The Faux Pas

At 11:22am UK time, I wandered out of Recluse's Victory, having filled up on Recipes and Salvage.

I flew across Grandville, over the statue. Then I realised what the time was. The previous night, Ewokspy from badgehunter.com had verified my badges, and we both briefly mentioned how hunting the Flier for the Heatseeker badge had turned from frustrating to simple despair.

So I turned back. I checked /whoall, and it turned out I was alone in Grandville. That meant that possibly, I had just respawned the zone. There was some remote chance of a Flier spawn, under such quiet conditions.

I flew to Wiggy the Brit, and waited. Time passed. It was 11:25am, then 11:30am. I figured that as usual, nothing was going to happen.

In a final moment of anger, I flew up to the Hanger, and took a good look inside. Nothing. For a moment I decided that the problem with the Flier might be that it gets stuck in the Hanger launch bay, so I activated Fly, and pressed against the red force field to catch a glimpse down the launch hole.

Nothing.

For a joke, I typed out in Local Chat "Well what, are you gonna make me wait ANOTHER none months?"

The Flier immediately appeared.

I didn't know what to do. As it exited the Hanger, I actually flew inside from the force of my momentum, and became trapped on the wrong side of the force field. I watched the Flier depart, heading east as usual, and panicked.

It was time to do something. I spammed Coalition, Help, Arena, Broadcast, and all the Global channels with something like "FLIEERRRRRRR". Then I remembered to type /stuck, and released myself from the Hanger to give chase.

I was lucky. The Flier (Arachnos Flier Delta) had landed in the eastern courtyard. Thanks to Issue 9, a tiny few of the servers most powerful villains were still online completing sales at the BMT, and within a few minutes (by the time of the second landing) I almost had a full team and we were all in hot pursuit.

But the Flier hits pretty hard, and killed a few of us as we engaged it in bits and pieces. It headed west from the courtyard to the north west Gutter, then stopped again in the north where we gave it a good pounding before it took off again with shields up. In the north, we actually hurt it.

Then it stopped in the north east, just inside the city walls. It was already well into daylight, and I thought for sure that it was going to simply vanish at any moment. I didn't have very high hopes for defeating it, despite this being my first opportunity since last August.

In the east, we dropped it to 3/4 HP before it took off. I knew for certain that it would only stop once more on the beach, if it was even going to stop at all. By this time there was a chatter of confusion on broadcast, with people slowly appearing to help out for their Heatseeker badge but not knowing where to go or what to do.

The Flier landed on the south east beach, the final stop for Delta. I called out that it was now, or never. The few of us around brought absolutely everything we had right down on top if it as a final, desperate effort to kill it.

For a moment, I actually thought we might win. I summoned my Shivan, Snowman, Mini-Blaster, temp power pets and even threw my only rock at it, trying to take it out. The other villains were fantastic, wiping out scores of Bane Spider bosses in seconds and buffing us while debuffing the Flier with all the powers they could muster.

But, in the end, it simply wasn't enough. Without multiple -Fly, we managed to drop Delta to around 35% HP (and falling fast) before it took off for its departure flight, heading east.

Far faster than any of us, it climbed extremely high into the air, where only a few could follow.

I chased that thing straight into the sky with SB and multiple buffs, spamming all the attacks and holds I had trying to knock it back to the ground. Even with Domination, Force of Nature, Megalomaniac, nine yellows and the drive of nine months worth of fruitless hunting behind me, I just could not catch it in time.

At maximum altitude, at the eastern border of the zone, it vanished.

I've had a chance to correct the mistake I made last August, when slow zoning into Grandville denied me Heatseeker by all of 3 or 4 seconds. After such a long time, after so much pointless searching, I failed again.

I'll return to watching the skies, and hoping that the Devs feel some sort of mercy about this GM that has been handed on a plate to the Heroes while Villains live an die over hearing so much as the slightest clue that it might just maybe have spawned somwhere, sometime recently, within Grandville.

With all the excitement, I didn't really have a chance to take pictures while attacking the Flier. All I got was this:

http://www.the-faux-pas.org.uk/fliertoday1.jpg

and a final shot (my new desktop wallpaper) of a heavily debuffed Flier retreating while I pursue, incandescent, willing the thing to die with my very mind:

http://www.the-faux-pas.org.uk/fliertoday2.jpg

The Flier does exist, and still spawns. Sometimes. It doesn't require Bane Spider or Arachnoid deaths. All it requires is an ironically quiet server, and luck.

I'll catch it one day. But sadly, not today.