The Broken Mirror – Completed

Amidst the busiest holiday season of the year, as well as several consecutive days of server downtime and stability issues, Inverse Logic has managed to flag enough raiders for the third and final tier of The Broken Mirror and successfully defeated the remainder of the expansion’s raid content.

People who are no longer actively playing EverQuest but I remain in contact with have asked me to describe this expansion’s raid content to them. I reply that it is “Rain of Fear with a keying system.” Here’s why I say that:

• Rain of Fear had revamped Temple of Veeshan raids. The Broken Mirror has revamped Planes of Hate and Fear raids.
• Rain of Fear’s raids were easy. The Broken Mirror’s raids are also easy.
• There was some flexibility to the order at which guilds could complete raids within a given tier in Rain of Fear. The Broken Mirror is similar (you can choose what order you want to do the zones, but must complete the raid events within each zone in sequential order).

The major difference is the addition of the VoA/TDS style keying (flagging) system used in The Broken Mirror that is not present in Rain of Fear. While I won’t get into much detail here regarding this system, it changes my approach to early expansion progressive raiding. As a raid leader, this system creates “a game within the game” for me. It becomes about methodically managing people’s individual flagging progress. The raid events themselves are not at the forefront of my mind. Honestly the raid events are not complex, and because of this they are not required to be the primary focus during progressive raiding.

So what is on my mind if it’s not the raid events themselves? It’s Keys. Flagging. Scheduling. Member attendance. Planning ahead. Holidays. Flexibility.

We actually defeated our first Tier 2 raid with only 35 players flagged for Tier 2. In addition, we defeated the first Tier 3 raid with 38 total raiders flagged and had no more than 50 players in the zone for our first victory over the final raid event in Tier 3. Fortunately, I knew in advance that we would be capable of defeating these select raid events with partial raid groups. But that doesn’t change the fact that raiding in EverQuest is not about overcoming the challenge of the content itself – it’s about overcoming the challenges of managing people and their varying levels of progression in a way that allows your guild to continue to raid as efficiently as possible.

The majority of EverQuest’s raiding population has yet to defeat this expansion. We’re actually 1 of only 4 guilds to have done it to date – The broken Mirror is still very early in its lifespan. But reflecting back on it (insert a joke about a mirror and “reflecting” here), it was an overall better raiding experience (keyword “raiding experience” not “overall better expansion”) than both Call of the Forsaken and The Darkened Sea. Those two expansions had either a staggered content release or far too few raids for my liking. The Broken Mirror definitely has its flaws, and some of them have existed for far too long already. However, I’m personally very thankful that I will not be farming only 7 raids for the next year and that they won’t all be contained within the same zone.

In closing, I’d like to say “thank you” to all of my fellow raiding guildmates for doing their part to help this guild complete this expansion as efficiently as we did. Our total raid hours were pretty low this time around, and that’s mainly due to seasonal holidays that have been occurring one after another ever since The Broken Mirror was released. We are and always have been a casual guild with a casual schedule. However, we prefer to utilize our time spent raiding as efficiently as possible in order to make the absolute best use of it. Our goal with each new expansion isn’t to try to be the number one guild in all of EverQuest – we aren’t a guild that can make the level of sacrifice that is required to achieve that. Our goal each and every time an EverQuest expansion is released is to complete the raiding progression in a manner in which we can look back upon in the future and ask ourselves “Did we do the absolute best job that we could have? Did we achieve the best results that we were capable of?” Fortunately when it comes to The Broken Mirror I feel that the answer is a resounding yes.

Inverse Logic clears The Broken Mirror on January 5, 2016

The Broken Mirror Raid Videos

The videos below are available in resolutions up to 1440p. I will post more videos in the future for the later raids in The Broken Mirror. Enjoy!

The Plane of Health (Video)

The Crypt of Decay (Video)

The Demiplane of Decay (Video)

The Demiplane of Life (Video)

Plane of Health and Crypt of Decay

As of December 13, 2015, Inverse Logic has defeated the second tier of raids in EverQuest’s recently released expansion, The Broken Mirror. I would best describe the four raids that comprise the middle tier of this expansion’s raid progression as “short and sweet.” Unlike in Tier 1, there were no raid victories delayed by broken event mechanics.

There were a few notable bonuses that came along with this second tier of progression raids. First of all, doubling the amount of currency acquired per raid event defeated (compared to Tier 1) was a very welcome addition, especially given the costs of the raid items available from vendors. Not to be forgotten are the backflagging items contained within the loot chests at the end of each raid in this tier. As a raid leader I just want to say “Thank you” for the inclusion of those.

