Almost 4 weeks since the last update when we managed to take down Xegony. Well since then we decided it was about time to farm Elem planes harder to gear up a bit. As an example on our kills of Fennin and Xegony the MT (who didn't die) didn't have a single item from the elemental planes. Didn't really stop us much but time to make things a bit easier on ourselves.

Since then we've farmed a lot. Still have yet to find Coirnav up or get a shot at that bugger, so a long learning process awaits us (if word of mouth is to go by). We DID however manage to play with the bugged rings in Earth a lot. That stupid dusty warder ring and resetting and bugged Triumvirates (9 at a time!!) was frustrating but we managed to wade through the mess and pop the Arbitor. Although I didn't mind the Peregin and Mudman rings much both the buggy nature of the dusty warder ring and the absolute boredem of the vegerog ring kind of gets to you when we spend 6 hours at a time in the zone. Arbitor himself happened to give us more trouble than he was worth, mostly due to our own fault. After managing to let him depop once and then wipe after winning (and hence no flags) we finally gave this lump the beating it deserved and got the majority flagged for Earth B. Look for more news from the home of the Rathe as we snag another Arbitor kill.

In the meantime we also managed to learn and take down the new Innoruuk as well which is only fitting as Wraith was there to take down Inny 1.0 and Inny 2.0 as server firsts as well. I actually enjoyed this new fight a lot, especially the first time we went at it with no prior info. A synopsis of the first attempt would sound like "Adds",  "and adds", "and more adds", "and more adds.........." ad nauseum. But we managed to revise the strat for what is pretty decent RvR especially considering the lack of Plate BPs to go around and also the relative lack of FT items in PoP.

We also managed to spend a fair bit of time in Plane of Water as well (what good elem farming can be complete without it) and have been pretty frustrated by it. Although we managed to score kills on Groihin the Wise, Hydrotha and Krizik the Mighty, the absolutely laggy and buggy nature of the zone is frustrating. It's absolutely ridiculous that soon as mobs touch a wall they manage to port whoever they melee to the zone. This has led to a lot of frustration and we're still unsure on what areas exactly are bug free. Also attemped this beast twice.

Ofossaa the Enlightened gave us a pretty thorough beating in our 2 runs though we got him to like 30% or so. Pretty ridiculous RvR for this idiot which explains why he is always up. His time will come and RvR notwithstanding, he must die once atleast.

Our luck (or lack of it) with rogue daggers continues from the Luclin days (we got 1 khal in 10 Cursed kills and 2 BB in 10+ HP kills). I think our rogues are ready to throttle some folks as we have yet to get a Ifir or Gold Runed Mithril Knife in 5 Fennin and 7 Sol Ro kills. Maybe Warlord Gintoklan will be more kind to us.

Also somehow we managed to find Lord Inquisitor Seru up late night and we also managed to produce a key. So we proceeded to smack down this guy for a guild first. The fight was about as anti-climatic as expected but the RvR was better than expected, again mostly to the reasons I stated for Inny, as Seru coughed up a BP, the FT5 ring and his torque. No wonder he's almost never up.

Sprinkle in off hours Ssra / Kael clearings, one VT run, more backflagging and more comfortable repeat kills on all elem plane mobs we've killed before (including another kill of Xegony) and you pretty much sum up what we've been up to last few weeks. Hopefully I will have more info on our Coirnav / Rathe progression as soon as we get to work on them, which should be happening soon. 

So after working on the event about a week or so we finally managed to bring down Xegony. I say finally because IMO this is a pretty anal encounter. It's all about executing with an acute attention span. The fight lasted about an hour for us. Fact is there's almost no way you can guarantee complete heals between every round from Xegony for an hour and 2 consecutive bad rounds can kill any tank in the game. So you have to hope that the healing is on target and nothing too freakish happens. I guess that's where gear etc comes in (to increase the chances of successfully surviving bad rounds and sustain faster healing indefinitely). All in all it's definitely a team effort and an encounter we enjoyed breaking down and conquering. And there was the familiar rush from another challenged offed.

Managed to pick up 2 robes (vests rather) from her and were also lucky to pick up some plate legs. I'm sure this encounter will becomes lots simpler as we continue to gear up.

In other news we managed to find a lot of mobs up in Fire that we had yet to take out and so down they must go. The new versions of Pyonis, birds, generals weren't much different. Reparm had been over-rated in some of the boards I read and he was definitely a push over. Babnoxis proved to be more interesting but still went down without much ado once we adapted our strat a little.

