Vex Thal, Vex Thal, Vex Thal. This is the boringest dungeon crawl ever, but
man... the loot is awesome. So, what with the servers going up and down,
we've spent much of this past week in VT farming.
I still have to learn the names of the boss mobs; they have extremely
unintuitive names that I haven't bothered to learn. Like, for example,
we've set up a Call of the Hero bot right in front of a perma-rooted giant
blob boss. Two days ago we CotH'd in, killed it, got the loot, and TL'd
out. Oh, and I got a nice neck piece that gives me a twenty percent savings
on the mana cost of my buffs. It dramatically reduces the mana cost of
casting endless Virtues.
Yesterday I spend the whole day in training after only getting a couple
hours of sleep the night before. So I'm already pretty tired as I log in.
My guild leader is trying to decide what mob to go after; evidently it
depends on whether some mob somewhere is holding a "BB" or not. In my tired
state I don't really pay attention to which mob they're talking about or
what a BB is. Evidently no "BB" is found, so the call goes out to get to
Vex Thal.
I get there without a problem and am one of the first to zone in and get
CotH'd. Giant blob boss mob is right in front of us. We pull some of the
surrounding mobs to prevent them from adding during the boss fight. After
killing five mobs, we set up for the boss fight and begin. The blob is one
of those that likes to AE Grav Flux. I'm merrily healing away when I get
Grav Flux'd and fall about three feet for 20K. I sigh and sit back while
everyone else kills the blob. My body is nice and hidden, so I have to
prompt to get a rez. The blob drops another neck piece, which another
cleric in my guild gets. He's quite happy with it, especially later when he
MGB's Hand of Virtue. Evidently he uses 11% less of his total mana. Man, I
have to actually get MGB eventually. Gotta ding 65 first, though.
Anyway, we begin the tedious process of killing a bunch of mobs to get to
the other boss mobs. I watch with half-lidded eyes as we kill mobs for a
couple of hours. We get to one boss mob and kill it. Some nice loot, yay.
Guild leader announces we'll be killing one more boss mob. About a dozen
people log. For a couple more hours we kill more mobs. We have one nice
protracted battle where someone wandered too close to the Feign Death'd
monk, aggroing six heavy-hitting unmezzabe mobs. Tanks and clerics begin
dropping like flies, and I have to use DA and DB in short order. We get
some semblance of order, and I'm rezzing and healing as fast as I can.
Alas, we're getting repops. We try to move up into another room, away from
the repops. It's during this move that I heal a tank and get aggro. With
DA and DB down, there's little I can do but just stand there and die.
Still, we manage to recover from this mess and stay ahead of the repops as
we rebuff and move on.
It's after 1 am and I am having serious problems keeping my eyes open. Now,
by long habit I have my fingers poised over the "awd" keys, which I've
remapped for my movement. I find myself nodding off for a second or two
every now and again. When I do, for some reason I press the "w" key and my
character moves forward. I usually recover in time, but I am quite anxious
for this to be done with.
I also make another startling observation: my Obulus Death Shroud is now
useless. I hadn't realized until just now that by far the majority of the
spells I cast are above level 60, and that my ODS's Mana Preservation III
won't work. I ask in guild what items give MP IV and am given a very short
list of items, including a drop off of Aten Ha Ra. I sigh and make a mental
note to sell my ODS and make myself some heraldic shoulders. In the
meantime, I need to stop mentally dealing myself out of shoulder drops.
We finally reach a section of hallway close to another boss mob. I'm
desperate for sleep but still very interested in helping us kill this mob
and getting more loot, so I'm doggedly hanging on. Despite that
determination, however, my eyelids droop close, my finger inevitably
descends...
...when I wake up, I'm in boiling lava.
