I haven't been playing as much as I used to; maybe three days a week I show
up for raids, raid, then immediately log off. A lot of my "fun" online time
has been spent playing City of Heroes, where my Empathy/Dark Defender is now
up to 38 (out of a maximum of 50 levels).
But I saw the AA's that are coming out with OOW, and I want those. The
problem, though, is that I'm woefully short of AA. It seems almost
impossible that someone who's been playing for four years has less than 200
AA's, but that's my current situation. I just spend a lot of my time doing
non-AA stuff, like quests or tradeskilling or just plain running around
doing nothing.
So I'm missing a lot of really useful AA. My goal today is to get Natural
Durability 3, which will add to my base hitpoint total. Oh, hitpoints, I'm
way behind on that, too.
I log on and say, "LFG". I get an invite to join a group XP-ing in Kod'taz.
I find them without incident. They've been trying to spawn named mobs to
get some AC augments, without luck. Seems the spawn rate of nameds has
dropped significantly in K'T. I wouldn't know.
I get two and a half AA's, then someone notices that Cynosure is up in Qvic.
This is one of the few contested mobs we face with the other uber-guild on
the server. In fact on one occasion we started the Cynosure event and
wiped. The script was still running so we were on our way back to rez,
rebuff, and finish. The rival uber-guild comes in, helpfully rezzes us,
then kills Cynosure while we stand there buffless and manaless. We petition
them for completing a script we had initiated. A GM responds and removes
all the loot they won in that event. We feel deeply satisfied. For some
reason this drives the rival uber-guild into a rage, and for a while they
relentlessly camped each and every mob in Qvic. Eventually they gave up as
they realized that sitting for hours in Qvic was doing them no good as we
raided Ikkiniz or Inktu'ta.
Still, finding Cynosure up is a call to a fast mobilization. My AA quest
gets cut short as we start the raiding day early. We move into Qvic, and I
take a quick shower as everyone mobilizes. When it becomes apparent that
the rival uber-guild isn't going to try and race us here, we start by
clearing the three Mshas, the GoD equivalent of mold-dropping mobs in PoP.
I have two GoD armor pieces - the arms, which add a very nice bonus to
direct heals, and the helm, which is a pure stat upgrade. I had to give up
Faerune, which means I had to activate it in Tribute. Which means I'm
running out of money. Darnit. My Heraldic smithing is no longer the cash
register it used to be. I'll have to investigate some other means of
generating income.
Anyway, we clear the three Mshas no problem; they're much easier to kill
than the equivalent PoP mobs were. Then we move in to Cynosure and take it
down. This is an easy event, which involves killing various mobs that are
trying to heal Cynosure, then leaving the last mob up and killing Cynosure
despite the healing it gets. During the clearing of these mobs, a
140hp/mana earring drops. This is openly rolled on, and I win the high
roll. A minor upgrade from my 130/115 Arbiter of Earth earring.
Well, that was easy. Now on to the main event: Inktu'ta. This is the event
we've been beating our heads against for the past couple of months. It's
the latest roadblock to our progression, so we really do need to work on it.
We clear our way to the zoneline, and just as we arrive the rival uber-guild
swarms in behind us, thanking us for clearing the way as they also head to
Inktu'ta. At least this is an instanced zone, so no need to worry about
racing.
We zone in. I notice right away two good things: we have over 50 people in
the raid, a rarity for us, and that we have ten clerics. I think this bodes
well.
We begin clearing the trash mobs. Oh, these "trash" mobs AE, by the way.
Not for much - 400, 800 hps max - but they AE often. Whenever we raid
Inktu'ta, I memorize my group Complete Heal and my group heal over time
along with my regular heals. I've made it a habit to have my group heal
over time, Ethereal Elixir, running just about constantly.
During the clearing we get the usual assortment of augments to drop. We
roll on these, as always. I always lose these rolls. Except today, when I
win the roll on a 1% Damage over Time shielding augment. Nice; every bit
helps.
Eventually we clear enough for our raid leader to say, "Charge the throne".
This involves running pell-mell through the hallways until we reach a large
room with a throne at one end. Along the way we aggro five or six or twelve
of the AE-ing mobs. This time it's on the low end, and the chanters mez the
mobs that they can. Alas, these mobs are undead and one of the clerics DoTs
one of them, sending one of our chanters into a rage. I didn't even know
they were undead; I'd always been too busy healing to worry about adding my
miniscule DPS to the cause.
We clear all the mobs and get ready. This part has either been relatively
easy or a total wipe. Basically we beat on a mob until it spawns other mobs
that AE for massive amounts of damage as well as various nasty effects. We
chase these mobs about as they randomly spawn in different places around the
room until we kill them, then go back to beating on the main guy. The trick
is not to have too many people die to these 4K AE's. Again, I concentrate
mostly on just keeping my group alive. With ten clerics, we have at least
one cleric per group, so it should be easy. But the last two times we've
done Inktu'ta, we've wiped right here, so it's not a sure thing.
