New Year’s Celebration

Many guilds take the holidays off, but not us.  We keep plugging away, and we were determined to complete Tier 2 of VoA before 2012, so we made our way to Sarith for the first time on December 31.  We quickly learned the event mechanics and got it down on our first day of attempts.

There was also the usual boatload of loot.  Congratulations to the winners.  We’ll begin flagging and farming and collecting our Rebellion Chits in preparation for a push into Tier 3 VoA sometime in 2012.

Lost Dog or Ulterior Motive?

Here’s a peek behind the scenes at the important discussions that take place during raids in the officer’s channel.  This particular exchange took place during one of our favorite raid events of all time – Sanctum Somnium 2.

No shortage of volunteers to get repped during SS2.

It was Vay’s parents’ wedding anniversary, so Z suspected the dog wasn’t really lost.

Bardeil is obviously an excellent parent…

Sounds like Z’s imagined anniversary celebration was way better than reality…

Orbus’ Nickname

If you ever have trouble getting Orbus to respond to you, you may want to try calling him another name…

What’s Next?

More VoA T1 and T2, more mass quantities of loot, more raid journal exp, and more Rebellion Chits.

Easy Money

We spent Boxing Day making our first attempts at the Herald of Oratory T2 VoA raid.  We had a partial raid due to gimp issues and still managed to get it to 2% on our final attempt.  Unfortunately, we just ran out of time due to holiday commitments and had to put off further attempts until today.  We were quite confident we’d beat it with a full raid, and thats what happened on our first attempt.

Solusek Ro and Rallos Zek were quite pleased with our win, but we didn’t do it for them.  We did it for the loot, which I’m not going to link because I have a full time job and a family and linking the amount of loot that drops in these lower tier VoA raids would require a full staff of updaters, which Zarax has not put in the budget.

Speaking of Budgets…

We have a shiny new Palatial Guild Hall.  It’s massive and easy to get lost in.  How can we afford such extravagance?  By plundering the Station Cash from the accounts of our Euro brethren, of course.

Thanks, Ganarak!

“The Basement”

Some of our officers had a great time decorating the new guild hall, and its coming together nicely.  One of the most popular areas is “The Basement” which was designed by Magikcati herself.  Here’s a little tour…

It’s an area shrouded in secrecy and protected by a veil of smoke.  Venture through the smoke and you’ll find…

A full service bar and other entertainment…

See if you recognize anyone you know from UF ”moonlighting”.  Apparently, raiding doesn’t pay the bills like it used to…

What’s Next?

We’re going to make our first attempt at the Sarith raid this weekend, so another update should be around the corner.  We’ve opened recruiting to a couple more classes for raiders and we are still accepting casual applications.  Follow the link to find out more.

Took us a few tries, but we beat the first VoA Raid – Illdaera’s Vengeance on our first day of attempts.  Details as I get them since I missed the raid.

Ok.  So I never got any pictures or details and we’ve moved on.  But close your eyes and try to imagine crossbow bolts, blobs of steel, and a massive golem.  Then imagine Sheex and Peyten smashing it with exploding carts while Bono levitates overhead peeing on it – not once, but twice.  Then there is much rejoicing, some achievement spam, and resses.  Then, you deal with a ton of loot and write about it in your raid diary.  Good times.

Expansion Complete

We entered Sanctum Somnium for the first time on Saturday and completed the first 4 events.  On Sunday we completed event 5, and we really wanted to get some experience with the next event, so we canceled a scheduled free night and beat event 6 on our second attempt yesterday.  We then took a shot at event 7 and got through phase 1, but wiped to phase 2.  By this point, completing the expansion felt so close that we canceled another scheduled free night and took a shot at Morell Thule again.  It wasn’t pretty at times, it took us longer than it should have and it was touch and go at the end, but we did beat Morell Thule on our first attempt of the night.  With the victory we became the 27th raid force serverwide to complete the House of Thule expansion.  If you consider only raid forces with no mandatory raid attendance like us, then we’re closer to the top 5 serverwide.  We all take great pride in this achievement and the fact that we have completed another expansion when its still current content.

We got less spam than normal since we completed the zone over 4 days.

As always, Vaynelle summed up our feelings perfectly.

Grats, Ganarak!

Rika and I can play with dolls now.

Grats, Jolakaz!

Grats, Khabok!

Grats, Hador!

Grats, Sheex!

Along with this great loot, we got cool new titles. Hey devs, while you’re working on VoA and making titles for completing your previous expansion, can you look into fixing this bug?  I know at least one of you will be infuriated by it.

