It has been almost a month since the release of the latest EverQuest expansion, called "House of Thule" (short: HoT) so I guess the time has come to inform the news-thirsty visitors of the Raging Fury homepage of our progress so far.

After our usual few days off at the start of HoT to level up, get some AA and the needed flagging tasks we have started right away with raiding. The first raid we ran into was called "Tick Tock" and the end boss was indeed a giant clock:

The biggest issue on this raid was in one part of the pre-events, where some nasty unDead dogs were permanently leashed, so they reset aggro constantly - our DPS just LOVED this event! As this part has now been changed, the event has lost pretty much every challenge and even before that it was far easier than the second event on tier 1, called "The Ritual of Terror". In this event lots of lizardmen try to open a portal for the denizens of the Plane of Fear to Norrath, for example this giant toad:

Needless to say we stopped the invasion and by doing so, acquired access to the second tier raids.

After having struggled for a bit with the mechanisms of "Ritual of Fear" (it was bugged for a time too), we expected an increase in difficulty in the next tier. The first 2 raids though were shocking everyone - with their total and utter gimpness. Rarely have I seen the members of RF going "WTH?", "Loool", "This is a joke right?" after a victory, but it happened like that, not only on "Terror in the Dark" but also on "Roots of Evil". Both raids are easier than at least 1 of the tier 1 raids, probably than both.

Anyway, we collected our (almost) free loot and moved on to the next target - "The Torches of Truth". This raid provided a bit more of a challenge, but in the end Terris Thule herself had to admit she couldn't stand against our forces:

The fourth and definitely hardest raid on the second tier is called "The Librarian's Nightmare" and a nightmare it was - for our raid leaders mainly though, because the raid is extremely chaotic and involves lots of things to learn, always combined with a complete restart of the script. Now it paid off that most of us had assembled a safety margin into the level, because otherwise we might have had some low levels in the raid. After a few days of constantly testing and refining our strategy we finally got successful and managed to beat the event and unravel the sad story about the love between the butler and the chief librarian.

OK, so after the first month of HoT, what is my own totally subjective verdict on it?

Raidwise I have to say that the total disparity between raids on one tier is shocking. How in Marr's name could anyone actually approve the raids in the Well or the Grounds when you have got a raid like the one in library on the same tier? I don't mind certain raids being harder (there have always been gate keeping events, which were harder than others on the same tier), but this difference is grotesque.
Also it seems that the focus on beating an event in HoT is more on the discovery of the mechanism behind it, not on the execution itself, giving guilds who beta-tested quite an advantage, because most of the time there are no real clues, what is actually happening. We will see how this turns out in the next tiers.

Groupwise I am a bit disappointed, because the content seems a bit meager for a one year expansion without an addition in April (as we had last year with Convorteum). People can solo named in the endzone Sanctus Somnium, that is blatantly wrong! Imho this early in expansion the endzone should either not even be accessed or if so, only a balanced group with skilled players decked in either group gear from the highest tier before endzone or in raid gear should be able to kill a named. Where has the challenge in the grouping game gone?

Last but not least HoT brought us a few novelties, which newer games have long since had: housing, bags with more than 10 slots and an improvement in the light engine. While the latter isn't that big an impact, it still has one thing in common with the others: it shows that EverQuest still evolves and improves, something not many would expect from a game which is more than 10 years old. The change regarding bags has long since been asked for and always declined because "the code doesn't allow this". Well, as we can see, somehow they made it work anyway and for that I have to say "Good job". Another pat on the back goes to whoever designed the rewards for this year's halloween tasks: an unDead rabbit bunny and a vampire bat for the house are well in the mood for the spooky celebration and the quests weren't very hard or time consuming. Just a nice little quest for a fun reward - thumbs up!

So much for my own first impressions of "House of Thule", I will delay my final judgment until we have beaten the expansion (let's hope not too soon, no one wants another 10 month farming snorefest like SoD).

