It’s been a while, so I may have some details messed up, but our small guild was working on the quest Capturing Day and Night, after one of our members had finally, after endless farming, gotten the Gold Dragon Scale needed to change Barakah into her dragon form.  When the call went out to the guild that we were going to kill the two dragons in Maj’Dul, we all headed up there to assemble.

Of course, some take longer than others, so while we were waiting for everyone to arrive, some of us started dueling, or killing random mobs that happened to be around us.  We were a very laid-back, casual guild, so this sort of tomfoolery was just fine.  When it was time to get serious, we always did so, but for the moment we were just joking around, passing the time.  Ventrilo, as always, was full of laughs and dirty talk.  Then, just as the last people were arriving to the courtyard, things changed.

The call to settle down and focus came from the raid leader who was about to inform the guild on how the encounter was going to go.  This came, of course, just as I had fired an arrow off towards a Sha’ir (61 Heroic), floating so innocently above us on his magic carpet.  He flew down towards me and I finished him off easily enough, just in time to focus on our upcoming raid.  Except, what I didn’t know at the time, was that if you kill one Sha’ir, another comes immediately after.  If you kill that next one, then more will come, and keep coming.  And come they did.

Taken off guard, a few of us who were in the immediate vicinity did our best to fight off the never-ending wave.  It quickly became more than we could handle and the Sha’irs started making their way through the rest of the raid force.  Vent went completely silent, except for the raid leader’s voice, “What the hell?  Who the fuck pulled the Sha’ir?”

Silence.

“That would have been our fearless Berzerker,” said someone who had obviously scrolled up through the combat log, looking to lay some blame.  “Everyone zone out, quick.”  Those in the raid force not yet dead sprinted towards the nearest zone line.  My head sunk.

When we came back and reassembled, there was no joviality, the entire atmosphere had changed.  I felt like such a tool.  The orders over vent were clear and simple, “everyone pay attention, and don’t pull shit”.  We got through the dragons easily enough, but I certainly wasn’t having fun doing it.  The rest of the guild (hopefully) forgot about my attempt to wipe out our raid force, but I never did, and never fooled around before a raid ever again.

Inside her Exquisite Chest was a great looking tanking breastplate, called the Hurricane Forged Cuirass.  There was only myself and our main tank in our raid who would roll on it.  Anyone who has grouped with me before would no doubt know that I have the absolute worst luck with the dice in the history of dice… ever.  Just the other day my wife and I were duoing in Pillars of Flame for Harpy lore and legend stuff, and I lost every single loot roll.  If my wife rolled a 10, I’d roll a 4.  It’s just something I’ve come to expect over my time playing this game.  So, when our main tank rolled a twenty-something, I figured I’d roll a twelve.  As luck would have it, I got a magical fifty-two.  Of course, I immediately told the guild through vent that if the main tank wanted it, it was his to have.  Lucky me again, he passed it on to me.  You can see the spiffy new breastplate on me in the picture above, and the stats for it in the picture below.

My luck wasn’t done there however, as we headed into Lyceum.  I was acting as the main assist for the raid, my first time with this guild, so it was nice to have the run go so smoothly.  For some time now I’ve wanted the sword that drops off of Vilucidae, but each of the three or four times I’ve been through the zone, it hasn’t dropped.  When we eventually took Vilucidae down and his chest dropped, I began to chant “sword, sword, sword” while gently caressing the Exquisite Chest with my mouse cursor.  The chest was disarmed, opened, and there staring back at me in all its glory was Vilucidae’s Sword of Shielding.  My chant had worked.  Now for the hard part, rolling on it.  I wasted no time as I had my /ran 100 command ready to go for when the raid leader asked all who wanted the sword to roll.  As soon as I saw “Rolling on the sword…” I hit enter and boom!  A perfect 100.  Oh yes, I really wanted that sword.  Again, the picture of the sword is up above, the stats in the picture with this paragraph.

As if that wasn’t enough, after the raid was done a group of guildies came to help me take out the final dragon for the Draco Mortus Heritage Quest for the Bone Clasped Girdle.  So in addition to my loot, I finished off another HQ and got myself my 92nd achievement point.  It was a good night for Davyydeous.

Don’t get me wrong though, SoS by itself is a great zone, and in fact, one of the best in the game in my opinion.  There’s a lot to see and do in there, from grinding out experience, to taking on names, and a few ring events as well.  When taken in the context of the Claymore line however, Sanctum of the Scaleborn becomes a brutally repetitive pain in the neck.  I know that I’m not alone in this thinking.  I’ve been sitting on the Claymore quest line for ages now for a bunch of different reasons I’m far too lazy to list here, and that means the majority of those I game with have already completed Claymore or are at least well past the Sanctum quests.  That made it very tough to find groups to work on the quests, and there were many times where it seemed like asking others to come to SoS was like asking them to rip their fingernails out with a pair of pliers.  Finding pick-up groups was equally as hard.

