Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty Six

18/08/03 Week TwentySix

And the lord of the Phat Lewtz Looked down and he sayeth:

"The devoted mendicants of Southern Armada have sacrificed many Pallies and allowed the death of many many Shammies, thus I shall reward them!"

Ssraeshza Temple crashed minutes before the raid was due to start. *BIG Evil Grin!*

I'm not sure why, but for some reason Alltear was very very happy during the Ssra raid, maybe it was the positioning of Laurwen?. I knew there had to be SOME advantage to being that short.

Raid was called and of course we all headed straight for the Temple. First target was the Emperor. Kez says "Bring me Snakes" and we did. Straight in, no muss, no fuss, dead snake.

As you do during a raid, we were discussing the physical attributes of the fairer members of the species and wondering whether Halle Berry or Lucy Liu's forward weapons were in fact real. The conversation was on a reasonable level right up until this popped up out of nowhere!.

Simis gets the official title of most Politically Incorrect lizard in the guild!!. I just about fell off my chair laughing at that!.

A quick run downstairs and I completely failed to get screen shots of a Glyphed serpent, Vyzh'dra the Exiled and Vyzh`dra the Cursed. Even tho I don't have screen shots you will have to take my word that they died. I promise they did!. I know, I'm crap, hey we were killing Snakes! I got excited!. I was hoping for a shot at the High Priest, I've been carrying Star Rubies around for 4 months ( I may forget my resist gear, or coffins, or EE's or my head if it wasn't screwed on, but I ALWAYS have the Rubies on me ) just in case we could get another shot at him.

Lord Mithaniel Marr, Lord of Goody Two Shoes Poofy Pally boys had popped, we have been having some trouble actually finding him up so we abandoned Ssra for the minute and headed to the Temple of Marr. We zoned in and for once the 85/15 thing worked for us, instead of against us and we quickly had a full raid.

The Emperor had been kind enough to drop a Kodiacs Robe of Heightened Focus and it had been awarded to a filthy Gnomie Wizzie.

Anklebiters, just say no.

Then it was discovered we had Twin Gnomies! Identical in every respect!, well with the exception of their Ugly faces! (Comes from all that ankle biting!) Mithaniel isn't quite as annoying as many of his contemporary bosses, in that there aren't 10 bazillion trash MOB's on the way to his room, there are however several rather nasty named's in the way.

Edium, Guardian of Marr

Halon of Marr

and finally Mithaniel's body guard with the stupid froggie model, damn he takes me back to the Days of Guk!

Ralthazor, Champion of Marr

I don't know what it is with MM, SA can drop Bertoxxulous in 1hr 20mins, we can take out Agnarr in 51 minutes, we dropped the HP with 24 people, but for some reason we have real trouble with Agnarr. I wonder if its the same for other guilds? With a little clever pulling, some extremely fast healing and CC we managed to pull MM alone.

Once we get him alone we can kill him easily. Its singling him out that is the tough part. I still think he is the best looking Boss Mob in the game so far. Although I have been told the Sol Ro Tower Mini Bosses look awesome I have yet to see them. Mithaniel died *sad* and for the second time in a row he dropped the Uber Belt!

At this point the rest of the raid headed out and back to Ssra. It was 2am for me so I decided to go and have a wee lie down. SA went on to drop Rhag 1,2 and the Arch Lich.

During the week I was also very kindly invited to join a POEarth group. (Ok I begged, whined, pleaded and generally made myself irritating) My first ever Elemental Planes group woot!. The Elementals are awesome fun and fantastic XP and the MOB models are all new and interesting. We set up on one of the Platforms and proceeded to pull everything we could see. Hopefully it wont be my last!

An Earth Initiate

A Vekerchiki Warrior

A War Shapen Earth Emissary

Despite being knackered due to getting 41/2 hours sleep and then being incredibly stressed by false reports of a worm inside my systems I wasn't going to miss the Guilds first Vex Thal raid. Apparently something needed to be done on the Prexus server so SOE decided to drop the server for 15 minutes or so and kindly fully popped VT for us!.

We zoned in and got a quick reminder to never take anything for granted with a near wipe. We sorted ourselves out, started to take VT a little more seriously and moved a little deeper into the zone. I kept thinking to myself "I'm in Vex Thal!, I'm IN Vex Thal, I'm Raiding VT!" Another first for me and another one I never thought I would ever achieve!. *Hug* SA.

I have to say this has to be one of the best looking zone's I have seen so far. The architecture is just awesome. After clearing the same number of Trash Mobs as you need to to get to Saryrn we got to our first Named, he looks just like his cousin the Itraer Vius and died about as easily.

