This morning, at 0950h local (GMT +8) time, Calreth was the mythical Dragon’s Marrow. This was made possible by the members of the guild, Paradise Lost from the Oasis server, who organized and was the main force behind the combined the Leviathan and Veeshan’s Peak raid today, with special thanks going to Stargrace and Shadowgeist for getting me into the raid, Ultann for getting me into numerous other raids which were unfortunately unsuccessful. Also, Kasul, Latharek and Clerissa for being online to share in my joy. Still to mention are the other people who gave me a chance in raids and groups despite my lack of mythicalness.

It’s never easy finding a raid as DPS. Most of the time healers and bards are the sought after class. I was promised a spot many hours ahead, but when it was time for the raid to form up, the story changed and it would seem that they were oversubscribed for DPS and lacked healers. Thankfully, Stargrace was kind enough to come along with me on her mystic and use that as a bargainning chip to get into the raid. No one turns down a mystic. It looked promising, I could almost see the quest update at that point.

Fast forward, things didn’t go well. It was the first time for a good number of the raid force, and the result of that was confusion on a large scale. Also, too many people were giving instructions which didn’t help matters. I don’t think we even got Leviathan past 96%.

Setting the above aside, Calreth participated in a leviathan raid over the weekend. Leviathan, who resides in the Chamber of Destiny, is one of the three epic mobs required for the Wizard’s epic weapon, along with Imzok in Protector’s Realm and Druushk in Veeshan’s Peek.

Don’t celebrate just yet. The outcome of this raid is still quite uncertain. Leviathan is a tricky mob. The raid starts off with clearing trash mobs which drops fish (Yha-lei) skins that would allow a person to, I assume, disguise themselves as food that Leviathan would attempt to consume.

Once trash mobs are cleared, most raids would then make their first attempt at leviathan himself in what is termed as a farming fun. At this point, selected members of the raid take turns putting on the fish disguise and being swallowed by leviathan, killing some kind of stomach creature to collect explosive vials. Once a sufficient number of vials are accumulated, the raid then wipes itself and begin the actual kill attempt.

The whole idea behind this is to get swallowed by leviathan just like in the previous attempt, but this time, detonating the vials farmed inside him, causing massive internal damage.

We didn’t get to the second attempt because we ran out of fish suits at this point. The trash mobs that drop them respawns, but takes a few days. Hence, it’ll be Tuesday morning (GMT +8) when the next attempt would be made. Hope that goes well.

Also, I finally had the chance to run Runnyeye: The Gathering (RE2). RE2 has been out for months now, but I could never quite slot myself into a group there, except until now. Ultann and Kasul (it was his first also) came along and we blasted through the instance rather quickly. The internal layout is exactly like that of Runnyeye, except populated with different, and much higher level (83 seems to be the average) mobs. It was a fun filled trip.

Given a whole week off work, what did all day and night was play EQ2. I ran instances like no tomorrow, accumulated a But that ends today. After today, I go back to being the casual player, logging in just for the weekends.

Calreth is now sitting in T2 shard armor, with 185 AA. I didn’t make any progress towards his mythical. He has his order of rime faction done, and two heritage quests out of the journal. I’m in a guild with great people, everything seems alright again.

But summer has ended.

Kasul had to leave after that, so it was just up to me and Ultann. Evernight Abbey, Anchor of Bazzul and Befallen:CoA were next on the menu. We blazed through each of them and headed to another. By the end of the night, I had a good amount of shards, almost enough for 2 pieces of T2 to give me the 5-piece set bonus. The reminder will probably come tomorrow.

It was my first time grouping with Kasul and Ultann. All in all, it was a great night, and I’m glad to have met and played with the other members of the guild. They’re great players, and probably great friends to be too. If only everyday could be the same as today.

Meanwhile, I set myself some goals I want to reach before the next expansion gets released. One’s got to have a goal to work towards in life, right? So does my character.

Firstly, I’d like to reach 200 AA. I think it’s a goal that can be achieved with some determination. I’ve completed most of the soloable quests that is equivalent to my tier, with the exception of the rime repeatables. I’m looking to go back and finish up the Peacock and Claymore lines, and also all the grayed out HQs. I want to have an almost empty quest journal in preparation for the expansion.

On the list right behind that is armor upgrades. I currently have 3 pieces of T2 and 2 pieces of T1, which isn’t too shabby, but nothing to be proud of considering a majority of the populace is clad in T2/3. This means endless shard runs everyday. I’m starting to feel bored of it but I’ll have to persist. Toss in a few WoE raids here and there, together with a lucky die, maybe T3 pieces would start falling. Just maybe.

Next, mythical. I don’t know if I’d manage this. It’s tough getting into pick up raids when I’m usually home only one, or at most two days a week. I’d love to have it at some point instead of constantly staring at others with jealousy. Missing Leviathan and Druushk currently.

In other news, Stargrace and her two three* friends (just one at the time of this post, other is apparently having issues) moved over to Antonia Bayle yesterday. Torrent Knights is seeing some life in it again! Stargrace purchased a guild hall for it and that’s some place I would be spending a lot of time idling at in the future. I’m not a fan of hanging around town where there’s a ton of people, so the guild hall with be a nice a convenient place to do so. Tipa moved her characters over too and I’m glad they all chose to. It seems that I would be having a circle of friends around again.

*Mistake pointed by out by Stargrace, she has a total a three friends moving over. Don’t blame me, I’m not used to having so many friends to count!

Speaking of RoK, I wish I could skip school and be home right when the server goes up, but I’ve lab sessions on that day and it wouldn’t be possible. I’m actually rather busy throughout the entire week so I’ll probably be missing the chance to get item discoveries. Calreth still does not have a single discovery to his name yet.

Also, Lineage 2′s test server for the new chronicle came out a couple days ago. However, by the time I finished updating and patching, which took about 2 days on my terrible connection here in Singapore, the servers went down for some unknown reason. From the screenshots I’ve seen and from the 5 minutes I spent looking at the login screen, the revamped interface looks amazing.