Following the complaints of the difficulty, or lack thereof, that met the raiding playerbase once obtaining access to the Citadel of Anguish was eptly dealth with in last weeks patch. Although I much agreed with several others that have voiced their opinion on various forums and news pages, I must say that I am somewhat disappointed in regard to the method of increasing the difficulty on certain mobs.

An example that immediately springs to mind is Ture. Having reached what is currently the final frontier of high end raiding encounters in Everquest, I would expect each mob not only to have a unique looking model, but also to have an ae ability shared by no other mob in the game. Not necessarily an unbalanced effect that would slaughter a guild in seconds, but an effect actually named after the encounter in question. Half of our enchanter team ran around desperately searching for a chaosslayer to charm once noting the Wanton Destruction
spell cast on them, though surprisingly enough, none could be found.

We have, similar to many other guilds I am sure, experienced somewhat of a drop in numbers of late, nothing dramatic, though at times we lack the needed 5-6 people to fill up the instanced expeditions nicely. As a result, we are opening recruitment for all classes the next two weeks, wanting to fill these spots with dedicated players willing to surpass the allure of other games currently being released. Read our recruitment forum, and apply either through e-mails, or ingame contact with Nineveh / Karde.

Our numbers have stabilized somewhat of late, and currently we are merely looking to fill the final positions needed in our guild. The following classes are of particular interest:

• warriors
• druids
• enchanters
• shamen

Obviously exceptional players that do not match the classes mentioned about may still apply. If you wish to be a part of the most challenging encounters Everquest currently has to offer, apply today, contact Karde, Nineveh or Timmok in game. We've actually been rather busy the last week, slaying Anguish nameds, completing all Muramite proving ground trials, and quite regally liberating Riftseekers of their torn poLitical intrigues. Celsius and Lithorien will have the honor of displaying their newly aquired epics for the visal part of this update however, as all of the encounters mentioned above can be found further down on this page, or within the archived news.

Unlike his esthetic equivalents in Anguish, Hatchet used every pound to his advantage and through mere girthsize repeatedly plowed through a blithely unaware raidforce within his chambers of torture in the Demi-Plane of blood. This encounter is without a quiver of doubt the most entertaining fight we have seen for a long long time, and while the majority of Demi-Plane still remains wreathed, I feel safe in proclaiming that this is so far the best encounter in the Depths of Darkhollow expansion.

That is where the praise ends however, one should always give praise when it is due, as should one always relay the reciprocal when needed. For more than a month now, the Demi-Plane of blood has remained the most poorly designed, and the least thought through zone in the game, ranging from named encounters that render themselves totally unfunctional, to mob respawns that literally makes it all but impossible to get from one location to the next within the zone without utilizing a magician corpse, a few necromancers for ressurrection purposes and obviously a willing batch of knights to lead the way.

This method of skipping content has up until the end of last week been the primary method of transportation utilized by 100% of the guilds that are currently progressing through the end game content of Everquest. Serverwide chat channels have made it a simplicity to communicate with other guilds experiencing exactly the same thing as we did over the last couple of weeks. Raiding in the Demi-Plane was not even remotely resemblant of anything one might regard as fun. Imagine having to wait for close to two hours while a fraction of your guild is involved in the process of moving a corpse from one location to the next. Based on the conversations I had with several high end guildleaders during the October month, their conclution was all but unanimous; if left in its current state, the Demi-Plane might very well cause an exodus reminiscent of the one we all bore witness to during the Gates of Discord. Regardless of what potential progression you might make within in a zone, it is hardly worth the effort if you are not even enjoying it.

There are always exceptions however, a minority of people were actually advocating that the zone should be made more difficult, as the current level of challenge was barely sufficient to satiate their need for adequate challenges. I have personally not seen any definitions of the epitome/paragon of hypocracy, but that statement comes extremely close if nothing else does. The same minority that refuted any change to the zone as it was not challenging enough as it was, backed their comments up by killing Zi-Thuuli inside the Dreadspire castle, as the encounter in its original state proved to be too tough to handle. Admittedly one might say that rendering the one challenge of this fight obsolete is merely thinking outside the box, but when you have to skip 100% of the trash spawns in a zone merely to reach a named encounter, I would hardly feel justified in proclaiming that something is too easy, atleast not until you've actually managed to handle something the way it was intended.

As mentioned earlier, the Demi-Plane of blood was seriously altered last week, including longer respawn times, lowering of assist range for certain inhabitants and several other minor changes that combined severely heighten the enjoyment of the zone. Clearing trash is still somewhat of a challenge, but at the moment is is possible to complete, within acceptable time limits. When altering content to such an extent as was the case last thursday, it would only be common courtesy to announce the alterations, had this been procrastinated much longer, I am pretty certain that the aftermath of such a delay would be highly noticable.

Two things that would help enforce the intentions behind the modifications to the zone would be to make it impossible to remove the zonewide area effect, and to disable the call of the hero spell within the Demi-Plane. Truth be told, being able to skip content in a zone through using a buff-stacking issue to remove an area effect; thus being able to make corpse runs that otherwise would be impossible while being snared is not original, it is unintentional.

Progression wise, Everquest seems to have entered a cold war era, new mobs are being killed but those killing them does not deem it important enough to update their newspages. As far as we are concerned though, a news posting is to announce a milestone your guild has overcome, nothing more.

Two thirds of the Wailing Sisters found themselves banished from the Demi-Plane of Blood tonight as intrigues and conspiracy on a level that even surpasses the average female cleric one(!) was revealed amid the bridesmaids of Tserrina. There is no description that properly describes this event, but it was definitely different from any encounter we have experienced as of yet, interesting enough to keep 50 players online past midnight, something that rarely occurs in Raging Fury. Redfang is all that locks the Demi-Plane to its current phase in time and hopefully his imminent demise will shift the reality of the projected plane enough to reveal the second tier shortly.

When undergoing the learning process of new encounters, it is always interesting to see what potential aid you might get from your fellow guildmembers, in this case however, they were not exactly helpful.

Raging Fury is currently looking for a few clerics to join our ranks. The two primary traits we are looking for is high activity and ability. Please review the cleric requirements in our application section on the forum, though note that the alternate advancement listed is merely a preferred amount, not necessarily a mandatory number.If interested, please contact either Nineveh, Xack, Zorrbald, Thordanis or Svartrot in game, or through the private message function on the forum.

For close to a week now, our tactical approach to the Redfang encounter has remained unaltered, though sadly we were not able to field an optimal raidforce until tonight. Sunday seems to be day of reckoning for our guild, our best prior attempt at this particular encounter was, you guessed it, last Sunday, and with every class accounted for, hopes and expectations were both high.

There are still several aspects of this fight that we can improve upon, but an ambiance of euphoria quickly spread through the guild as realisation of victory dawned upon those present tonight. The images of Redfang are all but lacking, so we will also include two random pictures taken during our exploration of the second tier in the Demi-Plane tonight. While none are unique, I for one have always enjoyed seeing pictures of new and unbeaten mobs displayed on the various newspages of diverse Everquest guilds throughout the years.

We are still looking for a few clerics to compliment our healing branch, please review the forum for details, or contact our newly appointed recruitment officer, Illandra, in game.