Power Levelling

The morning started with putting SirDarth and SirPerivale up in Merac with the Butchers to level the two ponies, as has been our habit lately, but after coffee Kaerella replaced SirPerivale on the modern computer, and headed out to the Sphinx Fighters.

However, Kae didn't actually do much, just adding 5.79%, 4 skill points, and 175 pet points, as I got distracted, and ended up playing actively as SirDarth on the older computer instead.  Things didn't begin very promisingly, as a titan called SnOzA approached Darth, and attacked "his" Butcher.  Normally this means that the Butcher dies, leaving the afk pet-levelling character just standing there... but as SnOzA was only level 13, the Butcher changed its target, and killed him.

Like most titans, SnOzA wasn't one to give up easily, and came straight back - not realising that pet levelling characters are usually afk, he asked to join the party, so I transferred leadership across from Kae to Darth, and added him to the party after a little persuasion.

Well, as a new player I felt he deserved some encouragement, so SirDarth and the titan teamed up, and fought the Butchers, with SirDarth always hitting first, and using the Divine Shield buff to keep us healthy.  We even went on down to the Berserkers, and those bandits that were far enough away from their friends not to call in a whole mob of them when attacked.  Going a little further along the road, I did actually attack a level 37 Blood Frenzy, which isn't a good idea when one is only level 22 - I had thought that a level 38 Doom Slayer was just out of range, but it wasn't, and launched its magic attack on me, so we had to run for it.  Luckily the Blood Frenzy gave up the chase, and I was able, with a health pot, to kill the Doom Slayer.  After that excitement it was back to the Berserkers.

SnOzA reached level 16 by the time lunch was due, so that gave him a useful bit of "power levelling", and hopefully his share of the gold dropped will help him to get new armour.  But then it was time to get SirDarth back to the Butchers for some more afk pet-levelling; I'd already replaced Kae with SirPerivale again.  When one of Stavinac's characters came on to enquire, I was able to tell him his horse had moved on to level 16; he's talking of me getting it all the way to 25, but if he wants to go that far some bribery will be needed.

After lunch I moved some items around, including sellable loot to MistressDomino, and quest items, transformation scrolls and production manuals to my knight CALM.  MistressDomina has now got the 30/32 armour set from Kae, but only a +8 level 29 weapon so far.

As SirDarth's current horse-in-training, the one for Stavinac, had reached level 17, I decided to see if Darth could now last okay against a Berserker, since with his bare-knuckle hit of 26 damage a Berserker will last forever, while a Butcher dies in about 15 minutes.  And, with a physical defence rating of 834 including 16 levels of Armour Increase (horse), defence & evasion type accessories, and the +6 armour set and shield, Darth did hang on in there, though his health bar did sometimes fall a little.

But once Kae was back and ready to head for the Sphinx Fighters, BasheR got in touch - he had managed to zoom up all the way to level 70, mainly using the Tomb's level 106 boss-monster type Anubis Spear Men, and was offering to give me a bit of power-levelling too.  So, an offer that couldn't really be refused - I happily agreed, and headed over to the Tomb of Theos.

My attempt to run down to the room with the Anubis Spear Men didn't last long, and that was one resurrection scroll used - the Screaming Zombies hit hard, even if one is just trying to run past them!  BasheR lost his way on his first run, and had to return to the start, after getting involved with the Anubis Archers and their annoying "snare" skill.  But he was kindly able to use a Scroll of Summoning to get me to the right place on his second attempt.

There had been talk of power levelling being thwarted by the last big patch, but apparently that is only if the player being levelled hasn't hurt the monster at all before the higher-level person loses aggro.  Things seemed to work just the same as when Zenderfly power-levelled Barbarienne in that Tomb room on the Cariae server, though as always there is an element of risk there - I used three more resurrection scrolls over the hour, but luckily dying didn't wipe out my Platinum Blessed Iris or my large crit potion.  Usually my death was my own fault, but if BasheR's stun skill Dash failed to work, then things were a bit fraught - I did manage to overcome the odds a couple of times and kill rather than be killed, so things evened out.

Zenderfly had said that an archer was just about the easiest type of character to power-level, with the general ranged attack and the Slow Shot skill, but the Tomb was set on "hard", and Bash didn't find the Anubis Spear Men anything like as easy as when he was power-levelling himself.  His pet died right at the start, so that he lost its buff, and generally my Heal skill was used quite a lot.  I had bought an hour's Party Recall card, for the losing-aggro bit, so he was able to go back to Randol and "unseal" the pet, which helped.

The general procedure was for BasheR to target an Anubis Spear Man, while avoiding the aggressive level 104 Sphinx Fighters (not to be confused with the level 63 ones outside the Tomb) that share the room.  I could also target it from a distance, but we needed to avoid using debuffing skills as that tends to increase the monster's attack power.  I'd use the Recall card, and also trigger an experience booster.  When the Spear Man was down to below about 5% health, Bash would use his stun skill, and then accept the Recall, and quickly leave the party - I'd then use Slow Shot on the dazed Spear Man, and keep shooting until it was dead.  If it wasn't stunned, then hopefully Slow Shot would slow it enough for me to kill it.  Once the Spear Man was dead, we would remake the party, and on we'd go.  To begin with, the twelve-fold increase in experience (three times four, for the PBI and the booster) got me up 60% of a level, though as we moved up a level or two that dropped down.  It would have been slightly more if we'd thought to have SirDarth in the party too to add the solo party bonus when Bash had left, but one can't think of everything, and 681.15% for an hour's work can't be bad, yes?

Adding seven levels increased Kae's Dexterity nicely, and also meant that I could get level six of Slow Shot (250 skill points, an extra 5% slowing in the target's speed, and an extra 40% to power) and Poison Arrow (300 skill points, and again an extra 40% to power, so that it hits for 420% of a regular shot's potential damage), and the first five levels of the passive skill Force Arrow (889 skill points, adds 50 to attack and 90 to defence).  It also meant Kaerella needed new armour, so I checked out the Merchant House for level 65/67 items, to add to the skirt that ANGELOFSKY had kindly given me.  

Prices for armour pieces varied, but I spent around 500,000 per item, though it cost 114,000 gold, a bit more than I'd expected for an unplussed item, to transform the level 56 rogue shirt into its healer equivalent.  To get all five pieces to +3 took 22 heaven stones, a 68% success rate, and then using 15 lucky smelting stones meant I had a new +6 set of armour.  The old "Mending" set gave me 1032 defence; at +3 the new "Serenity" set gave me 1029, but at +6 that moved on to 1136.  That will be a useful boost, though I can't wear the new tiara and boots without penalty until I level up again, meaning that my current defence is 1094.

Going back to the open-air Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men, it was a surprise to see that the Fighters were now white-named, only two levels above me, with the Speer Men yellow-named at three levels above me.  They were certainly easier to kill now, but give a rather smaller percentage increase for each kill, so that an evening session just added 11.42% experience, though they do now give a bit more skill exp, so that I added 26 skill points, as well as 879 pet points.

So a great step forward today.  Now I just need to sell lots of things, so that Kae will be able to afford a new weapon... Stavanic's horse had reached level 20 by the end of the evening, and will probably go on being levelled by SirDarth for one more day.  Would you believe he has another character, a healer, also in need of a mid-range pet, to keep me busy after that?