Where’s the red pool?!
stargrace This weekend was pretty intense. In fact it was so intense I didn’t take any screen shots, and I didn’t post on my blog at all. I’ve got a large handful of RL going on between family friends and work, but still managed to get a lot of gaming in over the weekend (knowing that the next two weeks I won’t be able to do that much).
The servers had a 40% bonus to experience, alternative advancement (formally achievement), and crafting – and while I would have loved to have gotten some crafting done it simply wasn’t in the plans.
I did manage to level my little Willamina (ranger) from 1-67 and I’ll have some roleplay posts about that later this week (or possibly next, I have deadlines coming up and things are a little hectic) and I also decided to turn aa experience on my little level 15 bruiser and reached 28 with her, which was fantastic.
I ran shard of love a few times, did a lot of instances, and everything was generally a blur. It was great. You know those happy gaming phases where you’re not concerned with anything else (for once).
Yesterday was also my first ‘official’ TSO raid run, as a recruit of Paradise Lost.
Let me tell you, TSO raids are *stressful* and basically as a healer you’re only ever doing one of a few things (because that’s all you have time to do). You’re either casting cures (which you do a LOT in TSO raids), not casting, or healing. We headed to Tomb of the Mad Crusader first, which I have been to quiet a few times now and have no issues healing in – oh except that I was experiencing (as were a few others) INSANE amounts of lag. The game may as well have been performing as a slide show. Now, I realize I don’t have a top of the line computer, but I rarely have as many issues with any other game as I do with EQ2 even playing on the lowest settings. I know I could improve my heals 100x if I could simply play the game properly without the handfuls of lag.
Once ToTMC was down it was time to head to Zerrakon, which I had never fought before. The encounter is pretty straight forward. There are two pools and a lot of debuffs and when you get hit with purple or red vision (which is more like black and the floor poofs with my settings) you have to run into one of the two pools or you wipe the raid. Not only do you wipe the raid but it calls out who has wiped the raid so everyone can laugh at you.
Of course, being my first time there it was me who wiped the raid. Lagging off the side of the red pool I fell to my death below instead of curing myself. Woopsie.
There are also annoying adds that spawn, per group, and you have to take them down or your group is unable to do anything with Zerrakon or anything at all outside of your own group. Very frustrating. Eventually we finished that raid (we do have a lot of recruits currently and things are a little wobbly) and headed off to Palace of the Ancient one, which I had only been to before once and that was on my troubador.
Palace is another raid zone where you’re constantly curing, and when you’re not doing that you’re healing and watching for debuffs where you’re not supposed to cure or you’re supposed to run through a portal or click on an item. These raids are VERY tedious and not fun what so ever. I don’t even get to watch anything going on because I’m constantly watching my group to cure and act on my detrimental window. The raids are nothing like the ‘fun’ raids of EoF or RoK.
I ended up getting two pieces of gear by the end of the night, my shoulders and my helm. That means my mystic is now wearing 5 pieces of T4 gear, critical mitigation went up a huge amount. My jewelery still absolutely sucks but that’s something that will come with time. She also has all of her master spells now, which I’m happy about.
This is the first time I’ve ever played a mystic on raids. The first time I’ve ever experienced TSO raids, and I’m fairly under geared since I also never did RoK raids with the character. Hopefully it will only take a time or two before I get used to it and start remembering the encounters and what I do on each of them.
What did everyone else spend their weekends doing? Anything exciting? I want to hear below!
Happy gaming, and I’ll see you in Norrath.