LOTRO Launches the Shadowfax and Treebeard Legendary Servers

Yesterday saw the arrival of two more legendary servers to the LOTRO lineup, joining the late-2018 Anor server (and the memory of the since closed Ithil server).  Named Shadowfax and Treebeard, they are supposed to offer players faster or slower progress through the tale of Middle-earth.

Shadowfax and Treebeard

As to what “faster” or “slower” progress actually means, SSG waited until launch day to tell us what that even meant.  Over on their newly updated legendary page the differences are laid out:

Shadowfax – Fast mode

• Get +50% XP, Legendary Item XP, and Mount XP along with +20% Virtue XP!
• Unlocks more quickly than normal, about every two months.

I am curious as to how fast this will get you through the content.  I suspect that it won’t be the LOTRO Epic Storyline server idea that I suggested back in January, but it is getting there I suppose.

Treebeard – Slow mode

• Get only 40% of the XP you would normally receive (-60% reduced XP).
• Unlocks less frequently than normal, about every five to six months.

I will be interested to see which of the two servers ends up being more popular, but my money is on Shadowfax.

The Anor server also offered a slower XP experience in order to keep players from outrunning zone quest content before they finished, and that worked quite well.  And I would be more confident in Treebeard if SSG indicated how close to the Anor XP curve it was, but SSG has not yet been forthcoming.  Just saying “slow” seems likely to put players off as we saw with one of the EverQuest special servers.  Certainly people who want to get to raids or other end of expansion content will favor Shadowfax, and that crowd tends to be made up of some of the most dedicated supporters of these sorts of servers.

In addition the two new servers are getting the new “landscape difficulty” option which, to my surprise, has nothing to do with hedge trimming.  I thought surely this was a hobbit gaffer challenge mode.

Instead it lets you set how dangerous mobs are out in the world.

Sorted alphabetically because programming is hard

The settings, which I believe go Normal, Hard, Dangerous, then the Deadly range, will offer benefits, boosting XP by 10% to 20% and virtue XP by 1% to 5%.  In addition, those who boost their difficulty to Hard+ before level 11 and stick with that difficulty will earn special titles at levels 50 and 130, and those who do the same at Deadly+ will receive additional titles at those levels to commemorate their achievement.

As for how hard is “hard,” some players did an analysis of the feature when it was on the test server.  In order to allow players with different settings to play together, the impact of the settings adjusts how much damage you take and deliver.  The analysis linked above show that with the maximum Deadly +6 setting your damage output is throttled to less than 17% of normal while boosting incoming damage 9x.  From the forums:

The difficulty mostly works by making you more vulnerable to monster attacks, and reducing your damage – so that it won’t interact too badly when other players who may not be at the same difficulty are present.

There are a few enrage buffs that you can trigger on an enemy when you are in higher difficulties that other players would notice, but these shouldn’t be too much of a hindrance for players running around at normal difficulty even if they do encounter them directly.

In 3+ group instances difficulty is disabled for all participants, as we assume that most of the time you’d be upping the instance difficulty tier for a harder challenge, and we don’t want to make it hard for players with different personal difficulty settings to do group instances together.

While SSG has been hinting about the idea of a LOTRO “classic” server… or at least no longer completely rejecting, which is the same thing to some players in that “so you’re saying I have a chance” level of logic…  in the vein of WoW Classic, the LOTRO Legendary servers are not that.

The Legendary servers have reduced cash shop options, but are otherwise mostly feature aligned with the normal live servers, which means you can play classes or races that were not there at launch and the whole talent tree update from a few years back is part of the mix.

Legendary servers are more akin to fresh start servers with some special rules which unlock content as time goes by.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I found the Anor experience quite enjoyable.  Just don’t kid yourself about what you are getting.

And, as usual, in order to play on Shadowfax or Treebeard you will have to have a VIP subscription or be a VIP lifetime member.

Anyway, the servers appear to be up and active.

