Saturday I log on, in anticipation of going to Vex Thal. Our new guild
leader (old guild leader quit the game and is ebaying his character) had
been repeatedly telling us to log on early on Saturday so we can take a good
run at VT. Evidently we've worked out a rotation with our resident
uber-guild; we'll take VT this week, they'll take VT next week, then they'll
forever abandon Luclin and focus on the Planes (they're trying to take down
Rallos Zek right now).
I'm late to the raid, even though I camped in Vex Thal. Already they're
inside the palace. A druid comes to the zone line to be a Call of the Hero
link for me and two others who are nearby - including a new recruit to our
guild, another cleric. It's not often you get a new recruit who already has
their Vex Thal key. Evidently the character was a part of our uber-guild
but then ebayed. The person who took over the character renamed him and
applied to our guild. He seems to be familiar with playing a cleric but not
familiar with the high-end game. He has to be told where to position
himself and what particular strategies are to be used against each mob.
We've also had to help him set up a Complete Heal Chain hotkey. But he's
friendly, polite, and very willing to learn. And once he's told something,
he has the ability to retain it, a rare trait these days. Despite my deep
reservations when he was announced as a recruit to the guild, I've found
myself warming up to him. He's doing a good job so far.
The druid invites me into the group for the CotH. I join and wait for the
summons. As I wait, one member of the group dies. Soon after, another
person dies. Someone says into the raid channel, "Well, at least we picked
a good place to wipe." Evidently a paladin had decided to help out the
clerics by healing a monk as he was pulling. The resulting train wipes us
out. But it's all right; a cleric was able to camp, and she logs back on
and rezzes everyone back in. Eventually I get summoned and join the raid.
We begin to fight.
And fight.
And fight.
There are an incredible number of mobs in Vex Thal with an incredible number
of hit points. Oh, and some of the mobs, upon dying, turn into undead
versions of themselves that also have a fair number of hitpoints. The
fights drag on and on and on. Hour after hour we continue the cycle. Move
to a room or a section of corridor. Sit there for ninety minutes clearing
mobs. Move up to a new room or section of corridor. Sit there for ninety
minutes clearing mobs. And so forth.
One person comments in the raid channel, "Remember a time when we *weren't*
sitting in this room?" Another person responds, "No." Everyone is quite
bored. Indeed, whenever we have a pull, you can see about half of the
people don't move or respond; there's a lot of split attention. People
leave and new people are CotH'd in. Some people leave only to return a
couple of hours later. It's an amazing marathon of killing the same kinds
of mobs over and over.
We begin to learn naming conventions. Qua's and Zon's are mezzable. Pil's
and especially Eom's are difficult mobs. Many of the four-arm guys will
turn into Xakra's, or undead versions of themselves after they die. Through
sheer repetition are these facts drilled into our brains.
We have one more wipe. We reach the end of a corridor and take down a named
mob. The loot is nice, although looking at it I can't help but feel it
isn't worth the hours of effort necessary to reach it. There's an orb at
the end of this corridor that we have to click to get to the next level.
Our two guilds are busy awarding loot and they've finished awarding
everything except an ancient wizard spell. The wizards are deciding who's
going to get it when suddenly the monk puller says, "Everyone click on the
orb now!" This leads to confusion; loot isn't finished being awarded,
should we really be moving? Half of the raid ports up. Half stays behind.
Those that click get wiped, including those that click in later to get
killed piecemeal.
There's a lot of bickering. The monk wants to know why everyone didn't
click. I want to know why we were moving when loot hadn't been finished.
I'm one of those who remained behind, and perhaps that was a mistake. I
still can't help but feel that we shouldn't have been moving, but I probably
should have heeded the call, mistake or no. Either way, we have to figure
out how to recover from this; more than half of the raid is dead upstairs,
the rest of us are sitting downstairs.
While we're deciding, the corridor begins to repop. I watch a paladin tank
two mobs. With an unobstructed view of the pally, I stand and click him so
I can target and heal him.
Guess what happened. Go ahead, guess.
Yes, I was standing too close to the orb. Despite the fact that it was not
in my field of vision, I've clicked on the orb. I'm transported upstairs,
where three mobs begin to beat on me. I try to get off Divine Aura but it's
no good; they're beating on me too fast. Interestingly, though, I get
summoned by the mobs downstairs. They're the ones that end up finishing me
off.
