Had a bridge match last night (which we won by over 50 imps) so I didn't get
home until close to 11pm. I log on to EQ and see Complete Heal spam in the
cleric channel. I do a / all guild and see that we're in Fire. My guess is
we're doing Fennin Ro and this is soon confirmed. Alas, I also notice the
number of clerics sending CH messages to the channel has dropped
precipitously. An officer in guildchat asks, "Think we can zerg him down
from 30 percent?"
I run to the Fire zone in, shrink myself with a tinkering device, lev myself
with a potion, and invis myself with my Cloudy Steel Mask. I run towards
the first castle. Just as I reach it, I see the zone-wide emote that
indicates that FR is dead. Oh well, so much for me riding to the rescue.
Guildchat is filled with, "Woot, two gods in one night!" I ask which other
god we killed, fearful that I've missed another first, but it turns out to
be Xegony - our third Xegony kill. Xegony is now, indeed, a mob we can farm
like Fennin Ro. We just need to get the kinks worked out on our Rathe and
Coirnav strategy. We can pull all the mezzable Rathe Council and bring them
down to 2% easily enough, but as we try to get the unmezzable RC into
position, something always seems to go wrong in the Crowd Control area. Mez
breaks, a chanter dies, the rest get AE'd, and it all goes downhill from
there. Coirnav is a different matter; we now have no problem killing the
minis, but still don't have a coherent strategy for Coirnav himself. Those
adds get us every time. Still, we're making progress, and Time is within
our grasp.
Anyway, while loot is being decided, I run to the bazaar and see if I can
find Part of Yaeth's Compendium Page 73, which is a component for the
researchable spell Remove Greater Curse. No luck. I check, and someone has
RGC for sale for 130K. Yeah, right, like I'd pay even 20% of that.
I decide to try and farm Page 73 myself. I recently moved Marrtuk to his
own account so I can now truly two-box. I meet up with Marrtuk in Dulak an
he dutifully follows me deep inside the caves behind the waterfall. He
pulls and attacks the mobs, first with his snare-proccing hammer, then with
his WMBS. Monual just MoR's the mob and chain-casts Supernal Elixir on
Marrtuk. I'm being lazy in my two-boxing, letting Marrtuk do all the hard
work. Monual throws in the occasional nuke but doesn't try to steal XP from
Marrtuk. Marrtuk is getting about 1% of regular XP per kill, which means
he'll be leveling very slowly here. It's all right, though, since I'm
farming and XP-ing at the same time and willing to make this tradeoff.
I only kill about five mobs when a shaman recruit in my guild asks if any
healers want to try a hard LDoN adventure in Mistmoore. I shrug my
shoulders and tell him I'll come. I camp Marrtuk right there and gate
Monual away. I make my way to Butcherblock very quickly.
It takes a while to gather the rest of the party - one is having connection
problems. I happen to run into the alt of my good EQ friend Kayia at the
LDoN camp, and we chat for a bit. I virtue her 54 SK alt as she tries to
find her own LDoN group.
At long last we get everyone together. Just as I'm about to cast Hand of
Virtue, someone shouts that they will be MGB-ing Virtue at the camp. Great,
I don't have to waste the mana. I BoR everyone instead - don't have the
group version of that spell yet.
The group leader chooses an Assassinate adventure and we move in. The
wizard logs on a chanter friend of his to give us VoQ. Our group is me, the
shaman, a wizard, a mage, a monk, and a paladin. The paladin is my
guildleader who, of course, has tons of great equipment and every useful AA.
That makes me feel better about doing this adventure.
We find the zone-in, which is on the far side of LFay and takes an
annoyingly long time to find. We zone in. Immediately we get three mobs
and I find out exactly what "hard" means - I burn through 25% of my mana in
that first battle and get some aggro where mobs are hitting me for 900.
This is gonna be fun. I ask the mage for a Mod Rod - he has elemental silk
leggings which have a right-click effect of Mod Rod, so everyone is always
asking him for "the rod in your pants". My guild has a strange sense of
humor.
We move in. The mobs don't get any easier and, without a chanter, crowd
control consists of root-parking the adds. I am fully concentrating on
healing - for the first time in a long time, mana management is a crucial
concern. I beg the monk to try and get singles, but of course he can't
always accommodate me - time is a crucial factor as well. We need to spawn
the named by killing enough mobs, then get to the named and kill it.
Neither of these is an easy thing.
