Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Sixteen

15/06/03 Week Sixteen

This week started off with a wee romp through the Bastion Of Thunder in an xp group. We dropped three out of four Tower mini bosses. I have killed them so many times now I feel I know them by their first names.

Gaukr

Laef

Oreen

First Guild raid of the week was Tuesday. The usual warm up in Crypt of Decay was Overlord Banord "Someone has cut my earlobes off" Paffa, he was snapped up good and hard...

Since we were in the Crypt of Decay anyway, we decided to do a run through the Carpin Cycle.

Raex Pwodil
Vindor Mawnill

Bishop Toluwon

High Priest Ultor Szanvon

The cycle went just about flawlessly. Then it was time to hit the Plane of Innovation for some Manaetic Behemoth. Unfortunately we got a bit cocky, one spidey made it into the room and bang all our Tanks and Clerics were dead. We still managed to take him down to about 13% with only the casters, one tank and druids healing, before we went down.

That was pretty much it for Tuesday. Lots of Guild Flags obtained, not much in the way of loot.

We were originally going to be raiding on Thursday after the big Wednesday patch. Then of course we had the Great Prexus Crash of '03 and rollbacks all over the place. I lost a butt load of Shissar bane weapons (I had about 6 drops in Ssra in about 30 minutes, including the extremely elusive Shissar Ulak. Attann lost not one but two 2nd floor key pieces which sucked ass.

I was sent out of town by my company on Thursday and worked my ass off to make sure I was back by Thursday night. I was on the road at 6am and didn't get back till 8pm to be in time for the raid. Fuckit. So raid ended up being Friday night and what a raid it was. There was LOTS of great targets up!

First up we headed to Ssra cause the Cursed was up. We ended up head to head with another guild and basically did a /rand for the spawn. Thanks to Kez's marvelous roll of a 2 we lost and set off to the Halls Of Honor and the Villager trial!.

Once that was done it was time for something new and interesting. The Lord Mithaniel Marr was due a little visit from us in his Temple. But first, the Avatar of War showed his ugly Puss in Kael Drakkal and was righteously ganked. One again he was kind enough to drop TWO (count em) TWO Blades of Carnage. We will be giving them away to twinks soon!. Oh Kez, my level 15 Froggy Warrior needs a BOC!

For some reason the pull team decide that just pulling the Avatar of War, Statue, Idol etc etc wasn't exciting enough. So they started pulling multiples. We got Vindi and five friends, Statue and 3 friends etc etc. It was fun!

Friends

Vindi

Statue of Rallos Zek

Idol of Rallos Zek

The Avatar of War

Then its time for Lord Marr. The entrance to his temple is pretty impressive. Very Greek, or should I say very Melbourne?

He has some big ass pussycats guarding him. They are very cute, but they hit very hard.

and Lord Marr looks Kewl!

Now that was a hell of a good fight!. Thanks to some fantastic (or should I say Lucky?) pulling we got Marr split from his guards and all alone. After that it was all over bar the shouting. Once Marr was down it was time for the Plane of Tactics and our old friend Vallon Zek.

For some reason this week I have also managed to miss 2x Seru kills and a Cursed kill. Basically I have been doing faction farming with the GF. Well no more!, no more I say!. This week there shall be much killing and I shall get my Horsie! I know the Emperor drops one as well, but Seru's is black, and well, I'm a Necro, and well, you know, its black!.

Oh and hopefully we may get a shot at the Emperor Ssraeshza soon. I finally managed to finish my Emp Key this week (Thanks to the phenomenal Geno and Attann) so I will be able to go to the kill. I have 3 more Shards to go for the VT key and I think I know how to get one more, so should only be 2 shards soon.

Raid night tonight. No idea what's going to be up but I bet its good!

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fifteen

08/06/03 Week Fifteen

Well last week was a real mixture for me. I had both an extremely good week and a extremely bad one. Everquest, like life, delivers the good with the bad, sometimes in a single helping. Well first up, Monday after the long weekend, not looking forward to going to work with sand in my eyes, but hell I ain't going to miss a raid day either!. Last week was a week of much backflagging after we found out that the changes to flags for POP would not affect story line progression. BUGGER!

So first up was of course Crypt of Decay and Overlord Banford (I have no ears) Paffa. He of course got dinked in short order as we waited for everyone to logon and kick off the raid proper.

