Saturday 27 June 2009

Zooming Up

SirDarth did his usual fine work, levelling his pony from before breakfast, and SirPerivale was on duty too. Luckily Peri's school uniform cover hasn't expired yet - but MistressDomina's has, which, like Kae's, was no big deal as it was never melded to armour, and just worn in town a time or two. It just means four inventory slots are cleared out, which is mildly useful. It would have been good to have the extra +1 on MD's armour, but not really practical as it would have stopped me trading the armour across to MistressSabina occasionally for her to use.

More importantly, Rage's old armour's cover expired too,, so that her old set could now be traded across to MrChuckNorris, and turned into a rather better level of titan armour than he has been wearing in recent weeks.

Still, the first item on the agenda was to try to get MistressDomina to our favourite back room in Prokion Temple. As Saturday can be rather busier, I didn't even try Auzura-3, instead Darth hopped across to Auzura-4 to provide the solo party, and MD went to that version of the Temple. It was certainly a lot busier than usual, and the "corridor room" was already in use, but I was relieved to find "my" room vacant, and, after the usual check on what skill exp an Orc gave, in case there was an event-style boost going on, the platinum super skill pill was double-clicked, and the "power hour" begun.

The hour gave me 473 skill points, which the brief "top and tail" increased to 476, getting MistressDomina's total of unused skill points up over 20.5k; 21.87% experience indicates that the next such hour is liable to get MD up to 99% of the way through level 31, so I'll probably just continue for a few minutes so that the level 32 skills, including new levels of alchemy and armour and weapon crafting, can be acquired after that. I make it 1630 skill points in all I'll be spending; the new attack skill is Terra Spear, which sends a spike of rock up from the ground through your target and has a 550% "power" rating, while on the passive side there's Staff Mastery, which increases a wizard's magical attack by 35 (MD's stat for that is currently 518), and Mana Barrier, which increases close-range physical evasion by 25 (MD's stat for physical evasion is 318, though she has some of the close range variety on top of that).

The hour also brought one heaven stone, one large attack potion, and eight moonstone boxes, as well as minor items and a little gold. Prokion Temple is certainly a good place for farming, if you're the right level for the Orcs there.

After that it was time to log SirPerivale back in; his horse had reached level 32 earlier, so we are past the convenient time when the hunger points go down five at a time, needing just one quality stone every five minutes. For this level and the next, it will be six hunger points every five minutes, so Peri's stock of quality stones, currently 570, will start to fall more rapidly.

The afternoon session involved Chuck getting his new armour, which, along with the level 57 weapon he won't be able to use until he levels up again, cost 1,780,600 gold to get transformed, and then heading for the sphinx types - after remembering to buy some bloodseal gems from Geres. Rage went along too, to provide a Combat party bonus - and, as it is awkward for a melee character there to just get one Sphinx Fighter or Speer Man at a time, ended up doing some luring, using a couple of arrows to attract one, and then ignoring it while Chuck used his sword, and the Smite skill.

Luckily, the level 39 cleric Greengem593 arrived before too long, so Chuck left Rage and partied with her, as she could do most of the luring, with Chuck doing most of the hitting, if he could catch up with the Sphinx monster in question. The level 44 archer Arcena was a welcome addition to the party too; sirlickalot, a knight, kindly gave us some Divine Shield buffs but as he was only level 29 wasn't interested in ks-ing us, he was still at the sp-farming stage, so I don't know why he was there. Another knight, ocainomed, was fighting close to us, often taking the Elite Sphinx Speer Man; the wizard Wortex arrived a little later, but had to "ks" us, with our permission, as at level 36 she was just too low to avoid being capped. It was a pretty productive session; Rage had only added 0.31% and a skill point, but Chuck managed to gain 19.05%, 4 skill points, and 865 pet points, and get at least one bloodseal for each armour piece. He even added a first bloodseal to his level 45 sword, which shows how little he's actually been using it.

Before Arcena joined us, Greengem had been fooling around a little, using a Harpy transformation scroll and then a Death Goddess scroll... and after she cancelled the second one, as far as Chuck was concerned, she was absolutely tiny, only two or three times as big as the armour-fairy. But Rage was still there, and as far as she was concerned, on her screen Greengem was still in the Death Goddess form, When she mounted her horse she vanished entirely for Chuck - and for Rage the Death Goddess just stood very close to the horse. Sirlicksalot and Arcena, arriving later, didn't get either effect, as far as I could tell. I'm supposed to publish some screenshots on the forum.

After the food break, a new member of the guild Rage is in now, Cenaria, was asking who had got their skill points fully farmed, and I mentioned that Rage had over 10k plus her special skills maxxed - so Cenaria, who turned out to be a level 93 archer, volunteered to power-level me. Instead of her archer, though, she decided to use her level 91 wizard Aszune, and so, after checking that I had the necessary Platinum Blessed Iris, experience boosters, crit potion, and so on, and could get Recall, we had a date with the Anubis Spear Men in the Tomb of Theos.