The best challenges came from Blazaxx the Omnifiend and Arch Mage Yozanni. Arguably both these mobs are harder than Fennin Ro now, atleast that's what I thought. Some pretty whacked RvR for sure. Here's a very large pic of Blazaxx in all his glory as he taught us a lesson in the earlier run before we managed to best him, but barely. Since then we killed him again and more smoothly, though the RvR is still pretty whacked compared to almost any other mob in the elem planes, except Arch Mage Yozanni.

The new Arch Mage Yozanni was a ton of fun to figure out. We tried some pretty whacky off-the-road stuff with some hilarious results before we managed to put together various elements from all the runs to put him down. The guy is absolutely a beast but a very fun fight to learn, adapt and execute. Though he went down, his RvR is also pretty out of whack. Definitely a fight that gets much easier once you have the right strategy for it.

Also managed to revenge the new Groihin the Wise in Plane of Water, another mob with stupid RvR. No wonder he's always left up. Dropped just one item for us, the so-so bard lute. Ummmm yeah. What's up with that? Not even 2 loots on this stupid mob with 2k quad + ramps + AE of  2kdmg/5sec stun that's pretty much unresistable, not to mention the leet ability of all named in Plane of Water to port ppl to the zone in or bind spot if they touch a wall at certain angles. Fun fun. It's not that he was much hard but the RvR on him is so stupid. We'll probably be looking to venture more in Water / Earth in the coming weeks (duh) so stay tuned for more updates in that regard.

Also managed to go up to hate late night and took out the new Maestro. He's like a Tier 1 PoP mob strength now, maybe slightly weaker, but definitely in the same vein (scripted event, low hps, etc etc). Dropped some loot in line with the fight, comparable to other Tier 1 PoP drops.

Also took a shot at the new Inny but having no prior info we were taken by surprise by what was held in store for us. Blowable events suck. Now that we know what to expect from him we'll go back sometime when free to take him down atleast once. Hope he drops something decent.

Cheers Wraith/Reviviscene on Xegony! Ciao.

May 13th, 2003 - The fall of the Tyrant of Fire - Desi

Finally getting a shot at an elemental god we manage to run over and do some Luclin-style spawn camping till we had enough to take on the mob (hint: it was more than 20) so we wouldn't blow the spawn.

It took a few tries and few wipes before we managed to refine the pull/positioning/strategy enough to pull off the win in a exhilarating 6 min fight with our melee heavy army. Hopefully we'll cut the fight time some more next time. Though since MT didn't die and mana was not a issue I guess it won't matter significantly.

And now the obligatory guild-showing-shield-at-throne shot!! What Fennin kill can be complete without it!

We were lucky to get the chain legs along with the 2 loot items (legs are a 1/3 drop it seems) but didn't manage to get the essence (another 1/3 drop). The items from combining the 4 essences are subpar for the effort anyway.

Followed that up with a night-cap with our old buddy RZTWL. No BoWs agains. We're 1/6 now. Only 42 more kills before the other 7 warriors waiting can grab one, woohoo. Sucks it's so rare. The other guild that regularly kills him are also 1/8 or something similar. Oh well. He has to put out soon enough. All hail the power of the Random Number Generator!

Lets hope the Air elemental island bug gets fixed on patch so we can finally finish our Xegony key and start working on what should be a fun challenge. Later.

May 10th, 2003 - Happy Bards equals happy raids - Desi

We've been keep our bards happy atleast with more Air farming and were rewarded with another Rune Stamped Blade from Avatar of Dust along with Ivory Hilted Cleaver as well as this from Sigismond.

Now to get some of those dang drums from Earth!

In other news, we have yet to take at a shot at ANY elemental plane god due to availability. With 4 fully geared guilds zealously farming the hell out of elemental planes, most of the time there are no mobs up. I can't imagine what would have happened if they had the pre-PoP mob model of 3-4 drops with a 1 week respawn, as opposed to the PoP model of 2 drops with 3 day respawn.

Rallos Zek is stingier as ever. 2 more kills and no more BoWs to show for it. Hopefully our patience will be duly rewarded in good time. 

May 5th, 2003 - Avatar of Wind and RZTWL - Desi

Head to Plane of Air again to try some of the other Avatars that were up. Managed finally get Clawpike to pop after another clearing of the bee island. Avatar of Wind went down with ease and gave up some nice goodies.

That was followed a trip to the Plane of Tactics for a meeting with our favourite Zek. RZTWL was stingy as ever and no Blades of War were netted on this trip either. 

