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Truly Naughty Troop 2009

rosi — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:16:00 +0000

Welcome to 2009, a very happy New year to all troopers past, present and future.

If you are interested in joining us please read the following posts to ensure we are the sort of guild you wish to spend time with.

http://www.truly-naughty-troop.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=445

http://www.truly-naughty-troop.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=420

http://www.truly-naughty-troop.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=102

Rosi
Guild leader

A big Thank you

rosi — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:39:00 +0000

As you have no doubt seen from the post below Grayhelm and Siddhaya have stepped down as raid leaders for TNF after 4 fantastic years of fun and adventure. From our weekly killings of the guardian of the seal to the last epic battle against Redfang I have many fond memories as I know do many many others.

So I salute you two for giving up your weekends for 4 years and persevering with us all.

TNF Update – August 2008

gnomtrix — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:41:00 +0000

TNF beat Redfang. Oh yes. Oh yes indeed. He’s been a thorn in our side since we went to the Demiplane, but last night on our third go at him in that session he went down and it was smooth. Of course, the first two goes that night were a little rougher, wipe on ~40% and wipe on 4%. Yes, four percent. That hurt. So much that we just couldn’t move on – we engaged again and nailed his flappy batness to the wall.

Nice effort TNF – impressive resilience and determination.

Also, last night was the last raid with Siddhaya and Grayhelm as raid leaders. We’re stepping down, it’s been an amazing four years but it’s finally time to take a break and get our Saturdays back.

Check the TNT raid and events forum for news on who’s going to pick the raids up now we’re stepping aside.

I took some video,

Good luck for the future TNF.

Demiplane Progress

gnomtrix — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:43:00 +0000

We’ve been to the Demiplane of Blood a few times now, Zi-Thuuli is no problem, we just wait him out and beat him down, but the other tier 1 events have given us some grief. Sisters is going to take a while to get right, although we were really close a few weeks ago. Redfang is about execution, we know what we need to do, we just need to get used to doing it, at the right time, and having a good turnout to make it happen. We were better last night than we’ve been before. And Hatchet, well, we finally beat Hatchet last night in an epic fight and I want to thank everyone who was there for taking the deaths, getting up, and doing what needed to be done.

Every time we beat Hatchet, and he will die again, we learn a little more, get a little more confident, and it’ll go smoother and smoother.

That first kill is one of those fights I’ll never forget, looking around with 30% to go and seeing most of the raid force either dead or recovering, most people with multiple corpses, but a feeling of determination in the air.

Proud of you all, thanks for making it another memorable night.

Why does TNF Raid?

gnomtrix — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:09:00 +0000

I wanted to write a short reminder, to myself more than anything else, about why TNF raids. With the recent changes to content in terms of flags, it’s a good time to get back to basics.

1. We raid to have fun with our friends.
2. We raid to see stuff you don’t get to see if you don’t raid.
3. Sometimes we get some nice loot.

TNF was never a ‘progression’ raid force. We were forced into progression to meet the goals above. If we didn’t progress, we would never beat new stuff, if we didn’t do the flagging, we would never have gotten into more fun zones.

There is always an element of progression in raiding. If we just all stayed level 65 in level 65 gear, we’d never beat the latest content, we would never have beaten Sendaii if we hadn’t all worked together, to improve our toons through raiding and grouping. So we’re forced to progress – that’s the EQ model.

But there’s a false element of progression in raiding as well – faction, flags, keys. Those elements are added for several reasons, and we can argue their value until we’re all blue in the face, but it doesn’t matter. For anything up to and including the Prophecy of Ro, they’re gone.

Mostly gone …. some raids require bane weapons, some raids require special items, and those weapons and items are only obtained by raiding previous content (this applies to DoDh and PoR), so there’s still some element of scaling the content.

And of course, no one skips through to the final mob in an expansion and kills it without doing the earlier stuff unless they’re already overpowered.

Where am I going with this?

Well, the recent patch is very exciting for TNF. It opens up more content than we’ve had access to since we started raiding PoP. More targets are available to us now than ever before. More content to challenge us, to entertain us, and to show us a side of EQ we may never have seen.

