Thursday 13 August 2009

A Welcome Boost

Yesterday evening's "server maintenance", starting before 6:30pm UK time, went on and on, with talk of "two hours" turning to "three hours", and then "done when it's done" - it was still going on after five hours when I logged out, so there wasn't any opportunity for late night pet levelling, or for SirPerivale to level his dragon hatchling overnight. So, for European players the whole evening session was lost, no wonder the forum ShoutBox kept getting messages from unhappy would-be players.

However, this morning things were back in action, without any new patch; all the work was apparently working on the "back end" of the servers, attempting to make them more reliable. So, there was no return yet of the merchant house system, and no rebalancing of the skill exp to be gained from mid-level monsters... but on the other hand, the "Player Appreciation" event is still rolling, so maybe Ratel will have a chance to get to level sixty before it ends.

I had to go off to the supermarket for a "big shop", so SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet were left pet-levelling, which went smoothly - Cap had been ks'd a little earlier, but wasn't out of action for long. When I returned after a couple of hours a level fifty Pandora's Beast was prowling on the far side of the clearing, so Cap logged out and MistressDomina rode down on her snow-white charger to deal with it - it dropped 63,200 gold, which made her trip worthwhile.

Cap's white horse reached level 35 just before lunch, and Peri's hatchling reached level 12 soon after, making four levels in the morning session for it. But after lunch, the pet-levelling was suspended, as Cap had an important date - to meet up with MistressBlaze again in Prokion Temple.

The Auzura-3 Temple seemed pretty busy as MB and Cap hurried towards the back room, but thankfully my favourite room was free, so we settled in as usual - and it soon became apparent that, after treating us so badly last night, the game was making amends with some nice double experience and skill exp.

So, even with taking a few minutes off mid-way, MistressBlaze reached level 36 in the course of adding 23.40% experience, and a very handy 231 skill points; CaptainScarlet got almost as many skill points, there was one restart and hurry-back, so that he does now have enough sp for all five levels of the passive skill Wall of Belief which come available when he reaches level 32, and 48 to spare. He is almost halfway through level 31 now. I assume his bare-fisted hitting power is likely to go up slightly when he reaches the new level, but I'm sure that he will still be hitting Berserkers a lot more lightly than the white-named SirPerivale.

Cap teleported back to town, and then on to Merac, while MistressBlaze logged out, and Peri logged in for some pet-levelling over the food break. I noticed that Cap was in theory still in a party with MB, probably because she logged out while he was teleporting.

The evening session began with MistressDomina heading west out of Dratan city, fighting Giants. I was teamed, for the solo party boost, with CaptainScarlet, who was still with his Berserker, and Ratel, who had recently logged on. He was busy making a level 49 sword, collecting the raw materials needed and having them processed - but then he rode out, after successfully making the sword, riding past me in fact to the Akane Giants I was heading towards.

We teamed up to fight the Akane Giants, and indeed the Elite Akane Giant and even a few Masters of Secret Technique, which are close by. I had mentioned to Ratel earlier that double experience and skill exp was running, but I guess he'd been too busy preparing to make that sword to notice, and he was suitably impressed with the amount of experience he was getting. After a while though he needed to go off and solo some Elite Goblins, which were closer to his level, to finish getting enough skill points, 250, to at last be able to get level six of Wall of Belief, which comes available at level 47.

Ratel wasn't over-impressed with the increase to his defence stat, 60, those skill points got him, but hey, it all helps. And it inspired him to suggest that we could try teaming up over at the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men, to see how we fared against monsters at that kind of level (63 and 64), before we decided whether we could handle a trip to Egeha to fight the Bogles (level 65).

Cap logged out, and Galahad logged in, and used his memory scroll to teleport to the Sphinx spot. While he could have joined our party, being only 15 levels below Ratty, I didn't want to dilute the experience gain we'd get - and Galahad doesn't really want experience without skill exp anyway. So Gal buffed Ratel and MD, when she arrived from the Akane Giants, with Concentration, to increase the likelihood of their skills succeeding, and just stood and watched.

It wasn't without its risks, but Ratel and MD did okay. Pretty soon we were joined by Stavanic, who had been chatting with Ratel, but after a few minutes his contribution rather fizzled out, with him concentrating more on a chat window than on fighting. We gave him as long as we could, but just staying in range and getting a share of the experience without actually fighting is called "leaching", so eventually I had to kick him from the party. I thought perhaps he was lagging out, as he vanished moments after that, but apparently Ratel had advised him to return to town, for his own safety - with respawning sphinx types, he could have got into trouble without knowing about it.

It wasn't a hugely long session out there, but it certainly boosted our experience nicely. Up until the move to the Sphinx types MistressDomina had added perhaps 15%, which by recent standards was pretty good - but the total evening session zoomed up to 55.32%, plus 34 skill points and 1030 pet points... enough to get MD's drake into level 36.

After Ratel logged out, I didn't stick around, and CaptainScarlet and SirPerivale were soon back in Merac with the Berserkers. There was a brief interruption when Peri opened a Pandora's Box and released a level fifty Pandora's Beast, so that MistressDomina had to ride down and deal with it; this one dropped 112,800 gold, which must be about the maximum possible amount. By the end of the evening the white horse was approaching the halfway mark in level 35, and Peri's hatchling was well into level 13.

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