So after another week of barely doing anything (as you can tell from the lack of an update last week /rude 1017!), we finally got back down to some hardcore raiding.
We started raiding again, and we raided HARD!
We started working on some PoP progression finally. Our first guild "flag" kill was AD. Our first attempt, he creamed us around 18% health. In true UG fashion, we rezzed up, rebuffed, adjusted our strats, and killed him easily. Yay, a flag and rotting loot!
We knocked out Carprin on our first attempt. We were letdown after hearing how hard the cycle was. We never even saw the skelly adds. Boooo. Disappointed. Yay, a flag and rotting loot!
We ran Hedge once for the few members that didn't have this flag. Yay, a flag and rotting loot!
After those few flags, we decided to kill Cursed and Emp. Cursed brought the phat loot finally, and we now have our first Bloodfrenzy. After Cursed, XTC spawned and our spotter said he had a Hategiver, so we had to go kill him too. Emp...well...it's Emp. He gave us more phat lewtz.
After all those kills, we were lucky enough to get a patch. This bumped us up in the VT rotation. After all the hours we've spent learning the zone, it was finally time for us to test how much we had learned. Needless to say, we learned a hella lot more than we thought.
It was our first run through VT, and we went hardcore all the way. We kept pushing and pushing, and our numbers kept dwindling. But we weren't going to let that stop us. We were to close to our goal to stop and lose it to a certain Asian guild. About 35 of us dedicated ourselves to making sure AHR was ours and we would stay on until AHR was dead.
Hours later, our efforts paid off and we finally arrived at our goal. Not knowing the encounter, and low on numbers, we pulled. Adjusting the positioning/healing mid fight as we learned the mob was the only option. As we were all getting flung around the room, AHR's health kept slowly dropping. Forcing ourselves to remain focused as the sleep deprivation took it's toll was the most difficult part of the encounter.
A few minutes later, AHR laid dead at our feet, and well-earned loot was handed out as we all sat in awe. We finally beat Luclin.
And now for the $$$
OMG....2 pics because there was so much that the file was too large to upload!
Do unto others or some shit like that.
Til next fuggeroos, all <3 and no h8
Gaeaan
Well, the new expansion was released and as was expected the server was reset many times. So we put off exploring the expansion for a few days to take advantage of all the mobs that were respawning every day.
With all the patches, we spent the better half of the week working our butts off raiding mobs. Raid after raid after raid after raid. It was a never ending cycle. The big hits of the week were 2 back to back Emp kills. These 2 kills were also part of a couple of guild firsts:
1) Swept all the Ssra bosses in 1 day (Rhag 1, Rhag 2, Arch Lich, XTC, High Priest, Glyphed, Exiled, Cursed, Blood, and Emp)
2) Killed Emp with 37 people (lowest number yet for us).
Besides the Ssra massacres, our other big kill was TVX. Sure, he's not a "tough" mob, but man does he force feed ya the loot.
The release of GoD added a new bonus feature to EQ that wasn't advertised: Constant 1017! We were overjoyed with the fact that 50% of our raids were screwed in one form or another from this new feature. And the best part about it, SOE didn't charge us for it!
Seriously though, they really need to fix the 1017's as fast as possible. It's affecting everyone regardless of the content their in. And their little pop up box that comes up on the server select screen is just their way of baiting us: "We hope you enjoy playing EverQuest!" We'll let you know if we enjoy it if we can ever FUCKING LOG IN!!!
All the 1017's did help though with another guild first. They managed to cause us to pass on our turn in the VT rotation for the very first time! And to top that, it was our first ever turn in the rotation!!! Woohoo!!! Go go good team!!!
That's about all there is this week, except for the money shot...enjoy!
Til next week, taker easy fuggeroos
Gaeaan
It was an unusually slow week for us in terms of raids. Not because we couldn't find any mobs up, but because we concentrated on farming shards for VT keys since we got our second Emp kill under our belts! Go go Good Team!
With our second Emp kill out of the way, we're now in the VT rotation. Sure, we may have a while to wait before our first turn in the rotation arrives, but we could care less. We're going to Candyland!!!
We did manage to knock out a few of our regular mobs between shard farms. But the kills were few and far between. Our notable kills were Blood/Emp, High Priest, and TVX (guild first). Some of the other kills included Arch Lich, XTC, GotS, and I think Fanya ran another Velk raid in "her" neverending quest for a ST key.
