Back to the Tomb

Despite it being a Sunday morning, SirDarth started fairly early, getting his current horse up to level 19 during the morning. Darth did sight a level 50 Blood Frenzy-type Pandora's Beast, but it was over on the far side of the clearing, and seemed far enough away not to be a menace.

Feeling that Prokion Temple ought not to be very busy on a Sunday morning, I sent MrChuckNorris over there for an hour or so's sp-farming. It was actually fairly busy, but the upstairs back room, thankfully, was not in use, with just one player wall-hugging - she left fairly soon. So, Chuck triggered his remaining super skill pill, for double skill exp - and also one of the red and white training pills, which adds another 15%. Not a lot, true, but they do come from the skill boxes and cannot be traded, so one may as well use them. It meant that instead of 5500 skill exp each, or 11000 with the ssp active, I got an extra 825 skill exp per Orc Axeman.

The hour yielded 388 skill points, which seemed pretty good. A rogue had come in about five minutes before the pills ended, and asked nicely if she could take over, which seemed fair enough as I wasn't going to have the time for a second hour anyway, so I gave her the Battle Roar buff, and left her to it, going off down the corridor to the area I'd been busy in yesterday. In all the session yielded 488 skill points, and 1420 pet points.

SirPerivale came online for the lunch break, to do a little work on the level 24 horse he's taking care of; with his +3 shield and armour, and 23 levels of Armour Increase, he had a defence figure of 791, which was enough to keep him healthy fighting Butchers... or fighting one Butcher at a time, anyway. The horse reached level 25, so that meant an extra 10 to defence on his next outing, over the early evening food break.

Before that, however, was the afternoon session, which went on an hour longer than usual. Rage went out to the Auzura-3 Sphinx Fighters, but it wasn't long before I got an invitation from crownedSalvation to join a Tomb of Theos party on Auzura-1. There was a level 42 royal knight called KaRmA, a level 51 assassin-type rogue called Epica, a level 56 mage called Katianna, and we also had a specialist sorcerer called Salop. Katianna and KaRmA did leave as the afternoon progressed, but we gained the level 40 titan Hyperlogic, and we didn't do badly - though I did get to use two resurrection scrolls, annoyingly against the very same Screaming Zombie... otherwise my many dashes to the north-side wall of the corridor worked. Those Zombies certainly don't like rogues, sigh...

It wasn't long before I reached level 46 - this meant I could wear the level 51 shirt and pants, but with their higher level of upgrade, the level 46 pair still give me more defence, so it doesn't loook as if I can go into battle looking like a lion tamer, unfortunately. Unless I upgrade those pieces to match, of course.

The afternoon had its quiet bits, but also its excitements. A level 38 sorcerer called Marcx did a bit of ks-ing, and kept asking to join the party even though we explained that he was more than 15 levels below our top member, and would thus be "capped" and get very little experience. He kept ks-ing, and in the end Epica decided, as we were on a PvP server, to kill him. This was enough to turn Epica's name red. And wouldn't you know it, within minutes a vengeful member of the top Auzura guild, Vendetta (I gather that, while they are on all the servers, elsewhere they are no longer top dogs), a rogue called BlueRogue, arrived, and killed her - at least twice I think. Luckily she wasn't annoyed enough to want to wipe out the whole party.

By the time the party ended, I'd gone up 59.13%, and added 1015 pet points; I didn't get any skill points against such high-level monsters of course. back in town I finally had enough stat points in Constitution to get the level 32 passive skill Mind Training, which increases my magic evasion by 25 for the cost of 276 skill points; one more level's worth of Constitution and I'll be able to get Defence Guard too, which for 292 sp will increase my physical defence by 100 - and be able to wear my new hood and boots as well, which will add another 98.

Zenderfly got in touch, asking if I was busy - but she was only interested in seeing if I had a character on Cariae with some spare horn beast eyes, as she has decided to get herself the second sort of "human tribe" pet, and perhaps a useful low level healer weapon for a new character of hers, Taldea. My stocks of "quest items" are actually on one of Elvastar's characters, so I couldn't help there, but I could at least find her a healer Event Weapon. She commented that, with three Stone of Shadows accessories equipped, her junior-level healer didn't have to bother with good armour.

After the food break, as things were running rather late there wasn't a whole lot of time before the Quiz, but Rage did get back to the Sphinx Fighters for a little while. The Quiz itself, as we had been warned, was at its new time of 8:30pm UK time, and luckily the questions seemed to be the same as last week, mainly - and they did leave the doors open for us to get back in, which was just as well. Kaerella was speedy enough to get back for the moonstones and the heaven stones, after we'd got the tool aids safely, even though on one entrance she got booted out again immediately as she didn't have time to get to the correct side of the room - Rage didn't get back for the moonstones, but just got back in time for the heaven stones, thankfully.

After the Quiz there was the usual Sunday night problem of the overloaded servers trying to keep up - trying to log SirDarth back in gave me a black screen instead of Randol, but before long things settled down. Speech was laggy, as was browsing the Merchant House; Ratel spotted a +4 level 45/47 armour set for 21 million, and grabbed it, I didn't realise at first that it was that set, thinking idly of maybe 35/37. It was quite a bargain, though after the purchase Ratel found that the gloves and boots were in fact only +3. Still, a hard armour set to find, especially those boots, so he did well. Not wanting to risk breaking anything, Ratel made sure to sell the last of his heaven stones, and then asked if I could sell him a couple of lucky smelting stones, which I did, at a suitably discounted price.

Rage did go back out to the Sphinx Fighters, but before long Auzura-3, at least, gave up the struggle and had a mass disconnection - no great surprise there. So, Rage had just added another 10.45% this evening, and 342 pet points - plus a skill point, even. That made her total gain today 69.58%, 1357 pet points, and that skill point.

We are just starting an "Almost Cinco de Mayo Event" now, apparently, which may lead to some in-game bonus times - 50% extra experience for 24 hours, for a start, if enough people buy enough Mall items today and tomorrow. Sounds good to me... Oh, and SirDarth's horse was comfortably into level 22 by the time he logged out for the night.