Vanguard Southern Armada Raids Week Five

Monday 04.02.08
Short and Sweet.
Some of the models that Sigil have developed (actually these are probably built by SOE) are just awesome. This is one of the guard Mobs outside APW, giant mixtures of beetles and lizards. One thing I have noted is that screen shots simply don't do these models justice. You have to be in game to appreciate how well put together the models really are. VG is definitely one of the prettiest MMO's on the market.

R5, Vicus. Fell down and went splat.

Unfortunately we only got two runs at Archon Travix. He isn't hard, he is a simple fight, we just seem to be rushing him a bit. We are definitely getting better at this, our fifth week into the zone, our Ninth raid, our 33rd-37th hours, Travix will die soon and we are traveling well for a push into the Hub. I think next Thursday we will definitely make it, as there won't be a lot up for us we will try and push on for the Hub just so we don't have to grind through the trash night after night.

Archon Travix Waiting

Southern Armada would also like to thank whoever made Lisani's boobies. Due to a bug (one of the many) Lisani was shown stripped back to her base model, and what a base it is!. The entire guild took great delight in running over to have a look before the bug was fixed. Well done I say!.

Lisani, what an Elf!

Thursday 06.02.08
Formed up and straight in. It takes us about 1.5 hours to grind through all the trash to get to Travix. Its not that the place is swarming with trash, its not. But each trash fight has different nuances, each fight has different needs and we are learning new things about each fight as we repeat them. We are getting better and faster with each push but it would be nice not to have to do this grind every night, lets get to the Hub!. At the start of the fight we had a hitch hiker with us, a Knight from another Guild who for some reason decided to tag along on our little jaunt. At the beginning he was spouting out all sorts of useful things like "/say this mob has a knock back so only fight him with ranged". Yes, thanks, very helpful. We will use what works for us. He stopped and seemed to disappear after the boss asked him oh so politely to shut up. So we fought on without the benefit of all that knowledgeable advice and made it to Travix in very good time.

R5 Kindly dropped the Greatsword he has been holding on to for the last 4 weeks and as there don't seem to be any other 2H wielders in the Guild at the moment I won the roll!. Now if only Vicus would drop his Spear I would be in Dread Knight heaven!.

Travix waiting for a spanking

This time we took him down slow but steady. This becomes a very boring fight for the non main tank unfortunately. I switched to my 2H, I went into evade mode, I didn't hit any specials, no damage or aggro attacks. I simply stood there, did white damage and watched for the Curse. Thats it, takes about 5 mins to kill him and I cant do squat apart from base damage *Yawn*. I also got yelled at, naughty naughty Dread Knight!. The Boss called for DPS off and as I was just doing base damage (I mean really, I couldn't be generating less aggro if I was offering him a cup of tea and a lie down) I just let the damage run. The boss very correctly and forcefully reminded me that when he calls for DPS off it means everybody!. So with my ass red and feeling much chastened, we moved on past Travix and into unexplored territory.

Travix being spanked by a naked Pink Tank

We continued to fight on through, deeper into APW. There was some new and different trash and some new scenery until we reached the Warehouse. Now you have to remember we have NFI where we are going. We have no spoilers. no maps and we are learning by doing, so basically we are just wandering aimlessly while looking for the Hub. Its lucky that the dungeon is fairly linear or we could be lost for weeks!.

Just as we had engaged two mobs, the Wednesday lag hit us. Its amazing, whatever the process is thats occurring on the servers, it happens at 11PM AEST on the dot and lasts 2-3 minutes. This time, to make it extra special fun, it not only lagged us out on the pull, the zone then crashed and the whole raid was booted to desktop. We were dreading having to log back in to a fully populated zone, this time we were lucky and it seems the zone didn't re-pop on us the way it did last week.

It was getting late at this point, around 11pm and I think, like me, people were beginning to get tired and their feet were dragging. As we made our way deeper into the warehouse we ran straight into Zaraax. Now this is one huge ass mob and he hits like a Mac Truck. Even though we ended up with him more or less accidentally, we still managed to get him under control and in position. He was at about 90% when we started to get adds. We don't know if they were roamers, he summoned them or they just popped in the wrong spot, I guess we will learn next time. We elected to take the wipe and bypass Zaraax for a further push towards the Hub. Awesome Model, kudos on the design of this guy.

Skulls for hands!

Once we reformed we headed in again towards where we could see a faint blue glow, the hub maybe!. As we were pulling trash we also ran into Akym the Assassin. He hits hard but seemed like a fairly straight forward Tank and Spank.

Once he was out of the way we made it to the Warehouse hub and we were going to log it out there. For various reasons unrelated to APW raiding, one of our Clerics had managed to get bonded to the Hub portal, so he ported back to the Hub just so we could check how far away the Hub was from where we were. Surprise, surprise it turned out he was only about 150 yards from where we were standing. So taking his direction we pushed on. It was after midnight at this point and everyone was getting damn tired. But we cleared through some more trash and voila!, we made it to the Hub! Everyone attuned to the two portals and we are now in a good position to pick up the hub quests and to explore into the surrounding wings.

First things first however, Zaraax must die!.