Author Message Nathanual Guest Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2001 10:49 pm    Post subject: Rallos Zek: A PK's life (long) First off i'd like to say that this has nothing to do with strategy for enchanter pvp, and it has nothing to do with arrogance. It's mainly an autobiographical post about the 'EQ life'that i lived, as a pk. I'm posting this mainly for blue server people to see what a pk goes through, of course people from other servers are more than welcome to read. It can be a lot of fun being a true pk on rallos, but it's real hard, and almost anywhere you go you'll be shunned and people will try to kill you. I started this game in summer, 1999.. June perhaps. I didn't know what pvp meant, that's why i joined rallos zek and started my GNOME enchanter. I never planned on pk, hell, i didn't know what it was. Level 1-8 took me a really long time and i used my level 1 choke spell mostly. I wasn't a pk back then, I got killed a lot by newbie pkers, and i had been saving everything for my level 8 spells. Naturally the first spell i bought (with all of my money of course) was chaotic feedback. It just blew my mind, when i used it, how much damage this spell did! I was a beast! And i set out to find someone to test it on. Low and behold, about a minute after setting foot outside of gnome town, i found a twinked up wood elf warrior by the Kobalds, nice and shiny bronze armor. It looked real heavy on him, since he was only a little elf. It took me 2 shots of chaotic feedback to kill the poor guy (probably level 4) with all of his friends around. Too bad for them they couldn't loot, at the time, no one could loot a kill unless 50% of the damage or more was done by the person. So I got loot, 40 platinum and a bronze sash I took, my first score and it was a GREAT one for my level. That was all it took to get me hooked on pking, as well. I walked back to the bank PRAYING i wouldn't be killed on the way because i had all of this platinum. I was also able to buy my spells. Mesmerise, tash, everything. This was the life. I pked all i could get from the gnome and wood elf inhabitants of akanon, and decided to level in a safer place where no one would know me. Greater Faydark. Crushbone was the dungean of choice, it didn't take very long, and i was leveled 12, but i didn't stop there. Oasis became my hunting ground until 16, I remained unknown until then with fairly easy leveling. Charm worked on people back then too, at 16 i bought every spell, including charm and misc. others that I never bought at level 12. Charm and Sanity Warp became my main weapons. I also joined the guild Terrorizors of Norrath, and quickly became an officer. I thought i was invincible, I had this huge arsenal and a guild to back me, Oasis was easily taken over for a few weeks. I'd win some fights and lose some, considering the fact that it was about 20 people to 3 of us, we did well. I pked a lot with Platnumkutz, some might know him now as Icedout. We got to the 20's in oasis. But whenever we leveled we had the 'police' of norrath (anti pkers of course) constantly attacking us, trying to exp kill us and get us while we were hurt. After every fight we'd hide underwater using breathing spell, or we'd hide in a crack in a cliff at the far south edge of oasis, just above the water. We were never safe to hunt there. When we hit our 20's we naturally headed to South Karana, 'the land of the pk', and we had also ditched our guild. Along with some buds we held the treants until we got to level 30. During that time, we suffered attacks almost as bad as on Oasis, except these ones were more organized, with more people. It was a lot of effort to level and fight people at the same time, and many times we were killed by the treants while people nuked us from behind. A lot of people would come solo, die, and come back again to attack, not even bothering to pick up their corpses. These kind of people were the worst, they would call a gm after they died again (of course they brought it on themselves by attacking) and sometimes the gm would give us a warning! So we would get harassed a lot, usually paranoid of being attacked from behind in the middle of a fight, and if someone went low health, they'd have to run down to the shore and sit in the water until healed back up. It really did suck. And leveling as a pker is not at all easy. I almost got fed up and quit before i reached 29. But i stuck it out, and when i got clarity, i just thought to myself 'this is un-****ing believable'. I was enjoying myself! Of course my buds were way ahead of me, some of them were 35 by this time, i was getting almost 0 exp. I was stoked with getting clarity, but it didn't last long because of this. I had usually pked naked. I had very little money and by the time i was level 20 they had changed charm and fear, my main weapon. I was doing horrible. I was in Greater Fay one night, running around attacking people. I don't think i scored 1 kill that night, but I did happen to meet someone really important. We didn't meet as friends though, he