To the Sphinx Fighters - and Beyond!

To the Sphinx Fighters - and Beyond! - August 3rd

SirDarth and SirPerivale started their pet-levelling work suitably early, and then after coffee it was time for MistressDomina to head back to the Poison Mists, to get that last 2% and reach level 39. This didn't take long, so there was time for a fairly short team-up between MD and MrChuckNorris over in Sphinx Fighter territory before lunch.

This was a little disappointing for MD, as even though she is 25 levels below a Sphinx Fighter, and Chuck is 10 levels below them, the amount of experience per kill is less than earth-shattering, so my vague hopes that MD would quickly zoom up through a few levels were dashed. Chuck would have to kill around 400 of the Sphinx types to get MistressDomina to level 40, and more for each subsequent level.

The fighting was, however, enlivened by the arrival of Kamira; so Chuck logged out, and Rage, who does still have the location on her memory scroll, teleported in. Luckily I'd taken the precaution earlier of replenishing Rage's stock of level 12 magical defence minerals, moving some across from my merchant MistressDomino, so horse buffs were applied, the mineral, a lucky scroll and an item drop booster were triggered, and Rage began the attack.

It's lucky that a ranger uses a bow, and doesn't have to get too near the target, as Kamira was pretty close to Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men, but as it was, with the use of some large health potions, Rage prevailed. To begin with I just saw the usual drops, the medal of honour, the lucky scrolls, moonstones, tool aids, and so on, but then I spotted some yellow lettering - Kamira had dropped an Origin of Land. It's not the most valuable rare accessory, but it offers six to constitution, 12 to all types of physical defence, and a boost of 100 to health points, so either Chuck or perhaps a pet-leveller is going to find it very useful.

Once again, Rage used the remaining time on the lucky scroll to kill some Curd Hadians and Legendary Slayers in the Forgotten Temple, and this time at least a level 62 piece of armour, a hood, was dropped - no boots though.

Chuck returned after that, teaming up with MistressDomina again, until it was time to finish the session. In all Chuck went up 3.68%, and added 2 skill points and a few pet points as well. Including the time with the Poison Mists, MD added 21.57%, 7 skill points, and 119 pet points. The mage Wortex put in an appearance, she is level 53 now; a rogue called Sayno wanted to party with Chuck, but when she was let into the team, I discovered that she was only level 28, so didn't, I think, get much experience over the following few kills. When a Sphinx type spawned too close to her while we were attacking another one, she got killed, and wisely didn't return from town. Really, at level 28 people will get more experience from Prokion Temple, and skill exp too of course.

While SirDarth was pet-levelling for the lunch break alongside SirPerivale, Stavanic got in touch; he had found a platinum pet experience pill on sale for nine million in gold, which does seem cheap by recent standards, and kindly passed it over to Darth, either in thanks for past pet-levelling, or for pet-levelling work yet to come.

For the afternoon, MistressDomina and MrChuckNorris teamed up again - but this time we headed for Egeha, paying our 800,000 gold each to get there. We headed west out of town, killing Bogles as we went, and after less than a dozen kills, the Grand Gold Dragon, the local raid boss, appeared, which just shows how quiet Egeha is these days if nobody else's activities had lured it. At level 90 she was out of Chuck's class, so we just moved on, and, after killing a couple of the Dark Bogles too, settled in on my favourite hill. The path doesn't actually lead anywhere, but you get a good view of parts of Egeha from the top.

Bogles are unaggressive, just slouching about and then, for no particular reason, breaking into a little dance. They tend to drop level 65/67 armour, and level 65 weapons; at the end of the day I moved all the armour over to one of my mule characters, a knight called EarlGrey, and he looks rather impressive in the complete "Valiant" set, including the shield, though the effect is slightly let down by his level 1 sword.

Kirimin got in touch, the only person on Chuck's Friends List who was online. That's a character I know very little about, I think it is one of Greengem's. I mentioned the GGD, and she was interested - I said I was on Auzura-4, but that the GGD's appearance was by then a few minutes back, so it would probably be best to wait until it was lured by my Bogle-killing again, but she didn't wait, and a few minutes later was asking which path out of town I'd taken.

Her fight with the GGD took a while - especially as the GGD's health reset to 100% once. What had happened was that it had attacked Kirimin's pet - and when the GGD killed it, the aggro was over as far as the raid boss was concerned, so its health was reset. Still, Kirimin is level 93, and prevailed in the end, easily killing the level 88 Cursed Weavers with around three hits each. She didn't get a rare drop, but the lucky scrolls and other routine items will have more than paid for the cost of the trip to Egeha, and the cost of getting her pet unsealed.

The afternoon session for MD and Chuck ended with MD up 39.40% and Chuck up 8.93%, plus 2 skill points each and 679 pet points for Chuck's drake. As Egeha is a bit expensive to reach, they both stayed there over my food break, and then resumed the fight for a full evening session too; there was always the likelihood that the older computer would "run out of memory", but surprisingly it lasted through to my normal log-out time. By then MistressDomina's immediate objective of reaching level 40 had been achieved, with a further 97.93% experience gain; Chuck added 19.60%, they each gained 5 more skill points, and Chuck's drake added another 1711 pet points.

It was lucky that both Chuck and MistressDomina had plenty of the medium-size mana potions, as Chuck had to use one for just about every kill, as the titan stun skill Smite does use a lot of mana. When his supply of 250 was running out, MD was able to trade another 200 or so across. You can only buy those in Strayana; the medium size health potions weren't a problem, Chuck just quickly returned to Egeha village to buy some more when he was running low. After the party finished, Chuck did make a quick trip to Strayana to buy 600 more medium mana potions.

Athema, Ratel's mage, had joined the party for the evening; her absence yesterday had been caused by a disconnection in the afternoon, after which the internet service provider had just gone into maintenance mode. Athema and her pet had both died, she discovered when she logged on today, and of course the blessed iris she'd used less than a third of had run out, as they count down in real time, even when one isn't connected to the game. Add the loss of the chance to get 15 heaven stones from the Quiz last night, and that must have been extremely annoying.

Still, Athema settled in in Prokion, using a new blessed iris to double her experience gain for three hours, and reached level 30... and then, before the BI expired, reached level 31 too and gained her +10 armour set and two +10 weapons, the witch wand and the wizard staff. She has also chosen to become a witch; she managed to upgrade her level 33 wand from +10 to +12 without breaking it, my advice was to buy an extreme stone if she wishes to get it to +13, rather than risk breaking such a now-valuable item.

Peri and Darth went back into action to finish the day, with Peri getting his pale blue horse to about 40% of the way through level 34, and Darth getting his drake past the halfway mark in level 24, so that it is just about ready to be returned to Galahad now.