Undivided Faith

Details soon

Worth the Wait

We’d taken a couple stabs at Guardian of the Gate prior to the April patch.  We wiped to it quickly enough after 2 or 3 attempts, that we knew it was going to take many frustrating weeks or months for us to get it down.  Since anniversary content had arrived and we heard rumors of a coming nerf, we decided to ignore the raid and focus on farming all our other targets including Vulak until the event got nerfed.

Well the nerf went live on April 17, and we returned to the Valley of King Xorbb on April 20.  We spent all afternoon working on the first event, getting closer and closer to victory.  However, it wasn’t until Hador left the raid that we were able to finally defeat it on our final attempt of the day.

Grats, Renaan on pre-auged loot!

Grats, Desirae on pre-auged loot!

Fire! Fire!

The next day we attempted the second Xorbb raid for the first time, Yymp the Infernal.  We weren’t sure what to expect, but it turned out to be very easy and we 1-shotted it with little effort.  This event featured fire…  and more fire… so… much… fire…

Grats, Israi! (bot loot on a first kill of a Tier 2 raid – awesome itemization devs!)

Grats, Samanthana!

The Return of the King

After 1-shotting Yymp, we spent the rest of the afternoon working on the final raid in the Valley of King Xorbb, the King himself.  We made great progress and got him to 22% on our last try of the day, but we ran out of time to beat it on Sunday.  We returned Monday and beat King Xorbb on our first try of the evening.  It was a really satisfying win on a nicely challenging event with a lot of moving parts requiring solid teamwork.

Grats, Cariandra!

Grats, Draedon!

We were proud to be the 26th raid force serverwide to beat this event.

What’s Next?

Farming and attempts at Chelsith Reborn raid.

A Second “First Win”

We’d been working on the Chapterhouse raid for a couple of weeks and were getting closer and closer to victory.  This raid has a lot of moving parts, but we felt like we had optimized most of them.  Our Friday night ended with us beating Marnek, but due to a tactical error, we wiped to the remaining adds and didn’t complete the event.  Painful and embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as getting arrested for fighting over soy sauce.  In any event, we went into Saturday very confident, and we put together a nearly flawless run for our second defeat of Marnek and first official event win.

Our complete domination of the event led to excessive achievement spam.

We got some new loot including our third Burden of Truth.

Grats, Valanx!

Grats, Bono! Canadia is indeed a foreign land.

Grats, Gynx! (And Sheex and Polleiden before her.)

We’re proud to be 23rd serverwide to defeat this event, and now the final RoF T2 raid zone, Valley of King Xorbb is open to us.

What’s Next?

More farming of RoF T1 and T2 as we begin our exploration of the Valley of King Xorbb.

Undivided Faith Forums

Well-Timed Vacation

Sheex had to take a family vacation this weekend and was worried we’d beat Chapterhouse or Vulak for the first time without him.  His fears were well founded.  Despite texting his friends during raids to induce a wipe, we made a couple attempts at Vulak and beat him Sunday.  We became the second raid force on Drinal to beat him and the 14th serverwide.  Sheex missed the group shot.

Sheex missed the spam.

Sheex missed the loot.

Grats, Zeemus!

Grats, Razmi!

Grats, Nelson!

Sheex did get to spend the weekend in Tulsa!

What’s Next?

With Sheex back, we’ll continue our farming of RoF and working on Chapterhouse.

Undivided Faith Forums

Another Zone Completed

We worked on the Zalikor raid for a couple weeks before getting it down.  It wasn’t as hard as we’d expected, and now its bugged (thanks, SOE!).  Not much to say about this raid.  There’s a lot of annoying running around, but eventually Zalikor dies.

I missed the spam, but got the loot this time.

Grats, Lorcer!

Grats, Nelson!

Grats, Laerentia!

 What’s Next?

We work on Chapterhouse and flag up for Valley.  We’ll also work on Vulak to finish off ToV.

Four Raid Wins

I took a weeklong vacation and missed both triumph and tragedy.  First the triumph.  We had been working on Zeixshi-Kar’s Shard for a week or two when I left, and we defeated it the first Saturday I was gone, January 19.

This win completed Tier 1 RoF for us.  Third on Drinal and 27th serverwide.  We followed that up by defeating Grelleth the following day.

The following Saturday we defeated Evantil for the first time.

And the day after that, we defeated the first raid in The Breeding Grounds - Velishan’s Revenge.

2 weekends, 4 raids defeated for the first time, and 4 events added to farm status.

