Innoruuk
Quarm

DPS seemed awful low at the beginning of the raid which slowed down our progress through Tiers, 1,2,3. We had a few glitches here and there in the upper Trials which caused delays. Thus I ended up logging at 2:00am shortly before we engaged Innoruuk.

Recently for various reasons I have been rather heavily stressed. The major of these reasons is I hate where I live and I am stuck there for at least another 6 months. I don't know if you, the reader, have ever been in a position where you would rather be at work than at home because home is so unpleasant, but that's where I am now.

So I am sitting on the Time raid, we are progressing as normal. Towards the end of the raid I suddenly realize I'm sitting there thinking "That XXX should have been mine!, I DESERVED that XXX!, Why didn't I get that XXX?."

I'm not like that, I never have been, I don't raid for "Stuff" and I've just never been that Loot-centric. But I found myself sitting there absolutely focused on getting stuff that I thought I somehow 'deserved' and getting really angry when I didn't get it. I am just so not that person.

I was just stressed and tired. I've determined to reign myself in if i ever start going down that path mentally again. I don't like it.

Anyway, one of the reasons this update is late is I have been working on a complete redesign of this Web site. 

Its still being built and it will be being changed and tested over the next few weeks. So if something doesn't work, don't get too bitter and twisted as Its a long way from finished.

I am completely rebuilding and reorganizing the layout of the site as well. How I'm going to port all of the existing Data into the site I really don't know.

I've also started keeping track of the named kills in GOD so I can properly identify them in these updates rather than saying "the 2nd named rock guy in Ikkinz 2" so next weeks update will be a lot more detailed.

Everquest Raids Southern Armada Week Seventy Seven

20/08/04 Week Seventy Seven

Ikkinz Trial 4. This was our second run at this Trial and we were hoping on being a lot faster and a lot cleaner this time as we now had some idea of how each encounter was going to go.

Thankfully with this trial there isn't the umpteen million trash mobs to clear through, so all you have to do is prep for each named. I also remembered to bring my Research kit and my Fletching kit for the key combines this time. So I didnt have to go porting out of the raid zone and running across the world again.

First up are the Altar Wardens. There are two of these, left and right and they are an easy kill. This is a fairly straightforward, pull and fast heal the tank fight. In fact they die so fast its really hard for me to be mana efficient. They die too soon to really load up DOTs on them, Neuro simply resists, so all I can really do is send the pet and chain Tap.

Next up are the Altar Sentries, again two of them, left and right. Despite the dungeons being "Cookie Cutter" in layout there are the odd touches here and there of cool design. I quite like this view of the Altar Sentry (which to my point of view is a huge model, bigger than an Oggie) standing below a massive statue of one of the Elf guys.

Now the Altar Sentries have a wee bit of a twist to them, they are what's known as "Class Kills". The way these guys work is that when you kill them you will get an emote after they die about which class needs to actually get the kill shot. If you are lucky they will just die, if not you will get something like "the Altar Sentry is vulnerable to the flashing blades of Holy Knights". The Sentry then re spawns back at his bind point.

Once you know which class needs to kill the Sentry you pull him again, at 5% everyone backs off and only the requisite class continues doing damage until it dies.

Then comes the Altar Overseer, or "The Pit Guy" as he is known. Now this is a fun fight. You engage the Overseer who is standing in a large bowl surrounded by guardian statues, at various points in the fight he calls the statues to his aid and they wake up and go straight for the Clerics. You have to have off tanks picking them up and engaging them as fast as possible. It doesn't have to be for long as the adds only last for a few seconds and then wander back to where they came from.

This is one of the few fights in Ikkinz 4 that I can actually partially unload on. This guy takes about 2 minutes to kill, so I can actually get a Horror, BOT and an NightFire on him before he dies. Of course only Horror runs full course but never mind.

After this there are a couple of encounters that I actually couldn't get decent screen shots of. As you are probably able to guess at this point, the models are all exactly the same so its not like you are missing a lot by not having screen shots.

There are the two Phantasmal Priest Guardians. These guys have an AE Gflux which is kind of fun. One minute you are casting away happily and the next you are 30 feet in the air against the roof and half way across the room. We didn't manage to split them and the first pull we got both of them. The kiters couldn't pull them off the MT and the raid wiped slowly.

We recovered quickly (The lost art of the raid wipe and recover is slowly returning to us) and the next pull we just off tanked one while we killed the other, that worked perfectly and we were quickly moving up to the next fight.

After the Phantasmal Priest Guardians come the Curate Fire Tenders. Again no screen shots and just straight up fights.

Then you get to the Oracle of the Altar, he is really more about clearing the way to the Altar Construct who is the really hard kill of the zone. The Construct randomly spawns adds. The problem is that you never know how many there are going to be. They hit for 1800, some are mezzable some aren't and very simply if you get too many spawning you are going to wipe.