The Back Story

I mentioned above that the fight with Morell Thule was touch and go near the end.  We were doing very well at the start and his HP bar was steadily going downwards, but with 10% to go for victory we suddenly lost all of our main tanks.  HoTT became quite angry as various dps names flashed on and off of it.  Despair began to make itself known.  Were we going to come this close to victory only to have it all snatched away right at the end?  Which of our warriors was going to step in and save us from bitter failure?

Hador the barbarian, our max-gear, max-AA, max-ego main tank?  Nope.  Too busy re-counting his AA. (30k not far away!)

Khabok the ogre?  Nope.  Incapacitated by flashbacks from Event 2.

Karlauk the ogre?  Nope.  Having a ninja-nooner.

Sweed the troll?  Nope.  Ice fishing.

Cleavem the ogre?  Nope.  He was getting something for his wife.

Gube the ogre?  Nope.  It’s hockey season.  Enough said!

With all of our big warriors unavailable, who was going to save us?  Throughout history, the best stories always seem to have someone small rise up, take charge, and save the day when there is great need.  This is true whether you’re talking about literature

or movies

or television.

Therefore, it was only fitting that our story should also feature a hero that is short of stature…

Yes.  Eattillie the dwarf, our shortest warrior.

Eattillie, whose name I always seem to misspell (2 t’s, 2 l’s, 2 t’s, 2 l’s, 2 t’s, 2 l’s).

Eattillie, who has uttered very few words in /gu and even fewer in /rs in all his years in Undivided Faith.

Eattillie, who’s first steps in Sanctum Somnium were taken as we prepared to enter the raid zone for the first time.

Eattillie stepped up and took agro and tanked Morell Thule until the end, saving us from epic failure and allowing us to beat the zone in 4 days.

Thanks, Eat!

The Story Behind the Back Story

When I sent him a congratulatory tell, Eattillie was his typical quiet and deferential self.  He told me it was all due to the great healing.  When our guild leader sent him a congratulatory tell, we discovered the truth!

Don’t worry, Eat!  We’ll leave that part on the cutting room floor when we make the movie!

What About Bardeil?

And where was our recently returned human warrior Bardeil during all of this?  Well, he probably wasn’t even at the raid, but if he had been, I’m not confident he could have saved us.

What’s Next?

Well, we’re going to farm Sanctum Somnium, aka our new Candyland.  We’ll gear up and get ready for the next expansion, Veil of Alaris.

More Free Loot

After discovering 2 free loot events in Sanctum Somnium, we really weren’t expecting to find another.  Cages of Testing didn’t initially seem like an easy event after our first try, but we discussed what we learned and devised a strategy.  We executed the strategy and watched the health tick down and kept waiting for something to happen.  To our surprise, a chest appeared.  Hello, Free Loot 3!

I reposted the picture above because I somehow failed to press my screenshot button during the group pose.  Back in May I urged the devs to find a way to reuse Edwin.  Little did I know, the anniversary event actually recycled this model from the Cages of Testing event.

Despite the my failure to acquire the group shot, I did get the loot pictures.

Grats, Polleiden!

Grats, Ganlaen!

Grats, Bono!

Grats, Hador!

Grats, Treenex!

We then took a poke at Morell Thule.  We got past phase 1, and then we had issues with phase 2.  Because of that failure we lose another free night.  Hopefully we’ll finish this expansion tomorrow so we don’t lose yet another free night this week…

Recurring Nightmare

After our successes yesterday, we started our second day in Sanctum Somnium full of optimism.  5 hours later we were tired and cranky and at each others throats.  We’d figured out all the mechanics of the puzzles and their adds and had wiped to the final boss a couple times.  But we were down to our last try and were quite sick of looking at each other and flashing orbs and pressure plates and puzzles and swarms of adds that resembled multi-colored blobs of crap.  I’m sure the puzzlers will be seeing colorful orbs and plates in their nightmares, which perhaps explains why this event is called “Elements of a Dream”.  However, in the end our perseverance paid off and we defeated the event.

I just wish we had a few more rogue corpses in this photo.

Grats, Feeldapain!

Grats, Bono!

Grats, Nelson!

Grats, Rika!

Grats, Karlauk and Hador!

Our victory today has earned us another go at Sanctum Somnium tomorrow, which is the best reason to lose a free night.  We’ll get a look at event 6 and perhaps more.  Stay tuned…

A Long Wait

We could have entered Sanctum Somnium soon after our first Miragul and Morell’s Castle kills, but we prefer to get as many of our raiders flagged as possible before entering the final zone of an expansion.  Since we have many people to flag, we planned to enter Sanctum Somnium for the first time about a month to the day following our first Morell’s Castle win.  Some of us were so excited we didn’t sleep all night.  We got through phase 1 of Taking the Tower with a bit of chaos but little difficulty.  We overcame the gravity effect in phase 2 but had some trouble with the viral stage.  That turned out to be temporary as we took the tower on our second attempt.