A Funeral

Not everything that happened while I was gone was enjoyable, however.  During the week, we also found out that Aaniu (perhaps known to some as Klone) and his wife Wearin were involved in an automobile accident.  Wearin sustained significant injuries, but unfortunately, Aaniu was killed instantly.  Although they were relatively new members of Undivided Faith, they were the kind of people who fit in right away and were well liked and respected.  We took the news very hard and many of us dyed our armor dark in mourning.  A memorial for Aaniu was created in the yard outside our guild hall.  I’m sure Aaniu and Wearin had many friends outside of Undivided Faith.  Feel free to stop by the memorial to pay your respects and remember him fondly.

Undivided Faith Forums

It took a couple weeks for us to beat Kael.  I missed it but Draedon was kind enough to provide a group shot.  You’ll just have to imagine the spam and loot again.

It took a couple pokes at Crystal Caverns before we could defeat Danela.  Far shorter time than it took to complete this update.  We also defeated Zlexak in ToV.  Here’s the group shot from the CC win.  You’ll just have to imagine the spam and loot.

Overdue

I’ll be brief since this is long overdue.  We took a couple pokes at this event before beating it.  It’s on farm now.  Spam was seen and loot was awarded, but I’ll just stick to the group shot.

Later, we went to the revamped Temple of Veeshan, and gave it a try.  Aaryonar gave us brief trouble before falling.  We ripped through the rest of ToV, too.  Killing 9 other dragons, sparing only Zlexak, Lord Kreizenn, and Vulak.  We were pleased to find so much free loot to be had.  Here’s the shot of Aary’s corpse.   I took a bunch of other shots, too, but just imagine this picture with the other dragon name’s over the corpse.

No Pix!

So we beat Sepulcher 3 while I was gone, but no one sent me any pix of that win (thanks, Drae!).  You’ll just have to imagine our joy at finally beating this event.  Granted it was the newly nerfed form, but we’ll take it!

Kill Your Friends

We then moved on to Sepulcher 4.  It’s the type of event where random folks not paying attention can literally blow you up.  Despite the best efforts of those more interested in the football game than following raid emotes, we beat it.

Draedon did send me a picture of this win.  Thanks!  He also sent me some pix of the loot but didn’t share with me who won, so grats, winners!

That just leaves us with 1 final event to finish VoA.  We were hoping to beat it by RoF launch, but we just ran out of time, so now it’ll have to wait.

The Time Has Come

Why finish the update now – over a month after the fact?  Well, Zarax threatened to sue me and report me to Facebook, and since I’m easily influenced by insane, idle threats, I found the time to finish this.

After a couple weeks of work, we finally solved Windsong…

and saw our last spam for awhile…

Grats, Hador!

Grats, Zeemus! (you ahole)

Grats, Kudladar!

The Return of Free Loot

Then it was onwards to Sepulcher.  There were mobs to balance, DT’s to cure, and portals to traverse, but we beat the first event on our second or third attempt.

Grats, Leekara!

Yay me!

Grats, Drmiangoth!

Then it was on to event 2 which we beat on our second try.

Grats, Delphias!

Grats, Ironbrow!

Grats, Hador!

Then, we ran into the next Chris Black – designed brick wall, Sepulcher event 3.  We are working to overcome this now.

Temporary Insanity

Sheex is chief among the Anti-Orbus’.  However, there was a brief time when he was an Orbusfan.

This was disturbing and lasted way too long, but fortunately, eventually the natural order of things was restored.

What’s Next?

We continue working on Sepulcher 3 in our effort to complete Veil of Alaris before the Rain of Fear comes.  We curse dev Chris Black regularly while waiting for the incoming patch which should allow us to beat the event easily.

PS – If I’m not around for the win this weekend, does that mean I won’t have to do the next update?

Well Designed?

If you were going to design a raid to maximally frustrate a raid force like ours,  you couldn’t get much closer to perfection than Unearthing Alra.

Raid takes place in a resource-intensive zone leading to an extremely high rate of link deaths on zoning into both the static and instanced zone?  Check.

Said zone also has an unusually high rate of spontaneous link deaths?  Check.

Raid mechanics require splitting the raid into not 2, not 3, but 4 different groups, making it nearly impossible to hide your weaker links and chronic afk-rs?  Check.

Raid mechanics include auras that make certain classes virtually required for victory?  Check.

Raid design is completely inflexible such that if certain aspects of the raid are not handled exactly as dev intended, there are punitive and raid-wiping consequences?  Check.

Raid includes personal emotes that if not followed result in a very high likelihood of raid failure?  Check.

Raid “scoring” sometimes appears arbitrary despite multiple changes made to make the raid more understandable?  Check.

Raid can be lost purely due to bad timing or luck if the wrong person gets an emote at the wrong time even if they follow the emote successfully?  Check.

