Double - Mining?

That AVG installation decided that it wasn't properly installed, and couldn't even find its files to repair them, so I had to uninstall and reinstall it - what it will decide tomorrow, I daren't speculate.  Luckily I'd put SirDarth on the newer computer, so his pet-levelling activities in the morning weren't delayed by the general fun, frolics, and restarts.

Later on Darth moved across to the older computer, and Rage was able to do some mining - and discovered that harvesting had been turned up to double.  Sadly this didn't mean that using a tool aid would give 54 rather than 27 quality stones, but every time one stone would normally have been picked up, Rage got two instead.  Auzura had lost its "recommended" status, so there were no new "blessed rewards" being dropped.

We also had double skill exp switched on, apparently as an apology for another unscheduled downtime last night after I'd logged off, so when I was at last able to play properly, MrChuckNorris was the ideal character to play, since he's my main current skill point farmer.  That favourite Prokion Temple room of mine was free, so he settled in there for the afternoon.  Towards the end another titan turned up, SirEsahc, who, like the previous visitor, was slightly low level for there, but at least had the sense to use a large defence potion and physical defence minerals too.

Just before I logged out for the food break, Chuck stopped fighting and just stood by one of the fire-braziers while I made some notes, and the next time I looked, SirEsahC had vanished, leaving some gold not picked up, so he might have got too many orcs picking on him, and died.  Still, Chuck had added 1852 pet points, and no less than 714 skill points.

The evening was a little more varied, but started with Chuck heading back to Prokion Temple.  After a while Ratel came along to join him, which probably decreased the rate of skill exp gain a little, but he is always good company, and his Temple Knight protection buffs saved a few small health potions.  Ratel and Chuck were joined a bit later by another Norcaine member, the level 24 knight SsnowboardS, who presumably was just curious as to what the deeper parts of the Temple were like.  He ought, we thought, to be okay in the corridor outside our room, which is just Orc Soldiers and Fighters, but he did manage to die once, before he got the hang of racing into the nearest corner when his health got low.

Ratel reached level 33, and went off, following my directions, to the Poison Mists; when Snow logged out, I decided that I was due for a change, and so Chuck logged out too - having added another 1463 pet points and 587 skill points.  1301 skill points in a day seems pretty good to me, thanks to that double skill exp being left on.  Interestingly, the guild chat had reported that, at least in the evening, the double skill exp wasn't on in the Auzura-1 sub-server, but over in Auzura-3 we kept the bonus.

I changed to Rage, and, as I still had the Poison Mists' location on my scroll of memorising, teleported out to Join Ratel there.  In theory, Rage is now a level high for the Mists, but that's close enough, and it was a real luxury not have to keep re-applying the horse buffs, as Ratel kindly kept supplying them.  I got a level 37 crossbow as a drop, and was saying that I generally sold them for just below 75,000 gold via the Merchant House, when I noticed that it had been dropped by the Elite Poison Mist, and, checking my inventory, saw that it was +3... so a bit more valuable than the regular ones.

Ratel was talking about borrowing Rage's +13 level 37 weapon when Rage no longer needs it, which will be once she reaches her next level... but some sort of deal with BasheR seems to have superceded that, with him getting a share of a level 33 +15 weapon instead.  That extra two plusses more than compensates for the lower level, so we should see Ratel doing a fair bit more damage now.  And I think the Poison Mists kindly dropped him a new level 37 shield.

There were announcements of Pandora mobs spawning, but we remained untempted; after all, even the level 50 types don't give much greater experience or skill exp than the Mists, and have a distressing tendency to kill people.  Looking on Darth's screen a minute or two later, I saw that he was rather close to a newly-spawned mob of them, so carefully drew him in closer to the cliff.  Luckily nobody inadvertantly lured any of the Pandies in his direction, and it wasn't long before the whole area was cleared out.

Ratel went off to exchange old and new weapons with BasheR, and Rage, after using the last of his Protection buff, decided to call it a night too.  For such a short session, 9.55% experience gain was pretty good, plus 48 skill points and 556 pet points.

Stavanic, after discussing it with Ratel, dropped by to see if there was any way to make an alliance between Norcaine and his DeathBringers guild "official", but we couldn't find any options in the Guild Management screen.  SirPerivale had dropped by, too, after using the last of a skill exp enhancing Blessed Reward by killing some Butchers; he traded some quality stones across to Darth, who traded some tool aids and pickaxes over in return.  With his Divine Shield buff, and Stavanac's defensive horse buff, he was able to pet-level his level three pony for ten minutes or so, the main trick was to know when to stop, as when the buffs ran out, his health was sure to run down rather quickly.

It was about then that Darth's horse reached level 33 at last - and by the end of the evening the horse was, well, at least a little way into the new level...