Mission Accomplished

CaptainScarlet did manage to keep working on Lylja's horse overnight, though it was a close-run thing. For the first four hours the horse was level 33, which, as that's only one level above Cap, was just the regular single starvation point per five minutes, so that a full yellow bar of 100 points would last over eight hours. But then the horse levelled up, and at level 34 the pet's appetite moves on to two starvation points per five minutes. So, I was relying on me waking up some time in the middle of the night - which I did, padding along to the front room and feeding a suitable supply of quality stones to the hungry beast. So, when I checked in the morning, we were still okay, with 14/100 left. Not that reaching zero is a disaster and a death, it just means, as I understand it, that the animal no longer gets any pet points, and its Sympathy starts to diminish, meaning that the armour buff it gives its owner starts to go down.

SirPerivale logged back on just before breakfast, to work on the horse that is destined for Samael, to replace the one his little brother traded away, very possibly for some magic beans - or was it a drake? At level 27 as opposed to Peri's own level of 22, this particular horse was even hungrier, getting through 3 starvation points per five minutes, which is fine during the day generally - after all, one does have to check occasionally to make sure some little dear hasn't come along and killed the Berserkers Peri and Cap have been battling.

Still, the idea has always been that RedRackham should take over Peri's pet-levelling responsibilities, leaving him just to help characters from level seven on to add a few levels quickly, so after coffee RedRackham headed for Prokion Temple, in a solo party with Cap back in Merac. Using one of his "beginner" platinum blessed irises moved his experience along by 34.65% over its hour, getting him into level 33. The new level decreased the amount of experience he got per kill - the Orc Sergeants still gave a useful amount, but the Orc Axemen, who were now blue-named to him, gave very little, so generally, after the levelling-up, I ignored the Axemen and just concentrated on the Sergeants, so that Red was followed around by the seven Axemen all the time. Continuing for a while after the pbi ended meant that in all Red went up by 43.25%, and added 110 more skill points.

Over lunch CaptainScarlet and SirPerivale were both pet-levelling, and then RedRackham went back to Prokion Temple, but this time with my level 23 rogue, RedRider, with him. Having her along meant that instead of 1283 experience, the Orc Axemen now gave about seven times that, and the Orc Sergeants were a bit more generous too. RedRackham had stopped off in Dratan to finish a couple of quests, after getting some Soft Sand and some more Orc Ornaments from my holder of such items, the knight Calm (or CALM to be strictly accurate), and the experience from the rewards added 3.55%; the time with the latest pbi brought in a further 39.46%, and I continued long enough to add a further 3.40%. That brought in another 74 skill points.

But, with one "beginner" pbi left, it was time to finish things off, so it was RedRackham's turn to go on the older computer, and head for the Sphinx types, where he teamed up with MistressBlaze. Neither of us got any skill experience there - but, with MB fighting the Sphinx Speer Men and Sphinx Fighters (I was happy to leave the Elite to the rogue MsNatashA), RedRackham soon reached level 34 - and got to our target, level 35, with about two minutes remaining on his pbi.

MistressBlaze had added 11.26% experience, and 554 pet points, over the hour, so her time had been productively spent. As for RedRackham, he returned to the newer computer (which is just about celebrating its first birthday now), spent 60 skill points on the level 35 skill Canid Fencing 2 to add another 120 to his physical defence, and met up with SirPerivale in Prokion Temple, over on the player-versus-player enabled Auzura-5 sub-server. Peri removed his armour and stood just a yard or two into the gaming area, but not near enough to the monsters to attract them, and let RedRackham kill him a few times, until RedRackham's name had gone the appropriate colour, with a good/evil rating of -155.

There was then a swapping-around of the pets-in-training; Peri passed Samael's horse to Red, and then Red traded that horse to CaptainScarlet in exchange for Lylja's horse, and the level 25 drake he was also carrying. Cap then headed out to Merac to work on Samael's horse, which as its level is lower than his, is back to only one starvation point per five minutes. Red used the thirteen tool aids he'd picked up along the way to get himself a supply of quality stones, and then headed for Merac too. While Cap hits for 17 bare-handed, at the moment Red hits for 19 - but that is partly because his gloves have a bloodseal that adds four to his strength stat, without the gloves that goes down to 18. Fine for Berserkers, or Butchers, or, I expect, Treants.

