Nothing like some pinball kiting....:)

No one on our server had completed the Vulak'Aerr Ring in NTOV. The big uberguild had killed Vulak a couple times before the Ring event was put in, but while I believe several attempts were made by various guilds after that, none succeeded.

So last Sunday, in the absence of anything better to do, and at the instigation of a monk who has had this dream of doing the Ring since he joined the game (yeah, he's a newbie...:) , we decide to give it a shot.

First surprise is that we find that the whole zone went down recently and all the Lords and Ladies have repopped. We had waited until after the dragons had already been cleared out by other guilds the previous day or two. You have to kill them all to be able to trigger the Ring event. *sigh*

Four hours later we trigger the Ring. For those who don't know how this goes, it's a timed event with several waves of mobs (17 total) in a restricted area (there is a group of DT wurms at one end preventing you from running out). These waves include flurry triplets, named sub-bosses, and various combinations of drakes and wurms. During some waves, rampaging hatchlings can spawn. Also, during some of the waves each death spawns a carrion drake add....lots of deaths lead to lots of drake adds.

My guild proceeds through the first six waves without problems. Then we start wave seven, which has drake splitters. You start with two drakes, and when you kill one, two spawn. You have to offtank half of each set and just focus on killing one at a time, working your way down the split chain. For this wave, I think it's a total of 22 drakes (11 from each of the original splitters) in the split chain.

We're working down the chain and are on the last one when the next wave spawns: three flurry drakes. A cleric goes down immediately, and of course, this is one of the waves where carrion drakes spawn. Another cleric goes down, followed by tanks and some nukers.

About 30 seconds later, over half the raid is dead. We probably have almost as many drakes of one sort or another as we have raiders. Two of the flurry drakes have gone down, but there are a ton of carrion drakes. A wipe is imminent. One of the rogues confessed later that he went over in a corner to hide...:)

I only have a paladin and a botted cleric in my group and we escape the initial wave of deaths. I see the paladin's health finally going down as the other tanks die, so I hit him with an NI. That causes me to get summoned by a carrion drake that has been taking spike damage, so I run off to one end of the Ring area with the drake in tow, then circle back to the end by the DT wurms in a little circuit. The carrions are immune to root or snare, so I know it's Kite or Die!

Both the paladin and bot cleric are taking damage, so I stop periodically to cast NI on them (and me!). As spike damage adds up, I get repeatedly summoned by several carrion drakes sequentially....bing, bong, thud. I shake off a few stuns, and keep on running my little circuit with several carrions in pursuit. As they get spread out, I would find myself summoned first to one end, then the other.

In amidst the chaos, I'm seeing an XP message flash by every 20 seconds or so, as the remnants of our raid finish off the last flurry, then work on one carrion at a time. A rogue or two pops up out of nowhere, and I see a ranger off to one side plinking away. No time to talk tactics or strategy, I figure my role is just to keep acting like a pinball. (Slam kiting is good prep work for Pinball kiting....:)

Somehow, fifteen or twenty carrion drakes later, we kill off the final carrion with about a minute before the next wave, Rathek the Tigerclaw (with a pet). Even though we only get about half of the dead folks ressed and buffed by the time it spawns, after pulling out of that near-wipe, it and the remaining waves seem positively anticlimactic.

And oh, yes, Vulak did go down...:)

Grats man.

Sounds like you where lucky enough to get one of those rare occasions to be a hero, on a raid. Cherish it. I always do when I get that lucky.

Never underestimate the value of soloing skills.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>One of the rogues confessed later that he went over in a corner to hide...[/quote]
Ah, a well-trained rogue!

Congrats!

Sounds like fun. :) I always wanted to do the Vulak ring, even though it is FAR too long. Sheesh, SOE really needs to cut down the length of these events.

Another fun summoning thing is when a bot on autofollow gets summoned. It's like they're on a big rubber band.

They're standing there, following your main character, then ZAP they're summoned. Then Sproing! They run back to start following your main again. It always makes me chortle when it happens.

Great story! Sounds like it was a lot of fun :)

This was a case where everyone involved was a hero. Including those who died taking down the first two flurry drakes.

Yes, it was one of the rare instances that demanded quick action and thinking by just about everyone on the raid. A razor-thin margin of error. As I told my guildmates, that few minutes was just about the most fun I've ever had in EQ.

