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I've no toons on argo so I can't help you there, sorry.

I would say for VON it's worth at least the proposed leader reading the walkthrough, There's quite a bit of toing and froing from the central hub where you zone in, and you do need to get some of the quest items to the right place. The voice and the ring, for example, have to be on the same person and go on the left hand side when you head north. It really depends on how patient your static group is. Even so you get a sense of where to go first, and what you need to pass the quest objectives.

Often people split up and complete different objectives separately, but I wouldn't recommend that - stay together and that way you will all learn it.

Stuff apart from the 2 x wisdom and 2 x strength stats that's needed is someone with unlock at a decent level, or knock loaded.

Spoiler freeish stuff that will help:
A trapsmith is very very handy.
The ability to hear voice and at least one person with voice is very useful for two bits requiring simultaneous lever pulling / rune fettling.
Someone who can cast resist energy is worth their weight in gold.
Someone who can cast DDoor is also very helpful.
Jump clickies are useful for one bit, as are featherfall clickies or a perma festherfall item.
Adamantine and preferably anarchic weapons / smiters are very helpful for the end fight.
Everbright weapons or muckbanes.
Remove curse / disease pots

This is why Azog is one of my favorites.

So, Saturday we tried VoN5... a complete catastrophe.
Yes, ok, sure, shortmaning a raid is not easy blah blah, but this was really a complete desaster. I had told everybody what pots to get, what spells to learn, I fetched some greater heroism scrolls for my retarded brother´s Wizzard (He never thought of that by himself...+4 to attack, to saves and skills? Not really worth the hassle .). We had two problems:

First, the spirit of Axer had taken posession of the Dwarf Barbarian.

Suddenly he had grown a small rectangular mustache under his nose and had a worrying tendency to  salute stretching his right hand with the palm down. And he was clearly menstruating. He invited us with his 20th level toon (also a dwarf barbarian) to his guild ship to buff and he started micromanaging how people had to take the buffs: "First you take this here and... where are you going?? THIS HERE FIRST!!!..."

Well, you know, if you take the buffs in the correct order it only takes 1 minute 38 seconds instead of 2 minutes 12 seconds.

The second problem was the artificer. He was in some Spanish mountains, as we say in Spain "where Jesus lost his lighter" (in the fucking middle of nowhere). He was connecting with 3G...badly. He could not hear us well. We could not really hear him. He did not get all the party chat messages, apparently. The "tells" worked...maybe.

So we tell him to take "The Voice". He goes to Haywire, and seems to speak with him. We assumed he took the voice. The alert reader may already suspect that he didn´t.
We have then the first trap. The arti is writing in Guildchat, so I answer him in Guildchat "The trapbox is on the right side, at the end". He starts searching at the beginning of the left side. "Noooo. Right side, END". He runs through the trap on the left side and get almost killed. "RIGHT SIDE". He checks the left side. Eventually, he checks right and finds the box.
It seems he had changed to party chat. Ok, fucking party chat then.

There we go the ramp down, to kill necrotic bankers that ruined the economy, and ask the arti to speak with the stone. "The stone gives no answer". Hmmm....maybe we have to somehow turn some power on, first. So, we go the ramp up again. The arty is still in front of the stone "where did you all go?".

The menstruating spirit of Axer rises with might inside the dwarf barbarian and starts to insult the arti, the arti´s computer, the arti´s internet company, the arti´s dog... The Arti seems to hear voice chat only when he is being insulted, so he starts getting extremely pissed off. He seems also to be missing a lot of messages from party chat. After a "few hours", we regroup a the shrines.

I start asking the arti in a tell "Do you have the voice?".
He answers in guild: "I turned the microphone off".

Azog:"I mean THE VOICE* (in english)" (waiting for answer... he seems to be reading the missed guild messages from the beginning)

Spirit of Axer, voice chat: "Buff the people before shrining. I need heal, also"
Azog:"I have the aura turned on. Come here. And don´t bother me, I am chatting to the arti"

Arti: (after reading guild messages) "What trap do you want me to dissable?"