We don’t know what it means for us yet in terms of week-to-week raids, what we’ll be killing, how we’ll structure things. But I do know, that there’s never been a more exciting time to be a casual raid force in EQ.

No more turning away friends who play rarely because they don’t have the flag. No more scratching around trying to find people to 85 us into zones. No more demands from myself and Sidd before a raid about ‘who’s keyed, who did this, who did that’.

Everything up to TSS is open before us, ripe, ready.

TNF – Raiding for Fun and looking Good while we do it.

Spider-queen Sendaii Spanked

gnomtrix — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:33:00 +0000

You can thank Siddhaya for the Title! So we did it. TNF beat the five blood raids. Of course, we’ve been farming Shyra for quite a while, but our focus was Anguish and we never really stretched beyond that. The Council of Nine fell a little while back, no problem for TNF, deal with a hard hitting mob and kill timed adds – just up our street. We steamrollered Bloodeye, in fact first time through we made it harder than it needed to be, second time we just showed it a little more disdain. Draygun gives us a little more to think about, but he’s died (or re-died) like all the rest.

But Sendaii, well, she’s not trivial. Our first encounter a couple of weeks ago got us through the first two waves, but the third wave just overwhelmed us. Honestly, we were hoping just to get further through the third wave on our second go, to get a better feel for placement and the mobs.

But TNF weren’t happy with that, you guys wanted to go all the way. First two waves were flawless, wave 3 started ok, and then Sendaii joined the fun and it got hectic, but not hectic enough! Wave 3 was down, and we played with the Queen and her fake friends, and then finally, the army of spiders descended, but you weathered it all, handled it all, and beat Sendaii into little bits of spider ick.

All five blood raids down, DSK keying well underway, Vule on the horizon, Daosheen tormenting us, Theatre of Blood keying ongoing, and more targets than ever.

It’s spring, and it’s time for TNF to step up, kick some ass and start taking names.

Daosheen the Firstborn

gnomtrix — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 01:07:00 +0000

Daosheen to 20% on our first visit. Sterling, amazing work from everyone. 60 minutes of fighting, over ten million hitpoints of damage dealt to him, and we just ran out of steam.

But we have his measure now. He has been tested. He will be found wanting.

Overlord Mata Muram Mutilated

gnomtrix — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 01:16:00 +0000

On November 29th, 2007 I said this,

We will defeat the two heads of the Muramite army. Tunat’Muram Cuu Vauax in Tacvi will fall before us, and Overlord Mata Muram in Anguish shall lie at our feet, a broken wreck. I can not say how soon these things will happen, we still have challenges in Txevu to beat, and you have seen the trouble Overlord Mata Muram has given us, but I can promise you they will happen. TNF will beat both the Gates of Discord and the Omens of War content.

At the start of January, we killed Tunat`Muram Cuu Vauax. He’s not even really the hardest fight in Tacvi any more. However, Overlord Mata Muram is another beast entirely. He is, without doubt, the hardest fight in Anguish, and to-date still one of the toughest raid encounters in Everquest. Certainly the toughest fight TNF has ever faced, despite having beaten Zomm the Seventh Born, Porthio the Second Born, Yar`lir, Matriarch Shyra and a bunch of other encounters post-OoW.

We promised you that if we had the right turnout we’d take him on. We started Anguish late today (Hello Porthio) but we burned through the first five targets like the plague. We took on Mata Muram and we drove him down to 30%, it looked tight a few times, we had some deaths, and some sterling team work from everyone, and we took our breather.

By the time we got back to him, he was up to 86%, which was a little unexpected, and really I know many of us had doubts by then. It had hurt to get him to 30% the first time, and now we had to do it again and more. But everyone pulled out the stops, mask clickers were perfect, healing was incredible, the tank team made like a brick wall and held Mata Muram at bay, and everyone else piled on the dps until he bled from every inch of his thick ugly hide.

60% and I was feeling confident.

