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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!