Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty One

07/07/03 Week Twenty one

Due to unavoidable RL shit I had to miss Tuesdays raid. I elected to log for that raid and deal with said RL shit rather than ignore it and maybe have to deal with it during the Rallos Zek hit.

I managed to tag along to the first kill of the night. Mr Overlord Banord 1/33 Paffa still has no ears, *sigh*

But that was it. I helped a few new guild members make it to the HOH zone, made sure they got into the raid and there was someone to look after them, basically made sure all was good and had to log. Unfortunately real life intruded on EQ and I had to go and sort it all out. So no Update for Tuesday.

There was a failed Lord Inquisitor Seru raid in Sanctus Seru the Sunday before as well. Please let Pooby get aggro, please please please. Don't cast until the assist is called. If that means that the MT forgets to call assist and you never get to cast anything. Then so be it. Stand there with your thumb up your ass but do not cast.

Wednesday we formed up about 3-4 groups and headed into The Temple of Solusek Ro. I have only been into Sol Ro's tower once before. I managed to hook up with an SA group to pull some stuff around the entrance for a couple of hours. This time we ventured quite a distance in and headed to the lair of Xuzl. He's a bit of a girly man really, but he, and the area he is in look awesome!. Sol Ro's Tower is just an amazing zone to be in. I would like to spend a lot more time in there, organising groups for the Tower is, however rather hard.

Xuzl

It actually went a little sideways on us at first, but the recovery was brilliant once again and we took him down with true SA flair. I am not sure exactly what happened but the raid leader called for us all to get out of the room and prepare for a wipe. So I headed out of the room as per instructions, then the call came to all run back in, get up on the platform and continue the fight. We did exactly that and he went down.

So that's one less Flag I need towards an Elemental plane. 4 more SolRo Minis to go and its time for a run at Sol Ro himself!. I hope Kez is back tonight, we miss you kez, get your ass back online. We will be doing more back flagging tonight I think. I logged on last night to help out with Bastion of Thunder Giant killing and back flagging and that issue that I thought I had dealt with on Tuesday night came back to bite me again. So after about an hour of Giant killing I had to log again.

The GF is out for Friday's raid, so as long as I have a good connection (and with the servers as shitty as they have been lately there is no guarantees) I will hopefully be online for the whole raid. What annoys me most is that I make a commitment to help out, to be online and do something for other people and I get interrupted because its "just a game and you can turn it off anytime". No amount of explaining that there are 40-50 other real people also involved in what I am doing ever seems to sink in,

Kez is back!! woot!. Welcome back boss!. I logged on and straight to Overlord Banord 'My ears fell off again" Paffa (1/34) in the Crypt of Decay. Guess what, bloody Cloak. I am beginning to believe that the Earring has been removed from the Drop Table. Either that or its so stupidly rare as to not be worth killing him for.

Since we were in Crypt of Decay anyway we decided to take a run against the Carprin Cycle. We kicked off the cycle, the pulling team and off tank team did a marvelous job and Carprin Deatharn and his assorted undead buddies went down in quick succession.

Next up is the Mob I've never seen and the Mob that gives us the most trouble out of this whole run. Once again we wiped against him and had to fight back to Ahvi Escron's room. As is also standard practice, the second run against him he was dropped with no problems. Next up is the massive damage output of Raex Pwodil. SA handled him beautifully and he snuffed it fast and clean.

Then comes Vindor Mawnil (I can now spell both of those names without having to refer to Allakhazam's first!). Both of these two can pump out huge damage. One Rampages a lot the other Flurries a lot and both of them are capable of one rounding a fully raid buffed main tank if your heal team is not very very tight.

Then its a quick run around the corner and drop the rather pathetic Bishop Toluwon. If you can take Vindor and Raex this guy is gimp. We had a monk tank and dropped him rapidly.

Then its the final MOB in the run and the flag boss, High Priest Ultor Szanvon. In comparison to Raex and Vindor he is a girlyman.

Ding!!, a bunch of people got flagged for CODb!. Yay!, less back flagging to do later!. This whole run is a classic example of how SOE fundamentally doesn't understand the bullshit they constantly spew about "Risk vs Reward". I don't know whether they think the flag is the reward or not, but for the difficulty, damage output and level of the MOBs in the cycle, they should drop something halfway decent. Instead you punch your way through the whole cycle and get stuff that goes straight to the Guild Mule because not even the Newbies want it. Its utterly ridiculous.

