Mad Spawns

It was the green drake that got the benefit of overnight pet-levelling with CaptainScarlet; and then, before breakfast, Cap changed over to levelling the pink drake, and SirPerivale joined him, levelling his plain old-fashioned brown pony. The green drake did go up one level to 25 overnight, and indeed isn't all that far from 26 now; the pink one is too high a level for overnight sessions now.

When RedRackham got to Prokion Temple on Auzura-4 he found the sorcerer Meltin busy there, so he moved across to Auzura-3, where MistressSabina soon joined him. We found that the 50% extra skill exp still hadn't been switched off, so merrily continued until lunchtime - though the idea of spending the whole day there didn't seem very attractive. Red added 18.39%, 139 guild points, and 131 skill points, while Sabina added 5.93%, 163 guild points, and 129 skill points, which took her to a nice round 10.5k of unused skill points. As she had now reached two-thirds of the way through level 36, that's the equivalent of going through the whole of the level if the 50% bonus skill exp hadn't been left running. Sabina also invested the 5,000 guild points in the "expension of the guild" skill, so that Discipline's maximum membership has now risen to 40.

A Pandora's Box did show up during lunchtime, very close to both Cap and Peri - and not far from Corleone guild member DarkKnight45, levelling a pale blue horse, either. So I decided it was a bit risky to have one of my knights open it, in case a level 50 Pandora's Beast popped out, and logged MistressDomina in to come down and deal with it. It was lucky I did that, as the box did release a level 50 Pandy, which immediately tried to attack either DarkKnight45 or his horse, so MD's swift action with Curse and Terra Spear was certainly needed, to stop an innocent party being harmed. The Pandy dropped a useful amount of gold, anyway.

After lunch, the plan was to take RedRackham out to the Sphinx Fighters with MistressBlaze, but I soon hit a problem - the only character of mine with a Party Recall card at the moment is MistressDomina, and she can't be in a party with Red as they are on the same account. I did take Red down south from Prokion Temple to the Poison Mists, and get the Elite Poison Mist's location onto his memory scroll, but I don't really have a suitable character for him to team with there, so in the end I logged Kaerella in, and she teleported out to the Sphinx Fighters' location, then used one of her three remaining "Scroll of Summoning" books, from some old package or other, to move Red to her. He then carefully added the location to his memory scroll.

Those books are useful, though individually they cost 19 aeria points each, in that they let you, as a one-off, teleport any character whose name you type into the box to your location, if they agree to it. For some reason a "Book of Teleport", which allows you to move to another character's location, if they agree, is actually cheaper, at 15 aeria points, so if we'd needed to buy one, it would have been up to Red to obtain that type.

So, RedRackham was able to join MistressBlaze at the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men - level 29 and level 44, just right. Red needed to gain almost 140%, and he managed that, though not as quickly as I'd hoped. One of the Sphinx Fighters actually stopped trying to get to MB and attacked him, perhaps because MB had got a Divine Shield buff on which he had supplied. He died rather quickly, but that did at least mean that I was able to use one of his "beginner" resurrection scrolls, usually my characters have too many of them left unused. Reaching level 31 means he has now received and equipped the level 30/32 +10 armour set, and the level 33 +10 sword and shield. He can opt to become a Temple Knight now.

As far as Red is concerned, the heat is off now, so I can take my time. Probably he will do some solo Orc-killing in Prokion Temple to level up, getting the Wall of Belief skill at level 32, and the Canid Fencing 2 skill at level 35, before getting a red name to reduce his bare-fisted attack, and settling down as a pet-leveller, replacing SirPerivale generally - though Peri will remain useful as a bridging character to help level up new characters.

I saw Ratel's sorcerer Elvastar in merchant mode in Randol, offering "Goodies" for sale, so looked at his stock, and noticed that he was selling a Chain of Tiger accessory for 23.5 million. I assumed it was a pretty good price... it gives the character that equips it (in one of their three slots for such things) an extra 8 on their close range physical attack, and gives them an extra 16 to their Strength stats. As RedRackham will have all his native stat points in dexterity, some extra strength for his levelling-up stints seemed like a good idea, so I bought the CoT. When Red has finished with it, I'm sure that SirDarth or Galahad will be glad of it. And later on Ratel was able to bring 74 million gold down to Cap to trade across, as a nice large first repayment of the gold I loaned him for that level 57 +15 weapon. He mentioned that he had actually bought the CoT for 15 million unidentified, and used a gold magnifying glass (cost: 1 million) to identify it, so he made a useful bit of profit there.

