More Classes Welcome

Now that we’re finally almost finished working through the post-merger deluge of applicants, we are again opening up recruiting to a few more classes.  We are now accepting applications from Clerics, Shaman, Druids, Enchanters, Wizards, Rogues, and Beastlords.

We currently have the first 4 T6 Underfoot raids on 5 day rolling farm and are farming Brath weekly as well.  We are actively working on Hive Guardians and still do some SoD raids for gear, runes, and flags.  Further information about us can be obtained here.

Too Many Apps!

The recent server merge has brought us a large number of applicants.  Even though we re-limited apps a few days after the merger, we continued to get a large influx.  Therefore, at this time, we must again restrict applications.  We are ONLY accepting applications from Clerics, Rogues, Shaman, and Wizards at this time.

We need time to work through our current applicant class.  When we find out who fits and who does not over the next 4-6 weeks, we will likely re-open to a few selected classes.  Until then, if you are not one of the 4 classes listed above, stay patient as we may re-open apps to your class soon.  Also, be aware that if you are a Monk, Shadow Knight, Warrior, or Bard it is extremely unlikely that we will open to those 4 classes any time in the foreseeable future as we are simply overloaded with those 4 classes.

Thanks for your interest in Undivided Faith.  More application information can be obtained here.

Anger Management

Why is Brath so angry?  Why must the whole instance shake for the entire event, making our pregnant (and/or hungover) members run for the nearest porcelain bowl?  And did Brath remind anyone else of a certain green super hero?  In any event, we’ve been working on Brath for a couple months now off and on.  We were getting pretty close before the merger and we were really hoping we’d get one more server first in before the Maelin merge, but alas, numbers never allowed us to do this.

Post-merger we had a couple things going for us.  First of all we’ve had a nice influx of new applicants who we’re very happy with.  Our numbers pre-merger were pretty good, but with the new apps we’ve had consistently full and over-full raids again.  The other thing we had going for us was that Independence Day was approaching, and we have a certain history of beating events on or near holidays lately.  This made us very optimistic that this would be the weekend we’d finally prevail, especially since we had gotten him to 20 the week before.  We got a quick warm up wipe out of our system, and then we got down to a real try.  His health was going lower and lower, but people were also dropping like flies and we weren’t sure we were going to make it as time was really running out on us.  However, we channeled our inner-Landon Donovans and pulled it out in the end.  It felt sort of like this (minus the awesome Spanish announcer). 

As you can imagine, the corpse-spam was epic…

We made a big pigpile at the chest.

We got some nice rewards, too.

Grats Delphias and Khabok!

Grats, Axedragoon!

Grats, Renaan!

Grats, Adorned!

Though this win came a little later than we’d hoped, and though its no longer a server first, we were happy to be able to share it with our new friends from Maelin.  We became the 26th raid force serverwide to beat this event, which isn’t too shabby.  Perhaps it even helped lessen the blow of World Cup disappointment for some of our Euro members from England and France…

Important Questions

How can a cleric get a group in UF?

What types of questions get asked in the UF applicant interview?

Is Vaynelle Easy?

Is Sheex an ass man?

Why don’t we let Soulis lead more raids?

Who finished the first Brell’s Shawl on Drinal pre-merge?

Grats, you ninja! :p (Yes, this is months old news that I am just getting to)

What’s Next?

UF farming and some SoD runs to flag up and gear up apps, and of course working on the next Tier 6 event, Cliknar Hive Guardians.

PS – Thanks to Draedon for some of the pictures for today’s update.

We Have All the Shadow Knights!

Ok.  We don’t, but we feel like we do.  Due to the overwhelming response to our open application period, we have to re-close to some classes since raids consisting of 54 Shadow Knights, Monks, Bards, and Warriors can’t currently accomplish much.

Therefore, we are CLOSED to Monks, Shadow Knights, Bards, and Warriors.

The other classes remain open for now, and we remain highly interested in Clerics, Shaman, Enchanters, and Rogues.

Please see posts below or on our forums for more details.

Thank you for your continued interest in our guild.

Merger Time Has Arrived

Well, the time has come to merge with Maelin Starpyre.  First we were joining them, now they are joining us.  It doesn’t really matter since its just a server name.  I am glad we won’t have to mess with all of our character setting files though.  Its the least SoE could do for us, since our previously low populations zones will suddenly be full of toons now.  If you Maelin-ers need help getting your character settings changed for the new server, try downloading this program.  We’ll see you in a few days when the servers are stable enough to play on!

Limited Time Offer

For a limited time we are opening up our application process to ALL applicants of ALL classes.  We are still most interested in Clerics, Wizards, Enchanters, Shaman, Paladins, and Rogues, but we will take ALL applicants for a short time after the merger.  See the post below for more information about our guild or check out our forums.  Additionally, if you act now and apply right away, you will also get to experience the the New and Improved, Non-Cursing Hador*.  That’s right, this version of Hador does not drop F-bombs or call people A-holes.

Good luck!

*Undivided Faith does not warrant that this version of Hador will not revert to Original, Continuously Cursing Hador at any time for any reason.  This offer may not be combined with any other offer.  This offer is void where prohibited.  No refunds!

Brave New World

We’d been hearing about the possibility of server merges for some time now, and the talk really seemed to be picking up steam with the devs lately.  Sure enough, a couple days ago we discovered that server merges had been finalized and our merge partner would be… Maelin Starpyre.  I’m not going to lie.  We found this pretty disappointing initially.  We’d become pretty accustomed to our little corner of the EQ world on a small, low population server.  Finding out that you are merging with one of the highest population servers with 2 of the fastest-progressing guilds is quite a shock to the system.  After the initial shock of it, however, we realized its just not that big a deal.

A Most Excellent Run

We have definitely enjoyed our 18 month run as the number 1 guild on Drinal, and the merge with Maelin certainly means an end to our run of server firsts and titles and the like, but its certainly not the end of the world.  We didn’t set out to be top guild on Drinal.  That was never our focus.  In fact, for most of our existence, we were not the top guild on Drinal, and we still enjoyed raiding and progressing and overcoming challenges together at our own pace.  We are capable of doing that on any server, regardless of our ‘rank’.

A Little More About Us

Since the merge was announced, we have already received a great many inquiries regarding our guild and applying.  I’ll answer some of those questions as best I can here.  We are part of a raiding alliance comprised of three guilds – Undivided Faith, The Kindred, and Legends of Mystic Heroes.  Speaking strictly for UF now, we are a raiding guild that is more casual in nature, but still very much focused on progression through content.  We recognize the demands of real life and respect them.  Therefore, we do not have any minimum raid attendance percentage.  We only require that if you are online during raid times that you attend the raid.

Loot is given out by a loot council on a merit-based system that is based on a very large number of factors.  This may sound vague, but it has served us well for many years, and because we farm zones extensively, all of our members end up getting geared up well.  This is reflected by our extremely low member turnover.  Almost no one leaves us due to loot disappointment.

We are a United States eastern time-based guild, but we have members spanning all time zones and a small but solid Euro contingent as well.  We raid 5 days per week with our most current and challenging raids being done on the weekends.

Monday – off

Tuesday – off

Wednesday – 7 pm est – 11 pm est

Thursday – 7 pm est – 11 pm est (most Thursdays there is also a “Euro raid” from 2-5 pm est)

Friday – 7 pm est – 11 pm est

Saturday – 12 pm est – 5 pm est

Sunday – 12 pm est – 5 pm est

Please note these times are estimates and sometimes we may start a little later and end a bit earlier or later.  Weekends in particular we often run a bit later, while week nights frequently end earlier.  Additionally, we will rarely raid on Mondays or Tuesdays if we need to.  Usually if we do that, then one of the other week nights will be a free night.