There they are on the list

I won’t be joining in this time around.  As much as I enjoyed the Anor experience, that was still fairly recent for me.  I am also pretty invested in WoW Classic at the moment as well.  And then there is my big monitor, which makes playing LOTRO an exercise in eye strain.  The minimal UI scaling they have is pretty bad.  Making things bigger also makes them blurry and pixelated.  So while I support the effort, I will watch from the sidelines.

Finishing Zul’Farrak and Returning to Jintha’alor

We were back to finish off Zul’Farrak.  We had made our mistakes, explored the mechanics, and run through most of the challenges, and now we just wanted to punch that “final boss” ticket and get the last two quests out of the way.  It was back to Tanaris for the run.

The general vicinity in Tanaris

Last time Moronae rolled over to level 50.  I was close, so went out and got there as well.  And Skronk and Ula got on during the week to put in some work on leveling, so when we met up our group was:

• Moronae – level 50 night elf druid
• Viniki – level 50 gnome warrior
• Skronk – level 50 dwarf priest
• Ula – level 49 gnome mage

Level 50 was an expensive one for us.  Moronae and Skronk spent a bunch on new spells, while Viniki upgraded a bit of his gear, including grabbing Julie’s Dagger from the auction house.  It is fast, so my sharpening stones will be all the more effective.

Once we met up, we rode on over to the instance and started moving through it fairly quickly.

Back in ZF again

Being on a mission, we bypassed even more mobs that usual, slipping by the fountain area where the two routes through branch without bothering to clear it out.

The fountain stands unscathed

We did end up getting a patrol while we were on that little hill, but otherwise killed as few trolls as possible as we worked our way around to the stairs once again.

Once again, we cleared out everybody in the area, then ascended the stairs and took down the executioner.  Then we did a round of buffs, got full mana up, then unlocked Sergeant Bly and his companions and started off the event one more time.

Here they come… again!

We followed the same plan as before, concentrating on elites when they came up.  The non-elites threatened to get out of hand for a bit as heals and AOE drew some onto Skronk and Ula, but we managed to keep that under control.

When Bly began the march down the stairs, we followed, and at the base killed off Shadowpriest Sezz’ziz and Nekrum Gutchewer and the few remaining non-elites without much issue.

That done, I immediately went to Weegli Blastfuse and spoke to him, so he would blast open the doors to the final boss.  Skronk and Ula looted Nekrum for his necklace.  And then I spoke to Sergeant Bly, aggroing him for the fight over the Divino-matic Rod.

We slew him and his companions, looted the rod, and were successfully done with the event… on the third try.

Event done, all hostiles down

From there it was over to the big gate, which now lay open for us.

The gates are open

The fight beyond was something I could recall almost nothing about, save a sense that it was a bit of a let down after all the energy of the stairs event.  And that sense was about right.

There are three groups of mobs you need to pull first, then it is time for Chief Ukorz Sandscalp and Ruuzlu.  They actually summon some non-elites during the fight, but we killed them so quickly that the two non-elites they called only managed to get to use after both bosses were dead.  We lined up for a screen shot.

Where the chief once stood

The chief did drop the Ripsaw axe, which would have been a great weapon for Viniki… except that he had already upgraded to Julie’s Dagger, which I mentioned earlier.  Still, a could gold it a couple gold.

The best bit from the final boss was that, on our way out, a couple of stealthed trolls had spawned and attacked us.  An actual post fight surprise mechanic!  I love those!

After that though, we were pretty much done.  We went over to the one area we had bypassed the last three runs, just to see if there was anything to be found… a rare spawn… some loot… whatever.  But there wasn’t much to be had.

The only time we made it to this area

After that we fought our way out, killing a few extra mobs on the way as Ula was closing in on level 50.  Once out we rode back to Gadgetzan to turn in one quest.  Then we recalled and flew on down to the Blasted Lands for another quest turn in.  That, in turn with another quest, sent us up to the Hinterlands again where we needed to go into Jintha’alor once more.

Blue X, Us – Red X, Destination again

We rode on out to finish up The Ancient Egg and Saving Sharpbeak.