I think the issue is two-fold.  First, I found it fairly rare that others were working on the same quest as me at any given time, let alone the same step of the quest.  Naturally, most people when grouped want to work on ensuring their updates get done, which takes me two my second issue, that being the zone of SoS itself.  Again, on its own, SoS is a great zone, it’s fairly big, there’s quite a few names in it, and given the level range and number of mobs, can be both a breeze to blow through, or fairly tough depending on your group make-up.  There are nine Claymore quests that take place within SoS; the first few a fairly simple, but that all starts to change on the fourth one, The Keys to Trust.  This is the first quest that has you travel beyond the first few rooms of SoS to the Scaleborn Cell, and the first that has you travel to the second level to speak with Xhorroz.  Given that SoS only has one respawn point back at the entrance, and is a shared dungeon meaning the mobs respawn, the further you go in, the further you’ll have to run back re-fighting mobs should the group wipe, and there are a lot of mobs in there.  In my experience, there were many times when our group got overly confident in its abilities, pulled too many mobs, wiped, and had to start from the beginning.  Those of you who have gone through this know just how big of a pain it is to make your way back down to where you wiped.

The quests following the Keys to Trust only get worse, all taking place deep into SoS.  Trading Information was by far the worst one for me, starting with my hours upon hours of camping Exarch Trulnariz.  Of course, a week after I finally killed him they changed the quest so that the placeholder will update the quest.  This quest had me travelling back and forth to different parts of SoS fighting the same mobs over and over again, many times waiting for precious auto-update dings.  It felt like tedium at its finest, and I was very happy when I was done this quest.

Next up, Riddle of the Vault.  Aside from having to camp Koturah for a bit at the beginning of the quest, this one actually went fairly well for me.  The night after unsuccessfully camping Koturah I made my way back in to SoS, put up my LFG tag, and started spamming 60-69 chat hoping to put a group together for Riddle of the Vault.  This lasted about an hour and a half without a single response.  Frustrated at my inability to find a group I decided to have some fun with Totems of the Chameleon and tried to invis my way down to the Gorg Pit.  In doing so, I discovered a somewhat fun and challenging mini-game.  Davyydeous is a Berserker which means he’s a plate armoured meat shield and nothing more; he doesn’t have fancy trick spells like evac or feign death, so sneaking my way around zones can be fairly challenging.  After a few attempts that ultimately ended in disaster (oh what I wouldn’t give for feign death), I eventually came up with a decent route.  The hardest part to get through is the Talonflight Armory, a room full of of Scaleborn Reavers, most of which see through invis.  While difficult, I was able to sneak my way through the room provided I was very careful with the route I chose, and patient enough to wait for the right opening.  Of course, sometimes I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a group ahead of me that was clearing the way.  Once past the Armory, I was usually able to train the mobs all the way to the Gorg Pit where I could jump on one of the climbable walls.

Once in the Gorg Pit, I just hung out and eventually came across another group that was camping Koturah and was kind enough to let me join.  Once I had Koturah killed I was able to complete the rest of the quest solo, again using patience and a whole lot of invis totems, with the odd fight thrown in as well.  Finally, the last quest just called for throwing a gem into the Pool of Spirits.  I invis’d my way there and hopped into the pool.  Unfortunately, throwing the gem is like harvesting, it pops your invis and takes some time to complete.  A couple attempts saw me interrupted too much and dieing before I could manage to throw the gem, but I kept at it and was eventually successful.

While there’s still a fair amount of work to do for my Claymore, I can’t tell you how happy I am to be done the SoS quests.  I’m quite sick of that zone.  I’m told the Palace of the Awakened quests go much smoother, plus the rewards a pretty decent too.  Can’t wait.

That little guild eventually lost some members to other games, and Davyydeous moved on, and landed with a casual raiding guild after trying out one or two others.  Almost a year after the release of Kingdom of Sky, I suddenly found myself with raiding access to the KoS zones.  Of course, I needed to gear myself up first, so Deathtoll was going to have to wait, but just going on any raids was exciting for me.  As luck would have it, by the time I was sufficiently geared up, my guild decided to change directions and go “hardcore” which left me out of the loop because I couldn’t meet the attendance requirements.  Deathtoll would have to wait.