Even more information about the application process can be obtained here.  Though we are only open to some classes currently, we always consider exceptional people from all classes.  We are more interested in the person behind the toon than the toon itself.  Zarax is our guildleader and is almost always available for further questions.

Holiday Celebrations

For some strange reason, minor holidays have been very good to us in 2010.  On the day before Martin Luther King Day, we defeated Fippy Darkpaw for the first time.  On St. Patrick’s Day, we defeated the Steel Behemoths for the first time.  On Tax Day for the US, we defeated The Beast for the first time.  And just 2 days after my 40th birthday (ok maybe this one’s a bit of a reach), we defeated The Unburrowing for the first time.  All were server firsts and all events have been on farm ever since.

However, since we had only just gotten enough coins to move on to tier 6.5 Underfoot raids and hadn’t been able to try any of the new raids yet, we didn’t have very high expectations coming into yet another minor holiday, Cinco de Mayo.  We weren’t really sure how to properly celebrate Cinco de Mayo and youtube really wasn’t much help.  Since we didn’t really want to sit around eating tacos and watching Klavyn and Orbus “whacking their pinatas”, we decide to celebrate the holiday “hillbilly style”.  No we didn’t put on our overalls, climb in our pickup trucks, pickup a first cousin, and head out for a night of moonshine and cow-tipping.  Instead, we put on our overalls, picked up our shotguns, and headed into the woods for a night of vermin slaughtering.  In EQ terms, we put on our gear, met up with our raiding partners, and headed to The Foundation to slaughter lots and lots and lots and lots of burynai as part of the Masked Invaders raid.

Not So Great Expectations

Since we barely had 60 coined and we knew almost nothing about this event, we expected this to be a learning experience with lots and lots of dying.  When we could barely field a raid of 40 people due to gimp issues, we lowered our expectations even more.  After a couple resets and a partial wipe, we decided on a strategy to attempt, and a strange thing happened.  Even though we didn’t have much of a raid force and even though we didn’t have much of a clue what we should be doing, we kept progressing the event, and our first real try kept going on and on and on and on.  Here is an amazingly accurate summary of the event.  (This video is so similar to the raid that I must conclude it is the inspiration for the raid.)  Actually, since this “learning attempt” ended up running over 2 hours, the experience was actually more like the extended version of the video (provided you watch it for the whole 6.5 minutes without turning off the sound or looking away).  Right around the 2 hour mark, at a time when we were usually long done raiding, we realized that we might be able to actually get to the boss on our first real try at this event and maybe even win, but we also realized it would probably take us another half an hour to get there.  Nonetheless, almost everyone stayed and we pushed on to the end, taskadding every bot we could load in case of a win.

Amazingly, after about 3.5 hours in the instance and about 2.5 hours spent on this single attempt, we survived many close calls to finally see the spam none of us expected that night…

The survivors huddled around the winter harvest…

and the loot we found inside was better than anything we’d ever gotten from a pinata.

Grats, me, and screw you, Grunkuck, you stingy bastard! And FYI, the graphic isn't nearly as ugly as the icon.

Grats, Kudladar!

Grats, Zeemus!

Grats, Karlauk and Mercx!

Grats, Zeemus and Mercx on the first flags for T7!

So a raid that is locked behind 3 other raids and drops loot like this can be beaten basically on the first attempt by 40 ish people who had no real idea what they were doing and were getting sleepy to boot?  Seems rather shocking really, but I guess thats the current state of raiding and raid tuning in Everquest today.  We’ll add this event to the farm anyways and will attempt to learn it better so it doesn’t take us 2.5 hours in the future.  Its a shame for the rest of this server that this raid is locked behind The Unburrowing.

Epilogue

The late hour that this raid ended spawned some very amusing chatter including the worried rantings of a certain ranger telling us that his wife has never been this angry with him.  (I still haven’t seen him online since Wednesday!)  It also spawned this exchange from the lone Euro with the stamina (mania?) to stay for the entire raid.

Kysumu, I hope you enjoy the new title, new key, super-shiny new loot, destruction of your sleep-wake cycle (and 10 Achievement points!) that you earned by staying up with us and seeing this thing through!  All kidding aside though, Kysumu is emblematic of the type of people that populate our raiding alliance.  Most of us are just people that love this game and want to see new stuff and attack new challenges even when it likely means scores of deaths and lost sleep and lost spousal faction with no loot or other in game reward to show for it.  This is the attitude that keeps us strong and moving forward and it was certainly on display tonight.

What’s Next?

Well, we now have the 3 Tier 6 Underfoot raids on a one day farm.

I expect we’ll be able to complete Masked Invaders on the same day soon as well, and we’ll be spending much of our time working on The Wrath of Brath which is the next Tier 6.5 raid.  With the jump in difficulty we expect from Underfoot raids going forward, we’re expecting many weeks to months of farming the first 4 raids to gear up for the challenges ahead.  Unfortunately, that will still leave a couple nights free, which means we’ll be continuing to farm SoD events for at least a little while longer.

PS – Thanks to Draedon for supplying some screenshots for this update.

A Pest Problem

Though we worked quite a bit on the Beast and died to it plenty, we felt like we made progress with each attempt.  The same cannot really be said of The Unburrowing event.  This event was extremely frustrating for us, and we died many times, feeling like we hadn’t really learned much in the process.  This was puzzling to us, since we all heard that this event was so much easier than the Beast.  In fact, when we beat the Beast, we became the first guild serverwide to defeat that event before beating The Unburrowing.  (However, the Beast has been gimped so much, that we expect the order of our killing to become the norm.)

The event seems simple enough.  You zone in and come face to face with some giant ants. 

You then get swarmed by ants, and most of our attempts to date had us feeling like ant roadkill.  This made many of us begin to start feeling the flight response to stress when this event was called.  We were hopeful that the recent nerfs by the devs would help us to beat this event now.  After all, Fippy has now become completely neutered, and the Beast is just a shell of his former self.  Unfortunately, our first post-nerf attempts on Saturday got us no further than we had been pre-nerf and despair was starting to set in.  However, our fearless leader gave us a pep talk, and we tried a completely new strategy which got us very close to victory.  However, it was late in the day, so we had to wait until Sunday to get the win we were certain was coming.  We had a little more tweaking to do than we expected on Sunday, but we fought through our problems and finally got to the main ant…

and defeated him, leading to more Drinal-first spam…

And more server-first loot…

Grats, Klavyn and me!

Grats, Gholatron!

Grats, Desirae!

Although we feel this event is currently harder than the other two tier 6 events, we’re pretty sure its on farm status now with our strategy.  We’re very proud to beat all three tier 6 Underfoot events before anyone else on Drinal has even beaten 1 of them.

What’s Next?

We need a couple weeks to key (coin) folks up for tier 6.5, then its off to Foundation for the first event.  We’ll be farming Underfoot in the meantime and SoD as well, though hopefully not for much longer.

