In Egeha With Ratel

It being the height of summer around here, it gets light early - and that means that SirDarth and SirPerivale get an early start, after which I can get back into bed for a while, until it's time for breakfast. So, they made pretty good progress this morning - though Darth did take some time off before coffee, to allow Kaerella to log on.

Kae may have not particularly high level armour at the moment, without any upgradings, and a bow to match, all drops from the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men, and be barefoot, but that didn't stop her going out to mine for some quality stones. As she had thirty spaces in her inventory, she got enough tool aids out of Bianca's storage, bought thirty healer-specific hammers from Merchant Geres, and rode out to the mine.

Equip hammer, drag tool aid onto it, yes I do wish to apply booster, booster applied okay, click on the ore mine, any specific type of stone wanted, quality stone... and then Kae bashes the mine a few times, until 27 quality stones appear in her inventory. Repeat until you've used all thirty hammers...then ride back into town and buy thirty more, and get thirty more tool aids out of storage too, and do it all again. Well it did take a little while, but at last 1620 new quality stones had been acquired.

The timing wan't bad, as Peri had a couple of minutes earlier had a Pandora's Box nudge up to him, and when he opened it, it released a level fifty Beast which chased him back to town. At level 67 I reckoned that even with poor armour and a basic level 53 bow, Kae would be able to handle him, so, once she had finished the mining, she teleported to Merac Caron, and rode down to the Berserkers, past Peri. Things might have been a bit quicker if I'd remembered to re-equip her bow after using the mining hammers, but it didn't take long for the Beauty to kill the Beast. Kae traded most of the quality stones across to Peri, and logged out. Probably due to her higher level, the Beast didn't drop any gold.

SirPerivale resumed pet-levelling, with his horse about halfway through level 34, and was soon joined by SirDarth. Taking delivery of so many quality stones had taken Peri over 100% of his weight allowance, reducing his dexterity slightly, so he passed about half the stones across to SirDarth, meaning they both had over a thousand in stock at that point.

A little later a knight called ArmorKnight, who had been fighting and killing Berserkers in the area, unleashed another Pandie, and soon found that he had to run for his life - he ran straight past Darth and Peri in fact, but luckily the Beast had a one-track mind, and kept on after its original prey. As he in his turn vanished up the hill towards Merac Caron, Darth logged out, and this time it was MrChuckNorris who rode down from town. With the knight watching, Chuck despatched the Pandora's Beast quickly, and got a drop of 99,200 gold as his reward. After that, Chuck logged out, and Darth returned to work, though it wasn't long before another Box appeared. This time, Chuck was able to pick up another 48,000 gold, so we are slowly recouping the cost of that pet "unsealing" the other day, when a Beast killed a pet, and its leveller.

Someone had phoned up to say they'd be dropping around to visit at just after eleven, so that rather ruled out MistressDomina's usual trip out to Prokion Temple for an uninterrupted hour today - normal service will, I hope, be resumed tomorrow.

The afternoon saw MrChuckNorris taking a trip to the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men again; Arceno wasn't able to get together a Tomb party, unfortunately. Chuck added 8.48%, which was enough to get him into level 53, so that he was able at last to use his level 57 sword, and start adding its bloodseals. It was pretty quiet out there, so there really isn't anything else to report, except the 5 skill points and 457 pet points.

After the usual food break with both pet-leveller knights hard at their day's work, LordElpus went out to do a little more work with the foxes and wolves, and got enough skill points for that final level five skill, er, level, and a few to spare. The "Mad Monster Spawn" had been running for a while when I decided that he might as well go and see how it was getting on, so he used his memory scroll to go to Velpist Temple, and ran past the local Elder Drakes and Great Horn Beasts to get there. The current wave had almost been finished, and there was an announcement of "4 more minutes"... the Patriarch Botris was finished well inside that time, and people stood around waiting for the goodies to be spawned, and things to continue. And continued to stand around! Eventually I asked on the shoutbox - apparently the people had taken 55 minutes to deal with the wave, when 45 is the maximum. It would have been nice if the GM in charge, JediMike, had said something! As it was, I fought a regular-type Drake, which with LordElpus at level 7 was red-named for me, and levelled up...and got a Hand of the Warrior as a drop, so I was probably the only person there to get a heaven stone...

Ratel logged on around then, eager to team up with Chuck for the previously-discussed trip to Egeha, so Darth and LordElpus logged out, and Rage logged in on the older computer, while Chuck logged in on the newer one. Rage took the teleporter trip to Egeha, for 800,000 gold, and then, as we'd partied up, Recalled Ratel and Chuck there. She stayed in town, to provide an emergency-escape Recall if fighting went badly... and also to be able to bring someone back if they had a disconnection.

