#Blaugust Day 21 -- How Charming: why there's no memorable locations post today

YO! So, I had full intentions of posting another "Memorable Locations" post today for Everquest, but instead I have a funny story that I just have to share.

These Memorable Locations posts are really time consuming and have taken much more effort and time to put together than my other posts.

1. My thought was that if at all possible, I wanted to grab a recent screenshot from within the game, and this requires logging in and re-orienting yourself to the controls of the game.
2. I'd like to avoid wiki use as much as possible, right? Of course I would! Taking a trip down memory lane is more fun without a map.
3. It's Blaugust! That means I need to get a post out every day! Normally I'd take a while longer with a project like this or not feel bad if I missed a day.

So my next Memory Lane post was to be Everquest. It's a huge world--HUGE! Navigating that is a pain, even with the wonderful port stones and shortcuts hidden around the world (remembering where to go for said shortcuts is also an interesting endeavor)

~~

On my list of first-thought-of locations for Everquest was the Plane of Fire. A year or so ago Everquest offered a promotion to instantly upgrade one of your existing characters to level 85 to help get people back into the game and cut down on the leveling time. I had a level 70 something Beastlord (ahhhh, Stingite), and decided to get him the free levels.

When Plane of Fire was released, the top level in the game was upped to 65. So, Stingite the Beastlord is 20 levels higher than the zone and when I took him for a spin in the zone grabbing screenshots, everything melted in front of me.

I was killing spiders and fire elementals and multiple mobs that might have wiped a raid force (or at least caused massive delays) back in the day.

It was a lot of fun to just throw caution to the wind like that. WEE!

I finally came to THEE raid spot I remembered.

On any given night back in 2002-2003, this spot would be covered in players, anxiously awaiting the monks pulling back a boss.  When the boss got there, the main tank would establish agro and positioning. The clerics would begin a "complete heal" chain on the main tank.  When the tank felt he had solid agro, he'd yell out for the 40 other people to jump in and start hammering on this thing . . . it was quite a production, and we loved it.  Now it was just devoid of life. Empty . . . and my playground.

I looked over at the first raid boss, Criare Sunmane . . .

He con'd light blue, which means you wouldn't get much, but you'd still get some experience from defeating this boss. "HA!" I thought. LET'S DO THIS!

I cast a slow debuff on him, and I was instantly pulled toward him where I got a couple swings in and actually took his life down fairly quickly, but then this charming firebird charmed me! Now, I'm maxxed out with 700 magic resist . . . apparently that doesn't matter, because, HAHA, I was stuck!  I was the puppet of this firebird, who would charm me every two minutes and not let me go. He wasn't damaging me.  He just held on to me in his talons and kept charming me.

I tried taking a few swings in between charms . . . too much regen on the boss.

I tried clicking the X in the top right hand corner of the game to shut it down. THE GAME WOULDN'T LET ME!!! LOL!! I literally had no control, and it wouldn't even let me shut down the game. So instead I pressed Control+Alt+Delete and shut it down the hard way.

I came back a few hours later, and yup . . . I was still in the clutches of the bird. I was terribly afraid I was going to have to use "/petition" and get a GMs help to get me unstuck. Oh man, embarrassing!  I wonder how many old noobs they have to save like this?

I wasn't quite ready to give up, so I'd wait the two minutes while charmed, and then use that one second window between charms to mash a few buttons to see if it'd buy me any time.  To my surprise, I found that I was able to run away for a few seconds when I hit my "Foray" ability. INTERESTING!!  I figure it must have a slight stun component to the ability.

I wait another two minutes, hit the foray skill, and just started booking it over the sea of lava. I WAS OUT OF HIS CLUTCHES! FREEDOM!!!! In fact, I made it all the way across the sea of fire and up on the mountain side. 

I instantly hit my Origin gate button, which is a skill the ports you back to your home instance where you first opened your eyes in the game. For Stingite, that's Cabalis. I couldn't wait to see my scaly old Beastlord trainer! YES! GET ME OUT OF HERE!

Nope.  As the countdown for Origin was running, guess who was flapping right toward me?  . . . and I was charmed again, right before Origin fired. NOOOOO!!! I was so close!!! He began dragging me back to the original spot, and I was following him. Before I knew it, I was right back in the same spot, and still held in his clutches.

It didn't stop me though, every two minutes I hit my Foray skill and would see how far away I could run . . . It was like he learned from my previous trick, and it just wasn't working like it did that one time. 

Then one time I got pretty far out over the sea of lava, he charmed me, and suddenly I was stuck on some geometry! I decided to kill my game again with Control+Alt+Delete. I was still very close to the Boss. Probably close enough that he might charm me again, but I thought if I even had a second before I agro'd him, I could hit an Invisibility potion (yup, I was smart all those years ago, and had a supply of those ready to go in my potion belt), and maybe it'd save me.

I logged back in. Hit the potion, and  . . . It worked! I was invisible. I was free. YESSSSSS!!! I ran back away from the area to a safe spot, kissed my invisibility potion and clicked the origin button. 

Whew.

. . . and that's why Everquest is a great game, and that's why you don't have a memorable locations post about Everquest today. I was too busy building a new memory while seeking old ones.

:)

Happy Dueling!

~~

This post is part of the Blaugust challenge -- Thanks to Belghast from Tales of the Aggronaut for hosting.