First of all, Valhall would like to wish all visitors to our humble site a very happy and properous New Year, may all your epic dreams come true in the year of 2006.

Now if you may remember not long ago I explained why we have yet to touch the 4 Green Dragons, main reason being that we wanted to focus on BWL and Nefarian since it was the obvious yardstick by which progress is measured. Now that we have delivered Nefarian's head, this meant that the only items left unchecked on our to-do-list are the 4 Emerald Dragons. Just last week we had our first taste of Lethon, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was pretty challenging. We didn't manage to kill him that day, but we figured out his gimmick and went back to the drawing board to draw out 'The Plan (tm)'.

As fate would have it, all 4 Dragons spawned for us on New Years Day after the server reset, and one by one they fell. First was Emeriss in Hinterlands, which was a totally new experience for us, but well...... she proved to be no more difficult than your average MC boss and it won't take more than a few tries to figure her out. Next was Taerar in Duskwood, we had actually already killed him just a day before the reset, and to be honest he seemed hard at first, but once you get the transitions down he can be even easier than Emeriss, or perhaps on par depending on your class make up. Third on the hit list was Ysondre, well what can I say about Ysondre, if you don't manage to kill her on your first 1-2 attempts you probably don't deserve the loots she drops. Lastly we had Lethon, which in my opinion is the only Green Dragon worth his salt, however after you figure him out and get the execution down, he isn't too bad. A couple wipes and some adjustments later, we walked away with a 3 death victory with no transitional tank deaths, you will understand why I am pleased with this result if you had experienced this encounter before.

In conclusion I think Ysondre, Emeriss and Taerar needs to be buffed a tad to bring them up to Lethon's challenge, especially Ysondre who is a complete and utter joke. Their loots are fine for the risks vs. rewards involved I guess, but they can drop some really good items like the Staff of Rampant Growth. Oh and one last thing, I'm never one to publicly shame people nor put down guilds (unless it's Leth or Logis) , but if I ever see one of you tards from ABC XofY guild try to train my raid again like you did at Ashenvale, I will personally make sure your reputation goes to a shittier level than it already is, although I'm not sure if that's even possible for you guys anymore. If anyone wants to watch us or any other guild attempt a boss to leech strats or for whatever-the-fuck reason, that's all fine and dandy by me, just please have the basic courtesy to stay a good few hundred yards away or you risk both training the raid or triggering a death AE like on Emeriss.

One and a half months ago, we downed the hound of a thousand skills for the first time. We faced the much publicised 'Time Lapse' Chromaggus a bit later, and while he was a tad more challenging than the other trivial breath combos (Hi, poor design, just make Time Lapse the default 1st breath and pick a random color breath for the 2nd), we overcome him nonetheless - and we're glad we at least did it before Time Laspe gets nerfed in patch 1.9. Naturally, it was time for us to conclude yet another chapter in Valhall's history, by slaying the Lord of Blackrock Mountain himself.

As you may already know, the encounter is split into 2 distinct phases. In phase 1 you have to tackle a zerg of Drakonids (think Starwars Kid from that internet video), these draw upon randomly picked abilities and weaknesses depending on their color each instance reset, and figuring out the best method to deal with every color combo each instance reset is quite frankly the only challenge in your learning curve of this encounter, albeit a steep one. When about forty of these Drakonids are down, phase 2 begins and Blackwing descends in all of his gothic majesty. He has your typical Shadowbreath, AE fear and tail whips which you should have no problems dealing with by now, even for Horde, the only other gimmick you have to counter are his 'class calls' which incapacitates different classes in a variety of..... interesting manners. Some are downright easy to overcome, some are downright crippling, while some are just hilarious, this gimmick alone makes the encounter worthwhile and ensures everyone is at the top of their game.

To be honest, this isn't a lot more difficult than the other encounters in BWL, as compared to the in-your-face brutality of Vael and the need for every member to make important decisions on their own during Razorgore phase1. But regardless, the Nefarian encounter in its entirety proved hectic and long but a lot of fun, specially when the mages started turning the priests into giraffes and the gnomes into cows. The ladies prevailed though, and slowly reduced Nefarians health until he was willing to have his head removed and placed as decoration in Stormwind's arches. We've brought you Onyxia's head first, now Nefarian's, and you can be sure we will do our best to deliver the skulls of the Twin Emperors of AQ. While I'm not too interested in the hype of being AQ doorboy-guild since it basically proves nothing, I guess we''ll be working on it anyway, and much credit to our dear and loveable Povilas for working his ass off to that end even though he was told it wasn't a priority.

For those who care about the loots (I mean seriously, who cares about loots?), we received a Wrath and Bloodfang Chestpiece, some cloak thingy and a hunter belt thingy, while Quisom got some head at last (grats bro welcome to manhood). Loots aside, it felt truely awesome to finally down the larger than life Nefarian and to mark a truly challenging Blackwing Lair as conquered after all the show stopping difficulties we've had - monstruous lag, poor attendance (nerf real life plz). Lastly, big kudos to the Valhall officers for stepping up their game to make this happen, especially Kortben, Xzen and Gildan, and Ladies of Valhall for their preseverance and co-operation with the officers, this victory is all you ladies.

ps: this update has been brought to you by The Amazing Alma and raex.

