With two new raid zones added ( The Icy Keep and Underfoot Depths) not that long ago, we've had a little bit more on our plate to keep us busy.
We also managed to finally take down the hard mode for both contested (more than once, as I've taken so long to write the news!).
Another expansion is here, and I must admit it feels long over due. Sentinel's Fate finally brings us face to face with Roehn Theer, the God Slayer himself.
This of course in turn meant that the Avatars of the gods have finally (hurray!) left Norrath, after 3 years of fighting against them I think few people will truly miss them.
Sentinel's Fate also brought the return of Odus and with it Toxxulia forest, Toxxulia (the Dragon Queen) herself included.
Read on to find out how we've faired against the new content.
On December 6th Xanadu finally cleared TSO with the killing of Munzok.
With the expansion cleared yet again, we can now safely look ahead to Sentinel's Fate and prepare as best we can with a mixture of farming, slacking, alting and weird guild chat conversations.
It's about time we had something to post some news about, and with Miragul's death on November 1st we finally have something new to post about.
The fight wasn't too complicated and we killed it with only a few hours of real pulls. The adds certainly have an Echoes of Faydwer feel to them which wasn't too bad on its own but everything combined to be quite problematic at times.
Galvanized by our complete Avatars annihillation, the fierce penguins marched on one of the last two enemies that still refused to give us shiny loots in this expansion, Warlord Ykesha. While his officers were no threat to us as we'd been killing them easily in the past months, he had some lame trick up his sleeves (hail, reset mid-pull) and managed to keep us busy for some time, but in the end he fell and we put his head on a stick (nicely covered by a pedestal) and placed it in hour guild hall! Woot!
Goes without saying that this another SERVER FIRST by Xanadu.
Wanna read more about this, read some kinky quotes and support Bear Humping (c) in Norrath? click the following button!
A few of our members decided we had spent enough time with 13 out of 14 Avatars killed with only Fear remaining. With the faction bump made it was only a few days before Avatar of Fear spawned on May 3rd and was soon dealt with. This completes our Avatar kills, all TSO contested killed. With only Ykesha, Gozak and Munzok left for us to kill.
It's been a while since we last posted a video for one of our kills, but with thanks to Krantz for filming and Slacka for producing we have one (I think Slacka uploaded 3 in total due to complaints about choice of music). I wasn't going to put this on the front page as it will most likely download the video in full every time people load to the forums, but the only other media we have is a stamp sized screen cap of the Avatars health at 1%.
With a few recent new Avatar kills we're now left waiting for just one to finally spawn (we will probably have to resort to forcing the spawn via faction). So having started at the end, what have we been up to that leaves us with only Avatar of Fear and Ykesha unkilled this expansion?
The past two weeks have seen three new kills for us, I would start with the oldest first but really who wants a news update with the main picture being a giant ugly halfling?
Yesterday (March 25th) we finally managed to bring down Avatar of Justice, it's almost enjoyable at times... no really, it is! It requires a lot of focus and there is little margin for error, while the usual Avatar timer is a little more lenient with this encounter the excessive lag and the amount the avatar heals for really makes it difficult to make the kill in the time given, not to mention individuals getting the fail mechanism after getting resurrected unless you take a few precautions. With no lag this could be fun fight, almost enjoyable. Right now with server performance what it is it feels more like torture, the constant agony of the fight and the constant threat of catastrophic failure...
Over the past week or so, our Avatar progress has finally started to take shape. On February 27th we managed to bring down Avatar of Hate for the first time since TSO launched. It proved a frustrating fight, it's zone location further adding to our issues (as I'm sure is the case for other guilds), Nektulos Docks function as a mini hub to access several other zones. Due to the new server lag that came with TSO which causes a brief period of lag every time someone enters the zone, if two or three people zone in quick succession this can turn what otherwise looked like a good pull into a complete nightmare. I could go on with my complaints about server performance, but I have two more kills in which to do that!
March 2nd also seen our long over due kill of Avatar of War, we had been close many times before but never quite managed to attain the kill. Once Axe of War stopped being a problem everything soon fell into place. I mentioned lag earlier, well with Zek being a empty zone we never really had much of a problem here with lag. No more than what is considered "normal" for raiding in EQ2 these days.
Last but by no means least, Avatar of Health Finally fell last night on March 8th, the only new contested that we'd have so far this expansion. The script was basic and straight forward, adds were strangely familiar... almost like we'd seen them before, but where? Seriously though, it was an enjoyable fight. However this was by far the worst lag we had ever experienced on a contested to date. We regularly just had to abort before anything had even gone wrong, the server was just responding so slowly that 2-3 minutes of combat equated to 1 minute of actual spell casting. 3 minutes of a flawless pull with only 10% damage dealt to the avatar, no players dead... Seriously SOE, EQ2 is an awesome game and we all enjoy I greatly but please give us back the performance we once had. When you put a time limit on fights like these at just 6 minutes 30 seconds (AoHealth it really is a limit, next sweep AE that hits after you get battle weary and it's nn raid), the least we expect as players is that our success or failure is in our hands and not purely based on if the server will respond in a timely manor for the 6 minutes needed.
If you made it through my ranting about lag and want to know what we looted, or perhaps you just like reading our freaky quotes?
We've had a busy week, so much so that 3 kills are going to have o be squeezed into one news update. Friday the 13th turned out to be quite lucky for us, with a quick kill of Avatar of Storms marking a good start to our evenings raids. That said it's still probably one of the most frustrating and annoying encounters that we'll be forced to repeat for yet another year. Who'd have thought constantly getting interrupted, loosing target and being unable to heal would be unpopular with players...
Sunday the 15th also proved quite productive, with a strong turn out we spent some time re-familiarising ourselves with Avatar of Tranquillity and were rewarded for our efforts. Probably one of the more enjoyable Avatars, even with the charm it's still hugely preferable to storms! note to any developers: random charms are still lame!
On Monday night we finally found time to spend a second evening on Zarrakon - yes, yes we know... Bad Xanadu! What on earth have you been wasting time on?! well other Avatars that weren't as fruitful as those listed above. - anyway, with decent positioning and a little practice the encounter proved quite fun, the scripting was pretty easy to follow with visual queues and text hinting at what you need to do. Hopefully this will prove enjoyable to kill weekly, rather than annoying... time will tell.
