[Olidan]

Grats to all on Ikkinz 3 last night. Hard to stay up that late for many of us, but glad we got it done.

The content we are going to be raiding now - both Time and virtually all GoD raids - is different in many ways from what we have become accustomed to. Sure the mobs hit harder, there are lots of AEs and unusual strats involved, and we are for the most part inexperienced with these raids and learning as we go.

But there is another significant difference to be aware of as well.

I suspect these raids are going to tend to run longer than many of you may be anticipating. Not just the Ikkinz instances but really all the GoD instances and Time as well.

For GoD, we will be doing Ikkinz 4 and Uqua multiple times - both of these will be, at first anyway, longer and harder than Ikkinz 3. We may not be able to complete them if we lose 1/3 of our raiders by the time we get to the end.

For Time, we have to kill P1 every single night to begin the instance, as well as P2 & P3 the first night we do Time each week. This essentially means we don't even get to the *real* mobs until 12:30 or even later Eastern time. I am wondering if we won't have our first Quarm kill happen at like 5:00 am in the East, hehe.....

Anyway, the point of this post is not to encourage people to stay up later to play EQ. Most of us, including the leadership, just won't be able to do that on a regular basis. Some of you may find yourselves getting frustrated and thinking -

I am never going to be able to stay up late enough to get my Ikkinz 4 or Uqua flag

or

Here I am helping AH get through P1 - P3 every week, but I am never able to stay up late enough to kill the greater gods or Quarm

The leadership may get frustrated as well when we have folks drop out of a GoD instance to the point of being unable to finish.


So during this time of adjustment - over the next 2 or 3 months at least - be aware that we are not only learning the content of these raids and how to beat them but also learning how best to organize and schedule our raids in such a way that works for all of us. Don't assume because we do something a certain way one week that it will always be like that. Voice any ideas or concerns you have and they will be considered.

We have come a long way together, and we can go a lot further if we stick together, stay patient, and keep this stuff in mind.

Happy Raiding!
_________________

[Xyyth]

What about doing thse particular raids on Friday and Saturday or starting one hour earlier during the week?

Are those options that can be considered?
_________________


Xyyth Rohrlohrd (73 Beastlord) - http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=242104

[Culdahl]

Honestly, we probably should not have done ikky 3 last night. Ikky 1 or 2 maybe, but we know ikky 3 is going to be a late night thing and should be reserved for friday or saturday imo. Most guilds that do ikky 3, do it once just to be able to trigger ikky 4 and move on. If kor's pattern thing turns out to be legit then perhaps we could farm it, but every raider I've talked to has said it's merely a crap shoot and there is no set pattern (though I'm still waiting on a few more responses). BTW, I pop'd infusion last night during that fight and it seemed to help....we may want to use infusion the next time we do him to save some mana on heals (believe the AoE is -300 chromatic).

As for time - Perhaps starting P1 - P2 earlier then normal so that we are hitting P3 around our normal starting time would help? It is probably the only way for us to do P4-P6 in the same night....otherwise, we're stuck doing P1-P3 one night and P4 - P6 the other. Anywho, I think we have a better chance of getting people on an hour early then we do asking them to stay and hour late /shrug.

Basically, any first attempt at a target should be done on fri/sat as should any raid that we know, in advance, will likely go later then 11pm. Essentially, that leaves one other night for shorter raids (other night is epics which is fairly short).

[Olidan]

[Culdahl]

[Olidan]

[Shieara]

Current plan is for Fri/Sat to be the longer raids (Time phase 4-6 and Ikk4/Uqua). Starting early is something under consideration, but we won't be doing it until we refine what we are doing have have a better idea how much time it is going to take us to do each phase in Time.

Cannot really start GoD early. Too much of a pita to get people there.

I'd give it another 3 weeks or so until we get a regular schedule down.

[Culdahl]

[Ghraa]

On Ikky 3 patterns:

/shrug. Kor said she knew the pattern. She said she knew when the mob would be killable by hybrids, she had us wait and then said "HYBRIDS KILL". They did, mob died, we cheered.

Thats all the evidence I need.

