West Karana

The clock on the cable box in the living room is twenty minutes slow; I *know* I shouldn’t rely upon it. I was trying to be clever and use my Asus Eee from the living room to SSH into my Linux box and copy the latest episode of The Middleman to my Vista laptop so that my PS3 could find it and play it. I have this crazy idea that I can use the Eee to control every piece of electronics in the house. I’d managed all that, when I noticed the Eee had a different time from the cable box — the correct time — and that I was late for the Tuesday Nostalgia group.

I ran to my room, jumped online, but nobody else from the group was there. I checked the boards and it looked like a lot of people weren’t going to make it; Hakiko may have been there and left already, I don’t know and nobody on had seen him. So I went to the Bazaar and thought about buying some gear to fill up all the empty slots in Sela’s armor, but after about an hour, decided to work on Tipa’s levels and AAs instead.

Since we raised the level cap from 52 immediately after killing the dragons last week, most everyone has been madly leveling … the three levels to the new cap of 55. Some people have wished for the cap to be 60 instead, but I want Nostalgia the Guild to be the kind of place you can come once a week and not fall behind. With AAs, there’s always something to do for those who want to play more.

I made level 53 the same night we removed the cap in the Crypt of Nadox, the level 55 hot zone. I made 54 in Akheva Ruins while we tried to do with one mid fifties group what raid guilds used to do with four level 60 groups — take on Va’Dyn, the giant rock monster who is one of Luclin’s first raid targets. We eventually managed to get him solo, but we could not take his damage. Still, made a level from the attempt because AR is, too, a hot zone.

Last night it was back to Nadox where I got 40% of the way through level 55 and my 20th AA, which I spent on Weapon Affinity. There are SO MANY AAs after so many expansions that it’s tough to figure out which to get. I have Run Speed 3, Innate Regeneration 3, Foraging (by mistake), Combat Fury 2 and Weapon Affinity 1. The last couple will increase my dps a lot.

The group I was in couldn’t keep mobs off me, even if I did nothing but auto-attack (I’ve a variety of nukes and dots I can add, including uber nuke Icewind that I quested for last weekend). I kept casting jolt, but finally decided nothing would work but to stay out of the fight entirely for the first few seconds. That helped some. Chain casting Jolt worked somewhat but was harsh on my mana.

The night was marred by the constant stream of high level monks who would go from camp to camp in Nadox looking for nameds to steal, bringing trains with them wherever they went, leaving death behind them. Sure, they could have feigned their trains off, but there was always the possibility that some level appropriate groups might get the nameds in their areas before they did. And there were plenty of level appropriate groups around. The fifties are the time you start coming upon the majority of the players. Most of the group was probably alts, but their twinkage was usually not high; I was the only one wielding epics, anyway.

So when I say training skills, I’m talking about the monks’ skills at training. I can’t tar them all with the same brush — we had two monks in the group who seemed very capable — but it certainly seems that if you want to be a real jerk, and you really care nothing about anyone besides yourself, a monk is the way to go. Once all the lowbies in the area are dead or dealing with your train, you can steal their named mobs.

Years ago, being trained would have really bugged me, because I cared about leveling and loot. Now that I realize neither of those things matter, I just take these things as they come. Being able to affect someone else’s game play, for good or ill, is just part of EQ. I got trained, and I died, but I got dragged to a friendly cleric, got a rez, full buffs, and an invitation to join their group. Being trained was bad, but I got to meet new, friendly, good people as well. In an entirely instanced game, neither would have happened. World of Warcraft, et al, by taking away the bad parts of open dungeons, took away the good parts as well.

Come Hell or high water, we were going to start leveling again after last night’s dragon raids. Everyone has been getting antsy about perpetually staying at level 52 solely to farm the dragons. Last night, we killed them both, and have killed each of them three times. Nostalgia the Guild has gone back in time nine years to when mega guilds used to roam the world, throwing themselves against the greatest monsters of the age. But now, we’re moving on to EverQuest’s first expansion. Next week: Veksar, the city hidden beneath the smoothly lapping waves of the Lake of Ill Omen. Nostalgians, remember that for the next two weeks, we’re meeting on Thursday instead of Friday. And that the new level cap is 55.

