Undivided Faith

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…