Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Ten

05/05/03 Week Ten

What a week!!, the beginning of the week we had a great raid, this was then topped off with SOE deciding to drop the servers for a patch on Wednesday. Of course you know what that means right?!, yup MOB's all over the place after the servers came back up and a raid day changed to Thursday!. So I managed 2 personal firsts this week, participated in a guild first and received a spell I have been wanting since Luclin was released. Its the best DOT a Necromancer can get.

So it all started on Monday, the UI that I have been using forever, decided to die. I zoned into PODisease and crashed to desktop and couldn't log back in. I could log in any other toon but not Ulaa. So after a lot of help from Kez, I reset my INI back to default and was finally able to logon. Of course all of this happened 5 minutes from Raid time (actually it was about 2 hours that I was trying to get back in). First things first,we head off to Halls of Honor cause Rydda'Dar is up. We failed at 40% last time so we determined that we weren't going to fail again.

Can you believe it the bastard denied us at 1%. One single Gods Double Damned Percentile. ONE Extra tank, ONE more Wizzie, ONE extra Nuke and he would have gone down. If ONE person had stayed alive another 20 seconds the various DOT's would have burned him down. GRRR, you'll keep mate, you'll keep. I have been told and read a lot of comments along the lines that if you can take down Rydda'Dar you can kill anything short of the Elementals. Well we proved we can kill him, 1% is nothing, he will die, oh yes he will.

Next on the list was Shei Vinitras in Akheva Ruins. Four armed Gimp boy was waiting for us, he and his little friends were all fat and fine and cuddly and decided to fall over for us. I think anything we could find after Rydda'Dar was basically doomed Monday night, as we were all so pissed off at the loss.

While Kez was doing one of his "I just slaughtered half a dozen Newbies and am going to hand out all their gear to the guild" sessions, he said a curious thing along the lines of "I went out shopping while drunk with the company cheque book the other day..." which he followed by "Send tells for Spell: Funeral Pyre of Kelador.

For those who don't know, this is the best DOT for Necromancers in the entire game. It was introduced to the class as part of the Luclin expansion and originally ONLY dropped off Rhag2 and Rhag3 in the Ssraeshza Temple and even then were insanely rare drops. Eventually after much yelling and screaming SOE realized that it was a bit rare even for them and also placed the spell as a drop on several other Luclin Mini Bosses. Unfortunately they then made the drop from those Mini's EVEN MORE rare than the drops from the two Rhag's. So basically this spell is insanely difficult and/or expensive to get your hands on as a Necromancer.

I had pretty much given up on ever seeing it drop and determined I was just going to hang on and wait and see if it dropped from the IV (Who can drop it) or the Va'Dyn. I don't know where Kez and SA got it or how, but I am eternally grateful. I was awarded Funeral Pyre of Kelador Monday 28th April around 10:30PM. Just Wow.

So after Shei Vinitras snuffed it we headed off to The Deep to visit our old friend the Burrower Parasite. After having victory over Rydda'Dar snatched from us at the last moment, the Parasite was in for a Ganking, so we ganked him and it was good.

It was getting late at this point and I was going to log, but Kez said Thought Horror Overfiend was up. Now personally I believe that the THO deserves to die just for being such a long boring fight. I am in a lot of ways glad I missed the "press Attack and go AFK" period of EQ raiding. The THO is SUCH a boring fight. The POP bosses are a hell of a lot more fun and a lot more challenging. So basically a bunch of the THO's boys got trampled.

And after about 20 minutes, so did the THO.

logged 2.00am or some such, BIG grin on my face.

I logged in Tuesday for some XP, sent tells to a few guildies with no success, sent tells to a few people in the lfg tool, no success, ran through half a dozen zones broadcasting lfg with no success. So I ran off to Ssra to join the Little Red Fire Engine and try and help him get pieces for his Emperor key. For once the LRFE didn't die however the results of that little foray can be found here.

Patch was announced Wednesday and the servers brought down Wednesday night our time. Kez made the call to change the raid day to Thursday. We all logged in Thursday night, a lot of MOB's were already dead including Rydda'Dar (Grats to Unity on a comprehensive Kill), but a lot was still up and breathing (a very temporary state of affairs)

So off to Akheva Ruins to start the night with a little Shei warm-up. As usual I got within one zone of The Deep, realized I was going the wrong way and had to turn around and head back. *Dumbass*. We have come up with a new method of getting to the names in Akheva, we form up, set up AOE's and simply pull everything in our way to one spot and kill it all. Its a remarkably fast and efficient method of clearing through the zone.