As usual, no news would be complete without mentioning the (very) few open spots we have. We have full raids every evening, but certain classes still have an opening. At the moment we are mainly looking for shamans and rogues, but we have some spots for other classes too, so speak to our recruiters Illandra, or Nalelini or talk to an officer.

Expect more news after the first events in tier 3 have been beaten, in the next days we have to grab a few more flags to have a sufficient raid force inside, but I promise it won't take us too long, so stay tuned!

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Since the last news update we have been very busy. There have been lots of fights, and while some of them were interesting from a conceptual point of view, so far we haven't really found anything really challenging - something we really hope will happen in the end zone of this expansion: The Citadel of the Worldslayer!

The biggest issues so far we have had with the sons of Rallos Zek in Eriak's Downfall (admittedly a tough script) and with the numerous bugs inside the Rallos Returns event, at which end nonetheless we stood inside the Rathe chamber where we stopped RZ from taking the power of the council:

The next task we had was to find the trigger for the last raid in the Invasion of Earth-theme (to my knowledge we weren't the only guild with this problem), but once we had it nailed down we proceeded and interrupted the ritual by the Discord agents to prevent them from changing history:

So, we now had enough flagged for Korafax (aka Discord) to start raiding there and on the first visit we met a very cool looking guy named Pallorax the Soul Slayer:

He was so dark that he was more shadows than anything else, so excuse the overlighting on the pictures. Apart from 2 armor molds he also dropped the following stuff:

We weren't done for the day yet so we thought we should pay a visit to a more traditionally looking mob Venom Lord Ksathrax:

The result of this fight wasn't too much different from the first one, we smacked him down and got some shiny new toys:

The last fight in this zone is the Mindshear Avatar (pictures coming soon), which shouldn't stand in our way very long either, so that we can fully start the farming of the needed keys to the Citadel. 2 keys per mob means 6 keys per week so you can pretty much plan ahead on when you will see the first pictures of RF raiding in the home of the Worldslayer.

Stay tuned!

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This could be the motto of the newest Everquest expansion Seeds of Destruction, as the background story is about correcting the destruction of Norrath brought upon us all by the agents of Discord, who manipulated events in our past. This brings us to some crucial points in the history of Everquest like the building of Qeynos, the battle between dragons and Iksar or the fight in Bloody Kithicor between Lanys T'Vyl and Firiona Vie. This expansion shows the rich lore which EQ has built up over the years and people like our own guild loremaster Imothep rejoice while diving deep into the abundance of quests. One good part about this expansion is though, that not everyone needs to complete all the quests, so people less inclined to quest still can participate in raids without feeling like a burden.

So, what can you expect in Seeds of Destruction from Raging Fury, the guild that was the first on AB to stop the invasion of the Muramites into Norrath back during 'Omens of War' by defeating Overlord Mata Muram? Absolutely right, we are going stop them again, be it in present time or in the past! We started this new expansion with a few days off so people could get to level 85 and do some of the tasks in the various themes, tasks which are needed by at least one person to request those raids which will bring us closer towards our goal to confront the Army of Discord in their own homelands. So far we have completed all the raids in Oceangreen Hills, Field of Scale and Bloody Kithicor with a very cool looking endboss:

While not all of them were overwhelming, the lore itself is really interesting and especially the 'Last Confrontation' between Jaled Dar and Emperor Ganak on his Sokokar in the Field of Scale was fast paced and fun.

The loot on this particular event wasn't too impressive, but it was delivered with style - nothing better than a mighty dragon corpse next to a chest:

We have also downed 'the Crystal Tyronant' in the 'Plane of Earth invasion setting', which had not too shabby loot (but of course I was not online that evening so no screenshots there, I might add some later) and are working on the next progression event there, an event which looks like the first real challenge in this expansion so far. We are definitely looking forward to it! So, do you think you might have what it takes to become a member of the only guild in Everquest that has finished among the top five serverwide in every expansion since 'Gates of Discord' more than 4 years ago? We have a few rare spots open at the moment, check our recruitment section for details or talk to Illandra.

