#a-net

I hate it when they announce an event to be released at a certain date...and than it's already 10 pm and nothing happened. I know it's about the different time zones...but they COULD  keep that in mind when making the announcement.

Today was guild Fractals run. We were going to try to do a level 10 Fractal run to get our lower Fractal level guildies up to 10 so they can do the daily but about a half hour before we were going to run Fractals, all the EU servers started having connection and log in issues that were effecting some users more than others(as confirmed by A-net)...so we ended up doing a level 4 Fractal, which we though, "Yeah, level 4, usually takes us maybe 45 mins max to do it, so even if we get lagged by the server acting up, we'll be safe."Boy, this time we were wrong about that.

Our first Fractal was Urban Battlegrounds, aka the Charr Fractal. We had pretty much no issues here but a little bit of lag made our skills lag slightly by about a half second so we had some close calls, but no one died. I ended up getting two rares so it was all good. We tried to find all the chickens but for some reason, that last chicken was not where it should be so after looking for it for 10 mins, we said "Forget it." and just moved on.

Our next Fractal was the Cliffside Fractal, this is where the lag issue seemed to come into play. We killed the Archdiviner at the bottom of the cliff without an issue, but once we picked up the hammer and got to the first seal, the mobs attacking us and the lag that showed up ended up making us get downed quite a few times, and a few of us getting killed because the characters and their attack animations would freeze for a second or two, causing us to take a hefty amount of damage; That combined with stacks from the hammer are not a good combo. The first seal wasn't too bad, and neither was the second seal, but once we got to the hand seals, that's where the issue happened. Since we had that lag, we ended up getting downed at horrible spots and pretty much had to run back and forth between the seals way more times than needed. We were all just sitting in Raidcall going "Damnit!", "Fuckkkk!" and having a laugh about how this was going since we've all done this before with any issues. After we got those hand seals done though, the rest was just easy pickings.

Our third Fractal was the Underground Facility Fractal. We had no issue getting through it(though still quite a bit of lag) until the final boss, which was Ice Elemental this time around. Getting a second of not moving is plenty of time to have Ice Elemental go Mr. Freeze on your arse. After a bit of time, figuring out the delay lag we were having, and trail and error, we ended up getting him down. All the trail and error contributed to 2 or 3 people dying numerous times, not just getting downed, including the guy we were running with that is used to level 15 or higher Fractals.

Last was, of course, Solid Ocean but the lag subsided by then and we were able to whip right through that without an issue.

Just a bit ago, me and a few guildies decided to give one of the jumping puzzles in Malchor's Leap, Scavenger's Chasm a go. It was just three of us going through this.

Now, this puzzle isn't too tricky per say, but at the end of it there are three treasure chests, each one require a number of "orbs"(called "Orrian Energy Sources") found within that jumping puzzle. The first chest requires two "orbs", the second chest requires four "orbs", and the last chest requires five "orbs", but six if you want the achievement. This totals up to twelve "orbs" we needed to find.

After a while, we found five "orbs" and started jumping around, looking for the rest. A couple falls into the water, a few nerve racking jumps, and some good laughs later, one of our little group had to go. So we were down to just two of us, climbing higher into the mysterious Scavenger's Chasm.

A few MORE falls later, my other guildie had to go as well, which just left me, along, to conquer this jumping puzzle. I said my goodbye to 'em and continued onwards and upwards. Eventually I was able to get all the "orbs" except for one bugger of an "orb" hidden underwater. There are two underwater "orbs" in this jumping puzzle, one was easy to notice and the other...well...there was a small hole to find between two pillars for that last one. Just finding that last "orb" in that spot took me forever because I was convinced it was up top somewhere.

Finally I found that last "orb" and went up to claim my prizes.

First chest: a green weapon and a crystal shard.

Second chest: two green weapons and another crystal shard.

Third chest: two green pieces of armor and...wait for it...another crystal shard.