Post halloween 2009

Well shoot. I've been avoiding posting again, and as allways, got a few things backed up.
Let's start with a few things that happend before the holiday rush.

One of the big things that was building up for me, I had let FoW bounties start accumulating on my rit, and after checking the preditions of bounties coming up, I figgured I could do them all in one shot.
For some reason I kept putting them off and putting them off after getting them, but decided I better get it done before the halloween stuff arrived.

So I loaded the rit up with heros, and used one of the secondary accounts, and got some heros on there as well. My rit with full Spirit spam, Dunk, olias, and souske. Healer, MM and Fire/earth. Secondary had ogden, hayda, and vekk. Smiter/prot, shout protection, and water/air.
This was a fairly good combo, and had worked before for the most part.
But I knew there would be problem areas. Notibly, dealing with large groups of monks from the shadows, and any skele group that had to many mesmers and ice casters.
Something that was bugging me, and I should do this from now on if I go to UW, is bring a rez scroll.
Please note, this entire run was in HM, but for the most part, wasn't much of a difference then when noa did it in NM. MObs get maybe 2 more levels, cast or run a bit faster, but for the most part, are about the same I realized.
Again had issues after getting the first quest done, but had to deal with that batch of 4 monks, and then the roving groups came up. TWICE we had to retreat to the forge thing, and let them deagro. Eventually whittling the groups down, and then going and getting the monks. After that it was straight forward.
Did a backway clear on the main forge, and then cleared the forge area out, all while having to deal with a whiny ***** on guild chat who wanted me to abandon my run, so I could come get him, and go back again, so he could show off his masterful splinter barrage build.
Right... 2 hours in and I'm gonna...
right. Not happenin.

Okay, did the back area clear, worked our way to the lava zone, cleared that out, and... damnit, I kept thinking I shoulda done a clear of the worm zone, but my idea was to work on that from the bottem up. Shoulda done it sooner. I'll explain why.
Headed back, ALMOST had a wipe thanks to bad placement and those friggin malstroms, but hayda got away, and her signet of return helped. Shoulda known something like that might happen.
From there it was a matter of clearing out the rest of the area, taking the quests, the dragon litch went down fast, priest of menzies not so fast. Had to move around a lot to avoid barrages. I think we ended up having to just get him to drain himself to where he couldn't heal anymore. Took over 5 min.
Went to forge, once the shadows were cleared, it was an easy run in, then I just set some spirits down to pepper the groups, ended up agroing almost the entire batch on one side, but that actually worked to our advantage, as they got stuck on the ramp, and we just nuked them to death. So we went over, pulled the group on the other side, and was done with forgemaster quest in under 2 min.
GOD I love the new rits.

Headed down to the cave, was an easy run, just flagged the hench back and soloed the giant aloes. Everything else was dead.
So now just needed a few more quests.
Did the lord kohbay one pretty easy, then headed to the forest, cleared that out through the backway, did a lot of soloing there so I could maximize drops. Died a couple times, but was able to make a comeback.
Cleared it out, and then did the wailing lord quest. I entirely soloed that, and found the banshees dropped some underworld goods, including a couple eternal bows, one of which was max damage, 9 req, and +14^50. There's a keeper.
Did a clearing of the path back to the first forge location, and then an escort service.
7 quests down.

So I decided to head in and do burning forest. At this point I had been running FOW for about 7 hours or so off and on. That's the problem, though an advantage of doing this solo.
All the bounties were taken care of, I just wanted to finish this off.
I had a bad feeling though, and so, in starting that area, I was trying to pull carefully, I was taking point, agroing, dropping spirits, and then rushing back. This worked out for the solid groups which were only scale or hydra, but when I started getting the mixed groups, I could see some problems.
And sure f'ing enough, it happend. The hydra totally skipped me, skipped the spirits, and went RIGHT for the group. Nailed them with a shower, and I watched the groups HP dropping by large chunks. I flagged them away, trying to cover, but it was to late, they were also degened by one of the scale. I watched hayda and vekk as the last to die out, and I was left... all alone. cursing and cursing and cursing some more.
Crying even.

