I killed a giant Jell-o

[Creole Ned]

This is how hardcore I am. :P

My one level 50, Angry Carrot, made it to the level cap in May 2005. One of the things you can do if you have a 45+ character is take part in a Hamidon raid. I had always heard them described as long, horrible lagfests so I never had any interest. The Hamidon is a special-class monster that requires dozens of players to take out, roughly equivalent to one of WoW's 40-man raids.

Yesterday I got a /tell from someone. This was the exchange:

Him: Rading?
Me: Rading?
Him: Yeah
Me: You mean Hamidon?
Him: Yeah we need a healer badly lol
Me: I've never been on a Hamidon raid before.
*team invite sent to me*

The rest of the team was in The Hive, the raid already just underway. I headed over and hooked up. There appeared to be some disagreement between our esteemed leader and the others. A short time later he either quit the team or disconnected. The chat window was filling up too quickly to tell. He had passed the star before dropping and the new leader recruited some others, giving us a team of seven.

So there I am, nearly a year later with my 50, standing inside this giant green Jell-o. I don't know how many people were there, but it was numbering in the dozens. Probably over 50, at least.

The lag was not actually that bad. I turned my particle effects down and kept on truckin'. The raid leaders were very well-organized and things went without a hitch. Instead of taking hours, it took about 40 minutes or so. Our team got dinged a few times when Hami got angry but no one was ever defeated. We cleared the mitos (monsters), killed Hami then took out the many resulting buds after (bosses). In the end, I got my Hamidon enhancement (range/damage), two 51 SOs and a training enhancement that will make me invincible!

It was certainly different than any other group experience I've seen in the game, both in terms of the organization required outside of a typical team-up and the sheer number of people involved. The closest I'd seen previous might be a big group beating up on Lusca, the giant octopus.

It wasn't as bad as I thought. I might even do it again. It's nothing I would plan but if I was on and got an invite, I'd probably accept.

It's weird because I found the idea of doing this so unappealing that I avoided it for an entire year.

No real point to the story, just felt like sharing. :yay:

[jackrabbit]

pics!

You filthy raider!

[Circuit]

I'm sorta the opposite of you in regards to Hamidon. I wanted to join in on a raid for a long time, but after doing it once decided I never wanted to again. I had to turn particles off completely and with so many people, Hamidon was invisible because the game was just trying to draw too many things at once. In fact, the trick the Hamidon veterans told to everyone was for a controller to send a pet in that would target Hami and that would allow everyone else to target him by targeting the pet. And then there were the constant healing spams, which just made the whole screen full of green numbers most of the time.

Back when I did it, defeating him required around 100 people and several still died. The large majority of the fight consisted of killing all the mitos surrounding the nucleus. As a tanker, it wasn't exactly a fun fest since they were all out of my range and I had to just keep superjumping and pulling off melee moves in the air.

Maybe it was mostly due to Hami being invisible because of technical issues with the game, but the whole thing just didn't seem all that exciting to me. This was supposed to be the biggest, baddest thing in the game and it was nothing more than a giant blob with mean bubbles shocking you the whole time. When he dies, he's just gone. No monstrous gurgling noises or anything. If there's one thing CoH has always lacked, it's any sort of dramatic effect on anything you do. The Striga Task Force did a pretty good job of giving you a good, interesting storyline and sending you to unique settings tailored specifically for the TF, but the ending was just sort of an ending. I want a big explosion or dramatic music or, at the very least, arch-villains that actually have voice actors behind the things they say while you're fighting them. That said, I still want to see what's up with the floaty ball fortresses in the Shadow Shard. :)

[Creole Ned]

There's a big explosion at the end of the Hess TF if you don't get out in time. :) But I know what you mean.

Technically, I saw none of the issues people complain about in the raid. The raid leader did repeat the advice to target off pets if you could no longer see Hami, but that never happened for me.

I took two screenshots and count at least 40 people in one shortly after Hami was defeated but there were two large groups, so it was more than that.

jackrabbit, Hami is simply a giant green translucent blob with a giant purple oval whatsit in the middle. Not much to look at but he's more than happy to one-shot you and your team if you poke him the wrong way.

Here's a pic during the "hold" part of the raid. The people here are all throwing holds onto Hami. Everything has a weird cast to it because you're actually standing in Hami's goo at this point:

http://creolened.com/images/hami_holding.jpg

[jackrabbit]

refund, please.

;)