Everquest Southern Armada Week Thirty

19/10/03 Week Thirty

I haven't been slack this week, I know the update is really late but there are good reasons.

1. I didn't get to do nada on last Mondays raid, which sucked because it was our first run into the Plane of Earth. I was having to deal with backup issues on the servers at work so I kept having to log out to check the running jobs. In addition to that I was having an LD night. After my 5th LD in an hour I was damn close to logging out and just giving up, but it eventually seemed to stabilize, just in time for the raid end.

Unfortunately due to the reasons outlined above I didn't manage to get any screen shots of Mondays raid. I was promised some by someone who was managing to stay connected so here they are:

Tantisala Jaggedtooth

So you will just have to accept that Monday was our first Elemental raid, it was the Plane of Earth and we completed 2 of the Rings, Soil and Mud I think they were.

2. There was a pickup raid against the Emperor on Wednesday night but I had already logged out so I didn't know anything about it. Damn GF Faction. It was also SA's first failed raid against the Emperor. The people who were online tried it with only 32 people, 2 Clerics and 2 Druids as Main Healers. All they needed was another Necro and they would have won damn it!. I believe they got the Emp to 26% or so before it all derailed.

I managed however to join a couple of LDoN groups this week, I have to say apart from putting the one and only spell that's of any use to me in a dungeon that no-one goes to, making it conjuration, unaffected by my Foci and AA's, insanely mana intensive and incredibly expensive, I am in fact really enjoying LDoN so far. It is paradise for a well played Necro. In the undead dungeons I get to play Gimp Chanter/Shammy. I am slowing, Mezzing, Root-parking, Doting, Nuking, Petting, Group healing, Direct healing and Mind Wracking.

Live-side Dungeons are just as much fun and a good Necro is just as useful without the slowage and mezzing.

Guk

Northern Desert of Ro

Early in the week I also managed to briefly join up with a Plane of Storms flagging for some of SA's members.

Paruek the Strong

These Plane of Storms named's were tough once!

Finally we get to the first real raid of the week I was able to be at and this week was a goodie! I logged in about an hour before hand, checked some of my quest mobs (spawn you bastards spawn!) and then went AFK to wait for the raid. I got back to a message from Kez, "SolRo is up!, get your asses to the tower!". So off we popped to SolRo Tower. This is not a tough kill, but managing to get everyone, flagged and un flagged into the tower is a real pain in the ass and a real test of a raid leaders patience.

Finally we managed to get everyone in and there was Solusek Ro, the Burning Prince waiting for us.

We didn't keep him waiting long, as soon as we had everyone in place we charged!.

He put up a valiant fight!, he even managed to kill a Necro! (Me) but no matter how much he struggled and wiggled there was no way he was escaping the blades of the Southern Armada.

And that was that. In two weeks we have opened the path to all of the Elemental planes, Earth, Water, Air and now finally Fire are now fully open to us!.

Just to prove it we headed up to the Plane of Air for some exploration. We have had individual members run through here with other guilds, but as a guild we have never fought in POA before so it was a real learning experience all around. It felt a little lumpy to be honest. I don't know whether people just figured that after the grind to get through all the flags and finally reach the elementals, that suddenly it was all going to get easy. But some of the really simple rules of engagement seemed to be being neglected.

A Stormrider Priest of Destruction

We essentially decided to try an Avatar for the first time and did a lot of clearing through trash and a couple of named's to get to the Avatars room.

Prismatic Recluse

Baltaldor the Cursed

Pherlondien Clawpike

Avatar of Wind

We got the Avatar down to about 26% before the 4-6 adds managed to completely wipe us out. Having now seen a lot of the mini's from Earth, Air, Fire and Water, I still maintain that there is nothing I have seen that can stop Southern Armada short of the Elemental Gods themselves.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Thirty Four

15/10/03 Week ThirtyFour
Well last Friday's raid just didn't happen. We should have known really. Typical SOE patch process seems to run something like this;

1. Throw some Code together from all the bits and pieces you have tried out at various times and in various combination's that you may or may not have tested on the Test server. If you did test it, completely ignore anything sent in by the people on the test server as to any problems that they may have had with the patches.

