Well, after my guild (or, more accurately, the alliance of my guild with
another guild) finally killed Emp, suddenly the pressure went up to collect
all the rest of the pieces for the Vex Thal key. I'd already acquired a few
pieces:
Once, after a Arch Lich kill, I was watching loot get awarded. Always after
every kill, they talked about a ball of luclinite being on the corpse and
asked who wanted it. I finally asked what that was for and was told it was
for the Vex Thal key. I sat right up and said that I was going to
ninja-loot it. An officer of my guild told me to go ahead, and I had the
first part of my VT key.
Another time, I was sitting in the Nexus wondering what to do, when someone
announced in /guildsay that a Lucid Shard was rotting in The Grey. So I
jumped up and began running. Halfway there, our guild leader asked if
anyone was going to loot it and I said I was on my way, and he was cool with
that. I got there and looted my first shard. I used /note to keep track of
the fact that I had looted this shard.
On our way to kill the Burrower Parasite, we slaughtered everything in our
path. One of the mobs dropped a lucid shard. I rolled and lost (against
about two dozen other people). Another shard dropped, and again we rolled.
This time I got the highest roll. The Deep shard was mine.
That left two shards down, and eight to go after I got my Planar Rift. I
had to get to work.
Ssra was easy: a group of guildies got together and slaughtered skeletons
until everyone got a shard. No ore dropped, alas. To this day we still
don't have a lot of banes, but we can still take Emp pretty easily.
Same with Fungus Grove: we went to a part of FG I didn't even know existed -
caves with great big huge bug things. We spent many hours there, and a
couple of shards dropped. I won the roll on one.
Then our alliance of guilds decided to spend hours in Akheva getting frames.
A mage summoned globes, a necro passed out Essence Emeralds (one of our
guildmates had decided to leave EQ, so she had allowed herself to be
sacrificed all the way down to 46, which gave us lots of EE's.) We killed
mobs for hour after hour after hour - at least twelve hours in that room,
waiting for the uncommon spawn, killing everything around us until it
popped. Someone got the bright idea to run out and pull the rock creatures
that drop shards, which led to some interestingly huge trains at times.
During it all, a few shards dropped, and I won the roll on one. Plus I got
my frame, so all was well.
I had to solo a few. People may tell you that clerics can, indeed, solo,
and that's true and untrue. I can solo some blue mobs, but they will take a
long time to kill and use most of my mana. It certainly isn't efficient,
and is *not* a good source of XP. But if you're trying to farm something
and can't get a partner, you can get by.
Dawnshroud Peaks was incredibly easy; the third rockhopper I killed had a
shard. Scarlet Desert took a little longer. I was sharing the plateau with
a necro. I buffed him and his pet and asked if it was all right if I pulled
some mobs for myself. He was fine with that, and even offered to let me
know if a shard dropped. I solo'd revenants for a couple of hours, then got
a tell from the necro that he had a shard. I ran over and looted the shard
and thanked him profusely. Being nice to folks can reap benefits.
Another time I got a group together and we did Acrylia Caverns. The mobs
were not at all difficult to kill, and the first two skullcrackers we killed
dropped shards. Three of us needed shards, and the other two people in my
party won the rolls. So we ended up having to kill mobs for two more hours
before another shard dropped. Just to rub it in, the other skullcracker
that spawned at the same time also dropped a shard. We let the 51 monk that
had accompanied us to get XP loot the shard. He was happy even if he was
somewhat pessimistic about ever getting into VT. That set me to wondering -
how many folks that get above level 50 ever see Vex Thal? Half of them? A
quarter of them? Ten percent? I have the feeling the number is somewhere
below ten percent.
Sans Seru was difficult. I hated the thought of destroying my faction - one
of the reasons I chose to play a human was that they had good faction with
more races than anyone else. But I really had no choice. These mobs were
really tough - I couldn't melee them, they did too much damage. They didn't
have a lot of hitpoints, however, so I could just nuke, root, nuke, root,
over and over again. I also learned to just attack humans in plate mail -
the others would nuke me or heal themselves, which was highly annoying. Two
days of running around killing legionnaires finally resulted in a shard, and
dubious faction with the guards. Ah well. It was a great feeling to loot a
mob and see the shard on the corpse.
That left one shard remaining - Maiden's Eye. This is the real bottleneck.
The shard is common drop off of mobs that spawn rarely. Very rarely. I
couldn't get much help from my guild in camping the shard - and I can
understand why, who wants to spend hours getting no XP and no loot? - so I
had to try to solo the placeholders.
I came to really dislike ME. There are lots and lots of wandering mobs that
love to aggro you. And there are lots of traps that spawn yet more mobs.
And there are lots of folks trying to get XP who over-pull or get too much
aggro and end up training everyone in sight. And in those situations where
I could finally get a placeholder one-on-one, it had too many hitpoints to
nuke and root. So I had to melee it. Took a while to find an acceptable
strategy - I summoned my ever-proc'ing Hammer of Souls, and got Yaulp ready.
Then I pulled the mob by casting Mark of Retribution, understanding that
this 15-point Damage Shield would do more damage then I possibly could.