Taxes Piss Us Off

Americans have quite a history of not enjoying paying taxes to the government.  In fact, it was basically tax anger that ultimately caused the original colonists to rebel against England, leading to the formation of the United States.  But we soon discovered that even when the government was our own, paying taxes is no fun and tends to cause resentment and anger.  Perhaps its because we don’t like funding bridges to nowhere or paying $600 for toilet seats or $1 million for washers, but come tax time most Americans are pretty edgy and even angry at discovering how much they owe in taxes or how much of their hard earned money they have given to the government the past year.  And so it was that on April 14, the eve of the 2009 Tax Day, the American contingent of Undivided Faith found itself in a foul, murderous, even genocidal mood.  If only we could find a target for our rage…

The Beast Volunteers

Although we got Fippy down quite quickly and easily in pretty much his original form and were finding him a joke after the first round of dev nerfing, the Beast was another matter.  He did not get nearly as sizable a nerf as Fippy got, but we kept working on him over the last few weeks, and we really felt like we were making some progress.  When we got him to 20% this past weekend, we figured his days were numbered.  However, he got nerfed again (and much harder this time) with the patch earlier in the day, so we’ll never know if we could have beat him in his previous form.  This did not make us any happier, so we got his instance to see how much easier he had been made.  I’d like to think our weeks of practice and wiping helped us, but he’s so much easier now that its hard to say that for sure.  We did wipe on our first attempt of the evening thanks to some random linkdeaths courtesy of Another Stable Patch by Sony ™.  Even though we lost almost 20% of our raid force to link deaths, we almost beat him.  Needless to say, these link deaths did not make us any happier, so when we killed him on our second attempt, we killed his mate and their entire unholy, interdimensional brood for good measure.  And in rolled the spam from another Drinal first…

We gathered for some group shots to see what loot rolled in…

Even though a monk killed both Grunkuck and his mate,

the chest provided us with the wrong weapon…

Grats, Axedragoon!

Grats, Sarouzek!

Grats, Jolakaz!

Grats, Hador on the legs and Bono on the wrist!

Even with the major nerf, it was still quite a satisfying kill, and we became only the 21st guild to beat this event serverwide.  We’re still pretty pissed about our taxes though…

What’s Next?

Farming Fippy and Beast for coins and loot, and this weekend we’ll see if the nerfs to Unburrowing have made it beatable for us, so we can get into T6.5 soon and hopefully leave that godforsaken Tower of Discord soon!

PS – Thanks to Draedon for supplying some images for this update.

Favorite Time of Year

Mid-March is one of our favorite times of the year.  Why?  Well, unless you’re Julius Caesar, there really isn’t much not to like.  Alcoholics have the ultimate drinking holiday, St. Patrick’s Day.  You have the official start of Spring, which also means students have spring break.  Sports fans get the NCAA Basketball Tournament also known as March Madness.  (Speaking of college basketball, it was kind enough to bless us with a news event that spawned quite an awesome headline recently.)  But for most of us in Undivided Faith, mid-March means something better than all that put together – the return of Fabled Everquest.  Ok, so SoE now prefers to refer to this period and the content it pushes out as “anniversary events”, but it will always be Fabled to us.  It was our complete domination of Fabled Planes of Power 2 years ago that played no small role in gearing us up in preparation for our ascent to the top of the Drinal.  Since then we have saturated all of our members, friends, and apps with some of the very best augs in the game that come as rewards for being the best in the various anniversary event raids.

Beating the Behemoths

This year there is only 1 new raid event, but we were anxious to try it.  We found it to be quick, straightforward, and, of course because this is SoE, buggy.  We beat this event on our second attempt.  Unfortunately, due to top-notch programming, not everyone could get the reward.  Afterwards, I found myself alone at the chest, looking for the rest of the raid…

I soon discovered that they were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day next to the Party Keg that spawns upon winning the event.

Yes, this keg works and provides you with a cold brew.

But I know what you really want to see is the loot…

Grats tanks and tank-wannabes who weren't dead or zoning at the end!

Grats casters, priests, and non-tanks who weren't dead or zoning at the end!

Grats Kysumu!

Grats Shadyzar!

Yes, this easy raid will be on twice weekly farm until they pry it from our cold, dead hands.

What’s Next?

Well, we’ll be farming this raid twice weekly till everyone we know has both augs and all the faction/AA /RLAA they can spend.  Also, I guess we’ll keep farming our SoD targets and Fippy.  The Beast should die soon as well.

What happens when a Canadian bard bets an American bard on the results of the Olympic Men’s Hockey Gold Medal game?  Well, it sure made one of the best hockey games of all time that much more exciting.  Draedon was probably feeling pretty smug when Zach Parise tied the game for the US with less than 30 seconds left, but it was Leekara who had the last laugh when Sidney Crosby scored the game winner in overtime.

All that was left was for Draedon to pay up…

Underfoot Ups The Ante

After hearing complaints about how easy raiding was in the last several expansions, and in Seeds of Destruction in particular, Sony promised to make Underfoot much harder.  We were somewhat skeptical after moving through Seeds of Destruction with very little resistance (other than a bugged Kithicor event and The Zek Brothers event).  But after we danced with the 20k hitting Beast Below and an 18k hitting Fippy Darkpaw, we were convinced that Underfoot would be challenging.  We were also convinced that we could meet this challenge and decided on a strategic shift in our loot farming to help prepare us.

Fippy’s Revenge

We decided to focus our initial efforts in Underfoot on the Fippy Darkpaw raid since we all fondly remembered killing the little barking gnoll from Qeynos with little effort.  I mean this is a mob that has never even been able to kill Orbus, let alone Orbus and 53 people that Orbus thinks like him.  We quickly discovered that this little dog has grown up and gotten bigger, hitting for 1,000 times more than he used to and getting bigger and badder as the event goes on.  However, we were undaunted, and we relished the task of learning a new event and all its mechanics by dying to it over and over and formulating strategies on the fly.  By our first week, we were well into phase 2 of the event.  By our second week, we had gotten to phase 3.  After our third week, we were able to complete phase 4, and we were very confident that Fippy would be dead soon.

On this, our fourth week of trying, our first attempt did not go very well at all which was a little disheartening.  Our second effort of the day, however, had nearly flawless healing, and we got him to 4% before wiping.  Though it was late in the day and though we lost a cleric, putting us at 4 for the entire raid, we decided to make one more attempt since we could smell victory (though to Fippy it smelled like our imminent defeat).

Oooh, and boom goes the dynamite… (by the way, that’s Zarax playing Jimmyvegas, just so you don’t think JV is a raving lunatic)

You've never really raided if you've never been spammed by the Achievement's of your guildmates' corpses...

Fippy's a lot bigger here than he was in Qeynos, but he swears he's never used PEDs no matter what Jose Canseco says.

Of course most of you want to see the Drinal-first loot, so here it is…

Grats, Sylvanea!

Grats, Koshling!

Grats, Jolakaz...

on making this!

Grats, Polleiden...

on making this!

Grats, Orbus...

on making this!

Grats, Renaan, Florencee, Drmiangoth, and Pinina!

Grats, Gholatron, Rime, and Xanderax on the progression flag!

We’re proud to be the first raid force on Drinal to defeat this event (or any event in Underfoot for that matter), and we’re also proud to be the 24th force serverwide to beat Fippy. 

As our raid lockout window will attest to, it was a very busy and eventful week for all of us with a couple server-first accomplishments to be proud of.  In honor of the effort and successes, Zarax is giving us all a couple days off to sit back and soak it all in calling for bonus raids tomorrow since many of us are off for Martin Luther King Day.

What’s Next?

Well, lots and lots of farming of Tower and Korafax Hard and normal and various other SoD targets as well as our new friend farm, Fippy Darkpaw.  We’ll be starting to learn the other T6 UF raids as well.

PS – Thanks to Hador for some screenshots for this update.

PPS – If anyone can tell me why my brand new PC takes screenshots in EQ with those pixellating streaks, please shoot me a tell any time.  Its driving me crazy.

Gearing Up For Underfoot

So we’ve had various Hard mode raids in SoD on farm for quite some time now.  We’ve even been split raiding most Hard targets to maximize our loots, but we hadn’t really tried Tower on Hard mode due to not really having the time, and usually having numbers far greater than 36 during most raid times.  However, after Underfoot release and after the New Year, we decided to make a serious push towards Hard mode Tower mainly to improve the quality of our loot as we gear up for Underfoot raids, which ratchet up the difficulty significantly.  This means we’ll have folks sitting out at times, but everyone understands the bigger picture, so thus far it has worked out well.  Besides, who wouldn’t want to play video games or watch TV while your guildies beat raid mobs for loot that you could win?

