Raids in August

There will be a TNF Raid on August 9th. Meet in PoK at the usual time (8pm UK, 9pm Europe, 3pm US Eastern). Targets have yet to be decided.

Important News

I have a penchant for melodrama, so I make no apologies for the tone of the following news.

Everything that has a beginning, has an end.

In November 2004 (the 6th to be exact) a few of us raided Overlord Ngrub in the Torgiran mines. Lessi will know the insane amount of planning that went in to that raid, I took screenshots, I planed the route, I worked out a strategy, I drew up diagrams. It was the start of a 4 year rollercoaster that none of us could imagine.

A few weeks later Siddhaya ran some raids against Luclin targets, Zelnithak, The Va`Dyn. Soon we were ‘in’ Ssra taking out legendary targets we had simply dreamt about. I remember those first raids with complete clarity. The Siddhaya & Grayhelm Saturday raids eventually turned into TNF, with a charter (too long, we never did get it short), a structure, and a solid raid team.

We achieved the impossible, truly. Casual raiding, without any significant bitching, no serious falling out, no catastrophic collapse. We progressed without being a progression force. We grew, we accepted anyone, we handled loot in an adult and relaxed manner.

And we took on and killed the mightiest in Everquest.

2005 Sat Apr 09
Target: Kael Drakkal – The Avatar of War

2005 Sat May 14th
Target: Kael Drakkal – King Tormax

2005 Sat Jul 30th
Target: Plane of Innovation – Manaetic Behemoth

2006 Sat Jan 7th
Target: Plane of Tactics – Rallos Zek the Warlord

2006 Saturday 8th April
Target: Plane of Fire – Fennin Ro the Tyrant of Fire

2006 Saturday 14th October (in conjunction with PoTM)
Target: Plane of Water – Coirnav

2006 Saturday 21st October (in conjunction with PoTM)
Target: Plane of Air – Xegony

2006 Saturday 2nd December (in conjunction with PoTM)
Target: Plane of Earth B – The Rathe Council

2007 Saturday 20th January
Target: Ikkinz, Chambers of Destruction (Ikkinz 4)

2007 Saturday 27th January
Target: Plane of Time – Complete

2007 Saturday 10th March
Target: Uqua, The Ocean God Chantry – Complete

2008 Saturday 5th January
Target: Tunat`Muram Cuu Vauax

2008 Saturday 26th January
Target: Anguish, Overlord Mata Murum

It has been an astonishing four years. Both myself and Siddhaya are honoured to have raided with you all. To have challenged at the time, some of the toughest content in EverQuest with casual players and beaten it convincingly in the right way.

However, the time has come for myself and Siddhaya to step down. There is no single reason, no single cause. Simply that it is harder to commit every single Saturday, harder to find the time to research the targets, harder to find the energy and enthusiasm that the raid force deserves.

August 9th will be our last raid together with TNF as raid leaders. We may finally go and raid Crushbone, or maybe we’ll revisit the Guardian of the Seal, or perhaps we’ll go kill some random stuff in Theatre of Blood or go and wipe to Vishimtar, who knows. Turn up and find out. We’d love to see you there.

Before deciding this, both myself and Siddhaya had already found ourselves unable to commit to raids on the last three weeks of August (due to summer holiday or work). So, we propose TNF takes a break in August.

The question for you all, is what will happen to TNF going forward after August. There are really three options.

1. Some folk volunteer to take up the leadership role and TNF remains as it is now.
2. Some people wish to start up a raid team, but want a fresh start, and start something new to replace TNF.
3. People feel that they need a break and nothing is started immediately.

All three of those options are fine options. The decision is really in your hands. Myself and Siddhaya will support you in any way we can.

It has truly been an honour, a privilege and a complete blast spending Saturdays with you guys. Well over 120 unique people have raided with TNF over the last four years, maybe more. We thank you for everything.

These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.

We’ve been to the Demiplane of Blood a few times now, Zi-Thuuli is no problem, we just wait him out and beat him down, but the other tier 1 events have given us some grief. Sisters is going to take a while to get right, although we were really close a few weeks ago. Redfang is about execution, we know what we need to do, we just need to get used to doing it, at the right time, and having a good turnout to make it happen. We were better last night than we’ve been before. And Hatchet, well, we finally beat Hatchet last night in an epic fight and I want to thank everyone who was there for taking the deaths, getting up, and doing what needed to be done.