Next up, Halls of Honor. We figured since we were on a flagging run we should do it properly. We quickly ran through the Princess Trial (4rooms),

Then the Villagers (12man) and finally Rydda`Dar. I still love killing this dragon. I get the butterflies every time we engage because he will still own you if you make even a little mistake. It was a messy take down for us. But a kill is a kill.

That was about that for Friday. Lots of back flagging got done, grats to those who finished up their flagging and thank you to those who made a special effort to be there for the back flagging session as well.

Well Saturday was both a lot of fun and one of the most frustrating days I have ever spent in EQ. It started really really well, I logged in and joined the Unity raid channel to see what was going on. Unity was prepping to kill Grummus. Now I haven't killed the fat bastard for a while and it was that or more camping the Pained Soul in Trakanon's Teeth. So I rang an NZ SA member who I knew needed Grummus and told him to log on. We headed out to Plane of Disease, formed up, ran in, and the first to die was Gryme the Crypt Keeper.

Up the stairs, through the door and Aramin the Spider Guardian dies.

Finally a very quick prep and in we go against Grummus.

Next up we were going to hit Carprin, but oops, SA had dropped him the night before. Then it was maybe HOH, but OOPs we cleaned that out as well. So they called Aerin' Dar and off we all headed to the Plane of Valor. The first attempt was made up just about entirely of Unity alts and it failed. After a fast reform and rebuff the second attempt was perfect and AD went down cleanly.

After about 5 minutes waiting around the Unity raid leaders called Rallos Zek!. Holy shit!, he wasn't supposed to be up for another 24 hours as far as I was aware. I knew Unity had dropped him for the first time the week previous, I had never even seen him so I decided to hang out and see how they went. Everyone logged their alts, brought in their Mains and we formed up in Drunder. For Unity this was a damn fast form-up. Normally they take a while to get sorted but this was lightning quick. I should have known at this point that this wasn't the same Unity I had experienced in the past.

We fought in, grabbed the two named triggers and when in position Unity dropped them. Tallon Zek was inc. Now this is where I have seen the previous runs I have been on with Unity fall apart.

Not this time, this kill was smooth as silk. Next up, Vallon Zek.

Again, went down like a virgin on prom night. Unity lost 3 people in both fights. Now one of the interesting thing's about being a server transfer is that you don't know anything about guilds and reputations on a server. You don't know the servers "History" as it were and people are very often willing to tell you all about a certain guild or toon. Now I had heard that Unity was originally neck and neck with Keepers of the Faith for the number one position on the server. They had a bunch of core people leave all at once and were severely knocked back.

I have also heard it bandied about in exp groups (by people in Guilds I have never heard of or who are nowhere near the level of Nameless Order, KTF, Unity etc) that Unity was finished, their Glory days were over and they may as well give up. I will tell you one thing, based on what I saw Saturday, those people are about to be eating their words because Unity's performance against Rallos Zek was easily one of the smoothest demonstrations of Power I have seen yet. I really wish I could have seen them at their height.

Unity is definitely back and headed to Time. If they can continue the current level of dedication and discipline then IMHO Unity are definite contenders.

Finally we made it to Fake Rallos, engaged, handled the adds beautifully and all Evac'd out to the Zone in ready for real Rallos.

Not a single death in the whole fake Rallos fight, clean as a whistle. Raced in and down to Rallos Zek the Warlord. Sorted charming, add teams in place and off we went.

We made one mistake. The Raid leader forgot to call Full Burn. That was it. We failed with Rallos at 8%. Unity decided to make another run, it was very very late for them so all Kudos that they all stuck around. We reformed at Zone In and raced for the triggers again. There was initially some concern that Tallionis were in zone and forming up for a run at RZtW as well, but they were in fact after the "real" Zek brothers.

So after a bit of pissing about we headed back to Tallon Zek.

Then big brother Vallon:

Back to Fake Rallos.

This one was a little messier. Unity was getting tired and it got a bit sloppy, but we were back at the Zone In in good time, reforming ready for the run at RZtW...

Link Death.

