Since this was my first PoH raid, I figured I'd post some notes for those of you who are getting ready to go to the planes for the first time. As Billit said to me before port-up, "planes are.... different :)".

Setup

Setup for the raid was done by Shadora (LoV). We were told to meet in South Ro at 4pm CET, which we all thought was 10am EST, but with the time change overnight in Europe (oops!) we should have been there at 9am EST. So just be safe and camp at your meeting point the day before and login an alt early to check and see what is going on. Nothing unusual for a raid startup, sit down, be quiet, turn anon off and LFG on. Still, even with the late comers, the break-in group ported up around 9:40am. I was one of the last groups to port up around 10:15am.

Break-In

Breaking into PoH can take an hour, or it can take multiple hours. Our break-in was apparently about par for the course. We made use of the safe spot (SS) in the southwest corner (actually along the base of the wall, a bit north of the SW corner as there is an 'imp trap' on the floor in the SW corner). Basically you'll port up invisible (someone attempts to invis the wizard while he's casting I think), and then run the slanted outer wall (halfway up, but no farther or you'll aggro the 2nd floor mobs) until you get to the SS. If you get aggro on the break-in run, stand and die (but get a loc!), as long as they can get a cleric and monk/rogue to the SS camped things will go smoothly. Once you reach the SS you camp to the chat room (unless you can FD at the SS, or are told otherwise).

My group's break-in run went okay (we lost 2 of the 6). While running across the south wall, I suspected that I had picked up some aggro from someone fighting an ire ghast (I suspected they could see through invis), so when I reached the SW corner I relogged to clear aggro before finishing my run to the SS. (I figured either I'd die in the SW corner, close enough to the SS for easy CR but far enough not to train the camp, or manage to relog and clear any aggro.) Once at the SS I camped to chat for about 40 minutes (others were told to log back in sooner).

First Floor - Safe Spot camp

The time was now a bit after 11am (so about 2 hrs in) and Shadora needed time to reorganize the groups (late-comers, port-up groups got jumbled, 10-12 people still being rezzed from the break-in). This is a tricky time in the camp since nothing is quite worked out yet, people are buffing, setting up assist keys, so someone training the camp would be a disaster. A good time for delagation by the raid leader (maybe a chat channel soley for raid group leaders) so that two or three core groups get formed and up and running within a few minutes. We were killing mobs by 11:30am, but the killing didn't start in earnest until almost noon. It took the pullers and raid crew about 90 minutes to clear enough of the first floor for us to move to the Maestro area (NW corner).

First Floor - Maestro camp

Around 1:30pm we moved to what I guess is called the "Maestro" camp. It's in the huge building in the NW corner. Amazingly this camp move went well (anytime you try to move 30-35 people from point A to point B, you expect Murphy's Law to take effect). Things went well here in the 2nd camp spot. People were continuing to be very good at following Worce's calls to assist and not attacking before Worce said to. There were more adds here, and we lost an enchanter or two on occasion during pulls (one pull there were a bunch of mobs and a few clerics were chain-healing Goadiel). It took us about 2 hours to clear most of the rest of the first floor of hate, at which point we were ready to move up to the second floor.

Oh and if you get GFluxed on the first floor? Immediately camp, especially if you take a Harm Touch from somewhere. Same goes for if you heal someone who got 2nd floor aggro (or thinks they did). And those in a group with a bard all will need to relog.

Second Floor - first camp

This is where it got scarier as we were starting to encroach in Innoruuk's domain (and the bad boy was up according to trackers). Primary rule for the first room is "don't touch the walls" (I'm not sure if you could aggro Innoruuk from the first area, but he's close). We fought a little up here, but then ran back downstairs to fight Hand of the Maestro, a mob that respawns as "a very unpleasant hand" when you kill it (a very nasty mean mob). Aggro on the respawn was not solid and it took out quite a few people (all of our enchanters, Castille). It took us 2 minutes to kill that "very unpleasant hand" (apt name!).

