Lance Berg
2007-08-10 11:21:29 UTC
So last year, while playing on Combine where some of these zones were
still the bigger content open, I gradually accumulated various pieces of
the 1.5 epic, because they'd drop and, well, we knew eventually they'd
come in handy, since we know the later expansions will open and what
they contain.
I also got cajolled into getting the 1.0 epic, because it was a mark of
pride for the guild to get as many of those epics as possible. I was
surprised to find that I ended up using it a fair amount, because I
could bash with it equipped, and its lifetap over time proc actually
helped out in AE/DS mobs or offtanking. It was by no means my best DPS
but SK usually isn't about DPS anyway.
So, I got back a while ago, and the expansion with the 1.5 was open.
But we weren't working on them as a guild, trying to stick mostly with
content in order, and we were just finishing up with Vex Thal, several
expansions away.
I didn't pay much attention, occaisionally there were some people doing
the odd epic camp, and sometimes I helped, but for the most part I
figured they were just getting the easy stuff out of the way. Then one
day a fellow SK shows up with his epic in hand. Whoa, and its nice too...
Gradually more of the guild was doing these camps. I went thru PON
tunnels and picked up my last junk drop, off the nightmares on the plateau.
Someone spawned the breeder in RCoD and I came along with most of the
guildmates online for the kill, I was allowed to roll for the egg, which
I thought was wrong. Luckily I lost so no moral quandry.
Later, I helped camp the guy, which took a couple hours, and rolled
against the other SK also camping it, he won, but at least I felt I
deserved to roll.... and that the other SK who came to help for the kill
was treated fairly when she wasn't told to roll. Its the camping that
takes real effort.
Mostly, time went by. People weren't that interested in camping the
Breeder, or else there'd be a group with 3 SK in it, and I wasn't a fan
of the odds nor thinking I'd be any actual help, what they needed was a
healer, slower and for gods sake a DPS!
Last Saturday, though, the perfect storm hit, I found some friends on
who were all free and willing to help, and a good chunk of the guild was
on for when I needed a raid force, and we didn't have a raid scheduled.
Popping the breeder and then being unable to kill it is one of the
things that had stopped me trying earlier.
We settled in for a long camp, and it took about 2 hours, but eventually
the breeder spawned. Called in a couple more groups, then had a monk
pull the breeder out and run it around to spawn all its spawns, with a
ranger watching on track and counting. Then we pulled the breeder up to
our cubby and killed it with overwhelming force.
Now we left a group at the breeder spawn with another SK, and a second
group went with me, while the third group worth of people split up and
went back to what they were doing.
My group let me do my hand ins in POK, then we went to Valor and killed
Fraga. Back to POK, more hand ins, and off to PONightmares to kill the
Wailing Sister. POK again, where I briefly get the sheathed Voice, only
to hand it in and get no visible flag or item in return.
Now its a matter of running around Norrath, where I kill a gnome in
Iceclad, just me and a fellow SK take it out while waiting for the rest
of the group show up, he was easily soloable, since I kept him snared
and feared most of the time. Off to SONH to kill a troll, now I needed
my group. Then to TD, where fooled by how easy the other two hits had
been, we had a small disaster, the cleric LD'd, then the enchanter died
while landing a slow, then the druid evacced... which was sad because
slowed I'm pretty sure we could have taken him out. Ended up taking too
long to get back to him and he despawned, so I had to skip him for a
couple hours.
Went to OOT for the fourth SK, though, and this ended up being the
biggest challenge of the day. The transporter gnomes have been removed,
you have to take the boat. I've been zoning slowly, particularly into
the revamped zones... when I finally zoned in, the boat was long gone, m
friends were all sitting at the camp. No problem, with levi and a
horse, I'd be there in seconds... I hit a wall. Turns out there's an
invisible wall all the way around the outside of the zone, and I've
zoned in on the outside of it. Goes from as high as I started, all the
way down to the ocean floor. I can see one of the islands, but I can't
move twoards it. No problem we've got a druid, she comes over near me
and evvacs.. and doesn't take me with. Wizard comes over and tries to
TL me, says he can't target me. I try logging out hoping that logging
back in will put me in the succor spot... take forever to log back in,
when I do I find one of the group had petitioned, and a GM showed up but
I wasn't logged on at the time! I tried to petition myself, and it
crashed me out. By the time I could finally get back in, the group had
moved on to someone else's kill, which was a good idea. We eventually
logged in a guild COTH bot and had him zone in and COTH me, luckily this
worked. Group came back after their other kill, and we took out this SK
using a new plan of me kiting him around till slow landed.
Back to TD, where we used the same plan on the now respawned Iksar SK,
smooth as silk.
Then more hand ins, and off to Kithicor. There, I spawned 6 paladins,
and we struggled thru them, a few deaths and changes of plan, but
eventually we ended up treating it like a General fight, having one
person kite most of the mobs while we peeled one and brought it to the
Rivervale zoneline for slaughter. Only got two blood drops from the
initial 6, but 6 more were spawnable right away, and I got the third one
I needed.
We then went off and worked on some other people's epic drops, having
done all the one groupable stuff.
A few days later, on raid night, I got the first target; off to WW to
kill a paladin. I did a high speed drive by hail on my pony, so I
didn't get one rounded. The warrior got aggro, I was Ramp, we got him
slowed and tore him apart long before the warrior's disc ran out.
