Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fifty One

12/02/04 Week FiftyOne
My first welcome back raid this week and of course its going to be Elemental Plane of Earth A rings and the Arbitor. However one good thing is that hopefully this will be the last Arbitor run we have to do. I think we now have pretty much everyone flagged for POEb so we can start to target the named's in there, and if they are up have a go at the Rathe Council.


I was in the middle of finishing off some trade skill combines (Baking 202 woot!) so I was a little delayed in reaching the Raid but I made it in time to help nail Tanitsala Jaggedtooth who was the first MOB to die.

It appeared that we only needed to drop one Ring in order to spawn the Arbitor so we quickly set up and started on the Dust ring. Dust Devotees died in their millions...

Then of course, the reason for all the killing of Devotee's popped and we quickly dropped the Triumverate of Soil and A Perfected Warder of Earth.

So finally the Mystical Arbitor of Earth spawns (I got a new key for his door Woot!) and we head down into his lair. We clear through all the trash and pull the Arbitor. As he is called inbound, all Bard songs are called off, Arbitor comes in and of course the swine AE's, then the bard resist goes back up. Too late I am now dotted with his sodding mana drain. I got one dot off on him and then was OOM for the rest of the fight.

It appears however that the Arbitor has a thing for Pooby. As you can see in the screenshot below after yelling "You will not evade me Pooby" and then summoning him he is reaching our for a wee hug. I think the Arbitor was feeling a little sad and lonely.

That was it for Earth. After everyone who needed to had hailed the PP we headed out and off to Tactics. Woot Rallos Zek!. I do like this fight, its a fast kill for us now and for me its still an exciting one. So we formed up and started the Trash Pulling. First up came Tallon Zek. Slow and sure dotting with LOTS's of FDing is the way with him. You do not want him to turn and face the casters.

Within minutes we had also killed big brother Vallon Zek.

Then its up into Rallos Zek's throne room and a fast fight to kill him and spawn the real Rallos.

Finally we set up for Rallos Zek the Warlord. Last time we failed on him with 55 as we didn't have enough DPS. (apparently, I don't think I was there) This time there was more than enough DPS and after one spawn of adds he died and kindly dropped another Blade of War for us. Damn this was fast. I think the whole fight from Zoning in to Tactics to killing Rallos Zek took about an hour max.

I know Gnome Warriors are just wrong, but Grats Gnosie on your new Blade of War!.

We still have a couple of Warriors who need Blade's of War so I am sure we will be doing Rallos a few more times yet!. That was it for Monday for me. Rallos died about 1:45AM and SA was headed off to hit Hydrotha in the Elemental Plane of Water. I figured that if I hung around for that I wouldnt be in bed till 3:00AM so I logged and headed off to sleepie BoBo's

This week has been the launch of the new Gates of Discord expansion so Im sure there will be patch on emergency patch. So when or if we will be able to raid again this week is at best dubious.

Well Thursday arrived and strangely enough we actually managed to avoid a patch. We had some nice fat Targets up, but the first on the list was Fennin Ro in the Elemental Plane of Fire. Its kind of an unspoken rule, you always have to drop a target twice to confirm that the first time wasn't just a complete fluke. Now since we nailed Fenin with such style the first time around, we not only had to drop him again, we had to do it with real Class as well.

I didn't really have me shit together during the beginning of the Raid as there was much stuff going on in the background, but as we cleared through the trash I managed to get a few shots of a couple of named's, unfortunately I also managed to miss quite a few.

In no particular order we nailed a bazillion Trash Mobs and :

Azobian the Darklord

Hebabbilys the Ragelord

Javonn the Overlord

Reaxnous the Chaoslord

Once we had all of those out of the way (and by the way where's the damn loot?, not even ONE random piece of PhatLewtz!. What's up with that!) we moved into the realm of Fennin proper and started to clear his Council of Fire.