Once again Banford Paffa utterly refused to gift the Southern Armada Necromancer community (9 raiding Necro's on most nights) with an Earring. We have had one out of, ooo I dunno a bazillion kills!?. Come on, I mean look at the pic, the fat bastard clearly has 2 ears!!.

After Paffa snuffed it, Kez decided we would venture even deeper into the Ruins of Lxanvom and we kicked off the Caprin cycle with a decisive nailing of the ugly,one eyed, hits-like-a-mack-truck swine himself Carprin Deatharn.

Carprin was a little messy but he died all the same. The pull got a little crazy as the puller got stunned on the inc and went down, bringing adds in all of which got off tanked nicely. If I was a MoB that lived in COD and I heard a guild with 6 active Pallies was inc, Id be pissing off out the back door as fast as possible.

"Yup, I know they are inc Carprin old mate, just gotta log and umm, polish my bones a bit so they are all nice and shiny for the fight!, you stay right there and hold the fort!"

After that came the fight with the mob I have never seen. I wont say much apart from to post this pic. Anyone who has ever been through this fight knows exactly what this means.

Skelly Train

That's the first HALF of the train going back to the room.

We reformed at the GY and fought back in, to pull Raex Pwodill. Something was going weird with aggro that night and we had lots of thru the wall aggro resulting in another 2 wipes. We wiped the first time when we got both Raex and his buddy Vindor Mawnil at the same time.

We came back in and splatted Vindor on the second attempt, but 30 seconds before the pull was due Raex got aggro'd through a wall again. Second wipe. At this point it was close to 2.30AM and I really needed to sleep so I had to camp. SA went back into COD and forced High Priest Ultor Szanvon to bow down and finally got the flags!.

Thursday was a different kettle of fish entirely. The Kill list from Thursday would make most guilds of our size just wet themselves with envy. First up is the typical warm up kill, Overlord Banford (The Aurally Challenged) Paffa.

Next up was a run up to Drunder the Fortress of Zek, to see Vallon Zek, I mistook him for his brother Tallon (who always kills me) when the Target was called and mentioned not to bother rezzing me until after the fight as he would only kill me again straight away. My mistake was pointed out to me in /gu and much hilarity at my expense ensued. Ah well, we ganked him. As smooth a take down as I have seen yet.

Vallon Zek quaking in his boots.

Vallon Zek multi boxing in an attempt to cheat

It didn't do him any good and he went down before the flashing blades of Southern Armada.

Next up, Plane of Valor and Aerin`dar. Now for some reason we always have a problem getting to AD. He's kind of like Grummus, no matter what we do, there is always a train, there is always deaths and Rezzing and its never anyone's fault. Its really simple, use the fucking wall, don't run across the middle of the zone and when fifteen level 60 mobs turn up at the switch on your trail point blankly at yourself and say "It wasn't me". Just use the wall, that is all, thank you.

So for more Flaggage, we dropped AD like he was a pair of week old underwear.

Looted, dropped down the zone well, ran down the tunnel, zoned into Halls of Honor and headed over to see Aerin`dar's big brother Rydda`Dar. Now RD is a MOB you have to always be on the top of your game for. If you aren't he will ream out good and proper in no time. I have been told that even Elemental guilds can have trouble with him and I believe it. He is a big ass nasty Dragon with a damage output to match anything we are likely to meet on the way to the Elementals.

But when you know you can run up and sit in his mouth, or when even a Pink Power Ranger can kill him..

then you kind of lose the fear of him!. 3 in a row woot!!.
I hate that Dragon and ganking him gives me a great sense of satisfaction.

Quote of the week comes from Garaneb immediately after we dropped RD:

"Can anyone tell me how long I have been melee'ing with these cups?"

After RD we were feeling a little lost, nothing worthy of us was up. Bert, MM, Saryn, Agnarr, all dead damnit. So we decided to do a bit more flagging and headed off to see Grummus!. So off to Plane of Disease. First up of course the run across POD, see comments for run to AD and apply here. Use the fucking wall, its really easy.

Gryme the Crypt Guardian dies fast...

Aramin the Spider Guardian follows suit...

Grummus is by now terrified and is trying to hide...

