Dirt Naps
stargrace 
Now, Bristlebane isn’t part of PoP at all (Planes of Power for those who may have forgotten or never played) but he was still on the list of “would like to kill one day” encounters that we all made mentally. I’ve never killed him before, in fact I’d never even seen him before let alone kill him.
So when Ninga and Ultann decided last night that we’d be going to check on him I was so excited. It’s no surprise that I’m a big fan of Plane of Mischief, it’s my favorite zone by far. When I first started playing EQ I spent hours upon hours in this zone with my beastlord friend farming gear that was (at the time) huge upgrades for me. It was so much fun. Probably the main reason I have such fond memories.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the encounter, there was a discussion about how every server had a different version of the playful King of Thieves, but when I looked it up on Zam there was only talk of one main encounter so perhaps things have changed over the years. It was a pretty basic fight. Throughout the duration Bristlebane does an emote (or two) and switches his stances out between being highly magic resistant and fighting faster, increasing his strength and other such things.
My necromancer (who is now level 68 after five days of playing which I’ll talk more about later) was almost instantly turned into a halfling – and not just any halfling, a BALD halfling. Those ones are the worst kind after all. I noticed the rest of the group mates seemed to resist this AoE and I felt a little foolish as I hurled spells at Bristlebane’s ankles.
In the end we were victorious, and the fight dropped a few pretties. What I was hoping for was the clicky shrink item, but apparently that’s rare and we sure didn’t see it. That’s ok though, what we did get was still pretty nice. I relogged over to Invis (the rogue) in order to loot a new dagger.
The dagger (even though VERY old) was still an upgrade to my off hand. Sure, I could purchase a better one from the broker but what would be the fun in that? Where was the challenge.
We also received a bracer, nothing too facny about it – but along with that bracer was a robe. A pretty robe. It went to Minxes (the necromancer) who has been wearing her tutorial gear for quite some time now, and who we’ve just started obtaining gear for. The robe has a beautiful graphic on the Drakkin and it’s black with purples and pink highlights.
Which reminds me, some time I need to take my little necromancer to speak with the npc in PoK about her planar progression stone – though it’s also highly outdated, and I realize Bristlebane has nothing to do with it, it’s just one of those things I need to get around to some time that I have not done yet. Hopefully the guys had just as much fun as I did, even though none of the items we loot are upgrades at all to their uberness. We keep checking on a particular mob every day to see if they are up yet and get a chance to kill them (not telling which, it’s a secret!) but so far, no luck. Not sure when they died last, either.
The boys did get a chance to check in on Cazic Thul and kill him, which I was surprised at, figuring that he would be heavily camped. It won’t be long until the PoP mobs we’ve already killed can be taken down again and now that my necromancer has a few more levels under her belt we can get her some more old flags that are no longer used.
Another post will follow this one in a bit, talking about what we spent the rest of the evening doing (which was a lot of fun and pretty exciting for me personally, I must say). See you in Norrath!