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Secrets of Faydwer is here. With all the xp grinding, flagging, faction work and bugs that new expansions bring. But also with new scenery, cool new models, places to explore and new mobs to kill So we have been doing exactly that. I think we are mostly done with the levelgrind and the flagging, so now we have started on the monster slaying. And ofcourse we will share our victories with you all. Here is a little glimpse at the critters we have met so far in SoF and who has fallen by the hands of Raging Fury

As a nice side effect, the last two times we visited Solteris, we cleared the whole zone in one day with a surprising low number on casualties total Stay tuned for some "real" SoF raid mobs soon!

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Raging Fury is looking for more players to join our ranks. In these poker times, you could say we are pretty much playing with a full deck of cards, all colors represented and we usually have the winning hand when we raid. However, that does not mean we dont have room to add an ace or two! Generally speaking, we are looking for demiplane level geared players, with around 800 AAs and high playtime. Exceptions to gear and AAs can be made and each applicant will be judged on an individual basis, but our guidelines should still give you a rough idea of what we would like.

You must be prepared to spend the needed time on faction work, endure numerous deaths breaking into new content and not get frustrated when the going gets tough. If you believe this profile fits you, please take a closer look at our recruiting section Here! Both native AB players as well as servertransfers are more than welcome to apply. Once you make up your mind, please send us your info either as PM or preferably via e-mail here: Apply! and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Feel free to include any extra info you believe will help your application

Ok, Enough about recruiting for now. Ofcourse I could not make an update without fancy pictures and progression updates! Since our last update, we have finished a round of reflagging for north wing Ashengate and we went back and took out Lethar and Dyn'Leth

We also took a sneak peek into the Frostcrypt progression line. Even though I dont have any pictures of the major encounters on this side of the progression, you can rest assured that there will be tons and tons of Dead giants very soon

So what are we working on at the moment? The big final event in Ashengate, Lethar and Selay. While a challenging event, others have killed him. Raging Fury will soon as well.

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Just a brief update today for those who like to browse other guild sites and keep up to date on progess.

I am proud to say that the Raging Fury train has started rolling. With the faction frenzy that came with TSS, we decided to go at our own pace and make sure everyone got flagged and noone felt left behind and do lots of this stuff as raids. It may have taken us a week longer than some, but in the end it will pay off in terms of less burnout I believe. One of the things that separates us from others, is our teamwork and I must say I am proud of how the Raging Fury members have banded together and pulled through this phase that left alot of people very frustrated and worried about being left behind.

So has it paid off? I think it is safe to say it has. We downed Stitch as the first on the server and serverwide second. We downed Sothgar as second on the server a couple days after Tide who in return took down Stitch. Nice going guys. Let us show everyone that AB is the place to be for high end raiding!

This places us amongst the top 5 guilds to have killed both Stitch and Sothgar and gotten access to north wing instance raids. But that was not enough for us. After entering north wing, we decided to give the first event a go after getting pretty much a full raid inside. Fast forward and the army of Dyn'Leth is scattered on the floor all around us in what can only be described as a pretty chaotic fight. Current status for us at the moment is having defeated the first two events in north wing. Way to go Raging Fury!

Even though the second event for some reason left the corpse empty and no chests popping, we have still gotten a few decent loots along the way to where we are, including the first bow I have actually seen a ranger want in years! I leave you with an assorted selection of goodies from the Raging Fury treasure vault:

Good news! Recruiting is open for selected classes that want to be a part of our fantastic guild. I am not in charge of recruiting and Illandra will be able to answer more correctly exactly what we are looking for, but I do believe 1-2 clerics, rogue, shadowknight, monk and a couple more are on the wishlist. So dont hesitate to send a tell to Illandra if interested

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