An Early Finish

While I didn't actually get to play this morning, that did mean that SirDarth and SirPerivale were both able to do some useful pet-levelling, with Hank (the horse Darth is levelling up for Ratel) reaching level 32 fairly early on, and passing the halfway mark in level 33 before the end of the evening.  Unfortunately, after a time away from the computer screens I returned to find Peri lying dead on the ground.  Looking around the reason was easy to discover, a level 50 Blood Frenzy type Pandora's Beast was still nearby. 

I logged Rage in to come and deal with it, which she did easily enough, though it didn't drop any gold - which was a bit of a shame, really, as it had killed Peri's horse, which cost, at level 33, 243,936 gold to "unseal".  Afterwards Peri returned to the Butchers.  An unsealed pet only has 30% health, but generally, unless pet-eating types are around, a pet is either alive or not, so that 30% should be enough to keep the horse going until the next levelling-up, at which point the health will return to 100%.

The new Last Chaos week has begun now, after last night's maintenance and restart for the servers; no more Easter Eggs, instead we are now able to collect various pieces of a "teddy bear" picture.  Get a complete set and you can play "rock, paper, scissors" apparently, with the chance to win a free costume to meld onto your armour.  I'm not sure how big the chance is, but time will tell.  What I've found is that the middle piece of the bear, piece five, seems to be the hardest to get.  Some of the recent changes to class skills have, they say, been undone, though I don't think that means that Peri will once again be able to fight Berserkers even when he has a high level of Armour Increase from his pet horse.

The afternoon session was just long enough for MrChuckNorris to reach level 35 in Prokion Temple, in the corridor-room with mainly Orc Sergeants.  Fellow Norcaine guildie Legacy was there when I arrived, taking a break, so I started fighting the Sergeants, and took a brief break myself when he returned to the keyboard.  He didn't stay long, and after swapping a particular piece of the "teddy bear" puzzle I had for a couple he had spares of, he departed, and the room was all mine.

While Chuck was level 34, the Sergeants gave 8536 experience and 2750 skill exp (with the blue-named Orc Axemen giving 1283/1650), so still a lot of skill exp by normal standards; when Chuck levelled up, that fell to just 1896 experience and 2200 skill exp (with the Axemen on 1283/1100), so it was time to leave the Temple, and head down south to the Poison Mists.  They only give a regular amount of skill exp, 880 at Chuck's current level, but 12681 experience is a useful amount, while the single Elite Poison Mist gives 1144 skill exp at present, and 38045 experience, which is a substantial chunk.  The spot is now on Chuck's memory scroll, and I'm sure he'll head there quite often - when not questing in Merac, that is.

Chuck's session had added 28.44% experience, 186 skilll points, and 1796 pet points - which were enough to get Chuck's drake into level 33.  Back in town, Chuck was able to learn the first level of Toughness, for 148 skill points, which decreases the amount of damage he takes from critical or deadly hits by about 80.  The second level of that comes along when Chuck reaches level 52.  So, even after learning that skill, he was still ahead on skill points for the afternoon.

The evening session was a short one, but MistressDomina was able to head for the good old upstairs back room in Prokion Temple.  She took a pack of five chaos smelting stones with her, to see if we could make life a bit easier for her there - after all she'll be spending an awful lot of time there over coming weeks.  Taking her shirt and skirt from +11 to +12 didn't seem to improve matters a whole lot, so I used the other three to get the other armour parts from +10 to +11.  It's an expensive set of armour now, but it just about gets the job done.

A titan called Diciple was there when I arrived; I did ask if there was room for me as well, as he didn't seem to be using the whole of the assembled multitude of Orcs, and he didn't reply... so I stayed.  He left before long, still without saying anything, and I used a super skill pill (the kind that double the skill exp) plus a 15% training spell (alias just "skill pill"), thus raising the skill exp per Orc Axeman from 5500 to 11825, and the Orc Sergeant skill exp from 4950 to 10642, for a busy hour.

Another titan called Theman1 came in after a while, apologising for coming into the room but saying the whole temple was crowded.  I said that I was using skill boosts, but we could see how things went.  He kindly decided before too long that there wasn't room for him as well as me, and, rather than "f up" my skill point farming, he left.  So, after I had finished my "power hour", and continued on a bit until I was ready to log out, I messaged him that the room was now free, and he quickly returned and took it over.

MistressDomina added 392 skill points during the hour, the equivalent of 182 without the boosts, and in the whole session added 473 skill points, and 1444 pet points, so that her drake is level 23 now.  She is now getting close to actually starting to hoard skill points for (far) future use, she just needs the top two levels of Expert Alchemy now, for 103 + 120 sp.  Chuck may have twenty thousand to play with, I want her to have rather more than that, sigh...

At eight o'clock, UK time, I had to log out, though later on SirPerivale was able to grab another half hour's pet levelling for his horse; SirDarth kept going throughout.  The next few days are going to be pretty busy for me, so I won't be able to play as much Last Chaos as usual, but at least the pet levelling will be able to continue, and the evening sessions, though even that gets truncated on Sunday.  I'll be hoping to sneak at least a partial afternoon session on Friday and Saturday, but that depends on matters outside my control.