Our first loot included a BP.

Grats, Sheex!

Grats, Delphias!

Grats, Kysumu!

Grats, Hador!

Grats, Treenex!

Then it was on to event 2 which takes place in one of the most annoying rooms ever.  We had a little trouble with this, but did end up beating The Essence of Dreams on our second attempt.

Grats, Sylvanea!

Grats, Hador!

Grats, Khabok!

Grats, Klavyn!

Grats, Koshling!

After that win we moved on to the third event, Under the Sea, which will henceforth be known as Free Loot 1.  We beat this on our first attempt.

No. I don't know what this shark is doing to Hador.

Grats, Damious!

Grats, Desirae!

Grats, Junior!

Grats, Karlauk!

Grats, Peyten!

Though it was late after that, we wanted to poke around at event 4.  However, as soon as we got to the Islands of Sand, we got the 15 minutes notification, so we had to get a new expedition and run back.  That took almost as long as it took to defeat (on our first attempt) event 4, which will henceforth be known as Free Loot 2.

Grats, Monoh!

Grats, Rika!

Grats, Cleavem!

Grats, Leekara and Dervanx!

We decided to end our day there after about 6 1/2 hours of raiding and 4 out of the 7 events in Sanctum Somnium defeated.  We’re looking forward to attempting event 5 and hopefully more tomorrow.  We don’t expect to find any more Free Loot, but you never know…

Speedbump

After beating Miragul yesterday, we wasted no time trying Morell’s Castle since it would more than double our weekly Sanctum Key acquisition rate.  We spent 1 attempt learning the mechanics of the first phase, then on our next attempt we got past phase 1 and managed to hold on to beat phase 2 on that same attempt.  Although the event wasn’t too difficult, we were pleased with winning on our first night since we ran into unexpected gimp issues and could not get a full force into the zone.

Grats, Agarwaen!

Grats, Jolakaz!

Grats, Polleiden!

Grats, Kudladar!

Grats, Servantes!

The win leaves us with a few weeks of key farming and flagging before we can enter the final raid zone in House of Thule.

Hell Freezes Over?

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the world was made right again…

This is, incidentally, a good way for pet classes to up their parse numbers.  However, if you’re going to do this, make sure you name your pet after someone with much better dps than Orbus.

What’s Next?

A few weeks of farming keys and flags, then we get to enter Sanctus Somnium and finish the House of Thule expansion.  Hurray!

Orbus the Idiot Savant

We worked on Miragul’s raid for quite a bit last weekend, learning its various parts.  We thought we were getting the hang of it and might actually beat it, when Orbus sensed we were about to fail on our last attempt before we even got started…

It turns out he was right, since we didn’t quite have it down yet.  However, we came back this weekend determined to win.  We made the wise decision of leaving Orbus and his taint of failure behind, and although it took us a bit longer than we expected, we stuck it out and were rewarded with spam.

We were also rewarded with some decent loot.

Grats, Drmiangoth!

Grats, Trieste!

Grats, Sheex!

Grats, Goners and Poisonclawz!

Most importantly, however, we were rewarded with an orgy!

Pinina, the former mangina, supervised it.  Thank goodness, he’s back.

Afterwards, we celebrated with confetti because Delphias says that no event is complete without LOTS OF CONFETTI!  She’s always bothering me for more confetti, so there you go Delph.  I was also asked by Kadilia to make sure I pointed out his presence since he raids about once a month, yet somehow manages to be on for many first time wins — just so he can be seen on the front page updates I think.

Tomorrow we will try complete tier 3 of HoT when we make our first entry into Morell’s Castle.  For now, we’ll end this update with a cautionary tale about the dangers of smoking…

Nothing to Fear

We’d not made any real attempts at Fear until this weekend.  The timing just never seemed right, but we spent Saturday learning some of the mechanics of it and felt like it was an event we could beat soon.  Sunday rolled around and after a few strat tweaking attempts, we did in fact kill Cazic Thule on our second day of attempts.

We got some new loot, too!

Grats, Kysumu!

Grats, Guzzler!

Grats, Renaan!

Grats, Kudladar on the hat and Laerentia on the wrist!

Grats, Vaynelle, Lyhestra, Khabok, and Bono on our first Sanctum Keys!

What’s Next?

More fun awaits as we push towards the final zone in HoT!

PS – Thanks, Draedon for the pictures used in this update.

It’s All In The Timing

After beating Upper House on the first day after the collective, forced EQ-vacation, we somehow didn’t find time to go poking at the other Tier 3 HoT raids until today.  I missed the first 2 hours of working on this event because of a graduation party which allowed me to conveniently join the raid on the second or third attempt after some lessons had been learned.  Since I missed the earlier attempts, as far as I’m concerned we beat Al Kabor’s Nightmare on our first attempt!  And as this corpse spam will attest, it was a flawless victory.

