Most of last week was spent getting characters flagged for raids. We’ve been all organised. I put a spreadhseet together and everything…. 🙂

Anybody who read mine or Samius blog from the start of the week will know that my guild, Heros of the Dragons Wrath, has been teaming up with the Defense Guild. Due to the time difference the only real time we get to group up is weekends, their mornings coinciding with our mid-afternoons.

Saturday we had a quick run around. Samius had things to do so after a quick run of Madstone Crater, he left and 3 of us ran around with Tobril in Eveningstar. We blasted through the Druids Deep chain on eH, with only a slight hiccup with the quest Thorn and Paw when the last wall wouldn’t come down. Until my partner, Trapping (she likes rogues!) found a Red Musk zombie lurking in a bear pit and finished it off 🙂 No hag on the last mission, though, so no chance of Ivy Wraps, which was a shame.

By the time we finished the chain, Samius was back but we had to log off for the night.

Sunday, the DG guys (and gal) jumped on just as I was about to go sort food out. By the time I got back, they were running the DQ pre-raid, so my partner & myself jumped in for the end of that. Lailat goes down very nicely and we all pile back to Zawabi’s ready to go off and kick her butt again. Only to find that my partners cleric had already run the DQ raid and hadn’t reset the chain! But, the DG guys are happy to run the pre-raid again, another eN run in the hope for the odd seal or shard 🙂 Back to Zawabi’s again, into ADQ. I cannot remember if we did eN, or eH, but either way this was the first time we’ve run this raid on epic. In the past our guild have 4 manned it on normal, but this run was easy and smooth, with Samius tanking Lailat; Tobril, Torrance & Trapping DoT’ing; while I whack away with my fighter (when I’m not knocked on my arse).

eVoN is suggested next. One of our other guildies, jpedd, comes on with his sorc, I switch to Dimichaerii my dark monk, Trapping stays with her cleric. Now, we have actually done eVoN5 before, but it’s not one we run very often so we’re not that familiar with it. But, again, it was breezed through. Even short manning it we had plenty of people for pulling of levers & such. Also, I started using the US pronunciation of ‘lever’ – I’ll have to be careful with that 😀

And so we come to eVoN6. We’ve run this at heroic level, maybe twice before. Never at epic. Tobril gives us instructions and we’re off. It took us a bt of time to organise our Djinni killing, but we get there, take down the portals, regroup. Onto Velah. She looks awesome. I feel kind of guilty for hitting her 😦 But I want her loot, dammit 🙂 Down she goes. A few shards to the team and I get my first flawless Red Dragon Scale – nice.

We take a quick break, trying to decide what to do next. The brave people from Defense Guild agree to a ToD. Again, we’re shortmanning it and the three of us have never, ever, done a ToD before. (I know, it’s embarrassing that I’ve played this game for over 2 years and never had the nerve to join a group running this.) We get past the judge & the jailer, onto to the final fight, deciding not to try for the optional chest. Samius does a great job of tanking both Horoth & Suulomades while we beat down Horoth. Again, it goes really smooth 🙂 My partner gets a ring, I get some war trophies.

All in all, it was a great weekend. Fun runs, lots of XP, I really enjoyed myself. Thanks guys! Oh, and Turbine devs – I think you really need to make a mini Arraetrikos companion…

On a more serious note, Hurricane Sandy is due to hit the East Coast of the US today. Hope you guys keep yourselves safe! (Here’s hoping Turbine has those servers tied down…)