Hi all!

We’ve made it happen and finally ventured into the Mind of Madness as a guild! A few of us have been in there already but the majority hasn’t and it was a pretty exciting guild event.

We were 19 with a few people not quite there with the hit yet but due to the nerfs it went quite alright anyway.

It took us a while to get the first boss Pagura down but it went very well anyway because every single pull got us a bit closer as people got used to the mechanics. The first few pulls we didn’t even survive the first part of “hide behind the pillar that appears when you kill one of the big adds”. We ended up activating too many of the big adds making the AoE damage that comes from them too much for us. It went better every pull though. Healers got used to what to expect, people didn’t hit more than one of them anymore and slowly but surely we made it past that phase safely more and more often.

The next problem we had was the phase with the two mini bosses because the small adds started swarming us when we didn’t kill their nests fast enough but that was a matter of getting used to as well and went pretty well after a while.

The closer Pagura was to his (her? its?) inevitable demise the messier the fight got though. Adds were everywhere. Red and green AoEs were everywhere. Kill the big add! Hide! Run away! And then, before we even realized how low hp Pagura already had, it suddenly died!

It was really great to see every pull being better than the previous one. We weren’t stagnating on one phase or struggling with a certain mechanic. It was constant noticeable improvement. Great job everyone!

So we went on to Lord Arak, the second boss. The first challenge of the fight was to actually jump down into the hole that opened after Pagura died without landing on Arak’s head and making him wipe the floor with you instantly. So regrouping after a wipe took a bit longer than usually, especially with a few very special people that seemed to enjoy being a mop for Arak’s floor.

The other problem was the pizza slice movement mechanic because one of our tanks apparently forgot the difference between right and left and had a difficult time moving the safe pizza slice we were standing in in the correct direction. Or as the first boss from Empyrean Core would say: “YOU HIT THE WRONG LEVERWLKAFDJWFJA”.

Then we kind of misunderstood the adds (WTB add whisperer) and didn’t exactly realize they would want to run away after if we bully the boss to 40% hp (we were close but didn’t quite get there). We actually tried to kill them when they turned off immortality mode but lacked dps a bit to get them down in one go before they became immortal again. But considering we were about 16 people only by then (it was getting late after all), still with a few lower hit members, we weren’t too surprised there.

We also had problems with a certain squirrel person that wasn’t setting a very good example as a squirrel person and kept running around like a mad headless chicken on drugs actually thinking some interrupts were missed or something… while standing in the green crystal near the boss.

After a while we got the left/right coordination problem sorted. The crazy headless chicken squirrel person calmed down as well so it was getting better and better. We still had problems with the adds swarming us even though the bard did all he could to pacify them.

We eventually had to call it a day because it got late and more and more people had to go sleep already.

In the end, we were quite happy with our progress that day considering we didn’t have a full raid and had a few people that weren’t hitting the boss half the time.

We will definitely try to keep this going! After getting Pagura’s mechanics down it should go down much quicker next time so we can fully focus on Lord Arak and the bosses beyond.

Thanks to everyone that made this raid a success and stayed in high spirits despite the many many wipes.

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Quite a few things to report on the Rift side of ED again. First off – and kind of late – we have reached the max guild level (30)! Grats ED! Thanks to everyone that contributed by doing guild quests!

We have had increased interest in achievement hunting lately and warfronts were being terrorized by our groups more often as well lately.

Raiding’s been going well, too. During the summertime low we were mainly focused on 10mans but we have officially made our return to 20mans two weeks ago and meeting up with this little guy again:

Yes, it’s Yoghurt (Yrlwalachakdjf)!

It went fairly well, we’ve had a few new members and raiders join us and it was great seeing so many together at once again. Time ran out before we made it to Threngar but the other four bosses bit the dust at least!

We had Hammerknell planned for the week after that but since we had quite a few people absent that day it unfortunately didn’t work out – we did a CoA EM to gear up new members and alts though!

