My start today was delayed until the evening, as happens on a Sunday every month or so; so not even SirDarth had the opportunity to do any horse-levelling until gone six in the evening. The horse started the evening session pretty high up in level 35, though, so had attained level 36 before the regular Sunday Quiz interrupted him.
I didn't have room to mention yesterday that xXAcheronXx was a member of the XxSNEAKYFREAKSxX guild, and suggested that Rage might join them. The idea was a little tempting, though as xXxDELUXxXx was still in the party at that stage, and put in a counter-bid for his "LastHope" guild, nothing definite seemed to happen. These things need a guild master or guild adviser to be located, anyway, so seldom happen instantaneously. Acheron seemed a good person to play with, despite the number of sitting-down "mana breaks" he liked to take.
The Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men didn't drop any Easter Eggs for us yesterday (though Rage did get one today, as yet unopened), unlike the Prokion Temple orcs for example, but on Friday Chuck did pretty well, for a change - instead of the usual 50 gold, 10 herb trunks, or on one occasion 500 gold, he got a Magic Stone accessory, which is a standard type of accessory that one does get as a normal drop...the difference with this one was that it had no enhancing properties at all! But he also got a heaven stone from one, and a 168 hour potion to add 30% to his experience gain... a whole week's worth. Not something Chuck wants to use yet, but when he has all his skill points and wants to level up, it is sure to come in handy. It's in his storage warehouse at the moment, I assume that it can't be traded across to a different character, like Rage, though.
The evening session wasn't, with its late start and early finish for the Quiz, that much of a marathon, but Rage certainly kept busy. To start with, she visited Merac to see if there were any new quests - and there were a couple to take care of, one involving killing 25 Gnoll Soldiers, and the other gently introducing her to Maargadum Jail by asking her to collect five Spiked Canine skins.
Both those quests were pretty straightforward; just as I'd got the fourth Spiked Canine skin, though, Darkmager got in touch, asking me to come over to the Sphinx Fighters - which, once I'd got the last skin and my quest rewards, I did.
The place on Auzura-3 was pretty busy. The leader of the party Darkmager was in, however, the knight LexyPooh, decided that their party was "full"... so I just fought the Sphinx Fighters and Speer Men solo for a while. Darkmager intended, I think, to get his level, then leave the big party, go back to town, and then return and team up with me, but that last part never happened, though he was apparently still online somewhere.
After a while I got an invitation from xXxDELUXxXx to join him - once I'd established that he was on sub-server six, I moved across, and partied with him, currently level 37, and his fellow titan, the level 49 Cloud. While my health did get knocked back a couple of times, we did pretty well, concentrating mainly on the Elite Speer Man. By the time Cloud in particular had got some mana back, sitting down and using a fairly large mana pot, usually the Elite had respawned. Why they don't use mana pots while fighting, I'm not sure.
By the time the Quiz was getting near, and we decided to call it a day, Rage had managed to add 40.89%, which was pretty good, I think - about half of it from the soloing, just about. The 7 skill points must have come from those quests in Merac - and 801 pet points got added. too. Delux and Cloud were talking of returning after the Quiz, I hope they didn't, as, well, conditions weren't very good then.
Kaerella and MistressDomino went to the Quiz on Auzura-3... but, horror of horrors, it was an all-new set of questions! Luckily, the GMs had kindly left the Quiz Room door "open", so that, when everyone got respawned in town for thinking that the best forum for general discussion was "general" rather than "open", and then for not knowing how many eyes the Barren Eise has (5 or 6?), we were able to run back to the Domain Merchant, and re-enter. I got a message from Ratel saying "how did u do with quiz?" - and while I couldn't type much, being alert for the next question, I did say "a few runs back in so far, lol"... but poor Ratty didn't take the hint, and didn't try to re-enter on his sub-server. As it was, I missed out on the 10 toolaids, as I either got question ten wrong or wasn't back in in time for it, but both Kae and MD got the 10 moonstones - and the 15 heaven stones.
Sadly, the pressure on the servers was starting to tell; some sub-servers had disconnections, one at question 17 apparently so people missed out on the heaven stones; Auzura-3 had been lucky. People logging their characters in started to get a black screen instead of appearing in Randol, after log-in and character selection. An "upgrade event" was begun, which always adds greatly to the server workload - combine that with people logging out and back in to leave the Quiz Room, and using the warehouse to put their winnings away, or buying and selling heaven stones, and it wasn't surprising that there were problems.
In the shoutbox, game sages were having to say "yes, be patient, I have a black screen too" - the upgrade event was halted, to allow people to log in. I'd managed to get SirDarth back to work - but then there was a mass disconnection, possibly an attempt to reboot the servers and hopefully get things working properly. While GM Moose did show up in the shoutbox, to be sworn at by one unhappy player, the comments were moving too fast to keep track of. Kaerella did finally manage to log back in, to put her Quiz prizes away, but trying any upgrading seemed a bad idea, as that was probably switched off for a while still. And then there was another disconnection, this time announced, ending a curiously quiet time for in-game GM messages: "Going to reboot the servers to get things going again - 10 Seconds", followed by "Alright servers going to reboot."
SirDarth managed to get back in, and started some more pet levelling, but by then it was getting late, and for me it had been a long day. A little later a new announcement came up: "Rather than cancelling the upgrade event the following percentage will be 175% for 10 minutes then the event will close - we cannot risk anymore than that - thank you for understanding."
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