This to me is very poor encounter design, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to how many adds spawn, so there is no way for the players to mitigate the numbers. Simply put, you need to do this encounter till you get an amount of adds that you can handle. Until you get that number you just keep aborting / wiping over and over. If you are lucky you may only have to do it 1-2 times, if you aren't and the RNG is against you then you can do this dance all night.

Finally, the boss of the zone and the Key mob. This is the Keeper of the Altar. After the Oracle of the Altar fight this one is fairly simple. He spawns adds, you keep them off the Clerics and you BURN him hard. This is the guy I always save LifeBurn for. Once he dies he spawns the little skeleton piles that come with all of the other kills in the Ikkinz trials. In these little skele piles are chunks of stone and rock. You only get as many flags as you have people alive at the end of the fight.

I fucked up at this point. I thought that the above message that flashes up on the screen was the flag. It wasn't, the flags are actually the chunks of rock in the skeleton piles. Unfortunately I didn't know this and I looted one without being told. Now one of the BIGGEST no no's on an SA raid is to loot anything without being told. I know this, I've always known this. I was tired is all I can say and not paying attention properly.

So after being thoroughly reamed out by a number of people, not least of which was Kezlar, I was feeling suitably stupid. Anyway, the remainder of the flags were handed out and I will be there for the next ikinz4 kill as well. So I will do my bit to make up for it by going back to Ikkinz 4 as many times as is required, just like all the other back flagging.

The remaining Raid of the week was Time. We flew through this and set a guild record of 4 hours 55 minutes to clear the whole Zone.

Just recently NZ has had a number of really cold snaps. There have been a number of raid nights where I have been sitting in front of my PC and its less than 5C in the room. So in a couple of occasions (this Time raid and a few in the following weeks) I have had to log just to go to bed and get warm. I don't like it but when you cant type or press a mouse button because you are shivering so much you don't really have a choice.

Hopefully in the next 2 months I am moving anyway, so I will be in a place where I can be warm, comfortable and raid.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Seventy Five

10/08/04 Week Seventy Five

It has been put to me that I have in fact gotten the timeline of our GOD raids wrong for the last couple of weeks. This is in fact correct. This week (Not the week I'm writing about now, but next week hehehe) we dropped Ikkinz4. So essentially in 4 GOD raids we have done Ikkinz 1,2,3,4 in a row. Quite an achievement considering we have had absolutely no idea about any of the encounters.

Mostly we go in, try it, see how bad we get hammered and how (that's only if we don't succeed first shot) adjust our tactics and then go again. Its a formula that has yet to fail us.

This week we actually started with GOD and Trial 3. I initially though we would be able to do Trials 3 and 4 in the one night, but they aren't as easy as all of that. Once again we got the cookie cutter zone layout, its exactly the same layout as Trials 1 and 2 with the mobs in exactly the same places and doing exactly the same things, only more so.

As a rough example of what I am talking about 

Trial1 : Nasty_Named_MOB_01 Hits 1000/triples 10K HP
Trial2 : Nasty_Named_MOB_01 Hits 1200/triples 15K HP
Trial3 : Nasty_Named_MOB_01 Hits 1800/Quads 25K HP
Trial4 : Nasty_Named_MOB_01 Hits 4500/Quads/proc's 1500DD, AOE's -300 Chromatic 2500DD 55K HP

They seem to ramp up considerably in nastiness with Trial 4 being a real bruiser (more on that next update.) Anyway we romped through Trial 3 pretty much. The last named caused us a few issues and there were two unplanned Raid rezzes but we still dropped him in the end. One thing that is annoying is to go from the volume of Lewtz that Time gives us, back to 2-3 Lewtz per raid. Admittedly the quality of the Lewtz is the best in the Game but its still a bit of a shock to the system. Time has spoiled us a bit.

I left this raid about 2:00am I think and headed straight to bed.

The following Thursday was a full Time clear.

Tier One
Tier Two
Tier Three
Saryrn
Terris Thule
Tallon Zek
Vallon Zek
Bertoxxulous
Cazic Thule
Rallos Zek
Innoruuk
Quarm

We had to delay it to the 2nd raid of the week due to splitting the Time kills across last week. We want to be doing this as one single raid to get it out of the way. I think it also makes people happier when we do raids where simply massive amounts of Phat Lewts are dropping and everyone seems to get a piece.

My weakest points, and the things I am really looking for an upgrade for are my Face, Earrings and Secondary. They are the only pieces left on me that are sub 100 hp. Everything else, be it raid dropped or picked up in XP groups are all at this point over 100hp and I'm happy with that.

A lot of stuff is now starting to Rot. The officers had nobody interested in Tier1, Tier2, Tier3 loot. There are a few pieces in there that would be minor upgrades for me (Arms from T3 have more regen and slightly more hp for example than mine) for example but I am waiting for absolutely everyone else who wants them to get them first. When they start to go to Bots I will put in for some of this stuff.

I really really wish I had managed to get Garakk Time Flagged. I can see stuff that would be a massive upgrade for him passing into the "grats Rot" category very, very soon. Even the main Bots don't want a lot of it.He is slooooooooooowly approaching 59. I'm not entirely sure why but from about 55+ groups for Warriors simply stopped. Up till 55 getting a group was reasonably OK, now I spend hours LFG on him and get nada. the best XP I have managed for him in the last couple of months has all been in 65 groups where I tag along.

