Darathar

Kasul and I decided that, being the only two in the guild that missed out on the previous raid, we’d try to get it done over the weekend, especially since I had a long weekend off.

The Speak as a Dragon/Fire and Ice/Deception quests, also known as the ‘Prismatic 1.0′ line, can be seen as the original ‘epic weapon’ quest in EQ2, before any expansions were released. The weapon is of no practical use today, other than being a pretty for the appearance slot, but it’s still a nice relic to have.

Putting aside lore and such, the quest itself is rather straightforward. Kill various epic dragons to obtain shards that are used to resurrect Vox, talk to Vox, and kill more epic dragons. I’d make a poor school teacher.

Kasul and I were lucky enough to find ourselves a healer. Gray or not, epics are still epics, and they do still dish out a reasonable amount of damage if you’re one with poor avoidance, like myself. The Darathar fight sends you to a special instance of The Isle of Refuge, except in this version, the proverbial bad guys have overran the place, and you need to set things right.

Basically, the Darathar fight can be said to consist for 3 ‘checkpoints’, at each quarter of his health. The first time you get him down to 75%, he heals back up, and again at 50%, and once again at 25%. In the event that you passed one of the ‘checkpoints’ and wipe, he won’t heal again when you reach the quarters you have previously passed.

Darathar surprised us with a nasty frontral AE right when we pulled him, resulting in Kasul and I dead and leaving us with low power throughout the fight after we were rezzed. Without proper power regen, I end up buffing myself with Ro’s Blade and melee-ing it throughout the fight, together with dots and the occasional ice comet. Still, Darathar went down quickly enough, and Norrath is once again, safe.