The whole fucking raid went Link Dead, in fact I think most of the population of EQ went LD all at once. I spent 20 minutes frantically trying to get back in to rejoin the raid. I got 1018 errors, 1017 errors and 1001 errors. In fact the entire gamut of errors. I finally checked into CHAT to find the whole game LD. At this point I logged in frustration. I knew the raid wasn't going to complete as the timer would have run out.

The penultimate of EQ is the Elemental Planes. I need one more Flag to make it into the elementals, Rallos Zek the Warlord. I never even dreamed I would be this close, never in my wildest imagination did I think I would make it to the Elementals. To be that close (Unity took him down the next day, first run, so we would have taken him out on Saturday) and to have it snatched away was frustrating beyond belief. I logged out and walked quickly away from my PC before I decided to break something.

The next day (when I cant logon, Sundays are GF time) Unity and SA took out Rallos and about 15 people from SA were Elemental flagged. I was so frustrated when I read that, that I couldn't logon. I logged on again on Monday, died to an LD on a pull and logged out again. Raid night is tonight and I will be there. I wouldn't miss it for the world, but my tolerance for general XP'ing (and all the frustration with constantly being knocked back when trying to set up/join groups) is very very high right now. Most nights I just end up camping some piece of shit key mobs or doing Green farming anyway, there isn't a lot of fun in that

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty

07/07/03 Week Twenty

This weeks images are a bit larger than normal. They are all still under 20K and the same size as usual , but it was a flagging night, so I tried to get decent close ups of stuff. Apologies to those on Dial-Up. First up, a quote from group chat a week or so ago. We were forming up to venture into CODa and Elly got a little frustrated with his 2nd PC's logon time.

For those who (Like me) need glasses.
Ellyrion tells the group: "My 2nd PC is slow as fuck"
Metalex tells the group: "upgrade"
Ellyrion tells the group: "I've seen old ppl fuck faster"
Caniella tells the group: "I really don't want to think about that"

I have to agree Cani, I really don't, but it gets quote of the month from me!!.

Well last night was an adventure!. We had examples of Southern Armada at our best and at (from what I have seen so far) our worst, sometimes at the same time. First up. Shei Vinitras. Flawless kill. I LOVE running all the way through Akheva Ruins and just AOEing all the trash on the way.

Next up Agnarr!!. WOOT a flagging, a flagging!. So we form up outside BOT in the courtyard. Someone manages to aggro the statue's. Not sure how that happened but we quickly dealt with them and started to move in. Geno DA's in and pulls the trash out from zone, we deal with the Portals and adds and turn on Evynd Firestorm. It was a bit messy and at one point I seriously thought we were going to wipe. We had adds all over the place, uncontrolled, Pooby down, Hill down, Nym tanking the Named, healers going down. We brought it back under control and I hoped that would going to be the shake down of the night and it would be nice and smooth after that.

Evynd Firestorm

So we take down the first level of the tower and rez, rebuff ready for the second. Geno DA's in to pull trash away again and goes down!. Pooby is on the named and keeping it entertained, CH chain is flowing nicely. 30 casters are standing there, thumbs up their butts looking for a target, no Second Assist!!. I am standing around ready to unleash some serious unpleasantness, I'm FM and can see at least 3 targets that the Chanters have under control and cant do nada!

It got sorted, Pallies stepped up and we rapidly took out the whirly stone thingies and started on the named. This is a fun kill. The AE's are so nasty that its really a ranged fight. So with the target designated, Pooby keeping aggro I just chain dotted the hell out of him, ended the fight at about 30% mana.

Image shamelessly Stolen from Illia's cause I didn't manage to get a good one.
Emmerick Skyfury

We got a "well done, as flawless a kill as I have ever seen" from Geno!!!!. Wow!. Finally we make it to Agnarr's floor. Everybody knows what to do, we are fully buffed, we are pumped from the last couple of fights, Geno calls it and we Engage!. Of course it all goes completely tits up. Pooby down, Cani and Trundle down, Geno down, confusion over Second Assist calls and targets, most of the Rangers and Druids kiting Agnarr down, Wizzie's down, half the Necro's down. We have 4-5 uncontrolled Adds running amok inside the raid, Agnarr wont stay controlled and Hilly and Panolen are doing a fucking beautiful job kiting him.