I can only hope that opportunities for an experience like this are available in LDoN....:)

What's that? You mean raids can be fun and challenging and people can be heroes? Imagine that...

Wow great story!

The ring is a BEATCH to get to and more impressive to finish!! Grats!

(FWIW: Had there been a GY in NToV it would have takin half the exitement out ;) fear of long CR's brings out the best in folks.)

And yes, well trained rogue. ;)

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>What's that? You mean raids can be fun and challenging and people can be heroes? Imagine that... [/quote]

Way to insert your agenda into an otherwise entertaining and lighthearted thread, Autumn. Give it a $%@# break already.

~Firemynd

Great, thanks Scirocco, now I can't get Elton John's voice out of my head!

"How do you think he does it?
I don't know...
What make him so good?"

LOL, anyway, grats on a great raid. I did my first "raid" in 11 months last night (just a lil 2-grouper to get the giant horse-riding guy in PoN), and it was a blast! We brought along a young necro I've been duoing with, and I think it was the first fast paced raid he'd been on, and all he kept typing in raid chat was "You guys should see me, I can't wipe the smile off my face!"

Now that's what EQ is all about, fighting with friends, making new friends, and getting the old adrenaline pumping!

Way to go,

Tat

Wave 7 is a killer. What we do is take the spliters to the bridge and off tank them until we know we can get them down.

Btw, that is some amazming high-speed kiting. There isn't a lot of room to work and those Carrion can kill you pretty fast.

Also, there is absolutely no reason for a Rogue to hide. If everyone dies or if everyone leaves the ring, the event is over.


*edit* Ding 1000!

I remember Scirocco(among others) doing the exact same thing in other threads Firemynd. I'm just trying to prove a point that raids can indeed be challenging and fun with heroes that save the day. You're the one that needs to lighten up it seems.

Firemynd

Didn't you read the "Don't feed the Trolls" sign?

/em mutters something about not being able to find a can of "Troll Begone" when you need one...

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Also, there is absolutely no reason for a Rogue to hide. If everyone dies or if everyone leaves the ring, the event is over.[/quote]

We're somewhat useful in dragging corpses out, so usually a rogue's impulse is to slink away and be useful for cleaning up in case of a melt-down, without having to run back from PoK.

Great story.

I always love the encounters that come real close to a wipe and you end up winning.. thats some fun stuff ;=)

That's alright, Firemynd. Trolls will be trolls...

In any event, it only emphasizes my earlier point in those threads. THIS kind of excitement is what I read heroic fantasy for, and it is this kind of excitement that I play the game for. I'll take it any way I can get it: solo, duoed, grouped or in a large-scale raid. It's unfortunate that it is relatively rare in the latter situations, but I suspect that that's the nature of the beast.

As I said before, I can only hope that LDoN, because of the limited raid sizes, will supply this kind of edge-of-the-seat action on a more frequent basis...:)

Death is for Hero's. Which rogues are not. If shT is hitting the fan and raid is wiping. All the rogues will escape and let the rest of the heroes die.

I have to agree and add that the game is at its most fun in the calm of the eye of chaos.

Way to go Scirocco :)

That is why I raid, I'll never forget the time we wiped to AoW (in our younger days) and were faced with a blown spawn which NOONE wants. Somehow, we managed to box a cleric, rez in, buff up and pull AoW before he depopped. We won, even short on healing, we won and that made it all the more enjoyable.

Consequently, my guild seems to be exceptional at dusting ourselves off and pulling out a win after a wipe. It's very rare for something to avoid death once we set our sights. Not many of us are willing to admit defeat :) It usually gives us just the motivation we need to win.

The two most fun times I ever had playing Everquest were during a Lady Nev fight with only two clerics, a druid (me) and a paladin as the healers. This was before PoP and before the big druid heals. We had almost the entire raid force jumping in and out from behind the wall in order to avoid the AE because we simply didn't have the healers to keep everyone alive and we were low on dps as well meaning the fight would last a while. My job was to keep everyone except the MA alive, and my mana was stretched to the limit. No shamans or extra clerics meant I had to heal myself up from modrods, which net me about 1 mana per hour, it felt like.