Thall Va Xakra

Lewtz, Phat, Phat Lewtz. Oh Lordy I hope we get to hit this place a few times. I can see why guilds stayed here and just farmed the place. We continued to move through the zone and made it to the second boss, a big blob. The pic is crap but what can you do with a flat grey mob on a grey background?.

Kaas Thox Xi Ans Dyek

Hopefully one week soon we will get to hit this place hard and go all the way through to Aten Ha Ra and completely clear Vex Thal. I logged after Puddle Boy, after the previous nights raid I was falling asleep at the key board. One more raid this week, Thursday and a mini raid against POEarth Mini's (hopefully) Friday night as well. The GF is going to hate me this week.

Well Thursday came and went, no Rallos Zek the Warlord for us. *Sad* The bastard just refuses to pop for us, we just need one successful run at him and we can move past him. We just need to drop him once to "prove" we deserve to be in the Elementals, then we can move to Sol Ro Tower Mini bosses and into the Elemental planes themselves. Elemental armour *droooool*. OK I don't know if that's the case at all, but that's what I am hoping anyway.

I managed to get one quick Plane of Earth group before the raid on Thursday and proceeded to knock off a bunch of MudMen, Goddamn Dillo's and these guys...

A Vekerchiki Warrior

But since Rallos wasn't up and she was, we headed to Terris Thule's house and smacked her. She was hanging about the place like a bad smell anyway.

Come and play SA...

Terris Thule

She fell over dead, it was a bit of an anti-climax really. You spend all that time prepping, fighting to her, setting up, and she just falls over. She dropped so fast and easy we decided that we needed some punishment to remind ourselves that POP gods are NOT easy to kill. So it was off to the Plane of Torment and Saryrn for the night for some serious self flagellation.

Now I really like the Earring she drops (why is it that all the decent focus items pre Elemental planes are Pri/Sec or if not pri/sec drop rarely off insanely annoying to kill Gods?) So there was much killing of yard trash, hours and hours and hours of it.

Trash...

More Trash...

Even more Trash...

Finally a Named!

And another named...

and another...

Are we there yet?

Finally!

One thing I would like to complain about. Stealth fixes!. I know how Sorrowsong was supposed to work, he was supposed to path around the room casting AE silence on everyone and making it hard to heal, nuke etc etc. Well he has never worked this way. He either sits in his little corner and/or paths around the room and casts nothing.

Well some time in the last couple of weeks the "kind" people at SOE fixed him. He now acts exactly as he is supposed to. Where was the patch message?, where was the information that Sorrowsong was now acting as intended?. When were they planning on telling us?.

Didn't matter, we ganked the pair of them anyway after the initial surprise (WTF?, I'm Silenced!) but it would have been nice to know ahead of time.

Sorrowsong

Saryrn

Unfortunately Saryrn picked that night to not drop her marvelous little earring and the collective howls of the Necro's could be heard across Norrath. That was pretty much it for Thursday. Hours of wading through Trash and then 5 minutes of fun killing Saryrn. Kind of like the average first date I guess.

I took Friday off as I had a wee chest infection and needed to sleep. So I spent the day XPing ( Garakk is 6% from Level 52 and struggling to get further. I HATE pickup groups grrr ). One thing that is interesting about being a lower level and grouping with people is to get the perspective of the lower end again. Very rarely when playing Garakk I will meet someone who knows the guild tag, or some of the other higher end guilds on Prexus, but most people don't know and don't really care beyond a kind of general "they are all uber assholes" attitude.

They are really happy that their guild has just started to kill in Kael Drakkal or are about to go to Plane of Hate or kill Grummus for the first time. It really brings you back down and gives you perspective on the game again. Its not all about the high end and the endless grind for AA's, Uber items and the next MOB on the path to Time. Its about fun and meeting new people and sometimes its about the little guy, not about Uber_Guild_57. It makes me think it would be huge fun to tank a Dragon or some other Uber Mob for some lower tier guild, after all its something I have never done!.

Saturday I logged in to find I was too late for Rallos, the good folks over at Unity were waiting for Talionis to pass. There were about 90 people in the raid channel so I figured I would wait for the next target. In the meantime I went down and ganked the Pained Soul for an hour or two. Hunting the Soul kind of like picking at a scab, you know it isn't going to do you any good and its vaguely painful but you just cant stop. So after an hour or two of that, watching Unity nail Rallos and then sort loot/flags etc they called the remainder of the raid to the Plane of Air. Woot! a new zone!.