The Hottest Ticket In Town

We started off slowly, just trying Hard mode Tower when we had 36 or less before our normal raid start times.  We quickly found that Mindblight was not too difficult with just 36.  The next week we were able to beat Trophy Room with 36, though it was a bit more challenging and required some small tweaks with low numbers.  Finally, this past week we decided to really try to clear Hard mode Tower, and when we made it through the first 5 events fairly easily on Wednesday (only Stasis almost wiped us), we knew that the clear would be completed on Thursday.  Sony sees fit to only give the prefix title for completing the final raid of an expansion to the first people on each server to beat the raid.  And even though we all know that titles are shallow AND pedantic, people went to great lengths to try to ensure a spot in the raid.  This ran the full spectrum from taking a day off work in real life to making sure ALL of Zarax’s needs were met in the guild hall.

Another Server First Achieved

When Thursday came around, we warmed up with our old friend Pallorax the Soul Slayer, and then proceeded to quickly and efficiently beat the final 3 events in Tower for Drinal’s first Hard mode Tower clear,

which earned us longer titles to spam those people who run around showing all name text.

And as I said earlier, our new focus on Hard mode Tower farming is going to mean that some folks need to sit out and be patient at times.  Since those out of the expedition did not get to dance on Brekt’s corpse or get the prefix title, they deserve a little recognition here.

We’re especially proud to be able to have these raid lockouts before anyone else on Drinal has completed a single Hard mode Tower event.  Heck, only one other Drinal guild has been able to complete a single Tower event with 54, let alone 36…  I just wish our former press secretary was still on Drinal to witness this.  Alas, after whoring out some loot with the other Tower guild on Drinal, he wore out his welcome again and has server transferred somewhere else so he can get even more loot.

What’s Next?

Fippy dies soon…

PS – Thanks to Hador for contributing some images to this update.

While we anxiously await the coming of Underfoot – aka New Raid Content, I thought I’d make a Thanksgiving update before UF becomes available.  And, yes, we’re excited that the next EQ expansion shares its initials with our guild.

Stop The Insanity!

All the new Marketplace potions are really starting to piss us off.  Race-changing, gender-bending, name-altering – where is it all going to end?  I mean it was amusing at first when Miraly made the shift back from mangina to Myrak – after all, we’re still chuckling about that cheesy soul patch.  And then our resident crazy barbarian shaman, Konarg, started a poll about which member should get a gender change.  He apparently liked the idea so much that he decided to make some lifestyle changes of his own.  Of course no one really batted an eye because, well, this is Konarg we’re talking about.  I mean this is the guy once torpored Zarax during a raid, leading to one of many guild removals.  His motto is

and as a male barbarian he wasn’t too easy on the eyes to begin with, so no one was too shocked to see

The result was ugly from any angle.

Anyways, we were all on board with all that and could mostly ignore the situation until the line finally got crossed when this came across guildchat…

No way the ultimate mangina was going to change from this, right?

Alas, it was true.  Our worst fear came to pass.

That picture makes me want to vomit.  We need to rise up now, and put an end to SOE’s money-grabbing Marketplace before any more travesties are allowed to occur.

Welcome Back, Monkey!

November did see the return of one of our original monks, Audwon, a cow-herding, Amiga-loving, Commie-leaning Norwegian, whose return to active play enables us to once again field 2 full monk groups per raid (much to Hador’s delight).  He was gone so long (not really) that he thought some of the most fundamental elements of the game may have changed.

He was of course welcomed back warmly and accorded all the respect due to a long-time, senior member of UF.

Welcome back, bro!  And, Nylea, Audwon isn’t just ‘any’ monk.

Hador Wannabe

I profiled Hador on the last update, and Ganarak became so inspired that he decided to try to channel Hador during one recent Hador-less raid.

Perhaps he wanted to be Hador because he heard about this…

Of course, Mychoce has a darker side, too.

Maybe this is why Hador hates the short races – they share a little too much about themselves…

Vaynelle’s Sore Throat

Koshling After Swimming at Cleavem and Evra’s Wedding?

Not sure I want to see those pictures…

What’s Next?

Underfoot!  Yes, we’re going to jump right in to this expansion as best we can (incoming Death, Frustration, and Good Times!) while continuing to farm Tower, Korafax, Rathe, and various Hard raids.  Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

Fall of Toskirakk

For a couple weeks now, we’ve had just one raid standing between us and completion of SoD.  We had thought it was a mere formality and we hadn’t really been going after it.  We did not beat it on our first attempt last week, but we learned that it would take a little bit of effort to beat.  We went back in this week and had a new strategy that we were not able to execute the way we wanted to, which lead to an epic and somewhat amusing mini-zerg which enabled us to beat the event less than a minute before it was set to time out.

Given the annoyingly long clear and the touch and go nature of the victory, I doubt we’ll be putting this event on farm status.  The server first loots…

Grats, Rorrik!

Grats, Angor!

This win enabled us to officially complete the Seeds of Destruction expansion, bringing us up to date on raid content for the first time ever.  It was a pretty proud moment for the three guilds involved, and the culmination of a lot of hard work.

The thing I’ll remember most about this expansion is that it is the first one I can remember where the c*ckblocking encounter (Zek Brothers) didn’t actually block you from the end zone of the expansion…  Interesting decision by the devs.  In fact, the hardest raid in Tower was probably only the 3rd or 4th hardest raid in the expansion.

The Angry Barbarian

It’s been a while since I’ve profiled any of our members, so I thought I’d take this moment to profile one of our warriors and a proud member of  The Kindred, Hador, or as I like to refer to him, the Angry Barb.

He can drop F-bombs with the best of them and enjoys bellowing in raid chat.   He has a thing for mages and a midget fixation, but surely there is a softer side to him!

If there is, Mychoce isn't revealing it!

Perhaps his fixation on the short folks is a reflection of his own shortcomings...

In a recent poll on our message boards which was started by Konarg, Hador was the overwhelming pick for “Who Should Get a Gender Change?”  Hador’s response to this accolade was typical…

Mangina’s End

Hador still hasn’t gotten his gender change, but we did get our first guild gender changer.  Miraly was apparently tired of living the life of a “mangina” and reverted to his true gender.

Did you pay extra for the cheesy soul patch?

Now he just needs to change that girlish name and all the cyber tells from his loyal followers can end once and for all!

Clueless Orbus

Has Orbus ever stolen your camp, yet claimed he did a camp check and no one responded?  If so, then the explanation probably lies in the fact that channels >>> Orbus’ small mind.

Welcome Back, Iddia!

To celebrate the return of one of our favorite Orbus-hating clerics, I give you this commentary on her virtue.

Fiz Loses His Balls

Deep Thought of the Day

Since it is now apparently cool to put philosophical questions on your guild website, I will end this update with this one.  Why is it that the people who are the biggest leadership failures are also the ones who are the most critical of the successful leaders?  Here’s some unsolicited advice for the leadership failures.  Focus on taking care of your own house and you might actually achieve something.

What’s Next?

Well, its all on farm now.  Tower, Korafax, Crystal Core, Rallos Returns, and their hard variants as well as the easier raids for rune-farming.  Underfoot where are you?

A Long Time Coming

The Zek Brothers event really sucked for us.  There’s no way to sugar coat it.  We had worked on it off and on for quite a few months.  We had beaten every other event in SoD except for this one (and the 3 it unlocks) dozens of times over.  We’ve been clearing the Tower of Discord weekly now without fail since July, so we decided to give the Zek Brothers another try before our 2 month anniversary of our first Tower clear.  The raid was united in its goal of paying back the Zeks for the many defeats we had suffered – well except for those who would rather have dinner with their wife on a Friday night…

I hope dinner was worth missing our revenge on the Zeks since I doubt we'll do this event again!