We begin, I heal, and it goes amazingly well. We kill the boss very quickly
and have only two people die - by far our best attempt ever. Perhaps this
bodes well for the rest of the event.
Loot is announced and I ignore it. One of the clerics has to leave, alas.
And suddenly, without my noticing it, I'm in a group with the guild leader
and main assist. This new power the raid leader has to assign groups is a
good thing, but it can be disconcerting at times. =) The guildleader, a
paladin, drops down to the next level and starts fighting a mob down there.
I join him, and eventually so does the rest of the raid.
We clear to the next event, which I personally call Whack-a-Stonemite.
About fifty or sixty billion stonemites need to be cleared. I'm not quite
sure what the object of the event is other than to split up the raid so that
we equally occupy four separate rooms whilst fending off the never-ending
stream of stonemites. It's never been a particularly difficult event so
long as we follow instructions and people don't get lost and wander around
aggroing another billion stonemites.
We win this event and get more loot, and move on to the next event, commonly
referred to as cursecallers but which I personally refer to as "Aren't you
glad clerics have epics?" In theory it's straightforward: there are six
mobs in front of six coffins in a largish room. We have off-tanks engage
each one while the raid goes around killing them one by one. When all six
are dead, you win. Oh, but there's a catch: every couple of minutes
someone will get a tell warning them that death is coming. A mob will spawn
and very slowly start stalking said character. If they reach that person,
they'll deathtouch them. So it's that person's job to run around the
perimeter of the room, while a designated force kills the stalker. Once the
stalker is dead, the person is free to stop running and go back to their
assigned task.
In theory, easy. In practice, people will miss the tell (and the frantic
screaming of their name in guildchat) and not run away. Or they'll run
smack dab into the stalker. Or the designated force can't keep up with the
stalker spawn rate, and while the stalkers start off moving very slowly,
they eventually speed up and *will* catch you eventually. The upshot is
that there will be a lot of corpses strewn about the room. That's where us
clerics come in handy; we click the corpses we see while still trying to
keep our group alive.
Again, I'm hopeful because we have nine clerics, giving us lots of
healing/rezzing power. We begin, and I'm assigned one of the offtanks to
heal. He's barely taking damage - the six mobs don't do much DPS but they
have a ton of hitpoints - so I mostly click corpses. Then it's my turn: I
get a script-generated tell and begin running around the room. I seem to be
running the opposite way of most people, as I keep running into a cleric and
a paladin running the other way. I do several laps, noticing that no one
seems to be killing the mob on me. Eventually it catches up to me and
applies its deathtouch.
Down I go. I quickly get rezzed. With no mana, I go around rezzing
corpses. We seem to be keeping mostly ahead, although there's always a
corpse or two to click. Eventually we kill the last of the six mobs. We
huddle together to med and rebuff while loot is awarded. Some neck thing
and... Muramite Chest Armor. This is the GoD equivalent of the Time
breastplate molds. We're very excited - our first-ever guild GoD chest
mold. I put in my name without much hope - this will surely go to a
warrior. So it proves: a warrior gets awarded it very quickly. Ah well.
I'm still quite happy with my Time breastplate and don't feel the urge to
replace it; eighteen months haven't passed yet.
So far, so good, but now for the final event, and the mob that has been
consistently kicking our butt: Noqufiel. Take all the other events and
wrap them into one. Noqufiel will spawn a copy of himself. If you attack
the copy, you set off a short-range 4K AE with a knockback. And every so
often Noqufiel will reset himself, causing the Main Tank to lose his target
and spawning another mirror image. And to add to the fun, occasionally
Noqufiel will banish the MT to another room, forcing the MT to run back.
Oh, and there's a cursecaller here, too, occasionally sending tells and
forcing us to run laps until the deathtouching stalker is killed. It's a
complex event, spawning much discussion on our guild message board exhorting
people to know what their role in the event is and to execute it to
perfection. Evidently this involves chain-rooting Noqufiel with mage pets
while SK's maintain aggro from afar so that the warriors don't get banished.
All I know for sure is what my role is: heal the MT and everyone else in my
group, click the dead when I can. Sometimes being a cleric is easy.
We begin. I heal the MT for a while until I get the famous tell. I begin
running laps around the (much smaller) room until I get the all-clear; they
killed the mob after me. I go back to healing the MT. I look around, and
we seem to be doing all right. We're keeping ahead of the deathtouching
cycle. Noq's hitpoints are falling, creeping down towards 50%, our previous
best. It gets below that and I cheer. We're doing good, but we seem to be
losing a little ground in the battle to keep everyone alive.
Then, with Noq at 39%, I get too close when someone attacks the fake Noq. I
get hit by the AE and blasted across the room. I hit the wall and fall
three feet for 20K. Stupid bugs.
I get rezzed, but we have too many clerics dead. No one has mana for
healing. Now we start hemorrhaging tanks, and soon they're all dead. We
try to back off, but Noq just summons us one by one. With Noq at 21% I get
summoned and attacked, but almost instantly get banished to the other room,
which conveniently takes me off of Noq's hate list.
