Everquest Raids Southern Armada Week Eighty One, Eighty Two, Eighty Three

20/09/04 Week Eighty One


Omens of War


It has become hugely apparent that the Omens of War expansion which went live on Wednesday was released in the wrong order. OOW should have been released prior to the Gates of Discord expansion, to be honest, they should have been released as a single expansion. Rule of thumb for all budding young game developers. We, the players, aren't idiots, don't assume we are and never ever let the marketing weenies get their hands on your release schedule.


If the expansions had been released in reverse order, or as a single expansion it would have made the casuals and the raiders both a lot happier. Both sides would have had a lot of their 65+ spells, everyone would have been level 70 with increased, HP, AC, Mana pools, resists, attack values etc etc. Everyone would have picked up some of the Time tier one/VT level gear that is dropping in the OOW zones and thus would be better equipped to have handled the release of GOD.


Once GOD was released, the raiders would have moved out of OOW largely and powered into the GOD raid zones leaving OOW to the casuals and non-raiders. Voila, everyone is happy (well as happy as an EQ player ever is)


Releasing GOD first was a fuckup of monumental proportions and whoever was responsible for it should be fired.


Having said that I am so far thoroughly enjoying OOW. I logged in and formed up with an SA group to head into the new zones. As I was running about and asking for directions it was pointed out to me that there were in fact maps. So after a quick trip to eqtoolbox.com (You guys absolutely rock!) I downloaded all the maps and logged back in. We formed up in the Nobles Causeway and headed through to the Walls of Slaughter on our way to the Muramite Proving Grounds.


On the way to the Proving Grounds we were killing stuff as we encountered it. I dinged on the first kill and easily slid my way into 66 for the first time. My favorite MOB model so far is definitely the Bazu models.

Although the Discordlings do come a close second. They are like Satan's idea of a cute little puppy dog

We made it to the MPG without too much incident and started to kill our way into it. This zone really reminds me of Velious. It is absolutely enormous. It still uses the "cookie cutter" zone design of GOD but it has little touches of finesse that give it a sense of its own uniqueness. The way the maze is laid out with blind allies and leads, the little blind corners that have MOB's hiding around them and the sheer scale of the place. My first impression of it was that it was so much like the old velious armour run in Sky Shrine. It just seemed to go on forever.

If they are ever going to introduce a new player race, the MOB's who would make the coolest new race are obviously the Orc's (the only reason I am looking forward to playing WoW is that I can play orc's!) however if orc's are not available my next vote would have to be the Dragorns. They just out and out look cool!.

So we kept slaughtering our way through the PG and encountered a few more MOB types and models. I like this zone, the spread of the MOBs forces a party to crawl their way through the areas rather than just sitting in one spot and pulling everything to you. The MOB respawn is also fast without being hideously dangerous the way the early GOD trials were. So it keeps you moving but if you do decide to turn and go back the way you came you aren't just running through an empty zone.

I have to say well done to whoever laid this zone out. I am also enjoying the new MOB models. However next time SOE comes to design a new expansion I hope they remember one thing; 6 new mob models do not an expansion make.

Basically in OOW you have the 6 or so GOD models plus 6 or so new models. Its a refreshing change but its still second rate and not what we have come to expect from SOE.

I have been re-reading a lot of the literature that was being released around the time of the SOE Guild meet to which the Great Aussie Bear should have been invited!, a huge oversight I am sure will be rectified in the next one, speaking of which, when is the first Australian fan faire?, hell even if it was somewhere in Asia I would go.

**** Much Delayed Update ****

I have had a hell 2 weeks. Firstly I did 31 hours in 2 days a couple of weeks ago trying to make my backup solution work again. I failed and they brought in a guy from aussie. So I was doing 12 hour days with him onsite to make the steaming POS work.

Then I got told that I was going on training for the next 8 working days. So I have just done a 3 day course on Electronic Policy Orchestrator followed immediately by a 5 day course (which was actually 2x 4 day courses compressed into 5) on Implementing and Managing Active Directory in a 2003 Domain. So essentially I have been both brain dead and nowhere near this PC for the last couple of weeks to complete this update.

On top of all of that there is a strong possibility that I will be losing my home DSL connection in the coming months. Oh Joy.

So all in all not a great month for me.

On the EQ front however I have been having an absolute blast. I managed to work my way to 69/35%, I have 3 spells and I completed my Epic!. Woot!.\\The original Necromancer epic weapon was not only a POS it was insanely hard to get. Most of the drops were fairly simple to get and as a 65 Necro with a full spell book I could have solo'd most of it. However even once I moved to Prexus and was with a guild capable of one grouping Cazic Thule, the drop that was needed from him was so insanely rare as to be a waste of time to even attempt it .


