Been putzing around the Plane of Mischief quite a bit. I've only just begun
the quest to get my Crazy Cleric Breastplate.
The Plane of Mischief is actually fairly safe to explore. There are only a
very few mobs that will aggro. Once I got past the traps in the forest and
into the castle itself, I was pretty safe. PoM is confusing as heck to
navigate, though, and I've been spending lots of time just wandering around
familiarizing myself with the various parts of the zone. There are also two
other people - a necro and a druid - that have bound themselves inside, and
I've often grouped with them while we go around clearing the zone.
I started by getting myself a Deck of Spontaneous Generation. This involves
killing an ogre called Dinner. He is, aptly enough, lying on top of a
dining table. He has but one hitpoint, but there are two rooted KOS mobs on
the chandelier that will nuke the bejeezus out of you. Still, it's not
difficult to kill Dinner, loot, and run out without dying. In fact I have
to do this twice because I turn in the loot to the wrong NPC. And unlike
many other zones, NPC's in PoM will happily take whatever you give them
whether or not it's for a quest.
I also needed a library card, but the necro had an extra one and gave it to
me. So I turned that in for a Book of Mischief in which I need to combine
four parts of a Words of Wealth. Once I have *that*, I'll be able to get a
Pot of Gold. Like I said, this is just the beginning.
So for now I'm just farming. The necessary drops are all pretty rare. The
key elements are throne cards. I need a red throne and a black throne. The
rest, while not frequent drops, are common by comparison. A good place to
get thrones is the so-called "Alice in Wonderland" section. I'd heard of
this area before and had visions in my mind of a hedge maze and playing
cards that attacked, that sort of thing. In fact, the AiW area is nothing
more than a series of larger and larger rooms with identically-named mobs
that give you the impression that you're shrinking. It's actually a fairly
effective illusion that I give the zone designers full marks for, but having
the players call this Alice in Wonderland overbuilt my expectations. =(
The mobs there are not necessarily difficult - all dark blue cons that don't
cast and don't do impressive damage. But as a cleric, soloing even one of
these mobs takes a while. Same old routine - I quaff a damage shield
potion, cast Mark of Retribution on the mob, equip my proc-ing mace, yaulp,
summon a pet hammer, and then proceed to beat on the mob until it's dead. I
once commented into the serverwide.age channel that it's sad when damage
shields out-DPS your melee, but that's quite true - the mob takes 67 points
of damage every time it hits me, which is far better than I can do even with
my mace procs. In fact, when the mob turns and begins to run, my DPS goes
way down. I have to sit back and nuke. Oh, and root, because all the mobs
in the zone assist, as I found out during my very first visit.
Doing this by myself has netted me a few squire cards. In fact, I've gotten
a complete set and used the Deck to create a flower. This flower, when
right-clicked, will give me a buff that adsd +50 to my disease resistance.
At first I thought this was pretty uber, until people in my guild warned me
that it doesn't stack with anything - a shaman's Tribunal spell will
overwrite it. Darned. Oh well, still nice for soloing for that extra bit
or resistance.
Another good place to farm throne cards is the puppet show. Every game day
puppets begin spawning in the theater, on the stage. They are small
marionettes of Innoruk, Solusek Ro, Rallos Zek, the Tribunal, Tunare, and
Bristlebane. These puppets are on the same faction as the gods they
represent. Thus the Rallos, Innoruk, and Tunare puppets all attack me on
sight (curse those Tunare raids!). They hit pretty hard (by Velious
standards), are perma-rooted, and summon. They can also drop thrones upon
rare occasion, so I've helped clear them a couple of times. I can say from
personal experience that the Ralls Zek and Solusek Ro puppets look nothing
like the gods they represent. =) The Rallos Zek puppet looks just like the
Avatar of War, only very tiny.
BTW, there's an unsolved / unimplemented quest involving Cazic Thule.
Bristlebane yells to the zone, asking where the Cazic Thule puppet is.
Cazic Thule drops "puppet strings". How these things relate, no one knows.
This weekend I spent my non-raid time in Mischief. After clearing the
largest rooms in Alice in Wonderland, I got a red throne. I proudly linked
it in guildchat. This led to a discussion between me and another cleric,
who was asking me why I bothered. One reason, I suppose, is that my guild
won't be farming any breastplate-dropping mobs for quite a while, until we
get into time. While a Crazy Cleric Breastplate may or may not be an
upgrade over Skyshrine breastplate, at the very least it will be a
*different* breastplate. I'll feel slightly better sporting a breastplate
that at one time was considered the best cleric BP in the game.
The biggest reason, of course, is just to have fun and to be able to say I
did it. =) Plane of Mischief is a freaky zone that takes some getting used
to, but I'm enjoying the experience.
I really don't angst too much over my gear, of course. I already have some
good gear, which was recently highlighted during our first-ever Xegony
attempt. Slowly we fought our way up, stopping along the way to kill a
couple of easy Avatars in anticipation of not actually succeeding on Xegony.