They finally fell after countless tries over many months.  I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be there since this is not an event we’re likely to waste time on again.

The worst part was the loot, which perhaps fittingly, consisted solely of a massive Jester.

Actually, the hardest event in all of SoD gives you one essence and 1 piece of loot – the least amount of loot you get on any event major event in SoD – so perhaps the Jester would have been more appropriate.

Grats, Hador!

Eriak Next

The next day we went back and beat Eriak’s Downfall on our first try.  This event was pretty damn easy.

It apparently shares a loot table with Zek Brothers.

Grats, Sheex!

Grats, Zsazsa!

Rallos Returns

We had some Tower to do, so we didn’t take on Rallos Zek until Sunday, and we discovered that the event is apparently so buggy that it is unloseable.  We had a total wipe on our first try, yet we won on our first try (nope, no banner zerging needed).  While you try to wrap your minds around that, I’ll just say that this event and its hard variant will probably be farmed relentlessly for eternity because its hard to turn down free loot.

Grats, Celestra!

Grats, Whitelion!

Korafax Hard Mode Completed

We also recently defeated Venom Lord on hard mode for the first time.   Pretty sure it was just our second try.  We just haven’t had the time to try him much since our attendance numbers have been such that we usually have more than 36, and sitting people out is something we try to avoid.

Giants and an Old Man

We have also been active participants in the ‘extra’ content SoE has been sending our way.  We have completed Giants, Giants, Giants several times, and we will probably complete it a few more times in an effort to get every one of our members one of the best Range slot-able augs in the game.

We’ve also beaten the Classic Vox and Nagafen raids which has been fun for our members who were never able to raid those dragons when they were current.  I’m sure the fun will wear off around raid 5 or so, however. 

What’s Next?

Well, we’ll complete The Fall of Tosk event to officially and finally complete the Seeds of Destruction expansion.  Hopefully, we’ll find some time this week to knock it out.  We’ll also continue farming Tower of Discord, Korafax, Crystal Core, Rallos Returns, the Classic raids, and various hard mode raids.  And yes, we’re still farming runes by raiding the Tier 1 and 2 raids when we can.  I sense less days off in our near future…

PS – Thanks to Draedon, Polleiden, and Copiecatt who sent me screenshots for this update.

The One Day Farm

Despite starting the day with a quick Crystal Core run, we took a major step in putting Tower of Discord on farm status by clearing the entire zone in one day for the first time and on only our third clearing.

As you can see we’ve also been enjoying the spoils of the hard mode raids – Rottrued and Malarian Queen like everyone else on the server, and Crystal Core as well.  We’ll be working on FoS2 and 3 and the Korafax hard raids as we have time as well.  Also, we’ve started doing some ‘retro raiding’ for fun, so new members can experience some content they may have missed.

Drinal-First SoD Tier 4.5 Loot

Grats Jacques on the cloak when Hador became momentarily stunned by his own F-bombs.

I wonder if this loot award will spawn another long, clueless rant on another guild’s officer forums…

No Sharing

You might wonder how the loot system works in an alliance.  Well, of course we make sure no one in UF wants any piece of loot before we open it up to the raid in general…

It works out pretty well…

We Need a New Guild Banner

The only thing more annoying than wiping is being taunted by your own guild banner after said wipe.

That’s what we get for having a vengeful woman as our guild banner.

I suppose its just revenge for all those times Z planted it in lava and other damaging places.

What’s Next?

Farming Tower, Korafax, and FoS as well as various hard mode raids and fun retro raids.  And of course, we have a date with Zek Brothers soon…

Late Update

We did, in fact, beat Pallorax hard mode on our first try.  We’ll try the others as we have time.

Grats Zebrn!

A High Bar

Beating the first 3 events in Tower of Discord (including what is widely regarded to be the most difficult event in Tower) on the first day of trying is a pretty tough feat to match.  Pretty much the only way to top on the second day of being in the zone is to beat the remaining 4 events.  So thats just what we did…

Unfotunately, I could not be on the raid, so what that means is less words and more pictures.

Scrying

Scrying was ‘hard’.  It took 2 tries to beat.

Grats Jolakaz and Aligaurius!

Grats Saejeas!

Grats Sheex!

Grats Kearis and Fizdro!

Grats Kudladar!

Grats Sarouzek!

Grats Gynx and Desirae!

Grats Zeemus!

Grats Talif!

Grats Evra and Junior!

Grats Delphias!

Grats Zarax!

I had high hopes that we would be able to defeat the Zek Brothers (the undisputed toughest event in all of SoD) and complete the Rathe theme before entering the Citadel of the Worldslayer (aka Tower of Discord), but alas it was not to be.  After putting in about 6 good days of efforts over the last couple months, we realized it would probably take a flawless effort from an ideally composed raid force using a solid strategy for us to beat the Zeks.  We realized this confluence of events was probably not coming together soon, so we decided to move on to the Tower of Discord (like many guilds before us have done on other servers).  Or, as the Official UF Press Secretary put it… 

Tower Entered

I can tell you that it was quite a shock for us to learn that we’re not a REAL high end guild.  We were quite dismayed and demoralized and even discussed disbanding the alliance and all the member guilds and simultaneously quitting EQ and drinking tainted Kool-Aid to end our miserable lives.  Zarax, in particular, did not take it well.  He was so distraught when he discovered he was not leading a REAL guild, but rather just a guild that is simply progressing rapidly through current content, that the first thing he did on zoning into the Tower was to hurl himself at the first boss mob he saw.  I didn’t zone in fast enough to take a picture of his corpse. 

And so we gazed upon our first challenge in the Tower.

Good leadership is critical to raid success, particularly in end game zones…

Fortunately, its also possible to win without good raid leadership.  After a second attempt where we actually learned something about the event, we beat Mindblight on our third attempt.

And if ‘before long’ means less than 90 minutes after first entering the zone, then we proved our Press Secretary right again.

The first Tower loot on Drinal…

Grats Doggen and Sylvanea!

Grats Fizdro!

Grats Cleavem!

Trophy Room Next

Next we moved on to the Trophy Room event which our Press Secretary promised would be funny.

We did indeed find it funny when we beat one of the hardest events in Tower on our first attempt.

We laughed all the way to the loot chest, which was filled with more Drinal-first loot.

Grats to Polleiden and Nightemare on more wrist/hand essences!

Grats Zebrn!

Grats Hador!

Stasis Fun

Flush with confidence we moved on to Stasis and had an excellent first attempt, making it to the final phase.  Then, the wheels fell off temporarily as we wrestled with some nuances of the script and wipe recovery…

There you go, Saro!

Grats Delphias and Symphoniko on essences!

Grats Klavyn on the mace and Xanderax on the charm!

First place aug for IRA 1 - "Marathon" event.

First place aug for Sand Golem - "Endurance" event.

First place aug for IRA 2 - "Sprint" event.

First place aug for DPS event.

First place aug for Dragons, Dragons, Dragons event.

Bonus aug from Dragons event with 9 years played.

What’s Next?

Well the rest of Tower of course!  Hopefully soon!

Another Theme Completed

After our first attempt at Mindshear Avatar last week, we felt like we had a pretty good idea of what was going on.  We went in today and beat him easily.

I wasn’t there and I didn’t get links of the loot, but besides the BP essences and Tower Keys that we’d already won on previous events, we also got

Flesh Scourge – Grats, Orbus

and

Acolyte’s Mentation Cloak – Grats, Alix

This victory completed the Korafax theme, leaving only the last 4 events of the Rathe theme and a couple months of backflagging and keying between us and the Tower of Discord – the final raid zone in Seeds of Destruction.

What’s Next?

