24/06/03 Week Eighteen
Well since I missed out on the raid on Friday night I tried to join up with Unity on Saturday and Sunday for a couple of their Raids. First off, while waiting for the bulk of
Unity to Logon we headed up to the
Bastion of Thunder for all the named's we could fit in. Turns out
Talionis was already clearing most of the Tower Bosses as we got there so the only one up was Brynju Thunderclap. Unity dropped him pretty promptly.
After that they decided to attempt the Rallos Zek encounter in the Plane of Tactic's. Now this is one of the big ones. This is the roadblock on the way to Elementals for almost every guild in the game. If you can make it past Rallos, nothing short of the Elemental Planes Bosses is going to stop you. Unity has had numerous attempts at him but this was the first one I managed to tag along on. First up you have to kill a bunch of Yard trash, but there are a couple of named triggers you have to Memblur/Mez and Pull with you as you move. Decorin Berik
Once you are in the right spot (The beginning of the Tallon Zek Encounter) you have then kill the triggers as fast as you can to spawn TZ. I hate this bastard. Once again I completely failed to survive and this time all I did was nuke!, actually the MT went down just as casters started landing Nukes and they pulled aggro. One TZ arrow amongst the casters and we were all dead.Tallon Zek
We reformed and were about to venture back in when I got a tell from a guildie to come and help him out. So, a Unity raid may be fun but a guildie comes first. So off to Cazic Thule for a little casual Lizard Slaughter. After killing off a few named in CT I checked with the raid. Unity were deep inside Tactics and there was really no re-joining them. So the little group I was in headed off to do a bit of Shard farming for the Vex Thal key.Late Sunday I also joined in dropping a couple of named in Bastion of Thunder. Goddamn I love Pallies, if ya cant get a Warrior, a Pally or SK will do just as nicely!.
Laef Windfall
That was about it for the weekend.The GF has a really savage flu so I was able to be online a lot longer than I normally would on Sunday. This meant a lot more Vex Thal Shard farmage was possible and I managed to collect the last few pieces of my Key!.Monday and Tuesday were called as the raids for this week, mainly because we were hoping for a shot at the Emperor and he was due to pop at that point. So Monday I logged in and as usual we took a shot at Paffa in Crypt
Of Decay while waiting for everyone else to arrive. We have killed him an average 1.5 times a week for 18 weeks. That's 27 kills. We have had 1 earring drop. A 1/27+ ratio, come on SOE, don't you think that's a LITTLE rare even for an earring that
nice?. Banord Paffa
Next up was a little Backflagging. Terris Thule is actually a fun fight and I quite enjoy it, but this is getting to be a pain in the ass and I am beginning to feel the pain of the longer term members. The flagging system was a great concept but I really wish they had thought a little harder with how they implemented it. Ah well, a necessary evil because we need every warm body we can summon for the Elemental Planes!. So off to the the Bitch Goddess of Nightmares house to see what's under her skirt.Terris Thule waiting for us...
She had a wee accident, fell down and hurt herself *Sad*
Then Kez called Bert!. WOOT!. I Missed Bert last week due to connection problems, so I was really looking forward to this!. Back to the
Crypt of Decay, formed up and started pulling. Now I didn't get a lot of good screen shots of this one as the event is a hard and fast one. I spent most of it facing a wall and running everything through my hot key bank. /Assist Genosin,
/Cast undead Nuke and /Mana Dump. The DPS in the guild now is massive.
My Nuke is a 5 second cast and often I had to interrupt as the mob was dead before I could land it. I
did manage to get a few very basic screens.
Knight Of Decay
Basically this is a two hour running fight. You kill the trigger Mobs and you have 2 hours to clear 12 Named Kings and finally Bert. If you don't do it inside 2 hours Bert despawns. Each King has his/its own peculiarities you have to contend with and deal with. The pulling was a little iffy in some places as the monks had never done this event before so they were a little unsure of the "tricks" of it. Next time they will nail it I am damn sure. We have the
best pulling team on Prexus bar no-one.
I managed to go LD immediately after the 12th King was killed but was lucky enough to get back in and be able to join the raid. Finally we pulled and killed Bert. Bert is cool, I loaded him up with all the DoT's I possibly could and then started Nuking!. Wow, one more flag out of the way. I am one Flag (Saryn Kill) from Sol
Ro's Tower!! and an additional 2 flags from Elementals (Agnarr
the Storm Lord and Rallos
Zek the Warlord). Bertoxxulous Dead
I am further along in the game than I ever thought I would be. It kind of stuns me sometimes to be honest. After 4 years of playing and effort I am actually at the point in the game where I want to be. I have now seen and taken part in content that
maybe 5% of the player base ever will. So with Bert downed (and 15 minutes to spare) and the
PhatLewtz handed out, people were starting to log. I was considering it, after all it was close to 1.00am my time. Then it came. The call I have been waiting to see since Luclin was released. "The Emperor
Ssraeshza is up!, get to the
Temple.
