A few intrepid souls embarked on a "Nekkid Dreadhorn Hunt" on Labor Day, proving that you don't have to be crazy to hunt peerless, but it helps! RaD, Mobius, Jessie and Jade traded their armor, shields, and weapons for a bag of reagents, and faced the crazed unicorn with nothing but their jewels and talismans!
The first round was touch-and-go, primarily due to a little misunderstanding about the tactics we were to employ. But Dreadhorn eventually met his demise, and the crew opted to try a second time. That round went exceptionally well, with few deaths, and DH being dispatched relatively easily.
Then for the third round, the adventurers donned their armor and tackled the monster fully clothed and equipped. Ten seconds into the battle, all of the hunt party members experienced and client crash, and died! Fortunately, they were able to execute a recovery that was quite impressive! All party members exited the island and ran to Healer's Grove in Ilshenar to be rezzed. There, they regrouped, re-equipped, rezzed pets, and got back up to fighting strength quickly. They then recalled to Luna, quickly grabbed some bandages, and then took the moongate to Spirituality.... and then directly from the Spirituality shrine, teleported back in to Dreadhorn island, where they claimed their corpses and slew the beast post-haste! Well done!
All in all, seven rounds of Dreadhorn were completed this Labor Day. Five with armor, and two without. And for all you adventurers who use "poor armor" as an excuse to avoid hunting peerless... try it nekkid! (At least you'll save on insurance premiums!)
Twaulo of the Glade? Who the heck is THAT?
It started out with a simple question.... "Has anyone ever done the champion spawn in the Swoop area of the Twisted Weald?" The ensuing deafening silence in guild chat confirmed that no one had, in fact, ever done it. In fact, no one had ever even seen nor heard of it being done. Thus began our quest to satisfy our collective curiosities as to what happens when you take on the Champion of the Weald.
The spawn started with pixies and dark wisps. We killed them, and killed them, thinking the spawn would never advance to the next stage... but eventually it did. Next, we were faced with dryads and centaurs. The centaurs were deceptively easy, and the group (which consisted of several from UMP, a few more from KOL, and some passersby) made quick work of them. The dryads were a little tougher, but we managed.
Then came the satyrs and cu sidhs. And as if they weren't tough enough, it seemed as if every other one was spawning as a paragon. Suddenly, things were getting a whole lot dicier! Our kill rate slowed to a crawl, and several times, the candles on the altar reset themselves, much to our dismay. Several times, after such set-backs, we came close to throwing in the towel, but we doggedly persued our goal of seeing it to the end.
Eventually, after tweaking our strategy to concentrate as a group on some of the harder spawn, we finally advanced to the last stage - feral treefellows and enraged grizzlies! The grizzlies were easy, the treefellows a bit tougher. The para treefellows were a lot tougher!
This stage went quickly, and suddenly, the champ spawned - a menacing dark centaur by the name of Twaulo of the Glade. All participants focused on bringing him down, and after a fierce battle lasting just a few minutes he fell. The rewards came in the form of gold only, however some particpants received minor arties during the battle.
All in all, a fun hunt, a new experience for almost all, and a chance to hunt with some folks from outside of UMP.
Woohoo! We fought our second round against Chief Paroxymus on 6/23/07, and this battle went much smoother than our first, one week ago. Even so, there were lots of lessons learned, which I was able to glean from our illustrious leader in a post-hunt interview.
So here they are, in no particular order....
Establish the crossing order for the river of acid before people start darting across.... Cross the river of acid one person at a time, and only after the gate has closed again after the previous crosser.... First person across needs to honor Paroxymus..... healer needs to remain stationary near the gate, while all other party members work to keep Paroxymus away from the healer..... Rezzes need to take priority over cures, since everyone pretty much stays poisoned all the time..... need more cross healing.... people need to use the central pillar as a shield more - keeping it between Paroxymus and themselves.
Oh, and on the way in.... (1) Don't forget your rope or your 5000 GP, (2) Don't stop to fight anything. (3) Don't bother invising every few steps. (4) Don't get lost (follow the river of acid and/or stay with the other party members). (5) Don't drag spawn to the key-drop area. (6) If spawn does get into the key-drop area, don't bother trying to kill it all, just drag it away and leave it somewhere where it won't come back.
Any more suggestions or lessons learned? Leave your comments here!
An UMP Chat Room? What's that for?To be honest, I am not sure there
is a need for it, but thought it might be a cool thing to test out. (If you haven't had a chance to check it out yet,
you can do so here.) There may be times when a conversation is not appropriate for in-game guild chat, or when one or more of the participants in what should be a private conversation doesn't have ICQ. Additionally, when prospective members wish to talk to one of us, they obviously can't use guild chat to do it, and often do not have ICQ - so, hopefully this may come in handy for recruiting from time to time.