happened to be a pk as well, just recently having quit Darkenbane, but never giving up the pk life, he loved it too much. Jeir, the little gnome wizard, caught me underneith the tree city in faydark, and it took him 3 nukes to kill me. I had tried to outrun him, but he had jboots, I did not. Being the good sport he is, he challenged me to a duel afterwards, and I accepted. It was probably the closest fight I've ever been in. His magic resistance was well over 100, he was a very well funded individual, and I know it was all from pking. The first thing I cast was enthrall, and it stuck, luckily. Tishan and Strip enchantment were next. It did take his Shielding buff off, but it also took mez off, and because of this, he was able to get off a shock of lightning, interrupting my next spell. I think he got me 4 times before I could mez him again. It took about 1 1/2 bars of life, more than i had done to him. I blinded him once, and only once, the level 24 (can't remember name)damage spell was all i had, compared to his almost 300 damage spell. But i nuked him anyway. He had his spells hotkeyed, and nailed me with this spell. It hurt bad, taking me down to about 1 1/2 bars of life left. I mezzed him again, and loaded up color flux, my level 4 shift spell, seeing that it was faster than the level 20 shift. After I hit him with my nuke again, he attempted his big shot 1 more time, he got fluxed and i casted my nuke, this would have killed him, but he broke stun and shock of lightning'd me, interrupting my cast, then sent the finishing touch. I lost again. After these 2 battles I was ready to quit, then i get a tell from Jeir, 'You should really wear some gear man, you probably would have beaten me... come to the bank i'll give you some of mine.' From then on we were pk partners, up until I was banned at level 50. This really revived the game for me. The first few fights were kind of dull, and they all got away because of our bad coordination and teamwork, but we eventually got the hang of working together, and we recieved some of the best loot we'd ever seen. We had (probably) a unique looting style, ever since day 1, it was basically if one of us needed it, no matter what, that person would get it. And if neither of us needed it, we really didn't care who got it, since my money and armor was his, and his money and armor was mine. Over time, we had reached the magic number 34 we both kept the same level all the time, so that we could always back each other up, no matter what, and pking got a WHOLE lot easier for us. We were triangle pking in South Karana, Cazic Thule (we had a good way of getting in through the maze) and Greater Faydark, we'd stalk the paths, or we'd go outside of the bank and prey on people sitting(or standing) near the tree, a gm was called on us several times of course, but what we were doing was legal, and with the mez/nuke combo, they never had a chance to even MOVE. Blinded the entire time, many people lost thousands of platinum worth of items and cash outside that place to us. Cazic Thule was also a lot of fun, we got into battles with entire groups there. We would sneak in invisible, and quickly nail a key member such as a cleric or druid, if they didn't have a cleric, then I would use the Area mezmerize (yes it does work at these levels) and enthrall anyone left over, while Jeir worked on one, and then I'd join jeir and blind/mez/etc. so the guy couldn't get away or bag, then we'd do the same to the rest of the group. But, alas, it didn't always work that way. Necros are a dangerous thing, especially in tight spots, 4 necros and 2 clerics are an even more dangerous thing, i believe we killed ONE of them before having to zone and evac with less than a bar of health remaining on either of us. Sometimes battles just went horribly wrong, a resist somewhere will screw you over. We had been partners for 2 months solid, and decided it was time to gain some levels. It took about 2 weeks per level, and 35 was really bad, took us about a month to get. We had pressure from both anti pks, and pks alike. We had both basically said '**** you' to any friends we may have had at the time, and *everyone* was a potential enemy or threat. Some fights were really intense. We were fighting a wiz and a necro combo that attacked us at the druids, it took us over to the dunes in East commons, by the tunnel to Ro. I went Linkdead in the middle of the whole fight. I thought for sure I was dead, I had everything on as well. But when i got back, there was a near-dead Jeir standing by my spot and 2 dead corpses. He had guarded me while i was linkdead AND stood his ground the entire time even though he risked himself and his items. We leveled to 39 on the druids in East commons and West commons, it took longer than anybody i know, probably about 3 months or longer. We didn't level the whole time though. Jeir was dedicated at one point to getting me Jboots. We spent many days in South Ro looking for the beast who would drop us the ring, so that I may have the coveted jboots. Up until that point, when we