After a week-long vacation, I was somewhat anxious to log back on and raid.
So after work I raced home, ran the patcher, waited for a few files to load
(missed the DX9 patch while away), typed in my name and password... and got
a 1001: Cannot connect to the EverQuest servers. Hmm. Evidently I arrived
home just as the servers were being brought down for an emergency patch.
I spend the next hour watching women's college basketball - go Golden
Gophers! - then finally log back on. After a few minutes of hitting the
enter key over and over again, I finally get past the logon server. I say
hello to everyone and they say hi back. I talk with a guildmate I had met
in real life while on vacation; a neat guy.
We were raiding in Ikkiniz but the emergency patch killed that. Raids are
called off. I make my way over to Kod'taz anyway to rez people, including a
necro who has three corpses to summon. It's a sign of how long I've been
gone that I stand in front of the Magus and keep saying "Nedaria" over and
over again and keep wondering why he's not porting me away before I realize
that I'm *in* Nedaria and that I need to go to Natimbi.
After I finish the rezzes, I indicate that I am looking for a group. A
rogue sends me a tell asking me if I want to do an Ikkiniz trial. My reply
is, "Jeebus, no." That's all anyone wants to do these days; I need XP.
Everyone has a billion AA's and I'm stuck at around 160. All Ikkiniz does
is *drain* XP away from me.
The rogue persuades me to at least stick around and kill some of the named
mobs wandering around Kod'taz. While I've been rezzing and waiting, our
rival guild, Cats in Hats, has been reforming a raid. They clear to and
pull the named mob we were going after. Can't blame them for that, since we
were nowhere near ready. The rogue goes scouting and finds another named
mob considerably farther away. We buff up, invis ourselves, and follow him.
The event turns into a two-group mini-raid; we kill that named and two
others, including a respawn of the original named we had been going after.
One drop rots - a caster necklace that isn't as good as the Phase 1 necklace
from Time that also rots for us. We /ooc to CiH that they can have this
loot, but they respond with similar disdain.
The first mob does drop a Geomancy Stone, a turn-in for the new GoD spells.
I have none of the new cleric GoD spells, so I roll and win the Stone.
Excited, I gate to Nedaria to do the turn-in on the big boat in the Abysmal
Sea, since we're waiting for a couple more people to arrive. I make my way
over to the dock where the boat arrives that takes you to the big boat.
After a few minutes it arrives. I board it, wait a minute... and then watch
the boat slip underneath me and head towards the Abysmal Sea, leaving me
hanging in mid-air like Wile E. Coyote before he realizes that he's stepped
off a cliff.
I take a step and fall into the sea, then climb back onto the dock to wait
for the next boat. It arrives and I board it, jump on it, sit on it, crouch
on it, do everything I can to satisfy myself that the boat is in fact
underneath me and real. Then the boat takes off and again leaves me
hovering near the dock.
I give up and gate back to the Magus and head towards Kod'taz. We have one
more named we want to kill. The other people arrive and we invis up and run
towards a place fairly deep into the zone. As is my custom, I stay high on
the walls, staying as far away from mobs as possible. I use the in-game map
to determine where I need to go. When I finally get there, I'm very high on
the wall. I can see my guildmates as tiny figures far below me. Not
everyone has made it successfully, and I need to get down to rez some
corpses. Cautiously, I step away from the wall so I can start falling down.
But I can't.
I'm having another Wile E. Coyote moment, except this one is stretching on
and on. I'm standing in mid-air far above the ground, and I can't descend.
I click off Spirit of Eagle and confirm that I have no other levitation
effects. I jump, I crouch, I sit, but nothing I do makes a difference.
It's like a sheet of glass has been places on top of the zone and I'm
standing on it. I can't even click-target anything below me. I run around,
hoping to get aggro - if I can get summoned and killed, at least the rogue
can drag me. But no, I can't aggro a mob, even those high on the nearby
temples.
Gosh, this is annoying.
I am able to use the F-keys to target my groupmates, and I rez a couple of
them. While they are looting, they get aggro from a roaming mob. I heal
them, and this gets me aggro. The mob warps up to me and merrily beats me
to death.
I arrive back in Nedaria and use the Magus to get back to Natimbi. I don't
bother with invis since, if I'm careful, I can get to Kod'taz without
aggroing anything. I make my way over and zone in. I get an invis there
and make my way back to the corpses. The rogue is indeed able to drag my
corpse down and I loot it and rez everyone. We try again to move to where
the named is, but see-invis mobs aggro us and again begin to beat us up. I
try to camp to clear aggro, but I log back in too soon and get killed.
I repeat the process of getting back to Kod'taz. This time the rogues will
drag the corpses to the zone-in; we're giving up on this last named. Just
as well.
As this is going on, I get a tell from a CiH druid asking me if I want to
help finish the second Ikkiniz trial. I've only done the third and fourth
trials as part of a raid with my guild, so this would be a good thing for
me. But I'm in the middle of this CR and need to stay to rez everyone. As
I'm telling the druid this, a rogue in my guild asks me the same question:
want to finish the second Ikki trial? Evidently all the static mobs are
dead and all that's left is clearing the five roamers, then kill two
priests. I shrug and say okay.
Soon I find myself in a group with a rogue and warrior from my guild and a
druid, bard, and chanter from our rival guild. While I often bash CiH as a
whole, in practice I deal quite well with a lot of their individual members.