So, look at it one way I'd been working on it since September when I got
my first epic 1.0 drop, but look at it another way, it took a days'
effort, and half that time was spent dealing with the zone line issue in OOT
Archfiend Berg, Combine
still the bigger content open, I gradually accumulated various pieces of
the 1.5 epic, because they'd drop and, well, we knew eventually they'd
come in handy, since we know the later expansions will open and what
they contain.
I also got cajolled into getting the 1.0 epic, because it was a mark of
pride for the guild to get as many of those epics as possible. I was
surprised to find that I ended up using it a fair amount, because I
could bash with it equipped, and its lifetap over time proc actually
helped out in AE/DS mobs or offtanking. It was by no means my best DPS
but SK usually isn't about DPS anyway.
So, I got back a while ago, and the expansion with the 1.5 was open.
But we weren't working on them as a guild, trying to stick mostly with
content in order, and we were just finishing up with Vex Thal, several
expansions away.
I didn't pay much attention, occaisionally there were some people doing
the odd epic camp, and sometimes I helped, but for the most part I
figured they were just getting the easy stuff out of the way. Then one
day a fellow SK shows up with his epic in hand. Whoa, and its nice too...
Gradually more of the guild was doing these camps. I went thru PON
tunnels and picked up my last junk drop, off the nightmares on the plateau.
Someone spawned the breeder in RCoD and I came along with most of the
guildmates online for the kill, I was allowed to roll for the egg, which
I thought was wrong. Luckily I lost so no moral quandry.
Later, I helped camp the guy, which took a couple hours, and rolled
against the other SK also camping it, he won, but at least I felt I
deserved to roll.... and that the other SK who came to help for the kill
was treated fairly when she wasn't told to roll. Its the camping that
takes real effort.
Mostly, time went by. People weren't that interested in camping the
Breeder, or else there'd be a group with 3 SK in it, and I wasn't a fan
of the odds nor thinking I'd be any actual help, what they needed was a
healer, slower and for gods sake a DPS!
Last Saturday, though, the perfect storm hit, I found some friends on
who were all free and willing to help, and a good chunk of the guild was
on for when I needed a raid force, and we didn't have a raid scheduled.
Popping the breeder and then being unable to kill it is one of the
things that had stopped me trying earlier.
We settled in for a long camp, and it took about 2 hours, but eventually
the breeder spawned. Called in a couple more groups, then had a monk
pull the breeder out and run it around to spawn all its spawns, with a
ranger watching on track and counting. Then we pulled the breeder up to
our cubby and killed it with overwhelming force.
Now we left a group at the breeder spawn with another SK, and a second
group went with me, while the third group worth of people split up and
went back to what they were doing.
My group let me do my hand ins in POK, then we went to Valor and killed
Fraga. Back to POK, more hand ins, and off to PONightmares to kill the
Wailing Sister. POK again, where I briefly get the sheathed Voice, only
to hand it in and get no visible flag or item in return.
Now its a matter of running around Norrath, where I kill a gnome in
Iceclad, just me and a fellow SK take it out while waiting for the rest
of the group show up, he was easily soloable, since I kept him snared
and feared most of the time. Off to SONH to kill a troll, now I needed
my group. Then to TD, where fooled by how easy the other two hits had
been, we had a small disaster, the cleric LD'd, then the enchanter died
while landing a slow, then the druid evacced... which was sad because
slowed I'm pretty sure we could have taken him out. Ended up taking too
long to get back to him and he despawned, so I had to skip him for a
couple hours.
Went to OOT for the fourth SK, though, and this ended up being the
biggest challenge of the day. The transporter gnomes have been removed,
you have to take the boat. I've been zoning slowly, particularly into
the revamped zones... when I finally zoned in, the boat was long gone, m
friends were all sitting at the camp. No problem, with levi and a
horse, I'd be there in seconds... I hit a wall. Turns out there's an
invisible wall all the way around the outside of the zone, and I've
zoned in on the outside of it. Goes from as high as I started, all the
way down to the ocean floor. I can see one of the islands, but I can't
move twoards it. No problem we've got a druid, she comes over near me
and evvacs.. and doesn't take me with. Wizard comes over and tries to
TL me, says he can't target me. I try logging out hoping that logging
back in will put me in the succor spot... take forever to log back in,
when I do I find one of the group had petitioned, and a GM showed up but
I wasn't logged on at the time! I tried to petition myself, and it
crashed me out. By the time I could finally get back in, the group had
moved on to someone else's kill, which was a good idea. We eventually
logged in a guild COTH bot and had him zone in and COTH me, luckily this
worked. Group came back after their other kill, and we took out this SK
using a new plan of me kiting him around till slow landed.
Back to TD, where we used the same plan on the now respawned Iksar SK,
smooth as silk.
Then more hand ins, and off to Kithicor. There, I spawned 6 paladins,
and we struggled thru them, a few deaths and changes of plan, but
eventually we ended up treating it like a General fight, having one
person kite most of the mobs while we peeled one and brought it to the
Rivervale zoneline for slaughter. Only got two blood drops from the
initial 6, but 6 more were spawnable right away, and I got the third one
I needed.
We then went off and worked on some other people's epic drops, having
done all the one groupable stuff.
A few days later, on raid night, I got the first target; off to WW to
kill a paladin. I did a high speed drive by hail on my pony, so I
didn't get one rounded. The warrior got aggro, I was Ramp, we got him
slowed and tore him apart long before the warrior's disc ran out.
So, look at it one way I'd been working on it since September when I got
my first epic 1.0 drop, but look at it another way, it took a days'
effort, and half that time was spent dealing with the zone line issue in OOT
Archfiend Berg, Combine