When we weren't busy farming shards or raiding, most of us spent our time playing around in VT in hopes of getting a good idea on the different mobs, pathing issues, spawn times, etc. Late Sunday evening, some of us even got ballsy enough to go whack one of the 2 non-rotational mobs that were up.
All I can say is that VT is fun as hell. It's controlled chaos. It's hectic. People have to stay on their toes at all times. And right now most of us are loving the challenge. I'm sure once the newness wears off we'll learn to hate the zone, but not before we get our share of loot outta there first!
We tagged in a few more ppl into the guild, and welcomed back a couple of old friends (wb Katalia and Muirtal!).
That's about it for this week.
Taker easy fuggeroos
Gaeaan
And here's the tease...
We're playing with a new layout for the Underguild news page. Little tweaks and changes continue to be made here and there, but overall, this is the direction we want the layout to go. If you're an Underguild member, please comment in the appropriate thread in the members section.
If you're not a member, we'd still love your input, feel free to drop a note here and let us know how we're doing.
Also, flaming spinning logos are coming soon.
The week went by as usual. Mobs spawned, we killed them. Loot was passed around. After a couple of days, we realized that we were almost fully keyed for Emp. And better yet, he was due to spawn the next day. So we busted our asses trying to key a few of our remaining members/recruits.
The big day arrives. We spent all day in Ssra waiting on the big snake to spawn. We tried striking bargains with our competition to ensure we have a shot. We got our chance, and sure enough, the snake and the golem popped late that evening. So we moved in. We got the OT's set and started whacking away on Blood. Everything was going picture perfect and Blood died. Loot was handled fast and then we sat there anxiously awaiting Emp to become targetable. He came to life, and we immediately have LDs...tanks, dps, rampage healers. Everyone needed to win the encounter is out, but we had no choice now but to fight the snake. We got him cornered and thought everything was going great when we realized our healers were the rampage tanks. It was all downhill from there.
Needless to say, we summoned our corpses and called it a night. There was no way we would be able to attempt him again that night since it was already into the wee hours of the morning. We went to bed praying that Emp would still be up the next day for us to take a few more stabs at him. Obviously our prayers weren't heard in Asia, as Emp was dead the next morning.
Emp: 1
UG: 0
The next day, we talked about what we needed to do to prevent the wipe should we have mass LD's on the encounter again and set about finishing up a few more keys in preparation for the next spawn. Then we whacked some more mobs, just because they were up and we needed more loot. Much to our surprise, the night following our first Emp attempt we found out there was to be a patch. We would get our second chance without having to wait a week.
So we all arrived in Ssra bright and early the next day after the patch. Emp had already spawned. "Sweeeet" we all thought to ourselves. If we started early enough we'd be able to take multiple attempts if needed. So we headed up again.
OT's were set, Blood dies, and again loot was handed out. Then came the moment of truth. We pulled Emp. Something went wrong with the pull! One tank dead. Two tanks dead. Three tanks dead. The 4 MT healers were assisting emp and spraying heals as fast as possible hoping someone will finally grab agro. Finally we had a tank holding agro, and the heal chain got set. Wait...who's this? Llew? A pally MT? WTF? The healers started making mental adjustments on the chain to adjust for the lack of hp/evasive. 17 minutes and countless nec twitches later, the big snake finally died!
We finally killed the big boss of Ssra! And we wouldn't have been able to do it if every person on the raid hadn't done their jobs to the best of their ability. The OT team did a tremendous job of holding on to their mobs and not panicking when the pull went bad. The healers maintained their composure throughout the fight, and even managed to get the ones that died on the pull rezzed back into the fight. The melees never lost their focus and followed their instructions to the letter as they were changing every second. It was truly an awesome display of teamwork and discipline.
I have never been more proud of my fellow guildmembers than I was on this night. To see all of their work and dedication finally come to fruition was truly inspiring.
Now we're just 1 more Emp kill away from being allowed into the VT rotation. After that, who knows.
To all of the other guilds that graciously let us have a shot at Emp uncontested, thank you from each and every member of UG. And to all the players that spammed us with congratulations, a big thank you to each of you too.
That's it for this week, so peace out and all that ya fuggeroos
Gaeaan
Oh yeah, I almost forgot....Aillron's cool!
