Nothing all that new to report that hasn't graced the front pages of dozens of guilds on ten other servers already, but for the sake of a status update and pushing all that damn war effort stuff down the page, here we go:

After opening the gate on Sunday, and two full months since we last saw the zone on Test, we finally ventured into AQ40 last night. It's fun and balanced, and it's comforting knowing that what we learned and did yesterday probably won't be changing too drastically in the weeks to come.

Skeram, the Family, Sartura, and Fankriss died without too much trouble, and we're feeling good about Huhuran.

It wouldn't be a proper front page post without a flex pic, so here's one corpse shot that hasn't been seen too many other places:


I love the idea of a "Choose Your Difficulty" boss fight, but I thought the loot was supposed to vary too. For our efforts weathering Kri's storm for the full duration of the fight, we came away with this and this. Both of which are readily available from Vem, the helmet-wearing slow kid of the family. The fight is a lot more challenging doing Kri last, but the loot really should reflect that, and it doesn't seem to currently, which I'm not sure is the intended design.

We're eagerly looking forward to getting a look at the Twin Emps and seeing what they're all about. Hopefully soon.

So what exactly chages about bosses when you kill one? I have not really read up on AQ. For every boss you kill the others hit harder/get more health? Or, is it like the Anubis trash, for each you kill the others get another ability?

3 bosses with different levels of difficulty. The easy way would be to kill the hard one (Kri) first so you don't have to deal with his abilities the whole fight. The hard way is to leave him for last. Supposedly, the latter will net you a better loot table ala risk vs reward. Last night, we found that wasn't the case.

Tonight they'll die again in the same fashion, so we'll see.

Ah. So, you are just fighting them at the same time.

Correct. All three are in the room, all three are pulled and fought at the same time. It's the order in which you kill them that's supposed to matter.

Story of WoW's raid game.

Grats!

awsome work guys, I'm gonna follow your progress closely. atm we're at the buffed princess aswell and she keeps spitting on us but hopefully we'll make some progress soon. having alot of fun so far.

ps. was there ever any post about the Vem & co loot table thing or is it just a rumour a lá "everyone needs to be revered for the barons mount to drop"?

It definitely was stated that the design was for the harder combinations to drop better loot. Unknown if it's just bugged or they decided to scrap that. Or maybe Kri and only Kri drops some really rare item that we haven't seen yet! :P

I believe Tigole himself said that the difficulty and loot was suppose to change with the order in which the bugs were killed. And while this may be true for Yauj and Vem, Kri is not yet dropping any unique loot.

I recall Tigole making that comment as well.

My super AoE arcane missile is even better.


You can probably find exactly what Tigole said at http://blue.cardplace.com .

Are they supposed to drop "unique" loot or "better" loot depending on the order?

Is that Huhuran?

Yes

Does Kri do anything special if he's saved for last? We tried doing Yauj last yesterday and she for sure did something special that ramped up the difficultly level significantly. Maybe she's supposed to be saved for last instead of Kri?

Uh, you mean devouring Vem and getting an uber melee buff?

Yeah, that's what Vem gives to whoever eats him, regardless.

Now imagine Kri with that buff.

I guess I missed the boat on Kri because I was Yauj healing the whole time. He didn't seem like too bad a guy in his un-enraged form. Enraged Yauj wrecked us pretty quickly, though.

We've only beaten it once, and it was Vem last. Just trying to get a hold of what combos were tried and beaten, and people's overall feeling of how difficult they were.

He must be pretty nasty then, because Yauj was going nuts and assassinating people like crazy for us. I felt like I was healing against a Broodlord that fears and heals himself. I would get a shield on the tanks and they'd croak before a heal landed. We'll give enraged Kri a whirl next Tuesday and try comparing the two.

Kri thrashes and cleaves. Combine those with Vengeance(+150% attack speed, +100% damage) and it's a rather nasty fight.

I remembered this thread while looking through the drop tables at allakhazam.

Ring of the Devoured
http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=21681

only recorded drop is from Kri.

also look at atractive drops like: imperial Qiaji Regalia with 20% drop rate from him where it's 5.87% from vem.

ofcourse this could all be explained by a small sample size etc but combined with the fact that they Did say it would be a different loot table it seems like a theory atleast that they could have different loot tables where the hard guys had more "attractive" tables.

Small sample size.

But yeah, I've heard reports of other unique items dropping from Kri now, so it looks like they've fixed it. It wasn't this way when AQ opened on our server, though.

Unfortunately, my guildies are convinced its still broken, so I can't get them to kill Yauj last every once in awhile for the leather NR gloves! :angry:

Vem and Yauj had distinct drop tables from day one on Test. Kri's wasn't correct until more recently, however.

I can confirm that Yauj has at least two Yauj-specific drops.