We’ll continue farming Korafax, Field of Scale, Crystal Core, Crystallos, and occasionally MMM while putting up our final scores on the Living Legacy raids in the next 3 weeks and celebrating Mother’s Day next weekend.  After Memorial Day, we’ll probably start getting busy on the remaining Rathe theme raids.

PS – Thanks to Jolakaz and Draedon for pix since I missed the win.

Long Time, No Update

It’s been 6 weeks since the last update.  Does that mean we’ve been slacking off, losing members, or /gasp stagnating?  None of the above actually.  We’ve just been extremely busy.  In addition to farming MMM, Crystallos, Pallorax, and Field of Scale, we’ve also been doing the Living Legacy raids twice weekly.  Why?  Well we intend to get the top or near top aug for as many of our members as we can for every event.  So far we have the top two scores for every event that we have done more than once, and we aren’t close to finished attempting these events.  Some guilds might see these raids as loot-less time spent away from ‘progression and farming’, but we see it as a chance to get all of our members 6 very nice augs.  Already 54 of us have the best charm aug in the game, and some of us got the rare pleasure of defeating Kerafyrm the Awakened twice in the same weekend.

Crystalline Tyranont Defeated

Although the raid schedule has been very packed, we have found time to work on two events sporadically over the last few weeks, and that persistence paid off this weekend.  Saturday we went to the Showdown at the Crystal Core and defeated the Crystalline Tyranont for the first time.  I missed it but heard it went very smoothly.  The best part of this win is that it paves the way for the rest of the Rathe events, and once we have those on farm we can stop raiding MMM and its endless trash.

I'm told the big red corpse in front is the Tyranont's corpse.

Some server first loot.

Grats, Jolakaz.

Grats, Hador.

Grats, Sylvanea and Polleiden on the first two raid wrist essences on Drinal.

Venom Lord, Too

The other event that we had been working on was Venom Lord Ksathrax in Korafax.  Sunday we paid him another visit and defeated him on our first try of the day.  The corpses got poofed quickly, but weren’t too impressive anyways.

This won us more server-first loot.

Grats, Cleavem.

Grats, Mackeever.

Grats, Zeemus and Relife on the first two raid BP essences on Drinal.

What’s Next?

We’ll continue farming our farm events with 2 new additions, while keeping the Living Legacy raids in the mix until they end next month.  We’ll also get started on the next Rathe raid – Zek brothers and the final Korafax raid – Mindshear Avatar when we have the time.  Once Living Legacy ends, we’ll really be able to focus on those new events.

PS – Thanks to Bewitchin and Doggen for the Crystal Core pics and Draedon for some screenshots I was unable to use on this update.

Bonus Raid

Because we were able to unexpectedly clear Crystallos completely in one day yesterday, we decided to enter Korafax for the first time as a treat to our raid force for a job well done.  We had been encouraging flagging for the last several months and had more than enough flagged for a full raid.  We quickly came upon our first mob, Pallorax the Soul Slayer.  He is a very cool looking mob, but also very dark.  These are the best pictures we could come up with.

We found this encounter extremely easy and beat it on our first try.

This led to yet more server-first loot.

Grats, Delphias and Aligaurius on Drinal's first pieces of T3 SoD raid armor. 80% fire focus on the arms - enjoy your increased summon rate.

Grats, Koshling.

Grats, me.

We then spent some time learning the Venom Lord Ksathrax event.  We haven’t quite figured this one out, but I’m sure we’ll get it down soon.  With the quality of the loot in Korafax, I have little doubt that we have just started yet another Drinal trend…

Lots of Lockouts

And here’s a final look at our weekly raid lockout, featuring 7 events that no one else on Drinal has beaten.

Was It Worth It?

That’s the question Orbus will have to answer after sharing his info with me, so that I could loot him a rotting Curator’s Treasure.

What’s Next?

Same as yesterday, only now Korafax has been added to the farm and FABLED IS ONE DAY CLOSER!

PS - Thanks to Tunkahop, Zsazsa, and Bewitchin for contributing pictures to this update.

One Day Clear

After spending a few hours learning the Kerafyrm event on Sunday, we were all pretty hopeful that we would beat the event this weekend.  I was hoping that we could get the first 8 events done on Saturday, leaving us most of Sunday to work on Kerafyrm.  We managed an early start, and the excitement for the weekend was such that we were able to start clearing trash 30 minutes before the scheduled raid time and had Earth 1 down 5 minutes after we were scheduled to start.  As the day progressed, we kept rolling, winning event after event with ease, and it became apparent that not only would we make my goal, but we would probably exceed it.  We had no wipes as came upon the same event that had stymied us just 6 days earlier.

We had beaten Meldrath the Malignant for the first time after clearing his Mansion in one day.  Would history repeat itself?  We figured we had time for 2 good attempts at him before we’d have to wait until Sunday.  Fortunately, one try is all that we needed.  It wasn’t pretty, but it was a fun and satisfying win all the same.  Strat tweaking can come on future attempts.

The interesting thing about this event is that you don’t really kill him, you end up putting him back to sleep. 

With the win came more server-first loot.  Kerafyrm is a difficult encounter but it rewards you with 4 loots and 2 chest essences.

Grats, Zarax and Hador on the first 2 BP essences on Drinal.

Grats, Renaan.

Grats, me and thanks UF, TK, and LoMH for the amazing weapon.

Grats, Zeemus.

Grats, Tunkahop.

And with a server first win over Kerafyrm comes the title, Dragonkin.

Allied Before Alliances Were Cool

And so the alliance of Undivided Faith, The Kindred, and Legends of Mystic Heroes completed the Secrets of Faydwer expansion and became the first raid force on Drinal to do so.  I suppose its fitting that we were first, since Undivided Faith and The Kindred were the first to form a successful alliance on Drinal many, many years ago, and now it seems that just about every guild on Drinal is forming an alliance or stagnating.  Our alliance has remained strong and welcomed Legends of Mystic Heroes as well.  We’ve weathered the ups and downs, and without really making it our focus, we have become the most “progressed” raid force on Drinal.  Looking at our lockouts for the week, you’ll see 6 events that no one else on Drinal has beaten.

I think that our success has not only driven other guilds to try alliances, but its probably lit a fire under the asses of some guilds that had stagnated.  Maybe it will motivate someone to get their act together and “pass” us.  That day may or may not come, but either way it won’t change the way we do things here and the way we approach our raiding and this game.

What’s Next?

Farming SoF and SoD, a surprise raid now that tomorrow is free, and of course, the imminent arrival of FABLED MONTH!

Practice Makes Perfect

After struggling mightily with Vyskudra for 2 days last week, we somehow beat the event on our first try Sunday. 

We got more server first loot.

Grats, Nightemare and Renaan.

Grats, Pinina.

Grats, Kysumu.

We then headed headed over to the final wing of the zone and came face to face with Brood Mother Visziaj.  We beat her on our first attempt.

More server first loot.  (Who doesn’t like a 3 loot dropping mob?)

Grats, Kyanahin and Kearis.

Grats, Symphoniko.

Grats, Nallaa.

Grats, Brach.

 What’s Next?

All this success brought us face to face with yet another expansion ending mob.

I wish I could say that we walked in and beat Kera on our first try, but we didn’t.  This event has some challenging mechanics and we spent several hours and 4 attempts “getting acquainted” with them.  I’m confident we’ll beat it soon.  Perhaps even this coming weekend…

We ended Thursday night with flying dragons, and began Saturday with more dragons.  We started our raid a little earlier than normal, and despite that, we were over full 10 minutes before the scheduled start time.  If only we could get such numbers and such promptness every day!