Raid requires all 4 sides to score well to progress to the boss (and two sides to score particularly well for a realistic shot at winning) thus leading to magnified frustration when a different side fails each attempt for the variety of reasons listed above?  Check.

Raid boss portion includes a mechanic that requires semi-coordinated raid movement during a time of high lag in an already laggy, resource-intensive zone?  Check.

Aside from all that, this raid was right up our alley!  I will say that the only saving grace is that it’s a short raid, so you can get many attempts in each day.  Also, by its nature, you may not necessarily die each and every time the raid fails.

We’d been trying this raid for a few weeks and making some slow, but steady progress.  2 weeks ago we were encouraged when we got our first score low enough to spawn the boss and took him to 9% on our first try.  We really thought we would win on our next attempt the following week.  However, due to the many factors listed above, the next week we were only able to spawn the boss on our final attempt of the weekend, and unfortunately, we could only get the boss to 7% before wiping.  This weekend started with a great deal of optimism, but lack of appropriate classes led to failure on Saturday.  We were having our usual difficulties on Sunday as well until we finally managed to put everything together on one magical run and saw this…

That's right! 3 perfect scores and a 3!

I’m not going to lie.  The final fight was a little closer than we would have liked considering we scored so well on the trials, but the bottom line is we became the 24th raid force server-wide to defeat this raid.  (Orbus’ corpse in the foreground makes this group shot so much more enjoyable.)

And we got some nice loot.

Grats, Nelson!

Grats, Karlauk!

Grats, Desirae!

And, of course, we got some spam with that win.

Accompanying the spam, you can see the range of emotions that comes from finally defeating an event you’ve been working on for weeks.  You see the pure joy of victory, the cursing from the release of pent up frustration, the pride in a job well done, and below, from Monoh, you see the dawning of insanity…

Yes, Monoh, Pillars is now on “FARM MODE” - just like the Trial of Creation from Underfoot, Ritual of Terror and The Torches of Truth from House of Thule, and Time and Tides from Veil of Alaris were put on farm mode previously.  It’s a special farm.  A farm so special that it won’t begin for 10 years.  Mark your calendar, Monoh.  2022 we will begin living your dream.  I hope you’re still playing this crazy game.  And I really hope Chris Black is still designing raids for it.

And You Thought Berserkers Were Just DPS Whores

Apparently, they are as careless with their channels as they are with their women.

What’s Next?

On our march towards the end of Veil of Alaris, we move on to Windsong and Sepulcher where hopefully the raids will be a bit easier until we reach the next Chris Black special.

Memorial Day Weekend Fun

Some folks spent their Memorial Day weekends partying or barbecuing.  We, however, spent our Saturday and Sunday on our second and third days in City of Bronze learning The Order of Three raid.  Even though one of our tanks decided he’d rather spend the entire time tanning (he’s from New Jersey after all), we managed to get our first win on our third attempt Sunday.

This win got us our first Bronze Fiats and our first VoA T4 loot.

Grats, Kysumu!

Grats, Frostik!

Grats, Karlauk!

Grats, Sheex!

Sheex was actually hoping for a new purse, but he had to settle for the sleeves to compliment his current purse instead.

We were the 24th raid force serverwide to beat this raid, which is not too shabby considering that flagging 100 odd toons was and continues to be a long, painful process.

What’s Next?

We’ll turn our attention to Pillars of Alra soon while continuing to farm what little content there is to farm in the lower tiers of VoA.

For Now…

Apparently it is now a badge of honor to hack an unsecured website with monthly page views under 1000, so congratulations to the nameless hacker on his impressive achievement.  We thought we’d take this opportunity to verify that we are in fact still actively plowing through the content of Veil of Alaris.  We have completed Tier 3 and are about to start exploring Tier 4.  In preparation for this, we’ve opened up recruiting to a few more classes.  Please go here to learn more about us and what classes we are accepting.  Who knows, you just might get lucky…

Patch Relief

We’d been working on Rubak Oseka off and on for a few weeks with pretty limited success.  We felt like we knew what we had to do.  We just couldn’t stay alive long enough to do it.  We weren’t sure the changes that were put in with the latest patch were going to make that big a difference for us since we were only able to kill 1 high priest before wiping horribly pre-patch.  However, we went from that to winning easily on our third attempt of the day, earning us our first spamwall in quite some time.

Grats Symphoniko and Draedon!

Grats, Klavyn!

Grats, Thanasis!

Grats, Monoh!

What’s Next?