While searching for a new guild, one of my requirements was their ability to raid Deathtoll.  I soon found a good fit, and was quite excited to see that Deathtoll was on the raid calendar just two weeks after my joining.  I waited in anticipation as Deathtoll day drew closer.  I’m sure that may sound silly to some, but EverQuest II is much more to me than what my stats are, and what armour I’m wearing; I love to explore the world.  If there’s one thing in common between all my favourite games, it’s that they pull me into their worlds through a great sense of atmosphere, and after all this time, I had built Deathtoll up to almost mythical status.  Just the name itself, Deathtoll, can illicit so much.  It’s one word, simple, and to the point.  With just that one word, the designers have established that this is a zone to be feared.  The Official Game Guide by Prima Games begins its description of Deathtoll like so:

The name should be a warning to all who have wondered about the land within.  It is your death that the bell tolls.  Not just a possibility, but a certainty.

I just eat that sort of thing up.  Top all of that off with the fact that at the end of it all is a gigantic dragon made of bone just waiting to stomp you to death.  Sign me up!  Of course, now that the zone has been out for a while, and strategies have been honed, it’s not quite the fearsome place it used to be, but there was a time that clearing Deathtoll was a sign of a guild that knew what it was doing.

So there I was, finally zoning into Deathtoll, fully expecting my game client to crash or my internet connection to die, but all went well.  I was instantly impressed with the entrance to the zone; the gazers floating there (possibly my favourite mob model in the game), with the gaping dragon skull jaw open in the background.  The entire zone, architecturaly speaking, is very impressive, very atmospheric.  I especially liked the dragon hung up and displayed in the Altar of Ending; very cool.  I was equally impressed with the mobs themselves, especially the Amorphous Drake.  That was a cool fight to see.  Then there’s Tarinax the Destroyer, who certainly has to be one of the most impressive looking mobs in the game.

When all was said and done, we had a fairly smooth run through the zone, clearing all the nameds.  It marked the first time our guild defeated Cruor Alluvium, and we did so on the first pull.  It was certainly a satisfying experience for the guild, and for me, as it lived up to all my expectations.  The only downside?  I think it’s a shame that a lot of the design work on the zone may go unnoticed because there’s no time to stop and appreciate the architecture of the zone.  It’s places like Deathtoll where I wish there was a “screenshot mode” that let you walk around untouched, snapping photos.  Anyway, it doesn’t look like we’ll be heading back to Deathtoll any time soon as we begin to shift our focus towards Echoes of Faydwer content.  Maybe that’s a good thing, because it would just feel wrong to me if Deathtoll became another routine raid on farm status.

After what seemed like a million runs through Obelisk of Blight (probably more like nine or ten), Davyydeous finally got his class boots, Strongbear’s Steelskin Feet. I’m embarrassed to say that Davyydeous had been wearing Xegonite mastercrafted up until now.  It was the worst piece of gear I had and I’m quite happy to replace it.

Ordeth in the meantime, joined a group in Klak’Anon and ended up getting a nice robe, the Clockwork Spidersilk Robe.  I’ve really come to like Klak’Anon and will probably be spending a good chunk of the next little while in there with Ordeth.

Finally, as mentioned previously, my Mystic Elrahir has been getting more and more attention from me as of late.  He’s now level 47, close to dinging 48, and eagerly awaiting the arrival of his Maj’Dul carpet.  I finished off a number of Heritage Quests that had been sitting in his journal for some time which netted a fair amount of experience.  Elrahir also ventured into Klak’Anon in what was probably my first heavy duty healing experience with him.  Up until this point my healing has been restricted to the duo group I have with my wife’s Monk.  Needless to say I was a little nervous, especially as we went deeper into the zone and started running into mobs that were still red to me.  All in all I think I did quite well and we managed to avoid any major wipes.  The one big difference I noticed between Elrahir and Davyydeous is that I really had to pay attention when healing.  I couldn’t let my eyes wander at all.  Hmmm, maybe that’s not the class for me then.

I also just noticed that I have access to the Legends of Norrath game within EverQuest II, so I’ll try to check that out real soon.  Hopefully I don’t get addicted to it and start buying boosters for it.

As time passed, the guild became more focused on the higher-end raids and the “casual” part of the guild disappeared from the guild charter.  As such, the guild split in two, with those not able to attend at least 50% of the raids in one camp, and the raiding team in the other.  This, unfortunately, was a necessary step towards progression in the Echoes of Faydwer raids, and spelled the end of my raiding days with the guild.  Even though I’m now able to dedicate more time to raiding, the raid force already had enough established plate fighters in addition to the main tank and main assist.  In fact, I was told that about four of the plate fighters would need to leave the guild before I got a spot on the raids.

