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…

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…

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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…

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…

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!

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…