The second time was when we first downed Terris Thule very shortly after PoP came out. We had a raid force of 45 and failed twice in a row. Most people logged out knowing that since we were the only PoNb flagged guild we'd be able to take her down the next day. Then, with only 20 people average level 62, we decided to go try and learn a few things about the encounter on a third suicide-attempt. Next thing we know, we killed her. Finding out that the best strategy with TT is to take her slowly, and having a wonderful mix of classes (too many enchanters and mages/wizards for AEs) was just about the funniest thing ever. Also, cleaning up the gargoyles (which we didn't even know existed until this point) at the end of the fight took WAAAY too long. I think one of the enchanters was kiting one of them for about half an hour.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Death is for Hero's. Which rogues are not. If shT is hitting the fan and raid is wiping. All the rogues will escape and let the rest of the heroes die. [/quote]

Well, yeah.
/peer

cheers,
Celeris Tujimson
Deceiver of The Nameless, RIF.

A good rogue with SoS can drag the raid back to zone in much faster so the cleric who is bound in Western Wastes can start rezzing than it takes to get a raid full of nekkid folks and a necro across Sirens Grotto out there with two stacks of coffins. Call efficiency. So get of the high horse.

Funny thing call teamwork. :)

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>We had waited until after the dragons had already been cleared out by other guilds the previous day or two. You have to kill them all to be able to trigger the Ring event. *sigh[/quote]

We do this a lot on Bristlebane.. and if you leave the Lords and Ladies up, you can still start the event, but Vulak summons them to his aid if I remember correctly.

Ah, you are correct. The reason to kill them is to get them out of the way so Vulak doesn't summon them, not to actually trigger the event.

/flex!

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> We do this a lot on Bristlebane..and if you leave the Lords and Ladies up, you can still start the event, but Vulak summons them to his aid if I remember correctly. [/quote]

We've left a lord up. Didn't add. Might have made the last fight more fun. Could have been a bug that they didn't add.

Your name is obscure. Didn't realize any other guild on BB was even doing Vulak.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>THIS kind of excitement is what I read heroic fantasy for, and it is this kind of excitement that I play the game for. I'll take it any way I can get it: solo, duoed, grouped or in a large-scale raid.[/quote]

It does sound like heart-pounding excitement for the ones who live but probably sucks for the people who die and have to sit out the rest of the fight.

<strong>It does sound like heart-pounding excitement for the ones who live but probably sucks for the people who die and have to sit out the rest of the fight.</strong>


Yep, been there, done that, too. But that's the real "risk" involved, missing out on the fun. Without that risk, you don't have the heart-pounding excitement.

If you never push the edge, then what's the point?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> We do this a lot on Bristlebane.. and if you leave the Lords and Ladies up, you can still start the event, but Vulak summons them to his aid if I remember correctly.[/quote]

Hmmm ... Now there's an idea for a raid. Might make a nice screen shot for the webpage. If you stop to think about it, trying to kill Vulak with all his lords and ladies in attendance would feel very much like a PoP encounter.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>We've left a lord up. Didn't add. Might have made the last fight more fun. Could have been a bug that they didn't add.

Your name is obscure. Didn't realize any other guild on BB was even doing Vulak. [/quote]

Except for that one VF trip... no one really is doing Vulak... ;)

And I was there on that trip. But I thought it was Dagnor and we had a GM slay him due to his lava swimming capabilities.

As for my name... This was my original character... (correction) it was a druid. But that is the past .. :)

My guild just did Vulak last night and it was a blast. Was actualy a fun event and the loot at the end we got was very nice. A int caster robe to die for, 25 AC earring and some very nice gloves. I'm supprised people don't do the event more often because the general consensus of our guild was that it was pretty damn fun and worth doing again.

Oh it is fun.. the first.. and second time.

We have done it a about what? 10 times or so?

It gets quite boring... And the funny thing is, when VF Did it, they got some of the best loots he could dropped, we missed out on the super good ones :-p. Whenever we kill him we get monk loots :( Lots of monk loots :(

one of my 1st trips to sky, we pulled some of the pink and yellow wisps on the... 3rd? island (gorgalsk)... the proc a knockback and you need to agro them with a spell... so a pally goes to pull them and gets knocked back off the island... so it's my turn... tag one, run into the building door, wait for it to pop on me... and bam ! knocked back up into the upper corner of the bulding (probably 150 feet up) and the insta summoned down... and since they were hard to target it would happen 4 or 5 times until the tanks got them off me...

i felt more like a yo yo =)

DS

Very cool, Scir =)

dwaguns must always die /nod nod