We zoned in at the foot of the dragon statue on time and headed to the Earth wing first.  We cleared to our first encounter after dodging balls and discovering that blue balls can truly cause bodily harm.  We found the Keeper of Stones and quickly put an end to his bowling on our first attempt.

Our first loots in Crystallos were

Grats, Orbus, on the wrist and Tunkahop on the foot essences.

Grats, Heming.

Grats, Ealrix.

We then continued on to our first dragon, Kildrukaun.  On our third try, we beat our first Crystallos boss.

Grats Sylvanea and Fizdro on the foot essences.

Grats Subjected and Damager.

We moved on to the Fire wing and quickly defeated the mini-boss on our first try, after discovering that clearing to him was more painful than facing him.

Grats, Klavyn on the wrist and Ealrix on the head essences.

Grats, Heming.

Grats, Aligaurius.

We then met our second dragon of the day, Tjudawos, deep in a pit of lava.  We beat him on our first try, and I discovered that damn, these dragon corpses poof fast.

Grats, Gholatron and Jakabk.

Grats, Xanderax.

Grats, Sweed.

After defeating the Fire wing, we made our way to the Air wing, and we defeated the mini-boss there quickly on our first try in a somewhat confusing fight.

Grats, Zarax on the wrist and me on the arm essences.

Grats, Mychoce.

Grats, Pinina.

We spend the end of the raid starting to learn some of the mechanics of the Air dragon, Vyskudra’s event.  We discovered it is quite difficult, and we ended the day happy that we had beaten 5 events on our first day in Crystallos.

Second Day Fun

On our second day into Crystallos, the raid filled even earlier than it had the first day.  We set out immediately for the Ice wing.  We made some good guesses at the mechanics of the Ice mini-boss event and we won it with little difficulty on our first attempt.

Grats, Nightemare on wrist and Alindawyl on hand essences.

Grats, Sarouzek.Grats, Junior.

Grats, Mychoce and Kysumu.

Grats, Hador and me.

Another Server First

Well, its 2 days earlier, and not the server first I expected to be announcing, but we had unfinished business with Emperor Ganak and spent some time this week getting a better understanding of the final Field of Scale raid.  This is one of the coolest raids ever, and if they could just tone down the lag a little and make it a bit harder, it would be perfect.

After that, we begin defending the dragons and there is a surprise or two thrown in.

Thanks for sharing your excitement, Renaan...

After perservering, we finally reached Ganak, and we had to deal with a flying target and the lag of all the other flying dragons.

He was probably a little too easy to defeat.  We were surprised to discover that as soon as you win, you get ported back to Field of Scale before you can even catch your breath (or screen shot anything).

Just as we were cursing and shouting in confusion about the lack of a chest, we looked around and realized this wasn’t any old Field of Scale.  This was a special zone smoldering in ruins from the battle we had just participated in.  We quickly ran and found the corpses of Emperor Ganak and Jaled’Dar.

And, most importantly, we found the chest with loot!

More server first loot.

Grats, Heming.

Grats, Vectinn.

Grats, Oagagim.

A New Emperor Is Crowned

There is one more loot from this raid.  A fun loot that drops every time – Ganak’s mount.

Congratulations, Zarax!

Of course, Zarax immediately clicked the bridle to summon Ganak’s mount… 

and he went immediately mad with power, illusioning up as an Ancient Iksar…

floating and dancing over the corpse of his fallen enemy, taunting it, and proclaiming himself the new Emperor of the Iksar Empire.

He then gated right to the Guild Lobby to annex it in the name of the Iksar Empire.

He summoned the mighty Iksar army to his side in a show of force.

Ok.  It was pretty late and most of the Iksar army had gone to bed, but trust me, it would have been an impressive show of force otherwise.  Also, all the softskins were slain immediately after this photo was taken.  True story.

Alas, with every blessing, comes a curse.  Zarax now gets the joy of fielding endless tells along the lines of “Which LoN expansion is that mount from?  How many packs did you have to open to get one?  Can you get me one?  It’s a raid only item?  Can I join your guild?  What are my chances of winning that mount as an app?  What’s your policy on ninja looters?”

What’s Next?

Crystallos, of course!  Also, we’ll add Ganak to the farm so that we can attempt to fulfill Sheex’s dream of fielding a raid composed of 54 iksar on flying mounts charging into battle.

Thanks to Copiecatt for some pictures and Sheex for some inspiration for this update.

Council Finally Undivided

We spent a lot of time on the first FoS raid.  Not quite the amount of time we spent on the Kithicor raid, but a fair amount of time nonetheless.  Since the event is called Kaesora:  A Council Divided, it seemed only appropriate that Undivided Faith be the first guild on Drinal to undivide the Council.

On many nights, we felt like hurling ourselves into that pit in frustration.

Some server first loot.

Grats, Disaa.

Grats, Nallaa.

Grats, Renaan. (no mes breaks today!)

A Second Server First

We made our way into Kurn’s Tower for the second FoS raid.  After doing exactly what we were told not to do on the first attempt, we decided to follow directions and we recovered Kurn’s Felbane easily. 

Not a bad weapon. Grats, Trakanon!

More server first loot.

Grats, Jolakaz. (better make a habit of asking for DI now)

Grats, Delphias.

Grats, Trelisha.

This raid is pretty damn easy and will surely be a farm source of lesser SoD armor for us. Oh hi Mining Behemoth 2!

Flying F-ing Dragons!

That about sums it up.  Think of some of the coolest images you can imagine in EQ and couple them with the most lag you’ve ever experienced.  That sums up FoS raid 3 in a nutshell.

This raid seems fairly easy, but after a long day of raiding, we couldn’t keep the raid together long enough to beat it.  It will fall shortly though.

What’s Next?

Well, since we’re entering Crystallos for the first time this coming weekend, you can count on many more server firsts soon!

Thanks to Tunkahop for providing some of the pictures in this update.

A Numbers Game

So you’ve started raiding SoF and you have your heart set on getting one of those awesome BPs with the neat click, useful focus, and loads of heroic stats.  But when you actually start the raid, you look to your left and your right at the 53 other toons on the raid, and you realize that over 40 of them are probably thinking the exact same thing.  Even with 2 BP cores dropping per clear, you realize that the odds are against you.  You start to wonder how you can improve those odds.  How you can make it clear that you are the ONLY possible choice for one of the cores?  Well, thats where this educational guide comes in.  Not only is the following method simple, but it has PROVEN results.

Make A Name For Yourself Early

Many raiders try to “fly under the radar” early and then really try to prove their worth at the end of the raid.  This, in fact, is the opposite of what you need to do.  You need to distinguish yourself early, and get your name “out there” as soon as possible so all the raid leaders are thinking about you throughout the raid.  Thats easy to say, but how can you achieve that?  Well, you have to look for your opportunities and seize the first opening that presents itself.

Here at Undivided Faith, our method for clearing the MMM trash really lends itself to such opportunities.

Now some might say its “risky” to have dozens of mobs messed right near the raid, but our mages are well-trained to not beam the trash, our wizards are well-trained to not AE the trash, and our warriors are well-trained to not maelstrom blade the trash.

Alas, the same cannot be said of our monks…

Renaan skipped the day the monks were taught to not ”Destructive Force” the trash.  Thats 36 mes breaks in under 1 second if you’re scoring at home.  And once the chanters went down, we had twice as many mobs rampaging through the raid, leading to this scene.

Notice to the right side of the picture that Renaan’s monkly training did not fail him.  He feigned and let the rest of the raid suffer the consequences of his actions – as any self-respecting monk pulling with “reckless abandon” would.  Of course this epic mes break was greater than any Zarax over-pull because you can see those coming either over the horizon or down the hallway, but dozens of mobs unleashed at once within the first 10 minutes of the raid is just something you never expect.  It was apparently such a stunning turn of events that only a couple people were able to come to their senses and simply turn around and zone out.  Everyone else just stood and died with the zone out less than 5 feet away.