I looked up and less than a third of the raid is still standing, bodies everywhere, Agnarr rampaging, adds just dropping people in one round all over the place. We are fucked. Then, the Guild took a collective deep breath, dug deep and recovered. This is to me the difference between a Guild and a Raiding Guild. We may only raid 2-3 times a week, but nothing gets in our way. Thats our reputation. We are the little guild that does more with less. The only difference now is we arent so little. People stepped up to do their jobs, thought outside the box and just said to themselves "This is NOT going to beat me". Many many guilds would have just taken the wipe at this point or had somebody do something stupid and complete the wipe. Not Southern Armada.

I was dragging (trying to, consent damnit), Combat rezzing started, Necro's are dumping to Clerics and throwing out Dots and Nukes as the off tanks got the Adds under control, Malina did an absolutely fantastic job keeping the named Giant out of the way, Panolen kept Agnarr occupied until Bilb (after his Rez) could get his AA boosted root on him and fix him in position.

Slowly we dragged ourselves back from a wipe, toon by toon we came back, until we had a room clear of Adds and Portals, Agnarr rooted against one wall and a fully rezzed and ready to go Raid. I couldn't believe it. I was fully stunned, that was a better feeling than dropping Ryd'dar the first time, that was Southern Armada in action. Kez was right to stop recruiting after all the guys from Xev came across, to allow everyone time to get to know one another. If last night was anything to go by, I would say the shakedown is nearly complete and SA is close to being ready for Rallos. Having said that, we should never have gotten that close to a wipe in the first place. No ones fault. Geno's strats were perfect. I think with Kez away and others having a rest, the few left in the officer corps are just about stretched to the limit. Once we were recovered however, Agnarr didn't even rate a blip on our radar. He is another one who spawns adds as his health drops :

Ekil Thundercall

The final add is Hibdin Cyclone and he is apparently a major pain, un-slowable and a massive damage output. Geno tanked him and we just blew him away.

Hibdin Cyclone

Finally the swine we were there for, Agnarr the Storm Lord. Ganked.

So we all ran upstairs to see Karana. It really is a kind of a cruel joke on the part of SOE to make the most hated God in the game, be the one you have to rescue. I was so looking forward to killing Karana for all the times I spent lost on his Plain's or just going round and round in circles in his damn rain.

This week we have a patch Wednesday night and a raid Thursday night so the pickings should be good! Well last week's Raids sucked ass in the end. Patch Wednesday was delayed to Thursday, so the raid was delayed to Friday. Then of course SOE fucked up the patch and had to emergency patch on the Friday. By the time the servers came up I was asleep. So sometime in the week I went along and helped drop Trakanon again and that was about it for raiding this week.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Nineteen

03/07/03 Week Nineteen

Tuesday night's raid was pretty short and sweet for me. After Saryrn I saw the call for Tallon Zek when my logout countdown was at about 10 seconds. Too Late!. I was nearly out and absolutely buggered so I left it and went to bed. First up on Tuesday I did my little run into Crypt of Decay to check if Paffa was up. I'm sure there is some nasty see invis MOB in the little room just outside his lair, because my invis drops or gets broken every time I make that damn run. Well he was up and very kindly the officers decided he was the nights warm up.

This time I waited to take my Screen shot and got a view of the other side of Paffa's head. This is to prove that he DOES in fact have a second ear that could potentially drop an earring. *Sigh* but not this time. We even had Mall sit the fight out because the only time an Earring has dropped was when he wasn't there. Didn't work.

Overlord Banord (1/30) Paffa

I get my hopes up every damn time. Its not even so much that I want one, which I do, don't get me wrong, I just want him to drop ONE! So after yet another disappointment, we headed out to the Plane of Torment, to hit Saryrn again. Its seems to be something of a Southern Armada tradition, that, beyond flagging requirements, we always hit a tough MOB at least twice, just to prove the first one wasn't a fluke. Not that Saryrn is a tough MOB, she's not. But clearing all the crap to get to her is a pain in the ass. If you have never done this kill, you basically have 1-2 hours of Trash clearing and 4 Named MOBs to kill before you get to Saryrn's room. Killing her is the easy bit.