Every time we beat Hatchet, and he will die again, we learn a little more, get a little more confident, and it’ll go smoother and smoother.

That first kill is one of those fights I’ll never forget, looking around with 30% to go and seeing most of the raid force either dead or recovering, most people with multiple corpses, but a feeling of determination in the air.

Proud of you all, thanks for making it another memorable night.

These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website.  The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.

I wanted to write a short reminder, to myself more than anything else, about why TNF raids. With the recent changes to content in terms of flags, it’s a good time to get back to basics.

1. We raid to have fun with our friends.
2. We raid to see stuff you don’t get to see if you don’t raid.
3. Sometimes we get some nice loot.

TNF was never a ‘progression’ raid force. We were forced into progression to meet the goals above. If we didn’t progress, we would never beat new stuff, if we didn’t do the flagging, we would never have gotten into more fun zones.

There is always an element of progression in raiding. If we just all stayed level 65 in level 65 gear, we’d never beat the latest content, we would never have beaten Sendaii if we hadn’t all worked together, to improve our toons through raiding and grouping. So we’re forced to progress – that’s the EQ model.

But there’s a false element of progression in raiding as well – faction, flags, keys. Those elements are added for several reasons, and we can argue their value until we’re all blue in the face, but it doesn’t matter. For anything up to and including the Prophecy of Ro, they’re gone.

Mostly gone …. some raids require bane weapons, some raids require special items, and those weapons and items are only obtained by raiding previous content (this applies to DoDh and PoR), so there’s still some element of scaling the content.

And of course, no one skips through to the final mob in an expansion and kills it without doing the earlier stuff unless they’re already overpowered.

Where am I going with this?

Well, the recent patch is very exciting for TNF. It opens up more content than we’ve had access to since we started raiding PoP. More targets are available to us now than ever before. More content to challenge us, to entertain us, and to show us a side of EQ we may never have seen.

We don’t know what it means for us yet in terms of week-to-week raids, what we’ll be killing, how we’ll structure things. But I do know, that there’s never been a more exciting time to be a casual raid force in EQ.

No more turning away friends who play rarely because they don’t have the flag. No more scratching around trying to find people to 85 us into zones. No more demands from myself and Sidd before a raid about ‘who’s keyed, who did this, who did that’.

Everything up to TSS is open before us, ripe, ready.

TNF – Raiding for Fun and looking Good while we do it.

These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.

You can thank Siddhaya for the Title! So we did it. TNF beat the five blood raids. Of course, we’ve been farming Shyra for quite a while, but our focus was Anguish and we never really stretched beyond that. The Council of Nine fell a little while back, no problem for TNF, deal with a hard hitting mob and kill timed adds – just up our street. We steamrollered Bloodeye, in fact first time through we made it harder than it needed to be, second time we just showed it a little more disdain. Draygun gives us a little more to think about, but he’s died (or re-died) like all the rest.

But Sendaii, well, she’s not trivial. Our first encounter a couple of weeks ago got us through the first two waves, but the third wave just overwhelmed us. Honestly, we were hoping just to get further through the third wave on our second go, to get a better feel for placement and the mobs.

But TNF weren’t happy with that, you guys wanted to go all the way. First two waves were flawless, wave 3 started ok, and then Sendaii joined the fun and it got hectic, but not hectic enough! Wave 3 was down, and we played with the Queen and her fake friends, and then finally, the army of spiders descended, but you weathered it all, handled it all, and beat Sendaii into little bits of spider ick.

All five blood raids down, DSK keying well underway, Vule on the horizon, Daosheen tormenting us, Theatre of Blood keying ongoing, and more targets than ever.

It’s spring, and it’s time for TNF to step up, kick some ass and start taking names.

These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.

Daosheen to 20% on our first visit. Sterling, amazing work from everyone. 60 minutes of fighting, over ten million hitpoints of damage dealt to him, and we just ran out of steam.

But we have his measure now. He has been tested. He will be found wanting.

These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.