had to run somewhere, Jeir would switch off his jboots and run with me, so that we wouldn't get separated, because if we did, we would die. Simple as that. We had each others back no matter what happened, and if things were going horribly, we'd either BOTH make it out alive, or none of us would. South Ro was a dangerous place for us, the biggest threat was a large attack by other players after the same treasure as us. South Ro is also a hard place to fight in, all of the dunes and hills make it hard to fight an enemy who's running, because they start to circle and disappear from lag. We usually used this to our advantage though, and the results were disasterous to the other side. THey'd get split up a lot, and we'd pick them off 1 by 1, we kept near each other, and communicated well. Jeir and I spent countless hours in that hell-hole. But one evening when Jeir wasn't on, I was with my slave (basically, he would do anything we wanted him to do as long as we left him alone), we were porting over to South Ro so i could goto Oasis and look for some sheets of research from the gypsies. He followed me (luckily) and caught the cyclops on track when i had just zoned over to Oasis. He was yelling 'CLOPS CLOPS GET OVER HERE NOW!!!!'. I had a shiny new pair of jboots by the end of that evening, and Jeir was stoked. We also vowed to never hunt for another ancient cyclops, ever, again. Level 35 was an especially BORING time for us. I did have jboots, but it didn't make leveling any faster for us. We would kill the druids, sell the weapons for huge cash, and when we got overloaded, we'd head for GFAY, this was pumice money, and i bought them for Jeir because i had more charisma. He usually used the pumices because i had other things i needed to do instead of waste time on the pumice. Getting pumices wasn't an easy task although the vendor was right outside the bank, we had about 5 people every time waiting for us, even the simplest task can be 20 times harder for a pker. I got the pumices under fire, Jeir was busy levitating us up so that we could run off the ledge asap, and we were just about to gate back to our bind point when Jeir gets a tell from Singood (again, another slave, Jeir annihilated this man several times in the past, he was probably scared of us) telling him that there's 3 people in butcherblock mountains in our range to kill, and that he was being attacked by them. We loved a challenge, and we got there as quickly as we could. We were faced with an enchanter, Ksanth(i think), wizard (dont remember the name), necro, Nutso, and out of range healer, Wolfen. They were on the shore to the left of the docks in Butcherblock. Nutso was sitting on the ground near a house, and his friends were off in the distance, we knew they had spotted us, because they were running toward us, but Nutso didn't seem to notice us. It took about 10 seconds to cook the poor necro before we had to fight the enchanter and wizard. This is one of the times we did split up to fight, Wolfen followed jeir and the other wizard, and i was left 1 on 1 with Ksack the enchanter(i honestly can't remember the name, maybe some of you know? it started with a K) I believe it was a level 39 ench(him) vs a level 35 enc(me!). He didn't last too long, his healer wasn't around, and there was a vast difference in magic resistance. Pks shouldn't fight other pks, but we did, thats how it went. On the other side of the battlefield, Jeir was killed by a dwarf that had caught his trail while he was running, he mowed down by its powerful axe. I was left with 2 bars of mana to fight this wizard and Wolfen's healing. He was rather easy to mez and blind, he had no idea how to pk. I ran out of mana quickly though, and Wolfen kept him full health. I had to gate and catch up with Jeir. After that fight we decided not to pk until 36. Level 36 was probably our best pvp level. We were just getting done pking and we wanted a new place to level, the druids were getting old, and all of our enemies knew where to find us. We decided to take over Darkenbane's spot in West karana by the Barbarians. We were all pumped up ready for a fight, but when we arrived, it was empty. No darkenbane in the zone. Oh well! We binded and started to fight. A few darkenbane came over every once in a while, and were dispatched fairly easily. Our little buddy Rykker popped in about an hour after we took over the barbarians. I believe this guy was level 27 at the time. He tried to killsteal us, hehe. He told us that Darkenbane was gonna come git us, after 3 failed attempts to take our kills, and he told us to stay here. So we did. And we leveled for 2 hours straight until finally, 1 dber in the zone, ivanale, a level 45 wizard. He came over and chatted with us a little and watched us, but he couldn't do anything. Then I get a tell from him 'watch out, 8 db coming your way'. I checked the zone (something we had to do every minute or so) and sure enough, we have a large group of darkenbane. I yelled at Jeir to evac us to Gfay and come up with a plan to fight them. It took all of 20 