The Payoff

This, of course, put Renaan’s name on everyone’s mind.  It infuriated Zarax, leading to a tirade in guildchat that I fortunately failed to screenshot since this is a “family” update page.  It also set the tone for the entire raid, leading to one of the sloppiest, ugliest raiding days we’ve had in a very long time.  We wiped 3 1/2 times to content we normally don’t wipe to at all, taking 6.5 hours for a raid that normally takes us about 5.  But we did soldier on and finish off Meldrath the Malignant, and when the BP core winners were announced…

So there you have it.  A sure-fire way to get yourself a BP core from SoF raids.  Good luck everyone!

A Minor Server First

On Wednesday, we ended our scheduled Tier 3 SoF raids earlier than expected, so we had time to try something new – an event that no one on Drinal had tried before, mainly because it was a fight who’s risk vs. reward was extremely skewed (imagine that in EQ!).  Scorn, is a Tier 2.5 difficulty encounter that drops Tier 1 SoF loot.  Nonetheless, we had a cleric ready to get his rank 3 Circle of Divinity (hp aura), so we gave Scorn a shot.  This fight was longer and harder than it needed to be, but we still beat it on our first attempt.

Congratulations to Relife on Drinal’s first (and currently only) Circle of Divinity Rk. III.  I’m sure you won’t lack for tanks wanting to be in your group now! 

MMM = 1 Day Farm

How do you top beating Meldrath’s Majestic Mansion within a week of entering the zone?  Well, as most folks know, the trash in MMM is legendary in its volume, so we decided that we only wanted to deal with it once a week, rather than twice, so we cleared all of MMM in one day.

It took a bit over 6 hours, but that included a partial wipe on Brinda, so we’re sure we’ll get this down to under 6 hours consistently in the future, which will open up an extra day of raiding new targets for us.

Some screenshots from this run, since I missed our first run…

Meldrath was relaxing in his workshop with his faithful sidekick, under the mistaken impression that he would not have to face us until Sunday.

The Corpsetron, one of our favorite supporting actors in the Meldrath script.

Never, EVER, leave a raid until the last loot has been awarded. Grats, Urtho, enjoy Saejeas' Prismatic Faycite.

The Secret to Meldrath’s Majestic Mansion

Now, some have been asking how we could possibly beat MMM within a week of entering it, so I thought I’d take a minute to explain how this happened.  I wish I could say its because Undivided Faith, The Kindred, and Legends of Mystic Heroes is composed of the smartest, most elite, most able gamers ever assembled in one place, but I can’t… (after all, we count Orbus among our members!).  The answer is much simpler and much more boring than that.  MMM is 15 month old content, designed for raids with level 80 toons.  It’s not even the end-game content for its expansion.  So if you take 54 toons that are level 85 that you have spent 6 months or more gearing up appropriately, then the encounters become easy.  Very easy.  That’s the recipe for beating the SIX events in MMM.

A Major Server First

So MMM is the easy end of our progression.  However, we are also progressing down the harder pathway of advancement in SoD, attempting content designed for level 85 raids and without well known strategies.  We were among the first guilds on Drinal to complete the Oceangreen Hills themed pair of raids, and we kept pushing on, spending time on both the Kithicor raid and the first Field of Scale raid.  Now, most folks know that the Kithicor raid is broken to be much harder than intended.  SoE has admitted as much.  It even put in a patch message indicating that the raid has been fixed, but not surprisingly, this was a lie, and it remains very broken.  Nonetheless, we kept trying it, convinced that if other guilds could beat it in its broken state, then we could, too.  Now, no one is ever going to mistake us for Triality, but we spent every free hour we had on this raid, probably over 20-30 hours total, taking failure after failure and death after death, while continually refining our strategy.  Friday night, we spent another 2-3 hours wiping to this event, but we left feeling like we finally had a workable strategy.  Our one day clear of MMM Saturday allowed us all day Sunday to try to execute our strategy.

Well, we weren’t quite as close as we thought, but after 6-7 more failures over 4 hours, we still had 54 players in the raid, which was a reflection of how badly we wanted to beat this raid.  As we buffed up for our what was probably our last attempt of the afternoon, we finally hit upon the key component of the strategy that we had been missing all day – the Pre-Attempt Gnome Sacrifice.  There it is Drinal.  The cat is out of the bag.  Now any guild can beat this bugged event!  Thanks, Gynx, for being the sacrifice!  With the EQ gods satisfied, we zoned in, executed our strategy, and finally saw the boss of this event, General Bahgresh, one of the coolest models we’ve seen in awhile (Thanks to Tunkahop for the high detail pix that are much better than the ones I took on my PC).

Yah, thats a lot of pictures of the same fight, but if you had spent as much time in the last month trying to reach it as we did, then you’d agree, this is NOT overkill.

He even looks cool in death.

Raid Rule #16 - When a cool looking mob dies, you have to make it your pet.

Almost forgot the obligatory group shot!

Some lore from the event.

Some server first loot from the event.

Grats Klavyn!

Grats Tyrs!

Grats Mackeever!

Not loot, but it opened this Tome up for monks. Grats fellow monks!

We can’t wait till SoE actually fixes this event so that it becomes truly trivial for us and so that others on Drinal can beat it, too.  All this work left us with a raid lockout timer that looked something like this (I missed the first two events of our last Steam Factory flagging run for awhile).

Not too shabby. A busy and productive week.

Is Zarax Really Married?

One does wonder about that given the ‘love’ advice he sometimes gives in guildchat.

Valentine's Day is right around the corner guys! Use this information well!

What’s Next?

More MMM, more SoD, and perhaps soon, more Drinal firsts.

Thanks to Tunkahop for some of the pictures in this update.

Holiday Break?  I Think Not!

So what did you do over the holidays?  If you are in any guild except for Undivided Faith, The Kindred, and Legends of Mystic Heroes, you probably had a break from raiding and spent time with friends and family.  Not us.  Some might say we have no lives or no friends or no family, but we prefer to think of ourselves as “dedicated” (and in some cases addicted to) Everquest.  Rather than rest or just go into “farm-mode”, we decided to kick in the doors to Meldrath’s Majestic Mansion on December 28.  As noted below, we beat three events on our first raid, including 2 Drinal-firsts.  We followed that up the next day with a low numbers raid to try out the other 2 events in the zone.

 Then Friday, we set ourselves up for a good weekend by raiding until 2 am and re-beating the three events we had just beat Sunday.  This set us up for 2 full raiding days to complete the last 3 events in MMM we had not yet beaten.  We quickly dispatched Breakneck and Brinda for the first time.  This left only Meldrath the Malignant for us.  After 3 tries, we beat him, completing MMM in only 7 days, and earning the prefix, Steamslayer for all those on the raid.

I received no pictures from the Breakneck or Brinda wins, but I did get a few of the post-Meldrath group shot.

A shot without the title/name spam…

The prefix, Steamslayer, for all those involved in the first kill.

The first two BPs went to Zarax and Hador.

Grats Alix on the hammer and Kysumu on the bow.

We’re Number 1

We never aspired to be number 1, but on a server like Drinal, it sort of got handed to us.  Our alliance with The Kindred and Legends of Mystic Heroes is as strong and successful as ever.  We progress at our own pace, making sure no one gets left behind.  We try to progress while having fun and hoping we don’t do something that leads to Hador’s cursing.  For now, we’ll enjoy being number 1 on Drinal while we can, and if we get “passed” by another raid force, that won’t bother us at all.

What’s Next?

We’ll be farming MMM and the SoD raids we’ve already beaten while trying the more difficult SoD raids as we have time.

PS – Thanks to Orbus and nameless others who provided pictures for this update.