The Itraer Vius is ready for an Oggie Pumping...

Shei Vinitras, waiting for us...

Shei Vinitras, the Kill...

Then came the call I have been waiting for, "Tallon Zek up get to Plane of Tactics" woooooototototototoooootooot!

A Flagging a Flagging!. Gated out of AR and head to POTactics. Zoned in and started to DMF everyone. We formed up for the fight inwards killing a few Oggies in the process...

Formed up and attacked...

The last image is TZ dead just before he fell over. I had a wee problem during the fight. I ran in, sending pet immediately, cast, resisted began to cast again and got bounced by one of Tallon's arrows. Began to turn around to see where the hell I was and got bounced again, so I was completely disoriented at this point. Unfortunately I got bounced up onto the little balcony where an Oggie Guard was still hanging about. I didn't know he was there, I noticed that I was at about 20% hp after the AE arrow and ran back down to the raid to tap RZ a bit.

Of course I managed to bring the Oggie with me. Anyone who has been on a couple of raids knows that the absolute worst thing that you can do is train a raid. First rule of raid moveage in places like POTactics where bringing the wrong mob can wipe a raid, is if you get aggro, stand and die. I have known this since my first Fear raid. I got down from the balcony and got a tell from Genosin to "Die", Goddamn he is in-fucking-credible.

I am so glad he is a member of SA and not another guild, he is MT for this fight, is concentrating on keeping aggro or we ALL die. He can still keep an eye on what the rest of the raid is doing, see what's happened with me and figure out what is about to happen before I can even realize what I have done and send me a tell. No wonder he is regarded as one of the best Shadow Knights on the server. He may be one of the best players I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Anyway so I stopped and waited to die. The Oggie completely ignored me and headed to the raid where (I think, though I am probably wrong and feel free to point it out to me) Ainya mezzed it fast. Anyway, long story short, Tallon Zek Bowed down before The Southern Armada. I didn't think that anything else was up, I figured we would probably go and do Bastion Of Thunder tower bosses and was planning on an early one when Kez called "Vallon Zek is up!" WOOOT!

A Flagging a Flagging!. A quick port back to the Zone in, and we raced up to Vallon's room. Now Vallon Zek is, I believe, a real test of your Tankage. You need to have some seriously well equipped and disciplined tanks and a tight slow/heal team to take him. I think the tanks did a fucking fantastic job on our first run at Vallon Zek as a Guild. Grats and Kudos go out to Ould. LRFE, Kemdell *It was worth the move wasn't it mate :) *, Genosin, Mewkus and Pooby. TZ is a Caster/Range fight, RZ is an upclose and personal Tank fight.

Vallon Waiting to die

Vallon Engaged

The view that many guilds would crap themselves over.
Vallon Zek is Incoming!

I had a really good shot of a dead Vallon as well but I lost it and have no idea where I put it. Hopefully its still at home so I can fix this up Monday. Man what a night!, what a week!. There was much much PhatLewtz!!. This is why I moved to Prexus in a nutshell. There is no way in Hell I would have been 64, equipped with Funeral Pyre or able to enter these zones let alone be in a guild that was definitely on its way to the Elemental planes if I had stayed on Karana. Thank you Southern Armada! /bow to you guy

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Eleven

04/05/03 Week Eleven

What a weekend. I logged on Saturday with every intention of getting at least 50% through 64. (I was at 18%) So I logged on and went through my usual routine trying to find/put a group together. Got a group in Plane Of Storms (NASTY wipe, Ebay Monks are BAD!) and during the CR I saw Brae in /GU saying there was a pickup raid going on in Plane of Disease for Grummus.

Now this is a flag I REALLY need. I was having visions of Southern Armada being up in the Elemental planes farming the place and me sitting on my ass in Plane Of Tranquility because I still didn't have this one damn flag. I have had 2 tries at Grummus already at this point.(I didn't post the last failed raid as it wasn't an SA/Unity raid.) Two chaps from Unity (Raurck and Fnorian) ran one last week which was a wipe, and the other was the SA raid which wiped. Now if anyone has ever had a bad experience in a pickup group, try a pickup raid, its a nightmare come to life.