Servant of Saryrn

Now I think I actually got screenshots of all the named's and in order this time. First up is the Fleshgrinder. Now forgive me if I am wrong, but surely if you are designing an encounter you start with the slightly easier MOBs and move up to the hard ones in a sort of semi logical progression?. Nope, not if you are SOE, lets put the 1k quadding, AE Rampaging, 100K HP MOB at the start of the run!!. Ah well I guess it sorts out whether you should even be attempting the kill.

Salczek the Fleshgrinder

Next up (I think) comes Ta`Grusch the Abomination. Another huge damage output MOB.

Now in front of that big ugly ass MOB which is pumping out enough damage to drop an Old World God, stands Pooby. In a lot of cases all that stands between us and a wipe, is the Poobinator and the dedication and Skill of the SA Cleric team. /BIG BOW to you guys!. One of these days Pooby will make the magical 10k mark, oh yes he will!

Then comes the Acolyte, a fun fight cause of all the adds. If your CC team isn't on to it, even if you can survive the previous two mobs, this guy will get you every time.

The Acolyte of Affliction

Another "spawn lots of MOBs as my health drops" Boss. Again, you better have damn good crowd control for this, one downed Chanty can mean 20+ adds in the middle of your raid. I still think its a bit of a boring Model though.

Maareq the Prophet

Next, and last before Saryrn's room is The Keeper of Sorrows. Now this is a MOB I really don't get. You make it through all the other very tough MOB's, requiring CC, healing, high DPS etc etc, you get to this guy, who is the last thing in your way and he's a Gimp. Straight up and down Tank fight. Odd.

The Keeper of Sorrows

Then you get to the good bit. I like this fight. It needs everybody to be on their game. Everyone has to be clear about what they are doing, where they are placed, what will happen next and the pace and speed of Saryrn's death. We lost one player this time. 2 Kills, one death, that's not half bad.

She knows we are coming, its all just bluster....

Saryrn has been Poobied.

A couple of days ago I was looking through Allakhazam's (As you do) and I noticed this. Now I can only speak as a Necro (I have played a tank to the 50's but that don't count) and personally that's one of those items that just makes me go all weak at the knee's. If it had STA on it as well I would have started to drool at my desk. This run through Saryrn was kind enough to drop it for us. To be honest I am very happy Mallee won it. I think the officers made a good call, and damn that job has to suck, Grats Mall, that is an Awesome Earring :)

I have to say, the more we crawl through the Mid-Upper Tiers of the Planes of Power, the more I am enjoying it. Every encounter, or series of them, has a different flavor. Its obvious (or at least it seems so to me, maybe I am wrong) that they are training Guilds towards an end. As you progress through the planes the fights get longer, they require more and more "combined arms" co-ordination and more and more dedication from the players than ever before. I think the designers are essentially trying to weed out the "lesser" or "weaker" guilds with these progressive encounters. Sure you can clear NToV, but can you drop a BOT Tower Boss?, Terris Thule?, Grummus?, or if you can kill those, can you step up to Rydda`Dar?, can you concentrate and co-ordinate your people long enough to drop Bertoxxulous?, finally, can you put everything you have learned together and kill the Big Bad (as Buffy would say) and kill Rallos Zek the Warlord.

I have seen a lot of talk and discussion lately about the next series of "EQ Killers" on the horizon. Personally, I have put a shit load of time and effort into this game and I am not going anywhere till I can say I "beat" it. I have been playing 4+ years and now I am getting this close to EndGame there is no way I am leaving. I want to see POTime, I want to drop the Rathe Council, I want to break the 3k HP mark on Ulaa. There is still a lot to do and see.

I have also seen a lot of bitching and whining by the Uber Guilds about how the end game "sucks" and there is "nothing" after it. Well sorry but getting to be an "Uber Guild" means one thing, you finish the game earlier and you have a lot of time waiting around for the next expansion. You get bragging rights cause you were first and you get to tell the rest of us we suck. If you don't like it, then stop playing 60 hours a week. Me personally, I still enjoy EQ and I have still got a lot of this game to see. Having zoned into and done a little hunting in Sol Ro's Tower I have to say I am looking forward to the rest of the zones. The design of that zone, the "Look and Feel" of it are fantastic!. I cant wait to see POFire and POWater.