We zoned in and started to clear through the trash.

Castellan of Air

Temple Guard

I have to say I this is another zone I cant wait for SA to start hitting, some of the MOB designs are just beautiful.

Phoenix

Servitor of Xegony

Djinn

This zone is a Necro's heaven. NOTHING I cast was resisted. We cleared through the zone to a boss MOB whose name I missed. He cant have been too tough as I don't even remember the fight. It just seemed like a guard with slightly more HP. We then ran quickly back to beat the re spawn and had a go at the Avatar of Smoke.

This guy spawns 3-4 adds with a 600point lightning AE each. Very nasty, we managed to get him to about 10% or so before we wiped. It was a first run though so I'm sure Unity will do far better next time. That was then about it for Saturday.

Now I would like to take a moment and philosophize on the color co-ordination of Tanks. In General they don't have any. Now most classes took the addition of custom colors into EQ with a grain of salt and with the exception of Pink Power Rangers and the odd Pink Pally *Cough* Unity*Cough* most classes stayed in relatively normal colors. Not the Tanks, as a class they just went hog wild. Now normally I don't like to generalize about classes and the people that play them but in this case I can fairly safely say that all Warriors are color blind.

I can honestly see the point of the lime green, and the blue kind of works, but isn't the pink hat just a LITTLE over the top?

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty Five

12/08/03 Week Twenty Five

Well its been a damn long 10 days or so. For those of you who live under a rock there is a rather nasty Worm running about the place that uses a Microsoft exploit to attack its victims. NAI says that within 3 hours of it becoming known to them they had seen it on 5000 servers, within 24 hours it had affected 250,000 machines they were aware of. The reason I am telling you this?, well sometime in the last 2 years I became the default Anti Virus guy for my company, so this whole issue has management panicked and keeping me really busy. However happy to say not a single virus has managed to make it through our systems.

That's why I am really, really late with this update. If I get the order of kills wrong or otherwise stuff it up, well the mistakes are all mine.

First up was last Monday. This was an "Impromptu raid" so we only had 71 level 65's in the raid and 1 level 64. It was a very disappointing turn out *grin* <--- Sarcasm by the way for those who have a problem recognizing it. A very, very quick run to Akheva Ruins and a fast drop of the Itraer Vius (a question was asked "Is he hard?", I nearly went blue from laughing so hard.)

After ganking and then abusing the corpse of the IV it was on to our old friend Shei Vinitras. I used to sit and dribble about the PhatLewtz on Shei, now I own pretty much all of it!. Is Shei a he or a she?, I've never been too sure. He is still a damn fun kill tho, especially when I get to kite off some adds, snare, run, summon, *smack*, run, summon, *smack* hehehe it's fun.

After the ease at which we blew thru the caverns we decided to have a go at something really hard. Agnarr was up, so we all headed over to the Bastion Of Thunder. This time the 85/15 thing worked and we actually managed to get the non flagged into the zone. Now after the mess we made of this last time I was a little apprehensive, but a comment was made in the Necro channel "Last time I did this with Unity it took just over an hour, we will take ages". So this time I started a timer as soon as the first MOB was engaged.

Of course the first name to go down was Evynd Firestorm.

This swine resists Funeral Pyre and for no other reason do I hate him. We dropped him fast, with a little rezzing and reorganization we powered up to the second level. I don't know what Mr Emmerick Skyfury is like for other classes but for Nec's he is one of the "fun" kills. I basically get to LOAD him with DOT's. I switch out all other spells and just load him up and do what a Nec is supposed to do, massive damage.

He fell over like a Girlie at schoolies. I don't think we even managed to sacrifice a Pally. So it was quickly up to the 3rd level. Now this is were we came unstuck last time, I needn't have worried, we were on Form!!. Gateways were downed in rapid succession by the Wizzies, adds were off tanked (Go the Pallies!) and the rest of us just savaged Jolur Sandstorm!

Agnarr's ass was parked against the wall, after a really fast round of rebuffs we engaged and just GANKED the bastard. Of course there is the little matter of a few adds that spawn while killing Agnarr. Not a problem for Genosin the Uber Shadow Knight!!.

Olin Stormtide

Hibdin Cyclone

Agnarr the Storm Lord

51 minutes from first zone entry to the death of Agnarr and That's including about 10 minutes of dicking around.

The real raid was on Tuesday night and we went straight at Rallos Zek in the Plane of Tactics. Hopes were high after the performance the night before. The initial run was a little rocky, partially our fault with a few silly mistakes being made, but due largely to the damn buggy script again. We zoned in, killed all the yard trash and gathered the triggers.

