Solace

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My apologies for posting this news so late. I've been suffering the effects of some form of malady all this week and haven't had the energy to sit here much. What follows is an accounting of our adventures in Ulduar on the evening of this past Monday, June 1.

It all started off innocently enough, Freya had contrived to ensnare us out of reach of victory on Thursday, and we were none too happy. This led to a quick oneshotting, and left us with lots of raid time left, so we decided to move on and once again check out the frozen lord Hodir (aka Horid) who we'd looked at after our first Freya kill. We felt like we had the basics of the encounter down and just needed to carry out our roles better in order to see what Hodir's chest had in store for us. After several not-so-perfect attempts during which we were tuning our strategy, we finally (yes, as usual) emerged victorious!



High on the emotions brought by such a victory, we rushed headlong into the next encounter with our old friend Thorim. As some of you surely know, this is a rather strenuous encounter during which our raid is split into two groups for a frenzied gauntlet of killing before the boss himself can be pulled. During the first attempt I was chosen to stay with the stationary group in the entry chamber while Myran led our expeditionary forces through the hallway gauntlet. It became apparent that these roles should be reversed, so we switched. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts in this fashion, we finally got through the hallway gauntlet to the boss and pulled him. You'll never guess what happened next...



After distributing the relics we found in Thorim's hidden cache, we found ourselves running short on raid time but decided to push on and see what was next. As it turns out, this was Mimiron. We cleared the hallway trash leading up to the encounter, in the process finding out how to clear said trash, and with no real time remaining and none of us prepared for the encounter, we just pulled Mimiron to see what happened. Long story short: We died. We are, however, looking forward to dealing with this recently-nerfed encounter as soon as possible.

Finally, for those completionists among you, I know I deprived you of a screenshot when we killed Auriaya a few weeks back, and yes, that has haunted my nightmares ever since. In parting this week, I leave you with a fresh shot from this week's kill, just to sate your appetite.

It's been a long week and a half since I put shield to face with my friend Freya in the Conservatory of Life, and while the trash was definitely a lot quicker and cleaner this time than in our previous attempts, the boss most certainly was not. One thing I have to say about Ulduar is that it really wants your group to be coordinated. Between the random packs of exploding flowers, elementals that have a suicide-by-raiders pact, and magic trees that pop up just to heal everything you're trying to kill, this is easily one of the most aggravating boss encounters in recent memory. That being said, however, we totally killed Freya last night. Well, we didn't kill Freya, but we killed her as much as the game would let us, which was down to one health point before she came to her senses and remembered how much I helped her out in Sholazar...



Along a path with steaming piles of...well, worms come out of them when you get close enough, and big nasty frostrock giants, you'll find a big, fairly circular room with that Hodir guy in it. You know, the one whose Sons you spent all that time getting rep with because it was too much trouble to go back to Outland and farm Fel Armaments and Arcane Tomes? Well, apparently your good favor with his Sons doesn't carry over into his little world. He's iceblocked all manner of folk, and is looking to do serious harm to you and yours. I know all this because I went down said path and he did serious harm to me and mine. We'll see how that works out for him on Monday, I suppose.

Tonight marks the first FailNaxx™ run after their first week clearing. Hopefully we'll see more bosses dying in less time than in the past. The group has been getting geared up fairly quickly, and I expect that to start showing itself any time now. We're currently between holidays, and the Darkmoon Faire has just left the building, which leaves people mostly playing with the Argent Tournament and PvPing in their spare time. Recent scheduling changes are setting the stage for another spate of alt-levelling, and that generally means another rash of heroics soon for fresh 80s that want to do any raiding. While the World (of Warcraft) keeps on turning, Solace isn't letting any grass grow under their feet. We like to stay busy.

Tonight saw quite possibly the highest amount of incoming damage by any raid group, anywhere...ever! And we didn't quit! Moving on from Kologarn's disembodied head, we tried our luck with Auriaya. Guess what? The trash before you pull it? Extremely aggravating! Also high in damage. After we wiped a few times we got them figured out finally and eventually put them to rest. Then began the process of getting the Auriaya pull right. Yes, that's right, I said process. We tried a few different methods and finally one of them paid off and we had a fight on our hands. Lots of fear-breaking and damage-taking later, Auriaya died. I don't say "she died", nor "he died" because as usual with that model, I'm not really sure which of those would be correct. In any event, some moron forgot to take a screenshot before we left the platform, so I got nothing to show you. Sorry, next time I'll remember.

