Equinox

SirDarth and SirPerivale got an earlier start than I'd intended today.  I've come down with a cold, so am not at my brightest, with a rather broken night, and absent-mindedly got up an hour early - or a week or so early, as the switch to "British Summer Time" fairly soon will do the same thing.  I assumed the bathroom clock's battery was giving out, was surprised to see that the newspaper hadn't arrived, and then finally noticed that the radio presenter hadn't changed, sigh...

 Anyway, SirPerivale has had a busy day working on Stavanic's pony - or horse, as she became in the early evening when she reached level 16.  SirDarth worked on Kae's blue horse for the first half of the morning, and over the food breaks, and managed to get him to level 30 just before 5:30pm, UK time, so there's just one more level before he becomes mountable...though level 37 is the aim of course.

In the morning Kaerella managed, with the help of those Elite Frenzied Berserkers, to get the 10% she needed to reach level 43 - despite having to go to get rid of one of those level 50 Pandora Beasts, released when Peri opened a nearby box!  This one dropped 106,400 gold, which Peri and Kae shared, as they were already in a party for "solo party" purposes, and Peri was close by when Kae made the kill.  After that Kae used a memory scroll to get back to the EFBs, and I thought Peri was bugged or something, as he started to kill Butchers bare-handed at quite a speed.  I soon noticed that he'd been in range when Kae had used horse buffs, so that was what had increased his attack so much.  Luckily it wore off fairly quickly.

Stavanic was having bug problems - his rogue Kaylie was no longer in his DeathBringers guild, and although she came to Merac and the Butchers to get re-recruited by SirPerivale, it wouldn't "take", so she remains guildless.  Apparently her memory scrolls have lost the memorised locations, too.  I noticed that the DeathBringers guild roster includes the un-named level 0 titan as guild master, too, which is a pretty common bug.

After lunch, Kaerella used her four new stat points to finally get her Constitution to 17, which meant she could at last get the level 38 passive skill Survival Training (for 293 skill points), increasing her defence rating by 100; now she needs to get her Dexterity up to 52 for the level 44 skill Poison Arrow, which will take until level 47.  With 17 stat points each in Constitution and Intelligence, it's now Dexterity all the way, which makes sense for an archer.

The Elite Frenzied Berserkers are now green-named for Kaerella, so it is time to bid them a fond farewell - until my other characters reach an appropriate level, anyway.  So with her extra defence, Kae went out to Dratan and the Giants, and made an attempt on the Elite Arcane Giant, in fact, but his extra hit points proved too much, he reached Kae with way too much health remaining even using Slowshot, and Kae was lucky to escape with her life.  Once I'd healed myself I ventured near again, but what I'd heard is true, to avoid people doing the more extreme kinds of power-levelling for their friends, if you leave a monster's immediate area its health resets to 100%.

After killing a few giants, I moved over to Maargadum Jail, and settled in there for a while - until I had a call from one of the people I'd teamed with yesterday, to go to the Sphinx types.  It seemed that most of the same people were along, though I was the only healer; it wasn't an awfully long session, which was just as well as my food break was coming up.  The afternoon had only added 18.81%, but at least it was fairly varied.

The evening session started with Jail, and then again I got the call to go to Sphinx Fighter central.  This session was a bit longer, again spearheaded by the titan Morean.  The level 36 specialist sorcerer CZnaruto2 (from the Czech Republic of course) decided to apply to join Norcaine, so I clicked the "accept" button, though was too busy running and healing, and even sometimes using the bow, and remembering to redo the horse buffs when necessary, that I don't think I said anything at all.  His brother CZnaruto6, a level 25 sorcerer (though he mentioned he has a titan too) also asked to join, it was ages before I could do more than type "sry a bit busy here", but after we finished, and I was back in Dratan City, he joined Norcaine too.  I don't know what they are expecting, we'll see if they decide to stick around - #2 did actually ask to be kicked a little later, I'm not sure if that is temporary or not.

After a recovery period, I got the summons to head to the Sphinxes again, and the party was pretty similar - we started with seven or eight, but we ended with just three, and one of them was afk.  The gold dropped was pretty good; at one stage I did get a sorcerer weapon, but somebody wanted it, so bought it, I think he put about 260,000 gold in the trading box, I was a bit too busy to really take much notice.  I did die once, but was able to use my skill point restoration scroll, and trigger a new one.  I seemed to do a lot of running around being chased by Sphinx Fighters, spamming Heal Party to try and keep everyone, myself included, alive.

So, that was enough excitement for one day.  The evening session added 29.68% and (mainly from Maargadum Jail) 14 skill points, so that Kae's gain for the day had reached 59.32% experience, and 45 skill points - minus the ones invested in that extra defence skill, of course.

Fighting the Sphinx types does get a bit hectic, and I can't say I'm too happy being the only source of healing, because as an archer rather than a cleric I am a bit limited in what I can do.  Hopefully it will soon be time to move on to the Tomb of Theos; the Screaming Zombies may be level 100, but at least you only get, if you are careful, one at a time.