seconds, and Ivanale offered to help us, even though he couldnt attack the 6 we were going to fight, he could kill their 2 healers they brought along. Trust a Darkenbane? I guess we would have to, to fight these guys (and yes, we REALLY wanted to fight them). So we gate back, our bind point is a bit away from the Barbarians, and Ivanale joins us in the spot. We then advance toward the group of pkers, 3 mages, 1 necro, 1 wizard and 1 enchanter. Ivanale made true to his word, he killed Daero and the other druid before they could heal even 1 time, and i had mezmerized about half the group and their pets, i was bombed by the necro with dots from hell and Jeir was forced to switch targets to prevent my death. It took all of 3 minutes to demolish this fearsome (obviously) force of darkenbane dreadknights. The only survivor was the enchanter, we had no time for him, his friends were going to come back soon and we had to get out quickly. Jeir took us to Tox to rest up. I had about 1 1/2 bars of life left, Jeir was a little more hurt with 1 left and Ivan was 3 1/2 bars. I honestly think we owe this one to the element of surprise, luck, and Jeir's knowledge of Darkenbane. Ivanale was kicked from his guild shortly after. Why he helped us? Who knows, but i doubt we'd have beaten even 1 of them if they had their healers along. We visited the place of massacre later on that evening, looking for darkenbanes to kill, no one was around, so we visited the hills of qeynos. We ran into Darkenbane's leader, probably one of their more famous leaders as well, Eladrin (aka. the original Ever). He was a slippery one indeed, and gave us quite the chase. Harmshield and shadowstep was this young man's best friend. The big mistake he made, was coming back to the spot we were sitting in, where we finally caught and killed him. In fact we killed him multiple times over the next few days. He became more frustrated with Darkenbane and their incompetant players, and i recieved a message from him saying, 'Darkenbane sucks.' .... 'level 40 necromancer at your service...'. A great victory indeed. But we didn't accept his offer, instead we destroyed him again by the Druids in West commonlands. After this I don't think we ever saw him again. We were prime Darkenbane targets now, along with anti pk targets, we were having a really hard time leveling. Saradin, top officer of Darkenbane at the time, informed me that initiation for Darkenbane included 'Killing Nath and Jeir', I was only killed once by a group of 3 darkenbanes while i was afk sitting at the bard in South Karana, bad idea, but i wasn't thinking. I don't think they kept that policy around very long. Also some people camped at our bind spots near the druids and waiting for us to gate in to attack us. We were lucky to get more than half a bar of exp a day. We eventually did reach 39, and moved to Butcherblock, and using charm kiting, we were able to take the spawns from Kaladim all the way to the docks and back before the next spawn cycle began. It was fast, easy leveling, and we were only in 3 fights until then. The first one was with Azzar, a level 44 wizard. He kept dying to me at level 42 and he kept laughing that i suck because i don't have 44 spells. Mental problems? Quite possibly. My second fight wasn't so pretty though, we were faced with a ranger, warrior, necromancer, and cleric. Each one had huge magic resist. They caught us off-guard sitting at the docks, and though we fought our hardest, we couldn't win, and we ran from them, we both almost died, luckily for us it was a cliffy area, and we used the cliffs to get away. These kinds of attacks were actually very, very frequent ever since level 29 and up, every 15 minutes or so we'd be under attack, and it hindered our leveling more than anyone could imagine. The last fight we got into during our leveling in Butcherblock was with a level 45 necromancer, he got 1 dot on Jeir and almost killed him. But we did manage to take him down, twice in fact, the second time we didn't make any mistakes and we took him down with surgical precision. We were offered a spot in his guild, a known pvp guild then, called Dark Legion Syndicate. It happened to be part of the plane group, TR/e, and we were invited on plane runs. Coolness. Our guild was made up of pvpers, every last one of them. Dathan, Fongh, Chaucer, Kidmen, Ironfoot, and so on. We were limited in our selection of pkables, but we did have quite a few to kill who we were at war with, mostly Peace of Formosia. We flew to level 50, and we went on plane raids almost every day, eventually we were at the top of their loot list and we both recieved close to full planes gear. Originally we had planned to get full, and leave and take them down. But we grew to like them, and we stayed. Dark Legion was disbanded during our early days of plane runs, and Gravesson(the MAN, and leader of Dynasty of Blood) offered to guild us. And we accepted. He knew of our rep, and it seemed he knew our entire history. And he told us that he didn't mind us pking, just don't do it too much! Although