So when they announced Epic 1.5 and 2.0 I was thrilled and determined to do the quest. So about 1 month from the start of it and with immense amounts of help from my guild mates, I completed not only the epic bypass (needed because I didn't have the Epic 1.0) but I completed the Epic itself. I will have pics soon, its my first day back at work so I'm a bit inundated with catch up.


So far I am still thoroughly enjoying OOW as well. The camp spots are nicely balanced, the mobs are killable without being easy, some pulls are singles some require either good CC in the form of a chanter/bard or fast root/snaring. I've done a couple of epic kills with people that have been a lot of fun as well.


On the whole I have to say SOE did a good job with this expansion. I am going to forgive them GOD at this point and say I am tentatively looking forward to their next offering.

Raiding in the last week hasn't been good. Mondays Time raid I couldn't connect to at all. I was on earlier in the evening but when I tried to logon for the raid I couldn't connect. It was odd, I couldn't seem to get past Sydney. I could connect to (and ping) NZ and OZ based web sites but no international or US based web sites. After an hour or so of trying I gave up and went to bed.


The following Thursdays Uqua raid I realized that Aussie still hasn't switched to daylight savings, so raids are starting at 10PM my time. As I was on an expensive training course and really needed to be vaguely awake the next day I decided to pass on that nights raid and head to bed early.


With the addition of 5 levels and extra spells SA moved quite a way past the point we had gotten stuck at before apparently and penetrated a lot further into Uqua. The first raid night for this week is tonight and I will be back to the regularly scheduled updates. !

OOW has also restored a lot of my faith in the Necro class. With GOD I was beginning to feel very unhappy with the path the Dev's seemed to have sent us down. With OOW they have redeemed themselves. They have done several things which have made Necros wanted in groups.


Firstly a lot of MOBs run, so snarers are again really useful. Secondly Mind Wrack affects everything. So by the simple expedient of casting MW on every mob I can add to the groups mana regen capabilities. Its not a huge amount of mana but every little bit helps. Thirdly I can do damage again. Horror seems to be a lot less resisted on OOW mobs and the new spell upgrades (The ones that I have aquired) have added immensely to my ability to do burst and long term damage.


On Raid bosses having the FD AA (Castable as a hotkey and while spell gems are refreshing) and the additional DOT damage means I am doing a third again as much damage (EG: 65K against Tallon Zek) as I was prior to OOW. So I have some group Utility back and I have maintained my ability to contribute large amounts of damage to raid mobs.


***** A Further Update *****

This weeks raids have turned out to be rather uneventful. I'm still three hours ahead so raids are starting at 10PM for me. Apparently Australia moves forward to Daylight Savings Time at the end of this month, I cant wait, it will put raid times back to the normal 5 hours rather than 4.


So we cleared Time and at a record pace for us. I left about 2:00am just as we had reached and started clearing Tier 4. We had just dropped Cazic and Innoruuk and were heading off to start on Rallos Zek when I gated to POK and logged.

Uqua on Thursday started late, really late. The raid formed up at 10:00PM but didn't get off the ground till 10:45PM. We splatted Pixxt Suir Mindrider first and then zoned into Uqua. Last week I took about 30K and bought 100% weight reduction backpacks. So the -100 STR AOE on Zone in didn't bother me at all this time.


We handled the traps and multiple pulls with no issues this week. We now have a number of 11K+ Warriors as well as several 11K+ Knights and a lot more healing power with the new 65+ spells, so off tanking has become a lot easier for these events. The tanks also figured out a good way of peeling the multiple pulls off and keeping them occupied without dieing themselves.


We easily made it up to the first trap room and here was were it all went wrong. Basically when you enter the room, each person starts to receive emotes, in that emote is the name of a key. On a nearby table are a number of different keys, once you receive an emote you tell the Guild asap and the key master (Kezlar) picks up the key and clicks the door.

Simple right?. Well it is until people are fucking about, emoting stupid shit and generally breaking raid rule number one : PAY FUCKING ATTENTION, they wait too long to say the key name and Kez clicks the door after the next emote has started. You only have about 10 seconds to find the right key and click the door, before the emote sounds again and the key changes.


Oh didn't I mention this bit?. If you click on the door with the wrong key you kick off an AOE. Its only small enough to affect everyone in the room and its only 3 waves of 5K damage each. So that was that. After the rez and rebuff, we clicked through the door in seconds.


We made our way deeper and deeper into the zone. More traps were spawned, more multi pulls. Most of them were handled beautifully with only a few deaths and the Death adds (a 65 MOB spawns when a player dies) quickly locked down by the on the ball Chanty team.                 

We cleared the names and started to clear the Avatars (Fury and Rage). Somehow we ended up with 3 Avatars in camp. I think a puller went LD as we had been having a lot of Link Deaths over the course of the night. At this point I had to log. It was 1:45AM and I couldn't see us getting back underway in any significant manner prior to 2:00am. So I gated out to POK, said my good byes and headed to bed.


