West Karana

Mayong Mistmoore looks so hunky in that portrait! He makes ALL the inky ladies swoon!

I keep saying EverQuest isn’t hard, but what I should probably say is, EverQuest isn’t hard, if you have great equipment. I haven’t put the same sort of care into Sela’s gear as I did for Tipa’s, and it shows. Empty item slots, missing spells, statless gear in at least one spot… I suspect the same is true for the other members of the Tuesday group. This gives us quite a different experience. Instead of laughing off danger as we slice through enemies without thinking, we can, and do, get overwhelmed, and die.

The Tower of Frozen Shadow is particularly deadly to us. Though we all got in safely and up to the second floor in no time, when we started crawling through the Library in search of the key to the third floor servant’s quarters, a named who brought huge aggro, did us in. He wasn’t too bad by himself, but attacking him seemed to arouse half the spirits on that side of the room. So that was a wipe.

Being the only rezzer, I released and used the AA to get a full xp rez and my body back, and headed back to the Tower.

I’d THOUGHT I had gone through Allakhazam’s and gotten every spell for my paladin, same as I did for the ranger. But, no. I was missing some vital spells, and it was the lack of Invisibility to Undead that would kill me a second time. Lull just doesn’t do the job.

Bought the spell. Summoned my corpse. Paid one of the many clerics who do a brisk business in resurrections in the guild lobby to rez me (and she threw in a temperance for free! What a nice halfling!). Headed back. With ITU working, I got everyone’s corpses pulled and rezzed.

After that, it was smooth as anything, though it seems unless I am 100% focused on a mob and keeping it taunted, stunned, and warded (for undead), it goes right for the berserker, druid and mage. This is bad news for multiple pulls, because I can only keep one on me for sure. The others turn back to another victim when I turn back to my original target. The only sure way I have seen to grab aggro from everything is to start healing people.

After about an hour in the Library, we got ourselves an enraged librarian, who gave us the key to the third floor, which was nice of her. I do wonder why we had to send so many dead scholars back to their final reward before they got upset enough to send someone in after us.

Up we went to the third floor, backs to the wall as we awaited the armored patrol. We didn’t have long, and we fought the first and then the second one right after another. We moved from there to the cooks’ room and took on a few of these before calling it a night.

We ended up standing in front of Randall, the Fellowship guy, making the Fellowship we should have made weeks ago. This while make wipes easier to recover from, especially as we come to places not easily returned to, like the upper floors of the Tower of Frozen Shadow.

All told, I got a neat Defiant two handed staff, in which I had almost no skill. I ended the night with skill in the 40s. I’ll probably need to get a two handed slash and two handed piercing to work on, just so I have a wide variety of options. I don’t really like the staff — no bash. But I know I have to build skill in different weapon types.

Before we started, I did a quick check on Nagafen with Brita, so unless the people who seem to have been farming him can get a twink raid together to kill him before Friday, we may have a chance to add another dragon to our kill list, and hopefully find some epic drops in the entrails. I have no idea how we’re going to clear his lair. Our little trick to clear Vox’s lair won’t work here… and Naggy, like Vox, has line-of-sight aggro. If he can see you, he will chase you. Maybe, if you can still bind inside the lair, we can just have someone with the gate spell be the puller. Even if lull works on the giants, which I doubt, the Fire Giant Magus who stands next to Naggy will still be aggroed when he aggros. I dunno. Maybe someone can kite Naggy while we kill his friend, though that idea seems crazy.

Well, we’ll think of something. Rayzr and Ebonfang are 52 now, and maybe some old Nostalgians could show :)

No, I totally don’t like this screen shot. My only excuse is this is the only one I took!

The Tuesday group may have found its home for the next few weeks. Yes, we’ve started exploring that den of mystery and key-farming, Iceclad’s most notorious dungeon, the Tower of Frozen Shadow. Eschewing the standard Velious all-purpose building material, velium, the vampire queen Tserrina built her fortress instead out of the same solidified shadow that so many Luclin buildings were made from. It’s seven floors of fun, and each is separated from the other by teleport mirrors that take keys. Really RARE keys. We spent half the night farming the key to the Library, floor two. That included me getting hilariously stuck in the pit and being unable to get out because the skeletons at the bottom kept stunning me (finally we killed them and I was able to get out, exhausted from all that jumping).

Once we finally made it to the second floor, we settled in for a long evening’s grind farming the floor 3 (living quarters) keys. They didn’t drop. Two or three pieces of Defiant plate armor dropped (yay me), a Defiant beastlord weapon dropped (yay Tesser), a bunch of cool augs dropped (yay other people), but no key.

So we’ll probably head back next week and just continue from the library. ToFS was meant for exactly this sort of group — a slow progression through the floors. Sure, once we reach floor 7, I imagine we’ll farm the daylights out of Tserrina just like everyone else does, but it’s gonna take us a few nights to get there, and all the time, we’ll be leveling so when we DO get there, we’ll be able to take her down.

It just wouldn’t be a good night if it didn’t start out with some hot Fada death action. And he was kind enough to die three times. Getting IN to ToFS is no easy task; it’s guarded by these bone, stick and ice creatures, and if you have one now, you’ll have a dozen in ten seconds and fifty half a minute later. Every strategy we tried to get outside and rez met with more death. Well, we eventually got everyone alive and inside… it wasn’t a great way to start, but this is EverQuest we’re talking about. “Easy” is for the other guys :)

We had a new Nostalgia member along with the Tuesday group; we were thrilled to meet and group with the iksar shaman Ebonfang. And we ALSO met a new rogue named Rayzr, both of whom seem to be headed for more dragon slayin’ action with the Friday group. WELCOME!