neXus takes out a level 80 epic WTF?!

Firstly let me apologise for the use of WTF in the title of this post. It will all become clear as the story of last nights EQ2 session unfolds.

I logged on to help Sofran get his Wizard epic update in Sebilis and our group formed up quickly. The nights group consisted of myself as Yetian (Warden), Milkyjoe (Guardian), Katary (Conjuror), Sofran (Wizard), Flashman (Illusionist) and MMO-Symposium’s very own Ffaffner (Paladin).

We entered Sebilis hacked our way down to the first waterfall area killed a named and Sofran had his update. Easy I know, this was only the beginning of the night however..

Before I go on however I just thought I’d show you the shiny staff that dropped from the epic update named. Nobody needed it so Ffaffner kindly gave it to my for my new Warlock Naitey, more on him in an upcoming post.

After Sebilis we quickly dropped the ring event outside the entrance and then someone had the idea to take down the epic x2 dinosaur in Kunzar Jungle as it was only a short walk away.

We ran over to the Dinosaur epic (80 x2 epic), a 2 group epic mob, with our 1 group of neXians. As we stopped nearby and started killing trash the dino approached us. At this point Katary the shiny fanatic decided to run over and harvest a shiny on the ground. A shiny is the term used for collectable items which you can find all over Norrath in Everquest 2. Katary has a bit of a shiny obsession and is often found harvesting them while the group fights, or pulling mobs while harvesting shinies. The epic got dangerously close to Katary and then all hell broke loose.

Flashman our fearless (or is that daft ), Illusionist tried to save Katary from certain death, other group members also followed while a ton of solo mobs were still being cleared. With the group not prepared and myself (the healer), still being eaten alive by mini raptors things went bad fast. The group all died in a short space of time and we regrouped for a 2nd attempt. With myself vowing to boot our Conjurer next time he harvests by an epic

The second attempt began with a group of heroic neXians Vs Trakanasaurus Rex!

This time we were all ready to fight and despite more trash arriving we fought hard and with MJ valiantly taking a beating for the good of the group, myself chain healing and plenty of DPS from the rest we dropped the epic without too much trouble.

The death of the dino prompted our leader Katary to issue the now infamous statement “Lol neXus takes out a level 80 epic WTF?!”

I should explain that neXus is a very casual guild to the point where the word slacker is used more in guild chat than hello. We formed the guild for people who have limited gaming time and who want to log on and enjoy the game with like minded players. We rarely raid and even then only do x2 raids as a guild, more than that requires advertising for others to join.

We have been building up our characters in terms of equipment and level. We now have around 2 full groups (12) of characters which are level 80 and equipped in mostly tier 1 shard armour, with some in tier 2. A level 80 epic with 1 group when Kunzar Jungle was released would have been a bit of a push for us. So we rightly felt a sense of pride after dropping the dino.

Not content with our epic kill we decided to try out an instance which most of us had never been to, despite it existing in the game for some time. The instance in question was Runneye the Gathering, otherwise known as Runnyeye 2 a level 80 instanced version of the zone Runnyeye. The image to the right is our group in the entrance area of the zone, with one different member to the earlier group. Ffaffner swapped from his Paladin to his Swashbuckler, the fancy pants had arrived!

There are a few images above of our path through Runneye. The final image shows us fighting our way through some trash (none named) mobs in the zone. We cleared through the first few named easily enough, though we did wipe on occasion where either we ended up with too many mobs or one or more of us (myself on occasion), wasn’t quite prepared or was chatting to the guild.

One of the named we dropped is shown in the image to the left.

I did say the first few named went down easily enough, though it wasn’t without incident. NeXus group nights can not pass without something strange happening to one of the group members. This time it was our Illusionist  Flashman who brought about side splitting laughter from the group.

Flashman had forgotten to unequip his Jarsath wastes porting hammer and when fighting one of the name Flash decided to melee the said Goblin and port himself to Jarsath Wastes! Jarsath wastes is not only another zone, it’s on another continent!! Poor Ffaff was incapable of fighting for the new few minutes as we kept hearing bursts of laughter over the voice comms. Katary then dropped a line into group chat saying he had spotted the hammer in Flashman’s hands but hadn’t said anything, evil Conjuror that he is.

Flashman did eventually rejoin us and we continued on.

Another neXus incident followed shortly afterwards. We were about ready to take down the hardest name in the zone and Katary decided he had to go check with his wife to see if she was sapping his bandwidth, as he was experiencing lag. I joked it was probably his wife uploading naked pictures of him to the web. When Katary returned he informed us his wife was uploading pictures to some Thai facebook type site. More laughing ensued before we attempted to take the named.

This time a third neXus incident occured before we could get to the named. Milkyjoe our tank for the night ran forwards to open the door to the named and instead zoned out to Enchanted Lands via the wrong door! By this stage my sides were hurting and we had to compose ourselves for MJ’s return.

The shaman in the picture was a tough named, he has 4 adds that have to be taken down in the correct order. We tried a few methods but as the only healer I couldn’t keep up with the healing on our tank. I am in Tier 2 shard gear, epic and decent equipment in other slots and despite chain healing I just couldn’t keep up. There is probably a trick to this named as I have solo healed a lot of TSO zones including necrotic which was one of the tougher ones I have tried.

We tried a few times but in the end decided to leave the mob alone and head back for a few named we had missed. We eventually ran out of time and the plan was to finish it tonight. Unfortunatley I have only just got back home so I’m afraid I’ll miss out on finishing the instance. Hopefully another neXian will step in to heal and neXus will take down the remaining few named.

All in all it was a good fun night and reminds me again what a great guild I am a part of. We don’t raid often as I said but when we do get together to raid or group it’s always good fun with neXians around.