There's a special offer package this week, the "30 Day Pak", which includes a 30-day Party Recall card, as well as a "Life Searcher" card which apparently lets one see other people's health, and four week-long "Greatest HP + MP Boost" potions, which increase one's health and mana by 30% - so, for 699 aeria points, I bought that package, and passed it to Rage.

Aszune Recalled me down to the usual Tomb room for such power-levelling; Zenderfly certainly gave Barbarienne an hour or two there back on Cariae! So I did know what to do, using Recall and making sure I had a new experience booster active, finishing killing the current Spear Man, then re-recruiting Aszune to the party as she'd hurriedly left after taking the Recall, using Recall again... with SirDarth, and for most of the time Argoth, in the party to give Rage a "solo party" boost. The first Spear Man of all died before Aszune could leave the party, and there was one other one later on that also got killed by her, but generally things went pretty smoothly, particularly when my Snare worked.

There was one crisis, though, as mid-battle Aszune stopped fighting just standing their helplessly, and gradually her health began to fall. I used Snare, which otherwise I'd only used right at the end, which stopped the attack for a while - and thankfully, with Aszune's health down to below 10%, probably nearer to 5%, the level 106 boss monster turned its attention away from Aszune, who was just standing there unable to defend herself - and came for me! I had to use some health potions, dodging to and fro and being careful to avoid the aggressive level 104 Sphinx Fighters, especially when Snare failed, but I did eventually manage to kill it - though Aszune shared the experience for that one of course as she'd not been able to leave the party. After a while, Aszune lagged out completely and disconnected; I waited a while, but finally decided to run back to the start, and use up the rest of the hour of potion time on soloing the Screaming Zombies. I was about halfway there when Aszune got back in touch, so she was able to get back, and Recall me down again - and we continued for the remaining few minutes.

Aszune had started by saying we ought to get me to level 70, and then revised that, when things were going so smoothly, to hope for level 72 - but that missing few minutes put paid to that idea. Still, we did manage to make level 70, which was the main thing - Rage ended up with an 810.92% experience gain, which was excellent - and a skill point too, though that probably came almost entirely from after the Tomb. Oh, and 656 pet points. Rage has thus overtaken Kaerella, which probably means that Kae should pass across the armour she's currently using, and go into semi-retirement for a while until Rage moves on to the 75/77 rogue set.

HiDE got in touch with Darth, as he was peacefully sparring with his Berserker - that's Renez from Cariae, of course, or the rogue MEDS. It seems that he is now active on the Katar server, and having fun there. "level 92 on there, in Untamed. Big guild. Good friends are there though, METH forced me to change server." And, as I remarked, one would hardly wish to argue with METH, right, just about the top PvP player in the game. It was good to here from him, and know that he is still enjoying the game.

Rage used the Recall card to get Chuck to the Tomb - I'd been meaning to have him ride along from the outdoor Sphinx types, but this was simpler. He added the entrance to his memorising scroll - as did MistressSabina and MistressDomina. And then I used my scroll to move across to that Sphinx site, so they added that location too, as did SirDarth, before he went back to his pet-levelling. The sphinx types there are blue to Rage now, though they did still give some experience and skill exp when I killed a few.

There was a bit of a thunder storm locally, but it didn't get close enough to be an electrical hazard - I had warned Argoth and Aszune though, in case I made an unceremoniously swift exit. Thunder rumbled around, there were some flashes of lightning, and a few streaks of rain on the window...but it went away. I had settled for some unambitious pet-levelling after the power-levelling hour, which has the advantage that it let me get the blog up to date earlier than sometimes.

I had remembered to allocate my new stat points to Dexterity as I went along, each time I levelled; and back in Randol, Rage was able to get some new skills. In all, 2512 skill points got spent, taking her cache to just under 8k now: 275 on the passive skill Mind Training level 7, adding 5 to evasion, 400 on the attack skill Piercing level 7, adding another 50% (for 350%) to its power, 387 on the attack skill Hide Shot level 6, adding another 30% (for 330%) to its power...and 1450 skill points for the level 70 attack skill, levels 1 to 5, Controlled Shooting, which I see is a self-buff which increases one's attack by 25% for a minute - but decreases one's defence by 15%, and stops you from moving. Hmmm... ah well, just because I've learnt these skills doesn't mean I always have to use them!

SirDarth got his pony up to level 16, making it a horse, at around ten in the evening - and with any luck SirPerivale's horse will end this session about halfway through level 32. That made a peaceful end to an eventful, and different, kind of day.

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