Then, when it got within melee range, I summoned my hammer pet, then
immediately cast Yaulp and Ethereal Elixir on myself. Then I'd melee,
bashing as often as I could, until the Ethereal Elixir wore off. Then I'd
target myself and re-cast EE, then go back and melee the mob. Oh, and I had
to keep re-casting Yaulp. Each fight took a long time and required a lot of
micro-managing on my part. Oh, and sometimes I'd get an add, which meant
I'd have to keep rooting it, then go to work on it when I was done with the
placeholder mob. This was terribly, terribly inefficient, and I kept asking
for help from my guild, which was alas too busy doing other things like
getting XP. Between shard camps and working on my smithing (243 adjusted
now), I had gotten very little XP and I was getting jealous and irritated.
All this was not producing any mobs that dropped a shard. I was really
coming to loathe this quest and this zone - now I finally understand all the
complaining about the time-sink quests in SoL. Then, I got the help of a
druid who also needed the shard. She managed to convince a warrior to come
help us. We began killing placeholders by the ton. There were other
guildies in the zone - a mage and a bard - who had decided to try and solo
for their own shards. I can somewhat understand that - it would be
frustrating to spend hours trying to get a shard-holding mob to spawn, only
to lose the roll to someone else. Still, there are advantages to grouping
with other folks. The bard, for example, got a shard mob to spawn - a
gorantha forager. She tried to solo the mob, but it was too much for her
and she had to zone. In the meantime, a beastlord who was just in the zone
for XP attacked the forager and killed it. A shard dropped. He happened to
be friends with the druid who was grouped with me. He offered the shard to
her, and she offered to roll with me on it. I was quite happy to do so.
She also offered to let the bard roll on it as well. But the bard was less
than happy - she felt the shard should be *hers*, without a roll, since she
had gotten the mob to spawn by killing the placeholders. I could understand
her position. I just wasn't sure if I could accept it - she had tried to
kill the mob and failed, thus it was open season to anyone else who wanted
it. This wasn't a triggered mob, it was just a mob that spawned rarely.
But still, she had done the work to get it to spawn - I waffled back and
forth in my mind. In the end, the druid finally managed to convince the
bard to come roll on it with us. On a 200-500 roll, the druid rolled a 201
and the bard rolled a 204. I rolled a 398 and looted the last piece of my
Vex Thal key. It was with a feeling of guilt that I combined everything
into my Vex Thal key. I wish I had obtained this a bit more cleanly.
I stayed with the druid and the bard while they pulled more mobs. We were
joined by another druid who also needed the shard. With our tank puller, we
now had a great group, and we were able to keep most of the placeholder mobs
cleared. Alas, an hour later our guild called a High Priest raid in Ssra,
so we had to leave.
After the High Priest dropped (after an embarrassing start where the Main
Tank engaged from the wrong side of the HP - out of range of the clerics -
and dropped quickly, and rampage spread out of control killing the clerics,
and we had to memblur the HP and start over), the guild leaders decided to
try Vex Thal. Our server's uber guild had already cleared most of Vex Thal,
but they had left a couple of boss mobs up. We wanted to try them, just to
give ourselves some experience in VT.
Eagerly I ran to Umbral Plains. I found the entrance to VT and figured I
could just run by the guardians and zone in. It would have worked, too, if
I hadn't been immediately stunned. It didn't take long for four mobs
beating on me to kill me. Sheepishly I bought some invisibility potions and
decided to try again. Fortunately I ran into one of our alliance's Shadow
Knights at the zone-in to Umbral Plains, and she summoned my corpse. I
looted it, rezzed myself, and ran back to Vex Thal. This time I made myself
invisible and zoned in.
Made me feel all oogy inside to see the message, "You have entered Vex
Thal." I also saw the message that my Vex Thal key had been added to my
keyring, so I destroyed it - I had learned from tradeskilling how valuable
any available inventory space can be. This met with open horror from my
guild officers - "You really deleted it?!" Invisibility was still up, so I
zoned out and zoned back in just to prove I could. Still, my officers
expressed great doubt over the wisdom of deleting my key - what if key rings
get screwed up again? How smart was it to delete something it had taken me
*so* long to create? I responded that if key rings got deleted I could just
petition to get my Vex Thal key back, but I had to admit they had a point -
I'd hate to have to depend on Customer Service to get something as valuable
as my Vex Thal key if something goes wrong with keyrings like it has in the
past.
The zone-in to Vex Thal was disappointing - just a very big, undecorated
stone hallway. They began pulling mobs - which were also disappointing, the
same rock guys you find in Mons Letalis and Mons Seru and other such places.
However, I was utterly amazed at how many hitpoints they had - it took us a
long time to kill just one. And these are the trash mobs of Vex Thal.
After killing the trash mobs, we moved up to where I could see a smaller
tunnel that lead out into a courtyard. At this point the raid ground to a
halt; we just now realized we had no rogues. And evidently there are some
traps ahead that we couldn't get around. So the raid was called at that
point; we'll try again when we have some rogues. And really, since there
were only 20 of us, we wouldn't have gotten far anyway - this was an
exploratory probe more than anything else.
So I am now officially Vex Thal-enabled. I remember how utterly
unattainable this seemed just a few months ago. Right now, the Plane of
Time seems equally unattainable - but who knows what will happen in a few
more months? =)
After all this time, EQ still has some things to look forward to. Right now
I'm eagerly anticipating our next foray into Vex Thal. So much to see
still. Aten Ha Ra, here we come!
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
High Priest of Rodcet Nife
Winter's Light
Drinal server
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!