Friday
Night. Fucking Overlord Banord 1/31 "Necro's can Suck my Ass" Paffa is first target. I went LD (oh what a surprise) as we engaged so no pic. He still didn't drop an earring. Bastard. Next up was a run to my favorite Zone. I always do the port down to The Great Divide and then run through Kael Drakkal to the Wakening Lands side. Its a lot faster than waiting for a port in POK. So we form up, buff up and the pulls start. We just about have this down to a fine art at this point. I think we could almost bring everything between the pull spot and the Statue and just AOE it.

Statue pulled....

shortly to die...

Once again the Statue came with two or three friends and once again the off tanks stepped up and nailed them.

The Idol of Rallos Zek

The Avatar of War

Then it was a quick run to Halls of Honor for more backflagging. We set up for the Villager Trial fast, kicked it off and spanked it. We absolutely blew through about 20 level 60+ Named Mobs without even pausing for breath.

One of many

Then it was time for our old Nemesis Rydda`Dar. This Dragon, that once gave us so many problems, went down like Pam on Tommy.

He's a Pussy really..

Then it was time for the big boy of the night. A quick run up to the Temple of Marr and the Lord Mithaniel Marr. Now once again this is a major crawl through miles and miles of Zone Yard Trash. However the yard trash here looks pretty cool. Some people think that these MOBs are doggies (Probably Canterbury fans) . I personally think they look like pussy cats. Level 64, hit like a freight train, pussy cats. They look like they should be curled up and asleep at the foot of my bed, purring and keeping my feet warm.

Once you clear through them you get the fun of killing off a couple of named's. If the pussy cats hit like freight trains the named hit like having a small moon dropped on you. Get it wrong and you can have a wee oops!. The named's died, but so did a lot of us.

Oops!.

Finally we were in place and it was time to go. The Monks were busy separating out Lord Marr from his various body guards. The biggest and nastiest of which is an overblown froggie model called Ralthazor, Champion of Marr. Now why didn't they use a new froggie model?. The new froggies are all followers of Marr, the old froggies from Guk (same as this model) are not.

Killing Ralthazor isn't hard, separating him from his guards is. The pull team did their usual flawless job and Ralthazor came alone. Unfortunately, during the maneuvering to separate Marr from his remaining body guards someone went LD, some funny aggro happened and we got Mith Marr and 3 of his friends.

That's basically another oops pic. We attempted to recover in place and Geno and Attann did a brilliant job of playing Tag with the pussy cats to keep them aggro'd on the far side of the room. It would have worked as well if two of them hadn't warped over to our corner and wiped the clerics and few tanks we had up by that time. Ah well chalk that one up to experience and bad luck. At that point it was close to 2:00am and time for sleep. I don't think anything else was hit that night as a lot of people were starting to log at that point.

But the following night I logged on with the hope we would get a chance at another Raid. Sure enough our old friend Seru was up. Everyone gathers in POK for the Port to Sanctus Seru and start the fight in to him. Once again he was waiting with his back to us. What I want to know is how he ever managed to Challenge the Emperor. He is always looking the wrong way.

He cant be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Another not so good fight. He aggro'd to the wrong spot on pull, wipe went half the Casters and Clerics. We struggled on for a couple of minutes before the call was taken to camp. We reformed, pulled and ganked flawlessly.

Lord Inquisitor Seru

That was pretty much it for Friday. Just a simple quite kill. Saturday was July 4th in the USA so Unity weren't really up to a lot. I managed to tag along with Cani and a couple of Non-USA Unity chaps and did a bit of killing for XP in the Halls of Honor.

Nevor Jikman

I also managed to tag along on a mini run to Old Sebilis to drop the Undead dragon Lord Trakanon. Now Trak may be well and truly old school EQ but I have never killed him, or even ventured that deeply into Sebilis. So about one and half groups of us formed up in Seb and started to fight our way in. It went pretty simply actually. Fight down to him, separate out his protectors.

and then a fairly simple Zerg Rush at him. Dead Dragon and one more Dragon ticked off the kill list!!.

Trakanon

He dropped a couple of BP's neither of which I won (I was hoping for the Cobalt BP for my nasty Warrior Twink) and we all ported out and went our separate ways, another Dragon trashed. I did manage to be awarded a Trak Tooth, so I guess I should start my Veeshans Peak Key quest!.