There's no stupid cross-guild bashing in this group; we just have a goal.
Kill these priests and complete the trial.
I'm the only one in the group who's never done the trial, so it's explained
to me. Two priests are in "jail cells" inside another room. If they have
line-of-sight on you, they will aggro you. And if one dies, the other will
rez it. So the trick is to keep one aggro'd while the other is killed. The
chanter will manage this - it's evidently not too risky since the mobs are
tethered to the room and will warp back to their spawn point before getting
in melee range.
The CiH druid works out a healing strategy and I follow along, bowing to his
greater knowledge of this fight. We get ready, the chanter aggros one
priest, and in we charge. I get hit and stunned just as I'm entering the
jail cell. Alas, this puts me right in the line-of-sight of the other
priest, who happily floats over and pounds on me. I die quickly.
Everyone else runs from the room, out of tether range. I sigh and once
again begin the un-invis'd trek back to K'T. The druid and bard meet me at
the zone-line and we head back towards the trial.
Priest strategy, part 2: this time, the druid and I won't enter the jail
cell. We don't need line-of-sight to heal; as long as we're in range, we'll
be all right. We begin again; this time I run to the corner, out of LoS
from the second priest and in range of the melee fighting the first priest.
The druid and I begin our healing, and I'm encouraged to find out that very
quickly the mob is at 5%. Man, that was fast. For some reason the last
five percent takes a long time, however, and I end up burning most of my
mana before the mob dies.
We sit and med while the chanter keeps chain-aggroing the second priest.
This is more difficult than it might seem because we keep getting hit by
AE's that drain our hitpoints. The druid and I keep having to heal the
party without burning our manaless group heals, which we want to save for
the second mob.
Eventually we decide we're ready, and charge the second mob. The second
priest proves to be a lot nastier than the first priest, and people begin
dropping like flies. After three party members die we abort and run back
out. I ask what happened and am told that the second priest was at 100%
when we engaged. I'm like, yeah, so? It's supposed to be at 11%. Oh,
really? No wonder the first priest seemed to drop to 5% so quickly.
I rez and we rebuff. The first priest gets rezzed by the second priest, so
we have to start from the beginning. Priest strategy, part 3: we'll run
out into the hallway, out of tether range, to med after killing the first
priest. We begin, and kill the first priest quickly, and I never get hit by
an AE at all. We run out to med. I assist the chanter, who is still
chain-aggroing the second priest, and I can follow the pattern. The priest
aggro's the chanter, charges him, then warps back to his spawn point at 100%
health. His health then drops to 11% before he aggros the chanter, charges
him, and warps again. My guess is that killing some of the other static
mobs in the zone dropped the priests' health down to 11%, after which they
can be killed. After they warp, the game goes through a quick check of the
other static mobs before adjusting the priest's health to an appropriate
level. We evidently engaged in that one second between it spawning at 100%
and the adjustment down to 11%.
While we're medding, the chanter runes each one of us while still
chain-aggroing the priest. Evidently, though, the window in which to aggro
the second priest is very small; while the chanter is runing, the second
priest warps and rezzes the first priest. The chanter is apologetic. We
tell him not to worry but devise Priest Strategy, Part 4: don't stop
aggroing.
Wearily, I move in as we once again engage the first priest. One thing I
haven't mentioned is that between each of the previous attempts we've had to
clear the respawning roamers. We haven't done that this time, and the bard
mentions that we have 11 minutes before the roamers pop. We kill the first
priest same as we always have, and this time we med inside the room for fear
of getting a roamer repop. It's this fear that eggs us on to engage the
second priest while the druid is at 40% mana and I'm at 60%. The rogue has
his new melee ability active and seems confident he can put out DPS fast
enough so we won't have to worry about mana.
The melee rush into the second jail cell while the druid and I remain
outside. We spam our heals and indeed the priest's health is dropping fast.
Alas, the rogue's discipline runs out just as both the druid and I run out
of mana. I use Divine Arbitration and the warrior uses his Mightystrike
discipline, and the second priest dies. We cheer as we get the success
message. The bard tells us to move inside the second jail cell NOW because
the roamers are respawning. The druid and I rush inside. A pile of bones
has appeared and we all loot a quest piece. The druid is wondering where
the real loot is; the priests' corpses didn't have anything. Of the roamers
that have respawned, one is a named; we wonder if the named is the "reward"
for completing the trial.
We med up in preparation to take down the named. The rogue, meantime,
sneaks across to the first jail cell and finds another pile of bones there.
When he opens it up, inside he finds a very nice priest/caster earring. It
has awesome stats and would be a definite upgrade for me, statwise.
However, it has a focus effect that adds 40% to fire nukes. That's useless
to me but would be a tremendous benefit to the druid. The necro and I step
aside and allow the druid to loot it. He's quite happy.
We pull and kill the named (so easy it seems after those annoying priests).
It only drops a +35 mana augment. The necro tells me to loot it - in his
words, he never stays alive long enough for mana to be of use to him. =) I
shrug and loot it.
At long, long last we evac. The group is quite pleased, overall, and
there's some discussion to doing more trials tomorrow. I can't stay to
chat; it's quite late and I have work in the morning. I log.
So while I got precious little XP - although the constant re-clearing of the
roamers allowed me to ding an AA point - I did make some useful progress.
Now if I can only get past the silly DX9 issues that are making life so
annoying, I'd be a happier cleric. =) Can't wait to get that new spell.
--
-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!