"The most useless guy got the best weapon."
Igor had ended up with the Aurastone Hammer, and Smooch felt bad for Lunatori.
Naturally, that didn't stop her from taking a shot at him.
Igor simply tuned her out.
He hadn't been playing Holy for very long, so his gear was still behind the other healers. The Aurastone Hammer should at least help him close the gap.
The Giantstalker's Helmet went to Smooch.
The moment she equipped it, she felt even stronger.
"I'm one powerful huntard," Smooch typed, apparently meaning hunter.
Igor immediately jumped on it.
"That's right. One very powerful huntard."
Smooch could only sit there regretting the message while Gabryell laughed to himself.
Only a genuinely good Hunter could get away with being called a huntard.
As for the Warrior Tier 1 helmet, Gabryell briefly considered giving it to Susie instead.
She already had the T1 gloves, so adding the helm would put her closer to the three-piece bonus. From a progression standpoint, there was a decent argument for it.
Susie shut the idea down before it went anywhere.
"You already said the next one goes to Carlos."
She had no intention of changing the rules just because the loot happened to suit her.
Gabryell smiled and handed the Helm of Might to Carlos as originally announced.
In truth, T1 wasn't particularly useful for a Fury Warrior anyway.
A strong Fury Warrior was better off mixing carefully chosen off-pieces. Someone blindly wearing Tier gear could easily perform worse than a player in good pre-raid dungeon DPS gear.
"We're out of flasks again," Carlos said.
They had burned far too much time on Garr and completely used up the duration of their second flask.
The raid had started forming at six in the evening.
By the time everyone assembled, traveled to Molten Core, and got ready to pull, it had been around seven.
Two flasks.
Four hours.
It was already almost eleven.
"Do we keep going?" Carlos asked.
If they did, he was probably going to have to move to an internet café.
Gabryell's dorm didn't shut the lights off until eleven-thirty, but most of the students in the raid had lights-out at eleven.
Several others had work in the morning.
"Let's call it for tonight. We'll do the rest tomorrow."
After four straight hours of progression, everyone was exhausted.
Getting from Lucifron all the way to Garr in a single four-hour night was already one of the strongest progression results on the server.
They had earned the break.
"Victor, add everyone's end-of-raid DKP."
Gabryell hadn't forgotten the attendance reward.
They could worry about the exact DKP adjustments tomorrow.
Once Victor finished updating everyone's points, he said, "I'll upload the DKP totals to the website in a bit so everyone can check their own. I'll post the link for you guys too."
"We're going to make a few changes to the DKP system tomorrow and clean up some of the rules. Don't worry, though. Nobody's getting screwed over by the changes."
Most people still didn't fully understand DKP.
After a few more lockouts, they would get used to it naturally.
For now, they were content to follow the guild's system.
Fearless wasn't about to cheat its own members.
"Everyone's tired. Get some rest. Same time tomorrow night."
Then Gabryell remembered something.
"Anyone who's already started the Hydraxian questline and needs to turn in the next step, come with me to Azshara. If you haven't started it yet, go get it done. I posted the full walkthrough for everyone."
Ideally, the entire raid would complete the Hydraxian chain.
There was no reason not to.
With the raid officially over, everyone else was free to call it a night.
Gabryell opened a portal to Ironforge.
Once everyone was back in the city, he noticed that most of them still hadn't left the raid.
"Raid's officially over. Do whatever you want now. It's late, though. Your guild leader recommends sleeping."
He had already opened the voice channel so everyone could talk freely.
OldSeven's voice immediately came through.
"No problem. I'm used to staying up late."
Coldhands laughed.
"That's single life for you. Too lonely to sleep."
"You bastard," OldSeven shot back. "You're single too."
"Sorry," Coldhands said. "I have a girlfriend."
"WHAT?"
OldSeven wasn't the only one.
Several voices exploded at once.
There were a lot of single guys in the raid.
While everyone piled on Coldhands for committing the unforgivable crime of having a girlfriend, Gabryell headed to the Auction House.
He searched for materials like Righteous Orbs and Essence of Water.
Tomorrow, he planned to put +55 Healing on the healers' weapons.
While he was there, he also bought out the flask and potion mats.
The trash after Garr was a huge step up from what they had faced so far.
Tomorrow, they would be dealing with Molten Core's infamous lava packs.
Those packs were some of the nastiest trash in the entire raid—absolute raid killers.
Even groups that had MC on farm could still lose several players to them.
If Fearless went in unprepared, they could easily spend half the night wiping on the lava packs.
And even when a pull didn't end in a full wipe, it wasn't unusual to finish with bodies scattered all over the floor.
Once he finished buying materials, Gabryell left everything sitting in the mailbox.
Tomorrow morning, he would log onto Igor's account and turn the mats into consumables.
"Anyone who still has some time and needs the Hydraxian turn-in, come with me to Azshara."
He interrupted the conversation before it got any worse.
The voice chat had been getting more and more explicit, and several of the women had already decided they'd heard enough and left.
Some people logged off completely.
In the end, only ten players followed Gabryell to Azshara.
They reached the small island off the coast and found Duke Hydraxis.
Gabryell and the others turned in The Molten Core.
"You have accomplished what many would have thought impossible. You entered the Molten Core, challenged the creatures within, and emerged victorious."
Duke Hydraxis regarded the group with obvious approval.
"For beings so small, your strength is remarkable."
Then came the annoying part.
Blizzard had made sure the quest chain wouldn't be that easy.
Before they could move on to Hands of the Enemy, they first had to complete Agent of Hydraxis, which meant raising their reputation with the Hydraxian Waterlords to Honored.
Only then could they continue.
Hands of the Enemy required them to kill Lucifron, Gehennas, Shazzrah, and Sulfuron Harbinger and collect a hand from each boss.
Once that was finished, they could start getting Aqual Quintessence from Duke Hydraxis.
That was the water they needed to douse the runes inside Molten Core and eventually summon Majordomo Executus.
"My rep is only Friendly," Hugo complained. "How long is Honored going to take?"
"Probably next lockout," Gabryell replied. "We can't finish the chain this lockout anyway."
Lucifron and Gehennas were already dead.
Even if they went back into MC and farmed trash until everyone reached Honored tonight, there was no way to go back and collect the boss items they had already missed.
Before tonight's progression raid even started, Gabryell had never expected Fearless to reach Majordomo during its first lockout.
The goal for this week had always been simple:
Kill as much as possible.
If they could make it all the way to Golemagg the Incinerator, that alone would be a massive success.
"Boring."
Hugo immediately lost interest.
Gabryell opened another portal to Ironforge.
"Go get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be worse."
His plan for the next raid night was to take down Baron Geddon and Shazzrah first.
If they still had plenty of time afterward, they would start progression in Onyxia's Lair.
Getting the server-first Onyxia kill would be easier than beating everyone to Ragnaros.
That made it something Fearless needed to secure as soon as possible.
Of course, that all depended on actually getting past Baron Geddon and Shazzrah.
If those two stopped them, the entire night would probably disappear into another stubborn MC progression session.
Then there was Thursday.
Once the patch landed and Dire Maul opened, Gabryell wanted to get his hands on Foror's Compendium of Dragon Slaying on the very first day.
Whether he farmed it himself or simply bought one didn't matter.
If he got it, Thursday's guild event would be Onyxia progression.
After all, how were they supposed to forge Quel'Serrar without killing Onyxia?
...
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