The Importance of Potions

Well, CaptainScarlet and SirPerivale returned to duty on the pet-levelling front at a suitably early pre-breakfast hour, so that Peri's drake reached level 25 during the lunch break. Cap's pale blue horse had reached level 33 by coffee time. As the drake was now two levels above Peri, it was starting to get hungrier, so the time is now approaching when it will be necessary to find it a new home.

Initially, for the after-coffee session, I despatched MistressSabina and JohnWellington to the Auzura-3 Prokion Temple, but, with Sabina now on level 35, there was very little experience or skill exp coming in for the team. So, Sabina logged out, after gaining just 0.12% experience and 3 skill points, and Galahad, on level 33, hurried to Prokion to take over.

The session lasted a bit over an hour, and Galahad added 8.24%, 135 guild points, and 66 skill points, while in all JohnWellington added 11.85%, 133 guild points, and, thanks to using his last "beginner" pssp, 142 skill points.

In the afternoon, MistressDomina took MistressBlaze out to the Sphinx types again. For much of the time I had the place to myself, but then people started to turn up, like the level 35 rogue tin9999, the level 50 guess-what XXRogueXX, who tried to persuade me to go to the Tomb with her, a mage you can't have been above 35, MTGOW1, who died at least five times, a level 32 sorcerer guildie of hers called xXxSeraphimxXx, a high-level mage called Nourc who gathered up all the Sphinx types in a sp-farming kind of way, and Selamon from the AllStars guild, who concentrated on the Elite Sphinx Speer Man.

So, things got a bit busy. Luckily only tin9999 and XXRogueXX were there when Kamira put in an appearance; I said I was getting my level 72 rogue to deal with her, but I think at least one of them attacked Kammy and got immediately killed. They seemed to "ks" a bit when Rage was fighting her too, which may have affected the chances of getting good drops, but, while there were no rare accessories, Kamira seemed to drop all the usual lucky scrolls, moonstones, tool aids, and so on.

By the end of the session, MD had gone up by 12.88%, plus 922 pet points - and MB had added 40.56%. They each gained 3 skill points, as well. So Peri and Cap were able to log in for a little pet-levelling, over the early evening food break.

CaptainScarlet had the opportunity to continue levelling the pale blue horse for a while longer, as attending the Auzura-3 "Mad Monster Spawn" only involves one character. This time it was my level 31 cleric, Memree, who had the honour. I was thinking vaguely that she could use up her "beginner" resurrection scrolls, but as she actually had zero skill points, and had only just started on level 31, she had almost nothing to lose by dying, so on the three occasions when she did take a dirt nap, I just respawned back in town and teleported back.

It was fun, anyway, though Memree tended to miss a lot more than she hit, with such high-level targets, and if she hit, only do 44 damage. Somehow that was enough for one Grand Gold Dragon to drop ten Great Healing Potions and a Crystal of Experience (Greater) just for me, though, and from the hand-spawnings of loot I picked up a few large defence potions, large attack potions, tool aids, skill point boosters, and item drop boosters. It seemed that we weren't quick enough on the final wave to earn any heaven stones; truth to tell, we weren't all that powerful a congregation, and the absence of our premier tank, MortimerJones, probably didn't help.

At the end GM Stratos announced a "Fluton Party" slightly further along, with a couple of dozen of the near-invulnerable beasties, but he relented and removed most of them, dropping in a few of the Strayana purple dragons instead. Once we'd dealt with them, well, he'd just faded away, which was a bit naughty really, people did hang around for a while in case there was anything else in the way of either monsters or loot. It would be a sensible idea if he ended with a "Thanks guys, see you next week, I'm out of here" message, so that people knew that the event was officially over.

I switched to MistressDomina to check to see if Ratel or Leopardknight were online - and Leo was. He mentioned that he'd checked up on his character at about 6:00 am and found an Orc Sergeant actually attacking Leo, who had mysteriously moved a little way out of the safe area, but he was able to log out without dying, and was 23% into level 20 by then. I offered to team MistressSabina up with him, but he was busy catching up on his Juno-based quests, and generally terrorising the local Blood Wolf and Pandora's Beast population.

So, MistressDomina and MistressBlaze were able to head back to the Sphinx types for the bulk of the evening session. Before long a level 50 titan, Lukas1, suggested that we have a Combat party, which seemed a good idea, even though it would slow down MistressBlaze's experience gain... we did try recruiting other people to it, but BigBoss1 didn't stay long, and others seemed already to have their parties. MTGOW1 seemed to be doing better now, and was around for a while.

Lukas1 was using a lot of potions - a platinum blessed iris and experience boosters, for a start, as well as a crit pot, berserker, adrenaline, shield, and large attack and defence potions, and it certainly paid off, by the time we finished he had reached level 55. He mentioned that it was all about the titan skills - he had used the same buffing with his knight and it was much slower. It was quite an expensive way to gain levels, especially as he had to go afk for about the last quarter of the first of the two main hours.

He left a ring on the ground, I think he said afterwards that he was short of inventory space, and I, not liking to see stuff left lying around, ran over and picked it up. "Wow, that is quite a good ring - hit rate 18 plus short range physical hit rate 75. Do you want it?" Not surprisingly he said "Well, yes in fact :)", so I traded it across.

By the end of the evening MistressBlaze had reached level 43, so she can now do a Combat party with MD without a third person in-between; she added 21.27% experience in all, most of it rather slowly in the Combat party set-up, plus 6 skill points - she also ended up with a heaven stone and a level 53 mage staff +4 in her inventory, which I didn't notice arrive.

MistressDomina had gone up by 25.59%, plus 7 skill points - MB had been absent for a little while, so that SirPerivale could at last recruit GuildHealer into DeathBringers, and pass the position of guild master across to her. MD's drake had added 1003 pet points as well.

When I logged SirPerivale in afterwards, I found that Lukas1 was in merchant mode under the headline "Absolutely Unbelievable" - and discovered he was offering a package of nine pet colouring crystals, including a white one, for only a million. Peri didn't have enough gold to pick up that bargain (I'd have said that half a million each was a pretty good selling price), so MD hurried back into Randol, and made the purchase, before logging out so that CaptainScarlet could reappear.

Peri and Cap headed for the Merac Berserkers of course; by the end of the evening Peri's drake was approaching halfway through level 25, while Cap's horse was about two-thirds of the way through level 33.