I think we had more issues after the raid was beaten than with the event itself,

but we eventually saw some pretty nice loot.

Grats, Sheex, the Library Guardian, on winning the item that was named after you (no joke)!

Grats, Kudladar!

Grats, Mbleak!

Grats, Velnarin!

We’re now halfway to Morell’s Castle, and will begin work on Fear Itself and Miragul’s Nightmare soon.

A Proper Celebration

How do you celebrate such an enjoyable victory?  By chain /guildremoving Orbus of course!

Draedon makes an excellent point at the end.  Apps, you can make an excellent impression on us by coming from an appropriately named portal guild…

or having an appropriate surname…

Mission Impossible

For some reason, Magikcati decided to celebrate our victory over Al Kabor by testing herself this week.

I haven’t been online for 2 days, so I’m not sure how its going for her, but when the officer channel routinely receives mistells like this…

I don’t hold out much hope for her.  I’ll keep you all posted on how it turns out!

Please Put The Kids To Bed

Now that the kids are in bed, I will post some PG-13+ rated screenshots submitted to me by some guildies featuring a fairly clueless Orbus.

First, from Vaynelle, Orbus has trouble comprehending a joke, then tells his fellow officers way more than they want to know about his wife.

Next, from Kadilia, Orbus makes a “quote of the night” but doesn’t even realize it.

Finally, from Vaynelle, a tell from Rika basically classifying all female Orbusfans as crazy. (Rika’s words, not mine, ladies!)

What’s Next?

More cluelessness from Orbus and hopefully more HoT raids down.

PS – Thanks to Vaynelle and Kadilia for some of the screenshots used in this update.

Unavoidable Delay

We were kept away from trying Upper House by Sony’s “open-door” security policy.  We spent our 2 week break finding other obsessions, but once they got the servers back up 2 weeks later, our #1 priority was acquiring the free loot that was rightfully ours.  And we did so without breaking a sweat (other than the classic Ganarak pull of impatience – he told us to spend the break learning to pull but didn’t take his own advice).

Free loot is good!

Grats, Bryeden!

Grats, Desirae!

Grats, Florencee and Dervanx!

What’s Next?

More Tier 3 and more farming.

Casuals Now Welcome

We have made a major change to our membership structure and are now accepting Casual applicants.  If you are friends or family of current members but don’t like to raid or if you enjoy the group game but not the raid game and would like to join a larger guild, then please click here for more details.

Recycled Boss

Because its apparently easier to recycle bosses from old raid events than to come up with entirely new content (yah, yah, I know the “lore” required it in this case), we found ourselves face to face with Terris Thule again.  We made a low-number, learning attempt at this event a few weeks ago, then recently made another more serious attempt where we got to the  Terris Thule phase.  We really wanted to take her down because she is quite the diva goddess, and at Undivided Faith we already have enough divas to deal with…

This is why you should never entrust Orbus with your login information.

So we went in today with a good idea of what we needed to do to win.  We had a little hiccup on our first attempt of the day, but did some tweaking and got her dead on our second attempt.

She was not stingy with the loots.

Grats, me.

Grats, Delphias! (and happy birthday!)

Grats, Kysumu and Ganarak!

Grats, Gholatron!

Grats, Orbus! (the perfect gift for the toon that loots everything)

That marks another House of Thule tier completely cleared, and opens up Tier 3 to us.  We were debating whether or not to move on and acquire the free loot that is the Upper House raid, but in the end we decided to wait until tomorrow to enter that zone.  After all, what can happen in 24 hours?  It’s not like the EQ servers are going to go down for an extended period of time.  That would be about as likely as Osama bin Laden finally being found and brought to justice.

Charlie Sheen Plays a Bard in EQ

This is a little known fact.  Its not that surprising that he’d play a bard since Charlie and bards have much in common.  Bards are showmen.  None of us are really sure what bards do exactly, but we know we like having them in our groups – just like Charlie.  The one thing that may surprise you is that Charlie plays a bard in Undivided Faith named Symphoniko and pretends to be from eastern Europe.  Study Charlie Sheen’s real life rants, and then compare them to Symphoniko’s rants and tell me they aren’t the same person…

He even causes other bards to mistell.

No doubt that was intended for the bard channel in response to something Symph said.

Good Timing

Sometimes getting the good screenshots for these updates is just a matter of timing.  Being on when chat gets funny or having my minions on when chat gets funny.  Here’s a perfect example of opportunity nearly missed.

Recycle This!

