Volvo Group Journal

The Volvo group had its first outing on Wednesday, January 5th.

Kevr... was busy levelling up to catch up to the rest of the group in Elwynn forest.

Skidder, Elliwyn and Jinian headed to Stormwind to do a quest for their mentors to obtain . It turned out that Dwarves have to do their own quest line. Skidder and Jinian ran off to do their version in Elwynn while Elliwyn went to Ironforge and did hers.

After the three members finished their quests they met in Westfall at Sentinel Hill to talk to the guards there and get their assignments. The group killed the requisite numbers of Defias, and completed the cooking quests. To close out the night the gnolls had to pay, with their paws. The intrepid band headed south to the highest level Gnolls who apparantly have the least birth defects.

The name the 'Volvo group' comes from an observation of Skidder's that we were like Volvos: Boxy but safe.

We found that we could handle pulls of 4-5 gnolls approximately 2 levels above the party's level with quite a bit of effort. If the gnolls were a bit higher or more numerous we would often lose a few members. We rarely (once?) completely wiped. This bodes well for the Volvo group once there are five.

At the end of the night everyone had all the gnolls paws they needed. We all agreed to level to 16 for next week's session.

---

Clearly we haven't been keeping up here. I'll put in some brief summaries of what happened later as I remember it or as I find write ups on the boards.

Deadmines:

Our levels were:

• Vittori 21
• Elliwyn/Errikson/Jini 18
• TacoSupreme 17

We hit every phase like a train, barely even slowed down for the shredder.
We got to Mr.Smite dropped his rogues in phase one, and finished off the cow headed man in round three.
I believe we had to bail, on the ramp to the boat once from a bad pull, but if you’ve ever seen a paladin pull with dynamite, you would understand.
We noticed a roadkill named Cookie on our way around the deck.
We also had to take three shots at Van Cleef, trying different styles and roles.
With the threat of a wipe eminent the surviving party members would jump overboard Then walk back up and rez the dead.
Ultimately I switched to tank V.C. got his agro, then ignored him as I helped with the rogue guards, I did the same thing with the spawned guards ,surprisingly V.C. didn’t agro the healer at all.
We were/are probably as surprised as you are now, that we pulled it off, this team defiantly has great potential.

---

Next we went to get our Verigan's Fist. We hit Deadmines just to get the wood, also grabbed the box in Loch Modan with ease. We did the first part of SFK as I remember, didn't bother with a full run. Then hit up the naga outside of BFD for the last bit (might have zoned in and killed some, can't remember). That night we got our uber hammers at level 20.

---

I couldn't play this week, I understand they went through all of BFD and destroyed Aku'mai with only 4 players around level 23/24.

---

In our mid 20s now we went to Gnomeregan to hit some of the outside quests and see how far we could make it inside.

We got our white punchards, our radiation, and killed Techbot with ease. We zoned in and headed to the trogg swarm that the gnome starts for you. We handled the first wave fine with our uses of explosives. The other side was a bit tougher with multile elites. It was a bit slow going, but out healing held up fine. In the end we took down Grubbis after a 10 minute long fight or so. Him having a 6 level or so advantage on us.

We continued on down past the clean room (got our recombobulators) and eventually wiped to an alarm add just past the slimes. It was getting late so we called it a night.

---

Wetlands for the Dark Iron War was next. This took some time and patience, but eventually we got all the dwarves needed so we could come into the stockades next week with all the quests.

---

Stockades fell with ease as we were now level 27 or so. Might have had a few problems with the guy that AoE fears, but nothing major.

---

party level 28

Razor Fen Kraul was our next objective. We got our tubers, escort and necklace quests out of the way. Also we went and killed the crone although we were too low level to actually complete the quest. I got the shield and switched from my verigan's to use holy shield.

We went back to RFK with our newest member Arathandir on his paladin Turath. Vittori had to leave so Arathandir stepped up to take his spot. We got his tubers/escort/necklace quests done on this run. Also we all got the crone quest as well.

Also on the way into RFK I flagged myself on a horde guard and some nearby horde decided to start something with us. Here is a video I recorded of the second fight we had totally wiping out a larger horde force (not everyone was at rfk yet in our group) PvP Video

---

Back to Gnomeregan! party level 31

Our latest run last night, with an average level of 31, was a complete run of Gnomeregan. In two hours. We got all the punch cards, got the workshop key, killed the Crowd Pummeler, and killed Mekgineer Thermaplugg. I've never before been on a run quite like that, even when I was in the instance with an overlevelled group. We did finally wipe when we headed back out from the Mekgineer's room up the hallway and somehow managed to grab aggro from about a dozen previously unseen mobs.