We started off killing Bogles, which at level 65 are nice and unaggressive, until attacked, though hit hard and are not that quick to die. They are well-known for dropping a good amount of armour, either for future use or just for selling to the merchant back in town, and gold too, which after the fee to get there is just as well. We quickly went on to the Dark Bogles, which at level 67 are aggressive and protective, and even an individual Hadeis or two. Level 70 doesn't sound too bad for a level 45 temple knight and a level 53 warmaster titan, but they are aggressive, with a long-range magical attack, and when one came in range while I was fighting a Dark Bogle, I was lucky to escape with my life. So, back to Bogles - and then Ratel led me to the Apes... the "mother" ones at level 74 are boss monsters and hard to kill, but the Baby Apes are okay, though they too are protective, so we often had to rely on Ratty's teleportation skill, or sometimes ended up fighting two at once. When we got the mother Ape as well as one of her offspring, well, that Recall came in handy!

It shows how quiet Egeha is now that our activities there attracted the Grand Gold Dragon; Ratel sadly clicked on it as he tried to move away, and so inadvertantly attacked it, dying rather quickly while Chuck heroically, er, took Recall. We did make an attempt to get Kaerella, in Chuck's place, to ride out and resurrect him, which would have saved some experience loss, but Kae has non-functional armour and only a relatively low-level bow at present, and Ratel had an Ape standing right over him where Kae would have had to stand, so we gave up on that, it was quicker for Ratel to lose that extra percent and kill a few Bogles to get it back.

We attracted the Grand Gold Dragon for a second time minutes later, but kept our distance, and Rage put out a call on her guild channel... and the highest-level member of DreamingRequiem, Aszune (the same person who had power-levelled Rage in the Tomb) eagerly accepted the challenge, joined the party, took Recall, and was directed out to where the GGD was... where the other party member dots were on the map, basically. She didn't take long to kill it, and then the level 88 Cursed Weavers it spawned when near death went down like skittles. There wasn't a rare item among the drops, though the usual things like moonstones, a medal of honor, and so on were there, and some gold. Aszune actually picked up 5 tool aids before remembering to leave our party, so they went to Chuck, who later sent his thanks, via Rage. She was a little disappointed not to get a rare item, but hey she had a free trip there.

The first time Chuck and Ratel killed a boss Ape it took quite a while - when he wanted to kill another Ratel passed across a large attack potion, a large defence potion, and various mineral boosts to Chuck, which, well, I almost never use such things - activate more than half a million's worth of pots just to kill one monster? I did get through quite a few health potions on that fight, but I must remember to return those unused things to Ratel when I can.

We finished with a little dedicated Bogle farming, taking it in turns to attack and stun one, which worked well, we'd have probably got more loot and experience if we'd just stuck to doing that throughout the session, but it wouldn't have been such an adventure. Ratel had to log out soon after nine, UK time, so after killing a few more, Chuck too, almost out of the medium-size health potions, decided to call it a night. A 15.38% experience gain wasn't huge, but it was probably more than spending the time with the Sphinx types would have given...though within a minute of arriving in Egeha, Chuck did get a message from Arceno that she'd got a Tomb team together, and minutes after that Rage got an invitation to a monster combo. But teaming with Ratel is one of the main pleasures of Last Chaos, so they were out of luck. Chuck added 2 more skill points, and 919 pet points.

Although she was on the older computer, Rage then decided, given that she had her health boosted, and horse buffs, to try and ride down all the way to the spot where on the Cariae server I'd spent so much time, in Norcaine parties and teamed with Zenderfly, fighting a pair of Boucu Demons. I had a pretty good idea where it was, and that I'd have to ride past Apes and Azers and Scorpionmantises and Skin Walkers and even Endemic Demons... but I made it safely, and was able to add the spot to Rage's memory scroll, and then Recall Chuck in so that he too could get the spot memorised. I did offer to Recall any other DreamingRequiem guild members in if they wanted to get the spot on their scrolls, but I guess with the Tomb and Strayana etc added to the game, the chance to fight a couple of level 84 Boucu Demons isn't as tempting as it used to be.

Darth and Peri were then able to do a bit of late-night pet-levelling; Peri's horse actually reached level 35, so doesn't have too long to go now before another level 37 mount can be made. Darth's horse is well into level 26 now, so is coming along well. I did notice a level 50 Pandora's Beast over on the far side of the clearing, but decided that Chuck had probably done enough for one day.