Saturday 11 April 2009

Double Time

SirDarth was out relatively early today to keep working on Stavanic's horse.  It was now approaching level 31, when it would be possible to give Darth all thirty levels of the pet Armour Increase buff, and, with fingers and toes crossed, head back to the big, bad Berserkers.  Would his +6 armour and shield, and the maximum pet buff, be enough to keep him alive?

While he was getting the last pet points he needed, Zenderfly came online, and added herself to Darth's Friends list.  She has been busy over on the Cariae server, and has even done one of the new-style monster combo parties - which apparently cost 38 million to get into, and lasted two and a half hours.

She has started one of the special "phoenix" characters that one is awarded when a character reaches level 100 - the "phoenix ticket" only cost 120 million apparently, so it can't be quite as rare a drop now as it was a few weeks back.  She was asking if I had some armour, and a +15 weapon, to lend this new sorcerer.  I did manage to find a +6 30/32 armour set, and passed it over, but drew a blank on the weapon front...checking later, I see that my level 25 rogue over there only has a +8 level 29 crossbow, so that would probably be the best I could find.  For some reason she traded the armour set back to me, perhaps it will be a while before he is high enough in level to wear it

Her healer, Itura, is now the guild master of Norcaine over on Cariae, I don't know what if anything she has planned, but it will be interesting to find out.  I did a "fox test" while we were chatting outside the gate (to get away from the spammers), and it came up 2 experience and 2 skill experience, which seemed promising.  Double-checking when I was back on Auzura confirmed that this wasn't just confined to one server, we had got double experience and skill exp switched on - and looking at Darth's screen, the pet points were going up two at a time as well!  A general unannounced celebration of Easter, perhaps, or an apology for our recent disconnections and downtimes.

SirDarth got set up with the Berserkers, and his health bar, while it wavered, never seemed to fall by much more than a couple of hundred, much to my relief.  So I was free to turn my attention to my rogue, Rage (well, RAGE actually), and go out to the Poison Mists.  Since BasheR was about, there was the hope that Kamira would show up, but she never arrived - he did fight her a few times on other servers, but didn't get any good drops.

So, with the triple-double, Rage did pretty well in the morning session, going up 83.41%, 105 skill points, and 2490 pet points.  This meant she was almost ready for her new armour set, so it was a matter of transferring Kaerella's old +4 40/42 set to her, and having Collector Ryu change it from healer Dawn to rogue Shadow armour, for 356,400 gold.  Rather than interrupt Darth's work in Merac, Kae rode down and traded the armour across to him, and then Rage in turn rode down and was given it.  As Rage was carrying a number of accessories, I looked through them and found quite a good defensive-type one, and gave it to Darth, increasing his physical defence stat by 2 to 951.  With the way his health bar wavered, every little bit helps.

Rage's afternoon session didn't take long to get her to level 36, so that she was able to wear the gloves, shirt and pants from the new set, moving her physical defence from 585 to 613.  Later, wearing the full set brought the figure up to 638.  Her experience gain was pretty similar to the morning session, on 83.43%; the skill points gained were a bit more, at 132, though, since getting a level nearer to a monster increases the amount of skill exp per kill, and also decreases the percentage experience gain per kill.  2824 pet points is probably the most reliable indicator that the afternoon session was a bit longer than the morning's - enough points to get her horse to level 26.

The evening session made full use of the continuing double stuff; I did have to share the Elite Poison Mist a little, mostly with a specialist sorcerer called Apherion (well, apherion), who eventually got a bit chatty.  He did venture to the south of Dratan, as the monster-showing map puts a picture of an Elite Poison Mist down there, but soon returned, not having found any.  An Elite Goblin at level 49, yes, but a bit high for us as yet.

The evening session was suitably lengthy, and ended up with Rage having reached level 37, and her pet horse (as opposed to her mount) reaching level 27.  113.00% was the experience gain, along with 226 skill points and 4598 pet points... meaning today's grand totals were 279.84% experience, 463 sp, and 9912 pet points.  Quite a step forward!  I don't have a level 41 weapon for Rage to start using, so, like Kaerella before her, she is likely to have to continue with her current level 37 +13 one, until at level 41 she can move on to a level 45 +15 crossbow - once Collector Ryu has changed Kae's old bow into a suitable rogue weapon, that is.

SirDarth got Stavanic's horse halfway through level 33 by the end of the day, which shows how useful the double pet experience all day was; fingers crossed that it continues on Sunday.  Now that the physical defence buff is maximised, the only slightly useful buff for Darth will be the one that increases his maximum health.  SirPerivale had a couple of shorter sessions, which were enough to get his horse up to level 27, so that he can at least fight Butchers without a risk of them killing him now.  With the harder-hitting monsters it is going to be difficult to afk-level pets from early on, though, so it's lucky that my main project, to get Kaerella, Rage, MistressDomina, MrChuckNorris, and SirDarth all their own level 37 mounts, is approaching its conclusion.

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