West Karana

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.

Terror — if you’re a dragon. Nostalgia the Guild set up a face-to-face for Naggy and Vox with old Veeshan, and I don’t think Queen Vee will be too happy with her progeny.

We’ve been tracking Lord Nagafen all week to see that he remained up. And shockingly, the elder guilds with their twink brigades didn’t move on the dragon, so Friday night, it was Nostalgia’s turn. We were short handed and had only one healer, the incredibly overworked Coldheat, but we weren’t going to be stopped. Also, we didn’t have a FD puller, but we weren’t going to let that stop us either.

We tried various ways to clear the room; the best way seemed to be to toss a gnome in first, and Gnewton performed amazingly as bait. I think that BBQ sauce-soaked robe he wears combines both fashion AND fine cuisine in an amazing way.

Eventually we got the fire lizard alone and we rushed in. Being very short on healers, we had our steadfast servants out for extra healing. We lost Coldheat and then Ceiphied, our tank. Thankfully, Urtog had come by, and he stepped up like a true dwarf and took the aggro and tanked, without healing, while the rest of us desperately tried to take Naggy down. Finally, the dragon turned to run — we had him. As long as we could keep him from heading into the lava and letting the molten rock from Norrath’s core heal him. He died with his head inches away.

Ceiphied got Red Dragon Scales for his epic.
Tipa looted the Torn, burnt book for her paladin’s Fiery Avenger.
Hierophant’s Crook and Blight, Hammer of the Scourge were looted for the guild bank.

Being only 8:30, we headed over to Permafrost and Lady Vox had apparently recovered enough from last week’s beating to set up shop again.

We had a couple of dirty pulls with Vox + some trash mobs, but on the first real pull we got her alone and took her down with no more trouble than we had last week.

Lady Vox was as kind with the epic drops tonight as Lord Nagafen had been. Are they trying to convince us to move on, or something?

Ceiphied looted White Dragon Scales for his bard’s epic.
Tipa looted Torn, Frost covered book for Sela’s Fiery Avenger.
Tipa also looted Runed Bolster Belt because apparently every melee there had same of better haste. WTF? Here I am feeling pretty cool about my FBSS and everyone else is laughing at me. So yeah, I looted it.
The guild bank looted the Dragon Bone Bracelet.

Well, we just need another set of Red Dragon Scales so we can do the quest to make them into Green Dragon Scales for Ceiphied’s epic, and then we won’t need to kill the dragons anymore. Raiding, though, is fun — and these past couple of weeks have been a real pleasure. As we level, we’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for other one or two group raiding opportunities. There’s a bunch of. Luclin has several single group raids; there’s the nameds on the near side of the chasm in the Deep, Ssra has Rhag 1 and Rhag 2, etc. We’ll see what happens. Two groups in good gear could do a lot of old world raids. Problem is, of course, that high level people in good gear can solo them, and often do…

Anyway, another triumphant night for Nostalgia. We aren’t a raiding guild, but when it comes time to do a raid, it’s good to know we can. That will come in handy as we try to finish our epic.

I haven’t written up a raid report for YEARS. But I absolutely have never been as happy to do so. Tonight, ten people, level 42 to 52, waded through hundreds of goblins, dozens of giants, and a couple spiders and tentacle terrors, to take down the Queen of Permafrost, the ice dragon Lady Vox. The technique we’d figured out to get the giants out of her lair without having Vox come along worked wonderfully. We tried various pull spots in order to best bring Vox without the adds from her room, and Soaridor suggested the Flag Room, which turned out to be the perfect Vox-pulling spot.

Special thanks to Gnewton, who not only served as bait for most of the night, but also sucked Vox dry of mana so she could neither heal nor gate back. Ceipheid, who kept Vox on him the entire fight even though the rest of the raid was doing their darndest to take her away. Coldheat, for braving family and a bad cold to come heal. Rayzr, for sacrificing his own life to drag Gnewton’s body from the pits. Sevaran, for swooping in with his wonderful nuking powers. Callendra and Soaridor, for being the total professionals they always are. Ebonfang for those oh so sexy slows. Said for getting disconnected :/

I honestly never thought we’d get to the point where we could kill dragons. We had no high level buffs, nor any high level characters clearing the way. Just us, and most of us started from scratch a couple of months ago, stabbing spiders in the tutorial.

Now we’re killing dragons. If Naggy had been up, he’d be dead, too. I think he is being farmed.

Oh yes, special thanks to SOE for Defiant gear and the veteran reward, Infusion of the Faithful. Being entirely immune to her AE kinda helps.

Coldheat won the Warhammer of Divine Grace
Ebonfang won a Tobrin’s Mystical Eyepatch (the other went into the bank)
Rayzr won Kavruul’s Mystic Pouch
Ceipheid’s bard got the White Dragon Hide for his epic a nice cloak that has nothing to do with his epic ><.

It was a triumph for the guild and all the people who worked so hard to prepare for this night.