---

Scarlet Monestary Crypt was our next goal.

Alliance has no quests for the zone, but its a fun one especially with 4 paladins to kill the undead. We did many runs of crypt (takes about 15min for each) and got 1 rare boss for this amulet.

---

Tonight we rampaged through the Scarlet Monastery. We started in the Library, had a tough fight of about 5-6 elites but other than that it was pretty easy. No problems at all with Doan, who coughed up an Illusionary Rod and Mantle of Doan... promptly disenchanted.

With the Scarlet Key in hand we head to the Armory. Most of the elites are heavily armored and are +2 to +4 levels higher than us and pull 2-3 at a time. Many pulls healers to deal with too, including a couple of pulls of 3 healers at a time. It's slow going but pretty uneventful and we make it to the end.

At this point 3 of us are L34, our tank (Kevros) is L35. backup healer (Turath) is L33. We are up against Herod who is L40 with lots of armor and strong melee attacks.... There's no turning back at this point so we buff up, take a deep breath, and step up to the fight! It starts off looking grim - Kevros is taking a beating and Herod's health bar is not moving. My melee attacks are missing most of the time, only hitting around 30-40 max when they do connect. Most ticks of Consecration are resisted. But we manage to keep up with healing and to bring his HP down ever so slowly slowly. When Herod gets down around half, he becomes enraged and starts doing alot more damage, and our main healer goes OOM. Backup healer takes over, with some help from the rest of us. At the end of the fight we are all nearly OOM but we win!! Jini gets a brand new helm (Raging Berserker's Helm) -- unfortunately he needs 2 more levels to use it!

---

We did another run of Herod and with another level or so and some experience we had no problems at all. After herod died we went off to really test ourselves in cathedral at level 36 and after a wipe when we underestimated their arcane explosion spell we managed to clear out the cathedral and take on Mograine in a long and drawn out battle.

Post and Video of the boss battle:

Here's the video I made of the weekly 5-Paladin group hitting up the Scarlet Monstary to show them what we are made of. This is by far THE toughest and longest fight yet for the group.

The showdown!

• Kevros L36 Paladin
• Jinian L36 Paladin
• Elliwyn L36 Paladin
• Skidder L36 Paladin
• Turath L35 Paladin

- vs -

• Scarlet Champion L39 elite
• Scarlet Commander Mograine L42 boss
• High Inquisitor Whitemain L42 boss

Video starts about 3-4 minutes into the fight. There was another high-30's elite add before the start of this video but it was little more than a speedbump.

Watch! and be entertained! as Skidder madly fumbles his hotkeys, combat loots while Kevros nearly dies, stands around chatting instead of fighting, and all around noobing it big time! Seriously after watching it a few times I screwed up alot. AND I really need to revamp my UI. But we still won so it's all good, right??!

Alright this *should* be a link to the file, it works for me at least! 55MB and a bit over 11 minutes long:

http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php?user_file_id=22358

You'll need to register for a free filecloud account to download it... sorry. It's the only place I have to host it. I have no idea what sort of information they want from you to sign up, I get a free account through my ISP. If anyone wants to mirror it somewhere else feel free!

Also here's a link to a 10 second snip if you want to check and see if your system can play it before commiting to 55MB of download, it's also up on filecloud here http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php?user_file_id=22344 but here's a reg-free link: http://www.speakeasy.org/~executor/sample.avi

technical stuff... The video is encoded with WMV9 and MP3 audio, I recorded it with Fraps and edited/compressed with VirtualDub and Exact Audio Copy. If anyone has any better suggestions I'd love to hear them!

Oh yeah, the soundtrack dosen't start until 15 seconds in, for no other reason than the 2 MP3's I used were 15 seconds shorter than the video. I'll be more clever next time. wink.gif

The video quality didn't come out as nice as I'd have liked, isn't too bad though, I just need more experience with the software tools. It looks nicer in VirtualDub than it does in Media Player for some reason.

Enjoy!

---

Last night we did another SM run of Armory/Cathedral. Nothing special to see here, more of the same only much easier with higher levels and better gear from our quest rewards.