The in-game map is still a reasonable guide to getting there.  When we got to the foot of Jintha’alor Moronae was only about 30 minutes from a hard stop deadline he had.  But we felt we could get through in time.  We had just done ZF so quickly, why not?

Well, as we had forgotten, Jintha’alor actually ramps up to level 50 elites pretty quickly, which is higher level than most of ZF.  Still, we were level 44 or so when we last went up, so it was still easier than before.  We were able to bypass a lot of mobs and got to the top pretty quickly, all things considered.

Up at the altar again

We managed to clear around the altar and then knocked out Vile Priestess Hexx and got her key.  That unlocks Sharpbeak’s cage.  We went into the cave to get Sharpbeak and the ancient egg.

Fortunately, the layout for the cave at the top of Jintha’alor is the same as the kobold cave in Arathi Highlands, which I had just been questing in with an alt, so I knew which route was a dead end.  We fought our way quickly into the cave, spotting the egg about where I expected it.

The Ancient Egg!

We managed to collect that… slowly, because when one person takes it the egg has to respawn… but Sharpbeak was nowhere to be seen.  I had to go look up the quest and realized that we needed to get back out and go somewhere else for Sharpbeak.  That was another cave.  Time was ticking down for Moronae.

Unfortunately, things were fast to respawn, so we had to fight our way out again.  Ula hit level 50 along the way in the cave, which was good.  Skronk dying in one battle as we tried to rush was less so, though Moronae’s combat ress came in handy there.

We managed to get out of the cave, away from the altar, and back down the path to the other cave.  Through that and a couple of guards and we were on a plateau where Sharpbeak’s cage was located.

We let him out… everybody gets the update from the same action… and we were able to see him off.

Sharpbeak rescued!

At that point Moronae recalled and logged off, a couple minutes over time.

The rest of us decided to run down the quest turn ins.  From Sharpbeaks plateau you can safely jump off… if you’re careful… and use the terrain to basically climb down the back of Jintha’alor.  That would have been handy to remember previously.

We rode off back to Aerie Peak to turn in Saving Sharpbeak.  The we took the flight path to Menethil Harbor to get back over to Theremore.  It was apparently rush hour on the dock.

Quite the boat crowd on a Sunday afternoon

From there it was back down to Gadgetzen then over to Steamwheedle and Yeh’kinya, where we turned in the quest.  Yeh’kinya then gave us our first quest for Sunken Temple, The God Hakkar.

I think Maraudon is actually next on our list, but we’ll get to Sunken Temple eventually.  Some of us get class quests at level 50 and they seem to all require you to get something from there.

That done, we recalled home once again.

Leaving Steamwheedle

Zul’Farrak is done at last.  Now the four of us are off to Desolace and Maraudon.

Our past adventures in Zul’Farrak listed out:

• Questing in Tanaris and the Hinterlands – Mar 2007 – Ready for ZF just before Earl has to move
• Return of the Azerothian Combo – Sep 2007 – Earl gets set back up, we start on ZF
• The Mallet of Zul’Farrak – Sep 2007 – We realize we need the mallet
• Finishing Zul’Farrack – Oct 2007 – We finished in two tried I guess
• Return to Zul’Farrak – Feb 2010 – Our Horde group goes to ZF
• Preparing for Sunken Temple – Mar 2010 – We have quests to finish
• The Altar of Zul and Jintha’alor – Apr 2020 – ZF prep
• Screecher Spirits and Feralas – Apr 2020 – More ZF prep
• The Three-Percent-Solution – May 2020 – Our first run in WoW Classic
• Death on the Stairs with Sergeant Bly – Jun 2020 – We mess up on the stairs
• Sergeant Bly Leaves Us at the Altar – Jun 2020 – Bly recalls while we dither

How do you solve a problem like the Drifters

How do you solve a problem like the Drifters?
How do you catch their ships and pin them down?
How do you find these un-scannable grifters?
These gate camping, structure shooting clowns?

-Drifters, from The Sound of Null Sec

The Drifter attacks on null sec, which I first mentioned last week, carried on through the weekend… a weekend where many of us were waiting around to get back home to Delve to face this Drifter menace.