I'm pretty sure there was a time for every guild when you first killed Lucifron and you thought 'damn we're badass', I know we did too. 1 week ago, we made our first forray into Blackwing Lair, and it didn't take long for us to agree that Razorgore is not quite the Lucifron of Blackwing Lair. 3 nights of attempts and a dozen wipes later, we finally tore down his zerg defence and said hello to Blackwing Lair proper. But alas, where the pain finally ends the true horror begins, Vaelastrasz took no time to inform us that Razorgore IS indeed the Lucifron of Blackwing Lair. Needless to say, Blackwing Lair has been a humbling experience so far despite our recent Ragnaros and Hakkar kills, but despite the much talked about piss poor risk vs reward in Blackwing Lair we are very much enjoying ourselves so far, and we're very much looking forward to the steeper challenges ahead.

I'd say the Razorgore event is pretty unique in terms of it's difficulty level, in that it requires great execution from -every- member of the raid but yet it isn't overly gear dependant. In fact, I'd go as far as to say its 95% execution and you can beat this encounter in non-raid gear. Vaelastrasz on the other hand is a different beast altogether, he puts out huge amounts of pain and you'd need perfect aggro management and immense DPS to bring him down. I can't say too much about this encounter yet as we've only had one go at him, but with some luck I will put up another update before long, I hope. Attached below is also a pic of our birthday surprise for Aira, but really pics doesn't do this event any justice, you'd have to be there to experience it. Fortunately our members have been volunteered by the establishment to do this again for my birthday for the sake of those who missed it.

So, what happened after Razorgore you ask? Welp, we came face to face with Vaelastrasz the Corrupt next, the famous 'Burning Adrenaline' boss. But alas, our joy at defeating Razorgore was shortlived, to sum up our experience with Vael - We came, we saw, we died.

First, we spied the dastardly Lord Victor Nefarius farming soul shards, apparently getting rdy for his impending battle with Valhall. Unfortunately, the sly fox got away before we managed to buff up =/.

Even more unfortunate was the event that Vaelastrasz woke up and mistook us for his captor. Indeed, he was pissed.

I knew I had to react quick in order for the raid to not wipe. Thankfully for Valhall, my ninja senses tingled and I remembered that I had Improved Taunt 2, I knew this was the time to finally put my elite Protection Spec to good use.

Somehow I had a feeling that really ticked him off, for his response was swift, and deadly. The insult had barely left my mouth when the bastage landed a lucky Crushing Blow on me, I felt excruciating pain for a split second as I exploded on impact and then..... peace.

And then it all came together, in yet another of my moments of inspiration I recieved a divine message from the Emerald Dream. I had the answer, the spoilerz if you prefer, to how this monstrosity can be defeated.

The guild agreed with me unanimously. And in the end, Valhall decided once again to let me bear the heavy burden of recieving the next 7 Warrior items to drop from Molten Core and Zul'Gurrub, a burden I must live with yet again.

Not quite Blackwing Lair yet, but here's a mini update anyways. I'm sure all of you should have heard of Zul'Gurub by now, the 20-man zone where good loots are too good and bad loots are really bad, where items have their blue and purple coding mixed up and are on par with MC/BWL items. Don't get me wrong, despite the absolutely whacked itemization this zone can still be considered a big success, if only it came out 2 months earlier though. Personally, I felt there was a little too much trash to clear overall, there were too many 'small' camps of mobs and roamers that provides no challenge or fun factor whatsover other than to slow progress down. The boss rooms however were fine, such as Hexxer's room with the 9 mob groups, sadly despite their numbers the trash hardly hits for anything so you're never really in any danger of wiping to trash unless you tried really hard to fuck up.

The boss encounters, however, are extremely well designed and well tuned for a 20man raid to provide a decent level of challenge although some of the encounters are more biased towards certain class make-ups. My personal favourite was Jin'do the Hexxer, it's not terribly hard but it requires focus from every member of the raid to execute a very simple and direct strat in a very intense fight. Next would be Bloodlord Mandokir for the humor value ('Please don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry'), but I thought the spirits providing auto resses kinda trivialised an already easy encounter. Many people have complained about Panther boss being bugged where the event doesn't register as a kill after you win, luckily for us we did not encounter such bugs and took her down after a few wipes - note that I do not consider the 1 million panther zerg to be a bug but a feature. My advise for those of you banging your heads against this encounter would be to not over-complicate the fight (*edit* the panther zerg seems to have been hotfixed on our 2nd kill and she is a walkover now, grats free loots!). Also of note is the Spider aspect boss which many pre-MC guilds are having problems with, I don't think she's terribly hard in that she doesn't put out insta-wipe dps, all you really need is for people to be alert in controlling her after she webs. If anything Spider boss trains you for Shazzrah I guess.

And what about Hakkar the Blood God? Well, to be honest I was expecting more out of this fight. I have heard that it was well designed and fun, but to be honest I thought it was retarded and anti-climatic compared to some of the other mini-bosses. There are only 2 real highlights of this encounter, 1) the satisfaction of figuring out the 'catch' for the first time, which of course you wouldn't have since you've probably read spoilers, and 2) cussing out loud when he heals because you were too slow. It's a slow and boring ass fight that tests your endurance (and patience in my case), if it weren't for Hakkar's stupidly overpowered loots I really wouldn't bother killing him again.

Anyways, don't really have a lot of screenies to put up other than the token corpse shot, in addition I introduce you to the ultimate of gaydom himself - Anuroth aka. Anus.