Once the hand was down we moved back upstairs to continue pulling while we waited for reinforcements (LoV) to take on Innoruuk (a level 63 mob that quads for 370-480, summons, has some sort of AoE, and an AoE GFlux). LoV started arriving around 4:30pm and we finished buffing up around 5:45pm (there were some deaths, lots of buffing to do, and late arrivals to sort into groups).

Second Floor - Innoruuk

Now it gets fun, we managed to run all the way around the zone walls of the second floor to the NE corner. This meant we had to run almost around the entire zone (if you look at a map you'll see why), then clear out the NE corner of any mobs in the houses. A few people got left behind in the previous camp (oops!), so someone had to run back and get them. There were close to 60 of us in zone at that point (35 from the original open raid force, plus 25 reinforcements from LoV). I was told my job on this fight was to avoid aggro (lowest cleric on the totem pole out of 8 or 9 clerics).

At 6:18pm, Innorukk shouts "You seek to challenge me in my realm, do you? Feel the embrace of an elder god, and know the true meaning of hate!" three times (I think Shadora might have been the sacrificial lamb along with two others). Sure enough, here the bad boy comes pounding around the corner looking for something to rampage on (eep!). Poor Billit got aggro fast (he was the first cleric on Inny's menu!). Castille and I got GFluxed onto the roof of the nearby Chapel (good because it reduced the falling damage we'd have taken, bad because that meant all of us had aggro'd other mobs). We got at least 4-5 adds from that first GFlux event (I'm not sure if the bards were still singing their MR song, or if it would've even helped) and those 4-5 adds meant that people started dropping like flies. I had an Agent of Innoruuk chewing on me until I burned my Divine Barrier to lose the aggro and try to focus on the Inny fight. While I was divined, I got to see everyone else get GFluxed again while I stayed on the ground (that was a sight to see!).

At 3 minutes in, the "clerics camp" call went out which was my cue to head high up on the wall and camp. It was a close thing as I stumbled over one of the "imp traps" (if you see a bell tower looking thingy, don't walk under it!). Fortunately my Divine Aura spell went off without a hitch and gave me enough breathing room to get away from them and camp. At this point it was just Sumamdar and myself of the clerics that were still in PoH. While I was camping, someone managed to heal me for two shots of 524, so maybe Sumamdar was close by (or maybe Fuerf transfered health?).

4 minutes, total wipe-out, Fuerf (necro) managed to FD at the base of the wall and provide us with scouting reports of Inny's location and whether it was going to be safe to log back in (for those who had camped in time).

Corpse Recovery

CR started pretty quick, but unfortunately it had been too long since we had cleared the first floor, so re-pop was due soon there, and there were too many wandering mobs near our camp-out spot on 2nd floor to risk trying the rez and regroup tactic. It took about 20 minutes for them decide how to get the bodies out, then about 40 minutes before the first group ported up to start summoning corpses. I was in a difficult spot now, being as I had managed to camp successfully (note to self, always take time to memorize Gate when camping!) on the second floor of hate, and they weren't gonna come back up to the 2nd floor! So now what do I do? So I sat tight for 70 minutes, talking to Fuerf, watching raid chat, trying to see if they were going to make another attempt or do CR and call it a day.

Finally I got the all clear from Fuerf who was still FD'd on 2nd floor (ugh!) near the camp out spots. We decided that it was worth the risk to try to login and gate out, since if I got out I wouldn't need a CR or port-up, and if I failed there would still be time to summon my corpse. Nothing like seeing "You have entered Plane of Hate." when you know nobody else is going to be near you (but I think Protanis knows the feeling)! Of course, it was a great relieve to see "You begin casting Gate." followed by "LOADING, PLEASE WAIT..." and "You have entered The Bazaar."!

Comments

- Corpse Recovery for a 60 person wipe-out only took an hour, in my book, that's pretty darn good.
- We should've cleared the area around Inny's pull spot, or fought inside the building to reduce damage from GFlux.
- It was a fun raid, and all the CSM'ers won something!

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Corish 46 Cleric
Vorish 27 Magician
Sorish 17 Troll Shadow Knight