The Prokion Effect

SirDarth was busily levelling Stavanic's mount-to-be this morning, when he got a new Friend request - from someone called HiDE.  This turned out to be Renez's Auzura-based rogue: "This character was the highest rogue on the first day of release of this server, the first rogue to level 30."  He confirmed that his efforts to have the CONFLICT guild "unlocked" after the banning of its guild master had failed.  "They unlocked Vendetta under the same situation.  Not us."

The invitation was to "Get over on C server sometime - I'm in need of a levelling partner", and I did briefly log in over there as Barbarienne, and learn the eighth level of the passive skill Survival Training for 400 skill points, which comes available at level 100, adding a further 50 to health and 20 to defence.  I also learned the top Master Armoursmith levels, though because of the old bug on special skills I can't learn the Master Weaponsmith equivalent.  There is a level 102 skill, I see, Fatal Blow, which adds 100% to the chance of a critical hit, but that needs not just skill points but gold too, and a special skill book which presumably can be obtained only in some of the new high-level areas.

But there was still just time to return to Auzura, and give MrChuckNorris an hour or so in that upstairs back room in Prokion Temple.  I opened a large number of the skill boxes, and, while most of them just gave the one-hour +15% training spell books, or the ten-minute +50% scrolls, or more usefully a pack of five skill exp boosters, I did get three each of the platinum super skill pills (triple skill exp for an hour) and the super skill pills (double), and used one of the latter.

Over an hour, then, Chuck got 416 skill points, boosted by the "ssp" and also the +50% blessed rewards.  I did trigger one of the 15% red-and-white training spell books as well, which worked fine with the ssp, so that 11,000 skill exp became 11,825, but sadly didn't "stack" with the blessed rewards, so that the maximum I could get was 13,750 rather than 14,575.  As usual I did stick around a little longer after the hour ended, so that Chuck's total skill point gain was 455, plus 1136 pet points - which was enough to get his pet drake up to level 26.

After lunch, MistressDomina made a first attempt on the third personal dungeon, Ajaka Canyon, but the Beast Crawler in the large room managed to sneak up on her, and its magical attack killed her straight away.  There's no penalty for death there, though, and quite a lot of small amounts of cash were picked up along the way.

A quest from Lorrraine took MD to Great Magician Minearm in Merac, who asked her to go off and fight a few Butchers, which seemed a reasonable request.  Once they'd given her ten "Order of Beradben" quest items, he then sent her on a quest to Shuraine, out at his oasis in the Dratan desert.

Riding out across the sands, MistressDomina encountered a Pandora's Box, which when opened released a level 40 Beast, in the guise of a ghostly spider.  She was able to kill it, and it dropped 60,600 gold, which was a useful sum.  As well as some experience, Shuraine gave MD a "magic stone" accessory which, with 2 physical fortitude (constitution), 4 swiftness of reflexes (dexterity), 2 long range physical defence, and 1 (all kinds of) physical defence, was actually better than one of the accessories she was using, so she is now suitably upgraded.  As there was space on MD's memorising scroll, I added that location temporarily, on the feeling that there did tend to be a number of visits to that oasis.

Two or three minutes fighting the Sand Golems there yielded some more Soft Sand - and the Elite Sand Golem dropped a Radiant Helm +4, which will be moved over to SirPerivale at some point, as at the moment he's just using a +3 one.

MistressDomina then went on to Prokion Temple, and, for comparison purposes, also cracked open an "ssp"; I didn't bother with one of those 15% training spells though.  She managed just 314 skill points in the hour, for 329 over the whole of the afternoon, and 1231 pet points, which were enough to get her drake up to level 21.  As the length of time that the +50% skill exp gain "blessed reward" is active tends to vary, it's difficult to make a direct comparison between Chuck's hour and MD's, but it looks as if she only kills at 75% of his speed, which is probably fairly similar to the difference in power between a +13 and a +15 weapon...

While MD was in Prokion she got enough Cracked Axes to complete a quest, so when she returned to Dratan she was able to get her reward from Crom there...and he gave her a new quest which just needed her to visit Shuraine again, so a quick click of the memorising scroll and she was at the oasis.  While her normal experience gain per kill is frozen, she does still get experience as quest rewards, so in all this afternoon she went up 18.20%.  She's still safely below the level 28 mark though, which is just as well, as level 27 is the most useful one for skill exp farming. Her new skill points were enough to get the first two levels of Expert Weaponsmith, though another 76 will be needed before she can learn the final level.

As usual on a Wednesday, I had an early finish, but Chuck was able to go back to Prokion Temple for an hour or so first.  The place was pretty busy, and I couldn't use my favourite back room, so I didn't use any skill exp boosting materials, but I added another 252 skill points, which was just enough to complete Chuck's first thousand for future use.  And 619 pet points, well, they'll come in handy too.

SirDarth at least was able to continue until the usual end time, so that the horse, now well ahead of my own one, was getting pretty close to level 27 by then.  And short of quality stones, too, some more mining is definitely needed tomorrow.