Vintage

Hail Al’Kabor!

Tomorrow, October 4th is Vintage’s Second Birthday and we would like to share it with the entire server by hosting an “old school” East Commons Traders Day! Many members of Vintage will be there to buy, sell, trade or give away items, gears and spells from the Classic and Kunark era that we’ve amassed in our journeys, and we welcome you to come out with your own items and coin to revive the Classic EC Tunnel experience many of us remember before the Bazaar was introduced.

There will be giveaways, prizes, casino games, duels, auctions, wtb and wts spammage. This is perfect for those who are new to the server, or even your alts who may not have any gear to come out and get something nice to take home. There will also be dropped Kunark and Velious spells aplenty available, so you can complete your spell books!

The event will be happening between 7pm and 9pm ET til whenever the zone dies down. We hope this event will bring together the community and everybody enjoys the nostalgic EC Tunnel trading experience and standing around in the tunnel chatting with one another! This will also be a great opportunity for everybody to meet and greet the Vintage members who have been cooped up in the cold tundra of Velious for the past few months.

Despite the cold and desolate wastelands, the slippery icy labyrinths and the frigid waters that Vintage adventurers traverse daily, an energy burns within their cores. A motivation for questing and slaying follows a summer of feasting, armor farming, and taking care of long put off matters in foreign lands.

Differing motivations among Vintage heroes explain this reinvigorated yearning for glory. Some, like the dwarves of old, doubtlessly have their hearts set on collecting more of the marvelous treasures that have been found searching the lands of Velious. Filled with dreams of magically infused silks, tough and sturdy dragon hides, and swords, daggers and maces of immaculate workmanship, this faction of Vintage members boldly pursue the most difficult encounters possible because of their hope of finding rewards beyond wonder. Other members are driven, not unlike the orc slavers of Faydwer, for dominion and control. These members see this Vintage band of adventurers as a convenient means to achieve that end as they hope to quench their thirst for power. Still others are just fun-loving and witty souls enjoying the laughs, discussions and cold ale that necessarily are present in a company compromised of such individuals that Vintage has.

Whatever their reasons, an excellent collection of Vintage fighters, thinkers and healers have been gathering, travelling, and destroying much over the past month. A wide assortment of fierce beasts, hated foes and even valued allies have fallen to this wrecking squad during that time. Some highlights of what Vintage has slain over the past month include:

6 Zlandicars
1 Statue of Rallos Zek
1 Derakor the Vindicator
3 Harla Dars
A Dracoliche, Terror, Dread, Fright
2 Dozekar the Cursed
Kelor Dek’Torek for his prized Orb of the Infinite Void
1 Gozzrem
3 Telkorenars
2 Mygas for the Wizard Dragon Bane scroll
1 Ikatiar the Venom

Additionally this month, the guild saw the advancement of two of its sturdier members, Bearclaw and Redneck, obtain the coveted Savage Lord title. The guild’s first thief hailing from Halas obtained his Ragebringer. Two well traveled explorers, who are surprisingly trustworthy for Iksar folk, decided to make Vintage their home and were greeted with sword, cloak and fine jewelry as well as companionship in their training and development. Many holding this land’s most esteemed titles for their classes have devoted time to other areas they can become masters in, including languages and tradeskills. Soon two hafling druids will join the elite who wear the blessed prayer shawl of the Velious dwarves.

With 11 actively present members now having the rare key to Kerafyrm’s Lair, it won’t be long until more priceless weapons emerge from that tomb. Whispers have reached our ears that there may even be more beautifully enchanted weapons than the priceless we have seen in the grave beneath the Wastes of the East.

We’ve come a long way from assembling for the purpose of defeating fire and ice giants of Antonica and we still certainly have an arduous path before us as we peer down into the halls of the Temple of Veeshan, Sleeper’s Tomb and Kael Drakkel. This motely group of gnomes, a smattering of other races, and gnomes, however, has never been deterred by a challenge.

So, cheers to all my Vintage brethren with frothy beverage in hand to the accomplishments of the past month, and to the successes and adventures that await.

- Ashlawn Pride

Vintage has been flexing it’s muscles lately and yesterday, we proudly killed a new target, Ikatiar the Venom. Congratulations to the following for fresh wyvern loot:

Ancient Wyvern Hide Boots: Quickin
Ancient Wyvern Hide Leggings: Monkus
Cloak of Venom: Scarboar

Afterwards, we continued our rampage and slayed Zlandicar, restoring some CoV faction and attaining another key to Sleeper’s Tomb. Vintage plans on raiding ST soon, within the next few weeks.

Everyone that has been active recently has seen what Velious farming has netted Vintage. Successful Raids!!! So to everyone that has farmed and stuck with it and those that have returned for the pwning thanks to all of you.

With that in mind, Vintage is actively targeting the mobs that we are capable of doing. As people notice that list is ever increasing. The current goal is to continue to farm the mobs we are farming and working more mobs into the rotation. As we get better this will become easier. Rather than spend 2-4hrs on one mob we’d like to spend 4 hours on 3-4 mobs. This is becoming much easier for us.

This past weekend we downed Zlandicar (unslowed due to lame shamans) and then moved on to Telkenor in ToV West Wing for a flawless kill. After that, we moved into HoT for symbol/armor Farming. This netted us an entire set of plate minus bp and some other extras while we got a bunch of symbols and finished Shuvits Cloak of the Fire Storm which he is now working to obtain since Telk killed his faction. Poor ogre!

We would like to continue this trend into the future and keep this as an ever increasing pwnage across Velious. While leadership will be working on raid mobs that we feel we can do if anyone feels we are missing out on a mob we could do let us know so we can try it.

