Adventure Log – Lair of the Bandit Queen

At the request of my guild, I kept this a secret until we ran it twice (negotiated down from “ran it forever”), which – fortunately for me (as I’m a journalist and I hate secrets) – happened within the span of on hour. Because we did the thing, then the server crashed, which I believe was responsible for allowing us to do the thing again.

Grumbleboom located a lair in the Ekrund RvR area and through shenanigans he managed to open it; these shenanigans are as follows:

– You have to be in a party (but NOT a war band).
– Someone in the party must stand close enough to the entrance to gain the purple-cloud-aura-thing. When they have this, they can move maybe 30 “yards” (as I estimate, not an actual game measurement) from the doorway…do so. Basically you’ll play a little game where you move too far away the first time, lose aura, then you have to move closer to pick it up and repeat until you find the threshold.
– The rest of the party fans out and finds a sucka to kill: note that as long as one member of the party stands close enough to have the aura, most other members of the party will have the aura as well. We think that the bearer of the aura needs to kill (or at least be involved in the kill, i.e. gain a renown point from it) the member of the opposing faction.
– Once you gained an RP, the party member who’s standing all alone at the entrance should check the lair door; you should find that it is open. Go inside. At this point, everyone else in the party should hit Flee and book like madman back, because the door is on a fairly short (but not ridiculously short) timer. You will be closed in. If you click on the door from the inside, it kicks you out…and you have to open it again.
– Inside you will find the Bandit Queen: good luck.

Our successful party configuration:
– Me (lv11 Archmage)
– Grumble (lv11 Ironbreaker)
– Diviana (lv6 Rune Priest)
– Drgilbert (lv10 Rune Priest)
– Lena (lv6 Shadow War)
– Pegasus (lv10 Swordmaster)

You’ll notice immediately that we have three healers. I can’t speak for the other two, but I know I was healing my butt off and only spared brief moments for DPS…most of which was Transfer Force (at full High Magic) so I had every heal possible on the tank. During our first attempt the tank (Grumble) went down…she spikes HARD, sometimes critting five consecutive times…but thanks to our backup tank and three healers, rezzing grumble and not being destroyed was a simple thing (if exciting). I found myself naturally spamming Healing Energy when Grumble was close to full but not full, primarily to keep my High Magic maxed so I could renew Transfer Force or throw out an occasional Laser Eyes (which I often forget reduces the target’s chance to critical hit). More than once Grumble’s health did get VERY low, saved by the virtue of the Morale heal. Note that we had three healers, two of which at the end of Tier 1 in gear and skills, the other who we’ve found at lv6 can heal near 30k in scenarios, and this was an issue. This lair boss is not to be taken lightly…and I presume nor are later ones.

We downed her the first time and she dropped a hat for our Swordmaster (which I didn’t get the specs on, but perhaps he’ll post them for us). The second time (after the server reset) we were in the process of trying to find a Destro player to open the door with (I find that funny), and a large group of about twenty people (?) showed up telling us to “stand aside”.

I was like, “ORLY?” I explained to them that we were going to do it in a moment so perhaps they would wait, but they said “HAHA NOOB GO BACK TO WOW” and when the door opened (which I believe was our fault) they streamed in. So we followed, to observe, noting that they had only one Ironbreaker (at lv7) and one healer (at lv8).

They were completely torn apart; she has a frontal-cone AOE which I didn’t see in action (as Grumble and Pegasus were kind enough to tank her facing away from the rest of us), and those she didn’t decimate with that cone, she one-shotted. Broken, the zerg-guild scattered, so in we went for our second attempt…this time without Grumble dying. We got a Witch-hunter’s hat (sad, we have none of those in our guild) and I got a pic of it. Actually, I have pics of the entire event for you to peruse as you wish, which I will link below.

One more thing. I pulled heal agro a few times, which we finally circumvented by remembering “Hey, tanks have this thing called Guard!” but my agro-dump/detaunt saved my ass most of those times…two times one of the tanks saved me with a taunt each. Everytime I got hit (hard) but never died; I just threw Lambent Aura and Healing Energy on myself and went back to work on Grumble. And at least twice, I found myself immediately pulling threat back. This stopped happening when Guard was on me; tanks, put guard on your more aggressive healers. <3

The Tome Unlock.
The Door (note the aura around me).
The Door is ajar @_@
Just inside.
Target aquired!
Victory!

You might get a kick out of the dialogue (or lack thereof) in the Victory! shot there. That’s because we were busting our butts. Expect to do the same yourself. You can get a lot of people in there, but she only drops loot for for one, and only for whatever party of six tags her, so…be ye prepared. <3 And good luck!

~ by thade on September 19, 2008.