After killing Rallos Zek the Warlord, my guild's been concentrating on
getting everyone caught up on flags. What's killing us is Mith Marr, which
has been consistently farmed by our uber-guild for haste belts. We did
manage to get one kill in last week, but we still have people who missed the
flag. The Planar Projection despawns quickly, making it very difficult to
log on folks and get them flagged. I don't necessarily believe that the PP
should be made to stay up longer; after all, flags should really be for
people who are there and logged in. It's just inconvenient for us,
especially since MM is a hotly-contested mob.
Another place where people are falling behind on in flags is Solusek Ro.
Typically we kill a Solusek Ro mini-boss or two at the end of a raiding
day - after a lot of people logged off, of course. Lately, though, the
pressure's been on to start these bosses right away to get enough people
flagged. So that's what we did Tuesday and Wednesday: Tower of Solusek Ro
mini-bosses.
I once referred to Tower of Solusek Ro as "Vex Thal with flags". It's not
*quite* as bad as VT, but there are still an awful lot of mobs you have to
kill to get to the mini-bosses. Last night, when I log on, someone wants me
to do a smithing order for them and asks how long I'm gonna be in ToSR.
"Hours and hours", I tell her. Can't be helped.
Again, I don't bother to memorize names, so you'll have to forgive me if I
refer to the mini-bosses as "bird guy" or "Ms. Ragefire". Today we're
headed towards "Guy with the pet swords that do tons of damage". I log on
after the raid is almost there. Fortunately the respawn rate is very slow.
So I follow my usual pattern of just running where I don't see any mobs. I
end up getting mildly lost in the rocky tunnels - it seems everywhere I go,
there are mobs up. I decide to try following the lava, and that works - I
find the raid just before they're about to engage. Almost as soon as I get
there they rush up, and I find out who the Main Tank is and heal him. Down
he goes, and amazingly no one gets deathtouched by the warders that spawn
afterwards. We finish off the pet swords as I finally get a group.
We move on to another mini, "Genie that does tons of AE damage". This also
goes very smoothly, although one of our new cleric recruits keeps dying.
She expresses some frustration and we sympathize - we've all been there.
She tries to pawn off being the sacrificial cleric to someone else, but
we're reluctant to assume the mantle.
That's the last of the minis - we'd killed the other three the day before.
I ask if Solusek Ro is up, and to my surprise am told "Yes". Evidently he
popped while we were fighting the minis. This is good news, as the
uber-guild has been killing him as soon as he pops to keep us out of the
Plane of Fire. For once, we have the advantage.
We clear down to the huge lava pillar in the center of the zone. People are
coming in, and we end up with 72 people in the raid plus a couple of
stragglers - amazing how people will log in for first kills like this. =)
Still, there's a lot of people not flagged for the tower, let alone have all
five mini-boss flags.
Officers are discussing strategy - there are two hard-hitting mobs when we
zone in that have to be dealt with right away. I frown and say, "You know,
a lot of people here aren't going to be able to click up to Solusek Ro."
"If you have 85% of the raid flagged, the rest can get in," is the response.
"But, remember Bertoxx? If you didn't have the Carpin flag, you couldn't
get down, no matter what."
"That was a key."
Er, no, it was a flag, but everyone seems so confident that I give up. "OK,
as long as y'all are certain." I work with the cleric on the healing
strategy - half will heal one tank, half will heal another. Finally, the
word is given, "CLICK UP NOW". I run to the pillar, click for a bit on the
base, get no where, move up and click on the glowing runes, and boom - here
I am in Solusek Ro's chamber. So are a buch of other people, and they begin
attacking the guards.
Meantime, the raid channel is being flooded with, "I can't get in." People
are clicking away and being told they lack the willpower. There's a bit of
confusion, and I content myself with one "Told ya" comment before shutting
up. Got tanks to heal, after all. I move myself around and accidentally
click on a large circular metal plate on the floor. I get a message, "You
do not have the strength to open these doors". Ah, this must be the
infamous portal to the Plane of Fire that was recently nerfed.
When the guards are dead we reassess. Fifty people now instead of
seventy-two plus. But plenty of clerics - only our cleric recruit failed to
get up. We decide to proceed. As we clear the chamber of guards, we
discuss strategy. Solusek Ro has a nasty AE (and yes, I know it pales in
comparison to some elemental boss mobs but it's still worse than anything
we've ever had to deal with) and we have to figure out a healing strategy.
Since the AE is centered on the MT, we decide to do the fight
"Cursed-style". When the AE is due to pop, the tanks will run out of range,
wait for the AE to pass, then run back in. Alas, the AE is wider than the
clerics' CH range. So we're going to get hit no matter what. So a shaman
is assigned to each cleric, and their sole duty is to keep us clerics alive.
We clerics are having our own strategy discussion. We don't have a real
strong cleric leader - the person who directs the clerics is whoever is
feeling the bossiest at the moment. Right now, our "boss" cleric is setting
the chain order - five clerics - and telling us to set our delay to 10.