Since the devs seem to enjoy recycling mobs in the name of “lore”, I beg you to please find a way to reuse Edwin in a future raid.

Greatest.

Mob.

Ever.

Seeing him emerge from behind the Southeast Trader Building instantly brought back fond childhood memories of a classic movie.

What’s Next?

Tier 3 HoT and beyond, and soon a farewell to Convorteum.

We're not the only ones doing cartwheels at the thought of being done with Underfoot soon.

Major Changes Ahead

We will soon be announcing some major changes to our recruiting.  I can’t go into the details of it right now, but if you really enjoy Everquest but aren’t a huge fan of raiding or have friends or family who fall into that category, then you will want to stay tuned.

PS – Thanks to Orbus for providing one of the pictures used in this update.

PPS – Thanks to SOE for getting hacked and giving me the time to produce an extra large update.

Book Burning

Librarian is a strange little event.  You have to destroy books and the characters from books.  Makes you think the devs didn’t really enjoy reading fairy tales in grade school… or maybe they enjoyed them too much.  In any event, it took us a little while to figure out what to do, but once we did (and when Orbus and I took away our bad mojo), we finally beat it.

Grats, Treenex!

Grats, Symphoniko!

Grats, Vaynelle!

We screwed around with this event a couple times before finally putting it all together and beating it.

Grats, Sheex and Gholatron!

Grats, Gube!

Grats, Junior!

Grats, Rennek!

Sorry for the delay.  At least I got the update completed before our next win…  ok.  Not quite…

The Roots of Evil

We had poked at this once before, but apparently we beat it today on our first attempt of the day and in ‘hard mode’ no less.

Our first Tier 2 loot.

Grats, Cursebreaker!

Grats, Validek!

Grats, Kysumu!

Grats, Bono!

Grats, Cleavem!

Grats, Solistarion!

Grats, Lyhestra and Poofiedog on our first 2 T3 keys!

What’s Next?

More farming and more learning of the other T2 raids.

P.S.  Thanks to Draedon for the pictures used in this update.

Another Tier Cleared

We beat Ritual of Terror this Sunday for the first time, completing Tier 1 HoT and opening up Tier 2.

Grats, Nightemare!

Grats, Junior!

Grats, Purky!

Grats, Magikcati!

Grats, Draedon!

We became the 18th raid force serverwide to defeat this raid.  Tier 2 next!

A Fitting End

After being disappointed with how easy the final fights have been for the last few expansions, we were wondering how difficult The First Creation was going to be and hoping it would be at least somewhat challenging.  Of course, we weren’t holding out much hope, given his appearance…

I mean he looks like he was separated at birth from this guy…

And the way he gimps up the ramps of Convorteum makes you think he’s going up to check on the status of his master’s lightning rod.  Fortunately, when you finally meet him in the final event he arms himself and looks a bit more menacing…

We were pleased to discover that the event is pretty challenging to learn.  We spent most of the afternoon throwing ourselves at it, making more and more progress, until we finally defeated him.  It was a pretty satisfying win, and I’d have pictures of us dancing on his corpse in celebration, but the corpse bugged and poofed right away.  We danced anyways after the spam was finished.  (Congratulations to Vaynelle for getting the Head to complete her Prayer Shawl 2.0!)

Grats, Polleiden!

Grats, Desirae!

Grats, Bryeden!

Grats, Swami!

We are the 18th raid force serverwide to complete the Underfoot expansion.   There were some rough patches getting  here and times we felt like we’d be farming the same 6 events for eternity, but I’m proud of the way we stuck together and pushed each other forward.  We really have a lot of unselfish people here willing to play bots or alts instead of mains or sit out for someone else as raid needs dictate.  It’s that selfless spirit that really makes us strong.  This win was a great way for Undivided Faith and our raid partners at The Kindred and Legends of Mystic Heroes to kick off 2011.  We’ll put Convorteum on farm and turn our attention to House of Thule soon.

Taking Out The Trash

Event 6 in Convorteum is yet another raid event involving a group of women conspiring to make your life miserable.  Anyone else think the devs have issues with women?  This one was a little bit tricky until we found the underlying metaphor for this event.  The Magus Sisters are really just 4 hookers trying to eke out a living on the mean streets of Convorteum.  They each have their own territory, which they will not stray from.  They spread a horrible disease (of course).  And, they are all about maximizing their earnings, so if you try to spend too much time with one of them, they’ll cut you off… permanently.  Once you understand them though, its not hard to beat them at their own game and make the streets of Convorteum safe for children and those offended by immorality (and recycled raid events).  And we did.

Grats, Bono and Renaan!

Grats, Zarax!

Grats, Wumorf!

20th serverwide to beat this event makes us happy campers.  First Creation next…

Sheex’s Secret?