30% and we lost a few people.

15% and I thought we had it.

12% and I was watching the fight from my hovering soul.

6% and I was rezzed again, but it was looking troublesome. We had a dragorn loose, some Ukun were running havoc, and we were running out of enchanters and dps.

3% and I closed my eyes. So close. A wipe now would be beyond insulting.

1% and I swore in rsay.

0% Overlord Mata Muram dead, the Omens of War expansion beaten.

I’m proud to raid with you, proud to be part of the team. From myself and Siddhaya, and the rest of the raid leadership team, thank you for turning up, making it a blast, and nailing Overlord Mata Muram to the floor.

Tunat`Muram Cuu Vauax – Croaked

gnomtrix — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:09:00 +0000

Just over a week ago, Truly Naughty Friends beat the final encounter in the GoD expansion. Every major encounter in GoD, from start to finish beaten. From the Tipt trial, to the single group Ikkinz trials, through Ikkinz 1, 2, 3 and 4. Uqua, Qvic encounters, Inktu`ta in into Txevu. Txevu we did the bare minimum and finally into Tacvi.

You can check the GoD progression chart out here and you can track TNF’s progression here if you wish!

Tacvi was fun, I hope you agree, and clearing it on our second visit was a good feeling. We’ll be back, the loot in Tacvi (weapons and weapon augs especially) is still decent and the fights are fun. It’s fairly quick and we’ll mix it up with some other targets I think. Our regular farming raid is still Anguish, the loot is too good to pass up, and we’ll head to Anguish on a regular basis for a while to come. Numbers are down still, three regular clerics, one or two regular druids, fluctuating tank numbers, no regular wizards, but we’ll continue pushing forward, doing as much as we can with whoever turns up. If we want to beat Mata Muram we’re going to need a good solid 40+ turnout though with more druids than we get at present.

Saturday gone we trounced Anguish again, although not enough to take on OMM, and we tidied up with quick and easy kills in DoN. Next weekend, something new. Nothing finalised yet, but Prophecy of Ro targets look likely at this stage. Hoping for a good turnout, see you in PoK at the usual time.

TNF – 2008

gnomtrix — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:35:00 +0000

This is a long post, stick with me It’s also a little early, we usually write something at the start of the year, but I’ve had a couple of questions about TNF and the SoF release prompted this a little earlier than normal. So, here we go …

Wow, another year has passed. It’s hard to believe it was only the start of 2007 that TNF made it into the Plane of Time. A lot of hard work in zones that offered little reward during 2006 to get everyone flagged, and then a few happy romps in Time for some fun clickies. At the start of 2007 I wrote a post on what we thought would be coming up in the following months (you can read it here). I said, and I quote,

We have no plans to get flagged for Anguish

And then,

if you have some spare time and wanted to, go pick up a few Anguish signets, you never know what he future will hold.

Well you went and got your sigs. We had no plans to get flagged for Anguish, but hell, beating the MPG trials was just so much fun it kind of just happened by accident. We’re in Anguish, we’re kicking Anguish Ass and we’re enjoying it. I wrote this half way through the year, to cover our progress at that stage, and since then we’ve surpassed all our plans. I wanted to take the time to write another note, let you know where TNF is, and where myself and Siddhaya see us going in 2008.

But first of all, I want to talk about ‘the wave’. TNF has been riding the wave for a couple of years, we’ve been just ahead of major gear inflation since we started. Three major gear advancements in 2006/2007 were a cause for concern for TNF. Firstly, the loot from DoDh / PoR group encounters was better in some cases than you could get in the Plane of Time. It was ok, not everyone had it, and the Plane of Time had fun factor and useful loot still. Then we broken into Qvic, but the armour from TSS powered molds is actually just slightly better than the Qvic armour. Again, it wasn’t easy to get, not everyone had it, and so Qvic / Inktu`ta still had something to offer. Finally, we broke into Anguish, and around the same time the single group armour from The Buried Sea turned out to be better or roughly similar to Anguish armour for some classes.