2. Put the patch code live and completely fuck up everything, emergency patch to fix the really significant fuckups within 12 hours. Deny any problems at all.

3. Second emergency patch to fix the fuckups we either didn't fix with the first emergency patch or that we actually caused with the first emergency patch. Continue to deny any problems at all.

4. Refuse to admit that anything changed, refuse to admit that we broke anything at all and to all the people now reporting errors with EQ that they have never had before, cut and paste a "Its your fault not ours" standard reply on the tech support boards.

The gist of this is that I gave up trying to log on at 1:30AM my time and went to bed. SA managed to get a few people on after the patch and had a go at a couple of the POE rings. Monday nights attempt was a lot better. I am studying at the moment so I logged on quite late to see what the targets were, rather than my usual logon and try and get a group or two before the Raid.

First call was to the Elemental Plane of Fire for Blazzax the Omni Fiend. We have never done this MOB so I was really looking forward to this kill. We all headed out to POF and zoned in, I hung about for the first 20 minutes or so to DMF any people zoning in, and then Usurp volunteered as the COH mule and I headed into the castle.
We set up and began clearing the trash.

A Magma Rocklord

As we were prepping for Blazzax, a stroke of luck!, POP hello Criare Sunmane. As we were already set up for the OmniTwit we pulled our first Phoenix!

He died pretty fast, but not before my first death of the night and after eating a few tanks. For some reason our DPS last night just sucked. We had about 60 on the raid but we just didn't seem to be pumping the DPS the way I know we can. So after rebuff, we got reset and inc was Blazzax the Omnifiend!!. Unfortunately we slightly underestimated the range of his AOE.That was death number two for me. Its all good, as they say death is a learning experience, so after a bit of adjustment of tactics we pulled him again. This time he was going to die! I do love this model!, this is SUCH a cool looking mob to fight.

Now many people ask me, where do we get our 'Leet strats?, do we have spies in other guilds?, is there a secret message board that Uber Guild leaders post on?. I cant answer for any other guild, but I can tell you where SA gets their strats. Now this is a secret and you cant tell ANYONE got it!?.

The secret is in fact a person!. There is one person in the guild who is able to extract secrets from Mobs, he can charm them, talk to them, get them to tell him about their friends and how to kill their nearest neighbors!. After every kill he moves to the corpse and communes with the dead spirit of the Mob.

He is Attann the Ass Whisperer!

And that's how we get our Strats! After the PhatLewts was handed out we headed out to visit "The Wise" in the Elemental Plane of Water. I hate POW. Its even laggier than normal. However, the one and only good thing about the zone is that nothing in here resists anything I can throw at it. So at the end of the Wise fight, shortly before I got summoned and mashed into paste I had FP, BOT, DP, SK, EBolt all running on Grioihin the Wise.

With around 1k a tick running on Mr Wise, BOT wore off, I stood up from FD to recast and *Summon*

Eeeek! he is WAY to close!

Splat.
Now this was a damn messy, but a really fun fight. Any fight I can REALLY lay the hurt on a Mob is fun to me. The AOE stun he has makes life a little difficult tho and we ended up feeding him tanks again, but hey that's what tanks are for :) The raid reformed and headed to POAir for some beatings of name's over there. It was still relatively early, only 1.15AM but of the team of 5 that I work with, we are down 2 long term and another short term. So there is a need for me to be relatively awake and paying attention in the mornings.

So with much regret I logged and left SA to the next set of targets. Hopefully this Friday will be huge!

Yes I know I am damn late. I am about 10 days behind on raids at this point. People are saying " are you not maintaining the web site anymore?". Well actually I am, but at the moment the team of 5 that I work with on a regular basis is down to 3 and one of those we are missing is the boss. Add to that a rather nasty outbreak of the W32/Nachi worm in a regional office this week and its been a hell of a ten days or so.

A wee piece of advice to any corporate types who may ever read this. There is no such thing as 100% protection against Virii. You WILL get Viruses, its only a matter of time. The question you must always ask is "What happens then?". How will you contain the attack, how will you clean it up?, how will you even know it is happening?. Do you have a dedicated (or even semi dedicated) Anti Virus/Security officer? or do you rely on the typical "she'll be right, it will never happen to us" attitude?.