Sheex is one of our elite SK team.  He is infatuated with anything Iksar.  He’s capable of running in circles like nobody’s business.  He takes death after death with only minimal  some  a ton of  the expected amount of complaining.  How does he do it?  What’s the secret of his success?  Why the answer is found right here at his very own website…

Epic Spam

I leave you with some epic spam.  No, not this type, but rather the EQ variety in the “Age of Achievements”.  This spam from our second Hall of Records win this week took a couple minutes to scroll by and made more than one person nearly LD.

That’s It?

We took an “exploratory first look” at The Hall of Records event tonight.  We did many things wrong.  I triggered the event early before clearing trash.  We spent the first third of the event camped in an area where adds spawned on top of us.  And we had a couple of near wipes.  But somehow at the end of it all, we beat the event on our first try with only 48 in the raid.

Grats, Mbleak!

Grats, Renaan!

Grats, Qberskies!

Grats, Nelson!

What’s Next?

We’re coming for you, First Creation.  Won’t be long now…

Hot Mess

The Keymaster event was pretty easy.  It was that age-old story - Raid meets girl.  Raid beats girl to a pulp.  Girl gets pissy and decides to go for a swim in lava.  Girl gets eaten by large greken.  Raid kills greken.  We beat it on our third attempt and with 39 toons no less.  This zone seems somewhat gimpy, but we’re happy to accept easy loot at this point since we paid our dues in T7.

Grats, Rennek!

Grats, Hador!

Grats, Desirae!

Grats, Renaan!

More Convorteum to come!  Happy Holidays everyone!

From what I understand we ran it a few times, figured it out, and beat it.

Grats, Cleavem!

Grats, Mercx!

Grats, Renaan!

Grats, Torwren!

More Convorteum firsts to come!

Thanks, Hador for the screenshots used in this update.

Free Loot

I suppose that SoE wanted to make amends for making guilds push through the Tier 7 raids, particularly the last two in Brell’s Temple.  However, even we weren’t prepared for the ease with which we’d blow through the first encounter in Convorteum.  The Gatekeeper… I guess The First Creation was working on a shoestring budget, because this guy is the worst gatekeeper ever.  I don’t think he could have stopped Orbus from passsing through.  He was so easy that we got both “achievements” on our very first try.  It sure did make for some fun spam though.

We got 10 free AA from SoE, and we got some nice loot out of it, too.  Split raids incoming!

Grats, Polleiden and Mercx!

Grats, Nighn!

Grats, Dukur!

With the Gatekeeper dispatched, we moved on to The Stone Warden.  We took one shot at learning it and trying to do an achievement, but it was getting late, so on our second try we just did it the ‘easy’ way and got it down.

Grats, Zebrn and Torwren!

Grats, Klavyn!

Grats, Desirae!

More Convo to follow!!!

A Sit Down With a God

After finally making Brell a few items, we next had to have an Audience with him.  Unfortunately, I missed it.  Meeting up with a god can be quite a stressful event, and Hador wanted me to point out that Khabok became so nervous that he had an “accident”.

Apparently we met with him most of the weekend, before we finally convinced him to let us have his loot and give us the final flags for Convorteum.

Congratulations to those who won loot and shall remain nameless.  And congratulations to us for becoming the 21st raid force serverwide to flag for Convorteum.

What’s Next?

Well, Convorteum of course!

PS – Thanks to Hador for supplying the pictures for this update.

A Must Win

Brell is a greedy punk.  He wants you to create him 6 items while beating down an annoying elemental mob.  The Trial of Creation is widely regarded as arguably the most difficult one in Underfoot.  We’ve had the tradeskill side of Creation down for a few weeks now and had been focusing our attention on the elemental side.  We didn’t quite have that side down but got close enough Sunday that we decided to try it with the raid split to get a more realistic feel for the requirements.  Of course, the first time we tried it with the raid split, we beat the elemental side, but even as some people were starting to rejoice, I had to admit that I had Orbus’d things up and had not completed the tradeskill side in time.  We thought it would be a mere formality to repeat the success with me combining a little faster, but we couldn’t replicate the win on the elemental side for the rest of the day due to the myriad little ways that this raid can go south quickly.  Therefore, the stench of Orbus (aka failure) had to stay with me until we could try again.

And so it was on Tuesday that we warmed up with Tick Tock and then came back to Brell’s Temple determined to win.  I had the motivation of redeeming myself, but more importantly, the raid had the motivation of winning so that I’d have a reason to update and post Orbus’ latest gem.

We wiped our first try, but on our second we satisfied Brell’s greedy demands and took down the elemental, winning the event for the first (and likely last) time and becoming the 22nd raid force serverwide to do so.  The victory tasted sweet, but was also very anti-climactic due to a decided lack of Achievement spam and emotes letting you know you won.  Nonetheless, we’ll take it.