Hiding didn't seem to do him much good and he fell over shortly after this pic was taken, strangely he didn't seem able to get up.

What now I hear you ask?, what else is there on the nights feast of MOBs? Tormax of course!. Everyone zoned through to to CODb from Grummus and raced for Kael Drakkal in case someone else should notice him and kill him. Well they didn't, we formed up and within about 10 minutes King Tormax was inc, and in 13 minutes he was dead!.

I like killing Giants even more than I like killing RD, so this night was just getting better and better!. In addition to Tormax we also pulled and killed Derakor the Vindicator. I didn't manage to get a screen shot of him as he came with about 5 friends and it was all a bit confusing for a bit, then he was dead before I managed to hit the button lol.

I'm hoping one day to max out Yelinak faction so I can go for White Dragonscale Boots. They are easily the best caster boots in EQ short of the Elementals. Apparently you can raise Yelinak faction by killing Vindi and KT only. Well I've killed Vindi a lot and KT twice, so I must run to Lord Yelinak one day and check my faction against him. I would guess that one more KT kill would put me at Ally.

What a night!
Paffa
Vallon Zek
Ryda'Dar
Aerin'Dar
Tormax
Grummus

It was over at that point for Thursday night, but Friday night we had a very welcome surprise. Seru was up!. This is where my week started to unravel. We fought into Sanctus Seru with no problems.

Seru himself...

I was put into the MT group. Me, 2 clerics, Bard, 2 Main Tanks. This is where I fucked up. I took from earlier conversations that I would need to heal the clerics as they would be inside the AE, so I loaded up ZToV, a disease based group heal. I also knew I would be Mind Wracking a mezzable caster mob pulled into camp to keep the Clerics topped up.

Mezzable...

I looked at this situation and figured I would also throw out DOT's at Lord Inquisitor Seru. So I knew I would be switching between targets and that I must NOT dot the Mezzed MOB or we would have a level 50ish unmezzable MOB in camp in the middle of a long ass fight that needs good control to complete.

You just know whats going to happen...

First up Seru got pulled, I waited for the MT to call aggro and cast ZToV. I promptly got roundly cursed out by the MT for taking his one and only Free Buff slot. Thought to myself, oh Fuck, drop out ZToV. At this point I now have MindWrack on the mezzed and DOT's on Seru. You just know what's coming next don't you?!. Yup I dotted the Mezz MOB. Idiot idiot idiot.

I was very very lucky in that I only cast a 54 second DOT, The Pallies stepped up and offtanked till the dot wore off at which point the Chanters promptly got the mob mezzed again. During that time, the Mezz mob beat the shit out of me, I managed to get an FD off at about 20% health, I think I distracted the Clerics enough that they dropped the rythym of the CH chain and the Main Tanks got down to 50% each and we quickly lost one. In other words, one slip of attention and I damn nearly wiped a full raid. If I had, I think I would have had a great deal of difficulty logging in again for a while.

Just goes to show, one mistake, one distraction and you can fuckup the night of 50 other people. I spent the rest of the night berating myself and calling myself bad names. Once the Mezz mob was back under control I also de-memmed all the potentially damaging spells in my line up, targeted the mezz MOB and did nothing but MindWrack the rest of the fight. Rule Number one, and one I should damn well know by now, pay attention, don't ever get sloppy.

Seru died and that was that. Sunday got a lot better, I joined an SA group in BOT, we were happily killing away when Gara noted that nameds were up. So after a bit of running about the place, we dropped 3 out of 4 named's. I won the roll for the only Rune that dropped. After the group broke up I ran to the Necro spell guy, did a long silent and fervent prayer to the Loot Gods, reminded them that we had sacrificed a Pally to them earlier in the evening and handed in the Rune.

Woot!
Blood of Thule. That's the last I needed, bar the "Nice to have but not really bothered" spells like GDMF I have a pretty much full spell book!.

Got a wee problem with The Litte Red Fire Engine. He isnt Red anymore.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Fourteen

25/05/03 Week Fourteen

Well the week started off Monday night with a relatively relaxed and mellow named killing in Bastion Of Thunder. We were already in the Bastion doing some XP'ing and Gara noted that 3 of the 4 named's were up (Yay Tracking!) he dropped out of the XP group to set up a named killing group. Once the named group was setup I dropped out to join them. First up was Gaukr Sandstorm in Deep South.