With the holidays fast approaching we plan to continue farming the content available to us in The Broken Mirror while we key up for the expansion’s final tier and (hopefully) most challenging raid events. Look for a Demiplane of Decay video to be released right around Christmas time and we’d like to wish everyone in (and outside of) Norrath a very Happy Holiday season!

(Note: I forgot to have everyone line up for a formal photo. I’ll make sure not to forget again in the next tier!)

The Demiplanes of Life and Decay

Now that the Thanksgiving holidays have concluded, we’ve wrapped up clearing the first tier of raids in the newest expansion, The Broken Mirror. It has become a yearly tradition for EverQuest expansions to be released shortly preceding the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday stretch, which for our guild is the most challenging time of the calendar year to manage a raid schedule. I’ve offered the suggestion to the guild that we all follow the example set forth by our Canadian members and celebrate Thanksgiving in early October. However, I believe the jury is still in deliberations regarding that topic.

It has been nice to see some long-awaited features be added to the game with the release of The Broken Mirror. Having nearly the entirety of the expansion’s quests be shared tasks amongst all group members is something I’ve personally been hoping to see implemented for years. Any incentive to group with other players is always welcome, as is the elimination of players within a group not being able to quest together due to players being at different points of progression (as seen in past expansions). Additionally, type 7 and 8 augmentations now granting up to 12 heroic points (as opposed to being capped at 8 in years past) and having more augments include multiple attributes is also very much appreciated.

That aside, the raids in The Broken Mirror have been, for the most part, fun. I understand that the developer who was the lead designer of the revamped Planes of Hate and Fear left Daybreak’s team to pursue other career opportunities prior to completing work on the zones. I also understand how resource-limited the current development team at Daybreak is. That being said, the Plane of Hate raid was rather enjoyable, though has a lot of trash mobs to clear for only 2 total raid bosses. However, the Plane of Fear events definitely had some issues when we raided it (which was on Nov. 19). I do hope that those issues can be cleaned up in the near future because a lot of players do enjoy revisiting classic content in a modern day raid environment.

The raids in the Demiplane of Life feel mostly bug-free. The difficulty tuning of its events feels right for the first tier of raids in a new expansion. I wish I could say the same about the raid events in the Demiplane of Decay, but unfortunately I can’t. I won’t get too in depth here (because the length of this post would become excessive), but both raid events, most notably the Damsel of Decay event, have their issues. I believe that some of these issues are not necessarily bugs but are more than likely oversights. For example, there are several debuffs in each raid event that persist through death. If you happen to die while affected by one of these debuffs and are resurrected, you are immediately placed in a combat state – unable to use the respite line of Endurance regeneration abilities. This can be very frustrating, especially for melee classes. The Damsel of Decay event may just be the buggiest raid event we’ve defeated in the past few years. Having a boss stand directly in front of you, with no obstructions, and not a single player in the raid being able to attack that boss due to line of sight errors is definitely a problem and needs to be corrected as soon as possible. Is this fight beatable? Yes. Is it farmable? Absolutely. Is it working? Not really. It’s in dire need of attention and there has been feedback on the official EverQuest forums describing the problems associated with this event. The event’s issues can be compensated for (which by doing so removes a lot of the finesse that we would have normally used to defeat this raid had it been working correctly), but these measures should not be viewed as the long term solution for the encounter.

Nonetheless, it’s nice to be raiding more than 7 total raid events in an expansion, and having said raid events exist in more than just a single zone. We’re currently farming the required number of keys in order to flag ourselves for the next tier of raids (which is an entirely separate discussion for another day). We are currently recruiting several needed classes with the goal of bolstering our raiding roster – click apply for more information or contact Shiea or any guild officer in game.

Inverse Logic’s first victory over Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay

Calix Quirinus and Lanys T`Vyl Beaten

On January 22, 2015 Inverse Logic retained the #1 spot on Luclin server by defeating The Darkened Sea Raid Event 5.

The Darkened Sea – Calix Quirinus and Lanys T’Vyl

Sticking to our Principals

Upon collecting 4 Arx Citadel keys on enough raiders, we moved on to tackle raid events 2, 3, and 4 in The Darkened Sea. We’ve defeated Principals Numicia, Nomia, and Lucia and begun collecting Apitarx keys to unlock the 5th and final progression raid event of this expansion. I personally feel that the tuning on these three events is right in line with what it should be (challenging enough that raiders won’t achieve their first victory while asleep, but not too hard that only a handful of guilds will ever defeat them). There are also some bugs present in some of these events that will hopefully be taken care of sooner rather than later.