" Anyone who considers themselves even vaguely serious about EQ starts to drool when you say that name. It's the "coming of age Mob" for any guild. It's not so much about killing him, which in the age of level 65's and Elemental Armour and items, really isn't that hard for a lot of guilds. It's about having the dedication to get the keys. It's about racing every other Emp capable guild to get to him. For a long time he was the be all and end all. Sure there was Vex Thal after him, but beating him was the big one. Kez then says "90 Minutes tops for the Kill". I should know better by now *sigh*.
When Kez gets his teeth into something, nothing makes him let go. Kez's relation to time is a lot like that of the infamous "Microsoft Minute". One Minute in Kez land, can equal hours in the real
world.
So of course there is no way in hell I'm going to log at this point. We stopped off at the third floor to kill the Named Commanders to pick up 3 final pieces for people and then zoned in. I Love that Message "The key to the throne Room to the Emperor of Ssraeshza has been added to your Keyring" WOOT!. Zone in and run into the Emperors Room. Its a really cool looking room,
with all the colored lights and runes on the walls.
The trick to this fight is not only the Bane weapons you need to be able to even damage the Emperor, its the tight and effective Crowd Control and healing to keep his bodyguards in order. We buffed up, got ready and pulled the Blood of Ssraeshza. 6 mates came with him and with heroic effort the Crowd Control Team got them all under control and started on The Blood himself.Blood of Ssraeshza
Engage!
Blood snuffed it fast and everyone ran to the Emperor. He popped a little sooner than expected and it was touch and go there for a while, but thanks to damn quick reactions from a couple of the raid force (Go Rangers!) and brilliant heal management we got him back under control and the Necs started to lay in the DoT's hard.
Damn this is a long ass fight. But considering we had 41 people and
only 3 Bane weapons we did Brilliantly!.
Dead Fat Snake Bastard
I logged off at about 4:00am. I felt really, really bad when I got up at 6:30am to go to work after about 15 minutes sleep. But it doesn't matter, that's one more item ticked off the EQ wish list!. I also managed to be one of the people who got a Rift from the Emperor. So on Tuesday evening this week I managed (with the help of several people, and big thanks to all of them!!) to finish my
Key to the zone of Vex
Thal, and hopefully one of these days Southern Armada will
zone in there en masse and trash the place.Now, last week after SOE fucked up the graphics animation patch (Surprise, Surprise) my graphics started to look seriously bizarre. I was seeing some very very bizarre skins.
Ometiklan
(High elf Pally)
PinkPower Ranger
Lyrique
Random Weirdness
And just for laughs, here is a couple of pics of me and My Horsie!! Not only is he pretty, he's the fastest thing in the Game with the exception of a level 65 Bard with a focus item. Don't I look Fabulous!
Tuesday we had a patch. Everyone decided to logon after the patch and I believe they dropped Lord Mithaniel Marr. However, after the effort on Monday night, and one hours sleep, followed by a ten hour day there was just no way. So I logged just before the patch and was asleep before my head hit the pillow. Wednesday we managed another mini raid. Lord Seru was up so we formed up for the hit in Plane Of Knowledge and gated in to Sanctus Seru . Lord Seru was in his usual position, facing completely the wrong way while we snuck in behind him.Lord Inquisitor Seru
First time round we lost the main tank, the casters immediately gained aggro (as we do when there are 6 Necro's dotting for over 1k per tick) and he charged us. The tanks managed to gain aggro back but by then we had lost about 1/3rd of the raid force. So we called it a fail, logged a cleric or two and took the wipe. Logged back in and the second run was absolutely flawless. In fact, I think
he went down even faster than he usually does.
That was the end of Friday night. I gated and logged as soon as he went down. I had promised the GF a 20 Minute kill before the first wipe. So in the end I was about an hour later logging than I had
anticipated. Much GF faction farming has to be done.Next day I joined the good folks over at Unity for an attempt to grab a key for access to Saryrn. I was a bit late so I had to run up to join the raid in the Plane of Torment. I was hoping Unity were also going to take a run at Saryrn herself after the key raid but it wasn't to be. Ah well, I got to see a whole section of the zone I had never been to. To cut a long story short, you have to travel through a nasty Boss MoB's stomach's to be able to finally kill him and get yourself a key. EWWWW.
The MoB's look really cool though as you travel through the stomachs. Unity did the whole script fast and clean.