Well... ****.
So... only 3 groups left, so... I gathered my wits, and proceeded to solo the remaining groups of hydra and scale, in HM.
And I did it. A testmant to how powerful rits really are now.
And I got the quest, and did that as well.
The final quest... involved that last forge area in the worm pits area.
THe area I didn't clear.

The area with groups of 4 barrage rangers and 2 monks each.
ANY other group design I might be able to handle. Not this one.
SPirits get *****, and any damage gets instant healed.
I got one group's monk killed, but the other monk rzzed him.
Eventually I had to give up and get killed.
ONE goddamn quest away from completing an entire FOW run. SOLO.
Siiigh.

Live and learn I guess. Lythia chastized me for knowing better, and that I should have flagged a hero back for emergancy rezzing. Hell, if I had spread them out a bit that would have done the trick, but it was getting late, and I was getting tired.

Anyway, I did get 7 silver coins worth from the bounty. If I really want to get FOW done, I should just join a speed clear group. But that's starting to become a dirty word around here.


Anyway... on with the rest of the stuff.
On other account, I needed the blister bounty, and that chara needed the cap as well. So I hijacked the devourer siege, and headed in.
Since we had already killed a few other bosses, this one racked a sizeable chunk of rep. AND... I get the green!
Nice run there.


During the dragon mission z quest, it enabled me to get this bonus done finally.
Here's my warrior getting ready to face off against glint. Running my Dwarven hammer stance, she got no chance.


I dunno. a rit I have at Longeyes. Probably for the Against the Charr bounty.


Some of the water djinn over at the djarian estate. I allways did like them, and wish more could be on your side. Just looking at them for to long burns your eyes. You do have to admire any being that can pull of the underboob look well.


Just before the halloween stuff arrived, I got my dirvish out, who's pretty much become the party crap holder, and had her doing her halloween dirvish dance, which seemed to create a party wherever she did it, which was nice. I also was selling halloween tot bags for 500g, but then dropped them down to 3 for 1k, which had them sell much faster then.
I kept doing this even more so when the decor arrived, but before the bags started dropping. After that, prices went down to 200-300g each.
And then the quest arrived...


While doing a run on one chara, I saw this.
Just... wow... oh wow.
A yeti with a heart transplant!


Here's a few solo run shots, sarah asking for her daughter.
One thing I learned when doing the 3rd and 4th quests with people, do NOT let them bring gwen down. I did that once, read the dialouge, and that was enough for me.



F'ing BONE pits...
As you can see I'm on the backside of the run, heading out. The single looking dot is a duo. I hate when they're that close like that because it makes targeting them singly near impossible, and sometimes the tab moves to the wrong target.
So I have to wait for them to leave.


Saurian scythe works well with teh candy corn look I think.


MEANWHILE, AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE...

ER... JUDGEMENT.



AND finally, mad king.


Now... unlike previous years, where I looked forward to his appearances, I actually wasn't really into his showings that much this time. I could get far more bags doing one 10 min run then standing there 30 min waiting for him to dispence out bags at a leisurely pace like allways. I got the hats on both accounts, and was done with it.

At the tail end of the quest thing, I decided to run a surviver chara through the quests, and once she got through with the 2nd quest, I could just drop a bunch of stones on her, and get at least another 200k exp if not more.
My reasoning behind this was, I'd use at least a blue candy to help recharge quicker, run faster, and if things were bad, just guild port out. This is hoping that my connection wouldn't crap out entirely, which it did on more then one occasion. WHere DSL would just... totally loose connection, and then get back on after 5-10 min.
It wasn't happening a lot, but it did happen now and then I had to watch it.
BUT... I started it to late, and got ported to chahbek village.
Great. Quest over.

So I went and cashed in the remaining stoppers, and by the time it's done, I have over 10 stacks of tot bags on one account, another 4 and a half on the other.
Unlike the wintersday bags, these won't go for much down the road, so... I may as well open them and chow down.
Time to fill up some sweet bars.
Dunno who I'll choose for going drunk with.