Raiding, Raiding, Raiding, Rawhide!

Last night saw my first raid back with my old raiding crew. I only managed to get a spot on Toxx, Lair of the Dragon Queen as my timers wouldn’t allow me to help the gang out in Perah’Celsis Labs, which they went on later to do. It was a nice case of being dropped back in the deep end with a proficient raid force. I forgot how fast things move in a well organised raid. Having been casual for an eternity it seems I’m used to taking five minutes to dish out loot, ages to have each and every mob explained etc etc. I actually missed rolling on a couple of things because I was dithering about with my chat boxes (my /ran rolls are in the wrong chat tab!). I was pretty pleased I was messing about actually, because in my self induced panic (“Holy Crap!! Where’s my rolls gone??”) my buddy Jahf won his shoulder pieces, which was great.

I did have to roll against him on a couple of items later on though. Well, I think a couple, not sure if he rolled on the T9 forearms piece that I won, but I know Jahf definitely rolled on the axe I won too. Sorry mate, it seems lady luck was a smilin’ upon me. One of our other Dirges, Piki rolled a bit too slow on the forearms but beat my roll by a huge amount..just as I had clicked accept to get the item from our raid leader, Irja. So apologies for that Piki mate. I wish I had been a bit more tardy messing around with my chat boxes when that happened, I might have delayed clicking ‘OK’ and Piki may have got the item they had ‘won’. Shame really. But we will be heading there a huge amount over the coming weeks, so maybe they’ll drop again soon.

Whilst everyone else toddled off to Labs, I sat Adurj outside AFK, just in case the raid force decided to come out and reset their instance (meaning Adurj would have been allowed in), and I switched to Voltaan to go do some harvesting. About an hour and a half of giving the poor old warrior Volt a crick in his back leaning over harvestable nodes constantly, I’m pleased to say I harvested absolutely no rares at all. Man, that is why harvesting really really gets on my nerves. The drop rates for rares is crazy slow and some of us who rarely have hours to set aside to harvest end up spending a fortune on them at the broker in the end. Not very cool SoE. Not cool at all. What about those players who don’t have that time available? Don’t bother answering that, all seeing SoE. I know the answer. “Head on over to our new upcoming EQ2Extended servers and buy your rares with real life money”, to which my reply would be “Thanks! Why don’t you head on over to my rear end and start kissing!”. Grrr. Annoying. Actually there is something humourous about this. I went to the broker to see how much Kaborite rares were selling for (around 10-11pp on AB) and mostly people have one or two rares to sell that they have been lucky enough to find. But one guy had like twenty two or something ridiculous. He’s either, got no life, got a bot program, or an aggressive marketing plan where he buys all the cheap rares and prices them back up on the broker for a bigger profit. Either way, taking the time to harvest twenty odd rares, if you didn’t have a bot and went and got them legitimately, wow, that’s dedication.

Pretty much just as I was getting extremely frustrated harvesting, a group who I had started Cella with earlier (then I had to leave to raid –very sorry indeed about that folks”), gave me a /tell asking if I would like to replace someone on the last fight with the Queen. I jumped at the chance as I needed the update in there from the friendly dragon to conclude my enervated Mythical weapon questline ‘Epic Repercussions’. I arrived, we did it first try, nice and smooth like. Quite an easy fight really, as long as you have everyone concentrating. Anyhow, I got my final update and following a little bit of runnin’ around I finally got my enervated mythical. Now, I’m not as happy as I thought. Oh, don’t get me wrong I’m overjoyed I have all that finally sorted out and now I don’t have to have my ‘Myth’ equipped all the time and I have a lovely house version for an ornament. But, there’s an issue here and I have mentioned this in my blog before. I used to have a ‘mythical’ item. The rarest type of loot drop in Norrath. In your EQ2 gaming life it is unlikely you will hold a mythical item more than once. They are the rarest of the rare. And now I don’t have one anymore. I know it’s petty. I know it’s childish, but I really did enjoy the fact that I had a Mythical class of item. When you hand in your quest to obtain your enervated weapon, it arrives back in your inventory with a ‘Fabled’ tag. Extremely petty I know. But I want my Mythical back! How can any self respecting sorrowful musician expect to brag about his exploits in song without a Mythical weapon? Shameful! Of course I’m joking, it really doesn’t bother me that much at all, in fact it was more of a musing I had. It was nice having a Myth tho. Maybe I can sing songs to my Grandchildren about the Mythical Ballad of the Lost Lamentation. Oh darn it.. I need a digi-cyber lover before pixel babies, oh well. Maybe I should go seek "Ceciliantas" and ask him how it's done ;)

Until next time,

Be well.