Trouble in the Tomb

When SirDarth arrived at his Berserker spot, a level 50 Pandora's Beast was prowling around, so he promptly vanished again, and I logged in Rage instead, and rode down to deal with it - the Beast dropped 116,000 gold, which must be about the maximum.  A little later (well, after breakfast) SirPerivale logged in too - and there was a prowling Pandie there by the Butchers too, so Rage had to make another trip to Merac.  That one, sadly, didn't drop anything.  Rage checked the Berserker spot too before logging out, and discovered a Pandora's Box, but it just unleashed the level 30 type Beast, so there was no great reward there.

After coffee Rage did get to make her scheduled trip back to level five of Maargadum Jail, to kill a few Death Mask Soldiers and obtain five portions of "Rotten Flesh"; she stayed a little while after getting the five, but didn't get any interesting drops.  Then it was time to take the quest items back into Merac to the Archbishop there, and claim the reward of 867,000 experience.  He in turn gave me the last pre-Egeha quest, which was just to take the samples back to Healer Yabo in Randol, who coughed up another 587,000 experience, along with 100,000 gold.

While Darth continued to work on his new hatchling, MistressSabina headed out to Prokion Temple for an hour or so of skill point, and guild point, farming.  I was expecting to link up with a healer called ElfMage who'd asked yesterday for a bit of help, but she didn't appear; it meant that I didn't start a skill pill, which was probably just as well, as before long Zenderfly got in touch, wanting to invite Barbarienne to a party over on the Cariae server.

So, Darth logged out, and my level 100 Cariae-based archer Barbarienne logged in.  Zenderfly didn't have a Recall card or book, unfortunately; she got free admission to the Tomb of Theos, as the guild she is in won the Dratan Castle Siege last time and therefore "owns" the place, but it cost Barb 160,000 gold - less than normal, usually it's 3,000 per character level.  Zen kindly dropped a level 85 unidentified bow, worth about 600,000, for me, to compensate.  As we were in our party by then, it got allocated to her, which I had to point out - she dropped it again, and that time I did get it.

I clicked on Zen to follow her as she made the run down to the Grave Room; she ran out of "Escape" potions about halfway, so we did get stopped by the Anubis Archers a few times, and both took quite a lot of damage - it was lucky that I'd just moved a greater healing potion onto my skill bar!  And then, just as we reached the Darkmind Terrain, suspiciously close to exactly 11:00 UK time (3:00 am PST), I got a disconnection.  Annoying, or what?

It didn't seem to be a general disconnection, though.  I checked my inventory and found that I did have a teleport book left, so I used that to move to Zenderfly, who had successfully reached the Grave Room, and took up my position by the wall... it's a tricky place to get an invulnerable position, I had to move a few times, until triggering a small potion of some sort didn't work, which proved that I was safe.  So, I settled in, with my "human tribe" Scra-Chi pet SkrappY, now level 50, equipped, to get and give that combat party boost, as one of five people there.  Menawhile, MistressSabina was relatively busy over on Auzura still, in Prokion Temple.

It seems that the Cariae server does uphold the old traditions, as at 11:30 (UK time) there was another disconnection, a general one this time; Friday at that time always was when that sort of thing happened, at one time the GMs even ran warning announcements about it.  So, I had to relog, and send Zen a message of regret... she can invite me some other time, but preferably when someone in that final Sphinx Commander-rich room has Recall available!

So, Darth was able to log back in, and give MistressSabina back her solo party.  By the end of her Prokion Temple outing, she had added 58 skill points, and, by adding 673 pet points, got her drake up to level 26.

SirDarth did have a visitor just before lunchtime, a rogue called lilwonderer: "Hey Darth, lovin' the drake."  My hatchling looked fairly similar to hers, but still, it was a conversation-starter, it was lucky I was there to be able to respond.  She did actually stand too close to me to chat, and the Berserker took an instant dislike to her, though she hadn't attacked it, and began hitting her instead of me.  I equipped my sword and killed it, which seemed the only thing to do, and found a different one to fight.  After I'd gone afk for lunch, having added her to my Friends List, she left a message: "U gonna put me on ya blog?"   Hmm, I'll have to think about that...

