Well I've been thinking long and hard about how to present this. I've started this year in review about 5 or 6 times and trashed it cause it just didn't seem to work. So rather than be a smart arse I'm just going to give you a little history of Ulaa.
Ulaa GrimSoul came to life about 4 years ago. She was created in the early hours of the morning in early January 2000. The name came from a song I was listening to on the radio. I was sitting in front of my PC at 2am about to give EQ a second go.
I had logged into Karana for the first time ever in early March (or a week after the game was released by Amazon.com which ever is correct) I had tried several classes, the first being a Human Monk out of Qeynos, unfortunately Monks had no way to mitigate aggro when the game was released and I spent a lot of time dieing. So I decided to try a Troll Shadow Knight.
I had this concept of the big evil Troll wielding a massive 2 handed blade and charging into his enemies. As we all know by now, the XP penalty for Hybrids at the time were simply horrendous and 2h slashing has only really become a viable alternative in the last 12 months 3 years later.
So after much frustration I abandoned him and started a Troll Warrior. Thus Garakk was born.
Garakk quickly reached 17th level and then ventured into Befallen. It was at this point I developed my life long loathing of Druids (unless they Cyber me :) ). I attempted to help out a Druid and for my pains ended up with my body rotting in the base of Befallen and losing everything on the corpse. So there I am with a naked weaponless 17th Troll Warrior and absolutely no ability to twink him back up to playable. After 6 months or so of play it was at this point I abandoned the game for the first time.
However I never cancelled the account. So after a number of months I loaded it all up, patched it and started again. This time I had done some research and the general consensus seemed to be, that the best class in the game for twinking another toon was a Necro. So of course with the avowed intention of twinking out Garakk I logged in and fired up a Necro. An Erudite Necro.
After about 15 levels of running my ass around the forest completely blind I gave up.
I was however determined not to give up on the game again. So I tried another Necro, and another and another. I tried every combo of Race and Sex there was. None of them really suited me and I kept deleting them.
And thus we return to sitting in front of a monitor at 2am trying to come up with a name for the new Female Dark Elven Necromancer that I was about to create. As usual I was looking around the room trying to come up with some sort of decent name which is my usual method of naming a toon.
The radio had just launched into Jeff Waynes "War of the Worlds" and the Martian's cry rang out through the room.
"oooooooolllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
After a little playing with the phonetics, Ulaa logged into Neriak for the first time. This time I researched before I leaped. I found out what the spells did, I worked out good solo hunting spots for the next level set, I printed out maps etc. I did all this with the intention of getting Ulaa to a high enough level to be able to twink out Garakk. Then Kunark came out, top level went to 60 and the cost of good twinkage went through the roof.
At this point I was in love with my Necro anyway. I had abandoned the idea that she was only for twinking and she had quickly become my main. Along the way I met up with the Guild leader of The Silent Watch ( a UK based guild +12 hours out from my time zone) and joined them, I discovered EqNecro which had just rocked my world and I was happily looking forward to 49 and my new big red skelly pet!.
Move along a few years. Kunark is out, then Velious, then Luclin, PoP has just been released and I have hit 60/25 soloing all the way. I have spent years watching TSW raid into places like HoT and NToV and been unable to join them. I have managed to tag along on one or two raids but only by throwing a sickie and taking the day off from work.
I have spent years reading sites like eqmaps, allakhazam's and drooling over loot in zones I was never going to see. Emp key?, impossible, never going to happen. Vex Thal is so far out of my league it may as well be in another game. Break 2k self buffed?, maybe but only if I spend a lot of time farming for PP. Full spell book?, never going to happen. Funeral Pyre is one of those spells I will never see, 61+ spells were just never going to be possible for me unless they came down into the under 1k platinum range.
But I stayed on Karana, I hung out mainly because of loyalty to The Silent Watch. I had been in the guild 3+ years and I thought we were friends. Fuck was I wrong. The guild imploded badly with real life mates screwing each other over. That ended, it was bad. So a bunch of us managed to recreate the guild and we started again. We had recruiting going, we were farming up POG and HOT to equip the lower members of the guild and fuck me if it all didn't happen again.
So with two guild implosions in 2 months and now unguilded at 60 I looked around and wondered why I was playing this game. I essentially came to the conclusion that what I really wanted was to see the high end game. After 4 years of play I wanted more than just watching Raids in /GU and wondering what it was like to take out big names. I had put in the effort that was required to level to 60+ and it seemed to me that I had seen none of the rewards in terms of both loot and experiences.
So I started looking for an ANZAC raiding guild. I found a number of them ranging from the hard core raiders Cold Fury on Quellious through to small family type guilds much like TSW had been at the start of the guild. Then I found Southern Armada. They raided two days a week which was perfect for me. Even tho I was still going to have to stay up till 2am in order to be able to stay with most raids, I figured that was the sacrifice I was going to make in order to experience the high end game.
