The Broken Mirror – Tier 2 Raids Defeated
Plane of Health and Crypt of Decay
As of December 13, 2015, Inverse Logic has defeated the second tier of raids in EverQuest’s recently released expansion, The Broken Mirror. I would best describe the four raids that comprise the middle tier of this expansion’s raid progression as “short and sweet.” Unlike in Tier 1, there were no raid victories delayed by broken event mechanics.
There were a few notable bonuses that came along with this second tier of progression raids. First of all, doubling the amount of currency acquired per raid event defeated (compared to Tier 1) was a very welcome addition, especially given the costs of the raid items available from vendors. Not to be forgotten are the backflagging items contained within the loot chests at the end of each raid in this tier. As a raid leader I just want to say “Thank you” for the inclusion of those.
With the holidays fast approaching we plan to continue farming the content available to us in The Broken Mirror while we key up for the expansion’s final tier and (hopefully) most challenging raid events. Look for a Demiplane of Decay video to be released right around Christmas time and we’d like to wish everyone in (and outside of) Norrath a very Happy Holiday season!
(Note: I forgot to have everyone line up for a formal photo. I’ll make sure not to forget again in the next tier!)
The Broken Mirror – Demiplanes of Life and Decay
The Demiplanes of Life and Decay
Now that the Thanksgiving holidays have concluded, we’ve wrapped up clearing the first tier of raids in the newest expansion, The Broken Mirror. It has become a yearly tradition for EverQuest expansions to be released shortly preceding the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday stretch, which for our guild is the most challenging time of the calendar year to manage a raid schedule. I’ve offered the suggestion to the guild that we all follow the example set forth by our Canadian members and celebrate Thanksgiving in early October. However, I believe the jury is still in deliberations regarding that topic.
It has been nice to see some long-awaited features be added to the game with the release of The Broken Mirror. Having nearly the entirety of the expansion’s quests be shared tasks amongst all group members is something I’ve personally been hoping to see implemented for years. Any incentive to group with other players is always welcome, as is the elimination of players within a group not being able to quest together due to players being at different points of progression (as seen in past expansions). Additionally, type 7 and 8 augmentations now granting up to 12 heroic points (as opposed to being capped at 8 in years past) and having more augments include multiple attributes is also very much appreciated.
That aside, the raids in The Broken Mirror have been, for the most part, fun. I understand that the developer who was the lead designer of the revamped Planes of Hate and Fear left Daybreak’s team to pursue other career opportunities prior to completing work on the zones. I also understand how resource-limited the current development team at Daybreak is. That being said, the Plane of Hate raid was rather enjoyable, though has a lot of trash mobs to clear for only 2 total raid bosses. However, the Plane of Fear events definitely had some issues when we raided it (which was on Nov. 19). I do hope that those issues can be cleaned up in the near future because a lot of players do enjoy revisiting classic content in a modern day raid environment.
The raids in the Demiplane of Life feel mostly bug-free. The difficulty tuning of its events feels right for the first tier of raids in a new expansion. I wish I could say the same about the raid events in the Demiplane of Decay, but unfortunately I can’t. I won’t get too in depth here (because the length of this post would become excessive), but both raid events, most notably the Damsel of Decay event, have their issues. I believe that some of these issues are not necessarily bugs but are more than likely oversights. For example, there are several debuffs in each raid event that persist through death. If you happen to die while affected by one of these debuffs and are resurrected, you are immediately placed in a combat state – unable to use the respite line of Endurance regeneration abilities. This can be very frustrating, especially for melee classes. The Damsel of Decay event may just be the buggiest raid event we’ve defeated in the past few years. Having a boss stand directly in front of you, with no obstructions, and not a single player in the raid being able to attack that boss due to line of sight errors is definitely a problem and needs to be corrected as soon as possible. Is this fight beatable? Yes. Is it farmable? Absolutely. Is it working? Not really. It’s in dire need of attention and there has been feedback on the official EverQuest forums describing the problems associated with this event. The event’s issues can be compensated for (which by doing so removes a lot of the finesse that we would have normally used to defeat this raid had it been working correctly), but these measures should not be viewed as the long term solution for the encounter.