And we’ll take the loot, too.

Grats, Koshling and Khabok!

Grats, Damious and Nallaa!

What’s Next?

An Audience with that Greedy Brell and hopefully Convorteum soon after.  If we never make another thing for him, it’ll be too soon.

PS – Thanks, Draedon for the Orbus screenshot for this update.

The Bell Tolls

My kids got a little excited when they heard I was on a raid called Tick Tock.  They were hoping it would feature some easy, white trash singing terrible bubblegum pop music.  Well, it was easy all right, but unfortunately for them, Ke$ha was nowhere to be found.  However, high reward for low risk loot was present, which certainly made the raid happy.

Grats, Bono!

Grats, Zarax!

Grats, Klavyn!

Grats on arms, Delphias! Grats on hat, Lyhestra!

Veteran’s Day

Happy Veteran’s Day to all our armed servicemen and women, many of whom are members of Undivided Faith and allied guilds.  Thanks for all you do for us all year round.

What’s Next?

We’ll be farming Tick Tock and UF raids and making a serious push towards Convorteum.  We should be beating Trial of Creation soon.

Use Your Imagination

We beat Fungal Forest raid Sunday while I was gone.  We’d worked on it a couple hours one afternoon, then apparently came back on Sunday and had a 4% wipe on our first attempt and beat it our second.

No one sent me pictures of the win, so just use your imagination.  I’d imagine it looked something like this…

Ok, maybe it didn’t quite look like that, but Sheex wanted some World Series reference.

What’s Next?

Pushing on to Convorteum as fast as we can.

Better Late Than Never

Thanks to Lyhestra and Draedon, I got the following pics (only a week late!)

Conspiracy Theory

We had been working hard to beat the Lichen Creep raid prior to House of Thule launch.  Although we made excellent progress, we came up just a week or two short.  We knew with the level increase and the two weeks we had spent grinding out levels and AA’s that LC would fall very shortly.  In fact, I knew that we were going to win it Sunday.  I was personally under a time constraint of having to leave the raid at 3 pm.  Since we got started at noon, I felt quite confident I would still be around for our first win since we had a full 3 hours to win and we pretty much fully understood the event from previous tries.  It was hard for me to imagine any sequence of events that would spoil my day.  Here then, are excerpts from my personal diary as the day unfolded.

12:50 pm – Raid forms and gathers and is finally ready to fight rather late.  Apparently, no one realizes or cares that I’m on a tight timetable.  Still things are looking good.  I’m feeling good.  Even Orbus seems slightly less annoying than usual.

1:01 pm – I feel my first pangs of unease as Hador announces that for some strange reason he will not be tanking the Monarch.  Odd, but still, such a small change won’t make or break us right?

1:18 pm – Monarch group wipes, soon followed by the rest of the raid.  First hate tells of the day fired off in Hador’s general vicinity.  With over 1.5 hours before I have to leave, I’m still feeling confident.  Orbus, however, has returned to normal annoyance level.

1:30 pm – The script seems to run extra long before finally resetting so that the CR can begin.

1:50 pm – Attempt 2 begins and the raid is a bit stronger as some more folks have logged on, so we’re running with far fewer bots.

1:52 pm – Hador announces that he will tank Monarch this round.  I manage a smile.

2:07 pm – Monarch goes down easily this time and we finish the first part of the event flawlessly.  Now we’ll see how we do against the Taskmaster.

2:10 pm – Taskmaster live…  The adrenaline starts to flow.

2:11 pm – Taskmaster 75…  Things seem to be under control…

2:12 pm – Taskmaster 50…  There is a hiccup with a tank swap or something and he gets loose momentarily, but all seems to be going well.

2:13 pm – Taskmaster 25…  Things are looking very good, but then somehow he gets loose and carnage ensues…  I start feeling a little sick to my stomach.

2:14 pm – Taskmaster 5, but over half the raid is dead and I think all the tanks are down.  Still, we have to have enough left to get him down 5% right?  Not many left standing to answer my question…

2:14.30 pm – Taskmaster 2…  so… damn… close…  I step in to provide some monk-style speed bumpery and hope we can squeeze out a bit more damage.  I get up close and personal with Taskmaster and he looks… exactly… like… Orbus…

2:15 pm – I’m slain by Taskmaster and watch the rest of the events unfold in /rs in hover mode.  Taskmaster 1% is announced in /rs and I have a fleeting hope that we might be able to somehow zerg out the last 1%.

2:16 pm – Total wipe.  At 0%.  I feel sick to my stomach.  My kids running around my room start to look like Orbus.