Anyway enough of the real world, on to Everquest!(tm)

We logged in Friday and the MOTD was listing a bunch of targets from PoFire to Kael Drakkal. Kez made the call that we were going to have another go at Rallos Zek, so off the the Fortress of Zek we all traipsed. As I zoned in I brought up the Raid tool and checked numbers. Ooooo boy we were really light. Now for those who have never engaged him most guilds usually take on Rallos with 80+.

Those who are inside the raid do all the DPS, positioning of Rallos Zek the Warlord, healing etc etc. Those who are outside the raid do all the controlling of the Adds, kiting etc etc. Guilds who have been farming in the Plane of Time for a while have been known to do him with less than 50. Once again those guilds are 7 day a week raiders, VERY well equipped. We were about to engage Rallos Zek the Warlord with 56 in the Raid!

Now I have seen Southern Armada doing some amazing stuff with very small numbers, so instead of doubting Kez, I simply put my mind to it and said "we can do this". First up was the run through the Halls of Zek, clearing through trash, killing triggers and massacring our way past the Zek Brothers.

Tallon

Vallon getting rooted

Rallos Zek

The Tallon fight was a little lumpy, I can only assume people were still getting warmed up, maybe the beer was warm in Aussie and they were having trouble getting the first one down?, I really don't know. But there was some damn fast rezzing going on before Vallon was inc. We got up to Vallon and obviously the beer had started to flow as that fight went extremely smoothly. Rallos Zek went down clean as a whistle (did we lose anybody?) and it was Rallos Zek the Warlord time!.

Unfortunately as the Pet getters were getting their pets they got a little over enthusiastic and started to wipe themselves out with an over pull. We were already damn close to time so it was Rallos INC ready or not!. I popped my pet from suspend and sent him in and just started laying on the Dots. I had even unloaded my survival spells (except FD) and was just laying the full load on him.

Slowly, slowly his HP dropped. Now I am facing the wall at this point so I had no idea what was going on behind me, but I gather it was a hell of a mess with massive numbers of adds everywhere and the kiters exerting Heroic effort to keep them away from the raid. We almost had the fat bastard!. I was finally dropped by Rallos himself, with him at 6%. SO CLOSE!.

So we reformed, Rezzed up and headed in again.

Second Tallon kill, FlawlessSecond Vallon Kill, Flawless

Second Rallos kill, Flawless

And minutes later we were back at Rallos Zek the Warlord again. This time the Pet guys spent a little more time and didn't try and wipe themselves. Once everyone was ready we pulled.This would have been a flawless kill as well. We did absolutely everything right. Positioning, Aggro control, healing everything was perfect. We managed to get him to 6% again before the adds overwhelmed us. We just didn't have the DPS with the number of people we had exactly 56 on engage again. A little longer farming the planes, a few more high DPS weapons, a few more AA here and there and this guy will definitely be in the "farmable by 50" range.

I think Kez was a little disappointed that we didn't manage to drop him, but I was happy as hell. I doubt anyone else at our level could have gotten him to 6% with the numbers we had. We will do him again many times I am sure, we need at least 3-4 more BoW's for a start!.

Be proud Kez, be damn Proud!

Everquest Southern Armada Week Twenty Nine

11/10/03 Week TwentyNine

Due to the release of LDoN Kez has only announced a single Raid this week with a warning to watch out for the pop of Rallos Zek the Warlord. So Monday night was quite a short one. First up we headed to the Plane of Disease for a quick Grummus kill. I decided (with permission) to take Garakk on this run rather than Ulaa. Mainly because its a fairly simple kill for us now so I didn't think Ulaa's firepower would be missed and secondly cause Garakk still needs this flag, hell Garakk needs all the flags. I figure I will ninja them for him slowly.

So we formed up, and headed into the POD castle, pulled and killed Gryme for his key.

Wiped Aramin the Spider Guardian out of our way and then nailed Grummus.