With CoA getting nerfed a few days ago our regular NM on Sunday turned into a HM progression run! We had given Duke Eblius a few tries on HM sometime ago already but this time we actually killed him, too! There were a few more mechanics compared to NM of course but it wasn’t much more difficult with the nerfs though.

Azaphrentus backstabbed us with his fire waves from behind though. Sneaky guy. We made sure he paid for it.

Hericius, also known as shroombro, also known as Venusaur, was a little tricky as we had to figure out how to handle the weirdly spawning adds. We had a couple of wipes while getting the hang out of it and had to continue the next day as time ran out but we eventually got him down as well by taking the safe path and slowing down our dps so much that we could get the adds down before pushing the boss into the last phase and having the adds that were hiding near the mushrooms we had to burst down sneak up on us and murder us. People got used to jumping the waves quite fast, too.

Fionn wasn’t much of a challenge after. The transition from NM to HM made the messy fight even more messy but apart from that it went very well and we killed it after only a few tries.

So we’re officially CoA 4/4 in HM now! Even though the nerfs took out most of the challenge it still feels good to have completed it! Grats everyone that worked hard for this.

In the meantime…. our dear guild leader Malbec is still busy studying some boring stuff posting boring books of boring contract law or something boring (with the occasional mandatory wine and juice picture thrown in between) making us reminisce our raids together with him. So our guild Bot Master (no, not the harmful ingame bots but the fun Discord chat bots) was testing a Rift addon that reads boss mechanics out loud. He combined it with his wisdom (and he has a lot, he’s a cleric) about Discord bots and long story short: Enter Malbina, our friendly raid assistant bot. Malbec is raiding with us in spirit always. <3 WE MISS YOU MAL

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and he did!

It took us pretty much all night but it was our very first full clear of CoA in normal mode! Woohooo! Thanks everyone that put in their time and effort! Luckily, our great cameraman saw it coming and started recording our last few pulls to put together a nice video of our kill. Enjoy!

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The guild’s been a bit quieter over the summer but as summer holidays are coming to an end the activity’s bouncing back up with people returning sun burnt for some relaxed gaming time.

We had people coming and going and a lot of new members joining (welcome again!), ranging from people new to Rift still leveling to veterans ready to kick some boss arse in raids.

Everyone’s pretty excited about the new expansion, too! Looking forward to be newbs again and explore new stuff.

With the usual summer time activity drop (we’re actually happy to see people doing other stuff during the long days) our HK progression is sort of on a hold at the moment. The guild’s successfully killed Inquisitor Garau though which takes us to 5/11 in HK!

CoA is going smoothly, too. We pretty much got easy mode on farm which gives us a good way to gear some more people with T2 items along with the stuff we get from IGP (which we completed on hard mode a few times as well now).

So we’re currently working on CoA normal mode and made quite some progress today actually with our very first guild kill of Hericius (aka Venusaur)! After wiping to him for quite a while for random reasons we actually killed him on the first pull today. It was almost unreal, especially the part when we didn’t drop dead after Shroomageddon. It was like “Okay, left shroom is dead.” – “Right one, too.” – “Wait, what, all of them are dead…? Oh right, move to the safe spot!!”. We didn’t hit enrage either and had a very clean first kill.

Killing Fyragnos (aka Charizard), the really blind dragon that doesn’t seem to mind if you stand INSIDE his mouth counting his teeth, took a few tries but after a few wipes we got him down as well. Even had the time to share some poems.

Our Fionn tries unfortunately weren’t as successful, even though we made some improvement. So he has to wait until another day as it got quite late already and we called it a day.

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With the nerfs to boss hp in raids we are having an easier time with dps checks which is great for our type of guild that wants everyone that feels like trying get a chance to experience raid content. We don’t ask for a minimum amount of dps, specific roles or even the required hit but the dps checks have usually set the bounderies. It’s a bit easier now and we can still get a kill even though half the raid is dead for example (true ED style).

