Friday 10 July 2009

Pet Levelling

SirPerivale's horse did in fact just manage to reach level 36 last night. The final level ought, I calculated, to take a little over 13 hours, so didn't seem likely to all fit into today, though I was looking forward to the Friday "Teatime" two hour event, of which more later.

As SmokeInTheKush is six hours behind UK time, and tends to stay up late, she was still around when my pet-levellers got started this morning. She had made a new titan, giving him the classical Greek titan name KRONOS, and got him to level 25, with the idea of having him do some pet-levelling, but titans aren't really very good at this sort of thing, they don't have a knight's health regeneration and their attack is slower. Smokey had allocated his stat points slightly wrongly for the task; I thought the NPC Crean in Randol helped sort such errors out, for a fee, but it seems he only deals with dual-class characters, at level 31 and above.

Just before breakfast MrChuckNorris had to be called in to deal with one of the level 50 Pandora's Beasts - which kindly dropped 57,600 gold and a moonstone box. He also had to ride down again later in the morning, but that particular Beast didn't drop anything; a third Pandora's Box actually just gave Peri some loot, five moonstones to be exact.

After coffee I was able to log MistressDomina in instead of SirPerivale, and of course she headed straight for Prokion Temple. The session there went smoothly enough, in fact her faithful drake only took four points of damage from the Orcs, which is unusually low. 9.15% experience got added, plus 848 pet points and 149 skill points.

Over lunch SirPerivale was able to rejoin SirDarth. I stayed away from the computer almost too long, not remembering the speed at which a pet gets hungry at level 36, fourteen levels above Peri, and when I returned the starvation bar was down to 2/100, so more quality stones had to be used right away.

Going by the general idea that one of my knightly pet-levellers can add a thousand pet points an hour, I worked out that going from level 12 to the top of level 23 takes around 80 quality stones - the levels before that, as they are shorter, could just take 26 or 27. After that the pet becomes hungrier, so going on to the top of level 32 takes another 600 - while the final four levels to get a level 37 pet would add another 800.

For the part-afternoon before the promised two "Happy Hour" hours, it seemed easiest to take Rage out to the Forgotten Temple again - and I did get to use Recall to bring in a couple of characters, but that was just Steve wanting help moving his pet-levelling knight armour set, and 28 tool aids, from BringerofHell to GuildHealer, as he intends to set up a pet-levelling knight on that particular account. As usual Rage had used horse buffs to race through the early parts of the Temple, and as usual nobody else was around. Killing the local monsters until just before the Happy Hour was announced added 1.45%, 322 pet points, and 7 skill points.

The Happy Hour was a bit of a mess, sadly. It started with an announcement that it was the US one rather than the EU one, and only offered the 50% extra experience gain - there was no mention of the promised double pet experience, or indeed any sign of the pet-levelling statues which were due to be spawned on each server's first non-PvP sub-server, outside Randol's north gate. The forum's shoutbox was without any GameSages, until finally Giovanna_X arrived, just after, at gone a quarter past the hour, we got a new "EU Happy Hour has begun!!! Enjoy the EXP Bump!!!" announcement, but still no increase in the pet experience rate. Gio promised to look into things, but the whole of the first hour passed without any change.

In fact, it was about twenty minutes into hour two before the pet experience started going up two by two. So, the patience of my pet levellers was at last rewarded. The 50% regular experience boost, unwelcome for a lot of characters if they were wanting to stock up on skill points, ended on time, according to the announcement, but thankfully the double pet experience continued. And it seemed more useful to continue Darth and Peri, rather than log Chuck or MistressDomina or Rage, or even LordElpus, in.

I did have some connection problems on the newer computer, so, due to a couple of restarts, Darth missed out on some of the double time; still, Peri was the important one, with his horse moving through its final level at double the usual rate. The boost did finally end a little before seven, UK time; it ought to be back at midnight for the US Happy Hour(s), but that's a bit late for me.

So, what next? I do find that I'm missing the option to play my archer Kaerella, while Rage is using the level 70/72 armour set, and also the +15 weapon for that level. It would be silly to buy a second set, appropriately upgraded - and swapping the one set between characters costs a couple of million, to change from one class to another, and destroys the set of bloodseals. Chuck can just about solo Sphinx types or Bogles, but in a rather boring way and using lots of potions - like Rage he would function better in a team, but despite what he said yesterday Ratel didn't put in an appearance tonight.

The most constructive use of the rest of the evening seemed to be to return to MistressDomina, so that's what I did... and what she did was return to Prokion Temple. It was a longer session, and I did have three visitors, though they didn't, thankfully, stay long, no more than a single Orc kill each I think. 15.38% experience got added, so one more hour will get MD to level 34, the last level at which the Orc Sergeants will be green-named for her. 1283 pet points were earned, along with another 252 skill points, so MistressDomina must still be earning skill points ten or even twenty times faster than Rage or Chuck can.

So, will MD continue for another level in Prokion Temple, preferably released from the 50% reduction in her experience gain - or do we exchange her level 32 drake for the level 37 one we raised, convert it into a dragon, and send her flying the friendly skies of Merac to mob the Bandits and Blood Frenzies? It would certainly make a change...

The horse SirDarth is levelling up for SmokeinThe Kush should pass the halfway mark in level 27 before it's time to log out. Thanks to that belated but slightly extended Happy Hour of double pet experience, SirPerivale will be getting pretty near to the end of his work on his current horse by log-out time, in fact he might just make it. Since he has borrowed Darth's upgraded shield and helm, his armour rating is slightly higher than usual, so I think he would be okay to take over Smokey's horse (which is a suitably smokey-grey colour) at its current level, even though that means that the Armour Increase buff is 40 below its maximum. Not having his full deluxe set, Darth can't currently start a pet from level 1, but he has a level 27 drake to work on, to keep him busy. But that's for tomorrow.

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