"Um," I say, "five times ten is fifty and CH is a 100 cast." She insists on
10 and has us do a test run. Much to my surprise, it works - evidently
there's enough human delay to make up the difference. This time it was
right to ignore me.
Solusek Ro is pulled. For the first few seconds, all goes well - our very
fast chain is working. Then the tank goes out of range, and dies, and so do
the secondary and tertiary tanks. We clerics hurriedly reposition ourselves
as the fourth tank - a recruit that was just made a full member two days
ago - steps in. Now we have it right, and the tank is staying up. I have
precious little time to devote to noticing outside details much - this is a
*fast* CH chain - but I do notice that I'm taking some pretty good damage,
which is being healed with dispatch by the shaman. I'm somewhat surprised
that my CH is never interrupted - perhaps it's not possible to be
interrupted by an AE unless there's a stun component. I'd never noticed
that before.
I also see that I'm burning through mana pretty quickly. At one point I
quickly click on my mod rod and recover a bit of mana, but I'm worried that
I'm not going to make it through the fight. I also don't even have the time
to check on Sol Ro's health between heals, so have to rely on reports in the
raid channel. "Sol Ro 50", "Sol Ro 30" - gonna be close. As Sol Ro dips
below 20, one of the clerics tells us to skip her - she's run out of mana.
I'm getting there myself. "Get ready for Enrage" - only 10 percent to go...
...and then I die. Evidently the shaman that was healing me also ran out of
mana.
I quickly tell the cleric channel that I'm dead, and their very fast CH
chain just got faster. As I re-memorize my spells, Sol Ro's health is being
reported. "5%", "3%", followed by "Dead." There is much rejoicing, some of
it a bit melancholy as the unflagged have to cheer form the sidelines.
I get rezzed back in. I quickly loot my corpse, then run to the Planar
Projection. I also notice that the metal door on the floor has been lifted
open - we can now port to the Plane of Fire. Everyone is told to stay in
the Tower so that we can deal with repops while awaiting loot decisions. I
hail the PP and get my flag.
Loot is some gloves and Gauntlets of the Burning Prince. I perk up when I
see that the gauntlets are CLR-useable. 18 WIS, 100hp, 125mana, some
resists, other stats. A terrific upgrade for my Salubrious Heraldic
Gauntlets. They also have a focus effect: Speed of Solusek. I look it up,
and it's an 18% spell haste on detrimental spells. I deflate a little -
that's int caster loot, not priest loot. But discussions ensue - there's
much better spell haste items for int casters, and the elemental molds we'll
soon be getting have better spell haste. I perk up and decide to put my
name in - I've been dying to replace my Heraldic pieces for a long time.
Loot decisions always take a while - we don't use DKP and I'm glad for it,
but that also means the officers have to take some time to decide. In the
meantime, we get the repops we feared and begin taking them down. During
the middle of the fight, one of the officers asks me to link my current
gloves. That makes me feel good - I must be one of the finalists, and it's
obvious that the gauntlets are a huge upgrade for my 20hp 20mana heraldic
gauntlets. Soon after, the announcement is made, "Grats Monual gauntlets."
I run and loot and respond to the mana tells of congratulations. Mine is
the last loot award, and by the time I get back to help finish off the
guards, the PP has despawned, the portal to the Plane of Fire is closed
again, and we just now notice that no wizards made it up to Sol Ro's
chamber. So we have a bunch of melee that are stranded here. Nothing left
to do but to have them kill each other and wait for the corpses to pop at
the graveyard. I get permission to gate out.
I do some smithing stuff - I'm gearing up for another big smithing run, and
I help out the person who sent me a tell when I first logged in. Then I get
asked to come to Plane of Fire to join an exploratory XP group. Already a
couple of named have been killed, with some good drops. I come a-runnin'.
I look at the portal to the Plane of Fire - a red sphere above a pool of
water. A few times in the past I've gone running around this pool, clicking
on the sphere just in case - and being told I lack the willpower. This
time, I click, and my screen freezes. I smile; Plane o' Fire, here I come!
I zone in, join the group, buff up, we move a bit aways trying to find
"Castle1" wherever that is. Alas, we get aggro along the way, then more
aggro, then more aggro, and we manage to wipe fairly quickly. We zone back
and rez and loot, and this time we stay at the zone-in and pull mobs. I
watch the drops for tradeskill items, and nab some molten ore - would love
to make some inferno plate. The XP isn't nearly as good as in the Plane of
Earth, and when I comment on this, am told that "Castle1" has better XP mobs
plus some easy named, if we can get to it without killing ourselves. After
an hour we call a halt - it's pretty late.
So: yet another milestone, yet another plane entered. At this point, our
guild is having a raging debate over whether to continue to farm VT or just
concentrate on farming elemental mobs. We'll see. In the meantime, it's
terrific that we got this far. Another step towards the good ol' Plane of
Time. =)
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
Archon 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!