So after my Rez in Plane Of Storms I run my ass to POD for the start of the raid. I KNEW this was going to be bad when I saw people openly Cybering each other in Raid Chat. People were running all over the place aggroing mobs, ninja buffing the tanks, talking shit in /RS etc. etc. I just knew this was going to be a bad idea.

Anyway we run the raid to the castle, form up and move in. People aren't paying attention to the Move Leaders or the Raid Leaders. People aren't assisting, people aren't waiting for the attack call. Oh God this is going to suck. We Pull and Kill Gryme the Crypt Keeper.

We move through to Aramin the Spider Guardian.

People are dying left and right and we aren't even at the hard bit yet. They aren't waiting or assisting or well anything /cry. After 2 hours in the pull room waiting for people to stop DICKING AROUND we finally move down to Grummus. They even fucked up the pull. Raurck had said over and over and fucking over "when we move everyone stop on the middle ramp, only the MT and his heal team to move down, on the assist call ONLY THE MELEE move down to engage, only on the second attack call does everyone else move down" simple Right?!. I am a Caster, thus I wait for the second attack call before moving down, easy.

Grummus knows we are coming...

Ohhhh noooo that was way to complex for some of these morons. We moved down and about 20 people who were not MT or in the heal team immediately attacked Grummus. Within about 20 seconds I saw this:

Not a Good View for a Caster still waiting for the engage call..

So after the wipe Raurck is being very very polite, saying "Im sorry we wiped, I will be running these raids regular and we will try again, but if everyone could do me the favor of listening to the instructions next time we will do much better." Basically he was being MUCH more polite than I would have been. One guy actually started to abuse the raid leaders!!, his parting comment was "the raid leaders didn't explain anything and therefore it wasn't the raids fault it was the raid leaders. WTF???? was this guy in the same raid as me?, oh no he wasn't!, he was one of those fucking around and NOT PAYING ATTENTION!!!!!.

For those of you who need it read this. Its only basic, but they are rules to live by and if you follow them you might even get invited back to another raid.

So I join the Unity raid channel (after sending a tell to a Unity officer and asking nicely) and head off to Plane of Valor where they are forming up to hit Aerin'dar . We nailed him which made me feel much better after the Grummus wipe. The difference between those serious about the game and their skills and those who aren't is just incredible.

So after killing everything on the way to Halls Of Honor and getting all the people who needed it flagged the Unity Raid Leaders are trying to decide what to hit next. People from SA were beginning to log in at this point and are asking what Unity is about to hit. Then Vanion announced it. Unity has a large number of members who still need the Grummus key and so do SA, so we are off to hit Grummus!. If I could do backflips, at that point I would have. WOOT!

Off to Plane of Disease.
Gryme Again

Aramin the Spider Guardian was of course dead at this point so straight down to Grummus, we set up, tactics were called, we engaged.

The engage was a little messy, but Unity handled it with ease and Grummus got to Kiss My Ass!.

So there was a flagging!. We all zoned into the Crypt of Decay for the first time and Unity declared the next hit was going to be the Carpin/Church run for the Lower Crypt Flag. Oh my god!, 2 flags in a day!.

So we zone into COD clearing our way through a lot of these guys to get to Carpin Deatharn .

When I say a lot I mean it, COD is absolutely crawling with the Undead!. We set up for Carpin, pulled him and his 5 Death Knight Guards and proceeded to mash him into Undead Dust.

The next in line was Avhi Escron. I didn't get any screen shots of him as he is a ranged fight in a separate room, but I did get a Screen shot of the first wipe of the night. If someone dies during the Avhi Escron fight 4 skellies spawn. It appeared that someone managed to transfer aggro to the casters so we had massive numbers of skellies rampaging through the room. So shortly before I died I got this shot.

Now apparently once you kick this cycle off you have quite a bit of time to complete it. So we reformed and headed back in, fighting through all the respawns back to the Avhi Escron room. A little bit more fighting and we got to Bishop Toluwon.

He snuffed it easy and we ran back to the prep room to make ready for Raex Pwodill.

and then Vindor Mawnil.

