#shardsofdalaya

[girls-of-everquest]

Eat the whole sausage

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted an update.  It’s not for lack of us slaying pixel monsters and more to do with my life becoming a persisting sleepwalking session.  

We’ve killed lots of new monsters, certainly not the least of them is this exiled king of jerks.  This mother fucker right here:

His main mechanics include starting every sentence with “royal” and ending every sentence with “boop-shi boop-shi boo!”.  This results in your party wanting to run away in a random direction to avoid total spontaneous human combustion.  We killed this guy to death and are now the proud new owners of a recipe for royal gravy.  Live action shot:

After we collected our sanity (and our fringed detached appendages), we ran off to a tik tok house for a supposed party in a dingy moldy basement that smells like insecurity and minimal adult supervision.  Unfortunately, along the way we ran into an aggressive flower which made advances on our entire party wielding a flesh-light bludgeon.  We beat this weed down with excessive amounts of pesticide, steel, and magic missiles *zap* *zzzap*.  The loot went into the trash and we aren’t going to talk about it.

We finally arrived at the house party but all we found in the dingy basement was Nicolas Cage and a swarm of BEES!!  We put Nicolas Cage, and our memory of this, out of its misery.. with bleach.. lots of bleach.

This is what Nicolas Cage looks like without stage makeup:

After leaving the “party” we fought a series of bullies.  First, this group of Gen X’ers who were singling me out because of my sidepart and skinny jeans.

After some brutal insults and owns - including flaunting our ability to get a credit card, our smooth grammar, and the fact that we aren’t the ones appropriating boomer culture - they ran away from the encounter and left behind a useless box full of tik tok videos and mom jeans.

After beating down some teens we got a real taste for blood and went out to find some old people.  Naturally this brought us to Target where we found this gem yelling at staff and other shoppers in the women’s lingerie section:

We sent him reeling back to his townhouse, yappy lapdog, and [oversized nondescript luxury SUV] and took the contents of his pockets.  A bag of [crack] rocks and a pant sized used handkerchief.

Fin

[lewyslewters-blog]

The 1st Post

When I was a young teenager, I was obsessed with EverQuest. I remember on Sundays, my dad would wake me up super early to do the longer Sunday paper-route, we’d get bagels for breakfast, and I’d have the rest of the day to play EQ.

I never made it very far. I started playing around the time I was 12 because of my older brother’s now ex-live-in-girlfriend. Around the time of Kunark release, they had bought a new computer together; a fuckin’ sweet lil’ thing with 256mb of RAM and a CD Burner (”YES now I can burn a CD with One Winged Angel!”). With it, they bought two games: Diablo 2 (something I had been looking forward to) and EverQuest (wtf.) I stopped playing sometime around the release of World of Warcraft, probably when I was 16. It was probably also a bit after Planes of Power. My timelines might be fuzzy...

 In all those years, I had gotten my Wood Elf Druid to level 35. 

It’s insane to think about that, with all the knowledge we have about the game now. On P99, I’ve gotten 2 Shadow Knights to high 40′s, and a slew of other alts in their 20′s and 30′s on Blue, and a TROLL SHAMAN (with dat 40% exp reduction) to 34 on Green, mostly out of being a fucking adult who doesn’t get distracted by every little thing, and, I guess, having a whole lot more info about the game readily available. 

I also spent a LOT of time exploring. Being a Druid made it super easy to port around, toss up a Camo and a SoW, and keep my track up in whatever zone I wanted to explore. I loved prodding every inch of the world of EQ for any tidbit of information, any weird named mob sitting by it’s lonesome off the beaten path. The world of EQ was what really drew me in, and held onto me. I still use Norrath as inspiration. I have two or three DnD characters who are characters from EQ lore, and I use old guild member’s names for characters in games where you get a naming option. 

Though I never got to the end-game of early EverQuest, I did live vicariously through the blogs of the top raiding guilds of the time: Triton, FoH, Legacy of Steel, Afterlife. I would check these guild websites in the library of my middle and high schools, and totally geek out over their most recent kills. Their just-edgy-enough humor really appealed to my 13 year old senses, and their knowledge of early internet memes would shape my budding sense of humor. 

So this is an attempt to return to that.

Probably like a month ago, some guy posted in the p99 subreddit asking if anyone else was interested in starting a Shards of Dalaya static group?

I didn’t respond. Mostly because, I’m not too keen on joining up with random dudes on the internet. I did a lot of that when I was in my 20′s, and... well, let’s say I learned a lot. And also because I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to try Shards of Dalaya again. I had just gotten my Shaman to 30 on Green, and was kinda tired of solo-ing. After having the soul crushing realization that I was likely going to spend my 30′s solo-ing in a world where I wasn’t allowed to go outside,  I decided to load up SoD again.

