Cove with Cordovan

This last week, our little Friday night guild run had a surprise visitor - Cordovan.  Seems that Evennote was talking with him earlier about setting up her "PvP with Cordovan" event and invited him out to run with us.  So he did.  And even though Cove is back and is running through July 6th (see what I did there?), the original plan was to run some e3BC.  But for some reason, Cordovan could not enter an epic instance, even though he was running on a L20 cleric.  Next, someone suggested Wheloon, but again, Cordovan could not enter an epic instance.  {And this is why people are asking that ALL epic content not have a minimum lower level requirement - other than "must be epic" (L20+), of course.}


Then the "let's run Cove" suggestion was thrown out, so we did.  Cove happened to be open when we got there, and everyone had a compass, so in we went.  I was running on my L22 Arty, which was the highest level toon in our little group of 4 (the others being L21 and Cordovan, as stated earlier, L20) - Cordovan suggested a level 23 instance, to which I promptly gave one of my standard responses of, "Sure - what's the worse that can happen?  We all die."  Which is no big deal, seeing as how none of us were running perma-death toons.  The run went well, getting our quota within about 5 minutes.  Unfortunately, the progenitor crystal was down by the "bowling alley", and we had laid a line down to the waterfall.  None of us had a clear map for this run, so we couldn't just see it upon entering.  We made an effort to get over to it, but didn't make it.  I did, however, spend that run clearing the map so we could see where it was next time.

Upon exiting, I ran over to see how much longer we had until this instance closed and saw "1 minute".  Just as I ran back over to the door, it closed.  So really, much less than 1 minute it turned out.  Oh well.  So we ran around the public area killing mobs, gather map pieces, and turning them in.  Managed to get one treasure map and kill a couple of red names.

Next opening, in we went again on L23.  Immediately saw the progenitor crystal was (again) by the bowling alley, but this time, started building down to it.  Just as the Kobolds are approaching the area, I see a couple turn around and run back (GRRR!!!  Stupid Kobolds...).  Adjust placement of the torch they got confused at, and finally one picks it up and starts heading back.  By this time, we have about 3 minutes remaining and...nobody has haste.  Great.  I play escort and run with the Kobold, in case any mobs decide to spawn (which of course they do, but they did not hinder the runner).  We managed to get to the first intersection when time runs out.  BAH!  Just another 30-seconds or so was all we needed.

Well, before we could go back in, Cordovan said he had to go (it was a bit after midnight, Eastern time), so we said our 'good nights' and 'thanks' and then we headed back in, sans Cordovan.  This time, we went in on L22 and the progenitor crystal was over by the waterfall.  Woohoo!  That's an easier line to lay down - much shorter.  I cleared the return path, because despite having a nice line of torches, the progenitor crystal runner will ALWAYS take the same route back to the top and it DOES NOT follow the torch line we had laid out.  A few mobs here and there hinder the return, but nothing we couldn't handle, so YAY!  Finally!  We got one back to the top for a nice, little 100 crystal bonus.  It was our best run of the night (sorry you missed it Cordo - it just works out that way, sometimes).

This was not the first time we had run with Cordovan.  Last year, as an incentive for donating to the Movember campaign, he had offered up a "Nekkid Tempest Spine with Cordovan" run.  Both our Thelanis guild and Cannith guild - and others - we able to take him up on that.  We were grossly over level for the L10 raid (even for an elite run), but we had fun anyway.

And that's always the point ("having fun", in case you missed it).