We’ll keep farming ToFS and VoA T2 and T3, and soon we’ll begin working on some of the T4 events.  Hopefully, we’ll avoid further episodes of jihad on our website in the meantime…

An Old Friend

SoE patched the 13th Anniversary raid this morning, and as promised, we went into the Tower of Frozen Shadow to finish what we started last Saturday.  We beat our old friends on the first 3 floors then went up and took out an unbugged Valdoon, then Venril Sathir and Dracoliche, and finally we arrived at the top floor to find an old friend who seems to be involved in a lot of expansion-ending events.

We dispatched the pair of them to earn some achievement spam and some T4 quality loot as well as an item straight out of Sheex’s dreams.

Grats, Sheex on your EQ dream coming true!

Grats, Nelson!

Grats, Hador!

Most of us enjoyed this raid and revisiting some old friends as well as all the humorous little touches, like this death message.

There was only 1 problem with the final event, and it was summarized best by Nelson.

What’s Next?

We’ll farm this 13th Anniversary raid every 5 days for the next 12 weeks to get our free T4 loot while still working on our progression and farming through the first 3 tiers of VoA.

Lucky 13?

Hard to believe Everquest has turned 13.  Like an unruly teenage child, there are some things we love about it and some things we hate about it, but most of us that are still playing are pretty much stuck with it.  Anniversary time is always nice because there are usually some nice augs to look forward to and a new raid.  This anniversary was no different.  Unfortunately, this raid was locked behind 13 solo/group tasks and missions.  Friday was our normal raid night, so I spent all afternoon pissing my wife off by being glued to EQ slogging through these quests, so I could request the raid for us that night.  I finished all 13 of Sam’s tasks just in time for the raid… or so I thought, until I went to request it, and he offered me a 14th (and initially hidden) mission instead.  We did bang this one out, but not before we ran out of time to do the raid.

We were the first guild on Drinal to enter The Tower of Frozen Shadow raid zone on Saturday.  Well, I don’t actually know this for a fact, but since no other guild on Drinal raids on weekends, I’ll just make the assumption.  Among the wonders awaiting us in Iceclad were the corpses of raids that had come before us, including the corpse of Noklav, with a couple of his comrades snickering over his corpse.  We entered the tower and rescued Ykesha on the first floor.  Then, on the second floor, we came face to face with some “old friends” and a raid mechanic from the distant past.  I’ve been asked not to spoil this for others, so I’ll just say that we spent a good 30 minutes getting everyone up to speed and prepared for the event.  It was well worth it in the end, as we beat the event easily and were rewarded with a lockout and a chest!

The chest contained 2 very nice augs.

Grats, Vaynelle!

Grats, me!

Not sure this aug was worth the hit to home faction since mass player whining has resulted in the decision to make these augs rewards for completion of the entire raid instead of just chest loot, but at least I’ll get to keep it in the divorce.  Oh wait, I almost forgot, I got a bank bag for finishing the tasks as well.

We then moved on up to the third floor and got our “lore” on, and moved quickly up to the fourth floor where we were stopped cold by a bugged Valdoon.  Yes, I know RoI beat this event and the remainder of the raid.  However, we had neither the time nor the desire to work around the bug.  Instead, we’ll look forward to completing the rest of this enjoyable raid after its fixed and after the augs become reward window grants for completion.  Another update when that occurs.

How Good?  Mustang Good!

Resplendent Temple is not the kind of raid that plays to our strengths.  54 people paying attention for the duration of a raid and following emotes is not something we enjoy doing or thrive on.  Nonetheless we took on the challenge and learned this event over the course of the last few weeks.  We kept chipping away at it, and those of us who weren’t out buying a new sports car were rewarded with some spam and loot.  We felt really good about ourselves after beating a raid not suited to our playstyle and makeup.  We felt like we all got our own Ford Mustang convertibles.

Grats, Tayeni!

Grats, Koshling!

Grats, Hador  Balgar!  And here’s a picture of Hador  Balgar with his shiny new weapon.

Grats, Hador on your new mount!

What’s Next?

We’ll be learning Rubak Oseka over the next few weeks while continuing to farm VoA T1-3.

No Spam

It took us awhile to flag enough members to try this, but we got enough to T3 this weekend.  We made our first attempts on Saturday.  We got it to 11% on our last attempt but it was too late for us to try again.  We were pretty confident that we’d beat it today and we did so on our first attempt.  It wasn’t pretty, and I’m pretty sure we’re not approaching this event optimally, but a win is a win and we’ll take it.

Didn’t screenshot any spam this time – I was too busy making sure everyone clicked their damn book!  To make up for it, I’ll link our loot for the first time in VoA.

Grats, Thanasis!

Grats, Treenex!

Grats, Desirae!

Grats, Gynx!

Grats, Tayeni and Peyten!

 What’s Next?

More VoA.  We’ve started working on Resplendent Temple.  Hopefully more updates soon!

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.