2:17 pm – The event resets and I do some mental math…  If we can just get going again by about 2:35 or so, I should be able to stay on for the first win.  I start to feel good about again and push for a speedy CR.  Somewhere in my daze I see something in /rs about the instance bugging with double spawns of all the named…

2:30 pm – Somehow, we actually CR in record time and are about ready to go again.  I’ll… just… make… it…  I estimate I should be able to be on for the win and be able to enjoy the moment for all of 10 seconds before I’ll have to /q and run out the door.  Still, I’ll take it!

2:31 pm – The instance is indeed bugged and we have to drop it to get a new one.  No big deal, right?  I sense gremlins at work.  Or maybe thats just Orbus.  I tell my potential replacement to be ready to zone in quickly in case for some reason I run out of time.  Still, I don’t really believe its going to come to that.

2:32 pm – We zone into the new instance and begin clearing the trash.  The LIGHT BLUE – conning trash.

2:33 pm – /rs Cleavem down.  What the hell?  How do we lose a tank to light blue trash?  No biggie though.  I figure we can res him up and let him med through the first parts.  Should still be able to start in time for me to stay for the first win.

2:34.00 pm – /rs Hador down.  WHAT?…

2:35.01 pm – THE…

2:35.02 pm – F*CK?!?…

2:35.03 pm – How the hell did we lose 2 tanks to light blue trash in under 2 minutes?  The mind reels.

2:35.10 pm – Reality begins to set in.  I’m not going to make it.  I’m going to miss our first win.  How? What?

2:35.15 pm – Second batch of hate tells to Hador fired off.  Most involve asking how someone with over 15k AAs takes damage from light blue mobs let alone dies to them.  He looks like Orbus at the moment.

2:36 pm – Hador explains how he died to LIGHT BLUE TRASH MOBS.  A bard is blamed.  Figures…

2:37 pm – I summon my replacement, gate, and leave the raid disgusted and still shaking my head as to how this could have all happened.

6:47 pm – I get back home and open my email to find these pictures sent by Draedon (a bard).  Very suspicious…

Grats, Symphoniko! (a bard... hrm...)

Grats, Rime!

Grats, Florencee!

Grats, Koshling!

Despite missing it, I’m still very proud of us.  We became only the 14th raid force serverwide to beat this event.  I’m sure there will be more firsts wins to come.  I’ll try not miss them.

PS – Thanks to Draedon for the images for this update.

Unexpected Server First

Since our merge with Maelin brought 3 of the top 10 guilds serverwide to Drinal, we didn’t really expect to have any more server firsts.  However, since SoE saw fit to have a pre-release event for HoT with random raid mobs dropping House of Thule loot, we used our strong Euro presence to be the first to camp the zone in numbers and kill the raid mob we spawned.  We camped it for over 6 hours and only spawned 2 raid mobs, but it was enough to get us the first 2 HoT raid loots on Drinal.  Granted this stuff is likely “app gear” for the “big boys”, but we’ll take the first nonetheless.

Grats, Kysumu!

Grats, Soulis!

Yes,  1 raid drop per raid mob at one mob spawned every 3-4 hours is a pretty tedious way to farm loot, but it was a fun diversion on a free night.

What’s Next?

Continuing to farm Deconstruction and T6 while making a push to get LC down before next Tuesday.  It’s not looking good, but stranger things have happened.

Victory Assured

We hadn’t been working on our first Tier 7 event, Brell’s Trial of Deconstruction, for very long before we realized it was reasonably straightforward.  We spent a couple hours learning one side of it and a couple hours learning the other side.  We were pretty sure we’d be able to beat it on our next try, but when Friday came around, we couldn’t quite pull it off.   Then, on Saturday we warmed up with Unburrowing and Hive Guardians when we got our sign that we would be beating the event today…

So we went to Brell’s Temple full of optimism.  Our first try of the day was a failure with us running out of time with the last mob at 75%.  We expected a win to come next.  Unfortunately, some bad luck and sloppy play lead to a series of wipes, each uglier than the last.  Frustration was running high and tempers were running short.  Hador finally explained what was going wrong on the Combat side.  And even though we were well past our normal raid ending time and were all pretty sick of looking at each other, we decided to buckle down for one final try for the day, and we finally came away with a victory with over 2 minutes to spare.

Becoming the 20th raid force serverwide to defeat this event netted us some nice loot.  (The winners thank you for logging off, Orbus!)

Grats, Sheex!

Grats, Polleiden!

Grats, Koshling!

Grats, Sylvanea!

What’s Next?

We’ll keep farming UF Tier 6 and this T7 event, and we’ll be trying like hell to beat another T7 event before the next expansion hits.  (We’ll be sure to leave Orbus at home)