Nonetheless, it’s nice to be raiding more than 7 total raid events in an expansion, and having said raid events exist in more than just a single zone. We’re currently farming the required number of keys in order to flag ourselves for the next tier of raids (which is an entirely separate discussion for another day). We are currently recruiting several needed classes with the goal of bolstering our raiding roster – click apply for more information or contact Shiea or any guild officer in game.
Inverse Logic’s first victory over Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay
The Darkened Sea Raid Events 2, 3, and 4
Sticking to our Principals
Upon collecting 4 Arx Citadel keys on enough raiders, we moved on to tackle raid events 2, 3, and 4 in The Darkened Sea. We’ve defeated Principals Numicia, Nomia, and Lucia and begun collecting Apitarx keys to unlock the 5th and final progression raid event of this expansion. I personally feel that the tuning on these three events is right in line with what it should be (challenging enough that raiders won’t achieve their first victory while asleep, but not too hard that only a handful of guilds will ever defeat them). There are also some bugs present in some of these events that will hopefully be taken care of sooner rather than later.
We’ll continue to farm these events until we have enough keys to take a raid force to event 5.
The Darkened Sea – Principal Indagatrix Lucia
Defense of the City
The Darkened Sea – Raiding Begins…
With the launch of a new expansion come new raids and challenges. The first of the raid events for The Darkened Sea was defeated by Inverse Logic on the night of Wednesday, October 29. Due to a key-based progression system (similar to the raid progression system used in Veil of Alaris), we cannot yet proceed to additional raid events. So for now – let the flagging begin.
Plane of War Raid Defeated
Plane of War (Raid) Defeated
With the defeat of The Brother Zek raid in the Plane of War, Inverse Logic has now successfully completed all of the raid events released during the Call of the Forsaken expansion and is the 4th guild server-wide (1st guild on Luclin-Stromm) to do so.
I personally took a 4 month break from EverQuest (late March to late July) and was not present for the introduction of Plane of War. In fact, I was not even keeping up with in-game events during said 4 month period and it was about 2 months after the zone had been released before I was made aware of it. Upon returning to the game in late July, I was delighted to discover that there was now a raid that a majority of the serverwide raiding population felt to be “overtuned” and not worth their time.
Also upon returning to the game, I found the guild’s roster of active raiders to be quite depleted from what it was upon the time of my departure four months prior. Without having any details regarding the Plane of War raid event, it was apparent that we would have to expand our roster before even considering attempting this event. Through the combined efforts of a number of dedicated members, we were able to recruit some talented players and enhance our roster to begin raiding in the Plane of War.
We started raiding The Brother Zek on Sunday, August 10. I was informed that the guild had spent less than an hour total with the encounter prior to that. While the raid is supposedly similar to the encounter with the brothers that occurred in Seeds of Destruction, a large number of our raiders (including myself) had never seen that encounter (and still haven’t). While we never dedicated an entire evening specifically to Plane of War raiding, a concentrated effort was undertaken to plan, theorize, develop, and refine the necessary strategy and raid composition we would require in order to defeat this event. I myself spent hours repeatedly revising 12+ pages of documentation dissecting this event and its mechanics.
Exactly two weeks later all of our combined hard work has paid off, and the most challenging and rewarding raid experience in Call of the Forsaken has been defeated. Is this raid “overtuned?” Absolutely not. It’s an optional raid that is not mandatory for progression. Does it favor having a higher amount of certain types of classes in the raid than others? Bigtime (and until recently, we did not have very many of some of these classes in our raids). In this raid event there is a way to deal with every mechanic, add, and ability that is used against you. Unlike most other raids in recent memory, this encounter’s consequences for not properly mitigating its mechanics can be severely punishing. Is this a repeatable kill? Definitely. Is it a perfect raid? No, it’s not. But it was a lot of fun these past 2 weeks. Challenges such as this are far too rare in gaming. This event gave people something to talk, think, and theorize about. I cannot applaud my fellow guildmates enough for their efforts on this event. In addition to hard work, it required patience and practice, two virtues that I personally value very highly in raiders.