Within minutes, I had a question - so I asked it in /ooc. When it was answered, I thanked the person and mentioned I was totally new. Then, some guy sent me a tell.

He asked me if I wanted to group up. Then he asked me why I had started playing again and I said “I saw a reddit post,” and he told me “lol I wrote that post.” He told me he had grouped with another guy from reddit, an Enchanter, earlier. So I joined his group.

Within a week, we had accumulated 3 others dudes who wanted to go around murdering adepts, and completing quests. We started with Fyona the Elementalist, a right jerk of an adept. We spent a whole night throwing ourselves at this pet’s pet’s pet’s pet and failed. After a few days off, we came back and MURDERED HER, and thus, Lewys’ Lewters was born.

Our original group make up of a Shaman, a Mage, an Enchanter, a Rogue, and a Ranger, really wasn’t cutting it for adept murdering as we started to make our way into our 20′s. So, we decided to cut our losses and go fuckin’ HAWD-COWE. We also lost our Mage friend to this thing called w-w...work? Long Live Ecuo and Guillermo.

So now, the group is made up of 4 guys, two of whom are playing two characters. A Paladin, played by me, a monk, a two-boxed Cleric and Enchanter, and a two-boxed Druid and Necro. Don’t you love that the only two people not boxing are the ones playing less complicated classes? I don’t box. 

That shit sucks. 

We’ll start by farming the FUCK outta the level 1 adepts to get us a lil’ head start, and then move on to the next level of adepts. The level 4′s!

[girls-of-everquest]

Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story

So last night, we decided to get after it again.  We began with adepts near our level, one-shotting Ironhide (who turned out to be anything but) and the Redbull hype-man Taurine, who tried to make us perform regrettable acts but we flipped the script on him.  These chumps died so fast there were several fights I wasn’t able to get a picture on, so I have included as-if-you-were-really-there illustrations below.

Ironhide

Hat - Dipple

Spear - Dipple

Bracer - Edrael

Taurine

Boots - Dipple

Bracer - Edrael

Stick - who cares

There was more shit afterward, including boner man in West Badlands who really put a hurt on our entire group and we nearly wiped but some late heroics by local legend Dtoo saved us.  We got some really neat pixels from that guy including a petrified boner ring, and a really wet hammer (picture omitted due to graphic content).  

We also killed an undead frog who spent the entire fight trying to give me syphilis.  Nondescriptadeptloot had by all.

Things really took a turn for interesting when we went to go check out Fyona the Elementalist in Erimal.  We began by fraternizing with her and her pets.

Yes, that’s right, she’s the crazy cat lady but instead of cats she has elementals.  The strategy for winning this fight is basically akin to how you stack those russian doll things into one neat little package.. except instead of it looking cute and homemade it beats your ass in a multitude of ways.

As you can see by the next image we smashed our heads against this for a while before figure it out, but we eventually claimed our super slick and shiny items! (this time it isn’t a sex thing)

Fyona the Elementalist

Scimitar of this druid now beats ass - Salchicha

Bracer - Dipple

Gloves - Edrael

We did more stuff with the rest of our night but by that point we all had our droolcups on so CBA.

[girls-of-everquest]

Which one of you was fuckin’ with the pants???

So tonight was the christening of our merry band of nerds.  Primitive muscle memory took over and we bashed our faces into our keyboards until some stuff died.

Actual footage from our first attempt versus Sssszzz the Stone (Snake)

We came back later and properly skinned his ass

After this we moved on to bigger and better things, like this tiny ass rat which you can’t even see because it’s getting pummeled so badly by our motley crew.

After this we decided to up the ante.  We found some tiny school aged elf stuck on a roof in Athica calling for help.  So we did the one thing that any good Samaritan would do, we hucked rocks at her until she fell off the roof and was paralyzed!

I see you ogglin that sweet troll ass..

Only one thing left to do after beating up a little girl, go find something manly to kill.  We found this guy minding his own business looking for berries and trash cans or whatever it is bears do in Greater Faydark. I now have nice bear pelt pants.

[lewyslewters-blog]

Wtf.

So, yeah, it’s been a while. What happened? Well, the fake version of the story is I got hired as the production stage manager of the upcoming Broadway hit musical Conan the Barbarian, starring Derek Klenna in the eponymous role, and don’t have time for blog writin’. The real version is I got real depressed ‘cause the world is in shambles, and couldn’t be bothered to keep up with anything. 

But you’re not here for theater professional in-jokes or personal struggles  - so, to the quests!

A LOT has happened. Like, I mean a lot. It’s been what, almost 3 months since my last freaking post? In that time, we’ve gone from level 8 to 29, and have killed about every adept in between. 

                                           Except these fucks.