I sincerely hope we never do Ikky 3 again. If we ever do however I am insisting Kor be there with us.

On Time raiding and how to fit in long raids on one night:

I like the idea of farming time before we get into GoD progression hot and heavy. Sure GoD loot is better in many cases but the failure rate is going to be higher. Farm time + get gear = less failure in GoD. I tend to think long term. Farming Time before trying to farm GoD seems more beneficial in the long run. Not to hurt anyones feelings but many of our newer folks just don't have the gear level for GoD. A few time clears before we move on in GoD would make things a lot less painful.

Starting a Time raid an hour early would be no problem at all (provided someone to lead it can do so). Its likely we can get 40+ folks that can log in an hour or even 2 hours early and thats all we need for Time 1, 2 and a fair portion of 3. The cap is relatively low anyway so thats a more efficient use of manpower and time then having some folks have to wait outside while we progress to a point where more can get in. The beauty of Time raiding is folks can easily enter the zone and jump in at any point (unlike Ikky raids).

In short, us east coasters would love to start early, clear 1,2 and maybe even 3 and by then more west coasters would be logging on coinciding with the point where the raid cap increases to accomodate more folks.

Just something to think about. Some of us east coasters kinda meander about in EQ for an hour or two just waiting for the raid to start. I'd much rather something productive like a bit of work on Time 1 and 2 then do yet another creator mission.

[Kalakob]

i like the idea of startig Potime early... alot if we spend p1-3 one night ... we still have to do p1-2, 4-6. that is a lot of ground to cover

[Kalakob]

i like the idea of startig Potime early... alot if we spend p1-3 one night ... we still have to do p1-2, 4-6. that is a lot of ground to cover

[Olidan]

Wow I hadn't anticipated so many responses so fast. Really I had intended this thread as sort of an *expectation lowerer* for the purpose of reducing some morale problems that might be coming with these harder raids. But anyway let me tell you what I think, too.

I think our best bet is to start Time every Wednesday and get through P3(and to start it early if possible). Get as far as we can each night until we are done with it. I think most of our raiders would rather do Time for 3 or 4 hours a night tand get to sleep rather than be put in a situation where the best we can hope for is to get halfway through P5 by the end of Saturday's raid. The first time to get all the way through it might take us 4 nights. Then maybe eventually we will cut it back to 3 or even to 2 as our proficiency improves. And if it doesn't take us 4 nights? Well that's cool too - cause then our Saturday night could be devoted to a PITA raid (like GoD) instead.

My reasoning is this - allowing ourselves 4 nights each week to get to Quarm will ensure that we kill him sooner rather than later. At least we would have the option of continuing in Time each night if we wanted to.

If we start Time on a Thursday or Friday, then we are forced to kill Quarm in 3 days or lose. We may put ourselves in a position where we really wish we had that extra night.

But whatever we do, I'm there, of course
_________________

[Suegar]

Maybe I'm totally outdated now, but we only used to have to do p1 multiple times never p2 =p So did they change that?

[Ardnasc]

One of the things that has me confused is the timers for Time. How do these things work? As I understood it all the tasks have a 5 day lock-out, but since folks are planning on spreading the Time raids over 2 or 3 days, I must be misunderstanding.

I'm also in favor of starting p1 and p2 early on nights we raid Time, we are likely to have enough folks on to start and since we can add more this appears to me to be a win/win solution.

Have Fun!
Ardnasc

[Kiliana]

Ardy, you only have a five day lock out if you fail the time limit on one phase. If you stop radiing after killing the bosses of any level you can come back later and finish it. Within Hmm 24 or 48 hours not sure which but with Empyreal we would come back the next night - less than 24.

[Shieara]

I also wanted to add something here.

After we finish Time each night, please remove yourself from the Time expedition. To do this, press alt z and it should bring up the window.

The reason I say this is that I am tired of clicking like 50 people and having to remove them manually. Please make me happy and do this on your own so I can go to sleep after our raids.

[Olidan]

BUMP - first post is my pre-packaged response to those up in arms about moving time nights back an hour.
_________________