This will likely be our final news update before the release of The Darkened Sea at the end of October. We are still looking to add a few players of select classes to our roster in the near future, but highly exceptional applicants of any class are always encouraged to apply.
Inverse Logic – the Strategic Tacticians
Call of the Forsaken [Tier 2]
Call of the Forsaken – Tier 2 Defeated
July saw the release of the final two raids in the Call of the Forsaken expansion. As always Inverse Logic was primed to take up the challenge of these new events.
The two raid expeditions ‘Burn Out’ and ‘The Journey Home’ were beaten on our very first night of entering them! Amazing teamwork, effort and determination to win solidified Inverse Logic’s #1 spot on Luclin.
Inverse Logic is a three day a week raiding guild. We are always looking to expand our membership. Click the ‘Apply’ button at the top of the page to find out who to contact to get help with submitting your application.
The Void (H) – The Journey Home
Call of the Forsaken – Tower of Rot Defeated
Tower of Rot Defeated
The release of Call of the Forsaken Tier 2 brought a new zone and a new raid. Tower of Rot became available for adventurers to explore with the Raid Expedition: Lord Kyle Bayle set to test teamwork skills to the max.
On Sunday June 22, 2014 Inverse Logic defeated Lord Kyle Bayle, aka Cow Bell, and his legion maintaining our number 1 spot on Luclin. The raid had four distinct stages to it, each requiring their own strategy. After many attempts and a huge teamwork effort there was great joy and rejoicing to be had when Lord Kyle Bayle took his last breath.
Tower of Rot – Lord Kyle Bayle
Call of the Forsaken [Tier 1B]
Call of the Forsaken – Tier 1B Defeated
Inverse Logic has successfully completed all four raids that comprise the Call of the Forsaken expansion’s Tier 1B. The staggered release model that SoE has used to deploy content for the current (and previous) EverQuest expansion has made raiding feel like a 100-yard dash as opposed to an endurance marathon where perseverance and persistence are much more heavily weighted factors in a guild’s progression path.
That said, any raider in EverQuest will likely agree that more raid content is a good thing – and the raiding community now has four more raids to farm each week than it did prior to today. We are the 5th guild gamewide and the first guild on the Luclin server to complete Tier 1B. It took us close to 2.5 hours to complete the four raid events and we experienced no raid wipes for the evening.
I do feel that all raid content in Call of the Forsaken thus far, including the new Tier 1B raids, is much easier than I would prefer raid content to be. However, I am thankful that the game developers listened to some of the feedback provided by my guildmates, as well as raiders from other guilds, and corrected the majority of the bugs found in the four raid events prior to them being patched to the live servers.
In this guild we like to be met with challenges, and then tackle those challenges in a way that we can look back on in the future and be able to say that we did our best. This mentality will continue to persist regardless of the difficulty of present and future raid events, as we pride ourselves on our teamwork, communication, planning, strategy, and efficiency at which we complete raid events and other challenges together. We continue to be a 3-day per week raiding guild and are recruiting with limited openings for exceptional players who work and communicate well in a team-based environment.
Dead Hills – The Legacy of Bayle
West Karana – The Defense of Lendiniara
Bixie Warfront – Pelzia’s Plot
Neriak Fourth Gate – Hate Rising
The Broken Mirror Raid Videos
The Broken Mirror Raid Videos
The videos below are available in resolutions up to 1440p. I will post more videos in the future for the later raids in The Broken Mirror. Enjoy!
The Plane of Health (Video)
The Crypt of Decay (Video)
The Demiplane of Decay (Video)
The Demiplane of Life (Video)