We’ll continue to farm these events until we have enough keys to take a raid force to event 5.

The Darkened Sea – Principal Indagatrix Lucia

The Darkened Sea – Raiding Begins…

With the launch of a new expansion come new raids and challenges. The first of the raid events for The Darkened Sea was defeated by Inverse Logic on the night of Wednesday, October 29. Due to a key-based progression system (similar to the raid progression system used in Veil of Alaris), we cannot yet proceed to additional raid events. So for now – let the flagging begin.

Plane of War (Raid) Defeated

With the defeat of The Brother Zek raid in the Plane of War, Inverse Logic has now successfully completed all of the raid events released during the Call of the Forsaken expansion and is the 4^th guild server-wide (1^st guild on Luclin-Stromm) to do so.

I personally took a 4 month break from EverQuest (late March to late July) and was not present for the introduction of Plane of War. In fact, I was not even keeping up with in-game events during said 4 month period and it was about 2 months after the zone had been released before I was made aware of it. Upon returning to the game in late July, I was delighted to discover that there was now a raid that a majority of the serverwide raiding population felt to be “overtuned” and not worth their time.

Also upon returning to the game, I found the guild’s roster of active raiders to be quite depleted from what it was upon the time of my departure four months prior. Without having any details regarding the Plane of War raid event, it was apparent that we would have to expand our roster before even considering attempting this event. Through the combined efforts of a number of dedicated members, we were able to recruit some talented players and enhance our roster to begin raiding in the Plane of War.

We started raiding The Brother Zek on Sunday, August 10. I was informed that the guild had spent less than an hour total with the encounter prior to that. While the raid is supposedly similar to the encounter with the brothers that occurred in Seeds of Destruction, a large number of our raiders (including myself) had never seen that encounter (and still haven’t). While we never dedicated an entire evening specifically to Plane of War raiding, a concentrated effort was undertaken to plan, theorize, develop, and refine the necessary strategy and raid composition we would require in order to defeat this event. I myself spent hours repeatedly revising 12+ pages of documentation dissecting this event and its mechanics.

Exactly two weeks later all of our combined hard work has paid off, and the most challenging and rewarding raid experience in Call of the Forsaken has been defeated. Is this raid “overtuned?” Absolutely not. It’s an optional raid that is not mandatory for progression. Does it favor having a higher amount of certain types of classes in the raid than others? Bigtime (and until recently, we did not have very many of some of these classes in our raids). In this raid event there is a way to deal with every mechanic, add, and ability that is used against you. Unlike most other raids in recent memory, this encounter’s consequences for not properly mitigating its mechanics can be severely punishing. Is this a repeatable kill? Definitely. Is it a perfect raid? No, it’s not. But it was a lot of fun these past 2 weeks. Challenges such as this are far too rare in gaming. This event gave people something to talk, think, and theorize about. I cannot applaud my fellow guildmates enough for their efforts on this event. In addition to hard work, it required patience and practice, two virtues that I personally value very highly in raiders.

This will likely be our final news update before the release of The Darkened Sea at the end of October. We are still looking to add a few players of select classes to our roster in the near future, but highly exceptional applicants of any class are always encouraged to apply.

Inverse Logic – the Strategic Tacticians

Call of the Forsaken – Tier 2 Defeated

July saw the release of the final two raids in the Call of the Forsaken expansion. As always Inverse Logic was primed to take up the challenge of these new events.

The two raid expeditions ‘Burn Out’ and ‘The Journey Home’ were beaten on our very first night of entering them! Amazing teamwork, effort and determination to win solidified Inverse Logic’s #1 spot on Luclin.

Inverse Logic is a three day a week raiding guild. We are always looking to expand our membership. Click the ‘Apply’ button at the top of the page to find out who to contact to get help with submitting your application.

Argin-Hiz – Burn Out

The Void (H) – The Journey Home

Tower of Rot Defeated

The release of Call of the Forsaken Tier 2 brought a new zone and a new raid.  Tower of Rot became available for adventurers to explore with the Raid Expedition: Lord Kyle Bayle set to test teamwork skills to the max.

On Sunday June 22, 2014 Inverse Logic defeated Lord Kyle Bayle, aka Cow Bell, and his legion maintaining our number 1 spot on Luclin.  The raid had four distinct stages to it, each requiring their own strategy.  After many attempts and a huge teamwork effort there was great joy and rejoicing to be had when Lord Kyle Bayle took his last breath.

Tower of Rot – Lord Kyle Bayle