Uqua will definitely fall to us next week as after I left the Guild got very very close to beating the final encounters.

Everquest Raids Southern Armada Week Seventy Nine and Eighty

17/09/04 Week 79 & 80
I've combined these weeks together for several reasons. The primary reason is that not a whole lot actually happened beyond "The Usual". We cleared Time a couple of Times. We did Ikkinz 4 again (and utterly Ganked it this time) and managed to get a lot further through Uqua.
The secondary reason is that the Omens of War launched finally and its turned out to be quite a lot of fun. I must admit I was beginning to get decidedly bored with EQ. The incessant hunt for the next group (tough as a Necro) and the endless mindless farming of crap AAs was beginning to drive me to distraction. It got to the point that I was in fact finding it hard to log on, even for raiding.


However with the release of OOW I now have a number of things to aim for. Firstly is Level 70. I had forgotten what a great motivator the level Grind can be. Secondly is Epic 2.0. I really really wanted to do my epic back on Karana but was never in a guild capable of killing the requisite mobs often enough to attain the stupidly rare items. I was actually awarded the Slime Blood of Cazic Thule (which was the major item blockage) about a week before I left Karana to come to Prexus.


As I was leaving anyway I held on to it for about a day, just to say I actually once had it, and then handed it back to the guild and transferred servers.
First up we will take a wander through Ikkinz4. We absolutely flew through this on our third run. First up we hit the Altar Wardens and then the Altar Sentries

Once they are out of the way its time for "the pit guy" otherwise known as the Altar Overseer. You will note Pooby as ever taking the pounding. Pooby likes to take the pounding. Its what the Pooby is for!

Then comes the Phantasmal Priest Guardians. These guys gave us a bit of trouble last time as they are rather hard to split. When they come you have to be prepared for 2 of them. So off tanking has to be ready and secondary heal chains ready to keep the off tanks up.

Then its time for the Oracle of the Altar. This guy hits like a train but doesn't seem to have a huge amount of HP. He dies inside of two minutes. Its the adds that will cause you the pain. We nailed him on only the second try tho so we were very happy about that. He spawns a random number of adds. If that number is too big for the Chanters to control the only thing you can do is take the wipe and try again.

The final MOB for the trial is the boss. The Keeper of the Altar is a fairly simple fight compared to what you have to do to get to him. Its a fairly straight tank fight here, nothing too special.

We also hit Uqua twice over the course of these two weeks. We formed up to head into Uqua and decided to give Pixxt Suir Mindrider a go as she is on the way. She is actually in Yxtta the Pulpit of Exiles but she is close to the zone in for Uqua. The first time we tried her we prepped and prepped and prepped. We were so ready for her as we had been told she was really difficult. So once we were engaged we found it quite surprising how easily she died.

On our second attempt I got a phone call just after I layered 3 DOTs on her. I FD'd popped up and then ran off to answer the phone. I came back after about 30 seconds to find myself standing nekkid in Time. According to SOE there is no such thing as Crit aggro, Strangely my logs show a successful FD, and then a summon immediately after a Horror crit. Odd that.

Uqua. I don't know what the Omens of War expansion is going to bring us in the way of raiding. But after three weeks in this zone if the raid leaders decided to never go back to GOD ever again I would be first in line leading the cheers.

On the first run into Uqua in these weeks we did really well. We got past the traps, past the Gas Chambers and into the room with the two behemoths, Construct of Rage and Construct of Fury.

We engaged them and managed to push one through a door (doh) where he promptly started summoning. The raid wiped and I managed to FD just inside the door. One thing we didn't know about these guys is they may physically reset but they don't seem to actually forget you. Unless you have been deaded, if you enter the room or even zone back in from a camp out they will come and kick your ass.

So along with the magnificent Zarthaz and Genosin, I pulled all the viewable corpses into a corner so they could be dragged off and rezzed. I just stayed FD'd until after about an hour of CR the raid leaders called it all off and we all quit out of the instance. Not our best moment.

I also managed to fall asleep during our second weeks run at Uqua. We had started the raid with only 3 warriors and after some very bad luck and a number of raid wipes the raid was called off. It was decided to head off and do Ikkinz 2. I thought yay! maybe an Aegis of Black scale will drop! and happily headed out of Uqua and back to KT. We were clearing towards Ikk2 when I fell asleep. I remember waking up and finding myself alone in KT and promptly logged off.

I also had a bit of a motorcycle accident that i was very very lucky to walk away from this week so I haven't actually been logging on a whole lot as i have been in too much pain to sit at a desk. Next weeks update (well actually its this weeks but forgive me) includes the launch of OOW and my first DING! in nearly 18 months!.