My Iniquity brethren and I have been spending our time working through the Palace of Ferzhul in Everquest II. It is arguably one of the hardest instances in the Shadow Odyssey expansion and seemed like a great example of design to discuss. We’ve had a lot of success there and this is one of those zones that really makes you question if it is possible to have a one group raid. The level of difficulty and complexity in the encounters really seems to lend that idea some credibility so it is best that we look at some of the encounters individually.
The Librarians
Each time that we’ve gone to the Palace of Ferzhul, we’ve made an effort to do the library first. The encounter is simply the most challenging of the three gate encounters and requires the most attention to detail. The general idea is that there is a globe floating in the center of the room. As the encounter progresses it will rise higher and higher until it reaches the ceiling. When it does so all party members are instantly killed. To stop the motion of the globe you need to slay books, loot them and use their item. By itself that sounds fairly simple but it is anything but.
While the books are swirling and doing their own thing you have to contend with three librarians who hit relatively hard. They are also linked and their life must never stray beyond a 20% difference or they will use a rather nasty AoE spell. The goal is to work them down at a relatively even pace before the globe reaches the top. When they reach zero they will “die” but the encounter still isn’t quite over. The globe will descend at that point and revive the librarians for one last go-round. Once more you have to work them down at an equal pace. In short, this is a complex endurance encounter.
Despite all the moving parts the encounter is incredibly well balanced and exciting. The bosses have the right amount of hit points so that a group with standard group only gear can handle the fight if they have solid tactics and player skill. The complexity is also easy enough to understand and there are few unknowns to the fight even if you don’t look up a spoiler. This one really came across as well written and executed.
Valdoartus Varsoon
In contrast to the librarians I’m not as pleased with Varsoon himself. The encounter is actually three different fights strung together so bear with me as I explain it all. Across all of the encounters Varsoon has a few things in common. He has a nasty curse that roots you and deals substantial but manageable damage, a noxious that deals substantial damage, a knock back, a noxious bolt and a few other dirty little tricks. Varsoon also hits pretty hard and seems to always know who to kill and when.
The encounter that notably gives a lot of people trouble is the blade room. Essentially you have to fight Varsoon on the move. Quite frequently he will call a name and spawn a mob at that persons position. You have roughly one to two seconds to move or that mob will cut you to ribbons. The mobs do not despawn and [b]litter [.b]the room if you don’t move in a set pattern and keep people stacked. While this is going on he also puts a trauma effect up that slows your moment and spell casting. It stacks and after three you become useless so cures are a necessity. This all occurs with everything I mentioned before going on. This part is actually pretty easy for us. It just requires a high degree of coordination.
The middle encounter is probably the easiest if you have the right group make up. You have to stand in a fire that is able to be mitigated down to about 1000 per tick and fight Varsoon without any other additional tricks. There isn’t a lot going on here other than he is a beast of a mob and you just have to interrupt his curse and kill him quickly.
The last encounter is somewhat frustrating but also quite doable. You fight Varsoon as you have everywhere else and he will spawn adds roughly every 20 seconds. If they’re not killed they will heal him and undo the work you’ve done. Once more this challenge isn’t that bad and it just involves group members switching targets. Nothing we can’t do.
Given that each encounter sounds fairly simple to do why do I not like this encounter as much as the librarians? The answer is simple. You have to do all three encounters in one shot. To make it even more exciting you have to run from one to the next without dying to his melee or curse (which he can cast pretty long distance). Each version is tough and running to the next adds a lot of difficulty, perhaps unnecessarily so.
In some of the finest gear that you can gain from single grouping and a few pieces from the two group encounters this fight comes down to luck. We’ve got all the tactics down and have the skill to achieve it and still fail a lot due to random chance. Sometimes Varsoon will just one shot a group member for 13,000 noxious. Other times we’ll catch one of the dots at an inopportune time. Still other times he’ll just have a lucky round and there is nothing we can do about it. Balance wise, that isn’t such a good thing. This one group encounter is designed around players having two group loot. That seems strange to me. Can you achieve it with single group loot? Yes. Is it likely? No. Beyond that, however, it is a well done encounter. I just think it has a bit too much going on for the average single group of players. If you have raid experience like we do it is fine but I have to wonder what level of success the average EverQuest 2 player has had. My guess is not much.
Disclaimer: Explanation of the encounters are brief for the sake of moving the story along.
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