Doubling Up

MistressDomino did pretty well selling stuff overnight, though the experience boosters didn't sell - it looks as if they weren't too wise an investment, though I should be able to sell them for at least 10% more than I paid for them. The selling went on into the morning too, with a few more item drop boosters put up. Six Easter Eggs got sold at 295,000, which is useful as they are starting to fill up MistressDomino's inventory rather.

Once when I checked up on how things were going, somebody had discarded all five parts of a mage's level 20/22 "Night" armour set, so I swiftly changed out of merchant mode and hit the "pet item pickup" key. The set was part +1 and part +2, with quite a few bloodseals too - and happened to be just what MistressSabina needed. There was also 6000 gold and a couple of herb-harvesting knives, one of them already boosted. It was lucky that those Easter Eggs had been sold by then, or I wouldn't have had room.

Just as SirDarth was about to log out, last thing last night, Ratel got in touch again, with some more quality stones he wanted to transfer to Darth. I suggested that he could pass over his level 18 light blue horse for levelling, and I'd lend him the level 36 horse Darth had been working on - that way he would still have a pet to give him good buffs, and the horse would get a few pet points too. By the time that was done, it was just about midnight for me, so I quickly went off to bed.

SirDarth made a fairly early start this morning, and I was happy to discover that double pet experience was running - so people bought enough special tickets from the merchant house yesterday for this final "tier" celebration. A little later SirPerivale replaced MistressDomino, so my other horse got some benefit then, and over lunch and the early evening food break, moving through level 30.

Before lunch, MrChuckNorris was able to have another session in Prokion Temple, in the room, a widening of the corridor really, with mainly Orc Sergeants. By the time lunch was approaching, Chuck had added 43.26%, 294 skill points, and 3210 pet points. There were a couple of people who made a slight attempt to share the room, but nobody stayed long, thankfully.

It was just as I was starting to think of logging out that Ratel got in touch. He was down in the southwest corner of Merac, in the "Den of Fear", a rather claustrophobic garden area filled with aggressive level 40 Highlanders...and so was the Grand Red Dragon! He wanted Rage to ride down and join him, feeling that between us we could defeat the boss monster, and the Cerebrii it spawns. and, well, you know how persuasive he can be.

So, I switched to Rage, and rode down there. Ratel kindly gave me attack and defence pots and minerals, which I triggered... I was just casting Snare on the GRD when Ratel used his teleport skill on it, but then I just basically attacked the dragon as hard as I could with Flame Arrow, etc, and Snare when it recharged. I did use a health potion, but, with Ratel to tank and provide armour buffs, I never felt I was in danger, and we killed it, and the Cerebrii, and indeed the Highlanders that kept on respawning too. We didn't have any lucky scrolls or item drop boosters on, and we didn't get any rare accessory, but we got experience crystals, lucky scrolls, moonstones, a Medal of Honour I think, and other minor oddments, so we came out ahead.

After that it was a matter of setting SirPerivale up to take advantage of the double pet experience over lunch... and then it was time for MistressSabina to log on, and, after some general trading-about, get her new armour set from MistressDomino. The next thing on her "to do" list was to make the run through the Dratan desert to Prokion Temple. The Clever Foxes of Desert and Sand Golems were run past successfully, and I stopped at the Oasis where Shuraine is to add that to my memory scroll, as it is a place one needs to visit a few times. The only slightly tricky bit of the whole run was getting past one of the level 50 Pandora's Beasts - but Sabina made it to the Prokion Temple entrance, and added that location to her scroll safely.

It didn't take too long to get through the level needed, fighting Ghouls and Mummies, and reach level 20, which meant that the mage "event weapon" appeared in my inventory as if by magic - I was already using a +6 one, though! The "Guardian System" was, therefore, successfully finished, and only about 22 hours after registering for it; Kaerella would get 10 Reputation points, as well, taking her total to a nice round 100.

At 99.90% of the way through level 20, Sabina returned to Randol, just to make sure that there weren't any quests she needed that would expire when she reached 21. There weren't any that were about to vanish, but there were one or two that were current, which she did - after she took her last chance to do the first personal dungeon. Everything except the final boss was blue-named, but the reward of a moonstone remains the same...and MistressSabina ended up 2.92% into level 21, and thus able to move on to her new armour's shirt and skirt.

There was time for Chuck to return to Prokion before the tea break, so, in that favourite back room, he managed to add another 12.93% and 122 skill points, plus 824 pet points, to get his totals for the day up to 56.19%, 416 skill points, and 4044 pet points.

After the break, there was an announcement that an upgrade event was going to start soon, so I sent a package containing five runes of protection 2 across to MistressDomina, who headed out to Prokion Temple, rather than just wait around in town, which was just as well as the start was a bit delayed. Despite the 200%, or double, chance of a successful upgrade, I only had two successes out of my five attempts to upgrade +10 armour pieces to +11, the other three tries ended with failure, and resetting the items to +10 - a good reason not to try upgrading anything higher than that with heaven stones and runes. Still, that improved MD's physical defence by 34, or about 4%, useful when there are Orc Sergeants, and Axemen, around. MistressDomina added 192 skill points, so is now able to process yellow herb leaves and herb trunks, and got 1368 pet points as well.

MistressDomina had picked up two heaven stones, which was nice - but when the first of the inevitable Sunday disconnections came, when I logged back in the "rollback" had removed one of them. But by then the Sunday evening quiz, now at 8:30pm UK time, was getting near, so Rage and Kaerella logged in to the Auzura-4 sub-server, hoping that it would have less lag than A-3, and entered the Quiz Room. Things went okay, thanks to the door being left open - just about everyone got booted out on the "How many eyes does the Barren Eise have?" question, thinking it was five, but we ran back in. Rage, on the older computer, wasn't quick enough to get the ten tool aids, but otherwise she and Kae did well, getting the moonstones and the heaven stones safely.

Sadly the lag was getting worse, and we started getting "The Black Screen of Randol" when logging back in - and Auzura-3 had a couple more disconnections, which, with the extra time taken to reload the game, weren't much fun. I had hoped to let MistressSabina have a final short session, but after the log-in problems, settled for getting SirPerivale back on to pet-level for a bit. And after that, sadly, at least as far as Auzura-3 was concerned, the double experience, skill exp and pet experience had disappeared... I did try and mention it in the shoutbox, particularly when games master aeria_Ks1lent turned up there, but my pair of pet levellers continued just to get a single pet point at a time. Still, by the end of the evening Ratel's horse had reached level 25, and my own horse should just about reach level 31 before I switch across to MistressDomino again, and try to sell a few more Easter Eggs. Ratel reported that the horse I'd lent him had reached level 36, too.