We backtracked a little and found ourselves facing the Assembly of Iron. There were three bosses in there and we only brought two tanks, so I thought we should just call it a night and go watch some TV or something. The rest of the raid leadership, however, disagreed and decided that we should just work with what we had. There's a lot going on in that encounter, and as I expected, it took us a bit to get used to it. There were some wipes, of course, but in the end...




My apolgies for the messy screen, but everybody ran away before I could call for a screenshot, and there wasn't much left to screenshot anyway.

More adventures to come, stay tuned to this station for breaking news and information!

That's an old saying, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." and sometimes it might seem like it's not true. If it seems that way to you, perhaps you haven't been into Ulduar yet. Big seems be be a theme they have going here, maybe something to do with all that crazy Titan lore or something, I dunno. Anyway, as you may remember from our last episode, Solace had taken down XT-002 and worked furiously at Ignis the Furnace Master for a while before our raid time ended. We vowed revenge and went to bed. Today, we strolled in a few minutes late, but quickly worked our way through Flame Leviathan, Razorscale and XT-002 before walking down our old buddy Ignis' ramp yet again. We were preceded this time by the almighty Blizzard Nerfbat, and that may have had something to do with tonight's outcome, but to say that it was a cakewalk, well, that'd just be an outright lie. We most definitely sang for our supper, and finally we had it.





It was pretty sweet, but not being the type to rest on our laurels when there are more evils to be dealt with, we moved on. After clearing some trash at the Anteroom, we finally decided to check out Kologarn and see what the big deal was. Turns out the deal was...well...really big! I'm not sure that all 10 pairs of underwear remained perfectly clean the first time Kologarn rose up in front of us, it was quite a sight to behold. He proceeded to beat upon us with his co-bosses Right Hand and Left Hand, but undaunted, we rolled with the punches and finally gave him what he had coming!



I'm not completely sure who's next on our hit list. Could be those guys over at the Assembly of Iron, or it could be that guy Auriaya. There's just no way to know right now! The suspense is killing you! er me! Rest assured that when I know, you'll know.

In other news, Solace members continue to tear up the Noblegarden achievements on a daily basis, mages getting bunny poly books and everybody picking up pets and clothes and titles and generally enjoying the free stuff, I think. As I mentioned before, Children's Week starts up on Friday, and I expect our members to dive headfirst into that holiday as well. I hear some of our folk are actually trying to get that [spell]60024[/spell] everybody's going on about. Not bad, one of the few globally-attainable 310% flying mounts there is. I wish them all luck!

Much as I predicted in my previous post, Solace entered into Ulduar last night and did what they do. Despite the game's attempt to throw us off by despawning all the mobs in the staging area, Repair Ogre included, we teleported back into the Colossal Forge and rolled straight up to the whiny baby robot's room. After a quick change in tanking position and a fair bit of hard work by the raid group, the XT-002 Deconstructor, guardian of Ulduar's scrapyard, was decommissioned. In the process, we even managed to get an achievement!



After having our fun with the baby, we moved on to the Forge's primary tender, Ignis the Furnace Master, who wasted no time showing us how he earned that title. The rest of the evening was spent constructing our repair bills to match the stature of this latest boss. Once again, we have the fight mostly figured out, and are just trying to find better ways to execute our plan of attack at this point. Hopefully next raid week there'll be more info about him, but only time will tell...

In non-raid news, Noblegarden has fallen upon us like a container ship full of trucks filled with bricks. On day one, several Solace "donated" their time until coming up with the title (the Noble) for their characters, while others took a more leisurely pace, and most folks seem to be trying to get it done on multiple characters, which for good or ill I suppose is showing Blizzard that no matter what manner of aggravation they throw at us, people will put up with just about anything. It's worth noting that unlike other recent holiday achievements that result in titles, this one is easily doable by those folks who are not level 80, and while the drop rate of certain items is certainly a problem, all of those items are purchasable which means that if you really want to complete this event, you will be able to. All it takes is time...