Did Xuzl and Arylixir in double quick time for some flags and took a night cap with a late night AoW kill for old time's sake.

May 4th, 2003 - More fun in Plane of Fire and Air - Desi

Took out a bunch of the mobs in Fire to try out the new changes. The birds weren't affected too much and went down with ease. Same for Pyonis whose AE we never used to dodge anyway. Babnoxious was slightly more challenging and need us to adjust tactics somewhat and was a fun fight. Have yet to try the truly horrendous Arch Mage Yozanni etc and will give more updates with that respect.

Went to Plane of Air to try the only island we knew was up. Sigismond's island script is pretty exhaustive. With no prior info we were surprised by some of the script's elements and were certainly unaware of a depop timer and had to come back to try again to get the script done right. Sigismond died with much fan-fare in a fun fight. And the Avatar of Dust rolled over soon after to play dead, and we were able to pick up, among other things, a nice bard trinket.

More info to come up as it happens. Ciao.

May 1st, 2003 - Sol Ro dies again and some mob changes - Desi

Still working on getting all our newer members completely flagged for all elemental planes so we can start working on them again and pick up where we left off. Solusek Ro was another pit stop that needed to be made and the fight went smooth. Made another trip to Candyland (aka VT) for our dose of 30 loots or so.

Patch changes were very interesting. The AEs on some of these mobs have gone to the ridiculous............. which should make beating them all the more  rewarding =) Check out this fun AE now on Offassa the Enlightened, newly reworked, as an example.

Mists of Enlightenment

With AE range of 250 (CH range is 100, all DD nukes are 200 or less), a -400 cold resist adjustment (practically lure) and is recast every 20 sec (in case you happened to cure it). The spells lasts on you for 1 hour if not cured. Fun fun fun!!

Apr 28th, 2003 - And back for more - Desi

Wow, been ages since an update. Well we got hit by a severe case of EQ-retardation aka burnout and lost a large chunk of the active playerbase. Had to recruit again pretty heavily and been flagging everyone back up again and just about done now. Also finally got the new Rallos Zek the Warlord event the spanking it deserved. I'll be updating the news site more often in the coming days.

Mar 6th, 2003 - Elemental Farming and more - Desi

A pretty uneventful month. We tried and killed lots of minis in all the 4 planes including the bountiful named in Plane of Fire, the few in Earth, the named in the temples and the bosses and Avatars from the islands in Air, and more named in Water. Also had a run at Fennin Ro and more to come from that dept. when we manage to find him up again and go at him again. Laters.

Feb 9th, 2003 - Solusek Ro falls and Plane of Water invaded - Desi

With the fall of Rallos Zek, we finally got access to the Solusek Ro chamber. Rather than have one guild wait to get access to Plane of Fire we decided to again team up with our friends in Vis Maior to grant maximum access to Fennin Ro's abode. Solusek Ro was an interesting fight, with the surprise factor of the AE (and the fact that it's lure) being the biggest obstacle. The fight was quickly brought under control and Sol Ro was prompty dispatched.

Went for Rallos Zek again as well to get those people flagged who had earlier missed out on the first kill. The fight was very smooth with hardly any casualties, though ofcourse the strength of the allies demanded such a victory.

Yesterday we spent adventuring in the Plane of Water. Took down Giridon the Wise or something and several other easy rare pops for decent drops. Went deeper and found another named up Ofossaa the Enlightened. We chose a spot to engage it in and cleared and then somehow found ourselves too near this guy and his guards, all of whom promptly butchered us.

The Plane of Water's boss will wait to be challenged another day. Later.

Feb 6th, 2003 - Rallos Zek Falls to Revived Old Alliance - Desi

Frustrated by limited attempts at the Rallos Zek encounter and artificial hindrances to our EQ progression, Vis Maior and Wraith / Reviviscence revived a three year old alliance to bring down Rallos Zek the Warlord tonight together for the first time on our first try. Last time Wraith and Vis Maior raided together was during the server first and early few kills of Trakannon in 2000 during the Ruins of Kunark.

And tonight, united against a common enemy by a common cause, Rallos Zek was brought down to his back by a monumentally zerg force by any standards.......... and all of us had a blast doing it. Cheers to everyone present. See you in the elemental planes.

Feb 5th, 2003 - Solusek Ro Tower - Desi

Spent the last few weeks getting everyone who was missing flags upto speed and then worked on the Solusek Ro trials.