After him we invis'd over to Hreidar Lynhillig's house and prepped for him. He knew we had a Pally tanking for us so his back was to the wall from the beginning!.

He put up a good fight, but eventually he gave up and went and stood in the corner like the bad little boy he was. Trying to hide didn't do him any good tho, he died and gave up a Rune!.

Third but not least was Laef Windfall. He gave it up like the girly man he looks like. Prancing round in just a Toga!, he deserves to die!, pervert.

Tuesday was raid day and I was looking forward to it, hoping like hell that we would get another shot at RD. Of course at 4.00PM the companies Gateway fax server fell over. At 4.05PM a server was dumped on my desk and I was told it needed to be built by 6.00PM. Basically this server accounts for 100K$ a day in revenue for the company so it MUST be up and functioning. I got it built by 6.00PM but had to hang out to help with the re-build and configure process. So I didn't get home till about 11.00PM. I did some quick factioning with the GF and logged on.

ALT-G showed me the guild was in Halls of Honor, woot A chance at Rydda'Dar!. I asked in /GU if there was still time to get there and was told, there was. Off to HoH for some Dragon Hunting!. Now we have recently had a few server transfers from The Hand guild on Xev (Welcome Guys!) and we had a couple of people from Unity there, so we had about 10 or so people more than we would normally have had at an attempt at RD.

This Dragon has only been successfully killed on Prexus by 4 other guilds, all of whom are well ahead of us in the race to the Elementals. So for Southern Armada not only was this Revenge, it was a BIG step up. If you haven't guessed by now, not only did we kill him, he was pwnt!

Incoming!

Kiss My Ass Dead Fat Dragon!

And to really rub it in, a close up...

After much rubbing it in, self congratulation and division of PhatLewtz and everyone getting our flags, we headed to the Plane of Innovation and the Manaetic Behemoth to do a bit of back flagging. Behemoth was the old roadblock for us, now we move in and just Nuke him hard and fast. We seem to have a bit of a problem with the post Behemoth spidey control tho as a whole bunch of nasty ass spideys got into his room and went Boom!.

So now all we gotta do is nail Rydda'Dar again to prove it wasn't just a fluke and to backflag those who missed this raid. Once we have done that we will be taking a little visit to the Temple of Marr, where Lord Mithaniel Marr is going to get a Beating!.

During the course of last week I was also awarded a Sharp Claw Ahlspiess which is a nice replacement for my Ceramic Gavel of Justice. The Gavel was a loaner from Neulaelae and so I had to return it rather than hand it in to the guild. I also managed to be awarded a copy of Word of Terris. One little bit iof a rant. I am very happy to have this spell in much the same way I would be very happy to have GDMF. Its not a spell I will probably ever use, but its nice cause it fills out missing spells from my spell book.

This spell is a classic example of the developers at SOE simply not playing the same game as the rest of us. During the recent nerf of charm all the classes charm spells had their resist levels massively reduced as well as the experience gained from using such spells to kill MOB's. Effectively this was a Necromancer nerf. Ah! I hear you say, here comes a typical Necromancer whine!, yet hear me out.

All other charming classes have some form of debuff which enables them to effectively lower the resistance's of any mob they wish to charm. All classes except the Necro. We do not have a useable debuff that would land on any mob we would be likely to actually use this spell on. After the nerf you still see Druids and Chanters charming mobs and then using them to kill other MOBs all over the place. Necro's?, nah, for us this spell is un useable unless the MOB is debuffed by another class first, and even then it breaks fast and alot.

If they didn't want people using this spell to solo and gain fast AA's, all they needed to do was to reduce the XP related to solo use of said spell, in typical SOE fashion they went completely over the top and nerfed the spell into essential uselessness. Grats the back of my spell book.

Ah well, that means I am now only looking for the two spells I actually do want, Blood of Thule and my 65 Pet!. Actually the pet is a better example of the lack of thought that SOE uses when it comes to EQ. They say they want people to group rather than solo, yet by adding a 12 pt DS to the 65 pet they have effectively aided the soloists and farmers without helping grouping Necro's one bit. How the hell is a 12pt DS going to help my pet in POP?. If my pet becomes the focus of any thing's attention in any POP zone it will last about 2 ticks, 12 seconds or so. And no 12 point DS is going to help it one bit.