I sigh and sit back, preparing for a long CR. I mem my spells and being the
journey from the Nexus to Vex Thal, anticipating that we're going to have to
summon our corpses to the zone line and rez there. I arrive in Umbral
Plains all right, then make my way towards Vex Thal, ignoring the raid at
the Maiden's Eye zone line. Oops, the raid is there for a reason. Hello,
Mr. Rumblecrush.
Back in the Nexus, I decide to buy a SoW potion from the bazaar and a few
invisibility potions to make the run to VT easier. Just as I'm beginning, I
get a rez pop-up. I blink, and wonder if I should decline it and continue
towards my Umbral Plains corpse. But that will take some time and not be
without risk, so I decide to sacrifice the XP on that corpse and click Yes.
I find myself back in Vex Thal at the end of the corridor. Somehow they've
managed to drag all the corpses back downstairs, and a necro rezzed a cleric
who then began rezzing everyone else. I still don't know how they did it -
perhaps the corpses upstairs were in range of /corpse downstairs.
We rez, rebuff, and clear some of the repops in the downstairs corridor.
Then, when everyone's ready, we click on the orb. This time we clear the
mobs without any problems.
Finally, after twelve hours (twelve hours!) of clearing mobs and boss mobs
and mini-Aten's, we find ourselves in a small antechamber. Through the
doorway we can see Aten Ha Ra. We discuss various strategies. I ask in the
cleric channel if we should form a cleric group with a necro to feed mana to
us. One cleric says that it sounds like a good idea, another cleric doesn't
want to. Without a clear consensus, we fall back on our default strategy of
just setting up the Complete Heal Chain in the cleric channel, not leaving
our individual groups. One cleric, who is on a dial-up and often lags badly
in boss mobs fights, is designated to be the rezzer/rebuffer/spot healer.
The rest of us form our chain, then find out that the raid leaders have
decided on a strategy. Aten Ha Ra will be pulled into the antechamber.
Despite the fact that the door is too small for her, we have information
that she will warp into the antechamber. The clerics will then run out into
the throne room and hug the wall - within range of the tanks, but out of
range of her silence AE.
We begin. The main tank, alas, falls quickly, but the next Main Tank steps
in and stays up. The fight takes a long time, with the extra challenge of
my Complete Heals being interrupted by Aten's Gravity Flux. (As an aside, I
find myself enjoying being flung up high and crashing back to earth, despite
the threat it poses to the raid.) I learn to throw in a fast heal if my
Complete Heal gets interrupted. All in all, as someone comments, this fight
is easier than many of the PoP boss mob fights we've done. Aten Ha Ra
falls, and there is much rejoicing. Someone comments, "We've beaten the
game!" only to be gently corrected: "We've beaten Luclin."
Since this is our first Aten Ha Ra kill, we all pose around her throne. Now
that I'm not staring at the wall mashing my CH key, I take a good look
around the room and it's quite impressive. After the group pictures are
done, I stand on top of her throne and take a couple of solo pictures of my
own.
The loot is awe-inspiring. An Essence of Aten Ha Ra, which can be used to
get a jaw-dropping neck piece. A mage in my guild is awarded that. A
terrific caster robe with FT VI and lots of stats. A wizard in the other
guild gets that. The Aegis of Judgement, which is awarded to a cleric in
the other guild that has lost out on too many Shields of Ssraeshza. And a
melee earring, which is awarded to a tank in our guild.
I dearly hope we come back and do this again. I really want the Mail of
Judgement, the nicest cleric breastplate currently in existence. I worry,
though, that we'll have the commitment from everyone in the guild to labor
through thirteen hours of fights to get to Aten Ha Ra. It was incredibly
boring; now I understand some of the complaints about this zone design.
Afterwards I gate out and run back to Umbral Plains. I find my corpse and
am pleased that there's a whole 22 minutes left on the corpse timer. I rez
myself, bringing myself 67% of the way through 63 - all of it earned in
raids. Now that I'm done with smithing, I really have to start bearing down
and get myself up to 65.
So: one expansion down. =) Now all we have to do is get to the Plane of
Time, which I anticipate might happen by next Christmas. Oh well; despite
the long road ahead of our guild, I can still stop and bask in this victory.
We finally beat Shadows of Luclin. ^_^
-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!