On the bright side, depending on where you stand, the Drifter problem has been “solved” for specific definitions of the term.  So I guess I don’t have to work on any more lyrics.  Over on Reddit there is a detailed examination of the behavior of the Drifters attacking null sec.

On the down side, the Drifters don’t seem to be doing much of anything that anybody really wants.  They are not blowing up null sec structures, except on accident that one time it seems.  This won’t be the purge of null sec that some people are crying out for. Bots are not being targeted. It has little impact on AFK ratting or Rorqual mining.  Moon mining might take a bit of a hit, since the Drifters cluster around structures, which is where moon mining also happens, but Locust fleet, the monthly harvesting of moons in Querious, went off as usual yesterday, so not even that is being held back very much.  This is basically a mild annoyance that impacts a few people and which won’t change any of the things that some people are hoping for.

Also, it isn’t providing much in the way of new content.  These are not incursions, which people enjoy doing, or even the Triglavian invasions that have been hitting high sec, which reward people for participating.  The Drifters don’t even seem to be dropping much in the way of loot or salvage.  The Drifters just show up in three systems in a given region (except in Delve, where they show up in more systems, because we needed another reason for Goons to feel singled out by CCP I guess), the people who can gun citadels fly out, blow them up, and life goes on as normal… unless you are one of the assigned gunners, in which case your life is non-stop running around your home region popping Drifter fleets.

Or if there is a low power structure that can’t be gunned.  Then a fleet has to go out to shoot the Drifters, which isn’t nearly as satisfying as it sounds.  I was on such a fleet yesterday.

On grid without another fleet

The Drifter AI is very twitchy.  The ships warp in and out regularly, they move fast, they align fast, they have the sig radius of a frigate, and if they target yo inside of your lock range you are dead.

Hitting a Raitaru

And if they do sit still long enough to lock up and hit, they die pretty quickly to a pack of battlecruisers so you are as like as not going to get a shot in.  Not that it matters.  If you kill them all they just respawn… but maybe they will pick another structure in their random ways.

The twitchiness of the behavior extends to bugs as well.  If they do lock you up as you warp away, they do not lose lock.  We sat and let a structure repair because the Drifters around it had locked up a couple of our logi… they always lock logi first… and were busy firing away at them past 1,100km.

A Basi taking fire from beyond visual range

Fortunately that seems to be past their optimal, so they are not deadly at infinite range.

Anyway, Drifter fleets are annoying and fighting them isn’t particularly satisfying.  It is yet more unsatisfying PvE in a game full of dull and unsatisfying PvE.  My hope is that this is part of the Invasion expansion events and that come Wednesday it will change or evolve or otherwise become part of the “Drifters vs. Triglavians” story in New Eden.

Otherwise, as a line member in null sec I can avoid it for now.  Defense fleets are not that common.  I went on the one out of curiosity as much as anything.  I don’t have rights to gun GSF structures, or even TNT structures. (I can gun corp structures, but I don’t think we have any.)  The people this hits, the people who get all the notifications and have to run out to gun all the structures under attack, are in leadership.  Move ops home were delayed or cancelled a few times due to the people assigned to run them being tied up gunning structures in order to shoot Drifters.

So, unsurprisingly leadership… the leadership of many null sec groups, not just the Imperium… are unhappy about this.  The Mittani, who was keen to continue prosecuting the war in the north, seems especially put out, though I don’t know if he was among those out gunning structures.

Unable to do anything about the Drifters directly, save from shooting them and then watching them respawn, a null sec cartel has been formed to send a message of displeasure to CCP.  The null sec groups are not shooting each other, so now they’re working together.  The mythical blue donut, ever the complaint about null sec, even when we are fighting each other, has been achieved to the greatest degree ever.

The plan, which I gather stemmed from Ayrth, CSM member and economic leader of the Imperium, involves and embargo of raw materials from null sec.  We are being asked to not ship any minerals, moon goo, or other such items to the high sec markets like Jita.  The idea is to have some impact on the economy and high sec production concerns.