Azog (affected by "crushing despair"): "Just let it be. Just follow us". I assume he has not the voice. I tell so in voice chat, somebody picks The Voice.

Arti: "It was me who dissabled that trap there" (what the fuck is he talking about???)

Azog: "Its fine, its fine, just follow"

(the arti seems to find the messages about the voice)

Arti: "to whom should I speak?"

All this, with a menstruating Spirit of Axer in voice chat calling the rest of us n00bs, running around killing stuff and asking for hjeals. In such situations I usually explode, but I am really improving in rage management, and I kept more or less calm.

We go to the puzzle. We get it done without to much screaming.

Then, the grand finale: The electric trap with the turning blades traps. The arti tries to dissable...and...yessss!!! he gets killed. Of course. He stays there, waiting. The shrine is kind of 10 meters away. We wait. He doesn´t move.

Azog (*sigh*): Ok, go out from there and I ress you.

Arti: Can´t you ress me here? (*He thought the electric trap was the only one, I guess)

Azog: Yes, but you will be get killed again.

No answer.

No answer.

No answer.

Azog: Ok, I ress you. ....woosshh....*DING*

Arti: Ok, I see. *rage quit*

So we try to get the traps the hard way. I get killed.
We recall. I call it a night and dc.

Epoch wrote on Apr 9^th, 2012 at 5:30am:


Good to know. The problem is the tactics are dictated by the dwarf barbarian (lvl 12, 402 hp fully buffed). He took 200 hits in the traps and expect us "n00bs" to do the same and survive.
The caster was running with him and get killed at the end, and was waiting for me to cross to res him at the other end.
Anyway, I was fed up and had no motivation to continue.

You have a lot of patience.

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I'd've stopped right here.

For people with bad internet connections, you can turn up the voice delay in game settings if voice is breaking up. This increases voice lag, but hearing it later is probably better than not hearing it at all.

Or if you have a static group have someone set up a Teamspeak server and have everyone use Teamspeak - it's much more sophisticated software and works better in adverse conditions.

Azog, your posts make my day better.   

I am crying from laughing. OMG please come play with us on Khyber.

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That wasn't your group asking me if I was flagged on Saturday, was it?  (on Ysharan)

I remember the first time I tried to short-man a raid. Of course we were a bit over level at the time but still tough.

I hit level 12 on my barb, the first character I had managed to get to such a high level at the time, and I thought to myself "hot damn supreme cleave is the best thing since sliced bread." so I decide to buy a couple hundred oils of repair (a normal amount for my barb) and jump into normal tempest spine just to see how many I could kill before I died. Next thing I know I'm at the int rune unable to proceed in that direction due to my int stat of 8 and down about 100 pots. At this moment I am still thinking to myself "hot damn supreme cleave is the best thing since sliced bread." So being unable to open the door with my rocks for brains barb I head in the other direction. Just before I reach the locked door my guildie loges on with his multi-TR on its wiz life at wiz10/rog2. You can not have better timing than that, I dare you to try. He comes in, opens the doors, we both kick the asses of everything in the mountain, I tank the un-jolly green giant and he heals me and solves the puzzle at the same time. The end fight was a huge pain without FOM though.

Azogs story is much better though. Nothing really happened in mine, but that was because I ran tempest spine into the ground because I loved too run it so much and had the innards of the mountain memorized.

Glenalth wrote on Apr 9^th, 2012 at 8:23pm:


Those were better times.  I miss them dearly.

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Ah, okay.  The lfm you mentioned might have been it then.  We might have joined that one if we were remotely close to being flagged, but we were still farming out VoN 3 on elite for xp, and hadn't touched the other three quests at all.

On an unrelated note, between the xp tomes and that 20% bonus xp, last week was fantastic for leveling.  I ended up skipping a ton of different quests on my normal farm list.