Regardless, it is just one more way to make the UMP web site interesting. Check it out, and let me know what you think!
Xcentric
Chief Paroxymus Goes Down!An UMP hunting party of four archers and two healer/mages took down Chief Paroxymus on Sunday (6/17/07) after a grueling hour-long battle that enriched the Sosarian insurance industry immensely! The intrepid archers, (Stephen Krieg, Xtatic, Soulsinger, and Shay) were kept alive and rezzed by the valiant mages (Seiryuu and Wulvyn Hauk) while "Tub-o'-Lard" Paroxymus chased them around and around the central pillar on his little island in the river of acid.
Some lessons learned during this adventure: We all knew no pets were allowed on this hunt, though some of us didnt realize til too late that that meant no summons either! Our Wildfire bows seemed to do more damage than our Fairie Fire bows. Corpse skin spell seemed to help damage overall from the fire-damage bows. Wildfire spells did a little damage to Paroxymus, but made the caster an instant target, and usually resulted in the caster singing the OOoooOOOoooOOooo song. Standard fire fields did no damage whatsoever to Paroxymus. Energy fields slowed him down, but also made it too difficult for members of the hunting party to maneuver. Having two healers worked really well - we probably would not have survived the hunt if we'd gone in with just one healer/mage.
Overall, a great hunt, which was a lot of fun. I think we are all looking forward to doing another Paroxiumus - hopefully a little better prepared the next time around!
First of all, let me just say I am posting this to my fellow UMPers in a purely non-official capacity. I have no authority to tell anyone what to do - Emmisaries are simply recruiters. For guild leadership, we look to our GM, Garion. I am just a fellow UMPer who is concerned and want to bring this issue to everyone's attention.
Consider this a heads-up for all UMPers who enjoy doing peerless hunts, and have been tempted to do them with non-guild or mixed "pick-up" groups of people who don't really know each other well. We've have a few incidents of late where non-guildies who go on a peerless hunt with one or more UMPers complain bitterly later (to us or to anyone who will listen) that UMP is "screwing people" on peerless hunts. Complaints range from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous, but we need to be aware that these things can affect our reputation and standing on the shard.
Complaints I've heard just in the last few days include:
"UMP takes newbies on peerless who are not prepared, have no armor resists, and inadequate skills, and then leaves them to fend for themselves."
"UMP hunt leaders loot the body and keep the special and best loot for themselves."
"UMP's GM (they didnt know the GM's name, apparently) screwed me on a peerless hunt."
"UMP camps peerless sites in order to keep other groups from doing peerlesses."
I have also gotten a couple complaints this week from people who have complained about non-UMP characters that they loosely associate with UMP because they see them hunting and interacting with us fairly regularly. They normally don't know these players also have characters in UMP. These complaints are usually pretty petty, but some are valid. UMP is not responsible for the actions of non-guilded characters, but we should all be aware that even our non-guilded characters can reflect well or badly on UMP once people start noting your associations with the guild.
Our guild policy is - that for guild hunts, we limit guests to people we know very well and can personally vouch for, or people who have hunted with us in the past. They should know how we do hunts before the hunt begins. You can refer them to the UMP Peerless guide on our web site to get them up to speed.
I also suggest that when we are out on our own, we be very careful about joining or organizing "pick-up" groups thrown together semi-randomly just to get the bodies necessary to do a peerless. Such hunts rarely turn out well, and can easily result in very bad publicity for UMP.
Just my two-cents worth. There will always be someone out there ranting about something they don't like, but we should all do our best to avoid any drama or ugliness associated with UMP if we can.
Labels: complaints, guests, hunts, peerless
Attack of the Killer Trees (or "DH Gets a Woody")UMPers on a recent Dreadhorn hunt discovered that the Spellweaving spell "Reaper Form" not only gives them greater survivability during the peerless hunt, but increased their Word of Deat Damage by a significant percentage, with the average damage per cast ranging from 400 to 500 hit points. This shot was taken at the perfect moment, when it appeared poor DJ was surrounded by trees holding hands and singing "Coom-bye-yah" (however the heck you spell it).
The UO devs gave us stockings filled with candy canes, gingerbread man cookies, gingerbread houses, and patches of snow for the holidays... and Garion (cleverly disguised as Santa) passed out some thoughtful gifts to UMPers as well. Pictured above, Hephaestus beans one of our newest Ronins, Lord Brian with a well-aimed snowball.