TNF doesn’t only raid for the loot, in fact, the loot isn’t our primary reason for raiding. We raid to show you guys new content in EQ that you might not otherwise see. For some raiders in TNF, loot upgrades on raids have always been rare, due to either being well geared before joining TNF or doing a lot of group work outside of raids to upgrade past the content we were killing. For many however, TNF has been a source of great loot upgrades.

With the release of the Secrets of Faydwer there can be no denying that the wave has broken, TNF raid targets will be behind the loot curve. Gear dropping in Dragonscale hills has 250 hitpoints and various mods, loot from further in SoF is even better. Armour you can buy in the bazaar (well, if you’re very wealthy) is better in some cases than Anguish armour. If there was ever a time where it was easier to get group upgrades than raid upgrades, for many of our raid force, now is it. I want to reassure you that TNF strategy will not change. We want to show you stuff in EQ you might never otherwise see, and that means that despite the loot we will reward the effort of working through Kod`taz, Ikkinz, Uqua, Qvic, Inktu`ta and Txevu and we will go to Tacvi and beat Tunat’Muram Cuu Vauax.

And that brings us to 2008, TNF’s fourth year. Four years of casual, once a week raids. Four years of hard work. Four years of loyalty, dedication and fun!

Gates of Discord and Omens of War
I promise 2008 will be no different. We will defeat the two heads of the Muramite army. Tunat’Muram Cuu Vauax in Tacvi will fall before us, and Overlord Mata Muram in Anguish shall lie at our feet, a broken wreck. I can not say how soon these things will happen, we still have challenges in Txevu to beat, and you have seen the trouble Overlord Mata Muram has given us, but I can promise you they will happen. TNF will beat both the Gates of Discord and the Omens of War content.

Dragons of Norrath
Yar`lir is our bitch, Rikkukin is our foot stool and Tirranun is beneath our contempt. Kessdona may well suffer a swift defeat one day, to say we went, but the real target left amongst the once mighty Dragons of Norrath is Vishimtar. TNF will be paying the beast a visit, and we expect to come away with our arms full of trophies.

Depths of Darkhollow and Prophecy of Ro
It’s time to band together in groups again, and to begin working on your raid zone access. Just as with GoD and OoW, there are single group tasks that must be done to gain access to the most powerful content in DoDh and PoR. Some of you already have access, some have been working on it and others still haven’t started. We need you to get access to Dreadspire Keep, Razorthorn and Theatre of Blood. There’s a lot of work to do it, and we’ll all need to work together to achieve access. As well as the single group stuff there are raids (like Matriarch Shyra) which provide flags, and in between GoD and Omens, it’s these targets we’ll be looking at in 2008.

The Serpents Spine, The Buried Sea, The Secrets of Faydwer
We’ll look at the targets in these three expansions and see if there’s anything we can throw in for some fun, but we don’t expect to be making any major progress or attempting anything significant.

Summary
It’s been a fantastic year. I’m proud to have reached Anguish the right way, with friends, having fun. I’m proud to be knocking on the door of the final zone of the Gates of Discord. I’m proud to be at the stage where we can beat Vishimtar and draw a line beneath yet another expansion. In 2008, TNF will beat GoD, OoW and DoN. We’ll do that because you guys work hard, turn up and continue to improve every time. We can’t do it without you. In 2008, TNF will step further into the Depths of Darkhollow, beating the most challenging raids we’ve ever seen, and we’ll look to the Dragons in Relic to offer a challenge.

A year ahead, a year of challenge, of mystery, of blood and fire. A year of dragons and demi-gods. Step up, be bold, show no quarter. We’re asking more of you than ever before, maybe everything you have to give. Here, now, this is where we make our stand, where we draw the line. Tunat’Muram Cuu Vauax can not be allowed to live. Overlord Mata Muram must die to pay for his crimes. Vishimtar the Fallen has crossed over and must be sent back. Tsikut, Shar`Drahn and Ashenback blight the very world with their presence and will be sent back to the ninth plane of hell from whence they came.

Be bold.

Show no quarter.

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.