Now there is a reason that this kill has so little information attached to it and that is I had no fucking idea what was going on half the time. The view of Pooby between the legs of Grummus is about all that I managed to see of him. That is the view that most tanks will see during the course of any given raid. As I am a Troll and I am double shrunk 90% of the time I cant see nada. If I am beating on a MOB and a caster pulls aggro, to me the mob just vanishes away and identifying the MOB again amidst a sea of legs is damn hard.

I really don't know how the regular full time tanks can do it, I certainly gained a new appreciation of how difficult their job is. I really like being a tank in groups, its fun to go toe to toe with a nasty, but I really don't know if I would want to do it as a full time occupation as a raider. So as soon as the Grummus raid was over I logged back into Ulaa with a sigh of relief.

After Grummus we headed to The Halls of Honor to smack over Mithaniel Marr. Now Mr Marr is not my favorite kill, in fact I really hate it. It has less trash to clear than a lot of other kills...

A big Pussy Cat

There are a few named's on the way to MM and they are relatively easy to drop...

Halon of Marr

There is the usual hypocrisy of the ostensibly "Good" people, they tell you one way to live your life and behind the scenes they are practicing all kinds of filth and degradation.

Leave that Cat alone you perverted Frog!

The reason I really hate this kill is this; we have one of the best pull teams in the game. Atann, Ainyarx, Geno and the boys can pull anything solo. They have the art of extracting a nasty mob from its friends down perfectly. However with MM they always have problems. Splitting him out from his guards is damn near impossible and often in the end comes down to sheer luck and the SOE "Random" number generator.

That is just wrong, it denies the skill and time the boys put into a pull and reduces it to luck. This time they had some of that luck and that, along with their skill and style bought us MM alone.

The Lord Mithaniel Marr INCOMING!

So with little or no fuss we quietly disposed of MM and headed out of the Temple of Wind. It was getting pretty damn late at this point but I was determined to hang on as long as I could. SA headed out to the Tower of Solusek Ro for a couple of quick Named drops. Now I know we have only been doing Sol Ro Tower for 2 weeks, but it really is getting faster and faster. We cleared though the Trash Named's:

Generic Picture of Trash Named_001

Generic Picture of Loot Named (Jiva_001)

I like these kills. They are really fast to clear to and kill , and they drop guuuuuuud loot, I could happily go on farming them for some time to come. At this point however we started to head to The Protector of Dresolik. I think I got about 3/4's of the way there and realized I was actually asleep, so I figured I should make it officially asleep and headed to bed.

During the course of the week I joined up with Genosin and Axixs deep in the newly revamped Greigs End to kill the Servitor or Luclin for A Glowing Orb of Luclinite.

We tried it the first time with no slower and I couldn't keep Genosin healed using Zevfeers Theft of Vitae and Shadowbond, even with Laurwen throwing CH's on Genosin as well. Laurwen and I were both running out of mana too fast. So we roped in Axixs for slowing and KEI (for Laurwen and Genosin) and we went again. The second time round we dropped him handily. We got the Orb and I managed to run Garakk into Griegs to grab the Sombrous Claidmore that also dropped!. Woot now that was a fun way to spend an evening!

I also managed to get Garakk on a fast Hedge run for my Terris Thule flag during the week, now being a tank on this run was a lot of fun!. 18 or so people is a good number to be a tank for.

Damn he is still ugly

Finally we get LDoN launched. I was half way through my Chardok Rings quest when the servers went down. I logged out in the Frontier Mountains having found and done the Sarnak Spy section. I AM going to finish this damn quest this time. Anyway LDoN launched and everyone and his dog was in an LDoN dungeon, I didn't manage to get into a Dungeon group, but I didn't exactly try too hard either. I will give it a go tonight tho.

Ah fuckit I was going to make this long and involved and really draw it out. But I cant do it I just want to show you now.

How to Have one of the best nights possible in Everquest.
By Ulaa Grimsoul

1. Zone into The Plane of Tactics.
2. Pull triggers.
3. Kill Tallon Zek perfectly

4. Kill Vallon Zek perfectly

5. Kill The Fake Rallos Zek perfectly

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you The Southern Armada's path into the Elemental Planes.
6. Rallos Zek the Warlord. OWNED

Not only did we do this as a pickup raid, not only did we do this without a full Southern Armada raid team, not only did we do this on our second ever run at him, not only did we do this as a 2 day a week raiding guild, but we did it damn near perfectly.

