Tuesday 4 August 2009

Levelling Up In Egeha

This may well have been the last morning on which SirPerivale and SirDarth went out to the Berserkers together, as the morning session was a time of changes. The drake that Darth had been raising for Galahad was comfortably into level 25 by mid-morning, so it was time to trade it back across to Galahad, who is now fully equipped with a mount and the drake. Darth went off to exchange a drake egg for a new hatchling - but in the end, it may not be him who levels it up.

It was time to get CaptainScarlet his red name, so he and SirPerivale switched across to the Player versus Player enabled Auzura-6 sub-server, and headed for Prokion Temple. It's not a matter of heading for that back room I go to, rather Peri just went a few feet into the corridor leading off the entrance hall, and removed his armour. Then Cap just had to switch to PvP mode, and kill him, repeatedly. Peri respawned in the hall each time he got killed and ran back, and we took Cap all the way to -155 on the Good/Evil scale.

How would this modify the power of his bare-handed hitting? Back on Auzura-4 he got a drake egg from MistressDomina, and took it to Lorraine in Randol and then on to archaeologist Jajan in Dratan, receiving his hatchling, and then he headed for the Berserkers. 27 is just about the maximum hit they can handle without eventually dying; at level 22 Peri hits for 26, while Darth at level 23 used to hit for 27, though with his slight red name at present he hits for 25. Captain Scarlet at the moment hits for a mere 17, so has no problems there at all.

SirDarth handed over his upgraded armour set to SirPerivale, who already has been using the +13 shield, and then Cap and Peri exchanged pets. With that armour set and shield Peri would have no trouble starting a drake from level 1, even though that means no Armour Increase buff from his pet. His physical defence is 1048, which is at least 60 more than the minimum required. With the +10 30/32 armour set and level 33 shield from the "Player Appreciation" event, CaptainScarlet's physical defence is 1011, which is also quite enough to be going on with. It may get to slightly more than that when all the pieces are bloodsealed, too, though that may take some time.

Moving the level 34 pale blue horse across from Peri to Cap means that instead of being 12 levels above its owner, and getting through 7 food points every 5 minutes (1 hour 11 minutes to use all 100 points), the horse is now only 3 levels above, and that means 2 food points per 5 minutes (4 hours 10 minutes to use the 100). So, an awful lot of quality stones are going to be saved with this system.

It looks as if SirDarth will get to level up at last. For the first few levels, he will probably be teamed with one of my other characters in Prokion Temple, one that's passed level 30 and thus needs a lower-level companion to continue to get a useful amount of experience and skill points there. That ought to work well, particularly as mages do seem to kill rather more quickly than knights. When he does need to fight on his own behalf, well, he'll need to borrow that good armour set back.

There seem to be rather less Pandora's Boxes around lately, but they do still appear; one last thing last night gave Peri five moonstones, and one this morning actually released a level 50 Blood Frenzy type Pandora's Beast. It seemed a while since Chuck rode down to deal with one of those, but all went smoothly, and the Beast dropped a useful 92,800 gold.

MistressDomina got the level 45 +15 titan sword that Chuck used to use from him, and converted it, courtesy of Collector Ryu, into a mage staff, for 340,000 gold, and bought some bloodseal gems, so that the next time she levelled up, she would be able to start using that, which is a big step up from the level 29 staff she has been using. Chuck also had his old 45/47 armour set in storage, but more of that later.

The afternoon session was, as yesterday, a team-up of MistressDomina and MrChuckNorris in Egeha, fighting the level 65 Bogles, plus the occasional level 67 Dark Bogle. Chuck opened some skill boxes before we set off, but only got one Blessed Iris from them - he got three Platinum Blessed Irises though, which give triple experience for one hour, which will come in handy later! He traded the blessed iris over to MD, and as soon as they reached the Bogles, she started it, for three hours of double experience - Chuck had a three-hour "medium experience elixir", giving a 30% boost to his experience gain, so he used that.

Things would have run pretty smoothly, except for that dratted Grand Golden Dragon, who "arrived" every 14 or 15 minutes six times in a row. Nobody on my Friends List seemed able to deal with it, so I just moved between the hill and the area at the foot of the hill, so that when the GGD "arrived" at one spot, I'd just head for the other. In the three-hour session Chuck added 25.81%, and MD added 165.63%, which got her a third of the way into level 42. Chuck added 5 skill points, and 1567 pet points, and MD added 4 skill points.

They just stayed in Egeha village through my food break, and then had another three-hour session; MD had a 30% boost potion this time, while Chuck started a 24-hour one. This time the GGD only teleported in on top of us once; there were other people active in Egeha, a couple of people passed by where Chuck was fighting, probably the GGD got lured and killed somewhere safely away from where I was.

When the three hours on MistressDomina's potion ran out, she headed back to town, having added another 86.95%, taking her into level 43, and 5 skill points; Chuck was less than 3% short of gaining his level, so stayed out until he did in fact reach level 55, just as he ran out of the medium mana potions he'd brought with him - 650 of them, I think it was. He had gained another 28.51% experience, 6 skill points, and 1825 pet points.

Back in Randol afterwards, Chuck traded across that level 45/47 armour set to MD, and she spent 708,600 gold converting it from titan armour to the mage equivalent. Putting it on, I found that even though it isn't as highly upgraded as the 30/32 set, it does increase her physical defence stat - from 1104 to 1105! Chuck didn't have any new skills to learn, just stat points to allocate to Strength; MD allocated her new stat points to Intelligence, and was able to learn the available five levels of Flame Field, an "area of effect" skill which apparently links well with Flame Storm, and the sixth level of Transformation, which converts health into mana. So that was 493 skill points spent... but plenty more left for future use.

After that it was time to send SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet out to do some late evening pet-levelling. That pale blue horse should reach level 35 before Cap logs out, while Peri's dragon hatchling should be level 5 by then. Apparently there won't be the usual server maintenance tonight, "though we may have a possible server reset to help with latency" - the actual maintenance close-down will come along later this week. Let us hope that they don't decide to have it at a peak European playing time, and that the "Player Appreciation" event, with its free armour and weapons, continues.


No comments:

Post a Comment