Chancellor Traxom

Warlord Prollaz

Omni Magus Crato

Finally the big man himself, Fennin Ro, The Tyrant of Fire is INC. We even tanked him with a Pink Tank just to add to his injury and insult. Strangely, once again he completely failed to kill not only our MT (Woot go Nym!, tanking Fennin Ro, that HAS to be a buzz!) but he also failed to kill any Clerics.

So the Score is currently:

Southern Armada 2x Fennin Ro
Fennin Ro 2x Monk, 1x Enchanter.

Yes that's right. This time he got another Monk and a Chanter and that was it. Pussy.

Never mind we will give him another chance at a couple of our Tanks in the future. I'm sure he will appreciate it. If the heal chain falls asleep and the druids don't spot heal he may even get to kill one!

Next up we headed across to the Plane of Earth and started to clear the Mud Ring. This went relatively uneventfully and with no problems. Now for the last few weeks we seem to have had a plethora of Tank Lewtz, where's the Caster drops I say!. 

Even Xegony managed to drop 2 Tank Shoulders rather than the Vest we silk wearers so rightly deserve!.

I also completely failed to get any screen shots of the Mud Ring. Now there is in fact a good reason for this forgetting of screenies.

Last year I managed to put on a massive amount of weight (20kg) after I gave up smoking, so after much putzing about and prevarication, this year I joined the Gym. Thursdays raid night was my second day at the Gym and so on Thursday night I HURT. So I spent a lot of the raid wincing and trying to find any position at all that didn't hurt some muscle or tendon.

For this very reason I logged straight after the Mud ring. I couldn't even sit up I needed to lie down and rest and thus around 1:15AM I crawled, wincing and moaning to bed.

Next weeks update is one I have been thinking about for some time as it will be my one year anniversary of raiding with SA. Yup that's right, one year ago I moved my delicate DE ass from Karana, with my massive 2500 mana pool, my 1800 HP self buffed, missing every spell above 60 and little or no Raid experience. SA was just venturing into POP and considering gearing up towards the minor gods of the Planes.

A Year down the track we are 2 Elemental God Kills from the Plane of Time and the only thing currently stopping us is the availability of those Gods, not our inability to kill them.

So I have decided that next weeks update will contain something of a "Year in Review" as well as containing the usual bits of Raid information. Looking forward to it already arent you?!. Yup I could tell

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fourty Nine and Fifty

26/01/04 - 08/02/04 Week Fourty Nine and Week Fifty


Well I packed up my stuff and threw it all in a friends car so they could take it up North with them as it wouldn't fit in our car. Why did it not fit you ask?. 


Well young Kezlar and his family had accepted our invite to come across to fabulous NZ for a holiday. Then we raced over to pickup Kezlar, Mrs Kezlar and Junior Kezlar and headed up North ourselves.


We headed up to a place called Coopers Beach in the Far North of New Zealand where my GF's parents have a fantastic beach house. Coopers Beach is on the edge of Doubtless Bay and there is no doubt in my mind that it is truly one of the most beautiful places on Earth.


The weather in Coopers at this time of year is always fantastic. Well, its usually fantastic. I have been going to Coopers at the same time every year for about 6-7 years and this was easily the worst weather we have ever had.


This year we had a number of really nasty weather fronts peel off the east coast of Australia and bring New Zealand REALLY heavy rain and REALLY shit weather. We got 3 really beautiful days at the beginning and 2-3 days at the end and the rest of it was raining and overcast. At one point the rain was actually coming in horizontally under the eves of the house.
Ah well, shit happens. Sorry about that Kez. At least we had a couple of good days.


After this brief interruption we will be back to our regularly scheduled Raid Updates as of this week.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fourty Eight

21/01/04 Week FourtyEight
I was sitting at work, as you do, very quietly trying to avoid being noticed and actually given something to do, as you do, when I happened to surf by the Southern Armada web site. While there I noticed a post that mentioned that Xegony would be up and that those who were interested in having a go at her should logon tonight.


Sure enough, all atremble I got home Monday night, logged in and like many others asked for an update on Xegony's status. She was still up! So after doing a bit of pissing about and waiting for enough people to logon, I headed over to the Elemental Plane of Air.