Needless to say, we parted ways and I began my search for a new guild.  Actually, I had seen the writing on the wall quite some time ago and had already begun an informal search for a new home.  So how did I go about my search?

Obviously, after being on the Kithicor server for a couple of years, I already had a basic knowledge of a good number of guilds.  I also used the official forums to check out who was recruiting and what sort of classes they needed, in addition to using the in-game guild recruitment tool.  I found that this was enough to give me a good list to work from.  At that point it became a matter of checking to see if the guild and I would be a good fit.

With respect to the guild itself, I was looking for one that was casual, but raid capable.  I can’t, nor do I want to raid every day.  Furthermore, even if the guild only raids two or three times a week, I wouldn’t be able to guarantee I’d make every single one.  Basically, I wanted the option to raid, but not the requirement.  While this may seem like a lot to ask, I found quite a few guilds with that very philosophy.

There were other things I looked for as well, mainly if the guild had a website with forums.  I’ve found this to be a great community builder in the past, not to mention a good way to keep in touch with your guildmates while you’re stuck at work, not like I’d know anything about that.  Visiting these websites gave me an opportunity to create a first impression of the guilds I was looking at.  It’s easy to see right away which guilds are casual (well, it was a struggle, but we finally battled our way through Labs!), and which are hardcore (Deathtoll pwned yet again in record time… yawn).  More importantly however, I find it helps give a window on to what the people in the guild are like.  Do they like to have fun, or is the game a business to them?  For me, I’m all about fun, and once I had narrowed my list of guilds down further, I started sending tells to the officers in game.

I think it’s essential to have a good conversation with an officer before joining a guild, because in the end, it’ll save a lot of time.  I asked a lot of questions, such as what their raid schedule was like, what they raided, was it mandatory, what kind of atmosphere is in the guild, etc.  I wanted to get a sense of what the people were like because more important than anything, I think, is getting along with those you’re guilded with, and having fun.  I wanted to find an atmosphere that I could be comfortable in.  I’ve been known as something of a joker (I like to think I can be funny), so I needed to find a guild that liked to laugh and have fun.

I eventually found a guild that I thought would be a good fit for me.  It met all my requirements, and I thought my discussion with the officer went quite well.  I’m now on a two week trial to ensure that we’re good fits for each other.  So far things are going well and I’m happy in my new home. 

This whole process however, has me somewhat discouraged by the apparent lack of need for plate fighters.  There are a lot of them in the game, and not many raid slots available to them.  This has only pushed me further to get my Mystic and Coercer leveled up so that I’ll have an easier time finding raids to join (hopefully).  That’s life as a tank I suppose, there’s never any around when you need one for an instance, and far too many when you’re running a raid.

It was probably in my 30′s or 40′s that the system was changed to remove the sub-combines.  I enjoyed the process more, but I still found it to be a major grind.  I’d craft all my newly scribed recipes (minus the mastercrafted ones because of the cost of the rares) each level, and that would usually net me somewhere in the area of twenty percent experience towards my next level.  I’d spend the rest of the level just grinding out materials that ultimately nobody wanted and were in turn sold to the vendor.  It got quite frustrating seeing my wife’s sage get about seventy percent towards her next level from the newly scribed recipes in addition to all her stuff selling quite well on the broker.

Regardless, I stuck with it, mainly for the need to equip one of my alts.  Because of that alt, I forced myself to reach armourer level 50.  Once at 50, the biggest pain came from having to harvest in the Sinking Sands.  Competing with all the other players (and farmers) for the ore nodes was never a fun experience.  Levels 50 through 60 were easily the most difficult for me as an armourer.  60 through to 70 however, were a different story entirely.  I was stuck at level 62 for a few months with no motivation to continue crafting.  By this point they had introduced the tradeskilling writs which helped a little, but it still took a huge amount of resources and time (grinding!) to make any levels.

Then SOE introduced tradeskill experience for doing the writs.  This was my saving grace.  I completed one out of curiousity to see what kind of experience I’d get.  I just about peed my pants when I got about ten percent just for completing the writ.  This was the motivation I needed.  I was level 64 on August 1.  Today is August 10 and I’m now level 70.  I was receiving roughly 14% per writ turn in, and for the first time, I found myself without any tradeskill vitality and a desire to continue.

This morning after logging in, I almost immediately received a tell from a player asking if I could craft a full set of Xegonite armour for him.  I did so which put me about 20% away from 70.  With no vitality left, I completed another writ, then banged out a few more pieces of armour and got my ding.

Needless to say, I’m a huge fan of tradeskill writ experience!  Hopefully it’s still around at its current levels when I need to level up to 80.