Anyone who has done them would realize that to say they were easy would be an understatement. It's surprising that one of the most beautiful zones in the game (up there with Vex Thal and Veeshan's Peak) is again locked away from the majority of the people, and AGAIN the mobs required to kill are harder than the mobs in the locked away zone. Trakannon was harder than all VP mobs except Hoshkar and Phara Dar. Emperor Ssraeshza was harder than all Vex Thal mobs. And now they bring the absurdity to another level. None of the Solusek Ro trials are harder than ................ Grummus. Probably Xanamech difficulty. Really the trials are ideal encounters for small guilds, small raids..... requiring about 3-4 grps and guaranteeing a decent item reward after an hour or two of fighting. Oh well. Some random pics.

First trial we did. After an hour or two of clearing we met a boss mob which ended up being a slowable version of Vindicator !!

This trial ended up with this beautiful flaming bird swooping down to attack.

Oh yeah, he's a gimp.

All trials were done upon availability and now we're at a stand still.

Rallos Zek the Warlord.

After being unable to access him for a couple of weeks since the guild first to kill him on the server was keeping him down because of his incredibly amazing and absolutely unsurpassed loot items, we finally managed to strike a deal allowing us access to the event........................ and now he's perma-killed! After trying the event a few times and getting our ass kicked by this version of Tallon Zek we have been unable to try him again since GMs are perma-killing him. More to come from La La land as we all sit and wait to try this sucker finally so we can move forward. Even worse, the PoP mob RvRs and itemizations are so sucky you don't even feel like killing them for the loot if you don't need a flag. Oh well, something has to give one way or another. Later.

Jan 20th, 2003 - Bertoxxulous, Mithaniel Marr, Saryn - Desi

Being on a competitive server limits your opportunities to progress somewhat and Quellious is one the more competitive servers around. Still we all strive to find our niche and we managed to find some opportunities and downed these respective mobs to continue the PoP storyline progression and opened a new zone for us.

Temple of Marr: Tier 3 (Sub-zone)

Went again at Mithaniel Marr and this time he went down with ease.

Infact the fight proved to be too easy for some so in all our wisdom we somehow managed to train a lot of mobs on us after the fight (repops and beyond) and managed to wipe after hardly losing anyone to him. Ah the joys! Loot did get distributed and everyone got flagged so mission was successful.

Crypt of Decay: Tier 2 (aka Ruins of Lxanvom)

Ran the Bertoxxulous script and managed to take him down the second time we popped him. Fight was easier than expected or perhaps we got lucky. Flags were collected and one more challenge was put to rest.

Plane of Torment: Tier 2

Also visited Saryn's Tower and cleared all the way to and including Saryn herself. Saryn is a surprisingly easy encounter, not much different from Terris Thule. With the Mithaniel Marr, Saryn and Bertoxxulous kills we managed to complete the necessary progression and Maelin now allowed us to enter the Temple of Solusek Ro.

Temple of Solusek Ro: Tier 3

Haven't explored this zone too much yet. More news to come when we do explore it further. Right now Rallos Zek stands between us and access to Elemental Planes and we will be proceeding to try his event soon as we repeat some flags for people who missed them. Hope you had a good long weekend. Ciao.

Jan 2nd, 2003 - Happy New Year - Desi

Not much's been happening. Lots of people took breaks during the last 2 weeks so the guild resorted to boring stuff like Vex Thal farming and etc. Although a little progress was still made along the storylines.

Temple of Marr: Tier 3 (Sub-zone)

Made a few unsuccessful attempts at Mithaniel Marr. The zone possibly has the most frustrating graveyard compared to any other zone in the game, landing you next to the zone in portal where attempting to loot your corpse can port you to kos mobs in the Halls of Honor and ofcourse you cant drag your corpse out of the graveyard either. Mithaniel Marr himself was a fun fight and I'll report more progress along that front when we revisit him.

Bastion of Thunder: Tier 3

Visited the Bastion of Thunder to attempt to free Karana from the stormlord's cruel reign. Agnarr was a very entertaining bout, especially figuring out the events for the first time. The visit was successful and Agnarr went down.

Plane of Tactics: Tier 2

Visited Tactics to meet the other demi-god we had not yet met. Tallon Zek was a harder than the pitifully easy Vallon Zek, and probably more fun too. Especially if you play with the graphics on and you see the flames burning around him as he reaches back on his arrow to land a 3k ish nuke on someone (complete with different effects / colors for different resists) and then see that person burning............. it's a colorful fight indeed. Much fun for all.

Yeah these guys dropped some loot too, I think.