The wipe is soon complete but a few banished people are alive, as well as
another cleric that managed to camp. I try to get back into Noq's room.
There's some trick to opening the door that I haven't quite figured out yet;
every time I touch it I get hit for 1500 of fire damage. Eventually the
door gets opened and I begin the rezzing.
We talk about strategy as we rebuff. Someone mentions the idea of pulling
Noq and his mirror to the East wall at 30% or something. When Noq resets to
the West, no one will be on his aggro list or in aggro range and we can take
the time to med / rebuff the dead. We decide to give it a try. Me, the
only change to my strategy is to get a necro to cast Dead Man Floating on me
so I won't 20K again.
We get ready. Some people have to leave but other latecomers arrive. One
advantage to the raid leader's ability to reform groups is that CotHing
people to the raid is now trivial. We are still at the maximum of 54 when
we begin again.
I'm still in the MT's group and I'm still mostly just healing him. I look
around and the rest of the fight seems to be going well. Sure, people are
dying - either because of the 4K AE of because of the cursecallers. But
mostly people seem to be playing out their assigned roles. This is
encouraging. Noqufiel drops to 50%, then 40%, and then the raid leader
tells everyone to move to the East wall. We do, dragging Noq and his mirror
image with us. We fight them there for a while, then they reset, and
amazingly no one aggros them.
We have our breather. Quickly we rez, rebuff, med. I'm actually doing all
right on mana, so end up fielding a lot of rebuffing requests. We can't
spend a lot of time on this - Noqufiel is already above 50%.
So we engage again. Again I stay on the MT. He drops down to 40... 30...
20.... We're losing people but Noq is still dropping health. 15... 10...
the last Noq reset. We get on it, and everyone starts yelling, "BURN" and
"MAX OFFENSE" and other pointless but well-meaning exhortations.
5...4...3... we count down every number. Then Noqufiel falls, and we
explode into a mass of cheering.
Everyone rushes to hail the golem standing there. Loot is announced. A
melee mask, a melee earring, and the same neckpiece from the cursecaller
event. This time I take a closer look:
Relic of the Unremembered
Slot: NECK
HP 250 Mana 245 AC 30
Str 15 Dex 18 Sta 12 Cha 15 Wis 20 Int 20 Agi 25
Focus Effect: Discordant Health
Increase Healing by 45% on direct group heals
Regeneration: +10 DoT Shielding: +3% Strikethrough: +2%
Not bad, a nice complement to my Qvic arms which adds the same effect on
direct single heals. I put in my name, then continue to participate in the
general feel-good guildfest. A couple of minutes later I'm awarded the
Relic, to my mild shock. Happily I loot it amidst the many tells of
congratulations.
Eventually we gate out. We don't know how to get the key to the next zone,
Txevu, so one of our officers looks it up. We have to combine the things we
won from Ikkiniz, Uqua, and Inktu'ta in order to get the key to Txevu. We
all rush to the boat in the Abysmal Sea, grab these items from the bank, and
find the NPC in the far NE corner of the boat. We all get our keys.
Hooray.
Quite a few people, including me, go back to Qvic. We want to zone into
Txevu. We're not entirely certain where that is, despite people attempting
to tell us where in the zone it is. So we begin a three-group mini-raid to
clear the way to the temple entrance. Alas, about halfway there we wipe
when we aggro six mobs. Our corpses get dragged to a safe spot in Qvic and
we get rezzed. Then we invis up and charge the temple entrance. About half
of us manage to zone in while the other half get aggro and die. I'm one of
the lucky ones that zones in. The official name of the zone is Txevu - Lair
of the Elites. This prompts a ranger to inquire if that means we're elite
now, to general chuckles. We're still feeling good about clearing the
roadblock.
The mobs right outside Txevu don't see invis so I invis up and zone out to
rez the people who didn't make it. Eventually everyone gets rezzed up and
zones in. We try to break the zone-in area but we don't quite manage it -
three golems and a really fast-moving archer guy swarm us. A few people
manage to zone out invis. I'm not one of them, but another cleric is. She
zones back and rezzes us, and we call it a night - it's very late and it
seems as if breaking the zone-in area might require a full raid.
Overall, a very good day for me. I got three pieces of new loot *and* we
finally cleared a roadblock. Alas, Txevu is not an instanced zone, so we're
back to competing with the rival uber-guild for spawns again. Given their
recent behavior with Cynosure, we are once more returning to "interesting"
times.
But I wouldn't have it any other way. No matter how fun City of Heroes is,
it can't quite fill me with the sense of accomplishment that Everquest can.
I think I'll have to stick with EQ for a while to see what else is in store.
=)
--
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
Archon of Rodcet Nife
Silent Tempest
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This page is Copyright by Skaarak; Everquest (TM) is property of Sony Online Entertainment
All stories and art work are Copyright@ by the origial owner/writer.
Most, if not all stories, were taken from newsgroup alt.games.everquest (AGE), I recommend that anyone who gets a chance to read it should!