Auzura Breakdown

Before SirDarth and SirPerivale could go out to Merac this morning, a small amount of trading had to be done. The newly-finished level 37 horse was traded across to MistressDomino, and then Darth traded across Smokey's level 27 horse to Peri, before equipping the level 27 drake he had been working on previously. With his lower armour rating, Peri wouldn't have been able to handle the drake, since, as it has been out of action while the horse was levelled, its Sympathy had fallen to 73%, so that would have been the percentage of the full Armour Increase buff it gave, to begin with.

Smokey did check on how things were going - it might have been eight o'clock in the morning for me, but it was 2:00 am last night for him, so me saying I was off to get some breakfast rather surprised him.

There was some more trading between characters after coffee, getting Stars, Stripes and so on to MistressDomino, and a few top hats to various characters, so MistressDomina was a little later than usual heading out to Prokion Temple on Auzura-4. Still, adding 6.12%, 527 pet points and 104 skill points did get her to level 34 at last, which was the object of the exercise. The blue-named Orc Axemen still (at the 50% experience donation/freeze rate) give 642 experience, but the skill exp is now down from 2200 to 1650, while the Orc Sergeants, on the last level when they will be green-named for MD, now give 4268 experience instead of 5691 (a fall of 25%), and 2750 skill exp instead of 3300.

Peri and Darth were both pet-levelling over lunch, while the knight Airwalker was working to level his Ichi pet, and then after that MistressDomina exchanged her level 32 drake for the level 37 one MistressFelicia had been holding. MD then had the Animal Trainer transform the drake into a big, bold dragon, which she immediately coloured red, and headed for Merac.

There were a few quests to be picked up in Merac Caron, to kill Pilferers and Bandits, to kill Berserkers, and to deliver various messages. Generally the local monsters of about MD's level were pretty easy to kill with a couple of blasts of Dragon's Breath, but as "area of effect" spells go it wasn't too impressive, it was rather rare for a second Bandit, or Berserker, to get touched by the flame and come in to attack. You really need someone on foot to gather a big mob close together, so that the dragon's rider can then apply the Breath

I spotted a level 50 Pandora's Beast and got a bit over-ambitious; the trouble with carrying a horse mount and a dragon mount is that, while it allows you to fly around on your dragon with horse buffs, it does mean that when you are on foot you don't get that extra Armour Increase buff from a drake. In short, that darn Pandie killed me, though when I used my resurrection scroll and a health potion, it was low enough in health itself to be polished off. Which was just as well, as the horse buffs had expired, and I'd not immediately started a new resurrection scroll, so a second death could have been nasty.

After visiting Rau at his pillar of magic, it seemed a good idea to head across to Dratan, and polish off a rather old quest, involving killing Desert Spiders. And also to ride down to the Elite Poison Mist's location, and get that spot onto the ol' memory scroll. The Mists seemed easy enough for MD to kill, with the horse buffs active, so perhaps she, like my other characters before her, will spend a few sessions there. MD even went into Prokion Temple for a few minutes, and wandered around killing Orc Sergeants, so it was a pretty varied session, even if it only added 9.77%, 23 skill points, and, well, no pet points, since there wasn't a pet on board...

I would have continued in Prokion Temple for longer, but a little before three o'clock in the afternoon, UK time, there was a mass disconnection, of the worst kind, for the whole Auzura sub-server group. The other servers were still running, which is okay for those of us with multiple accounts, but one's account, or accounts, that had been connected when Auzura went down remained "still logged in", preventing one from re-logging in to switch to a different server. I did spend a little time on a level eight mage over on Hatzring, mainly killing jaguars, but I can't say that my heart was in it.

Luckily Aeria_ks1lent was in the office fairly early, and was able to get the technicians on the job before too long to sort things out, but it still must have been around 5:30 pm before things were up and running again, longer than a "proper" maintenance. So that rather cut back on the playing, and the pet-levelling, today. We'd been enjoying a distinct lack of crashes and mass disconnections lately, so I suppose something like that was about due.

Rage headed out to the Forgotten Temple to begin the evening session, mainly concentrating there on a couple of Curd Hadians - but they didn't drop any boots, just the usual Stars, Stripes, and a moonstone box or two. I'd got up to 3.60% experience, 939 pet points, and 22 skill points, when Aszune needed a bit of help, over on Auzura-2. She was taking a level 41 archer guildie for some power-levelling in the Tomb of Theos - but the archer didn't have the location memorised yet, and Aszune's Party Recall card had run out. So I volunteered my aid, moved over to Auzura-2, joined their party, used a memory scroll to get to the Tomb entrance, and used Recall. Aszune was already there and went straight in...she could have saved a little cash by giving me the gold to enter (as I'm about 23 levels below her, and it costs 3,000 gold per level to get in), which would have made the archer's admission free. I might well have been able to run down to the room that I presume they wanted, come to that, while my horse buffs lasted, saving the archer a dangerous journey...

So, that brought the Temple session to an early conclusion. Before it was time to put SirDarth and his drake up to join SirPerivale and Smokey's horse, I took that new archer of mine, LadyAuzura, out for a session in Juno, killing deer, foxes, and wolves, and taking her from level two to level six. I also added Velpist Temple's entrance and the "Mad Monster Spawn" location to her memory scroll; there was a "GameSage Hide and Seek" going on at the time, so a number of people were rushing around on mounts looking for GS iiAbbyii; some of them probably found her, but just moving around on foot, I didn't. It was handy to open Pandora's Boxes with a bow rather than with a melee weapon, anyway; the first one LadyAuzura opened released a level 30 Beast, so I just moved on, while the second actually dropped a heaven stone, the first time I've had that happen.

A little later, SirDarth wasn't as lucky - the Pandora's Beast he released managed to kill him. Luckily the pet drake was unhurt, and Darth only lost 1 skill point. MrChuckNorris quickly rode down to take our revenge, gaining 97,600 gold for his trouble. Darth went on to get his drake safely into level 28, while Peri ought to get SmokeinTheKush's horse to almost halfway through level 29 by log-out time.

It was yesterday that HiDE, a character of Renez's, got in touch, to say that he had one of the "tier 2 reward packages" in his Item Mall Records section over here on Auzura (on that particular promotion, they sent the rewards to all servers, which means I've got some useful stuff over on the other servers too), and would I like to have it? That was a very kind offer, which I immediately accepted. For ease of spelling we decided that Rage would be the right recipient, so today there was a nice assortment of power potions, crit potions, and so on to add to her inventory. The package also included seven lucky smelting stones, so those got transferred to MistressDomino - and four of them were passed on to SirPerivale to use on his armour, so it is now as strong as when it had the school uniform "cover" on, and has the little fairy fluttering at his shoulder to show that he has +4 armour. It doesn't make a huge difference to his defence rating, but sometimes every little helps.

Talking about those "covers", SirDarth still has his school uniform active, and he also has a cover for his weapon, to make it look like a baseball bat, which he hasn't melded to the sword he occasionally uses. Like the costume, you can equip it without it being melded to the relevant item, so I tried that early on today for a change. Darth still hit the Berserker for 26 damage, so there seemed no problem, but when I next looked, the Berserker was dead. For some reason the attack speed was greater (and probably the percentage of successful hits), and that had overwhelmed the Berserker. So, there was no more use of a baseball bat, Darth went back to bare-knuckle fighting.