More EQ stuff... yeah, yeah, I know... but hey... otherwise I'd be telling you all about our novel and then no one would read it.
Okay... Balthenie and I are in Dreadlands working on level 45.
Verrant did a patch this morning, and a lot of the new spell effects are updated... blue fizzies and red fireworks and stuff that looks like dropping a wave of ice water on the mob. Very very pretty... but, like most huge patches, the servers kept going up and down all day. Usually for no more than a minute or two, and sometimes only one zone would crash. Annoying, but not too bad, mostly.
We got into a really tight group and we were massively power-pulling. Mob after mob... the experience was rocketing in. Both Balthenie and I made 45th level after only a few hours, so that was good. It also means my Elder Spiritualist clickable effect will now work. I don't have to have snare memmed anymore! I can just click it! Yay! Save mana, save time, have another spell slot open... it's great.
Anyway, we end up with this wizard in our group who really wants to try and kill the Dread Widow (that's a large black-widow dryder sort of creature). She can Harm Touch for 300 points, root, lightening strike, has over 4,000 hps and is highly magic resistant. And at least 4 levels higher than everyone in the group. But he thinks we can take her and so, eventually, we decide to try. She drops a really nice intelligence caster item, too. +5 int +40 mana, and some other stats.
We go over and we chase her around for a while. She was actually not as hard to kill as we had thought, altho she did try really hard to make jelly out of one of the shadowknights. And the wizard looted the item (no drop) without rolling on it to see who got it. It was between him and Balthenie because no one else wanted it or could use it. And then he went linkdead before anyone could yell at him about it. We thought - understandably so - that he ninjalooted and split with the prize, a very sucky and rude thing to do.
Balthenie was, needless to say, EXTREMELY pissed off. A few minutes later he came back. He'd just gone link dead. And he didn't mean to loot the item, it happened because he was getting lag spikes and it was an accident. After some very profuse apologizing on his part and a lot of yelling and screaming from everyone in the group, he gave Balthenie his old item that he was replacing and said he'd stay and try and get another one for her, because it really wasn't fair and he really didn't mean it. And he was good to his word. We stayed at that camp for another three hours.
Finally, she spawned again. This time, she immediately took off after some random passerby, and we had to chase her all the way to Fironia Vie, practically. I finally catch her (damn she's fast), snared her, and began the ardous process of dragging her back to our camp spot. She nearly kills me three times in the process, too. Gah. I get her back and we start whaling on her. 80% health. 60% health. Heal the rogue back up because he's getting pounded. 40% health. Pry her off the enchanter. 20% health... finally, she's running... and
You have been disconnected.
Zone not available.
Zone not available.
When we finally all got back in, the whole zone had reset, including all the monsters that are normally in her web (which we'd cleared out before) and we nearly got killed before I managed to evacuate us to the other side of the zone. Then we had to trudge all the way back over there. And she's gone. No body. No mob. She's reset. And we have to wait, all over again.
Oh course, Balthenie has to work tomorrow, so she had to log. We never did get a second one of the things.
GAH!
I could just spit.