We COH'd up to Xegony's isle. This was Southern Armada's first ever shot at her and we were all just crawling all over each other with excitement. We formed up, strats were called and Xegony was incoming!. Our first run at her we slowly battled our way through the first two waves. It was a bit lumpy with adds in amongst the Clerics, Pooby and Nymeria (our two MT's for this fight) going down rapidly thereafter.


Attempts were made to salvage the fight but Kez called the restart, so we reformed, rezzed, rebuffed and kicked off again.

Second run, we ended up in trouble in about the same place, just after the end of the second wave. Up till now the 10 Necromancers on the raid had all been hanging about the clerics and mana dumping to them. We were also combat rezzing people back into fights and mana dumping to bring dead's back up to speed asap. It was suggested we split up leaving 5 of us with the Clerics and 5 off to add DPS to the mobile groups. The five largest mana pools stayed with the Clerics and the rest ran off to Nuke stuff. We definitely noticed that waves were dieing a lot faster with the 5 additional high DPS toons pumping damage.

Everything else went well, adds were being controlled, Cleric rota was smooth, interception groups were moving about without aggroing additional stuff or running through Xegony's hit box. It was all going really well, then Pooby went down. Not sure why. I was in the Cleric Channel and the Rota switched over to Nym without missing a beat, no one dropped out or missed a call. It was weird.

So anyway, restart was called, we reformed and got ready to go again.

Third try was the charm. I know its a computer game and I am nowhere near any other players physically but I swear I could "feel" the whole of SA pull their chairs closer to their monitors, roll their sleeves up, top up their drinks and settle in to get this done. After the first two runs we knew we could do this. The CH Rota was more than capable of handling the damage from Xegony, the raid DPS was enough to handle the waves of adds and we were getting them split and off tanked nicely.

So we knew now that we were more than capable of handling the fight. We hunkered down, settled in and started again. The shot below is Xegony being nuked down to spawn an additional wave, I love the new spell graphics that were introduced a month or so ago. they are so pretty. Unfortunately the killing of Xegony has to be very, very controlled so no DOT's.

When we made it through the third wave and everything was smooth as a whistle I knew we had her. Having spent the entire hour or so of this fight in the CH chain channel, I have so much more respect (if that's even possible) for the job that the CH Clerics and Trundle as CH lead actually do. I have no idea how you do it guys but my hats off to you. Wow. A seamless 1-2 second CH chain for 45-60 minutes, you guys just rock. People drop out due to LD, getting killed, whatever, doesnt matter, the chain absorbs the change and keeps right on going.

My Job was essentially to keep mana dumping to the members of the chain and keep Crippling Claudication on Xegony. Its not a thrilling job but one that has to be done. I was basically picking a cleric, throwing 5-6 dumps at them, then the cleric next to them, then next to them, till I got low on mana, sat to med for 2-3 minutes and started again. The Clerics actually finished the fight FM!

Kez got a little excited during the fight and the quote of the week goes to him for this little gem.

Kezlar tells us: "south team will now move to north - there will be no more wouth adda aftes tot"
Yup ok Kez, I will get right on it!, whatever it was you said !*grin*

Finally we get to the good bit. Xegony is under 20% and the Nuke call is made. All the Necro's are life burning, I am nuking for all I am worth and the bitch is just dropping. 5,4,3,2,1 DEAD. Our second God in two weeks! 2 down, 2 to go!.

I have to say, although it was a damn good night for the tanks lootwise, for a MOB who drops at least 3 of the best caster items in the game her lewt on this occasion sucked ass. Bitch. Its ok tho, she is definitely on the farm list and we will see her many many more times I am sure.

Tuesday's raid saw us get another shot at another God, tho not quite as successfully this time. First up was a run at the nasties in the Plane of Fire. We have this down to an art now. Run in, form up, pull nasty phoenix, kill it, get another. Its a lot like being in an XP group.

