Guild Resources
News
Members
Scrapbook
Joining
Rules
Ethics

DKP System
Explanation
Items Database
Current Standings

Archived News
Nov 01 - June 2002
May - Oct 2001
Jan - Apr 2001
Jun - Dec 2000

Forums
Afterlife Forums
General
Trade

Member Sites
Thott
Thott's Writings
Thottbot
Thottbot WoW
Hobben
Hobben's UI

Contacts
Guild Leaders
Thott
Hobben
Webmasters
Biny

Posted by Arele
Tower of Solusek Ro
Afterlife spent the evening progressing through Sol Ro Tower tonight. While we'd been here on a brief trip previously, tonight we decided to enjoy the whole thing, and make our way into Plane of Fire.

The tower has a series of mobs you must defeat to gain entrance into Solusek Ro's chamber. All are different and very interesting....my favorite was the Rizlona fight - she unexpectedly turns from a half elven woman to a fierce dragon! You can see pictures of all the fights in our scrapbook.
Here are a few highlights of the fight with Solusek Ro.

We zoned into Plane of Fire for the first time tonight!

Posted by Thott
Plane of Air
New planes with such provocative names are always interesting to explore, just to see which nickname will fit.  Plane of Air: there's nothing there?  Plane of Air(heads)?  Gasping for Air?  To Air is Human?

Bad puns aside - it's a good zone.  This one actually has items, for which we were both surprised and thankful.  The only negative thing is an overuse of of immunity flags (mez, lull, snare), but even that relaxes deeper in.

The zone is seperated out into islands.  Each island has a wall around it, that can't be climbed.  Each passage between islands offers no exit.  I imagine there is a great expanse below the islands, but I saw no evidence of it.  It's like a bumper car version of Plane of Sky; drunken EQ players welcome.

After clearing the first island (red mobs that split into numerous green mobs, each holding a tiny "Dire Charm Me!" sign), we moved to the second island, and met our first boss: Baltaldor the Cursed.  I'm getting Bzzazzt isle flashbacks.

The interesting thing about this zone isn't the mobs or the base geometry - it's the animated furniture, such as this flying book:

This thing actually flaps its "wings" and flies in a circle!  It's only the 10th, and I've already gotten my money's worth for the month.  Unfortunately, it's not a mob, so I can't kill it.  How else can I experience something in EQ?  "Flying books camped!"

Next boss, Gakamenial Fir`Disralsi:

Next boss, Queen Silandria, or "Queen of the Flying Asparagus People":

Hall trash of some sort dropped this nifty item, which has an overabundance of particles when equipped:

There's an interesting lead in before finding this guy (An Elemental Masterpiece), but I won't spoil what it is:

Calebgrothiel:

Rinturion Windblade, politely humble in defeat:

Arch Mage Alchtonion.  When made into a sauce, this fella goes good with salmon:

After fighting back a bit, we ran into this familiar sight:

The Phoenix rises again!  Or is it deja vu?  He even carried the same loot.

Lossenmacher, who we killed while I was dead, had this to offer:

The last thing we encountered, before the end of our raid period, was this happy spider:

We searched for Leprechauns, to no avail.  This spider, and its children, found their long lost King among our midst: Kharza.  When we wiped out to them (unexpected aggro), the entire hoard of spiders followed his corpse wherever it was taken.  I kid you not, they loved that corpse.  I think I heard them praying.

We also went back and killed Rallos Zek again:

Posted by Thott
Plane of Water

Today we visted Plane of Water, where we were shocked to find...water.  Lots of it.

The whole zone, except for the zone in, seems to be completely filled with water.  It's water inside of rock, which I found to be a bit surprising, since I was envisioning, I don't know, a big 'ol ball of water surrounded by nothingness, with coral floating in it.  Such a thing would probably break EQ badly, so maybe it's good it's all encased in rock.  Or at least, "Everquest Simulated Rock", which is made from damp tissue paper.

The water has fish, turtles, sharks, etc., with some interesting graphics touches that are best seen first hand.  After clearing trash, we came to our first boss...that I completely failed to get a screenshot of, but he looks like this:

Only bigger, named Grioihin the Wise.  I was dead when he died, and Hobben looted everything (loot shown below) before I was ressurrected in, so there's no pic of the corpse.  Instead, I provide you with a pic of the wall we pushed him through:

As promised, here's the loot:

Coincidentally, we found this same boss loot on dozens of hall trash mobs, which implies that the hall trash drop overpowered loot.  Or something.

Later we came across a mob I actually had the presence of mind to photograph, Hydrotha:

No hall trash loot this time!

We continued on, finally reaching the spot where the end boss should clearly be...but he wasn't there.  A puzzle!  Or perhaps a bug, either way, something to chew on.  Speaking of puzzles, I saw this near the zone in:

Huh?

In other news, the meat mentioned above, combined with other items, created this gourmet delight:

Uber!  Kind of.  Perhaps the unnamed thing above just wanted soup?

Posted by Thott
Rallos Zek is Dead

Yes, it was impossible, but that didn't stop us from doing it.  This is a serverwide first kill.  It's also an expansion first: the first mob that wasn't run over in a rush to consume content; the first mob of true difficulty.

I'd like to say that it was intended to be this difficult, but I suspect it's this hard solely due to a fascinating collection of reinforcing bugs.  A challenge, be it a planned one or unplanned, is still a challenge nonetheless.  We enjoyed it immensely.