Decorin Berik

We get into position, drop the triggers and in comes Tallon Zek.

Gimp Boy

He died efficiently and in rapid succession we had Vallon incoming.

Unfortunately due to a bit of confusion amongst the off tanks and some weird pathing on the pull, he came with about 5 friends. A quick wipe, a quick reform ( Talionis spies were hanging about the place ) and back to the triggers again.

Soon to be dead trigger MOB

Tallon Again

Vallon Again

The second time round the whole sequence took about half the time of the first. People calmed themselves, we had our little shake down run and we were ready for Rallos.

We made it up to the fake Rallos room and pulled him.

Back to the ZI and down into the pit for the real fight. Rallos Zek the Warlord is INCOMING!!

This was one of those fights that just balanced on a razors edge. If one or two things had gone our way we would have taken him. Unfortunately those things went the way of Rallos and at 2% health we wiped, We really wanted to be the first guild to drop him on our first run. That honor will have to go to some other guild unfortunately. But the fact we got him to 2% puts him on the "not yet, but soon" list. The night we got Rydda'Dar to his death walk but we wiped, we knew the MOB was definitely killable by us. Rallos Zek the Warlord will die to Southern Armada and soon.

To make up for the disappointment of Rallos, the Lewt Gods smiled down on us and the Emperor Ssraeshza was up and good to go for a third round with SA on Friday. A quick run to Ssraeshza Temple and a little quiet key farming on the third floor we zoned into the Emperors chambers...

Prepped...

and nailed the Emperor.

To quote our illustrious leader <---- NOT sarcasm, there will be a test on this later so I hope you are paying attention.

"Well it certainly felt like pharming to me...well timed, lavish pharming."

The Emperor has definitely gone on to the "Farmable's" list and will be providing us with the PhatLewtz for many moons to come. There was much other killing this week, BOT Tower bosses, the XTC fell to our power and several others I wasn't around for. As I said at the top of this missive, this week was rather busy and being on training Wed-Fri meant I kind of needed to be vaguely awake in class, so I dropped out a bit early for a couple of the kills.

However a screen shot of the Plane of Fire was promised. It's only the zone in but hey it's a Screenie :)

Well that was week 25, week 26 is being worked on as you read this and may even go up shortly after this update.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Twenty Four

04/08/03 Week Twenty Four

Wow, what a night. Just wow. Southern Armada's demonstration of DPS and control against Bertoxxulous would be I believe, second to nobody. Maybe KTF could do it faster but not with more style.

First up. The traditional Banord "My Loot table is up my ass" Paffa smacking. I have completely blown out my merit this week, I don't even want him to drop the damn earring for me. I just want him to drop it to justify the continuous and extensive beat down we have laid on him. There is a number of Necromancer's in SA who DESERVE that earring and that fat bastard should drop it.

Now since we were in the Crypt of Decay and Bert was showing his ugly face we decided to get revenge for last weeks little fubar. We kicked off the event and just powered through it. We dropped the Ten Kings inside of 65 minutes. Within 70 we had added Bertoxxulous to that total. Just wow, it was smooth, it was clean and it had style. What a Kill!. I actually managed to get a couple of pic's of the various Kings as well.

Darwol Adan

Pzo Ardan

Meedo Adan

And finally the rotting, skinny swine him self...

Bertoxxulous,
God of Disease and all things smelly (Dwarves)

I actually really like the Bert run, its fun, its challenging and it really sorts out who can and who cant when it comes to Guilds. You get it wrong once during Bert and its a wipe, as we proved last week.

Now each of the 10 kings has a chance to drop at least one fairly decent item, its a small chance but its there. Last night we just about got them all!. Mallee got one of the coolest toys I have seen in game so far. I didn't turn on spell effects so you cant see the cool blue flame dripping off it!. Grats mate!, you deserved to upgrade that sword :)

I, mean while managed to replace the crappy shoes I had been wearing with a brand new (well rotting and diseased really) pair. I really wasn't expecting that at all!. I figured after last weeks shield upgrade I would be out for quite some time!. I think I now have all of the focus items including the incredibly rare (6 on the server I've been told) Burning Affliction 4 item, the Ceramic Shackles of Torment. That's the item that looks like a black sword with red runes I carry in my Primary. I have never owned anything in the Game that I get requests to link. The Shackles I get link requests for every day.