First up, Lord Nagafen. We had a fantastic turnout, but, unfortunately, were gnome-less :(. Soaridor had transferred his monk, Sisca, over (along with a lot of very nice arrows — THANKS!), so we had a puller once again. First pull was a disaster in slow motion. First came the two giants in the room. And then Magus Rokyl decided to join in. And then Warlord Skarlon and HIS friend join in (!!). And then, NAGGY. Okay, I was very nearly almost laughing. We got the first two giants dead and Rokyl most of the way there before the last of us died.

We rez up (I remembered this time to move the campfire to the ready room), and kill Skarlon and his friend. Sisca manages to split Rokyl, so we kill him, then rush in for the Naggy kill. It took a little longer to position him than normal, but we took the old lizard down — live! on the web!

Ceipheid was broadcasting our raid out on the web (I would have announced it here if I’d known in advance), and it was bizarre watching the raid live on my computer, and then watching the raid a few seconds delayed from the MT’s perspective on the other computer. Plus commentary from the random visitors who wandered in. One of them mentioned he could solo Naggy, I guess he must have been 52 or lower but he claimed to have 15K hit points. Well, okay. But we’re not raiding to be uber. We’re raiding to have fun. And to get a second Red Dragon Scale.

We didn’t get one. Naggy is being stingy. Someone asked if that meant we were coming back. Nope. It just means we’re heading to the bazaar. 7500 plat later, and Ceipheid got his GREEN scale, which means he doesn’t need to do the quest to turn a red scale green, which is a huge bonus.

Brown Chitin Protector — Guild Bank
Razing Sword of Skarlon — Ceipheid
Cloak of Flames — Binxs
Gauntlets of Fiery Might x2 — Guild Bank
Gold Plated Koshigatana — Guild Bank
Torn, burnt book — rot.

With Naggy dead, his love Vox would be pining away. She needed to be killed just to set her soul at rest. It would just be cruel to leave her alive, really.

The hardest part of the Vox fight was clearing the giants from her room, there was an extra one or two in with the pack that I guess we normally kill separately. Two ice giant priests and their complete heals made the whole thing tedious, but not particularly dangerous. After a few minutes we had them dead, and Sisca pulled Vox to our normal kill spot in the flag room (to the displeasure of the peanut gallery on the webcast, who wanted to see people get flung into pits by tentacle terrors as we took her down. Nope. There’s a REASON we don’t fight her in her lair.)

Without any mages and nobody to drain her mana, Vox took a much longer time to die, but we stepped up our dps just at the right time and she had no chance to either complete heal or gate away.

Both of them will be back next week after their forced vacation courtesy of Nostalgia, but we won’t be. It’s been absolutely wonderful to be able to raid them these past few weeks.

Dragon Bone Bracelet — Guild Bank
McVaxius’ Horn of War x2 — Ceipheid’s bard, Maromi
White Dragon Scales — Maromi

Afterward, we kicked Urtog, Gozad and Malfi from the Fellowship and added Callendra, Sisca and Warmunger in their places. Sorry guys :( We needed the spots, and those three are there every week. I wish Fellowships were larger. Nine seems to few; there’s no middle ground between campfires and guild banners. I’d just prefer to set up a guild banner someplace. Make it six people in the guild that need to be there instead of thirteen, and that would work out fine.

Lackey was tearing up the Crypt of Nadox with his cleric, and invited anyone to come join. I thinks I will, I said, rushed over there, turned on my Lesson and ended up 72% of the way through level 53 when the group split up. It felt good to be able to level. This morning, I returned to Nadox to do the Icewind quest. Lots of people claim this can take days, but it only took about an hour of killing before I got the drop, went back to Gunthak and am now the proud caster of a sooper dooper ice nuke.

I also got a pair of Steel Wrapped Leggings and three pairs of Gloves of the Fallen Spirit, coming soon to a guild bank near you.