At this point, we have so much adept gear we’re deleting shit left and right, and stuff rots on the regular. We’ve introduced side characters to help us kill shit. Sevak bought a RV. Muk sat through a 6 hour interview. Vanni is still making metal studs for our Amish characters. I became a unicorn

So, instead of going down a checklist of adepts, a veritable “Who’s Who” of dead elf pixels, I’ll do a “Best of.” 

In Newport, thar be tales of mermaids who lost they mirrors, or something. 

When one talks to yon maiden of the sea, she tells you some belligerent beach bum stole her mirror or maybe a brush or some shit, I don’t remember. 

Basically, you engage the belligerent beach bum who lives on the beach outside of the Newport docks (Newport is what EverQuest fetishists would call “Qeynos.”) The fight is pretty simple. The dude will drop an item in the 1st empty slot in your inventory - a crab, or a shrimp, or a lobster or some other ocean bug that people feel oddly compelled to consume - and you need to right click it immediately or it will cast an 100 dmg DD to you. He drops these on you p. frequently, too. 

The cool part about this boss is the loot you receive. You get the mirror, or the brush - whatever the fuck it is - and you turn it in to the merlady. The class of the person turning it in determines the loot - and there’s some cool shit. 

I personally received this little sticker, which has leveled up to almost it’s max of 10/30 and a whopping 33 AC at this point. It’s got damage reduction. It’s got an aggro proc. It’s got a sweet post-Velious model that’s new to me. It’s fuckin’ dope and I still use it.

After Coralia, it’s sort of a sea of nameless adepts who went down like... well, I don’t know- you add your own sexual reference here. I was gonna go with “went down like a twink for his daddy on the 1st of the month” but I thought, who knows, maybe people aren’t familiar with gay vernacular.

Anywho, here’s a bunch of shots of Adepts we’ve sent to a farm upstate.

                                        The Beetle Queen and her loyal subjects.

                           Bone is the worst name for a pet, but Alsobone is great.

                                                      Hey, wha happen?

                                        No, that’s not Fizzletina. That’s just Shzoc.

                                                       Grikk gets got.

                                               I think we killed this guy - once?

                                          Runemaster Cervix is the hardest adept.

Now the good stuff.

                                             RIP 1st Labor of Dalaya We’ll start here, with Othello the Raid Killer. This guy is kinda the reason our first labor of Dalaya failed. We quickly realized we were not going to be able to progress much farther with our fuckin’ sweet set-up of a Ranger tank and Shaman healer - as much as Muk may protest and say “RANGERS R TANKS.”

Othgualo is one of the most annoying fights to have to tank. His one basic mechanic is an AE that forces everyone in combat with him to shadow step and roots them in their new position. This also does a shit ton of damage to them. Then he summons whoever has the most aggro. Hopefully, that’s your tank. But often times, it’s your druid or enchanter, or your monk who just busted his load of monk juice.

The important thing about this shitheel is that he is dead now. And we have his gravy.

Look at this crate! It’s just a crate, right? No. Fuck that. It’s the longest fucking adept fight of your life. 

The Crate of Pets is wave after wave (after wave after wave after wave after wave) of usually groups of three mobs. They can be crocs. They can be apes. They can be elephants or giraffes. You’ll kill so many waves you’ll feel compelled to ask in OOC “how long is the crate of pets fight? we feel like we’ve killed 5 waves by now” and someone will respond

“Sometimes, hours.”

Kill them all and eventually you’ll fight a boss pet. Kill that and you’ll probably end up with this fucking unit that turned Meatybone into a fucking animal for the rest of the night.

                                             Fuck this guy. This guy right here is where we’re gonna end this post. We’ve killed this fat fiery fuck a number of times. He isn’t really that hard. We’ve even ALL two-boxed a character while fighting him. Basically, he spawns a fire pet at 3 of the 4 cardinal directions in a cross a few yards out from him. In the last cardinal position, a water elemental spawns. Every one in combat (except the tank) must be standing behind the water elemental a few seconds after it spawns or he will do something like... 566 damage to you or some bullshit.

None of this is really that bad (unless you’re two boxing). He’s fairly easy when you get the hang of him. The problem lies in the fact that if someone dies and is zoning while the mob dies...you lose the ability to loot the corpse. You can loot ONCE and report the loot to your group, but once you leave the window no one else can loot from him. 

Which leads me to this:

You have 14 Days. If after that time the Plane Gozzlac is not properly tuned loot fixed, I am deleting my characters, and cancelling all of my accounts. The rest of my guild friends will follow suit, as will several other guilds and people no one else that play Everquest Shards of Dalaya. ... 14 Days.... after that this site will change from the most popular least popular EQ SoD fan nerd site shitpage on the internet to the most popular World of Warcraft fan site least read abandoned waste of bandwidth on the internet. I'm done playing ball with you useless fuckers... it's my turn.