Jaxoliz Dawneyes 

Criare Sunmane

Druav Flamesinger (again)

Tonight we got our first shot at the Avatar of Water, Coirnav. This is the last nasty bugger I need to complete my key to the Plane of Time. I have killed Fenin Ro and Xegony with Southern Armada and The Rathe Council with the good folks at Unity. Southern Armada will drop the Rathe Council no problems. All we need is a clear shot and enough Chanters online and RC will die to us like Gnomes do to a MOB. The only trouble we are going to have, and its the same with every guild at this point in the game, is Coirnav.

Killing the Avatar of Water is all about pure DPS, you need lots and lots and lots of it, applied concisely but massively.

So we formed up in the Plane of Water and COH'd down to Coirnavs room. Now this damn zone is buggy, laggy and generally hellish at the best of time's, but Coirnavs room has a lag factor second to no other area in the game I have yet been to. So once down there I logged out, turned off all models and any pretence at having a decent graphics card (IE I turned all options OFF). Logged back in and it was marginally better but it was like being back at an old Fear raid.

I know a lot of people disliked the Luclin Model set, but I have to say the old models were just SO damn ugly. I couldn't go back to looking at the game like that again. I am really hoping that the new spell effects engine they have put in place along with the new effects themselves are going to be a forerunner of things to come.

There has been a rumor of a new graphics engine for the last few months, the screen shot graphics I have seen look just amazing even on the old zones. I can understand that graphically rebuilding the entire game is a massive task but I hold out the hope that it will not only improve the overall look of the game but may even improve its graphical efficiency. Lots of people say that EQ is "dieing" or that SOE is going to shut it down. I honestly don't believe that.

I think if they can work out the tangle of legacy spaghetti code in the back end, document it all properly, rebuild the graphics and code to bring them up to a more "modern" standard then they can continue to upgrade graphics/game engines and keep EQ going as long as it still makes money. It still has the largest and most detailed content set of any game around and will do for some time to come. I may still be playing this game or its descendent in my 50's and remembering the "good old days"

Anyway, we formed up, setup, starts were explained in detail, this a complex fight and needs to be done fast, so everyone needs to know what they have to do before it happens. Once we were all in place the Guardian of Coirnav was inbound and the event was on!.

Unfortunately, for various reasons which we will have sorted for our next attempt it didn't work. We ended the fight with the first 3 waves dead but the boss mobs all in camp. This is what's technically known as a "Bad Thing" (TM)

That was pretty much the end of the raid for me. SA went on to take a run at a couple of Avatars in Air, but as it was about 1:40am I figured it was about time for me to hit the sack. Just getting to the Avatars would have taken longer that 45 minutes.

I think it was Thursday I was in a Fire Group which was chomping through the local fauna nicely when Rainbird asked for help to drop the final named for her key piece in the Plane of Storms. So we all headed over there and efficiently dropped Zertuken the Unyielding. I also managed to get Garakk a Key piece as there were a couple of spares. One more step along the road to keying a second toon. I know when we hit Time that the 85/15 thing no longer works so there will have to be a bit of back flagging to get everyone properly flagged. I will try and get Garakk flagged to at least Sol Ro at that point.

Thursdays raid didn't really go well for me. I was a little late die to finishing the last 200 combines of my Halas Meat Pies. I headed over to the Plane of Air, zoned in and died. Damnit, that's ok, it happens. Send a tell, get a Rez, zone in, start looting body, die again. FUCK. Ok now I am a bit pissed off. Get a second rez, collect both bodies, sit to mem spells, dead again. Oh ffs this is getting stupid. Now I am really pissed off. 3 Deaths and I have yet to actually cast a fucking spell.

Anyway, I sort another rez, get rebuffed for a third time, manage to get spells memmed without dieing and rejoin the raid. Several named's died during this period but the only one I managed to get a shot of was Inlokher the Warlord.