Yet this same 65 pet, the absolute penultimate Necromancer pet in the game, hits at the same frequency, for the same amount, with the same atk level as the 61 pet. To all intents and purposes it IS the 61 pet. But now it has a 12 point DS. I ask you, why do they even fucking bother?. They were doing a great job of ignoring the Necromancer communities proofs that the 65 pet was sub standard, just like they did the 59 pet for near 2 years. I still really want this pet, why?. Because. As I said above, it is the Necromancer's ultimate pet!

If they seriously wanted to do something to upgrade the pet it was an easy fix. Give it the same damage as the 63 pet does from the rear, but from any angle. So the pet progression would look more like 61=Warrior ( good if you do need tankage) 63= Rogue (good for groups) 65=Monk (Good for raids and for groups due to decent HP, AC, resist and sheer DPS, still not useable to solo tank with in POP). Its really not fucking rocket science.

Friday was one of those raids where you look back on it afterwards and think "Now thats why I moved to Prexus and joined Southern Armada". We started out with a quick Shei kill in Akheva Ruins just to get the blood pumping.

Shei Vinitras

I remember seeing the stats on a Flowing Gossamer Cloak back when I was on Karana. I never ever believed I would one day own one!. Yup Shei was kind enough top let me have it from his broken and bleeding body!. On the way in Xardan was also kind enough to let me have my Pet!. I really really appreciate that, because I know how much that particular spell still sells for on Prexus and I know what he passed up to give it to me. /bow Xardan, thank you mate.

From Shei it was onto Halls of Honor for another shot at Rydda'Dar. Now I was a little apprehensive about this kill, we had done it once, could we do it again?, or was the first time round just a fluke?. I needn't have worried. Not only did we nail that fat Dragon bastard, we did it with STYLE!.

Rydda'Dar

After that there was some Villagers needed rescuing. Much like the Princess it is my opinion that these villagers must be particularly stupid as they do seem to need rescuing. a lot!.

First ya kill this guy...

Then a whole lot of these guys spawn...

once you have killed all of them, then a named spawns, kill him and Voila! a flag!.

At this point it was getting fairly late and people were beginning to get tired. It was getting on to Midnight for me as well, but its Friday and its raid night so I don't care!. The GF has long gone to bed and its just me and the Raid out killing stuff. So we figured lets go kill us some Zeks!, Yup both of them up at the same time!.

So off to Plane of Tactics, form up, race in, engage, *sigh* well I lasted 20 seconds against Tallon this time. People are even warning the Raid, stay away from Ulaa!. I have survived one damn fight against the bugger, I think I'll just Nuke from now on.

Tallon Zek

Next up was big brother Vallon, everybody was home tonight!. Vallon is a fun fight, I always enjoy it cause its an in your face sort of fight. To me its a good test of a guilds discipline, because its in such a tight area its a kind of one slip and your Raid is dead type of fight.

Vallon Zek preparing to engage

Vallon Zek trying to cheat and bring his buddies!

The result of cheating!

I know the pics are shite but its dark in that damn room!.At this point a lot of people left, I was still hyped so i stayed and we headed down into the dungeons of Tactics to kill a mob I've never seen!. Zone into Tactics, drop down into the pit, kill a lot of nasty mobs...

and finally you get to a big room that I think is supposed to be an armory. I don't know if it is, but there was a lot of this stuff hanging around the walls of the room...

Damn if only the armour on my froggy twink looked half as good as that!!. Oh well. One thing that does suck, around this room are scattered a bunch of NPC's who are Non-KOS to everyone, unless you have some sort of illusion up. If you have any kind of illusion form on you they will attack. NOOOOOOOOO!!, damn it no Seduction of Saryn! All the Necro's in the raid were spitting tacks in Necro channel, we HATED not having SoS up!. We all felt like Wizzies having to rely on KEI and VOQ, it sucked ass.

Oh well Targrin Maldric died anyway...

and on the way out so did his pal Glykus Helmir.

I may be a bit confused as to who/what we were killing at this point. There was a lot of whiskey and it was about 2.30AM, so if I am wrong, let me know. One last thing, quick update I know but its been a hell week at work. I REALLY want one of these pets!!