Keep in mind everything below is at level cap 16. The raid came out when the cap was 14, but I started playing in 2008 right after they increased the cap to 16.... No past lives, there was no self healing in the game AT ALL unlike now, enhancement trees didn't exist (the old enhancement system is very hard to explain, but they weren't nearly as powerful as they are today), no heroic durability changes so HP was much lower, etc.... Having 200 HP on a sorc/cleric at cap was normal, and melee HP ranges were 300-400 (except barbs who were 450-500). Keep all this in mind.
Now for how the raid used to be:
- The first phase was about the same.... an easy beat down to 66% HP.
- Once there, 6 out of the 12 party members would instantly get teleported into one of the puzzles (2 each)... there were no ddoors that popped up, so no "scouting." Strictly a random teleport. The remaining 6 would be left behind to wait and kill trash.
- To prevent all newbies from being in a puzzle they didn't know how to solve, the party leader would select 6 people (the newbies) to die during the first phase. We waited until they died before beating down the Abbot.
- Once they were dead, each of the 6 remaining people (who knew how to do all puzzles) would be designated to pick up 1 persons' soul stone each. This ensured 6 knowledgeable players would be distributed evenly between the puzzles.
- The people would stay dead in the ice puzzle and goggles until the living people completed it. We didn't want any distractions. The dead people in roids would be rezzed to help with throwing
- Puzzles were different
- There were no such thing as "blue" tiles in goggles.... there were no safe tiles and every tile disappeared... some runs goggles became very hard because there was no "straightforward" way across. Lots of raid failures because of goggles.
- Ice water was instant death.
- Unlike now where it just does a ton of damage, back then as soon as you touched it you were given a death effect. It didn't matter how much resist or HP you had, as soon as you touched the water you instantly went to -10 HP.
- Because the wands can sometimes lag/bug out.... if that happened then *ding* instant raid failure.
- The end fight was much harder
- Inferno did ~100-200 per tick before resistance (remember how people only had 200-400 HP?). This meant you'd die in 2-3 ticks of inferno.
- Inferno lasted 20 seconds instead of the current 15 seconds. This meant that unlike today where you can hop on 1 ice island and wait it out... instead the entire party of 12 people had to hop on one ice island, have someone wait 7 seconds, cast another ice island, and the whole party hop on to that one. Yeah.... that wasn't happening.
- Instead, you would have to heal through it, but back then (I think it's not the same now), inferno would also drain spell points. So clerics would often drink 15-20 Major Mana pots per run (also remember the DDO store didn't exist at this point and Mana Pots were very rare and expensive)
- Not during my tenure in this game, but back around the time it originally released you also got a debuff of -10 to all stats when you died. Remember, the level cap was 14, the largest Ability Tomes there was were +2 (and even those were really rare outside of 1750 Favor [which was also very hard to get because there weren't many quests in the game]), no past lives, no completionist, max +6 items.... meaning you'd be helpless for the rest of the raid and a single death might as well been "permadeath" for the duration of the raid. There were NO completions of this version of the raid, and this was reverted before I started playing.
The end fight above of fighting through the end fight and inferno was what the high tier end game guilds did. I was part of a group of 6-8 people who ran it every week and pugged the rest (so good luck doing that).
What we ended up doing is getting as much sorcs and wizards as we could. Back then persistant spells wouldn't disappear upon your death (i.e. Wall of Fire and Ottos sphere of dancing lasted their entire duration even if you died). Also, Wall of Fire could be extended.... so instead of lasting 30 seconds like it does today, it lasted 30 seconds +6 per caster level (i.e. 4:12 at level 16 with extend). Additonally, spell criticals were different. A spell crit was calculated upon cast, not upon damage. So unlike now where you cast a fireball and hit 10 mobs and get a crit on 4 of them, back then your entire fireball was a crit and you crit everything. This is important. Because unlike today where with Wall of Fire a crit is calculated each "tick", it used to be calculated whenever you cast the spell.... so if you got a crit Wall of Fire, EVERY tick for the entire 4 minutes and 12 seconds would be a crit. Keep this in mind for the paragraph below.
Now.... the Abbot has a Mantle of Invulnerability that makes him immune to level 4 spells and below. However, that mantle only lasts for 1 hour. So what we would do is do all the puzzles, then all go afk or chill and chat for 45-50 minutes until his mantle ran out. It was really fun and we all got to know eachother really well over the months we'd run the raid every week. Once the mantle was down we'd send 1 sorc/wiz down at a time and start nuking and firewalling him. We'd really hope to get a crit firewall off. We did this because there was no way in hell we'd survive an inferno as a party. So we'd send one person down at a time hoping to get a crit Wall of Fire and last as long as you could until inferno killed you. Once the Wall of Fire ran out, the next sorc/wiz would go down.
It was really fun and really epic, I had a lot of great nights back then.
Here's a link to the DDO wiki on the changes, and here's a video of people completing this raid when the cap was 14 (note, this is not me or anyone I know in the video.... just something I watched many years ago). Keep in mind this is a top tier raiding guild so their tactics might be a little different than I described with my semi pug group.
DDO Wiki:
https://ddowiki.com/page/Ascension_Chamber/Raid_History
