Pipped at the Post

CaptainScarlet did try to pet-level his pink drake overnight, but some little darling came along pretty early and killed his Berserker, so a few hours were lost. Still, by morning the drake had gone up to level 33. SirPerivale joined him out in Merac for a while, but level 25 is about high enough for Peri to take a pet, it starts to get hungry, so later on I transferred a pan flute across to peri and he went to Lorraine and Jajan to get a new level 1 pony to begin work on. By the end of the lunch break it was approaching the top of level 2, and had gone up to 65% Sympathy.

But after coffee there was time for MistressSabina and RedRackham to head for Prokion Temple on Auzura-4, where luckily the back room was available. Sabina may have run out of skill pills, but Red does have the "beginner" plus 150% platinum super skill pills to use up, so he used the first of those, gaining 197 skill points in the hour. He went up 62.84%, getting him to level 26, so that was a good start. Sabina added 10.59%, 164 guild points, and 80 skill points

After lunch, and a bit more pet-levelling, Sabina and Red returned to Prokion Temple, where they settled in for the long haul. RedRackham started another beginner pssp, and this one brought him another 205 skill points. In theory the "Sunday Teatime" was due to start at 3:00pm UK time, which was only just over half an hour away, and I was pretty sure that the 50% extra skill exp from that wouldn't "stack" with the 150% extra from the b-pssp, but knowing that these events tend to run a little late, I went ahead and used another pill, gaining another 171 skill points. In fact it wasn't until about 4:30 that the "teatime" began, so I could have used a third pill in the afternoon - but by the time I took my food break, Red had gone up another 43 sp, and was almost halfway through level 27, with 319 more guild points.

For MistressSabina the afternoon had added 23.42%, with her reaching level 36 halfway through; as well as 399 more guild points, she had added another 193 skill points. I'd already started a rather hurried food break when, unannounced, the skill exp went up by 50% for the "teatime" bonus, and we finally lost the 50% experience bonus that had been running up until then, but it lasted a full two hours, until 18:37, so that by the time the Quiz was approaching, I'd had most of the two hours at 50% extra, and then another b-pssp for Red. So, RedRackham's evening totals were 84.87%, taking him almost a third of the way into level 28, plus 351 more guild points and 368 more skill points, while MistressSabina added 15.80%, 434 guild points, and 283 skill points. REd's experience gain would have been a little lower, but I'd absent-mindedly started one of the beginner platinum blessed irises instead of the pssp, so for that particular hour he got an extra 150% experience, as well as the extra skill exp.

RedRackham has learnt Divine Shield and Uncanny Movement now, so, while he does need to keep back 327 skill points for that level 32 passive Temple Knight skill Wall of Belief, and maybe even 60 points for the level 35 passive skill Canid Fence 2, he does have plenty of spare skill points, which a regular knight would put into other passive and general skills which just aren't relevant to a dedicated pet-levelling character. So, it looks as if Red will be the character to donate 599 skill points to upgrade the Discipline guild to the next level... once the necessary 19,620 guild points have been obtained. At the moment, taking away the 5,000 needed for "expension of the guild", I see that Discipline is about a quarter of the way there, with eighteen members in all, with an average level of 15. It's possible he might even get the 653 sp needed for the level after that, though that would need a further 21,385 guild points apparently. By my calculations he has 76 skill points towards that at the moment...

Ratel was in the party for solo purposes for most of the day, adventuring in Egeha and against the Sphinx types. He switched to Elvastar, his level 22 sorcerer, in the evening, and was somewhere in Prokion Temple, though staying clear of my room to avoid getting his experience and skill exp gain messed up. Once he'd got to 99% of his level, he spent all his skill points on suitable skills and then went and died 33 times to get down to less than 1%, so he is taking skill point farming in Proki pretty seriously this time. It may well take three more such sessions to get all the sorcerer skills up to level twenty maximised. Ah well, Orcs make a change from Baby Apes and the other Egeha monsters he was fighting earlier.

Aa eight approached, half an hour before the Quiz was due to start, Elva logged out, and Ratel went to Auzura-2 - where he found someone selling a level 57 +15 weapon for 350 million, which he was probably right to think was a pretty competitive price, these days. He asked me if I had 350 million that he could borrow, so I logged Red out, and logged MistressDomino in on Auzura-2, where I traded the gold across to him. Unfortunately, by the time we'd done that the prospective seller had ended her merchant mode, probably to get ready for the Quiz, and Ratty wasn't even sure of her name. I said that he should keep the gold for a day or two, in case he saw her again... but luckily within a few minutes he had located her, alinutz17, spoken to her, and bought the weapon safely - for 30 million less than he would have paid before! So, a good result there.

Memree and Kaerella joined Ratel in the Auzura-2 Quiz Room, and he traded the surplus 30 million back to Kae. He'll have to take a paper round to earn enough gold to pay me back... either that or get his propective pet-leveller, Leo, into action. The quiz itself was, as we went along, chiefly notable for the number of "X or O" answers that stayed on the same side, one after another. We started with four questions to which the "O" option was the correct answer...and then the next ten were all "X", before three more over on "O". We got our tool aids, moonstones, and the first five heaven stones for getting question 18 correct, but, like about half the people there, we got the next question wrong, so didn't get a chance to add a further ten heaven stones to our total. I thought that level 35 was the maximum level at which an eligible character could become a Phoenix character, but a maximum level of 30 is "true" - it's just that when they become a Phoenix type, they then move to level 35, sigh.

To wind down I decided just to take my level 3 rogue RedRider out to kill some foxes and wolves on Auzura-4, but before very long an announcement came up for a "Zombie Invasion" event which was about to start, so, checking the website and discovering that Auzura-2 was the venue, I decided to send Memree, my level 31 cleric, to investigate. There was quite a crowd at Burbank Mill in Juno when I got there, waiting for GM Kali to spawn the first wave - which was mainly the low-level Velpist Temple type of zombie, which presented no challenge, but with quite a few level 74 boss-type Apes along. Subsequent waves were chock-full of level 100 Screaming Zombies and level 102 Ancient Screaming Zombies, though, which were more of a challenge - and we were working to a tight deadline, if any zombies at all were still around after 15 minutes we'd lose. There was also the chance that they might "infect" a GM or GS, making them turn on us, but luckily that didn't happen.

We beat the deadline, and prizes were spawned in the usual way, though as Auzura-2 is a PvP-enabled sub-server, there was always the chance that some player-killer type would decide to get rid of some picking-up competition. I had seen a few players with the "PvP active" sign over their heads, and did see an innocent healer struck down, but Memree survived that and the zombies - she actually added 1.24% experience from her rather feeble attacks on various monsters. As for the loot, it wasn't as much as one would get from a Mad Monster Spawn, but she did manage to grab a skill point booster, 3 large attack potions, 4 large defence potions, and a few tool aids and small HP and MP recovery potions.

That was a nice little extra adventure to end on, and after that SirPerivale went out to join CaptainScarlet in Auzura-4 Merac, with the Berserkers. The pink drake was by then approaching three-quarters of the way through level 33, too high a level for Cap to work overnight on it, while Peri's new pony soon got into level 5, with its Sympathy already past the 85% mark.