We are killing King & Prince more safely now (usually not needing full 2 hours on them either) and since we were low on Warriors we went to check out the dead pregnant ghost (wait what?).

One of the lazy Rogues slept in so we were 19 half the raid (nobody else was around that wanted to come at that time) but had a few good tries after sorting mechanics and roles. The sleepy Rogue showed up mid way and after a few more tries we killed Matron as well!

Also, as some may know already there’s a new T3 10man raid called Comet of Ahnket. Curious as we are we went to take a peek after we finished our IGP on Wednesday rather quickly (at least for our standards [we don’t have standards…]).

The first add pack (mini boss?!) gave us quite the welcome. Slapped us right and left over and over till we somewhat figured out how it works. We obviously just tried the new universal introduction mode as it was just (supposed to be) a quick peek at the first boss. But then things went crazy and we actually killed it! And the next one! And the one after! Too fast! So furious! But then the doom of the shroom came upon us and kind of traumatized people. One Rogue couldn’t stop licking shrooms, a Mage got totally broken by Shroomageddon. But the team somehow killed the evil shroomies and went on to the next bosses which died one after another. People were kind of just expecting marks from the Universal Introduction Mode (easy mode) so everyone was very happy that the bosses actually drop T2’ish loot!

We got stuck on the last boss since it was getting very late with people having to go leaving us with just 7 members for a few shots at the last boss. We tried figuring out mechanics but there was a lot going on and the tank(s) were fighting for their life taking a thousand thrusts! Weared out we decided to take a break but since everyone was so hyped we decided to continue the next day.

And so it happened we worked on the last boss on Thursday learning about the mechanics and wiping over and over (we probably still missed a lot of stuff). Since we were usually just doing older tiers with lots of guides and kill vids out already this raid was an interesting change as we didn’t have a reliable guide to depend on or someone that did the raid already to tell us about the mechanics. We learnt more every pull and shortly after we reached 100 stacks of the easy mode buff that increases your hp and damage we killed him!

And then something unexpected happened.

Shard… what…

Ah, shard first.

…wait what??

Yeah, apparently everyone was focused on normal and hard mode and none of the other casual guilds attempted easy mode… or something… Nobody really knew how that happened but hey, shard first in something!

At least some people in general chat had fun, too.

Great job everyone!  Let the giggles continue through many more nights.

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…there lived a King and his son in a huge fortress. They ruled their kingdom with an iron hand and crushed any that would oppose them.

But there was a brave group of adventurers trying to bring their tyrannical rule to an end. Day after day of defeat did not diminish their resolve to bring peace to the kingdom once again. They fought off the King’s guard dog, Murdantix, at the entrance of the fortress rather quickly and went off to face the tyrants yet another time.

But this time Lady Luck favoured them. All the heroes fought hard, used their previously earned experience in battling these monstrous rulers. It was a bitter fight and looked hopeless for the heroes again but Prince Dollin gave in first. The King cried out in rage when he saw his son lying on the ground and tried a last desperate attempt but was finally defeated as well. The adventurers ended the tyranny at last with barely half the group still on their feet. Great was the joy of the brave adventurers and shiny was the loot they found on the corpses of the King and Prince of the fortress.

But the brave adventurers had yet another trial waiting ahead of them for the King and Prince had actually been possessed by an evil witch from a foreign land! So the heroes ventured into a secret cave behind the throne where the evil witch was awaiting them. After having a bit of trouble with her evil minions the brave heroes faced the evil witch in battle. Still tired from their previous fight and not quite prepared for a foe of that calibre the group was soon defeated. Having to retreat the heroes promised to deliver justice to the evil witch in the near future…

To be continued.

Great job last Monday everyone! Finally got Molinar and Dollin down! We had a lot of luck with the red areas not spawning in bad spots and barely made it with 5secs left till enrage and all our healers dead and our Rogue tank had used his cheat death ability already. We weren’t really prepared for it but since we still had some time left we went on to Estrode but it took a while to check up stuff and ask our awesome Warriors to respec. We will definitely be back though.

