Inverse Logic has defeated all raid content in Veil of Alaris and completed the expansion. Just shy of 5 months after its release we completed the final event of Veil of Alaris as the 1st guild on our server and the 7th guild gamewide to do so. As a guild that raids only 3 nights a week (and always has) I couldn’t be more proud of the raiders here. We have some very dedicated, patient, and skilled players that make up our roster and the completion of this latest expansion is certainly a huge accomplishment for us.

Along the way we found raids that were noticeably more challening than those in recent expansions preceding VoA. Tier 3 was the first time we met a notable challenge and we wasted no time in rolling through it. While many guilds across the game seemed to hit a brick wall at the Rubak and Resplendent Temple raids, we were mostly unhindered by them. There was talk of some guilds who killed Rubak on one occasion and then decided not to continue to farm repeat kills of the encounter. We stayed our course and cleared all Tier 3 raids every week – even during our early Tier 4 progression. We only stopped doing so once we ran out of time to fit them into our raiding schedule during Tier 4 learning and progression.

Moving ahead to Tier 4, the first raid (Pillars of Alra) was probably the second most difficult event in the expansion. This is a raid in which the difficulty can vary greatly between guilds. Some classes are extremely valuable while others are severaly hampered – each due to the mechanics of the event. Unfortuantely of us, our roster contains a lot more of the latter and a lot less of the former. Regardless, we got the encounter down without spending too much time on it. Windsong and City of Bronze raids were enjoyable, a medium level challenge, but long duration events. During this time we had 2 occasions of 24 hours server downtime from SOE and we lost 2 full raid days due to it. That’s a lot when you only raid 3 nights a week.

Sepulcher raids were slightly different than expected, but still a lot of fun. The first 2 events were about the same difficulty as Tier 2 raids. The 3rd event, however, was pretty challenging. It was another long event, and kills have clocked in close to an hour. Sepulcher 4 was back to a weaker difficulty, somewhere between Tier 2 and Tier 3 level. The final event though, Sepulcher 5, was very fitting for the final boss of an expansion. We had the unfortunate luck of not reaching this encounter earlier than we did and only having about 2 hours total to work on it before the event was changed in a patch. While it is still challenging (and admittedly the patch made some very needed changes to the fight that guilds who had already killed it had asked for), we would have liked to have had more time on the event before it was changed so that we could kill it in its original form. Given ample time I’m sure that we would have been able to.

In conclusion, this expansion has been excellent overall. The raiding has been challenging, the backflagging is much improved from the last expansion, I cannot thank the guild members enough for their perseverance over the past 5 months and for responding in the way that they did when I would push them. I know there were times when I would push too hard, yet this guild has raiders that focus very well during raids and can overcome obstacles as a well functioning 54 person team. This expansion was outstanding, and I applaud SoE for the overall job they have done with it – especially in the raiding game. Thank you to everyone in Inverse Logic – the Healers, Tanks, DPS, and Utility classes that made this expansion such an enjoyment to play through.