Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fourty Eight

21/01/04 Week FourtyEight
I was sitting at work, as you do, very quietly trying to avoid being noticed and actually given something to do, as you do, when I happened to surf by the Southern Armada web site. While there I noticed a post that mentioned that Xegony would be up and that those who were interested in having a go at her should logon tonight.


Sure enough, all atremble I got home Monday night, logged in and like many others asked for an update on Xegony's status. She was still up! So after doing a bit of pissing about and waiting for enough people to logon, I headed over to the Elemental Plane of Air.


We COH'd up to Xegony's isle. This was Southern Armada's first ever shot at her and we were all just crawling all over each other with excitement. We formed up, strats were called and Xegony was incoming!. Our first run at her we slowly battled our way through the first two waves. It was a bit lumpy with adds in amongst the Clerics, Pooby and Nymeria (our two MT's for this fight) going down rapidly thereafter.


Attempts were made to salvage the fight but Kez called the restart, so we reformed, rezzed, rebuffed and kicked off again.

Second run, we ended up in trouble in about the same place, just after the end of the second wave. Up till now the 10 Necromancers on the raid had all been hanging about the clerics and mana dumping to them. We were also combat rezzing people back into fights and mana dumping to bring dead's back up to speed asap. It was suggested we split up leaving 5 of us with the Clerics and 5 off to add DPS to the mobile groups. The five largest mana pools stayed with the Clerics and the rest ran off to Nuke stuff. We definitely noticed that waves were dieing a lot faster with the 5 additional high DPS toons pumping damage.

Everything else went well, adds were being controlled, Cleric rota was smooth, interception groups were moving about without aggroing additional stuff or running through Xegony's hit box. It was all going really well, then Pooby went down. Not sure why. I was in the Cleric Channel and the Rota switched over to Nym without missing a beat, no one dropped out or missed a call. It was weird.

So anyway, restart was called, we reformed and got ready to go again.

Third try was the charm. I know its a computer game and I am nowhere near any other players physically but I swear I could "feel" the whole of SA pull their chairs closer to their monitors, roll their sleeves up, top up their drinks and settle in to get this done. After the first two runs we knew we could do this. The CH Rota was more than capable of handling the damage from Xegony, the raid DPS was enough to handle the waves of adds and we were getting them split and off tanked nicely.

So we knew now that we were more than capable of handling the fight. We hunkered down, settled in and started again. The shot below is Xegony being nuked down to spawn an additional wave, I love the new spell graphics that were introduced a month or so ago. they are so pretty. Unfortunately the killing of Xegony has to be very, very controlled so no DOT's.

When we made it through the third wave and everything was smooth as a whistle I knew we had her. Having spent the entire hour or so of this fight in the CH chain channel, I have so much more respect (if that's even possible) for the job that the CH Clerics and Trundle as CH lead actually do. I have no idea how you do it guys but my hats off to you. Wow. A seamless 1-2 second CH chain for 45-60 minutes, you guys just rock. People drop out due to LD, getting killed, whatever, doesnt matter, the chain absorbs the change and keeps right on going.

My Job was essentially to keep mana dumping to the members of the chain and keep Crippling Claudication on Xegony. Its not a thrilling job but one that has to be done. I was basically picking a cleric, throwing 5-6 dumps at them, then the cleric next to them, then next to them, till I got low on mana, sat to med for 2-3 minutes and started again. The Clerics actually finished the fight FM!

Kez got a little excited during the fight and the quote of the week goes to him for this little gem.

Kezlar tells us: "south team will now move to north - there will be no more wouth adda aftes tot"
Yup ok Kez, I will get right on it!, whatever it was you said !*grin*

Finally we get to the good bit. Xegony is under 20% and the Nuke call is made. All the Necro's are life burning, I am nuking for all I am worth and the bitch is just dropping. 5,4,3,2,1 DEAD. Our second God in two weeks! 2 down, 2 to go!.

I have to say, although it was a damn good night for the tanks lootwise, for a MOB who drops at least 3 of the best caster items in the game her lewt on this occasion sucked ass. Bitch. Its ok tho, she is definitely on the farm list and we will see her many many more times I am sure.

Tuesday's raid saw us get another shot at another God, tho not quite as successfully this time. First up was a run at the nasties in the Plane of Fire. We have this down to an art now. Run in, form up, pull nasty phoenix, kill it, get another. Its a lot like being in an XP group.

Jaxoliz Dawneyes 

Criare Sunmane

Druav Flamesinger (again)

Tonight we got our first shot at the Avatar of Water, Coirnav. This is the last nasty bugger I need to complete my key to the Plane of Time. I have killed Fenin Ro and Xegony with Southern Armada and The Rathe Council with the good folks at Unity. Southern Armada will drop the Rathe Council no problems. All we need is a clear shot and enough Chanters online and RC will die to us like Gnomes do to a MOB. The only trouble we are going to have, and its the same with every guild at this point in the game, is Coirnav.

