Teaming in the Temple

My pet-levellers were hard at work all morning, as I was generally busy downstairs; I had expected to lose the afternoon session too, but managed to get everything finished by about halfway through, so was able to get more involved with Last Chaos then.

As I was reminded yesterday, it is possible for a character to continue beyond level 34 in Prokion Temple, if they are teamed up with someone at a significantly lower level - so the obvious candidate for teaming up with MistressDomina was my power-levelled titan Cyborg, who had practically no skill points, and hardly any skills.

So, both SirDarth and SirPerivale were able to take a few hours off; with Cyborg on the older computer, he and MD teamed up, moved to Prokion Temple, applied MD's speed buff and the horse buffs, and, with Cy clicked onto MD to follow her, headed for my favourite back room.

Unfortunately even on Auzura-4 the room was occupied, by a healer with a name like Nanak, so, while I parked Cyborg safely behind one of the torch-braziers in there, MistressDomina had to content herself with fighting the Orc Fighters and Orc Soldiers out in the corridor and other nearby rooms, making sure that Cy's dot was still visible on the compass map.

It wasn't long before that healer left, however, and with me having Cyborg's view of the room on my screen, I knew about it right away, so that MD was able to dash in and claim the place as her own.

The session before my usual early evening food break wasn't very long, but MistressDomina did get the last 9% she needed to level up, reaching level 35 - in all she added 14.50%, plus 86 skill points (enough to take her reserve over 25k), and 171 pet points. When I reached the new level I had to unequip MD's drake, as with all the Orcs now blue-named, it wouldn't get any more pet experience, and while its buffs are quite useful, it does tend to get attacked a lot, and not having to watch for that all the time was rather a relief.

I left the characters in the room over my food break, and was able to resume fairly quickly. MistressDomina was getting fairly similar amounts of skill exp to what she had been getting before this on-site team-up, and more experience - not the 1284 from an Axeman and 8536 from a Sergeant she'd got at level 34 after the 50% experience freeze was taken off, but more like 6500 and 14500 or so, though it varied with each kill.

Ratel was playing his healer Jacqueline, mainly to lure the Grand Red Dragon - and when the luring succeeded, he'd switch to Ratel, start a level 12 magic defence mineral, and go down and fight it. The first appearance was actually caused by Norcaine guild member JadaMarie, but, while Ratel did succeed in killing it, JM got carried away and joined the attack, which may well have diminished the chance of a good drop. The following two lurings were done by Jacqui though, and each time Ratel triumphed over the dragon and the Cerebrii it spawns... the last time it did actually drop a rare, even though he'd not been able to start an item drop booster or lucky scroll: a Crest of Rainbow, an accessory that adds 6 to constitution and 12 each to strength, dexterity and intelligence..

I had to advise Ratel how to reveal the item's "secret properties" - that is, buy a golden magnifying glass for a million gold, click it open, and drag on the item to be identified. Ratel was most impressed with his new acquisition, and decided right away to keep it, and equip it.

My evening went pretty smoothly - except when a knight called bLoodmoNey barged in, started ks-ing, asking to party, what level was I, he'd go away if I gave him a moonstone box, and so on... but luckily he didn't stay all that long.

By the end of the evening, MistressDomina had added another 52.96%, which shows what a boost partying with Cyborg gave her, and 298 more skill points, so she'd done well... while Cyborg had in all gone up by six levels, from 20 to 26 - 600.48%. He'd got 374 skill points, too, so ought at least to be able to get Battle Roar up to level five. That's exactly the same number of sp that MD got across the two sessions, since party members, assuming they are close enough together to be on the compass-map, do normally get the same amount of skill exp. Ordinary experience does vary though, depending on how close you are to the monster in question's level.

So, Cyborg should be a bit more useful next time he attends a Mad Monster Spawn. We'll have to see how things go when he levels up a bit further, perhaps he will still boost MistressDomina's experience gain up to level 29 - we will see. Cyborg will never have a full set of maximised skills, but he should be useful in future, in situations where I don't want to send a character who'd lose a lot of skill points when killed.

JadaMarie, as a level 28 healer, was having the same sort of problems Jacqueline had been having in Prokion Temple... having only average armour, skill point farming just didn't work, every time she died she lost more than she'd gained. I was at least able to suggest a trip to Strayana's weapons dealer to buy some level 33 weapons, to convert into smelting stones to upgrade her armour (weapons may cost slightly more, but they give two smelting stones rather than a piece of armour's one)...so she now has all her armour at least at +3. My other advice is, if Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen hit too hard, go for the Orc Fighters and Orc Soldiers, they may give a bit less experience and skill exp, but they are lower level, so are easier to kill and dont hit quite as hard.

The evening ended with SirDarth and SirPerivale returning to the Berserkers, where they were joined almost immediately by Airwalker, training his Ichi "human tribe" pet again. He didn't stay very long, as he's two hours ahead of UK time - he was glad to be back, he'd had internet problems this week - three days without Last Chaos! It hardly bears thinking about...

SirDarth got his horse to level 19 this evening, while SirPerivale's drake is now just starting on level 33, which should take a while.