SirDarth and SirPerivale were up early as usual, and Peri's horse reached level 33 during the morning. Darth had to play without any supervision for a while, as before ten I fired up Guild Wars on the newer computer, and that always makes an existing Last Chaos window, even if minimised at the time, go black. Darth continued to pet-level, until I finally closed the Last Chaos window, but I couldn't feed the drake or anything, all I could do was watch things from Peri's point of view. Over in Shing Jea Monastery, in that other game, the Dragon Festival was reaching its climax, and I needed to have a character there to get the newest dragon-type headgear. Well, I think she has almost every other special hat or mask ever issued, so one needs to continue the collection, yes?
After coffee it was time for MistressDomina to head for Auzura-4's Prokion Temple, where she soon reached level 33. This meant that the skill exp per Orc Sergeant fell by 14.3%, and the skill exp per Orc Axeman fell by 20.0%. The Orc Axemen are now blue-named, so fighting them won't add any pet points; the amount of regular experience they give has fallen away very sharply too.
All of this explains why, compared to yesterday's 280-ish skill points in an hour, along with about 14% experience and 800 pet points, this morning's 246 skill points in the hour (249 in all), 8.09% experience, and 657 pet points seems a bit low. As that included a few minutes before levelling up, and used the last of the 15% skill pills, things would be a little bit lower next time, I knew. If the experience gain per hour has been cut in half, I thought, perhaps it was just about time for MistressDomina to come out of the "50% experience gain freeze" situation, and start to level in a normal way.
After the usual pet-levelling over lunch, it was time to finish the job on that spare titan of mine, Cyborg. First of all, Rage partied with him, and used Party Recall to let him get the entrance to Prokion Temple onto his memory scroll (plus the Sphinx types and the entrance to the Tomb of Theos, for good measure); then MistressDomina passed her armour and accessories over to MistressSabina, who at level 30 was just in range of Cyborg, at level 15, without Cy being "capped".
MistressSabina partied with Cyborg, and added horse buffs, and Mana Shield for speed, for him, just outside Prokion Temple, again on Auzura-4. Then, although his own armour is still rather low-level, he was able to run to my favourite back room, and take up a position in a corner, protected by one of the torch/braziers. MistressSabina followed him in, and set to work on the back room's Orc Axemen and Orc Soldiers, in much the same way that MistressDomina had earlier, though using her level 33 wand instead of MD's level 29 staff. Over the next 40 minutes MistressSabina added 15% experience - and Cyborg added five levels, reaching level 20 and completing his Guardian apprenticeship, so that the event weapon appeared in his inventory.
The "Sunday Teatime" started about then, with 50% extra skill experience for two hours, but Sabina didn't stay long, she doesn't need 50% extra, if she is to get any useful number of skill points she needs at least 200% extra. In all she added 15.95% experience, 67 skill points, and 653 pet points.
The best way to make use of the bonus time was for MistressDomina to swing back into action, so as soon as the accessories and armour had been traded back to MD, SirDarth logged in for some pet-levelling and the solo party boost, and very soon MD was back in that room with the Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants. The Sergeants were now giving 4950 skill exp per kill and the Axemen 3300, but as we were still on the 50% freeze of the experience gain, that was as good as using a pssp for triple skill exp without the freeze. MD now only had four super skill pills left, for an hour each of double skill exp, so using the 50% bonus was rather convenient.
There was about an hour and 45 minutes left of the Teatime, and MistressDomina made pretty good use of it, adding 12.29% experience, 1176 pet points, and, I see, exactly 300 skill points, taking her comfortably over the 22k mark.
The early evening food break had the pet-levelling duo back in action; a single Pandora's Box let out a level 50 Pandora's Beast, which Chuck came down and dealt with, gaining 71,200 gold. Soon after that Darth's drake reached level 20, while when he logged out again Peri's horse was just approaching the 30% mark on the journey through level 33.
The main evening session on a Sunday is always a problem, as it has the Quiz stuck right in the middle. I was running a bit late, after delaying my food break until the "Happy Hour" had ended, so, ruling out trips to Egeha or the Forgotten Temple, I logged LordElpus in for a few minutes... and then worked out that I just about had time for an hour's worth of Prokion Temple before the Quiz, so changed over to MistressDomina again.
This was MD's first full ssp-using hour at level 33, so it was interesting to find that she went up 6.88%, which means potentially eleven more one-hour sessions before she reaches level 34 if I don't get her experience gain "unfrozen" from its current 50% rate. Using the 100% boost to skill exp from the ssp, 221 skill points got added, along with 563 pet points. Hitting the Axemen doesn't count towards pet experience now, and I'd have said if anything there were more Axemen than Sergeants in that room's mix; I think we're still getting more than half as many pet points because hitting a group with Flame Storm only counted once before, even if six targets were involved...and as long as at least one of those targets is a Sergeant, it still counts the same way.
The Quiz started on time at 8:30 UK time; I was there as Kaerella as usual on Auzura-2, along with Rage, plus Ratel, GuildHealer, and a lot of DreamingRequiem people including Aszune... and almost everyone got kicked out on about the fifth question. I suppose I wasn't concentrating, everyone else was on the side that said that, yes, GMKrash was in charge of the old school treasure hunts... and then at the last minute I persuaded myself to dash for the other side. Rage, who was following me, didn't make it, and respawned back in the middle of Randol, along with almost everyone else.
So, Kae was one of only eight survivors. Luckily most of the following questions were ones we know the answers to, and we all made it through to the end, to get our ten tool aids, ten moonstones, and fifteen heaven stones. By that time I'd got SirDarth back pet-levelling in Merac with his Berserker. And when Kae logged out, well, it was time for LordElpus to kill a few more foxes and wolves.
Ratel and GuildHealer (alias Steve, Stavanic, BringerofHell, etc) were looking at prices in Auzura-1's Randol - heaven stones on sale for ten million, mounts for 800 million, chaos smelting stones approaching 200 million, and all sorts of vastly inflated prices. It all gave Ratty a bit of a headache, and he signed off for the night. Steve apparently has a character or two on the Hatzring server, and he plans to work on them a bit over the next week or two, levelling pets and generally farming, as he reckons that prices are more stable there, so he wants to develop a Norcaine guild there that we could all switch to if necessary. He'll still drop in on us over here from time to time, though.
LordElpus didn't get too bored, as an assassin-rogue had summoned a Skin Walker, a level 82 boss type monster from Egeha, which seemed really incongruous just by the moat around town. She and a knight friend were attempting to kill it, but made very little headway, with the knight dying a couple of times, until they brought in a rather higher level titan to help. It still took a while, though! As I knew that Skin Walkers aren't aggressive, I allowed it to get pretty close to me in an attempt to take a screenshot - and nearly died, an "area of effect" skill it used took me down to 7 health. So, I kept my distance after that.
So, that was the way the day ended; SirDarth had got his drake to level 21 before the end of play, while SirPerivale's horse should have reached about 40% of the way through level 33 by the time he logs out. Peri still has around a thousand quality stones, but that number is going to start to fall quite dramatically over the coming week.
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