The only other thing that needed to be done in the afternoon was getting my rogue RedRider's experience down a bit, since level 23 seems such a useful one; she was almost 90% of the way through it after the session with RedRackham. First of all I managed, easily enough, to spend all her unused skill points (521 of them), on skills such as Snare, Far Seeing, Free Walk, and Innate Movement - and then it was a matter of going to Prokion Temple, again, and letting the local monsters, including the few Orc Sergeants that are usefully near to the hallway, kill her thirty times, to get her experience in level 23 down to zero again.

After the break, RedRackham ran down to the south of Merac, to where the Gnoll Lancers are, and spent a little while pet-levelling on them for a change. With a high-level pet giving all thirty levels of Armour Increase, RedRackham's physical defence stat now is 1551; without a pet it is 1301, which still seems enough to keep Red's health bar full against a Gnoll Lancer. I was chatting to another pet-leveller down there, WeaponHand, who warned me that someone called Majormed has been known to come along and kill one's Gnoll Lancer, and even lure a Pandora's Beast onto an afk pet-leveller. "Not frequent, but it happens." WeaponHand is white-named, so his Gnoll Lancer does die eventually, but at level 32 he hits for 33, so they last a good long time.

After the break, RedRider logged back on, and headed for Prokion temple, where she was joined by SirDarth. Luckily Elvastar was also around, and at level 26 fitted neatly in-between, so was able to change the party into a Combat type, meaning that, while Elva as he was out of compass range just got the usual "solo party" effect, Darth got a slightly boosted experience gain from the Combat effect, and a further boost from RedRider's comparatively low level. Red got a small amount of experience, and a full share of the skill exp, so it worked rather nicely. At level 34 Darth was getting around 21,000 experience from an Orc Sergeant, and 12,000 from an Orc Axeman; later in the evening he went up to level 35, so that even the Sergeants were blue-named, but they still gave him about 18,000 experience, with the Axemen giving about 11,000.

A level 31 titan called Healthpack (or indeed HEALTHPACK) dropped by for a while, and later in the evening a rogue of a similar level called MasterDsStudent also paid me a visit - and was apparently the same person, though playing as an assassin-type rogue did seem to increase her urge to "ks" a bit, not that I minded. They both got added to Darth's Friends List, and I may well see them in that back room again before long.

SirDarth went up by 43.26%, and added 138 skill points; since it was a Combat party, RedRider only went up by 32.10%, but got 140 skill points. Where she got the extra 2 from I'm not sure, but possibly she was in range of Elvastar's fighting occasionally.

Elvastar did leave us for a while, so that Ratel could go out for a rendezvous with Kamira. As Ratty is ten levels lower than the "roadboss", it was a pretty dangerous encounter, though Ratel emerged triumphant. He didn't get a rare accessory, just the usual lucky scrolls, crystal of experience (greater), and so on, which meant that, as he had had to use 6 Candy and 17 greater health potions, he probably didn't make a profit on the encounter, but killing Kammy at level 60 is quite an achievement - "one to tell the grandchildren about", as I phrased it. He mentioned that he had seen a sorcerer manage the feat at level 49, but that one had had a full set of +15 armour, and so a very high magic defence.

And so it was time for CaptainScarlet to head for his Berserker, and for RedRackham to go down to the Gnoll Lancers again, where WeaponHand was still busy - and a knight called xXMeTaKnightXx wasn't busy at all, I think his Gnoll Lancer had managed to get behind a tree, breaking the aggro. Cap's horse, or Samael's, was well into level 28 by log-out time, while Red's, or Lylja's, was a couple of hours into level 35.

This blog does appear in a number of places; on GuildPortal I'm always surprised by the way the number of readers for a new day's post apparently fluctuates between 4 and 80, particularly as I've never managed to find where they keep the blogs, to look at anyone else's. On Blogger there are absolutely no followers, though if you happen to do a web search for a Last Chaos player I've mentioned, or even a general bit of Last Chaos lore, its results are usually higher than any others. And on kaerella.com, well, that's "home"... and does include, as well as archives in reading order (from the top, rather than the usual blog format of the newest on top), a few pages of screenshot galleries. I've sadly neglected those in recent months, but I did add three screenshots of the "Epic Event" last night, since Zenderfly urged me to. It was certainly a busy time, with a lot of people there.