I didn't even think of getting him Time flagged at the time. I was concentrating on the Guild Flagging, this weekly tome and getting Ulaa flagged. To be utterly honest I'm still flabbergasted every day that we made it. I think in some small part of me I never, ever thought I would be in a Time Level and beyond Guild. So I just didn't get Garakk Flagged, I really should have.

I've been trying to get him a lot of the older flags but successful pickup raids are few and far between. He has a few flags and 3 associated AA's but he is still missing a hell of a lot.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Seventy Four

01/08/04 Week Seventy Four

Tier One
Tier Two
Tier Three
Saryrn
Terris Thule
Tallon Zek
Vallon Zek
Bertoxxulous
Innoruuk
Cazic Thule
Rallos Zek

This weeks raid did not go smoothly. It wasn't just me, I think everyone was having a very "average" day. Basically this raid was just lumpy. It started off badly with a near wipe in Tier 1 Fire. That immediately put us behind the 8 ball in terms of time. It didn't really get better from there. We struggled through Tier 2 and 3 and finally began to get out act together around Tier 4.

There was nothing immediately I could point a finger at and say "this sucked", just that nothing seemed to work all that well. We cleared out tier 4 and then managed to near wipe in Tier 5. The pull of the armies for the AOE clear could be termed a little "enthusiastic" on the part of the Monks. We effectively managed to wipe about a half of the raid in one pull which took us time to recover from.

Vallon didn't drop my earring (Bastard) so by the time 2:00AM rolled around I figured it was time to head to bed. As I was logging Southern Armada was just forming up for the engage on Rallos Zek. They dropped him and decided it was time to finish for the night leaving us with Innoruuk and Quarm to kill for the following Thursday.

Thursday:

An extremely quick form up and clear of Tier One. It was almost like people were embarrassed at their performance on the previous raid and were on the ball. Either that or the beer drought in Sydney had ended and people were now properly pissed.

Either way it spelt doom for Inny.

We dropped Quarm with no worries at all.

As we had plenty of time on Thursday we headed over to GOD and an attempt on Ikkinz 2 and 3.

We cleared through 2 and were about half way through 3 when I had to get to bed. I have to admit its starting to be fun. When an encounter can start to seriously challenge your power as a guild is when the game gets interesting. Its not at the level of the elemental Gods yet, but its definitely shaping up that way.

Now here is where I think SOE fell down on the Gates of Discord expansion: 

Aliens, its a fucking fantasy game, stop it with the damn Aliens. If I wanted aliens I would play StarWars:Galaxies. 

Spell Availability: Give us our sodding spells. The next expansion is nearly out and I still don't have a full spell book. I at least have the advantage of a raiding guild and a bunch of guildies regularly fighting in KT and higher zones. For the non-raiders and the casuals it must be insanely frustrating. I know I certainly wouldn't be purchasing the next expansion as a casual, what for?.

Assassins: I'm a Hero, I play this game to be "The Hero" not to be a hired assassin for the Wayfarers guild. They want stuff killed, let them go do it. Bring back high fantasy.

Graphics: The 5 or so models there actually are in the expansion look really good, but cookie-cuttering your way through a zone does not a good expansion make. Give us Boss Mobs that look different, give us models that really stand out. I actually really like the look of the little elf guys, but I never get to see them as they are always surrounded by a raid.

A lot of people hate it (mainly non-raiders) but for me the best expansion so far for MOB models has been POP. Each zone has something different and each boss from Xanamech up has a Unique look and feel. For Zone design and for the way zones integrate and work within each other and the way the Lore works, for the "look and feel" of zones, easily the best expansion was Kunark.

Zone Design: I really really hate the idea of using the same zone model for all the trials. Its cheap, its shitty and it looks awful. there is no excitement of zoning into somewhere new for the first time. I do ikkinz 1-4 and I know the fucking zone is going to look exactly the same every bloody time. This is just cheap, SOE claims that they are still devoting resource to EQ and then they put out stinking piles of shit like GOD.

The have announced Omens of War, the next expansion on from GOD to be coming out soon. I will end up buying this for one reason only. Levels.

I want to continue raiding with Southern Armada as raids are the best part of the game for me at the moment. To continue to contribute to SA raids I will need to level to 70. To be honest this pisses me off. Its already been let slip that the level increase was supposed to be released prior to GOD's release but they fucked up. SOE now knows that people are so fucked off with them that the ONLY way to get anyone to buy the sticking pile of shit, that I'm positive OOW is going to be, is to bundle the "free" level increase into the expansion pack

SOE has admitted that GOD was a complete screw up from the design stage up, they admitted that the level increase was to be free, they admitted that GOD and OOW were originally one expansion and they got split up by the bean counters. They have managed to completely alienate an already angry player base.

OOW should be a free release.