Once RedRackham had reached level 31 he logged out, and MistressSabina logged back in. She went out to the Sphinx types to take Red's place for the rest of the afternoon, though, at level 36, her progress was a bit slower than I'd been hoping. In all she just went up 18.00%, though it wasn't a very long session. As for the one who was doing all the work while Red and Sabby stood at the side, MistressBlaze went up 24.87%, plus 815 pet points for her level 27 drake. Hmm, that's one drake that needs a bit of upgrading, I think.

I was about to log Rage in after the food break, when the Mad Monster Spawn was announced, so instead my level 31 cleric Memree was logged in, and teleported across to the MMS location. Usually it is GM Stratos who handles this, but today it was GM Kali, who was as usual friendly and chatty, not to mention a little worried about what the forum consensus about what her Halloween costume should be, will be!

Generally the MMS was an improvement, with perhaps a little bit of scaling-down of the waves to compensate for Auzura's smaller turn-out of high-level people - and some high-level monster types I'd never seen before. Memree did die a few times early on, but with only a few percent experience in her current level, and 2 skill points, she had nothing to lose, except memory scrolls - but it was annoying once to be immediately killed as I teleported back in. We seemed to manage the final wave within the time limit, but the last spawning of the various Hands didn't include any Hands of the Warrior, the heaven stone one. Kali stayed on after that, though mainly afk it seemed, occasionally returning to spawn a few more of Strayana's vast blue dragons. As so often happens, there was no clear conclusion, people tended to stay in the hope of more monsters, or more loot spawned, and then gradually drifted away. By the time it was definitely all over, just about two hours had passed... so we didn't get any heaven stones, but I added to my supply of skill point boosters, item drop boosters, large attack and defence pots, tool aids, and so on, which can't be bad.

After that, Rage got her long-delayed return to action. As the 50% extra skill exp was still on, a little trip to the Temple of Forgetfulness (or Forgotten Temple) to fight the level 72 Jumping Devils seemed like a good idea - with a few of the level 68 Legendary Slayers as well, in case they dropped anything good. The Devils did drop a pair of level 65 sorcerer gloves, and two level 65 crossbows too, but the drops weren't that exciting. Still, 9.27% experience was gained, plus 19 skill points, and 636 pet points for her level 37 drake. There's no hurry to level Rage up, as level 72 is convenient for when Kamira drops by, but it's good to keep in practice.

Following that session, I took my low-level new rogue, RedRider, out to the elder wolves, dire wolves, and berserk wolves in nice peaceful Juno - and even fought a couple of level 8 jaguars. I just had time to get her up to level 7, ready for a levelling-up teaming with SirPerivale some time, before it was time to put CaptainScarlet back up, to join SirPerivale out in Merac with the Berserkers.

However at about 10:20 UK time I did belatedly notice the messages about GM Kali starting the Mad Monster Spawn over on the Cariae server, so decided on the spur of the moment to go off there. By the time my level 100 archer Barbarienne had rode out to the usual spot, the final wave was being fought, so I joined in, and it was nice to actually do some real damage for a change, and get an appropriate amount of experience for it. Some things were still thirty or more levels above me of course, so I was careful only to attack critters that were already being battled; my default damage on such monsters, like the Patriarch Botis, was 218 - but my critical hit damage was more like 2680-2700, and a deadly hit would be around 4260. The final wave was killed off on time, and the Cariae people were suitably jubilant, though again I didn't see any heaven stones spawned. I managed to pick up some of the usual MMS items, though, before logging out, and letting Cap return to his pet-levelling.

The pink dragon reached level 35 just after CaptainScarlet's return, while Peri had by then got the new horse up to level 18 - a pony no longer. Ratel mentioned that he will be playing on the Katar server tomorrow, but I should see him on Thursday, at least in the evening. The warm-up for one of my "busy weekends" will be starting then, so I'll be busy downstairs on Thursday until the evening, and busy much of the time on the following two days, before going entirely missing on Sunday until well after six in the evening.