Friday, April 09, 2004

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fifty Nine

09/04/04 Week Fifty Nine
We logged on full of anticipation. The final impediment on our trip to the Elemental Plane of Time was going to die tonight. Coirnav was up and he was on the menu. We did a fast clear (and I mean fast, this stuff just gets mown down by us now) of the Elemental Plane of Earthb. We just hammered Ginlotaken and his buddies.
But that was just the warm up. We flexed our muscles, stretched, stocked up on caffeine and headed down to the Plane of Water for Coirnav. Now I have to admit there was a certain amount of pessimism being felt in the Necro channel as we were forming up.

There were a large number of Non SA with us and there was quite a lot of stuffing around going on while strats were being called. Personally I had this one marked down as a fail. Just goes to show how much I know!. We formed up, got set up and everyone in place, I had my DI's up and was set up in the entrance to his lair good to go.

The pull was on. Everything was coming in smoothly, in fact we had to wait about 30 seconds for the 2nd wave spawn as the first one died so fast!. The AOE teams were doing a brilliant job. Root teams had their shit together and the pullers were bringing it all in a nice steady flow. Real names inc, down, move to the entrance, trash away, GO!.

I threw everything I could at him. Not a whole hell of a lot landed (I died before I could learn what did and did not land on him last time). So I managed to get Horror and Blood of Thule on him before he hit 60%. At that point I checked my health (full), hit the LB button and waited. WHAM. 6.2k of damage (damn I wish Life Burn critted). After that he was about 20% and I just started to chain tap him. I think I got to my 5th or 6th Mujaki when his health hit Zero and he fell almost directly at my feet!

Well we confirmed the first Coirnav kill last week wasn't a fluke. We not only nailed him on our second run, it was as sweet a kill as anyone could have managed.
So that was it for Water. After the Lewtz (and they were decently Phat this time) had been distributed we headed out to the Elemental Plane of Fire for some named clearing. Quite a lot of people logged out at this point. I was close to it myself but I really wanted to hang out a bit more and keeeeeeel a few more MOBs. I knew there was no way I was going to get to sleep so I figured I may as well be online a bit longer.

First to die was Quavonis Firetail. We only had about 40 online so the kill was a bit slow but what the hell he died.
Next up, my not favorite spider in the whole world, Babnoxis the Spider Bitch. In fact almost all of the spider mobs in EQ are stupidly hard to kill, what's up with that?. It was messy but hey, she died in the end and we didn't, which is a good thing.

That was it for me and I gated and logged. SA went on to clear Fire with Magmaton and Druav also dieng before they too began to log.

Wednesday we logged in and headed to the Plane of Time for the culmination of a years work. 

We formed up in the Plane and kicked off the Trials. Now we have absolutely no idea about the Trials so it was literally "Zone in and see what happens". I was assigned to a group and we headed to the Fire trial. For those who don't know the you have to complete 5 different Trials in Phase One, in one hour to move though to Phase Two. First time through I believe we got 3 out of the 5 trials complete before we timed out.

We got ready again, a few people left (for gods sake, be sitting at the Time zone in ready to go and in the raid channel, not on a bloody alt when we need you) We ran through the Trials again.

We got 3 down again, just different ones. So that was it. Our first run through the Trials wasn't great, but it wasn't too bad either. I have to say the time trials are actually a hell of a lot of fun too, they are certainly fast paced!. I've only seen Fire and Air so far but I'm sure I will get a run at all of them over the next few months.
Inferno Mephit
Now at some point during the night I was waiting on the call to zone in to a Trial and the GF came into the room and wanted to chat with me. So I turned away from the screen for a few moments. When I looked back, I nearly died of fright as I was confronted with close to the ugliest sight I have seen in 5 years of EQ. There it was covering my entire screen, hanging there. A close up of Pooby's ass!
One of the weird graphics glitches that have been happening after the switch to DX9 is this two tone effect on Xardans Robe. Apparently others see him in completely different colors entirely. He has also been told he is dressed in Green and White.
Xardan
Next week, more time Trials and I am reasonably confident Southern Armada will make it into Phase 2!

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