Latest News
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Posted by Ninibi
Update Round 2!
Check out the latest Guild Event fun in the Event Repository!
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Posted by Ninibi
Grats guys on Pawbuster!!
Early on, we'd gone in to work on Paw and got ourselves splattered to the
9 kingdoms. A frustrating part about this fight is that it starts out chaos and continues to feels chaotic. With a mix of short raids, new raiders and raiders in need of decent gear/upgrades, we weren't getting too far & "progress" on the mob didn't seem to happen in any logical order. We'd go in, get
one good pull, then it would seem like the fight totally changed the next
pull. We'd try something, it'd seem to work, then next pull it would fail horribly. We experimented with different call outs & different AA specs, different pull spots, trying to stay out of the AE, trying to stay in for it. Some of these things made a moderate amount of difference, but not enough to make consistent progress.
To the disappointment of some, I shelved him for a while, hoping to get folks better geared/upgraded & in the meantime, mentally "reset" my perspective of the fight. We finished TPR, went in to visit Venril & started working on Kor Sha, which they've now obligingly cleared up to the Overking (GREAT job on the Twins, guys!).
Finally, last week, I decided it was time to go back and try again.
All the practice as a group, gearing up, farming of TPR (otherwise known as "Disneyland") had paid off & raid dps was nearly double what it has been earlier on (42k guys - excellent!). This time things started to click into place & we started making progress. Tuesday, we went back, and (woohoo!) finally hammered him.
It turned into one of those fights where I was focused so hard on doing everything I could think of to keep burning him over the heals as people died ("f...udge...I forgot miracles!"), that near the end, I got a bit glazed around the edges and didn't even see his hp % OR any messages (good thing I wasn't the one on lever duty!). Getting dumped into the pit totally caught me by surprise. One second fighting, the next falling & thinking "Seriously? :D"
In the end it was a fun fight, and one of the most satisfying kills this tier and, how fun, on April Fools day. But, seriously, he's dead! :D
Grats on your updates for your epics and Fate of Norrath quests, guys & GREAT job!!
On to the pictures:
They've got TPR down to a 3 group raid, they've done it so much.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Posted by Ninibi
Grats folks on your shiny purrrrrrty Epics & the great progress through
Kor-Sha with less than a full raid!
Register on the forums & toss in an app if you're interested!
EVENTS: Timorous Deep Relay Race this Sunday. Shuu has put a lot of work into it, so I'm anticipating what sounds like the Norrathian Dakar...only, with ponies, and wargs and stuff. 2box toons must register separately for the DARPA Challenge sticker, 2' radio antennea and 6" styrofoam bumpers.
Coming soon: Photoshop challenge for both members and the Norrathian Public. Get ready to bring Retro to Fantasyland!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Posted by Ninibi
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Posted by Ninibi
Reminder! Tomorrow (4th) is our Nights of the Dead party @ 3pst! We'll be hanging around Freeport and the eeeeeevil side - check in with guild chat to get directions to the party & dress up! We're starting with a costume party! :D
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Posted by Ninibi
Grats HM on Mayong!! GREAT job!!
There aren't many raid mobs that get me sniffly at their demise, but Mayong I had to get up and walk away to get a drink and puff through the teary-eye moment that struck when he went down. I didn't realize I was sweating the RoK release so much till that moment.
Back in June, we were psyched to be in HoS and beating mobs. I remember during the spring my goals being along the lines of: beat Vyemm...get past Gnorbl...at least get to Tarinax before raids are over...
To add to this, we're a casual "hardcore" raiding guild, which means we've condensed our raid time down from the 7 days a week, 7pst till "whenever" schedule we had long ago, to 3 days a week and 4 hours, with the rare "stay later" night. This puts us in a time crunch for banging out content - we often run out of time when we're at the mob we want to work on in longer zones. Many of our raiders work early mornings and come with kids, so they're snoring over their keyboards by the end of raids. Raid end is a mass exodus from ventrilo. :D
Getting caught up from a couple hard hits, much less back on track, has been alternately frustrating to the point of banging my head on the desk, and gratifying when we have those "look what wacky stunt we pulled off!" moments.
So this is to say - beating CMF, then FTH - a lot of hard work and time put in. But nothing was as gratifying as getting back into MMIS and starting to work on it. It's not the last zone to beat for the tier, it's not the "hardest" but it's a big milestone (to quote Teddie) and being able to get SoD completed for players was something I wanted before the expansion hit & those new toys started to become less nifty.
So, getting into MMIS on time, and getting up to Mayong with time to spare turned into a headache as we'd get there just on time for raid end. AAAAARGH.
To add to this challenge was the string of bad luck we'd run into in the zone. Twice we had the entire raid, bar 1 or 2 people, crash to desktop in the middle of a fight (this is due to some sort of bug with the mob charm, I hear.), other times we'd get random linkdeaths, screwed up trash encounters with the ever so loveable chaperons (see Soul's video "Remembrance" for a shoutout to the chaperons at the end), or people would have to log... our chanter's pc imploded on her and she disappeared from game, so Chantelle had to step in and play her chanter alt & learn the timing on Viswin & Cheroon....hell of a way to get your feet wet raiding your alt! We also learned in the process that not all chanters lag alike. o0
Finally things started to come together, we started killing the chaperons and their gargoyle pals all together. Courtesans stopped chewing people up so quickly, blood colossus went down a bit faster (notice I'm not saying that the Nameds in there present a big challenge. Thanks for the digital hamster wheel that is trash killing, SOE...and special blessings to the guy who said "let's have them repop and path for miles!!").