Finished goods are allowed to be exported.  So ships and modules and nanite repair paste and whatever.

The question is what sort of impact this might have.  There was certainly some fluctuation in pricing on some raw materials as soon as this was announced.  But nobody knows how deep the market backlog in Jita really is.  If people are sitting on a few days worth of products and raw materials, this could have an impact in the near term.  If the market stockpiles are a month deep or more, there might be no noticeable change between now and whenever this event ends.

As with any cartel, the incentive to cheat might be too much.  If the prices go up dramatically, some individuals may want to cash in with a bit of moon goo, and all the more so since the prices in null sec will be depressed due to market saturation.  The Imperium is not going to go the Circle of Two route, where GigX, in fine third world dictator fashion, required all raw materials be sold to the alliance, and was scanning outbound freighters and blowing up the ones that were smuggling.  Cooperation with this is voluntary, which means some people may use the opportunity to profit.

Whole corps or alliances may want to cheat.  What better way to outfox Goons than to make a pile of ISK while they are hoarding their raws?

And the whole Drifter thing may not last long enough for this to have any impact.  Well, no impact aside from heated rhetoric.  But the marketplace of ideas in New Eden has always had an oversupply of that.

As with the Drifters themselves, this doesn’t have much direct impact on me, if any.  I neither buy nor sell raw materials, and the finished goods I buy are usually off of alliance contracts which are often for things produced in Delve.  Things might get cheaper.  But it is more likely that I won’t notice any change at all.

And so it goes.  We shall see what happens, if anything at all happens.  But the game remains impressive even for the potential of what might happen.

Other coverage:

• INN – Drifter Invasion: Null Sec Response
• INN – Drifter Onslaught: What We Know…
• Evehermit – We hate you and you and you

Abyssal Pocket Stats from EVE Down Under

The EVE Down Under event was going on this weekend, with several of the EVE Online team flying out from Iceland to join in and do presentations in Sydney.

Video from some of the presentations is available on Twitch and The Greybill has already done a nice post about the changes coming for Caldari industrial ships. (Which I hate, mostly because CCP seems to enjoy making radical changes to Caldari ships, as opposed to way the retain design continuity when the change up Gallente ships.)

Of interest to me was CCP Fozzie’s presentation, which started off with some stats about Abyssal Pockets.  I have been hoping for a dev blog about how the roll-out went.  Absent that, this set of slides will have to do.

In an orange Abyssal cloud

The CCP devs had a whiteboard with estimates/answers to a set of questions they had laid out in advance which formed the backbone of the data.  They were wondering how many filaments would be activated and how many players would run the new content.

Filaments and Characters

While watching the presentation my own mental guess was 10K to 12K on the first day, which was in the zone.  11,944 filaments were activated on the first day, with 274,665 in the first week after Into the Abyss went live, with 1,680 and 13,961 unique characters running the content respectively.

The, of course, the question as to how many ships died.

Ships destroyed and filament popularity

579 ships were destroyed on the first day, which only counts from downtime to the UTC day change, while 11,369 were destroyed in the first week.  And a capsule goes with each one of those ships.

The most popular weather type… or flavor as I put it in my brain… was Gamma while the least favorite was Dark Matter.

Then some more diverse guesses about the Abyssal pockets.

Ship type, tiers, and time to first

The Gila, the Guristas pirate faction cruiser, was the most popular ship.  The most popular tier on the first day and during the first week was tier one, which is probably no surprise.  And the first filament was activated only 22 minutes after the expansion went live.  Somebody had a plan.

First Into the Abyss

The first into an Abyssal pocket was Mike Severass who ran a calm firestorm in his Ishtar in nine minutes.

Among the loot items in Abyssal pockets are blueprint copies for the three Triglavian ships, all of which were built for the first time on day one.

Triglavian ship build times

As CCP Fozzie pointed out, the Triglavian cruiser, the Vedmak, was built first, before the Damavik frigate.  And the Leshak battleship was built just before the end of the first day.

The most popular cruisers being used in Abyssal pockets were the usual suspects.

