The Kedge Keep Raid Review.

First off I would like to say how proud I am of everyone. We started out the night with 9 members of Syrian Drauka and ended up the night just before I had to leave with 12 Syrian Drauka members and a guest. :) That would have been enough for 3 decent groups but we need one more healer.

Although I was impressed with everyone I have to say that Rasken earned his PAY in a very big way. Besides being the main healer for his group. Rasken had the duties of casting EB on needy adventurers, Charming the add on fish, and casting invigorate on the tanks who were constantly low on stamina. . . AND he managed to nuke a few times to gain his group the edge on exp when killing a few mobs. Rasken has been in the guild since level 1 and now he has made it to level 50 and is certainly a real asset to the guild.

We started the night around 7:30 pm gathering members and fish scales for the raid. Dumaka and Shirdan were already in place and the other members got ports from Rasken, Fandaar and Benny to get to Kedge. Kedge is an underwater zone which you need to swim to at the bottom of the lake in Dagnor's Cauldron. We got ourselves buffed on land just outside the zone to unrest and I assigned the groups. I put Rasken along with the two pallys (Shirdan and Dalandar) in one group. My thought here was that if rasken got behind on his heals the pally could always fire off there LoH in an emergency. Wompus our 42 Necro rounded out that group. My group consisted of Myself, Dumaka, Distinct, Karey and Benny. Karey was put incharge of EB and invigor of our group while I would do my best to help her as time and mana would allow. At level 35 she was the lowest level character on this raid and we were fighting mobs who were level 45ish. . . wow . . . Nice job Karey for standing in with us ! ! ! and give that baby and hug and kiss from the guild :)

I ordered us down to Kedge entrance, and believe it or not IT AIN'T easy to find the entrance. ! ! ! After a few minutes of wondering around however we managed to all zone in. Once inside we find out that revolution had arrived and was in the middle of pulling Phinny (52nd level boss mob of the zone, requires 2 groups of 50+ to take him out). Anyway undaunted we clear the entrance way and swim down to second level. We were kind of unorganized during the first part of the raid mostly because the entrance spawns are so easy (level 30ish). Once down on the second level however we run into our first spawns with meat on them. Piranha. Stingtooth and Stiletto. These fish are about level 40 so they aren't really hard for two group of our level but they do have damage shields. Benny was put on Nullify duties, which is a good job for a Wizzy because it gives them something to do in the beginning of the battle before they can start nuking. During this time is when Benny and Rasken begin there friendly competition of trying to WIN the exp for their group. ( I would like to post a separate message on the exp issue later :) Unfortunately our fun was short lived. One of the side effects of Revolution pulling Phinny was that they pulled a bunch of seahorses. So before we knew it we had three seahorses in our camp who were causing trouble. I start yelling to zone out and Rasken was dead before we knew it. Also as we RAN/SWIM out of the zone we had to pass by PHINNY ! who was rooted at the zone line by revolution. . . . while we are all standing outside Benny drowns ! Yuck ! Dumaka our 49th level Rezer and myself team up to rez our fallen members, I cast Enduring Breath once the person arrives at his/her corpse to keep them from drowning again. It doesn't take long before we are back in shape to head down to the second level again :) . . . we are all gaining swimming skills like crazy . . . we pull some more fish and soon Distinct pulls the GOLDEN HAIR MERMAID ! ! ! I got so excited I could barely think. This mob drops the lock of golden hair which is used for the ranger only bow "Raincaller" a very nice bow I have always dreamed of getting. I looted the lock of hair and she also drops an emerald. (which unfortunately was our best loot of the evening) We decide to move out and I take the group to the Shark Den.

This is a large room with 4 to 5 regular sharks and hammer head sharks swimming around. It also is the area where cauldron boil spawns who has some very nice loot. We take up position in the entrance hall to the room which will forever be known as WOMPUS HALL ! ! ! LOL . . . poor wompus died 4 times while fighting in this hall, for some reason the sharks could not get enough cute gnome to eat last night and Wompus must have been especially delicious ! ! ! ! Therefore as Raid leader and one of the senior officer of this guild I hereby declare the hall entering into the shark den of Kedge Keep to be here after known as WOMPUS HALL :) This was also the location of our biggest mistake of the night. Distinct was out pulling mermaids while I was medding and unfortuneatly he got rooted. I had earlier put on some resist gear so I was resisting the mermaids roots easily but I forgot to warn Distinct. He starts taking heavy damage and I move in his direction to cast my ranger heal (90 points) ! ! ! (DONT LAUGH DUMAKA ! ! !) Well the only thing I am truely successful at is angering the mermaids and all 3 come straight to our camp. The battle rages on and I start using my hard won mana to nuke the heck out of the mermaid who I have targeted. The mermaids are also healers so we are trying to attack all 3 at once. . . Dumaka goes right to work healing and he gets attacked by one of the mermaids and is soon dead. . . Rasken is also soon dead so Karey is the only healer still alive. This is where our duo of Pallys really shine. I soon finish off mine with just over 1 bub of life left and the pallies along with Ymihere are beating up the last two. Karey puts her final heal on Ymihere with the mana she has left and the pallys settle in for a long battle. I watch as Shirdan and Dalandar has his health drop to a sliver and he FIRES OFF LoH ! ! ! truely remarkable that LoH ability. The pallys managed to turn what would have been an entire group wipe out into a manageable victory. We get Dumaka back into the zone and begin our work of rez'ing.

This is the most disappointing part of the raid. NO LOOT. We fought various mobs all the way up to Phinny's Den and not one interesting piece of loot droped. We cleared the Shark Den at least five times with no Cauldron boil spawn. Verant shouldn't make it so that zone is so unrewarding! We spent 5 hours in one of the hardest zones in the game and came away with nothing. . . shame on verant.

Finally we make our way to the ledge over looking Phinney's Den and this is where the most intersting battle of the evening takes place. We are attacked by a seahorse ! ! ! This seahorse cast complete heal on itself 3 times ! The pally's stun spells just would not stick and darned if I could interrupt the casting . . . Well at this point I simply could not stay away any longer. . . it was 1:30 am EST so I got Benny to TL me out of there. I would like to know what happened afterwards if anyone cares to make a reply to this message. I also would like input from the members who came. for example what did we do RIGHT and what did we do WRONG?

Wildice Benny Shirdan Dumaka Karey Wompus Dalandar Rasken Distinct Ymihere Cimon Mesar (spelling) Seems to me we had 13 total at one point . . . who am I missing ?