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!.

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.