On November 29th, 2007 I said this,

We will defeat the two heads of the Muramite army. Tunat’Muram Cuu Vauax in Tacvi will fall before us, and Overlord Mata Muram in Anguish shall lie at our feet, a broken wreck. I can not say how soon these things will happen, we still have challenges in Txevu to beat, and you have seen the trouble Overlord Mata Muram has given us, but I can promise you they will happen. TNF will beat both the Gates of Discord and the Omens of War content. 

At the start of January, we killed Tunat`Muram Cuu Vauax. He’s not even really the hardest fight in Tacvi any more. However, Overlord Mata Muram is another beast entirely. He is, without doubt, the hardest fight in Anguish, and to-date still one of the toughest raid encounters in Everquest. Certainly the toughest fight TNF has ever faced, despite having beaten Zomm the Seventh Born, Porthio the Second Born, Yar`lir, Matriarch Shyra and a bunch of other encounters post-OoW.

We promised you that if we had the right turnout we’d take him on. We started Anguish late today (Hello Porthio) but we burned through the first five targets like the plague. We took on Mata Muram and we drove him down to 30%, it looked tight a few times, we had some deaths, and some sterling team work from everyone, and we took our breather.

By the time we got back to him, he was up to 86%, which was a little unexpected, and really I know many of us had doubts by then. It had hurt to get him to 30% the first time, and now we had to do it again and more. But everyone pulled out the stops, mask clickers were perfect, healing was incredible, the tank team made like a brick wall and held Mata Muram at bay, and everyone else piled on the dps until he bled from every inch of his thick ugly hide.

60% and I was feeling confident.

30% and we lost a few people.

15% and I thought we had it.

12% and I was watching the fight from my hovering soul.

6% and I was rezzed again, but it was looking troublesome. We had a dragorn loose, some Ukun were running havoc, and we were running out of enchanters and dps.

3% and I closed my eyes. So close. A wipe now would be beyond insulting.

1% and I swore in rsay.

0% Overlord Mata Muram dead, the Omens of War expansion beaten.

I’m proud to raid with you, proud to be part of the team. From myself and Siddhaya, and the rest of the raid leadership team, thank you for turning up, making it a blast, and nailing Overlord Mata Muram to the floor.

These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.

Just over a week ago, Truly Naughty Friends beat the final encounter in the GoD expansion. Every major encounter in GoD, from start to finish beaten. From the Tipt trial, to the single group Ikkinz trials, through Ikkinz 1, 2, 3 and 4. Uqua, Qvic encounters, Inktu`ta in into Txevu. Txevu we did the bare minimum and finally into Tacvi.

You can check the GoD progression chart out here and you can track TNF’s progression here if you wish!

Tacvi was fun, I hope you agree, and clearing it on our second visit was a good feeling. We’ll be back, the loot in Tacvi (weapons and weapon augs especially) is still decent and the fights are fun. It’s fairly quick and we’ll mix it up with some other targets I think. Our regular farming raid is still Anguish, the loot is too good to pass up, and we’ll head to Anguish on a regular basis for a while to come. Numbers are down still, three regular clerics, one or two regular druids, fluctuating tank numbers, no regular wizards, but we’ll continue pushing forward, doing as much as we can with whoever turns up. If we want to beat Mata Muram we’re going to need a good solid 40+ turnout though with more druids than we get at present.

Saturday gone we trounced Anguish again, although not enough to take on OMM, and we tidied up with quick and easy kills in DoN. Next weekend, something new. Nothing finalised yet, but Prophecy of Ro targets look likely at this stage. Hoping for a good turnout, see you in PoK at the usual time.

These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.

This is a long post, stick with me 🙂 It’s also a little early, we usually write something at the start of the year, but I’ve had a couple of questions about TNF and the SoF release prompted this a little earlier than normal. So, here we go …

Wow, another year has passed. It’s hard to believe it was only the start of 2007 that TNF made it into the Plane of Time. A lot of hard work in zones that offered little reward during 2006 to get everyone flagged, and then a few happy romps in Time for some fun clickies. At the start of 2007 I wrote a post on what we thought would be coming up in the following months (you can read it here). I said, and I quote,

We have no plans to get flagged for Anguish

And then,

if you have some spare time and wanted to, go pick up a few Anguish signets, you never know what he future will hold.