I was talking to a young Nec who had sent me a tell asking me a question and during the course of the conversation he came out with "Everyone knows the Uber Necro's of Southern Armada". Apparently the 10+ active raiding Necro's in SA are well known around the server. We find it quite funny to do a "/who all necro 65" and ninety percent of the names are SA.

Wow!, 6 months ago I was just a young-un yearning for the "high end game" without really understanding what that meant. Now I'm an "Uber Necro" in an Uber Guild. Holy shit how did that happen?

Anyway enough rambling, more Killing. While we were dropping Bert, Paffa showed his fat ass again. He peered into the darkness and thought "Oh Goody, Southern Armada isn't here, I can come out and pretend to be a big man for a little bit". A very stupid idea Mister Paffa, very stupid indeed. We zoned out, back in and smacked him.

Next up was Bastion Of Thunder Tower's. There is so much trash in the way before you get to the fun stuff..

Vann Militis

along with a smattering of named's...

Iri

Now maybe it was because we were already pumped from killing Bert but the clearing of trash seemed to go a lot faster than usual and we very quickly pulled and killed:

Kuanbyr Hailstorm

a quick change of Towers and it was time for Eindride Icestorm

The rest of SA decided to keep going and I believe they dropped the remaining 2 Tower Bosses in short order. At this point it was close to 2:00am and I decided it was time to log. This Thursday's Raid is going to rock!, we have a big patch Wednesday so we should be able to get the drop on much Gankable goodness including multiple runs at Rallos. (Sol Ro Mini's please please please!)

Wednesday, patch ran for a million hours so no post patch Ganking. Then of course there is the traditional post patch, patch because SOE couldn't get a patch right with a gun to their head. We managed a quick run across to Sanctus Seru for a fast Lord Inquisitor Seru drop and that was about it.

He died, I logged, there wasn't a lot more to it so I was really hoping for big things on Saturday. Along with a butt load of dicking around and waiting, I pretty much got big things!.

I had a largely quiet weekend this week. All the Sydney peeps got together for some heavy drinking on Friday night. So Friday I logged in, checked all the usual solo spots (camped), checked for any groups (no, all full of bots, its weird, 2xbotting just wasn't done on Karana, on Prexus its incredibly common), talked to a couple of friends, checked to see if my VP key Mob was up (nope and camped anyway), thought casually about logging in my Tank (Woot he's across!!) and decided to log off and feel depressed cause everyone was drinking and I couldn't go. :( WAAAHH!! I want my drinking buddy back!! *sulks*

Say hello to my leetle friend!
Garakk Grimsoul

So I had a pretty quiet night Friday. Saturday was a different proposition!. Logged on late to find Unity doing RZ and already 90% of the way through. So I ran around and did some of those housekeeping things you always need to do, Food, Water, 'Dots, Bones etc until they were finished with the kill.

Initially the Unity raid Leaders said head for POEarth, then they changed their minds and we all headed out to the Tower of Solusek Ro because Solusek Ro, the Burning Prince, was up and preparing himself for death!. Zoned in, formed up, fought our way through the trash to Sol Ro's room. Now I am not flagged for Sol Ro's room, you need to kill all 5 mini's and I haven't managed to get into a pickup to do that, and a hell of a lot of other people weren't. The raid leaders of Unity (/bow to Xomax) put a hell of a lot of time, effort and sweat into making sure as many people as possible were in that room for the fight.

After all the Drama of getting people in to his room and a lot of waiting we were finally ready for Sol Ro himself.

He's waiting for us!

A Close up of his Highness...

We cleared his guards, waited a bit more, prepped and Sol Ro was Incoming!

Oops wrong position...

Now that's better, stay there...

I ended up on the 'page list as he was dropping tanks like flies at one point, it came very close to a wipe and Unity was combat rezzing people back in, but damn they recovered beautifully and took him out. One round of 1800 swats from him and I went Splat. However I was rezzed back in facing the PP, hailed him and DING! Plane of Fire enabled!.

I zoned in just to say I had done it, completely forgot to take a Screenie and zoned out. That was about it. There is only one spot to solo in POFire and its pretty much perma camped by Necro's, so until Southern Armada starts to raid into the Elemental Zones I probably wont get to go back into them a lot.

Someone objected to last weeks screen shot of a single mob being engaged by a group with all graphics on. They said it doesn't really show what a fully engaged MOB look's like during a raid. So lets correct that. Play spot the MOB with me. These are two screen shots of a MOB in Sol Ro's Tower fully engaged by Unity, taken from (subjective) about 60 feet away. Can you see the MOB?

And happy birthday to me!

This is my sixth month on Prexus WOOT!