Ship Choices for Abyssal Pockets

Gilas were far and away the most popular, followed by the Sacrilege in distant second, the Ishtar in third, and then fourth place a tie between the VNI, the Caracal, and the Cerberus.

CCP Fozzie said that the most unique ship was a Victorieux Luxury Yacht, which can carry no armament, filled with booze, drugs, and exotic dancers, which went into a pocket presumably in an attempt to win over the Triglavians by appealing to their party spirit.  They are not party animals it seems… or maybe they thought it was just a big pinata… but you can see the kill mail from the attempt.

Also, a Scimitar, the Minmatar tech II logi cruiser, died doing a tier 3 pocket.  Somebody trying for a very specialized fit.

The popularity of the various tiers is pretty much as expected, with higher tiers being less popular.

Popularity of tiers over time

The popularity of the various Abyssal pocket weathers is also not a hug mystery.

Favored Weather over Time

Dark matter seems to be the least favored, but the gap between weathers isn’t huge.  If they aren’t evenly split, they aren’t that drastically different either.

As of the time of the presentation CCP Fozzie said that over 96,000 modules had been mutated with Mutaplasmids.

Most popular mutated modules

People want longer range points and webs I guess.

In the short term there are some updates coming to Abyssal pockets.

July Update Plans

Beyond that there are bigger plans for Abyssal pockets, however CCP Fozzie’s slide on the topic simply said “REDACTED!”  So We will be hearing more about Abyssal pockets going forward I guess.

PlanetSide Goes Dark

As noted two weeks back, PlanetSide is set to be shut down today, July 1, 2016, at 4pm Pacific time, or approximately when this post goes live.

PlanetSide back in the day…

The game went live back in May of 2003, but has been a relatively inactive title for several years now, especially once its successor, PlanetSide 2, went live.  I joked in a post a while back, when Daybreak had cancelled EverQuest Next, that PlanetSide would go down once they found out where Smed, ever paternal in his outlook over the game, hid the last server.  I guess they found it.

The final statement from Daybreak about the game was:

April and May were really exciting months for us with the release of the new Construction System, base revamp of Indar, and new population caps to improve battle flow. It’s been exciting to watch all of you experiment with base design and shift battles in new directions. A big thanks to all of you who have jumped in to try it out and given us feedback.

While we hope you are as excited as we are about the recent changes, we do have to make a more solemn announcement. On July 1st, at 4:00 PM PT, we will be closing the PlanetSide 1 server. PlanetSide 1 has a very important history with Daybreak Games and a special place in the hearts of those who work on its successor. While we have run the game for free since 2014, due to evolving business needs and technical requirements it has become necessary to conclude this service.

We hope you will take this opportunity to enjoy the remaining time available with each other and please help us give PlanetSide 1 the sendoff it deserves.

And so it enters the history of the genre.

Titans Down in Okagaiken Trap

GRINDR FLEET TIME, NEED MAX NUMBERS IF THEY ENEMY COMES TO FIGHT NUMBERS WILL BE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WINNING AND LOSING

