SirDarth and SirPerivale were both busy this morning, though not starting particularly early, of course. Stavanic came on just before lunch to enquire how his horse was getting on, and was happy to know that yesterday's double experience, skill exp, and pet points (which ended last night at about 11:00pm UK time) had got his horse up to level 33... and a few minutes later, level 34 was attained.
I did urge him to let me continue to level 35, which would have taken another day, but Steve was eager to get his hands on his mount, and go out and farm Bandits and Berserkers, so the exchange was made. He kindly passed over 2.5 million in gold as a reward, which is a lot less than the actual value of a mount, of course, but is probably all he could afford and a nice gesture.
No fighting at all got done during the morning - well, not by me, anyway. BasheR managed to sell a large number of experience boosters at 1.35 million each, which is a symptom of the way prices are heading, perhaps driven by the Merchant House system, where some scary prices are being asked. He is now pretty rich in-game, but almost out of aeria points again.
My rogue Rage had a fairly short session out at the Poison Mists this afternoon, much of it in a combat party with a level 35 titan, Darkmager. He did mention the possibility of going to the Sphinx Fighters and teaming with one or two more people there, but I didn't think Rage was high enough level for that yet - fine when Snare worked, perhaps, but that is only 70% of the time.
Once Rage had reached level 38 I went back to Randol, and spent 586 skill points on two new attack skills. Flame Arrow seems useful, "an attack that causes the target to 'burn' and lose mana" - it adds 400% to the regular attack, though removing 50 mana doesn't seem very important. Piercing, on the other hand, is an "area of attack" skill, though the (up to three) targets have to be in a straight line. The normal attack is multiplied by 250%.
Rather recklessly, I decided that now that Rage was level 38 she ought to be able to ride out to the Tomb of Theos - but her armour just wasn't good enough, and the level 57 Masters of Secret Technique, with their ranged magic attack, killed her. I didn't give up, though, I tried a different route with, I thought, less of that particular monster along the way - and got killed again. So, I logged Kaerella in, and she used a memory scroll to move to the Tomb entrance, then used one of five Summon books she had to bring Rage to her painlessly.
So, that worked nicely, but I then had the bright idea of Rage riding back from there to the area with the Sphinx Fighters, and Sphinx Speer Men... and, wouldn't you know it, there were too many of the aggressive and hard-hitting Sphinx Fighters, and a third resurrection scroll got used. I know this is the time of year for death and resurrection, but Rage was rather taking things to extremes...
Rage also stopped off in Merac, and found some quests waiting - mainly taking messages and items from one NPC to another, but there was a quest to get ten red toenails from the Gnolls, so she rode down towards their lair, stopping off at the four Elite Frenzied Berserkers to get that spot, at least, safely onto her memory scroll. By the end of the afternoon Rage had added 20.01% experience, 33 skill points, and 739 pet points.
Some trading across of items took place after that, with MistressDomino gaining recently acquired loot for resale - and I took the opportunity to move some more resurrection scrolls across from Kae to Rage, too! I also passed a pan flute across to SirPerivale, who was otherwise out of a job, since SirDarth had taken over levelling what ought eventually to be his mount.
Peri went out to the entrance to Velpist Temple in Juno, to see how, with the recent augmentations to monster attack power, he'd stand up to the locals. Drakes, at level 18, are still green-named for him, so die rather quickly; Treants, at level 26, are orange-named, and seem to last almost as long as the Butchers, though it is a matter of attempting to lure one of them clear of their spawning area, killing any extras, before being able to leave Peri to it... and with no pet buff yet, his health bar does fluctuate a little. The Treants aren't ideal, but do seem Peri's best bet if he does need to continue raising any pets from level one. He got the new pony up to level three, allowing two levels of Armour Increase, which will add 30 to his defence...at least, it will add that much when the pony's Sympathy reaches 100%, it starts at only 50% and is a bit slow to rise, at the moment it is only at 67%, so only 20 will get added to his defence to begin with.
Rage went across to the Poison Mists again, and made a combat party with the titan Darkmager and the sorcerer Apherion, which worked pretty well, except that there aren't really enough Poison Mists there for all three party members to stay close enough together all the time to get the full benefit of a combat party. After a while, Darkmager wanted to move across to the Sphinx Fighters, and we ended up agreeing, though I'd said that I didn't really want to head there until I was level 41, with a level 45 crossbow to use. Mounting up, I followed Darkmager pretty closely, moving west across from where we were rather than starting from town. It was risky stuff, I didn't notice my health was down to about a third at one stage until Darkmager stopped in a safe spot. He advised me to save the position to my scroll every now and again, which was sensible I guess but less than reassuring.
We stopped just past the Dragons, to let Apherion catch up, and I watched her dot move across the map towards us. At last she came into view - but she was followed by three Dragons, breathing fire! I'm not sure that Darkmager wasn't actually afk at that moment, but it was probably lucky for the two of us that she was killed before she quite reached us, so that the Dragons gave up their chase. She respawned back in town, and had to reboot her computer, so left the party.
The route we'd taken avoided the Masters of Secret Technique, thankfully, and Darkmager knew the way to the usual spot to battle the Sphinx Fighters from, which, coming from this direction, only involved passing a very few of them - and we arrived safely. How a level 36 titan and a level 38 rogue could actually engage a level 63 Fighter, though, I wasn't sure, but we managed a few safely, with me retreating behind the handy bit of fencing at the end if my Snare failed. Darkmager had a stun skill too, so, generally, it worked okay, particularly when I could add Flame Arrow into the mix.
We didn't stay long as Darkmager wanted to get to the Quiz in good time. I took Rage and Kae along, with BasheR arriving with seconds to spare before the start, and just clicking on Kae as he was going to be afk. The questions were the ones we know and love, so all went smoothly, though Bash, as the third person in the conga-chain, was a bit slow to move to the correct side two or three times, even though I was careful to react and move as quickly as possible.
An upgrade event was announced after the Quiz, and I decided that it would be a good idea to increase SirDarth's defence a bit. I found a package with some Runes of Protection in it in my records, gifted them to the Kae account, and, as runes can't be traded, made a knight called BaronIce specially. Darth traded his +6 shield across - and, after suitable additions, including two or three failures, received it back moved on to +13, which means it adds 135 defence to its basic 96. With 5 Runes of Protection left I decided to try and upgrade his armour too, or as much of it as I could, but that was not so successful, and I ended up with only two pieces, the leggings and the plate mail, moved on from +6 to +7. Still, it does mean that Darth's defence now is 806, plus whatever buff he can get from his pet's Armour Increase buff, so that the current 27 levels of the buff mean a total defence of 1026, which is more than enough to fight Berserkers with. Until they next do an update, that is...
After Darth went down to fight his Berserker, a Pandora Beast spawned from a Box close by, and Kaerella came down to deal with it, riding past a couple of groups of the mass-spawned Beasts. They wouldn't give Kae much experience, so Rage briefly logged in to teleport to Merac and kill a few, but her brief outing only added 1.37%, to make the evening session for her 25.07% experience, 35 skill points, and 855 pet points. That meant that Rage was up 45.08% in all today, plus 68 skill points (unless one counts the 586 I invested in those two skills) and 1594 pet points.
And SirDarth got his horse, his own mount-to-be, up to level 29 before my rather late logging out time. It's good that he can fight a Berserker now rather than a succession of Butchers, though his upgrade was a bit expensive.
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