The place we hurt most right now is Healers/Tanks being on all at the same time. Doing these mobs with just 1 warrior and sometimes no hybrids is very hard but we have yet to let that stop us. If that means we get 1 of the beefiest Main Tanks ever then so be it! No one likes 3rd string tanks anyways.

So with everything in mind keep on questing, farming and leveling. Please note that minimum requirements for Resists in Velious is 150 unbuffed and every member needs to be working towards that goal.

- Wejbot Neversleep

Since day 1 of Velious, Vintage has dreamed of collecting the tears of pain and sorrow of Dozekar the Cursed to quest for the delicious rewards from the Halls of Testing. However, this scrawny, yet mighty dragon has never been an attainable target for the guild due to his difficulty and rarity of availability… until last night!

On Wednesday, August 24th, twenty four adventurous raiders gathered at the usual rusty fire pot in Halls of Testing, as we met at many times before, preparing for a night of Skyshrine armor farming. On this particular night, we noticed something was different… there was a foul stench in the air, an unfamiliar groaning echoing through the hallways and an eerie flickering of flames sending tingles down our bravest ogre’s spines.

Our scouts seeked out this disturbance in the hallways to discover that the fabled Dozekar the Cursed has returned to his lair. Within minutes, scouts from other guilds were entering the zone preparing to farm Dozekar, but respectfully gave way to our raid for the first attempt.

So Vintage did what we do best, we rain danced around the fire pots for the chances of good loots, trimmed every gnome’s beards and mustaches (to look good for the fight of course), and sang war songs to pump us up for our upcoming epic battle.

When the time came that we were ready, everyone got into their positions and the fight began. Heals were spammed, daggers stabbed, ogres bled and high elves cried. A long test of endurance ensued as our fighting strategy adjusted during the battle several times to the strengths and weaknesses of our foe. 80%… still doing good, 50%… low on mana… 30%… recovered and holding steady… 20%… we can do this, 10%… burn burn burn!… 1% Dozekar breaks free from Tugur’s Insects and wildly flurries on our tanks and continues to devour everyone! As Dozekar’s health bar lingered at 0.1% and his last breath seemed to slip further and further away, Kapowie, one of our wizards who gated halfway through the fight (we think he had to change his pants), came running through the doors of the Halls of Testing, watched as the last half dozen or so members were being devoured, and timely conjured the clutch killing blow to save what was very close to a 0% wipe to Dozekar the Cursed!

Here are some screenshots from our unforgettable battle with Dozekar!

Fist pumps soared high. Epic, memorable moment for Vintage, as we prepare to start our snowball of slaughter season in Velious.

Congratulations on Tears:

Emerald Tear: Wejbot – already completed for Buckler of Insight
White Tear: Rokstar – will be used for Mask of the Silver Eyes
Poison Tear: Shuvit – will be used for Cloak of the Fire Storm

Over the past few weeks, Vintage has made a big push in farming gear in Halls of Testing. Almost all of our members are max ally faction with Claws of Veeshan and our guild bank has been overflowing with donations of armor gems from members and friends on the server. A majority of our members have already gotten nice Skyshrine armor upgrades, while some have even completed full sets. In our recent raids on Halls of Testing, we’ve been pulling in 15+ armor pieces a day, and with a few more good loot days, we’ll be geared and ready to unleash our wrath on the rest of Velious.

One of our first goals post-HoT will be to actively target Temple of Veeshan’s West Wing dragons and other Sleeper’s Tomb Key Mobs as their upgrades would continue to benefit our members. As we gear up more and more on these easier targets, we’ll start killing Giants in Kael Drakkel again to repair our faction with CoV so current members and new members will still be able to get Skyshrine Armor upgrades down the line.

This is a 100% guild effort to gear up all of our members as much as possible. “Leave no Gnome behind!” are Wejbot’s famous words… and Ogres… they won’t know the difference between their Large Bronze armor and Skyshrine armor anyways.

At some point, Vintage will completely switch to Giant faction when we move into NToV and members at that point who still need Velious armor upgrades will be able to quest the Giant armor counter part. When the day comes, we will make it known to the server that Dragon Hunting Season has officially begun. In the meantime, we will still be CoV faction grinding in the Kael Arena and farming Halls of Testing.

Now is a great time to join Vintage and level up with the guild as we prepare for the epic Velious raids ahead. See you in Norrath!

Now’s a great time to get back into EQ if you’ve been away for a bit, we’ve got a lot of members who are in their 40 and 50s online just about every day exploring new places or grinding out levels! On top of that, the guild is still raiding strong every Wednesday night and Saturday afternoon, with impromptu smaller raids throughout the week. See you in the icy tundras of Norrath!

In our recent weeks, we’ve had some great new members join our guild, as well as a few old members taking advantage of the free 45 days to join us on some raids. Lately, we’ve been farming armor from Halls of Testing for huge upgrades to our outdated Kunark armor. Our last two raids yielded 25 pieces! With the majority of the guild already max ally faction to Claws of Veeshan and farming gems, we’ve had no problem claiming our Skyshrine Armor!

Screenshots, courtesy of Africa, of a recent raid in Temple of Veeshan, the Corpse Run was due to Dozekar surprising us at the end of the night!

Sony has extended free time to all of their accounts, including inactive accounts. If you have an active EQMac account, or even an inactive EQMac account, you now have 45 days to come back and play for free!! You’ll have to log into your station account first and change your password, and then you’re good to go. Looking forward to seeing old friends of Vintage again!