FC: Asher Elias
Op 1
Strat Op
Grindr battleships + logi + loki + support
(Also 20 free anti-fighter armour caracals will be given out for those of you who can’t fly battleships)

~~~ This was a broadcast from asher_elias to all at 2016-07-01 01:00:37.694040 EVE ~~~

I almost did not go on this op.

I saw the ping come up just after dinner, but was still talking to my wife and was planning to have some desert, so let it be.  So I ignored it.  Eventually though I was done and sat down at my desk to find that further pings had gone out for the fleet, including a RepSwarm ping from Arrendis asking for more logi.

So, more than an hour after the first ping had gone out I decided to log in and see if I could catch up.

Once in the station in Saranen, I grabbed an Oneiros out of my hanger.  Grindr Fleet is an armor battleship doctrine, effectively our old Baltec Fleet doctrine revised for the current meta, which meant armor logi.  I could have gone with Guardian… they are preferred, and I think I still have my infamous Higgs Anchor Rig Guardian, now fit correctly… but I wanted a slightly more independent ship if I was going to catch up.  Guardians need to be on a cap chain to be effective, while an Oneiros does not.  That meant I could catch up without worrying about capacitor and leave early if I wanted without breaking the cap chain.

In my ship, I then opened up the map, which I keep set to show the locations of members of my current fleet, and saw that most everybody was just one jump away in 93PI-4.  Since Saranen was almost completely blue, I undocked, and warped off to join the fleet.

I found them in 93PI-4 shooting another POS, just as we were doing with Asher the other night.

Always another POS to shoot

I got on the logi anchor and took stock of the situation.  I had the right fit.  I hadn’t bothered to check until then, but I was close enough to change out if I needed. I had mostly armor drones in my drone bay, with a few Acolyte IIs in case there was a combat target to whore on.  I launched one of those just in case somebody showed up.  And I noticed SynCaine was on, in the fleet, and flying a REAL ship now, a Megathron.

SynCaineThron

I opened a convo with him and said hello.  We left that open during the evenings events.

Asher did not have us hanging out on that POS for long.   Well, the rest of the fleet might have been there for a while, but I wasn’t there for long.  He had us align to the Saranen gate and warped us off to a bounce, then to the gate, where we jumped through.

Of course, about the time we were jumping through I reailzed I had left a drone behind.  Three Acolyte IIs left in the drone bay.

In Saranen we found another POS to shoot, then spent some time tethered on one of our citadels in the system, then started shooting another POS.

Sitting on another POS, this time in Saranen

This went on for quite a while, and Asher was pretty quiet for long stretches.  Some people asked for a participation link because it was getting late for them.  It was well past midnight for the Euros.  They got one and a few people wandered off to bed.  SynCaine and I were speculating on what was up in our convo, where I noted that Asher is quiet when he has business cooking in other channels.  Another ping went out to help keep the fleet full.

Some dreadnoughts were called out to join the shoot.  Then hostiles finally showed up.  A group of NCDot T3s arrived and went straight after the dreadnought.  We moved around and took a couple of shots at them, but they were hard on the dreads, taking them down.  It was disheartening.

A doomed Moros at the POS shoot

Then Asher warped us all back to the station and told the dread pilots they were on their own.  We sat there in space for a bit before Asher warped us off again, this time to one of our POSs, where a titan was waiting.  Asher told us to get in range of the thing, and before we got very close the titan put a bridge up.  The call was to turn props on and take the bridge, go go go go go!

Because on the other side of that titan bridge was the main course of the night’s meal.

Titans on grid in Okagaiken

We had bridged into Okagaiken at the W-4NUU gate where a supercapital force had been building up to come and drop on us.

Asher began giving orders, Apocs were to go after one titan, point it and neut it, while Megas were to go after another.  A titan was called as the primary.  We see hostile titans regularly enough.  We’ve even seen them in Okegaiken before.  But calling one as a target with a subcap fleet is generally just a defiant gesture.  I anchored and launched one of my Acolyte IIs and put it on the primary just in case things got real.

Of course, it wasn’t just a subcap fleet for long.  Cynos were up and dreadnoughts began landing on grid with us, friendly dreads that joined us in the fight.  I was busy answer the call for reps, but I kept that titan targeted and watched its status.  The shields were stripped away, but it was likely armor tanked.  Then the armor began to get peeled back, slowly but steadily.  When it finally hit structure, it was like an adrenaline surge, we were going to get a titan kill.  And sure enough, that first target exploded.

Opus Congelatio’s Erebus goes up