So we headed up to the Trigger for the Avatar of smoke taking in Pherlondien Clawpike on the way. So I have now been in the raid about 5 minutes. I have cast ToM about 3 times total and *SMACK* we get an add rom the back and guess who he decides to smash, Yup, my fourth death in about 15 minutes. Ah well, these things happen, you can either take them in your stride or get all pissy and log which is really just cutting off your nose to spite your face. So I gathered up my shit and started again.

The first Avatar we nailed was Wind. Around this point there was an emergency patch notification that the servers were coming down in an hour. So we very quickly scurried across to the Avatar of Smoke, dropped him as well and that was that for the night.

Dead Wind

About to be dead Smoke

I also managed to pick up a second piece to my Xegony Key. I think I need one more to complete the key quest. I have not only started the Aid Grimel quest (yes I am nuts and after about a week of Baking I am beginning to realize just how tough this is going to be) I have decided my aim is to get every key in the game that I can.

That's it for me for the next two weeks. I am off up to the North of New Zealand to lie on a beach, drink beer and generally do nothing. So there will be no more updates for two weeks. I am however planning a big "Year in Review" update for week 52 which will be my one year anniversary on Prexus.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fourty Seven

15/01/04 Week FourtySeven
Saturday afternoon, as I was stuffing about trade skilling I saw that the good folk over at Unity were forming up for Fenin Ro. Now we had tried Fenin a couple of months ago and failed due to a lack of Clerics online (we got him to 80% with 4 clerics and 2 bots). I wanted to see how Unity did the kill, just to see if we were doing it radically differently or to see if I could pick up some tips for whenever our next shot would be.
So I headed over to Plane of Fire, joined up with Unity at the picnic tables and Unity did exactly as I expected, They smoothly fought their way past the triggers and named's and took out Fenin Ro the Tyrant of Fire. No real surprises, nothing unusual or innovative in their technique, just a clean take down.

The Southern Armada's next raid was Tuesday night. We formed up and the call was for a single ring in the Elemental Plane of Earth, then the Arbitor of Earth and finally a few shots at the Elemental Plane of Air. So we all headed over to Earth, setup, and begin to pull and kill the Ring of Dust.

Do I have some spinach in my teeth?

We ran through the ring with no major hiccups and quickly downed a Perfected Warder of Earth.

I think someone must have already cleared all the other rings and thus we only needed to drop the one ring in order to spawn the Arbitor. We fought our way across the zone until we reached the Gemmed Guardians who guard the entrance to the tunnels of the Mystical Arbitor of Earth.

Finally we reached the Arbitor and with no fuss we dropped him. This stuff is getting easier and easier for us. After a bit of a rocky period post SA reaching the Elemental Planes, with lots of people stepping off and having a wee rest from raiding, SA is nearly back to its old self. MOBs like the Arbitor are smoothly and serenely ganked with no problems. We are ready to kill Gods now, the remaining farming between us and getting a shot at RC, Xegony, Fenin, and Coirnav is just going to make us killing them even easier.

Mystical Arbitor of Earth

Getting Funky!

Surprisingly after the Arbitor fell over, the call was not to Air but to the Elemental Plane of Fire instead. So we TL'd our asses out of Earth and headed across to SS1 where we proceeded to lay the smack down on the evil Quavonis Firetail, he was so embarrassed about putting up such a poor showing against us that he was determined to hide his face.

Druav Flamesinger. What can I say. Dead. Again.

Once the Raid Leaders had determined that we had cleared Fire of all available targets, it was time for the Plane of Air. First named up was Pherlondien Clawpike, an ugly MOB with a stupid name and phat, phat Lewtz.

Next up, after several tens of thousands of yard trash MOB's got stuck with sharp bits of steel, it was time for the Avatar of Wind. At this point a lot of people were logging and I think the Avatar was as embarrassed as Firetail, as we killed him with only about half a raid.

That was it for me and about 2:15am I logged and crawled off to my incredibly hot and muggy bed.

The Trackers of Spawn times had determined that there was a strong possibility of Fenin Ro popping for us on Wednesday which was technically a non raid day. I was logged on and running around in LDoN adventures, many others were logging in and out to check as we waited for Fenin to pop. It was getting on for 10:30pm and I was beginning to wonder if it was going to pop early enough for us to get a decent shot. And then..