Well you went and got your sigs. We had no plans to get flagged for Anguish, but hell, beating the MPG trials was just so much fun it kind of just happened by accident. We’re in Anguish, we’re kicking Anguish Ass and we’re enjoying it. I wrote this half way through the year, to cover our progress at that stage, and since then we’ve surpassed all our plans. I wanted to take the time to write another note, let you know where TNF is, and where myself and Siddhaya see us going in 2008.

But first of all, I want to talk about ‘the wave’. TNF has been riding the wave for a couple of years, we’ve been just ahead of major gear inflation since we started. Three major gear advancements in 2006/2007 were a cause for concern for TNF. Firstly, the loot from DoDh / PoR group encounters was better in some cases than you could get in the Plane of Time. It was ok, not everyone had it, and the Plane of Time had fun factor and useful loot still. Then we broken into Qvic, but the armour from TSS powered molds is actually just slightly better than the Qvic armour. Again, it wasn’t easy to get, not everyone had it, and so Qvic / Inktu`ta still had something to offer. Finally, we broke into Anguish, and around the same time the single group armour from The Buried Sea turned out to be better or roughly similar to Anguish armour for some classes.

TNF doesn’t only raid for the loot, in fact, the loot isn’t our primary reason for raiding. We raid to show you guys new content in EQ that you might not otherwise see. For some raiders in TNF, loot upgrades on raids have always been rare, due to either being well geared before joining TNF or doing a lot of group work outside of raids to upgrade past the content we were killing. For many however, TNF has been a source of great loot upgrades.

With the release of the Secrets of Faydwer there can be no denying that the wave has broken, TNF raid targets will be behind the loot curve. Gear dropping in Dragonscale hills has 250 hitpoints and various mods, loot from further in SoF is even better. Armour you can buy in the bazaar (well, if you’re very wealthy) is better in some cases than Anguish armour. If there was ever a time where it was easier to get group upgrades than raid upgrades, for many of our raid force, now is it. I want to reassure you that TNF strategy will not change. We want to show you stuff in EQ you might never otherwise see, and that means that despite the loot we will reward the effort of working through Kod`taz, Ikkinz, Uqua, Qvic, Inktu`ta and Txevu and we will go to Tacvi and beat Tunat’Muram Cuu Vauax.

And that brings us to 2008, TNF’s fourth year. Four years of casual, once a week raids. Four years of hard work. Four years of loyalty, dedication and fun!

Gates of Discord and Omens of War

I promise 2008 will be no different. We will defeat the two heads of the Muramite army. Tunat’Muram Cuu Vauax in Tacvi will fall before us, and Overlord Mata Muram in Anguish shall lie at our feet, a broken wreck. I can not say how soon these things will happen, we still have challenges in Txevu to beat, and you have seen the trouble Overlord Mata Muram has given us, but I can promise you they will happen. TNF will beat both the Gates of Discord and the Omens of War content.

Dragons of Norrath

Yar`lir is our bitch, Rikkukin is our foot stool and Tirranun is beneath our contempt. Kessdona may well suffer a swift defeat one day, to say we went, but the real target left amongst the once mighty Dragons of Norrath is Vishimtar. TNF will be paying the beast a visit, and we expect to come away with our arms full of trophies.

Depths of Darkhollow and Prophecy of Ro

It’s time to band together in groups again, and to begin working on your raid zone access. Just as with GoD and OoW, there are single group tasks that must be done to gain access to the most powerful content in DoDh and PoR. Some of you already have access, some have been working on it and others still haven’t started. We need you to get access to Dreadspire Keep, Razorthorn and Theatre of Blood. There’s a lot of work to do it, and we’ll all need to work together to achieve access. As well as the single group stuff there are raids (like Matriarch Shyra) which provide flags, and in between GoD and Omens, it’s these targets we’ll be looking at in 2008.

The Serpents Spine, The Buried Sea, The Secrets of Faydwer

We’ll look at the targets in these three expansions and see if there’s anything we can throw in for some fun, but we don’t expect to be making any major progress or attempting anything significant.