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Hello all!

Just after ED’s 2 year anniversary the other day our raid team also achieved a few things worth celebrating.

For the third week in a row we have been back in Hammerknell! It was really great to see. We had a lot of new members over the last few weeks and a lot of them helped making HK a regular thing. Thank you all!

On our first week back in HK (you can imagine the HYPEEEEE) we managed to kill Murdantix again! We used up almost all of our raid time though, especially since we started late, so we didn’t bother going through those painful trash mobs before our next target King Molinar and Prince Dolin. We were super happy already with just being able to go back in there and kick Murdantix’s smelly behind! Some of us didn’t even want to leave the place, running around in circles being happy to be there again.

The second week we had enough people to go in there again! Oh the hype! Murdantix was not so hyped but thought of this as a good chance to kick our behinds this time round. We had quite a lot of random deaths. Sometimes it was like his green farts turned into a big explosion killing like 8 of our melees out of nowhere. Bad dog, bad! He even resisted our magical fail-safe “OK LAST PULL”-chant-for-definite-kill. And in a really evil way as well – our last pull got him to 1% hp…

… Yeah that was quite painful.

BUT!

Our third week! Ohhhhhh now that was awesome! KILL ON FIRST PULL! Yahoooooo. Yes, first pull.  Stop laughing, it’s true. No, it wasn’t the chronicle either.

We actually went for some really good tries on King Molinar after that!

We only had one night on King before and it’s been what feels like ages so everyone was anxious, raid leader included. “Okay guys, I think I’m supposed to explain tactics now but… I don’t really remember, it’s been a while…” We somehow put together what we remembered from the tactics – some mid-battle – and had a few very good tries! Lowest we got them to was 26 %. I blame the drunken Mage that usually boasts with his dps but happened to struggle with outdpsing the supports and healers tonight. He blamed it on the poor Pyromancer spec.

But you could definitely see improvement every pull. We still had to get used to the fight again so we had a lot of simple deaths, easily fixed by more practice, like missing an interrupt or reflect here and there, wrong positions etc. Very good tries though! I’m sure we can get this down in time if we continue the practice.

Yesterday then, was the day we scheduled for a few tries on Anrak on hard mode! We’ve never tried IGP on hard mode so it was a whole new challenge. We had a few tries with 9 people while waiting for our delayed 10th person. The first real try with 10 people got us to 10% on enrage and we weren’t sure if we could cover that but HELL YEAH! We did! I think we owe this success to our Archon that day that told the tanks and healers to just pull an additional 10 % more dps and we should be good! And lol they actually did improve their dps (among other people) and we got it down! Great job everyone! So proud <3 We had a few tries on Guurloth but nothing serious because we were at half raid time already so we decided to switch back to normal mode to make sure we clear it and get some other people that need more gear in as well.

Very successful few weeks! Great job everyone.

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The Boss – under the ever persisting influence of his wine – started with a small speech. For those of you who missed it, here it is:

After we were done cheering and toasting we went outside because there were still games to play and prizes to win!

We started off with a dice tournament. We split into 3 teams. Originally they were supposed to be decided by /roll 3 but since the Rogue that organized the event (Rogues’ naturally low intelligence stat showed…) is really bad with numbers and got confused with so many of them in the chat (everyone rolled at the same time after all) it didn’t exactly work out as planned but the teams were equal in numbers at least.