So I logged onto Prexus and had a look around, contacted an officer and had a chat and quickly made my mind up that I was going to transfer. So 100$NZ later I was on Prexus, naked, broke and running to catch up with my first raid.
And what a raid it was. I had never experienced anything like Southern Armada in full flow. The speed of the setups, the pulls and the kills were just phenomenal. I was used to 2-3 hours of buffing and pissing about until the raid even moved to engage the trash. Not SA, they just pulled and killed as they went. There was a level of, I guess you would call it professionalism that I had simply never experienced before.
The first raid I went on, I not only saw Xanamech and Manaetic Prototypes in the Plane of Innovation that I had never seen before, but I also saw and contributed to a raid on a GOD!!. That first night we headed into (and failed against) Terris Thule . That one raid was worth every bit of the100$ transfer fee as far as I was concerned.
I had now done something I had only dreamed about and engaged a MoB in a zone that preciously I had only read about. It continued to get better. The second raid that week we headed over to Ssra and engaged the Cursed cycle. Until then I had zoned into Ssra once to summon some corpses and that was it. I was just in 7th Heaven.
As the weeks passed, I got more confident as a raider and we worked through a few more kills. It took us a few weeks of trying out different strats but eventually we put Shei Vinitras on the Farm list. I received my copy of Funeral Pyre as a guild hand out after a Shei kill, something I will never forget. Slowly we geared up, more and more Mobs died to us and we were killng faster and faster.
The Emperor of Ssra is one kill I will always remember mainly because I didnt get to bed untill 4:00am, but mostly cause, holy shit, I just killed the Emperor!. The first kill so very nearly turned to shit, but due to skill,class and everybody just pulling together to do their jobs we pulled it out and he died. Kez's start call of "Bring me Snakes" has become Legend.
Shortly thereafter followed Grummus, Terris Thule finally fell and turned out to be easy once we worked out how to kill her, Aerin'Dar and big brother Rydda'Dar both fell to us. Rydda'Dar was a real pain in the ass and stopped us dead for a little while. It took us 7 runs at him to finally take him out. Then we moved up a Tier and it all got harder.
Agnarr the Stormlord finally died to us but only after a really nasty wipe the first time we zoned in, Kez said he "Just wanted to test the strat". Then we ran up against Lord Mithaniel Marr who wiped us several times before we got the hang of him, Bertoxxulous the big meanie, we made the event look easy but Bert sure wasnt, and finally the big man himself died to us, Rallos Zek the Warlord.
All the way through, on every kill we were learning. We learned off tanking on multiple heavy targets, we learned speed killing, fast crowd control, multi splitting, applying power and damage with strict limits in order to bring a mob down under control. We learned we needed discipline and to listen carefully. On every kill we learned more and more patience as the amount of trash we had to clear through got bigger and bigger.
We also made it a point to all get Emperor keyed and then VT keyed. We dropped the Emperor of Ssra several times and his oppo over in Seru, the Lord Inquisitor as well. To finish off the Luclin set we also made it a point to get into Vex Thal and fight our way all the way to Aten Ha Ra. I don't know how guilds managed to farm that for months. No wonder people simply went crazy while doing it.
Hell, I was now Elemental flagged. I couldn't believe it. The day I zoned into the Elementals was huge. This was certainly a place that less than a year ago I would never have believed I would ever see. Once we had enough keyed the back flagging ended and we spent a couple of months farming the Elemental Plane's and dropping every MoB we came across. We even dropped General Reparm the first time we encountered him which was quite a feat.
Then it was time for the Gods. Finally the Elemental guilds above us had moved into Time and we were able to get a clear shot at them. Fenin frustrated us several times. We had about 8-10 runs at him before we finally worked out the positioning and dropped him. Xegony was the next to fall and suddenly we were only 2 Gods from entering the Plane of Time. I personally had snuck into a Unity Raid and I only need 1 key (Cornaiv) before my Time key is finished.
I still like saying that, I am one God Kill from the plane of Time. It just makes me go all wobbily. In the last twelve months Southern Armada has gone from being "the little guild that could" to being one of the top Guilds on the Prexus server.
If all goes well we will be the fifth guild on Prexus to step foot into the Plane of Time and the Fifth guild to drop Quarm. Where SA goes from there, only the Officers know, but I know that at that point I will have achieved more on Prexus, seen more, done more and killed more than I ever thought possible. SA has moved in 12 months from just venturing into the Planes of Power and having trouble with MoBs like Terris Thule and Behemoth to killing Elemental Gods.
Ulaa is now 6100hp raid buffed (about 3500 Unbuffed) with a manapool over 5k and a full spell book.
I am in a position I never would have believed I would ever be. I own items I never would have believed possible and have focus effects for almost every occasion. To top it off I have had a real blast while raiding, all those long nights and exhausted days were well worth it.
On to the week's Raiding.