The hatchling was level 12 by the time Darth logged out, to allow MrChuckNorris to join Rage in Dratan.  The afternoon session there was a pretty long one, as the Friday "Happy Hour" began at three and continued until five, with 50% extra experience - and after that, well, first I needed the last few percent to get Rage to 53, and then I needed just a little more to get Chuck to 43!  Legacy was with us all afternoon - with Chuck at the side, anyway, she had a meeting to go to.  WhiteMessiah2 was around for much of the time, and continued a little after I went downstairs for my food break; she showed me her armour, it was very impressive, both the shirt and pants were +15, and the others around +12, so that, with horse buffs, her defence rating was 2555, compared to my 1973.  

TinySickNinja, the level 54 ranger, also joined the combat party after a while, and invited Rage to join the "TrueGamers" guild, whose guild master is the level 57 archer Succubus2.  It seemed like an active, fairly dynamic guild, one does see a fair number of members around, so I decided to see how it went, and accepted the invitation.

Level 53 meant that Rage could finally equip her shiny new level 57 +15 Puplern Crossbow, which made a useful difference to the power of her attack, and by the time I finally took my break, Rage had gone up 50.31% (including a small amount from the morning), thanks in part to the "Happy Hour", plus 7 of those all-important skill points and 1830 pet points.  Chuck was up 31.60%, and 4 skill points, so all in all it had been a productive session.

I got back from eating at just about the time that Legacy also got back, so we began to fight the Sphinx types again - but pretty soon TinySickNinja invited me to join her and Succubus2 for a party killing the level 100 Screaming Zombies in the Tomb, over on the Auzura-4 sub-server. I asked if Legacy could come too, and, as she was just high enough at level 42 not to be "capped" by Succubus2, the answer was in the affirmative.  Only after the three of us were inside did we discover that Legacy didn't yet have the location on her memory scroll, but with a few directions she was able to run from the Sphinx Fighter location, and join us.

The first hour or so went very well, we really carved our way through the Zombies most efficiently, with Succubus2 luring, Tiny doing the first Snare, and me the second.  After a few minutes I started one of the expensive, triple experience for an hour Platinum Blessed Irises - and by the time it ran out, my total experience gain was 171.65%.  After carefully checking that we intended to continue long enough for me to get full use from it, I then started my second one, but about ten minutes in, it all went a bit pear-shaped.  I think Tiny was afk; I also got the impression that more than one Zombie was involved, either as a mis-lure or left lurking around by someone else.  But I died - and, while I was deciding whether to use my resurrection scroll to res on the spot, and waiting for the Zombie to get moved away from my corpse a little, suddenly Succubus 2 had resurrected me - which meant that I hadn't used my scroll, and had thus forfeited a large chunk of skill points - 472, by my calculations at the time.

If there's anything that annoys me, it is thoughtless, noobish behaviour like that - and did I get an apology?  No, it was "next time get ur lazy ass up."  Maybe my response to the situation of "WTFFF?  You b*****!!!!  Never EVER res someone who has a res scroll on... you wasted 472 skill points for me then" was not entirely diplomatic, since Succubus 2 is the leader of that guild, but heck, it did seem a lot of skill points, and either terribly noobish, or dreadfully arrogant, behaviour.  "Don't worry, I'll never res you again" doesn't count as an apology in my book.

Succubus2 vanished in a sulk, and, as Legacy seemed to have had a disconnection, after also dying, the party was over.  Poor Tiny was puzzled about it all when she returned to her screen, she seemed to think I'd called Succubus2 a "btch".  And is "wtf" swearing?  It rather depends what the flip you think the "f" stands for I suppose. To make some use of the remaining time on the Platinum Blessed Iris I headed back to the Sphinx Fighters, and, in all, from that second PBI I just got 44.56%, around a level less than I would have expected.  Dang, I'd been saving those two PBIs for the Zombies, and now I've gone and wasted one.  Luckily, Succubus2 expelled Rage from her guild, saving me the trouble of logging out, deleting and undeleting the character, and logging back in again, to lose the guild membership, not something I'd have wanted to waste time on with the PBI running.

So, while SirDarth was busy getting his hatchling up to level 14, Rage had at least added 216.21% experience, and 1681 pet points, even if she was down 465 skill points on the session.  Though, come to think of it, now that things are calmer, weren't 225 of those actually spent on getting the level 53 skill, level six of Mind Training?  Ah well, maybe that ought to take one or two exclamation marks off my outburst, but honestly, a healer using resurrection on someone with a res scroll active is such a basic error, one really does wonder...