These are two damn nasty MOB's. Get them wrong and they will eat your main tank like he ain't there.

So we pull the remainder of the High Priests guards and get ready for High Priest Ultor Szanvon.

At this point something went badly wrong. We set up, engaged and somehow aggroed a MOB through the wall. Halfway thorough the fight with everything going perfectly, a train, the likes of which I haven't seen since my days in Lower Guk pre Kunark, comes rampaging through the raid. Wipe Number two. Reform, fight back to High Priest Ultor Szanvon and this time we nailed his undead ass.

So after receiving my flag I gated and logged. It was a damn loooong day (14 hours pretty much) and the GF wasn't talking to me by the time I logged off. I am still in deep crap up to my eyebrows even now. But what the hell, 2 flags in a day!.

Thursday 08/05/03

I am buggered. I think I have averaged about 4 hours sleep a night since Monday and the GF is simply not talking to me. What have I been up to you ask?. Well lets make this short and sweet.

Monday Night:
The Deep
The Burrower Beast:
Ganked:

Plane of Tactics:
Tallon Zek:
Ganked:

Halls of Honor:
Rydda' Dar
He Ganked us with 37% to spare
I am going to be so happy when he finally goes down

Ruins of Lxanvom: (COD)
Overlord Banord Paffa:
Ganked:
Grats X on the Earring you lucky bastard!

At the end of the raid I /conned my GF and she was Dubious so I slipped into blissful slumber.

Tuesday dawned after about 5 hours sleep. Went to work, its sucked as the whole damn Domain has been collapsing around our ears for the last 2 weeks. Raced home and joined a COD group. Man we just CHEWED through that zone! we cleared out all the undead 3 times completely, including the Elites and a couple of named!. If I can get a Pally as a tank then COD is definately my new favorite XP zone!.

I logged Tuesday at about 1.30 in the morning and /conned my GF again. This time It was Threateningly. Bugger, well I will just not play EQ tomorrow and spend time with her then!.

Of course when I got home Wednesday she wasn't home and I was bored so I logged in. After some initial problems setting up a group, Garaneb and I managed to pull an SA group together in the Bastion of Thunder. At first we just killed ordinary giants which is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Then Garaneb noticed a couple of named's up. So with a full SA group we rapidly Ganked:

Hreidar Lynhillig

Laef Windfall

Wyborn

and Oreen Wavecrasher

and not even one death!. No wonder Sony has changed the loot tables on these guys. In the whole night we got 4 Spectral Parchments (Grats Me and Mallee!) and that was it.

Now at this point i was going to bed and do some faction work with the GF. I knew Kez was planning a High Priest Raid and I WAS GOING TO SLEEP!. Oh yes I was. I was NOT going on the HP raid. Now I have had some good chats with Kez and the one thing he knows about me is that there is three things I just cannot resist. Number one is Killing Giants, Number Two is Killing Snakes and Number Three is I hate being beaten by a MoB.

So he says come on we need to gank this punk cause he's reamed us the last few times we have tried him and he is not often up. So I'm wavering. Then he says I have a couple of spells for the guild Necro's (Goddamn but that spell is rare!) . I am resisting, but hanging on by my fingernails. Then he says I have a Cunning Plan and it will only be 90 minutes!. That puts log off just before 1:00AM, I can still get about 7 hours sleep! Woot I'm in!

Off to Ssraeshza Temple. XTC is up so we race off to see him. set up, engage, tanks go afk, have a smoke, watch TV etc etc. Damn he's a long fight. Once again, my view of Xerkizh The Creator.

XTC falls over, we all rub our eyes, slowly wake up and off to visit the High Priest of Ssraeshza Temple. Setup, Plan, Engage! 30 minutes or so later he dies. Southern Armada Engaged with 31 people including 4 Bots and in a nice safe controlled fashion took out the High Priest with only one death. Someone said the other day we are "fighting above our weight". I guess this would prove it.

Guards

High Priest

Snakey boy was holding a blade but it wasn't Mindpuncture. Ah well, next time snakey boy, and there will be many next times!.