What the heck? I'm utterly confused - I had no idea there was lava anywhere
in Vex Thal. I'm burning burning burning. I quickly cast Supernal Elixir
on myself. I do a 360 and find no readily apparent way to get out of the
lava. Sheepishly I tell the group that I fell into lava. There is a delay
while they drop a member and get a mage to join to CotH me out. In the
meantime I notice I'm only taking 17 points of damage per tick, which is
easily manageable and no reason to panic. Tentatively I swim through the
lava, but I don't go too far for fear of aggroing mobs above me.
After a bit I get CotH'd to the bottom of a spiral staircase. After
determining who the tanks are going to be, we run up the spiral staircase
and charge the boss mob.
As I begin healing, I see a problem. We have only three clerics healing.
If I'd been more alert, I'd have made sure to get some druids into the
cleric channel to help with healing. As it is, we're in desperate straits.
We do what we can, but inevitably the first tank falls, then the second.
People are noticing our inability to keep up the healing, and druids and
even paladins are throwing in what heals they can. Alas, this is costing us
all a lot of mana. I have a mod rod which I use, but even then my mana is
dropping much more quickly than the mob's health. Man, this is going to get
messy. Eventually, as the mob drops towards 20 percent health, I'm reduced
to medding up to 9 percent, then standing and casting Complete Heal, then
sitting and medding again. This is not quite adequate. Our main tank dies,
then another. Every healer is screaming that they are out of mana. The mob
drops to 10 percent and enrages, which causes a lot of damage to tanks that
can ill afford to take it. Our guild leader, a paladin, steps up as the
main tank and manages to last a while. As the mob drops to two percent, the
pally dies. I do a /who warrior and find only one left. I target the
warrior, only to get his corpse. Oops.
The boss mob is now done eating tanks and moves on to clerics. It's at one
percent as it summons me. I do the worst thing possible - I try to run
away. See, I'm so used to having a tank there to taunt a boss mob that it
doesn't occur to me that there are no tanks left. The mob chases after me,
summons me a couple of times, then finally kills me.
I'm positively grim as I sit in the Nexus and follow the raid channel. The
boss mob is merrily going about killing casters now. One gets killed just
as she was about to nuke it. "What's it at?" one of our dead tanks asks.
"Zero percent" is the answer. "Oh, so it's dead?" "Nope, still ticking."
Jeebus. We're about to wipe to a Vex Thal boss mob that's at zero percent.
Just as I'm standing up to make the run back to Vex Thal, a rogue says into
the raid channel, "It's dead." There is a tremendous outpouring of relief
over this statement. We were down to our last eight raid members when it
died. Fortunately one of those raid members was a cleric, who rezzes
everyone back.
Someone asks if we're going to try and do Cursed. This is immediately
followed by lots of "Gotta get to bed" responses. We award loot and get the
heck out of there. I was so tired and it showed; there were many things I
could have done better. Like, for example, actually paying attention to
what healing would be needed against a boss mob.
A guildmate wants me to make him a Black Acrylia Halberd for a friend of
his. He provides me all the materials he's farmed, and I fail the combine
(trivial > 250). He says "d'oh" and thanks me for the attempt, saying he'll
try again when he can farm more of the necessary ingredients. I point out
that everything he needs - from Akheva blood to vials of distilled mana -
can be bought from traders in the Bazaar. He perks up at this and buys a
new set of ingredients. I do the combine again and this time I'm
successful. It's actually not a bad item - 40 / 48 2HS with a lifedraw
proc. His friend is a level 40 SK that will get some good use out of it.
I decide to set up shop in the bazaar, selling items I've long-since
outgrown. Earring of Cleansing. Raptor Hide Cap. Obulus Death Shroud. I
put them up for sale and fall gratefully into bed. It's 2am and I have
training again in the morning.
Today at work I look at my guild's agenda for the evening. Oh look... Vex
Thal. We'll take a few hours and go kill Aten Ha Ra. Man, I hope I can
stay awake this time.
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
High Priest of Rodcet Nife
Winter's Light
Drinal server
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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!