During one pull, a slow gets resisted and the paladin's hitpoints drop
quickly. I duck out of my CH - in the interests of mana efficiency I've
been trying to use nothing but CH's on the pally - and try a fast heal, but
not fast enough - the pally dies. Slow lands and the monk takes over
tanking. I quickly rez the pally, then heal the monk. The pally zones in
and I quickly Virtue him. During this pull we get another add, and the
pally resumes tanking duties. After the mobs are dead I'm down to 15m.
I've been using mod rods as soon as they refresh - I feel like I'm doing a
Xegony fight.
We take a small break, enough for me to get to 30m. The monk resumes
pulling, and for once we have some luck getting singles. By using CH's and
sitting the rest of the time, I slowly build up to 70m. Great.
We finally kill enough mobs to spawn the named. We have a little over 30
minutes left. The wizard scouts with his eye, trying to find the named.
The pally uses invis to go looking, too. Alas, some of the mobs are undead;
he starts taking damage. I don't see him and try to run up to heal him.
Stupid mistake; I take aggro from the mobs he invis'd past. I die pretty
quickly.
Eventually they find my corpse and the pally rezzes me. We are running
short on time - 20 minutes left now. There are seven living mobs between us
and the room with the named in it. The rest are undead. The wizard gives
me a manastone - the first time I've ever seen one. He decesses me and I
zone out. I start clicking on the manastone and I'm impressed - I take 60
hitpoints of damage but regain mana. I get myself down to 1 percent, then
cast Complete Heal. Repeating this process a couple of times, I'm able to
get back to full mana and buff myself. No wonder they removed those things.
That is a way-powerful item.
I zone back in and get Call-of-the-Hero'd by the mage. The rest of my party
has been killing the remaining living mobs and I help them out. When
they're dead, we're told to get Invisibility to Undead up. I have a group
version of ITU that I've almost never used, but I get it up now. I invis
everyone and we get to the room where the named is.
It's a depressing sight. There are a ton of mobs in the room. Most are
undead, but a couple are living. We only have 8 minutes to complete this
task. We hug the wall, group ITU still up, until we run into a living mob.
We kill it despite the fact that the undead mobs are healing it. I recast
group ITU and we creep a little closer. The monk pulls a living guard right
next to the named and we kill it. Again I cast group ITU. Five minutes
left.
The monk tries to single-pull the named but too many other mobs come and he
FD's. He tells me to pacify one of the undead mobs. I memorize
Pacification and accidentally cast group ITU again. Then I try to pacify
the mob the monk indicated. First attempt: resist. Second attempt: resist
and aggro. Three mobs including the named reduce me to a red smear in no
time at all.
I find myself back at my bind point in the Plane of Tranquility. I sigh and
sit, watching groupsay. Surprisingly it's not a wipe; group ITU was still
up, so none of the rest of the party was aggro'd. In fact, the adds wander
away first, leaving the named there by himself. The party attacks. I have
found a new pulling strategy: cleric suicide pacification.
The battle is going to be a close one. The shaman is trying to heal but is
soon OOM. The pally is trying to heal himself, but he is OOM and Lay on
Hands is down. The wizard declares that he is gonna Manaburn and prays that
it is enough. Evidently it doesn't quite kill the named outright, but it
comes close, and the rest of the party finishes the mob. I get a success
message right there in the Plane of Tranquility - we killed the named with
two minutes to spare. For this, we get 105 adventure points. I can't help
but reflect that doing Normal adventures is much easier and much more likely
to get you adventure points.
I ask how many people died and it turns out I was the only one. Amazing. I
was *so* certain we were gonna wipe and I was gonna get my first LDoN
failure - okay, I've only attempted twelve adventures, but still. =)
The pally rezzes me and I loot. We decess, then go back to open a chest we
had bypassed. Alas, all it held was a no-drop one-charge potion of
Illusion: Ogre. We all roll for the heck of it and the mage wins.
We zone out after I reluctantly return the manastone to the wizard. I was
the main looter, so I sell and try to split the plat, but everyone has zoned
or disbanded and doesn't care about the loot, so I end up doing a two-way
split between me and my guildleader. Not much, enough to pay for a stack of
emeralds. Oh, I finally got Unfailing Divinity 3 so I can now DI tanks on
our raids. Whee.
It's now very late - I hadn't planned on the adventure taking the full
ninety minutes to complete. =) I log off, very tired. While it was a fun
challenge, at the same time I don't think the risk/reward ratio is right on
Hard adventures. I can do a Normal adventure in less than half the time
with just about no chance of failure and get 51 AP's. That seems a much
more worthwhile endeavor. Still, I had to do at least one Hard to get a
feel for the flavor. I'm not *so* concerned about my perfect record that
I'm not willing to risk it in order to try something fun and new. =)
--
-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!