Dragon Age II: Ancient Rock Wraith

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this post should be worth quite a few. I was able to capture a few shots during my battle with the Ancient Rock Wraith. While some of the shots are from cutscenes, the in-battle images did take a bit of work to set up properly. Yes, I was actually pausing the fight and setting up shots. Could I be any more of a nerd?

Dragon Age II: Massive Spider

The Deep Roads are full of some pretty nasty creatures, oftentimes more dangerous and grotesque than anything one might face on the surface. The Massive Spider is one of the first sub-Boss encounters you must face during Bartand's Deep Roads Expedition. It most definitely does not like fireballs to the face.

Dragon Age II - Bone Pit

With nearly two months left in Classic EverQuest, there isn't really anything new or interesting to post about or see. While not sitting around waiting for contested raid bosses to spawn, I have been putting some time into Dragon Age II. This will be the first in a series of posts showcasing some of the more cinematic moments and memorable boss fights from the game. Here is the first encounter with a Mature Dragon as part of the Bone Pit sidequest.

If you poopsock it, they will come.

In what will surely set a precedent for Fippy Darkpaw going forward, someone once again decided to petition a GM during a Vox poopsock. With 2 1/2 guilds present (does Citizen really count?), GM Technite thought it would be fair to spawn Vox a bunch of times and give everyone a shot at some easy loot. Hell, we don't even know what dropped for Armageddon, but we did manage to kill two out of the three Vox spawns that night (lolwut.)

Google Crisis Response: Japan 2011 Crisis

So, the current crisis in Japan is not very epic at all. What would be pretty epic though, is if you took this opportunity to help out however you can. Google has set up a crisis response page, which provides helpful links, information, and donation information (for those of you who can help financially). At the very least, think of all the awesome anime, video games, and fast cars that Japan provides for us. We owe it to them to lend a hand.


"On March 11 at 2:46pm JST a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake occurred near the northeastern coast of Japan, creating extremely destructive tsunami waves which hit Japan just minutes after the earthquake, and triggering evacuations and warnings across the Pacific Ocean. The earthquake and tsunami have caused extensive and severe damage in Northeastern Japan, leaving thousands of people confirmed dead, injured or missing, and millions more affected by lack of electricity, water and transportation.


This page is being updated continuously to provide the latest information about this crisis, resources for those affected, and ways to contribute to relief efforts in Japan."

Plane of Sky, Take Two.

We decided to take another trip up to the Plane of Sky, mainly to finish off keying the rest of the guild so that future runs will operate much more efficiently. Fortunately, we were able to grab a few more items for the various Tests of Sky as well as some decent drops from trash mobs. I'm almost positive that every one of our Clerics has Weight of the Gods resting on their shoulders now, I'm sure we will be hearing the words "Grats, rot." on our next run. I was able to grab some pretty decent screenshots over the course of the night, so this post is serving as more of an image dump than an actual entry. Enjoy.

Ding 50!!

After many, many hours of mindlessly grinding away on orcs, spiders, kobolds, zombies, goblins and various other assorted things, it is finally over. Huzzah! I've hit the Classic level cap of 50 and can now focus on raiding and preparing for the Shadow Knight Epic quest. The bad news of course is that Kunark is just around the corner and with that we will see the level cap increase to 60. Fortunately, the level cap doesn't go up again until Planes of Power and that is still three full expansions away!

Plane of Hate: Ashenbone Broodmaster

So, it's probably worth noting that the Ashenbone Broodmaster is significantly harder than Innoruuk (a full-fledged deity, btw). Although they have approximately the same amount of hitpoints, the Broodmaster hits like a friggin' truck. Wargrade serves as a prime example of why you should not try to tank this guy. SOE, if you are paying attention, Mage pets and Harm Touch need a serious re-tune please!

Plane of Sky IV: Eye of Veeshan

After roughly 8 hours of clearing trash, hopping from island to island in the Plane of Sky, we finally arrived at our final target. The Eye of Veeshan is the last boss in the zone and a relative pushover compared to the rest of Sky. I suppose with enough Shadow Knights, any pre-Velious content is kind of trivial though. The loot was pretty terrible, a single measly quest item and some terrible Warrior belt. It wasn't a total loss though, as it happened to be the server first kill. Congratulations to everyone who made it happen, look forward to another successful clear very soon!

Plane of Sky III: The Hand of Veeshan

The Hand of Veeshan decided to show Sirran a thing or two about how to properly take down an entire raid force. This guy is so ruthless, he won't even let you leap to your death. People were jumping off the islands, willing to take their chances with the fall, only to be promptly summoned back and manhandled. It's worth noting that he technically isn't even a boss.

Plane of Sky II: Sirran the Lunatic

This is what happens when you have a full raid and not enough keys to go around. Sirran the Lunatic, an otherwise cheerful fellow, can be "encouraged" to attack and kill (ie. rape) your party. We probably spent more time summoning and resurrecting corpses than we did clearing trash.

Plane of Sky I: The Spiroc Lord

We ran into The Spiroc Lord a few hours into our Plane of Sky run. He isn't really a big deal, but we did manage to pick up a piece for the Jagged Blade of War quest. As an aside, bipedal bird men are pretty damned creepy looking. More updates from Plane of Sky to come!

Fear Me Mortals!

It's not every day you are called on to tank Cazic Thule, so I made sure to take this opportunity to get some pretty wicked screenshots during the fight. Surprisingly enough, I actually managed to survive the encounter! Congratulations to Raabe on Soul Leech, Dark Sword of Blood.

Everquest Nostalgia Part II - The Evil Eye Camp

Venturing deep into Lower Guk last night, I came across this baddie. Now, any classic-era EQ player would remember the Evil Eye. Not only did he drop a nice weight reducing bag, but in the early era, he dropped the awesome Manastone. This item was, of course, later removed from loot tables, due to its overpowered nature. However, it was not removed from the game, and those lucky few to possess a grandfathered stone saw its price skyrocket.

Interestingly, during the podcast, the developers hinted that they intended to allow old-world items, that no longer dropped on regular servers, to be be found once more on the Fippy server. It was said that these items would begin dropping about a month after the server launched. Only time will tell if this will include the legendary Manastone. But if so, one can expect screenshots like this to be at a premium, as travelers from all over the world will be heading to Lower Guk for a shot at at this epic item.