Each round there was a slightly different rule set and each team, when it was their turn, had to make it through the round with as few members out as possible to have better chances at making it far in the tournament. There was “if you roll the same number as the organizer rolled, you’re out”, “if you roll anything higher than 8, you’re out”, “if you roll an even number you’re out” and more. Everyone was really lucky the first two rounds with everyone passing! Then in the third round about half the participants rolled an even number and were out! We continued to battle on until a winner was finally decided! Congrats to the last three who won the prizes for their respective places! Surprisingly enough, all three of them were Rogues. Can’t trust dem Rogues… must have been some loaded dice or something…

After this luck-based game, our knowledge was tested in 10 rounds of Trivia, each round awarding a small prize! Some questions as obvious as “what’s the max level?” while others took a bit of more in-depth knowledge like “Who’s the leader/commander of the Defiants?”. The very first question though was ruined by a typo by the Rogue organizer. Instead of asking “What’s the dragon of gold and greed called?” she asked “What’s the dragon of gold and green called?” leading multiple people to answer “Greenscale” instead of “Laethys”… After there was another (not so bad) typo in the next question as well, the Boss threatened to have her pay 100 plat per typo. After that it went pretty typo free.

After the trivia was done we wanted to go eat some well-deserved cake but some evil person (those Rogues…) stole and hid it. Everyone spread out to find it then, especially since a bounty of 100 plat was offered to whoever found it! But a sneaky smart person (a Rogue. Of course.) had a better idea that (to his own surprise) even worked, and instead of going to the cake he brought the cake to him! (via the dimension item list)

After a good yummy piece of cake we went off to take pictures. Because making lines and forming circles is too easy (or not) we tried something harder: Forming an “ED”. It was such a mess lol Partly because we didn’t have that many people left (we tried to fill up with companions but controlling the movement of those little buggers is harder than it seems…) so we gave up after a while. We went over to the little bridge and took some good ones there instead! And that concluded our little party.

Happy birthday, ED! Thanks everyone, old and new members, for making it an awesome place to be. Let’s celebrate a lot more birthdays in the future. <3

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Hello and happy Easter everyone!

Raiding’s going well in ED. We have been back to Mount Sharax the last two weeks among other stuff and we were just 2-3 members with 1.2k hit short from going back to Hammerknell last Wednesday so that should be just around the corner, too. We were able to bring in a few new members again though.

MS was quite fun again though. Before we even got to the trash mobs before the first boss, a love quarrel broke out between the used-to-be-a-dwarf-but-had-a-growth-spurt-Bahmi Mage and his supposedly soon to be wedded Cleric “wife”. The wedding that was supposed to take place last Tuesday was put on hold because “something came up”. Or someone? We may never know. It’s hard enough to keep track of who’s part of the “love triangle” (more accurately probably a “love pentagon” by now).

Once we passed the Easter Bulfy that rewarded us with lots of yummy drops, we headed on to Jinoscoth that demanded a sacrificial lamb again. As a tradition (that established kind of recently lol) we wanted to sacrifice one of our new members and we even had one brave new Cleric that was willing to take up the challenge! So after briefly explaining tactics we tried it out and it was like he was made for the job! It went really smoothly and so it was two more. Izkinra was playing hard to get like usually but we did get him in the end.

Now Yrlwalach was being funky again, too. Playing hide and seek with some people, disappearing from their screens. Oh, and apparently the jelly buff that prevents you from being mind-controlled isn’t always gone after you die anymore? One of our Mages had his own theory: “It was a secret Quality of Life improvement by Trion – it SOMETIMES doesn’t fall off…”. We had a few tries but time ran out and people had to leave so we stopped there.

Friday we went for a random RoF with a couple of new people as well. It went quite well with lots of giggles as well. “Need one sec” – “One.” – “Okay, wait, need lots of secs/sex…” – “Did he just say that…” Yup, he did. Looks like his future wife isn’t giving him enough secs yet. Overall a smooth run with useful loot for our new raiders/members.

We started RoF a bit earlier than usual so we could still do another old raid as they’ve been quite popular lately for the achievements, wardrobes and with lower level members. We decided to go back raiding Maelforge’s and Laethys’ eggs again as some members haven’t been there last time and there are still quite a few achievements to get for the Infernal Strider mount (and it’s Easter after all)! We managed to get a few more achievements and it was a nice raid with about 15 people attending.