Killing the Avatar of Water is all about pure DPS, you need lots and lots and lots of it, applied concisely but massively.

So we formed up in the Plane of Water and COH'd down to Coirnavs room. Now this damn zone is buggy, laggy and generally hellish at the best of time's, but Coirnavs room has a lag factor second to no other area in the game I have yet been to. So once down there I logged out, turned off all models and any pretence at having a decent graphics card (IE I turned all options OFF). Logged back in and it was marginally better but it was like being back at an old Fear raid.

I know a lot of people disliked the Luclin Model set, but I have to say the old models were just SO damn ugly. I couldn't go back to looking at the game like that again. I am really hoping that the new spell effects engine they have put in place along with the new effects themselves are going to be a forerunner of things to come.

There has been a rumor of a new graphics engine for the last few months, the screen shot graphics I have seen look just amazing even on the old zones. I can understand that graphically rebuilding the entire game is a massive task but I hold out the hope that it will not only improve the overall look of the game but may even improve its graphical efficiency. Lots of people say that EQ is "dieing" or that SOE is going to shut it down. I honestly don't believe that.

I think if they can work out the tangle of legacy spaghetti code in the back end, document it all properly, rebuild the graphics and code to bring them up to a more "modern" standard then they can continue to upgrade graphics/game engines and keep EQ going as long as it still makes money. It still has the largest and most detailed content set of any game around and will do for some time to come. I may still be playing this game or its descendent in my 50's and remembering the "good old days"

Anyway, we formed up, setup, starts were explained in detail, this a complex fight and needs to be done fast, so everyone needs to know what they have to do before it happens. Once we were all in place the Guardian of Coirnav was inbound and the event was on!.

Unfortunately, for various reasons which we will have sorted for our next attempt it didn't work. We ended the fight with the first 3 waves dead but the boss mobs all in camp. This is what's technically known as a "Bad Thing" (TM)

That was pretty much the end of the raid for me. SA went on to take a run at a couple of Avatars in Air, but as it was about 1:40am I figured it was about time for me to hit the sack. Just getting to the Avatars would have taken longer that 45 minutes.

I think it was Thursday I was in a Fire Group which was chomping through the local fauna nicely when Rainbird asked for help to drop the final named for her key piece in the Plane of Storms. So we all headed over there and efficiently dropped Zertuken the Unyielding. I also managed to get Garakk a Key piece as there were a couple of spares. One more step along the road to keying a second toon. I know when we hit Time that the 85/15 thing no longer works so there will have to be a bit of back flagging to get everyone properly flagged. I will try and get Garakk flagged to at least Sol Ro at that point.

Thursdays raid didn't really go well for me. I was a little late die to finishing the last 200 combines of my Halas Meat Pies. I headed over to the Plane of Air, zoned in and died. Damnit, that's ok, it happens. Send a tell, get a Rez, zone in, start looting body, die again. FUCK. Ok now I am a bit pissed off. Get a second rez, collect both bodies, sit to mem spells, dead again. Oh ffs this is getting stupid. Now I am really pissed off. 3 Deaths and I have yet to actually cast a fucking spell.

Anyway, I sort another rez, get rebuffed for a third time, manage to get spells memmed without dieing and rejoin the raid. Several named's died during this period but the only one I managed to get a shot of was Inlokher the Warlord.

So we headed up to the Trigger for the Avatar of smoke taking in Pherlondien Clawpike on the way. So I have now been in the raid about 5 minutes. I have cast ToM about 3 times total and *SMACK* we get an add rom the back and guess who he decides to smash, Yup, my fourth death in about 15 minutes. Ah well, these things happen, you can either take them in your stride or get all pissy and log which is really just cutting off your nose to spite your face. So I gathered up my shit and started again.

The first Avatar we nailed was Wind. Around this point there was an emergency patch notification that the servers were coming down in an hour. So we very quickly scurried across to the Avatar of Smoke, dropped him as well and that was that for the night.

Dead Wind

About to be dead Smoke

I also managed to pick up a second piece to my Xegony Key. I think I need one more to complete the key quest. I have not only started the Aid Grimel quest (yes I am nuts and after about a week of Baking I am beginning to realize just how tough this is going to be) I have decided my aim is to get every key in the game that I can.

That's it for me for the next two weeks. I am off up to the North of New Zealand to lie on a beach, drink beer and generally do nothing. So there will be no more updates for two weeks. I am however planning a big "Year in Review" update for week 52 which will be my one year anniversary on Prexus.