By that time the enemy too was bring in help and some Fax Machines landed on grid with us to try and tip the battle.  They were immediate targets for our dreads and we bent ourselves after the second titan.  (The Apostles went down quickly, but I still managed to put my drone on two of them in time.  Bad logi pilot!)

The second titan was another Erebus, and I told SynCaine that if we got this second kill, the fight would be paid for.  The slaughter on grid continued, the hostiles potting dreads as fast as they could, but more kept arriving.  Then the second titan became the focus and, like its predecessor, was whittled away until it exploded before us and became another wreck on grid.

Caoni Mar lights up the grid with his death

In that picture you can see the wrecks of the original Apostles at the top, more on grid, the Erebus exploding, and yet more ships being cyno’d into the fight.

The third titan was a Ragnarok and everybody was soon focused on him, yielding another explosion and wreck on the field.

Kamikaze Doomchild lights up space

By this point the dread wrecks were starting to litter space.  We were way ahead on points with three titan kills, but Asher still had enough dreads on grid to go for a fourth.  Dreads who jump into this sort of fight have pretty much bought a one-way ticket, so they insure (if they remember) and keep shooting until blown up.

The fourth titan was another Ragnarok, but the enemy seemed to have him covered.  Our initial burst of damage actually got him into structure, but then he got armor reps and his armor belt was restored.  To get him Asher told his subcaps to go at him, props on, in order to bump him away from his support.  I enthusiastically joined in on this in my Oneiros because we were anchored up out of drone range of the fourth titan.  So I sped off, even after Arrendis told logi to stay on anchor, in order to get within drone range.

As I got close enough, I launched my last Acolyte II, the other having been eaten up by smart bombs over the course of the battle, and sent him off as I turned to anchor back up.

That last Ragnarok was slowly but surely driven away from his allies, remove his support and leaving his exposed to our fire.  After almost ten minutes of this… a long time in a battle… he was finally far enough away and obliged us with one more big explosion.

NiceandRed goes critical

At that point, we had gotten all the titan kills we were likely to get.  The enemy was there in force, the T3 fleet we saw in Saranen had joined the fight, it was time to leave.  It was “fofofo” in local then, plus some “Blap Blap Blap toot toot” from Xel for good measure. (Xel was up past 5am local time for this fight.)

Let us “fofofo”

Asher had the subcaps align and warped us out, leaving the remaining dreads to their fate.  Then we warped to the station and docked up for about 45 minutes as we waited to the hostiles, bent on revenge, to wander off.

At about this point it came down through intel that Darkness had finally formed for the fight and was undocking.  I heard the fleet got a gold star for an excellent form up.

In station people linked battle reports, though those were lagging behind as the kill boards updated.  We knew we were going to come out ahead with four titan kills, the question was more of how much ahead.  This morning the numbers on the battle report I was looking at were in our favor.

I put Snuffed Out and Project.Mayhem on our side as they were part of the whole plan.

It was clearly a bloodbath, with a lot of sacrifical dreads going down to get those kills, but the ISK was was our, plus we killed some titans.  A single titan kill is headline news most days.  I expect to see posts up on multiple sites as the day goes foward.

While we were docked up, Asher told us about how he had worked to set this up over the last week or so, working with Snuffed Out, to bait out supers with another battleship fleet and some sacrificial dreads, only to have Snuffed Out and Project.Mayhem in place to tackle the supers when the showed up and let the piling on begin.  One NCDot pilot had some prophetic words earlier in the week about titans.

With the plan sketched out for us, somebody who had been looking at the kill mails wanted to know if anybody had gotten some good loot.  There was some expensive stuff dropped on the field.  As it turned out, the REAL winner of the battle was one Taylor McNinch, who was the looting God according to this pic up on Reddit.

Once things died down in system, we headed back to Saranen.

It was a hell of a night, and a hell of a fight, the kind you go out on fleets waiting for.  And SynCaine got blooded with his first titan kill, in a proper ship, as did a three day old character in KarmaFleet according to coms.

People already have some videos up of the fight.  Here are a few I’ve seen:

• Imperial Snuff causes Mayhem on NC/Tishu [DREAD POV]
• Snuff/PM/IMP Okagaiken Dread Bomb against Tishu/NC (or how to lose 4 titans)
• Just Brawling it Out
• TISHU and NC. titans dreadbombed in Okagaiken (with Asher’s fleet coms, so you hear what we’re doing)

I am sure there will be more tales from this fight, which I will link below as I see them.

And then, of course, my screen shots from the evening.