I was sitting in front of my monitor, all the DOT's I could load running hard, with Rallos Zek at 2%, pounding my fists on my desk and bouncing up and down in my seat yelling "come on you MOTHERFUCKER!!".

I'm sitting here at work 12 hours later and just thinking about this again has got a smile on my face and a thrill running through me. Southern Armada SNUFFED Rallos Zek the Warlord at 11.48PM NZ Time Wednesday September 10th. Fuck I love you guys.

Big huge respect to Servalan, Genosin, Attann and Wolfe for running one of the fastest put together and best led Raids I have ever been on. The pulling, the raid control, the off tanking, the discipline all excellent. I owe you guys so much beer it isn't funny. See me in Sydney for major payback !

Everquest Southern Armada Week Thirty Three

09/10/03 Week ThirtyThree

Look its really simple. If you are NOT flagged for the the Sol Ro zone then you can get into the zone with the 85/15 raid rule. This rule will ALSO allow you to get into the Chamber of Sol Ro. However, once you get into the Chamber and disband from the raid if you are NOT flagged for the ZONE you must log out to a twink, or log in and out continuously before the 3 minute warning is up. Once everyone is invited into the chamber then you can be invited to the raid safely.

If you are flagged for the Sol Ro Zone, you only need to get into the Chamber under the 85/15 rule. Once you are IN the Chamber you can disband and just sit and wait for the next set of instructions as you will NOT get the 3 minute warning.

Its not bloody rocket science.

As you can probably tell I was a little frustrated at last Monday nights raid. Pay attention, listen to the raid leaders and if you get aggro stand and fucking DIE. After about an hour or two's pissing about we finally managed to get everyone into his chamber.

He was waiting for us and this time the bastard had a sneaky plan!. His plan involved running throughout the raid and randomly smacking people down instead of focusing on Pooby. Unfortunately his plan was better than our plan and it was "Camp the Clerics". We reformed fast, dropped the repops and pulled him again.

This time he died and not a bad attempt for a raid of 43 I thought. We handed out the PhatLewtz and headed out to the Elemental Plane of Water. I must admit I breathed a sigh of relief as I thought we were going to go and do Plane Of Earth rings.

Now although POE is boring due to the hours and bloody hours of clearing trash, POW is just an insane lag fest. I am going to have to spend a couple of thousand dollars to update my PC just to be able to raid in there.

First up we went for Hydrotha. He is a right pain in the ass because he has this nasty tendency to blind the MT and then bloody move. It makes it rather hard for the MT to hold aggro. We had gained a few people after the Sol Ro kill but we had lost a few as well, so we went into the fight with about 45-50 people in the raid.

Once again we needed to feed Main Tanks to the MOB and at the point we were about to feed him Pallies he died. According to EQWatcher I managed to do about 55K on him *grin*. Kez called for an emergency Rez of the MT's "eyes". I sat, memmed Rez, waited for Refresh, cast, and about 2 seconds later got a tell from a fellow Necro saying "I have rezzed him", err bugger, so did I. I wonder if he got a 100% xp rez as he was rezzed twice?.

At this point due to all the pissing about during the SolRo fight, and the fact that Aussie is now 3 hours behind me so the Raid doesn't start till 10PM my time, it was getting bloody late. I hung in for one last mini named A Hraquis Arch Magus (I think that was the name). We dropped him with ease. SA went on to do another mini I believe.

Raid night this week was supposed to be tonight (Thursday), fortunately the folks over at SOE have decided to have a patch tonight, so the raid has been moved to Friday night. Now this can be good and bad, sometimes when we logon after a patch the big American guilds have left us something, or sometimes we are just well placed for repops. At other times there is just absolutely nothing up. Its pure luck, but no matter what is up, we will find it and we will kill it, even if we have to do it with only half the people you are "supposed" to have for that fight.

We will find out Friday night I guess!. Me and my whisky bottle will be there!.

Nothing stops the Armada.