<licking her wounds>

Our guild - <The Pantheon> - decided to take on Naggy again. We rounded up
our crew and some friends. We had a great time clearing to the Lair. We had
5 groups and sent 2 of them back to the Stone Spider room to lessen lag and
keep it clear for the ones who were arriving later. Only one death along the
way, our monk puller brought the FG wiz, war, and Magi - got stunned too
much to successfully feign and went down. We got mask and crown (crown of
King Tranix is NOT no drop btw.)

Then the hour long re-group and buff session as we assembled the full crew.
Finally, we are ready to make the charge when <you have been disconnected>
Log back in, click on char to re-enter zone and <that zone is not available>
Grrr. Now here is where you should have a chat room pre-assigned or log
your twink. But -wth- lets just try it again. Kinda fun entering a fully
populated Dragon Lair! Kinda bad seeing 30 or 40 corpses strewn all over in
the few brief seconds you have before getting smooshed. Virtually
_everyone_ in the zone died. All the dragon hunters and all the Doggie
campers broke camp back into a fully populated zone. Grrr.

Ok, so now I re-spawn at the spires in Gfay and start to hear the really
ugly stories from the casters who were binded in the lair. Some took 5 and
6 deaths before they could /q out. Levels lost, 4 and 5 bubs lost. Camii
(our server's head GM) comes to the zone and solos everything but the
dragon. More guides come and summon ppl from rocks, walls and lava. Someone
says to contact "somename" and report your exp loses. No one reports any
exp being restored by GM's or Guides - we were all told 'sorry, cant help
you." Lev 50 clerics otoh were busy doing what they could. I do applaud
our guides and GM's for doing the best they could with a really bad
situation - they deserve a lot of credit for the thankless work they do.

Some people had to go at this point and they gated or got gated while the
rest of us re-assembled and re-buffed. By now we have heard rumors from the
other server that FoH fought Naggy and found that he will strip your buffs.
Never-the-less, we buff up and get ready.

The plan is half of the groups will go in and make the initial attack while
the other half wait away from the fight and out of sight. This works fairly
well. The first group took him down to about 80% before we got the call to
charge! In we went and I played ele & guardian, dropping to ele only when
it got too laggy. I stood near my cleric and saw several resist messages
and took no fear - not even partials. My cleric stood his ground as well.
Unfortuantely, our tanks roamer out of song range and were getting partial
resists and short fears. <sigh> if they would only listen.

We fight and fight and slowly he drops his hp. He is getting down to 20%
now and my cleric calls OOM. I look up and see only 2 or 3 tanks on the
Dragon and think... hmm well he is below 20 and dropping, he is not casting,
you have 2 Yks...

[Thu Jan 20 23:10:13 2000] Lord Nagafen says 'You will not evade me Moods'
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:13 2000] Moods has been slain by Lord Nagafen!
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:15 2000]
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:15 2000] You feel an aura of elemental protection surround
you.
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:15 2000]
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:17 2000] Xaera tells the group, 'something is bugged' (X
was frozen and not swinging her sword)
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:17 2000] You are no longer afraid.
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:18 2000] Auto attack on.
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:19 2000] You slash Lord Nagafen for 1 point of damage.
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:19 2000] Xaera tells the group, 'there we go'
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:21 2000]
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:21 2000] You feel an aura of elemental protection surround
you.
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:21 2000]
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:22 2000] Your song ends. (I started anthem here)
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:23 2000]
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:24 2000] You slash Lord Nagafen for 18 points of damage.
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:25 2000] Gibekn has been slain by Lord Nagafen!
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:25 2000] You have been slain by Lord Nagafen!
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:26 2000] Jarik tells the guild, 'I'm gakked.'
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:27 2000] Britania has been slain by Lord Nagafen!
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:27 2000] Returning to home point, please wait...
[Thu Jan 20 23:10:28 2000] LOADING, PLEASE WAIT...

Had this been the "old Nagafen"...... (Naggy got buffed in this last patch
see p.s. for some observations from Suana)

Well, I will spare you the whining and leave the rest for those who were not
there to analyze and tell us where we went wrong - always so happy to hear
from them ;p

Let me offer some tips to those guilds who are considering dragons:

1. Try to have your leaders tag with other experienced groups and learn
the geography and sequence of battle.
2. Learn to do the Fire Giants. More than half the battle is clearing
to the Lair. You will get multi-giant pulls.
3. Dragon-wear is now more important than ever. Camp that Frog King,
farm some crowns. Resistance is not futile and with buff stripping, your
base is gonna matter more.
4. Bards are key but their value is lost if the group spreads out of
song range. Keep the group in close proximity to each other.

Have fun!

Sylly Songsynger
<The Pantheon>
Bard of the 42nd song
somewhere on Innoruuk

p.s. Here is a clip from "Suana" who posted this to our (Innoruuk) server
list (he tends to rant a bit but I think his observations are good)

[begin clip]
Here is some of the ninja-patching we found:
1) SoundBlaster Live now causes you to crash to windows periodically.
Apparently programmed to do it just as King Tranix is trying to pound you
into Paste. Additional side effect totally uninstalls certain components
and corrupts the associated .DLL files.
2) Lord Nagafen got a HP boost AGAIN
3) Lord Nagafen had a resistance boost to match the resist debuff built into
the wizard class. That's what I gathered from watching him shrug off all
those Ice Comets.
4) Lord Nagafen's breath attack now does damage whether you resist it or
not. Resisting only seems to save you half the damage. The test? (some
comment about getting burned here)
You have resisted the DragonBreath spell!
You have been slain by Lord Nagafen!
5) Apparently, they felt dragons still didn't regenerate fast enough in a
combat, and took steps.
6) Dragon fear seems to have been upgraded AGAIN.

[end clip] Those are Suana's observations - fwiw.