One of the mobs we killed was a named spider that dropped 45AC boots. I was
presently bootless, having lent my FT3 boots to one of our recent cleric
recruits, now a full member. I was awarded the boots, which were much
better than the Heraldic boots I would have eventually made for myself. We
got up to Xegony and spent a *long* time trying to figure out positioning
and our strategy. It was actually exciting waiting to see Xegony; there's a
subtle but emotionally significant difference between seeing screen shots
and actually seeing the mob rendered on your graphics accelerator. =) Got
a couple of hints in the distance of a big mob with wings, but that was it.
We had a couple of early wipes, once while we were fighting a mob and we
pushed him too far towards the center of the island, getting Xegony aggro.
I got a *real* good, up-close look at her before she pounded me into the
dirt. After that and some more positioning ("Move here. No here. The MT
will be here. No, here. Check your range. No, wait, try here. Move
closer to the rock. OK, Xegony will be pulled this way. No, this way.
Crowd Control groups, move over this way. No, over here.") we decide to
form cleric-only groups, with an SK to help us feed mana. The clerics also
decided to drop our usual /pause Complete Heal rotations in favor of a
single-line silent count CH chain (which will warm James's heart when he
hears it, I'm sure). We need to heal fast and sure - only seven clerics in
the chain.
Xegony gets pulled. To my amazement, she gets pulled as planned. Crowd
Control also seems to be working as planned -they get through the first two
waves just fine. The cleric chain is spewing heals as fast as we can. I
can guess this is going to be a matter of luck as much as anything else -
the MT is getting awfully low sometimes. Even slowed, Xegony is capable of
some impressive damage spikes. I am casting CH almost as soon as the gem
refreshes. Then during the third wave of adds the Main Tank takes a huge
damage spike and dies. We have a backup tank ready to step in, but Xegony
moves to the clerics and kills them, boom-boom-boom, one after the other.
Fortunatley most people are able to camp out.
We try a second time, but the cleric starting the chain doesn't see the
incoming message and starts it far too late. A third attempt, and we get
off to a better start. Again, the MT's health is getting precariously low.
I notice that there's a bit of lag between the cleric in front of me and my
turn. After a while, we just can't keep ahead of Xegony's damage spikes,
and again the MT dies and again Xegony kills the clerics as fast as thought.
I actually manage to DA and run a fair distance away and camp out. During
the last five seconds, I see Xegony stop killing the Crowd Control people
who are left behind and begin running (er, floating really fast) in my
direction. In fact, she gets uncomfortably close before I camp out. I
wonder why she didn't summon me.
Clearly we have a healing problem. We discuss it for a bit afterwards. The
consensus is that we need more clerics doing a faster, longer chain with one
of two doing spot healing. We'll try again when we have more clerics
online.
We also have another problem: mana. Some of our clerics were getting very
low on mana. I was just fine - I was staying ahead of Xegony's health.
With FT15 (I'm actually wearing FT16 atm) and my extra five ticks of mana
from my Shawl of Awakenings and my summoned drogmor, I'm doing much better
than the new recruits. For example, the cleric I leant my FT3 boots to
still only has FT7. Plus she doesn't have nearly the mana pool I have; the
guild she belonged to previous was a family guild that didn't raid often and
never made it the high-end Luclin mobs. While I was hovering near 90m, she
was talking about being below 40m. In fact, the reason she was lagging in
front of me in the chain was that she was trying to cast Yaulp in-between
Complete Heals.
I tried to suggest that the guild buy 6K drogmors for all our clerics.
Sitting on my drogmor, I regen mana more quickly than I would with Yaulp VI.
Curiously this doesn't go over well, just not with the guild officers but
also for my fellow mount-less clerics. They don't want to sit on drogmors,
they prefer standing and Yaulping.
We gave up on Xegony because it was very late and some of our European
members had been up all night. We'll try again the next time she's up - we
had planned on getting her yesterday, but our resident uber-guild went to
Air to get her. We took perverse satisfaction out of the fact that they
wiped five times before succeeding. They were up there *all* day, and while
they were we cleared Earth and Fire. During the middle of clearing an Earth
ring, we suddenly got an AE TL box. Our guildleader told us to take it, but
I cancelled it and used my faithstone instead, not wanting to go to
Mischief. People were asking why we were leaving Earth, and the guildleader
responded that Fennin Ro had just popped in Fire. We hurried on over,
keeping an eye on the uber-guild who had just wiped on Xegony again, in case
they decided to try Fennin Ro. In fact, we saw the guild leader of the
uber-guild zone into Fire, but by that point we outnumbered the uber-guild
52-1. We cleared to Fennin Ro and killed him flawlessly - amazing what a
difference having a plan we *know* works in place.
I gate out before loot is even announced; this time I won't go in on the
elemental plate legs mold. I've come to realize that I have almost an
embarrassment of riches. Oh, I don't have anywhere near the best equipment
available, and I'm sure my magelo profile is put to shame by many other
people's. (Here's my magelo if you wanna take a look:
http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=45043 .) But still, compare
it to a someone who's *not* in a raiding guild, and it's qutie uber. While
I still regret that I never got a Mail of Judgement from Aten Ha Ra while we
were farming Vex Thal, I only now realize that I shouldn't be all that
worried about how my loot stacks up - I'm already doing darned well.
Of course, that doesn't mean I won't still try to get the Crazy Cleric BP.
In that instance, the journey is more fun than the destination. =)
--
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
Archon of Rodcet Nife
Silent Tempest
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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!