It all started when we first zoned in.  I hit my macro to assist our main tank, but for some reason it wasn’t working.  The Labs raids are typically run to gear up our newer raiders or alts, and on this night, it turns out our main tank was playing his Ranger alt.  That meant the main tank for the raid last night was now one of our usual off tanks, a Shadowknight.  A quick scan of the raid window showed that I was the only other plate fighter in the raid, in fact, the only other fighter period, which  in turn meant that I would serve as the off tank.

This was the first time I had been asked to actually perform a roll on one of our raids aside from “swing your sword and help kill stuff“, and quite frankly, it was pretty nerve racking.  I’m just a casual raider, raiding with the guild maybe once or twice a month, so I’d prefer on the rare times I manage to raid that I not be remembered as a screw-up.

In the end, all things turned out well, but it was a different experience from what I was used to for sure.  I certainly got an appreciation for how tough it is to keep aggro away from  a hungry mob of scouts and mages all trying to claw their way to the top of the DPS parse.  On the Pardas Predd fight, I managed to grab the two abominations that spawn halfway through the fight easily enough, but as soon as the rest of the raid started nuking them through me all bets were off.  I kept spamming my taunts, blew Rescue, Insolent Gibe, and did just about everything I could to keep them off our more squishy raid members, all to no avail.  While we got through the fight just fine, I still felt like a complete failure.

At the end, after Vyemm and Alzid Prime lay dead I had a chat with our regular main tank who told me that anyone would have trouble keeping aggro the way our raid was DPS-ing.  We had just wanted to tear through the raid as quickly as possible.

I was also finally able to upgrade my shoulder armour when the relic plate shoulders dropped.  I’m embarrassed to say that up until last night I was wearing tier 6 fabled.  I got a nice stats boost out of the relic… and I like the red too.

I had left Davyydeous in Loping Plains after killing two of the three blades in Arkelek’s Gash for The Stone Behind the Ankh quest of the Swords of Destiny timeline.  I wasn’t quite able to defeat the third blade on my own so I decided to bring my wife’s Wizard in to two-box it.  I ran Davyydeous over to the spot, where as luck would have it, a Conjurer and Warden were about to kill the blade I needed.  I asked to join and the three of us easily got our updates.  I thanked them and drpped group to head on my merry little way.  Of course, I couldn’t just log out… no, I had to check out the next step of the quest.

It wasn’t long after that I found myself in Mistmoore Catacombs, a few more steps into the quest of course, when I ran into the Conjurer and Warden again.  They asked to team up again and I obliged.  We soon got our next updates and found ourselves off to Kaladim.  A Monk joined our group which ended up being a godsend, as this guy was über.  We knocked out the Kaladim updates in about forty-five minutes, maybe less, a task that would have taken significantly longer without the Monk.  Seeing this guy in action really made me think I rolled the wrong class for my main.

After Kaladim we headed back to Mistmoore Catacombs, answered the riddles, then portaled to Butcherblock (three cheers for Druid portals) to finish off the quest.  This is where our group ended, and I was pleased as punch to have advanced the Swords of Destiny to this point.  With my scattered playtime of late, I didn’t think I’d get this far so soon.

So, my twenty minutes had now turned into three hours according to the 2:00 AM staring back at me on the clock.  My next task would be the most difficult quest of all; getting up and into bed without waking my wife.  How’d I do?  Well, unless she reads this, and I don’t think she will, she’ll never know.

Ding!

From the beginning I’ve always just used the built-in UI as it suited me just fine.  Just for fun the other week, I decided to give a custom UI a try.  The one in particular was Profit UI Reborn, for no other reason than I saw its name come up the most.  I gave it about a week before I reverted back to the default UI.  It just seemed way too fancy-pantsy for me and I didn’t like the look of it. 

So, for a quick tour of how I have my UI set up, I have four hotbars on the bottom that I keep open all the time.  The one in the center of the screen above the other four is brought up just when I’m tradeskilling.  When raiding, I have the center bar full of all my useful macros and such.  On the bottom right, I always like to have an inventory bag open so I can immediately see anything I pick up while walking through Norrath.  My main chat window is over on the left, with all the combat text going into a separate Combat tab.  My guild window is just above the main chat window, but is visible only on mouse-over, or when new chat text appears.  Group members appear along the top, just to the right of my character name, while I keep my active quest window in the top right.

Pretty simple and clean, and it does the job for me.  That said, I’m not sure how or why this post turned into a tour of my UI, because that’s not what I set out to talk about at all.  Oh well, I’ll consider it a freebie!