we did have a good honest guild behind us, we were still attacked by everyone, and KOS to every guild. We loved it too. This was our thing. Hell, we could have probably organized our own events, we knew these places so well. Any run we were on became a dumbass fest. Jeir and I filled the screen with dumbass **** and just generally had a good time. It livened things up for the others too, they were probably bored out of their skull before us. And our group got the extra dumbassness that we had to offer, if we didn't get exp, it was blamed on someone in our group just to mess with the guy =P We were doing great, of course we had started about 15 wars for dynasty of blood, we resolved each, individually. All of this ended though, when we were kicked because someone complained a little too much to an officer of our guild. Gravesson wasn't on, so he couldn't do anything about it, and by the time he came back on, i had been banned from EQ. Before that time though, we decided to spend our last days of EQ (we didnt think it would be our last days), pking people. It was only during the last week of pking that we thought to make a webpage and screenshot our kills. Our last week was interesting, it was a week of intense pking against foes with powerful spells and more intelligent than those we had fought before. I made a huge mistake during that week. It was the week of the wizard best of the best, and i decided to visit the arena and watch. It was nothing spectacular, i was bored out of my mind, and was grateful that it finished quickly. Akkirus (head gm) was standing around while everyone rushed the center stage. I found myself staring Akkirus face to face, and I wondered if he was attackable. I decided to try, and nuked him with chaotic feedback. It worked! I could tell he was pissed too, and i tried to enthrall him, but he /killed me. Jeir looted my body for me and then ice cometted Akkirus for that. He died too. But Akkirus was down half life. I wish we would have killed him, it would have made a great kill shot. Oh well. The next day i was banned without explanation. And i was done with EQ. Jeir was done as well. Our last Recorded week can be found at http://www.eqgods.cjb.net/ , made by Jeir, all pics are also from Jeir's point of view. We never did become anti's or goodies, we were always pks, Gravesson knew this, and so did most people who did events with us. We never kept it a secret. They still kept us around for as long as they did. TR/e had balls, I guess it became too much for them. Also note that I included barely any of our battles, if i had, this would have taken days. We were fighting CONSTANTLY. A pk's life is HARD. -- Nathanual, deceased Back to top InsidiouzSoulcollector Newbie Joined: 15 Nov 2000 Posts: 31 Location: Strongsville,Ohio,U.S.A. Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2001 6:45 am    Post subject: Rallos Zek: A PK's life (long) Bro nicee story..I enjoyed it..and yes I agree pkers liffe is hard...I look at it as how a criminal lives..always hiding,poor if he doesnt kill or steal,and always on the run....I am going through this atm...and I gonna stick to it all the way....I have an anti mage ATM thats level 31...and hes gonna be secret so I can enjoy both worlds of the good guy and criminal...I have been pkin less than I couldve because my biggest goal is to get 44,so I can own phat and fast...I will wear MR galore,jboots,and it will be a fun level to pk....I remember you from back...I remember when Agnostic Front had a bad rep,and my wiz Mafiosi invited you in AF,also platnumklutz was in for a lil while...AF was harder back than...everyone pked,and it made it confusing for the goody goodies in AF...I do remember you though..heh I used to hangout with Rykker at WK and SK with ARkons,Stope,Azzazz...these were when they were new rookies in DB... Back to top Tsunamii Starshine Ancient Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 2235 Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2001 8:29 am    Post subject: Rallos Zek: A PK's life (long) Being in Peace of Formosa and having all of norrath hate us I feel ya... Has always been nice knowing you. Tsunamii Starshine Back to top Gulden Newbie Joined: 08 Jan 2001 Posts: 12 Location: Scottsdale, AZ USA Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2001 4:10 pm    Post subject: Rallos Zek: A PK's life (long) Definitely a good read. Hope you are having fun in whatever you are doing now. Back to top Flaine Memorysweeper Rookie Joined: 09 Nov 2000 Posts: 109 Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2001 6:42 am    Post subject: Rallos Zek: A PK's life (long) Awsome Read, i always thought about being a pk, after tryin it out and loving it hardcore, i got into trouble for killing some Covenant of the forge and my guild spewed, so i dont anymore.. but when we get to 45... maybe :P -Flaine Back to top Branar Old School Joined: 15 Oct 2000 Posts: 604 Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2001 2:43 pm    Post subject: Rallos Zek: A PK's life (long) Cool biography, nice website