*POP*

A Guardian of Doomfire is INC and Fenin RO is going to die!

There are many named's on the way to Fenin. Most of them drop no loot (except rarely) and yet are every bit as tough as named's in other Elemental zones. They have been known to trip up over eager or unprepared guilds. Basically if you cant take out these guys you have no business attempting Fenin Ro

Reaxnous the Chaoslord
Missing image

Azobian the Darklord 

Javonn the Overlord 

Hebabbilys the Ragelord 

Finally we had all the named trash cleared and were into the Council of Fire. The first to die was Chancellor Kirta.

Then came, and fell, Chancellor Traxom.

Warlord Prollaz
Missing image

Omni Magus Crato 

The council fell as smooth as silk. In fact as we warmed up, they died faster than ever. Finally, close to 2:00am, after a few moments to explain strat, prep and rebuff it was time. Fenin Ro is inbound!.

With the crew we had online I had no doubts at all that he would die. What I really didn't anticipate was how cleanly he would die. I killed him with Unity on Saturday and they have taken him down many, many times. This was our first shot at him and I have to say, if anything it was smoother that even Unity did it.

I knew we had him at 80%, everything was ticking over flawlessly, heals were going in smooth as silk, the Necro's were landing everything and Nuking in between. Even the Wizzies were managing to not get summoned and keeping focus on the MT. If anything this was, for us a very conservative kill. I know I was being extremely cautious about my aggro and was FD'ing after just about every single DOT. I suspect as we do him a few more times and get a bit more confident, this kill will get faster and faster.

This was close to a flawless kill. We lost one Monk on the pull (as you do) and that was it. Pooby stayed up the whole time, even after /def expired and we never had to do a tank switch.

/cheer Pooby
/cheer the Heal teams
/cheer the Pull teams
/cheer Southern Armada

One God down. Three to go.

The Final Humiliation
Fenin Ro the Tyrant of Fire as an SA Necro Pet

So two days in a row it was an after 2.00am bed time. I need to sleep now. Friday is our next raid. So its going to be me, Bourbon, and whatever the Lewt Gods bring us.

The Southern Armada Fenin Ro Crew

Friday,
there were after work drinkies, then there were after work drinkies drink's, so by the time I got home I was pretty pissed. I logged in, did a quick LDoN adventure for some fast points and headed to the Plane of Earth for the first raid. Beyond Horror, I still haven't actually bought anything in LDoN. The only additional item I actually give a crap about, I am still 200 points short of, I will get there but Im not too worried.

First up the Ring of Dust. Many many Devotees give their lives in the cause of Southern Armada's pursuit of PhatLewts.

The of course comes the boss, a Perfected Warder of Earth. He cant be that perfect, he keeps dieing.

Then the Ring of Vine *yawn*. At this point the booze and the fact that my computer room is small and very very muggy on this night starts to catch up with me.

Ring of Mud. A Monsterous Mudwalker prepares to die. I'm having trouble focusing at this point.

Ring of Stone. Peregrin Rockskull prepares to die horribly. I am consuming vast amounts of water in an effort to stay awake and fend off my hangover

Coat and Shoes MoB. Tanitsala Jaggedtooth the biggest crocodile the world of Norrath has ever known shows Pooby the soft spot under her belly. She is sick of dieing to us and figured she may as well make it fast. Luckily I use EQWatcher advanced, I have it set to speak to me when DOTS wear off. So on this raid I was casting all my dots, FD'ing, standing, sitting to med, sleeping and waiting for EQwatcher to say "Horror is off" before having to wake up and actually do something about it.

So quite literally I can say I have done Earth Rings in my sleep.

That was it for me. It was only about 1:30am but I simply couldn't stay awake any longer, hell I wasnt awake anyway, the booze and the heat were combining to send me off to dreamland. So I made my apologies and logged while SA headed off to drop the Arbitor of Earth.