Summary

It’s been a fantastic year. I’m proud to have reached Anguish the right way, with friends, having fun. I’m proud to be knocking on the door of the final zone of the Gates of Discord. I’m proud to be at the stage where we can beat Vishimtar and draw a line beneath yet another expansion. In 2008, TNF will beat GoD, OoW and DoN. We’ll do that because you guys work hard, turn up and continue to improve every time. We can’t do it without you. In 2008, TNF will step further into the Depths of Darkhollow, beating the most challenging raids we’ve ever seen, and we’ll look to the Dragons in Relic to offer a challenge.

A year ahead, a year of challenge, of mystery, of blood and fire. A year of dragons and demi-gods. Step up, be bold, show no quarter. We’re asking more of you than ever before, maybe everything you have to give. Here, now, this is where we make our stand, where we draw the line. Tunat’Muram Cuu Vauax can not be allowed to live. Overlord Mata Muram must die to pay for his crimes. Vishimtar the Fallen has crossed over and must be sent back. Tsikut, Shar`Drahn and Ashenback blight the very world with their presence and will be sent back to the ninth plane of hell from whence they came.

Be bold.

Show no quarter.

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.

Well you turned out! 53 live and willing players turned up for our fourth run at Anguish, and our last official TNF raid before our three week break. Thank you for making it! I felt sorry for Keldovan as soon as I saw we have 53 folk there, I mean he’s never really caused any issues, so having another two groups of people wailing on him was always going to be painful for him, and so it turned out! Jelvan was sweet, smooth, almost trivial, we’re getting better with off-tanking group setups and the two extra groups of DPS really make it smart.

And so it appears that Ture is to be our nemesis, often considered the easier encounter, twice now we’ve made it look hard! Still you pulled through and beat it without needing a full wipe and it keeps us fresh. With Ture down Hanvar is never an issue, and although our Arch Magus fight wasn’t as tidy as last time it was never at risk.

And so on a day where I felt sure we would have a good shot at the Overlord, he pulled out a bug from his bag of tricks, charged the raid the instant AMV died, pathed back and closed his little hut. So we decamped and killed Yar`lir instead.

It was a great turnout, we got some cool loot, and I hope we can do it again after our break many more times.

As I said in my last post below, Txevu and Tacvi lie ahead of us, we need people to continue to focus on getting Tipt/KT keyed, Qvic keyed and Txevu keyed to keep numbers up while inside Txevu/Tacvi. We won’t be doing much stuff in Txevu (low return vs. risk) but we will be playing Tacvi as often as possible to get some nice weapons and other toys.

See you all in three weeks, don’t forget Zerblag has already scheduled some stuff on the TNF off-days, show up, give her your support, get some loot.

These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.

It’s sounds more like a sneeze than a zone, but many TNF’ers got their Cypher of Txevu last night, the last real flag in the Gates of Discord. Txevu is a static zone, and inside you find the instance entrace for Tacvi, the final zone in the Gates of Discord and an instanced raid zone. Because Txevu is not instanced, the targets inside aren’t always up. We’ll have a little bit of work to do in there to get a couple of keys which allow raid leaders to request the Tacvi instance. Once that’s done we probably won’t spend much time in Txevu itself.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Last night, Inktu`Ta. A good turnout, not the 50 we were hoping for but a good 40-odd people. Cynosure was up, and you can’t go to Inktu`Ta with him alive, so we gave him a little TNF introduction. We also did Zoo for the first time, which was fun, especially when she leashed and started summoning us, but we coped, rushed her and her little pets and left her dead.

Our third visit to Inktu`Ta, the first had been a resounding success, the second not so good. The curse callers did us in, but this time we weren’t about to be beaten by some dead cowardly ghosts, we ran like champions and we burned burned burned and they died died died (er, again). Noqufiel is a pushover once his little ghost buddies are dead and while he put up some token resistance he was never really in any kind of position to negotiate.

Inktu`Ta beaten for the second time, another bunch of TNF’ers with their Cypher of Txevu, and the final two zones in the Gates of Discord looming ahead of us. Which is where I came in at the top of this note.

One more raid in October, and we’re going back to Anguish. I’m personally hoping for a huge turnout, in the high 40’s, because if we get that we’re good to attempt Mata Muram again. After that, TNF is taking a three week break in November. Hope to see you in Anguish next weekend, let’s make the fight before our little break one to remember.

And then when we get back – Txevu, Tacvi, Dragons, Anguish, perhaps a little more toe dipping in the Depths of Darkhollow, and beyond.