The final part of the final fight had an interesting...plot twist.  I don't know what they intended to happen, but what did happen was certainly entertaining.  No, I won't spoil it!  I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise :).  Plus I wouldn't be surprised if the encounter changes completely this next patch, probably into a well balanced, bug free, yet completely boring encounter, suitable for farming and easy pwning.

But that's ok!  This is only tier 3.  This encounter is way too hard to be in tier 3.  This encounter would be fitting at the end of tier 5.  While we may not get the fun of beating this bugfest challenge again in its current form, the game will be better when it's fixed.

In any event, I'm sure my text is boring people *whirr* *click*, so here's a nice picture:

Posted by Thott
Rallos Zek

We live to do the impossible.  Give us a bugged, poorly balanced, plainly impossible encounter, and we're as happy as a hungry tiger in a shopping mall.  Racing through content is fun, but doing what nobody else can - that's what we live for.

King Tormax was "impossible" in Velious, but we fought him anyway - and won.  Others tried, failed, and gave up.  We don't give up.  Sadly, they weakened him soon after.

In Luclin there was Vyzh'Dra the Cursed.  Double DT, charm, nasty AE...impossible.  Every attempt we did better, and perhaps, we could have eventually won...but before we could kill him, he too was weakened.

Today we have Rallos Zek.  Picture an army of snowmen attacking a volcano.  An army of snowmen armed with res sticks and sharp objects, dying en mass to gushers of lava.  Rallos is the volcano and we are the snowmen - but we have travelled surprisingly far.

We've spent five days on this encounter, three prior to the latest change (which made it significantly easier), and two after.  Did we get any loot?  Nope, but we don't care.  This is FUN, and I'm glad it's bugged.

I won't spoil the encounter here, but I will say there are three stages to it - perhaps more.  So far, the best run I know of by another guild completed less than one quarter of the first stage, on their best run.

We beat the first stage.  No other guild has even seen the second stage - but we beat that too.  The third stage...

I am not a foul man.  I rarely use profanity without a reason.  But when I saw the third stage, the words I spoke caused sailors to sit up and take notes.  Animals within hearing distance were shocked, and they don't even know why.  I looked at the third stage, and even I thought, "impossible."  Which makes this event even better.  Unfortunately, I didn't think "screenshot," and neither did anyone else.  The best will have to wait.

Here a few assorted pics we did manage to take:

WARNING: Some spoiler information follows

Rallos in the background, with his (bugged) army in front

Jorr's spidey sense tingles

Rallos, smug in victory - for now.  Those pets he has?  They never go away.

Posted by Arele
An Update!
Here ya go, I had a great holiday...New England is beautiful in the fall. While I was gone, Afterlife killed quite a few things. Lucky for me, we did it again when I returned! Here are some screenshots of the larger fights...visit the scrapbook for more details. I'll be working on updating the database over the next week...so you can check out the loot there.

Posted by Arele
Mithaniel Marr Down On Mithaniel Marr!
Revenge is sweet.

Scrapbook updated as well. Week two put in...I know it's early, but no raiding on Halloween, and I'll be gone the rest of the week. I am sorry the page is picture heavy right now, but we are doing so many things so quickly, I don't want to take them down yet.

Posted by Arele
Mithaniel Marr....The Real Story
Okay, so after killing The 7th Hammer, we strolled over to Halls of Honor to do the trials there. We successfully completed all three, and excitedly went to zone into HoHB to meet our server's namesake. It was fantastic - for most of us...We had a few members who completed the trials, hailed the proper mobs to receive their character flag...but still could not zone over. We have documentation, petitioned GM's, and got very unsatisfactory responses. They wouldn't even summon them into the zone or review their character logs... It's bad enough that we have to repeat all these fights for each new member, or members absent for the raid....but to have people that are actually there not get flagged properly? This is unacceptable....and the treatment our members and guildleaders received about the issue left us very unhappy.

While waiting for the issue to be resolved, the rest of us continued our quest for Mithaniel Marr. We killed our way through scores of guards, and some "mini-bosses", when Thott proceeded to aggro the big man himself. YOU HAVE BEEN DISCONNECTED....view the compiled image below and decide for yourself what happened!

Oh, and after the server came back up and we all died while logging in? A GM named Mheii rezzed about 10 of our people right into the middle of KOS mobs and left them there to die again. Then GM Zalumbus showed up, killed the mobs, rezzed a few people...refused to discuss the issue about our bugged members, and left.

Not exactly our normal update...but we aren't too happy at the moment. Look for more pictures later.

Posted by Arele
Still Not Enough?
Well, here's more. Now that Planes of Power has been out for a week, we are proud to say that many of our members are enjoying level 65. Still nothing stellar to show in the loot department, but some neat new pictures for you to enjoy. Oh yeah...the scrapbook has been updated as well.

Posted by Arele
What Is Afterlife Up To?
What everyone else is up to...leveling, and getting character flags for our members! While there is not anything worth mentioning loot-wise, here's a few pictures to keep the "updateyourpage" hounds off my back til I have time for more. Enjoy :)

Posted by Arele
Vulak Aerr Killed
Afterlife took a nostalgic trip to the Temple of Veeshan tonight. After disposing of Vyemm, we moved on to start the "Ring of Vulak". During the ring, several waves of mobs are spawned. After 2 hours and 55 minutes, our old friend Vulak spawned, and we killed him.
Besides his usual treasure, Ancient Aegolism and Ancient Burnout V were discovered.
Lots of pictures of the encounter have been added to our scrapbook.