Great job everyone that was around these past few raids. Hammerknell is definitely in reach.

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Hi all!

After a very quick run in RoF last Wednesday (under an hour even with new people! Finnie dead on first try!) our hunger for raids was not quite stilled yet so we decided to go back and visit some of the most epic raids and battle with the Blood Storm once again!

First we headed to Infernal Dawn, the lair of Laethys and Maelforge. It was quite awesome to see the raid again, even if most of us were level 65, which made things so much easier. We did have a few of our still leveling members join us in this epic battle though! Thank you everyone that came!

The first two bosses went down without major problems but then Rusila Dreadblade kind of wiped the deck of her pirate ship with us. Yarrrrrr! We had a couple of tries but it started getting late already so people had to leave and we decided to continue another time.

Yesterday, we headed back there and finally defeated her! We did a bit of research on tactics before heading in though so that made it easier.

Next two bosses were fairly easy again, other than playing an early “find the Easter eggs” game with Laethys’ dragon eggs. That made her quite angry and she made the next fight was a little tricky but we managed to defeat her! She did get a little too distracted by her piles of gold coins lying around in the end.

Then it was time to make our way to the last boss, Maelforge. He was not amused… In fact, he was pretty enraged. We did defeat his minions, his girlfriend and their dragon eggs after all… He gave us hell but we managed to come out victorious after all!

It was a great raid that rewarded us with lots of achievements and quite a few nice wardrobe pieces. One of our still leveling members even got gear improvements! Grats everyone!

But we were not quite done yet… We still had time and motivation left so we decided to try another “old raid”. Of all things, we decided to pick a fight with the Queen of Storms, Dragon of Tyranny – Crucia – in her Frozen Tempest.

Epic “world’s ending” background music got us fired up so after clearing some trash we went to the first boss, sexy Zaviel (“Hey, we’re fighting shards!”). The fight was quite uneventful, just had to remember to kill the swirls to remove her immunity to damage (instead of continuing to hit her without dealing damage like the brain dead zombies we are sometimes <3).

The next mobs were quite funny as one of the bigger guys kept spawning some smaller guys that kept giving experience! lol I’m not sure how much they were actually giving but it gave one of our new still leveling Clerics the idea of wanting to stay there and continue slaying the small guys! Unfortunately the big guy died shortly after so we had to move on.

The next boss, (our shard!) Gelidra, had quite bad luck because we defeated her so fast she didn’t even have time to put up her pillars of mass destruction that we would normally have to destroy before she gathers too much energy from them!

Oh but the next bosses gave us hell in return! The twins, Kolmasveli and Toinenveli (“Cole and Tony”) were not happy we defeated their two girls.

It was funny though. We actually had dps problems. But not the kind you usually mean by dps problems. The kind that makes the “Hide from Cole/Tony” mechanic, which is based on time passing, and the “Bomb! BOMB! DEFUSE THE BOOOOMB!!” mechanic, which is based on their remaining hp, line up just perfectly! So we had to hide AND defuse the bomb at the same time… which was quite tricky. We spent quite some time trying to hold back dps and as time passed, some people had to leave, so we ended up with lower dps! Yay! Wouldn’t think we’d ever be happy about lower dps but hey, strange things happen. They still made us go boom quite a few times after that but we managed to defeat them at last! Wooooo! Defeating them was quite satisfying. Great job everyone!

Now it was finally time to face the Dragon of Tyranny! We had a couple of tries, improved bit by bit but had a few problems due to not quite remembering tactics, especially regarding the turret and the bomb. But it was still a very exciting fight! It was getting late though so some more people had to leave so we decided to call it a night. But Crucia, we WILL return!

Thanks to everyone that came along for the fun and giggles for both Infernal Dawn and Frozen Tempest! Especially our new and still leveling members! You took time off your leveling and gearing schedule to join us and we’re very happy about that, I hope you had as much fun as I did!

ALL HAIL CRUCIA!

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