Well the first target of the night was the not so very mighty Quavonis Firetail. I don't know whether there just weren't enough people at the raid yet, or we just weren't paying attention, but Mr Firetail managed to wipe us quite effectively. For some reason this struck me as bloody funny at the time.
As
soon as we re-sorted ourselves and formed up, we pulled him again.
It struck me that even the second time around we seemed to be
low on DPS and healage, as even against a mob as simple as Firetail
we were losing Tanks. It seemed to take us ages to actually take
him down, but ultimately, die he did.
Next
up was the lovely Blazzax
the Omnifiend. He didn't cause us even a little problem. However,once
again it took us a little while longer to kill him than it has
taken in the past. We still had people inbound to join the raid
at this point and DPS still seemed low.
The
next target was announced as Pyronis but as the pull teams were
maneuvering to get the frog in place, Cruare
Sunmane popped right in front of us. So Lufy loaded up his
Steins(tm) and charged the future chicken burger. We beat him
down pretty quickly and Pyronis
was inc shortly after.
Frogs
Legs mmmmmm
That
was it for Fire,
we pretty much had a full sweep with the exception of the Spider
Bitch and the two generals Druav and Reparm. So with not a lot
else up we headed over to the Plane
of EarthB. I have to say I was really looking forward to this
zone and ended up being really disappointed by it. The models
are all rehashes of what you can already find in the Bastion of
Thunder, nothing at all new or interesting. SOE you disappointed
me.
The
Warlord was the only guy who we had trouble with, by trouble,
I mean we couldn't go full burn on him as he memblurs a lot. So
slow and gentle was the order of the day and we slowly wore him
away until he dropped.
We
zoned into POEb and set ourselves up for an attempt on the Rathe
Council. I had to go to bed at this point, even tho it was relatively
early. I had to be up at 6:00am to take the GF into work and it
was 1:30am. Despite really wanting to stay I logged and headed
for Bed.
After
I left SA tried a couple of experimental pulls of the Council
members and were doing really well until a wee mistake was made
and an unmezzable was pulled. At that point everyone logged leaving
a few key toons in place for an attempt later on.
The
next raid of the week started in rather unusual circumstances.
We had learned that the RC spawn we had left up had been taken
out by someone else, so that was out. I had logged in early and
after finding no groups available, I had set out to check and
see if my solo spot was free in Fire.
For some reason GOD has just killed my ability to find groups.
I have had one group since GOD was released for some reason, I
used to be able to average one a day at least even if it was a
simple run through an LDoN dungeon.
So
I ended up at the picnic tables to find a number of the folks
from Talionis about to pull the Fenin Ro trigger. I figured that
was that and logged out thinking that we would not get a shot
at Fenin that night. Once the raid was formed later on, we headed
into Fire for a shot at Cruare
Sunmane. Unlike last week we had no problems and promptly
dropped the big chicken on his feathers.
At
that point we discovered that our officers had been in contact
with the officers online in Talionis.
The people from Tali had had every intention of taking out Fenin
but as it was late for them, many of them had logged leaving them
not enough people to complete the kill. So rather than blowing
the spawn and leaving, they had elected to leave us up one Named
Trash and Fenin himself. They called their farewells and Good
Luck's as they were leaving the zone. Extremely good of them I
thought.
So
after a fast run to the picnic tables area, with a nasty couple
of incidents due to see invis mobs, we ran straight up to Fenin's
area, formed up and pulled his Chief Lieutenant and leader of
the Council of Fire, Warlord
Prollaz.
Then
it was Fenin
Time. I LOVE killing Gods. Bring me more.
And
that was that for fire. After Fenin went down Fire was completely
clear. So after some scouting by the officer team we were called
to the Plane
of Water. Coirnav the big fish himself was up!. For some reason
(I think the plane architecture was patched) we couldn't just
COH into his room so after about a half hour fight into his room
we were ready.
The
strats were called and I ended up in a pull team. For some reason
with something as complex as
Coirnav on the go, a lot of people were pissing about, chatting
in GU, talking in Raid etc etc. This is actually quite unusual
for SA as when we come up against a target like a God we are usually
all business. Consequently I proceeded to get quite bloody confused.
Even with 5 minutes before the pull I was still trying to sort
out what the deal was and exactly what was expected of me
With
the help of Anobis (who had done this before) I finally got sorted
and in position. Basically as I understood it, my job was to FD
in front of Coirnav's lair and aggro a specific named as it came
past. Once I had it on my tail I was to pull it back to my group
who would then Root/Park it. Ok, so I got into position, practiced
my run back to my group a few times so I knew where I was going
in the zone and I was good to go. The trigger was pulled and we
were off.
Fuck I still didn't even get to see it go past. So I popped up, ran over to where my group had been and they were gone. I could see them casting but I couldn't for the life of me figure out where the hell they were. So at this point I ran back to the raid and started to assist on the AOE kills. From here it just all turned to crap with mobs all over the place. In the end we were all popped back to POK as the timer had run out and that, unfortunately, was the end of the Raid for Thursday.
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