I had been intending to leave SirPerivale pet-levelling overnight, but just as I was about to do so, an announcement came up that the Auzura server was going to be taken down for maintenance for an hour or so, starting in fifteen minutes, which meant that logging out was my only option. Apparently this was "due to a zombie attack on our Auzura server compound" - nice of them to take the trouble to give us the technical details. I did hope that whatever the "black ops teams" they sent in to "correct the damage done by the undead" managed to do stopped us from having any more server crashes for a while, but sadly that was not to be.
Today was always going to be one of my busy days, so SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet had plenty of time to continue their pet-levelling efforts, starting before breakfast and continuing past lunchtime. Peri's pink dragon hatchling reached level 16 soon after breakfast, turning into the slightly larger drake version, just as a cute little pony turns into a horse then. The next milestone is reaching level 31, when a drake or horse can be turned into a mount, and then level 37, when a horse can have its attack and defence enhancing buffs both maximised. The situation with a dragon mount is less clear-cut, as there are a number of relatively useful skills to choose from, but 37 is a pretty good level there too.
There were a couple of Pandora's Boxes nearby in the morning that Peri risked opening, once Cap had moved to a safe distance; the first one just released a level 30 type Pandora's Beast, which Peri dealt with easily, but the second released the level 50 type - so Peri quickly vanished, and MistressDomina rode down to deal with it, getting 88,000 gold dropped for her trouble.
Back in Randol, MD took the opportunity to check if she could learn any new skills - and found that level six of Flame Field was available, for 250 skill points, increasing its "power", the multiplier for a normal weapon hit, from 180% to 210%, which may not seem much, but it will work on up to five foes if they are close enough together. It's not a skill I have used, as it seems inferior to Flame Storm, which on its top (fourth) level has 260 power, apparently doesn't need the foes to be quite as close together, and uses a lot less mana, but if I do get to a stage when I'm attacking mobs of high-level critters it might well be useful to alternate the two.
My "busy morning" was actually pretty fruitless, as the delivery I was expecting didn't come in - instead, it looks as if I'll be having a busy Saturday, sigh. Still, that did at least mean I was able to do some LC playing this afternoon.
MistressDomina and MistressBlaze headed for the Sphinx types in Dratan's sunny uplands, and MD started a seven-hour elixir just on two o'clock, with a view to using the last three hours of it in the Tomb in the evening. Things were pretty quiet out there on Auzura-4; a blue-named knight called Visible arrived, killed an Elite Sphinx Speer Man, gathered and killed a gang or two of Speer Men and Fighters, and then rode off; later on MTGOW1 teleported in, and was doing pretty well against the Elite Sphinx Speer Man, though the necessary tactics included a lot of running away.
I kept going until a little after four. MistressBlaze levelled up to 44, just ahead of MistressDomina levelling up to 55; MD had added 15.57%, 4 skill points and the usual sort of number of pet points, while MB had gained 39.24% and 5 skill points. There is a level 44 skill that MB may well learn, Freeze Arrow, but she won't have enough stat points in Intelligence for it until she reaches level 46, since she had to put some points in Dexterity and Constitution for Terra Spear and various passive skills.
There hadn't been any mention of the usual Friday afternoon "Happy Hour", and the "Events" calendar on the Last Chaos website doesn't list one, which is strange - next week it does say we'll have an extra 50% experience gain, though. When I logged in SirPerivale for the usual bit of pet-levelling, after the end of my afternoon session, Elvastar commented on the lack of any event, before switching over to Ratel. I logged in CaptainScarlet as well, taking the opportunity to add Ratel to Cap's Friends list, and left my dynamic duo hard at work.
And then, the next time I checked on the computers, the servers had crashed again, for the third day running as far as Auzura is concerned. I did manage to get Peri back into Randol, but as soon as he moved away from the town centre towards the teleporter, the place was empty, and I disconnected again - another attempt at least had the teleporter NPC visible, but Peri disconnected just as he approached her. Cap managed to get in next, and saw Peri still apparently standing at the spawning point, which would explain an "account is already logged in" type of message. As you can imagine, the forum ShoutBox was getting pretty hectic.
"The servers are fine, we have always been at war with Oceania", GM OgreKing commented, as if it was still 1984. It wasn't too long before things did seem to settle down, and Peri and Cap both made it back to the Berserkers... only to be disconnected about 50 pet points later. At this rate I'll soon need to buy some more memory scrolls, which I use to teleport me to the Berserker clearing.
During that brief return to normality I said to Ratel that we really shouldn't risk going to the Tomb, and using expensive potions, until the server had had time to prove that it was stable again, and he agreed - also warning me about a sorcerer he had just recruited to the guild. He rather feared he had made a mistake, as the sorc had immediately tried to "borrow" a mount, so could well be a scammer/thief.
The downtime continued - and then I managed to log my level 2 mage MistressFelicia in, who's in charge of carrying armour sets that aren't in use, with a view to transferring the level 60 gloves and level 61 shirt and pants, from the set that Chuck got for reaching level 60, over to MistressDomina. I couldn't, however, get MD online to trade with her, it was still the "timed out" message at every attempt. There were only five other people in Randol and Juno, as far as I could see, one of them a low-level sorcerer who was also killing a few foxes, and the others just people standing around in town.
So for a while MistressFelicia happily killed foxes and deer, and then wolves, for Healer Yabo's quests, and got 81.14% of the way through level 4 before at last being disconnected, after a few unsuccessful attempts to pick up the latest 3 gold that a fox had dropped. Whether she will keep that experience gain, not to mention a fox tail, a hand of bravery, and a pan flute, when the servers are up again, I couldn't begin to speculate.
So, whatever last night's maintenance did to the Auzura server, it wasn't enough - though as I understand it, it wasn't just the Last Chaos servers that were affected, Aeria's other server-based games, such as Shaiya and Wolf Team, were also offline. But "it appears that we underestimated the volume of interest that would be generated from PAX", GM SupermanOX put in a forum post - that being a reference to the Penny Arcade Expo, which is currently running in Seattle. And Aeria_ks1lent, commenting on and locking a forum thread putting forward the view that Aeria would do well to invest some of the money they get from ap-buyers in obtaining better server equipment, said "the current issues have nothing to do with the LC servers"...which does seem logical if the other Aeria games are involved as well.
So, the downtime continued right through the evening, reaching my normal log-out time. Maybe it will be possible to log in for a bit of pet-levelling later, but I'm not holding my breath.
No comments:
Post a Comment