We'd get to Mayong and get a pull or two before running out of time. Enough to get some information gathering done. Another night, another couple pulls, a bit more info. Then another string of bad luck. It started getting to the end of the expansion & I wasn't sure we were going to make it, and started gnawing at the straps. Last week, we came to the difficult decision to camp in the zone and come back the next day to work on him, but ironically, it was a patch night. No luck there!
Finally, this week, we got up to him Thursday, but again ran into trouble with numbers and linkdeaths. We took a pull or two and it was, predictably, messy. We decided to call it a night, people were game to camp in the zone, so we came back Friday night fresh from dinner and ready to go, got up to Mayong, and 3 pulls later he died. Go figure!
It was one of those fights where people just suddenly snapped into their groove (LOVE it when that happens). At 10% I was going crosseyed WILLING Rell to stay up, trying to rationalize that if something nutty happened and we DID wipe, then at least we'd got him to 10%... then 6% ...then some *coughcough* Aussie guy ;) yelling "STAKE HIM!!"
So, a bit unorthodox, but done and in under 6 hours between Thursday and Friday. You guys managed to find a way to beat a Boss on limited time, get your updates and not get clobbered with fatigue for morning rush hour. lol /thumbsup! Soon we'll burn through here fast enough to get it down to under the four hour mark.
Another screenie:
Mayong
at 6%, complete with captions!
And extra stuff worth noting:
Darkharte
wins the first Trial in EH!
Random midday T6 contested:
"Hey, Barakah's up, I want to harvest on that island! Come out!"
So Shuu and her 2box dirge, Tactic and his 2box warlock, Chanty & myself
go out there
and whallop her.
I climb up on the island and ...oops...no nodes. /blush
But! Chanty got some hot looking pants & the Dirge got AA, so it's all
good! :D
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Posted by Ninibi
What the heck is Gnomedarts?
Well, this site may be the quicker, self explanitory version, German though it may be. (language barrier not withstanding, that's a fun game!)
The short and sweet of it, when it comes to Everquest II: the idea is based on lawndarts - throw one, it sticks in the ground, right? Well, take a gnome...
Soul decided to expand on this by making use of the tinkered parachutes & the islands scattered all over Tenebrous Tangle. We figured we'd have a paratrooping contest and see where we could get to. Unfortunately he neglected to look at the required level for the parachutes (26), so we got a few level 2 gnomes up there only to find they couldn't use the parachutes. At that point, our skydiving gnomes decided to bravely forgo use of any safety devices and just plummet to their targets.
Some of us, there to help clear out dangerous beasties, went for gnome illusions and parachutes and made a game of seeing how far we could glide.
One of our "older" gnomes in action.
More screenies:
Watching from one of the isles as Brightward takes to the skies.
From the air, flying over to meet the HM Paratroopers.
Having landed on the "island with the tree on it."
We had a blast with this, then someone said "I wonder how this would go in Bonemire" so we headed over there and found we could land on the spires over Halls of Fate...then someone said "We should go to a raid zone!"
Imagine: you're standing outside Labs waiting for your raid to arrive, and level 2 gnomes start falling from the sky to splat at your feet.
I offered to tank the zone, but wasn't taken seriously. :(
Offers to assist being brushed aside, we took matters into our own hands and zoned in. Someone said "I wonder how far we can train..." and a new game began of "You distract the bad guys, we'll run past!"
A few attempts:
Winner was Clatter, who made it down to Alzid's room.
Later that night, busy day and a short raid turnout, we headed off to Roost and Crab, then, bored, headed over to MMC to clear around there and see what was for the clobbering. Halfway through clearing upstairs, the blue zone emote popped up. Sadly it was just the x2 down by MMIS rather than Mayong himself. We wanted to run in and try him with our uber leet x2 raid. ;)
Having cleared the upstairs with only a named or two (and crap loot. yack!), we milled around for a few minutes then decided to head over to New Tunaria to check out Throneroom for the first time as a group. We ended up hanging around till the end of our raid timeslot seeing how much we could clear with two groups. We did ok till the second/main room...then it got a bit messy (read: 5 epic x4s = tank implodes!).
Hm, wonder when those guards are going to start charging us?
After the golems, the guards were ridiculously easy...which is probably why there's a gazillion golems, and not that many guards.
Cries of "SEND IN THE BRIGAND" are now altering to "SEND THE MONK!" Granted, I (Brigand) may be behind that one. ;)
Fun night and great afternoon. I hope to see more of these fun days and "let's see what we can do" evenings in our future!
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Posted by Ninibi
Woohoo! Grats on Thirneg!
Gnomes from above!Friday, October 12, 2007
Posted by Ninibi
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