Now since I have been so very very tired this week I have missed many many opportunities to get Pics of The Little Red Fire Engines many many corpses. I must admit I died once during the Rydda' Dar fight myself but I only managed to get a shot of the LRFE's ankle as he zoned past me at high speed. I keep telling the guild Clerics "Rez the Necro in FIRST". He seems to think I have something against him and I am out to get him. Of course this is complete rubbish. I love him, really I do. So the only new pic I have of the LRFE was supplied by X. Thank you X :)

MoB's: 2
LRFE: 2
He wasn't there for the Grummus/Carpin flagging on Sunday or the BOT fights (tho I did try and get him to come, he had knitting to do or something)

My GF now /Conns Red and ready to attack. But its ok, I blamed it all on Kez *grin*

And the best part of the week was:

To my one Fan: Sorry for the delay in updating this. I usually update this from work and on Monday my PC decided to have the big Death. So I have spent most of this week so far rebuilding into a usable state. I've also done all the upgrading I was avoiding on my old machine, so I am learning to use new versions of all my apps.

Well Fridays raid was time for another another baaaaaad day!. We all started off at Ruins of Lxanvom where we proceeded to lay the smackdown on Overlord Banford Paffa.

He kindly loaned me a great Mask as he lay dieing (Now gimmee the earring you fat bastard and I'm done with ya!)

It was then decided that it was time for us to try the Carpin Cycle for the first time by ourselves. While we had been beating up on Paffa lots of people had been waiting patiently outside. The officers zoned out and I think they were a little surprised at the numbers of people sitting outside the zone. Now I am one of those for whom this was a problem so I understand just how frustrating the flagging system can be. However, I listened to my elders and did what the officers suggested and I got flagged. . Up until 2 weeks ago I would have been one of those people outside. I quite like the flagging system but this issue was always going to be a problem for any guild trying to move up towards the Elemental planes.

Something needed to be done I agree, but I disagree with SOE's method of fixing this problem. Opening the Tier two plains to all and sundry is a bad idea without major changes to the way named spawns and trials are done in places like HOH and COD. Guilds can be cock-blocked by a single vindictive player who "blows" a spawn.The good thing about the change is that we no longer have to "back flag" those without the needed flags, the bad things have yet to be worked out but I am sure they will be substantial.

There has been much debate on various boards as to these changes. Those "For" the change are largely those without the flags and/or those who no longer XP anywhere near the named zones. Those "against" the change are immediately labeled "elitist" and accused of wanting to keep people out of "their" hunting spots. Personally, as some-one who vowed to never solo again and thus doesn't give a shit about solo spots, and who spends a LOT of time trying to organize groups in places like BOT and HOH, I welcome the change. There is nothing as annoying as needing a tank for a group, and none of the available tanks are flagged.

As someone who has now done a number of back flagging's and was facing a butt load of them in the future (and nowhere near as many as some in the guild) I am pleased about this change.

However as someone who worked his ass off, begged, whined, pleaded, moaned, pissed people off, put up with shitty pickup raids in order to get his flags, I am not happy with this change. Whatever the proposed "reward" for already having your flags is, it better be fairly substantial, tho knowing SOE it will be half assed and badly thought out.

Anyway. it was decided that we would race off and do some back flagging before we would have a go at Carpin. So off to Plane of Disease.

Gryme the Crypt Guardian

Aramin the Spider Guardian

Grummus the Fat Bastard

Everybody zoned into COD. Yay that was 99% of the guild flagged! Have you ever had the feeling that its all just about to turn to shit?, that your raid is all about to go badly wrong?. I did and really don't know why, we zoned into COD, set up, buffed and proceeded to pull Carpin Deatharn and his buddies.

Carpin went down like a bag of wet poo's and we moved on through the zone. Our first attempt at Avhi Escron went all pear shaped. This is a close up of me FD'd shortly after the engage.

We reformed and re-engaged. Second attack went beautifully and the swine went down smooth as a babies bum! We moved on to Bishop Toluwon.

He died like the girly man that he is and we prepped for Raex Pwodill. Unfortunately this is where my bad feeling stepped up and it all turned to shit. A guild that can nail AOW with no deaths and handle High Priest with 31 people should be able to put the hurt on this guy. Unfortunately after he had finished kicking our asses I had to log as it was close to 2:30am and the GF had me booked very very early in the morning.

So it was both a damn good week and a bad one but on the whole I thoroughly enjoyed myself!