A Flayed Horror
Unfortunately the final part of the event was bugged and despite the valiant efforts of the 14 people who actually ended up ported to the right spot, we couldn't quite take the final guy down. So I gated out after the Rez and went and did a little farming in Sebilis.Later on Saturday afternoon the officers sorted another pickup raid. Ellyrion and Servalan logged in, started organizing, and we all headed over to the Crypt
of Decay. Once again Overlord Banord Paffa (1/28) has proven to have no ears. He's got about 10 backs, 10 hands and 7 faces
but only one damn ear.Earless Fat Bastard
One of these days that fat bastard is actually going to drop an
Earring. Simultaneously 9 Necro's around the world will have heart attacks
in sheer surprise and it will end up rotting. After Paffa went down there were more and more SA people logging in. So we decided we had enough for a hit on Saryrn, so everyone headed across to The
Plane of Torment. We also had enough people who didn't get the Dream Sequence key the last time that we decided to do the whole thing again. The toughest part of this kill (IMHO) is not so much the Named kills, its clearing all the crap to get to the
Named's.
I managed to get some actual Shots of the Named's this time, and
I even think they are vaguely in order. 
There was Salczek the Fleshgrinder in there somewhere as well. You fight your way through all of those and a bazillion tons of Yard Trash to get to:
He is a pretty nondescript Human model type who basically stands there and gets ganked. He's a lot like the guy in the Caprin event that I never get to see. I cast on him from another room and that's
it. So anyway, he goes down, we all pile under the Cage and port up to the final guys room. The
Keeper of Sorrows. I find this kind of a weird fight in that a lot of the MoB's you have to face on the way to the Keeper are quite hard, but the Keeper himself is really a very easy, straight
up and down tank fight. Not a lot to him.The Keeper goes down, we all say our piece to the Flag guy and get ported back to Saryrn's room. Finally!, the Arch Bitch herself!.
Makes Terris Thule look like a well behaved church going type!.
After telling her that Terris Thule is cuter...
Flawless
A Flawless kill it was. We didn't lose a single person, not even the Ninja Turtle Wannabe, tho we did try to get him killed by aggroing Sorrowsong too early and trying to drag him over to where the casters were so he could cast Silence on us. But all in all, a fun fight, the Chick MoB's in EQ seem to have this thing about spawning add's to help them. Now I know Rallos Zek does this as well. My question is this, is Rallos really a chick in Disguise?.
Of course the best part of this was a new Flag! After we all gated/ported out of Torment we all started running around fixing up flags. I had a couple of PreFlags I hadn't completed and it took much running between the Library, the Seer and Tranquility before I managed to get it all fixed up. Course the first thing I did was head over and zone into the Tower of Solusek Ro. This is a COOL looking zone and it is huge.
Didn't get much else done as it was getting on for quite late. So I gated out and went to bed. The next day I managed to get online a bit as I was sick so I was "allowed" a bit of extra time to play. There were a couple of people already in Sol's Tower, so I sent them a tell and headed over to see what the zone was like for XP. I have to say, wow. This is definitely my new home.
2-5% XP per kill in a full group killing the entry MoB's.A Protector of Ro
We ventured in a little further and this is easily the most amazing zone I have seen in EQ so far. It is absolutely massive, it looks awesome (next time I'm turning spell effects on and it will look
even better I'm told) and I think it will be a blast to Raid in. I also did one other thing in between all the raiding this week. I saw someone was organizing a run to see Lord
Yelinak in
Skyshrine. Now I have been to Skyshrine many times, but I have never seen Yelly himself. As I wanted to see how my faction was with him, I asked if I could tag along. After a LOOOOOOOOOONG ass run to get to him, there he was. One of the toughest MoB's in Velious, and guess what!?, I'm his Ally!!). Woot!, now next time when we drop Tormax I can put my hand up for his head. Mainly cause I want
these.
Next to the Boots that Bertoxxulous drops, they are easily the best Caster footwear in the game and Bert is just a little bit harder to kill than Tormax.
Oh and a wee message to Solusek Ro and Rallos Zek. Southern Armada is coming for you....
The trick to this fight is not only the Bane weapons you need to be able to even damage the Emperor, its the tight and effective Crowd Control and healing to keep his bodyguards in order. We buffed up, got ready and pulled the Blood of Ssraeshza. 6 mates came with him and with heroic effort the Crowd Control Team got them all under control and started on The Blood himself.
We ventured in a little further and this is easily the most amazing zone I have seen in EQ so far. It is absolutely massive, it looks awesome (next time I'm turning spell effects on and it will look even better I'm told) and I think it will be a blast to Raid in. I also did one other thing in between all the raiding this week. I saw someone was organizing a run to see Lord Yelinak in Skyshrine. Now I have been to Skyshrine many times, but I have never seen Yelly himself. As I wanted to see how my faction was with him, I asked if I could tag along. After a LOOOOOOOOOONG ass run to get to him, there he was. One of the toughest MoB's in Velious, and guess what!?, I'm his Ally!!). Woot!, now next time when we drop Tormax I can put my hand up for his head. Mainly cause I want these.
