Wednesday 2 September 2009

Server Crash

As usual SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet logged on bright and early, and got some pet-levelling done, but when I returned after coffee there was a suspicious lack of numbers floating up into the air over the Berserkers' heads. I was intending to send JohnWellington and Galahad off to Prokion Temple, so logged Peri out - and was unable to log back in again, while Cap just continued to appear to fight his Berserker without gaining any pet points.

A visit to the Last Chaos forum ShoutBox soon confirmed that the whole Auzura server had crashed, though the others were still going, including my old haunt Cariae, so I logged on SirDarth and Enchantrella there - I had to avoid using the two accounts that had been logged in to Auzura, as they just gave "account ID is already in use" type pop-up messages. I took Enchie off to Prokion Temple on Cariae-3, and fought the Orc Axemen and Orc Fighters there; she is level 27, so Orc Sergeants weren't necessary, and with her +6 armour set she was taking quite enough damage from the level 25 and 27 type Orcs.

There were reports of further server problems on the ShoutBox, so to be safe I unequipped Enchantrella's drake, since a disconnection might well mean that in-game I theoretically just stood there being hit, and it is expensive to "unseal" a pet if the attackers decide to focus their attacks on it. It was lucky I did that, as a minute or two later Cariae too suffered a crash, and I was disconnected - I'd just started running back to the entrance hallway, and though Enchantrella wasn't followed, she was still taking hits from the Orcs.

Both SirDarth and Enchantrella over on Cariae do have mounts - and I found that Darth's was down to only 3% Sympathy, and Enchie's to 0%, which seemed strange as the characters haven't done anything lately, and anyway, since when do mounts lose Sympathy just because they are not being used?

The Katar server survived, and I did do a bit of fox, deer and wolf fighting with a couple of low-level characters, but at last word came that Auzura was back up, so CaptainScarlet was able to log back in, followed by SirPerivale. In the ShoutBox Kelrya, billed as "Aeria: Admin", asked if things were okay now, and I was able to say that I'd got back in safely. I noticed that Cap's horse's starvation bar was about 8 lower than before, and the pet points had decreased a little, but that ground was soon regained, and the horse reached level 34 before lunchtime, with Peri's drake reaching level 26 as well.

So, after lunch it was time to find that drake a new owner - JohnWellington now has it, though he doesn't currently have a mount. I must count up how many of my characters do have mounts some time. MistressDomino had a pink drake egg in her inventory, so she passed that over to SirPerivale, and Peri went to Lorraine and Jajan to get himself a brand-new "pink dragon" hatchling. Actually, it's more of a pale mauve, and looks even cuter than the usual type.

For the main afternoon session, MistressDomina and MistressBlaze headed out into the Dratan uplands to visit the Sphinx types. Two archers, both in the "gang" bathrobe-style costumes, were there when I arrived, Duendesa and xDigitalx, but they didn't stay very long. After a while a level 50 rogue called "alinutz17" arrived, asking if I needed any help. She vanished before long, but then returned, and joined the party with MD and MB, tempted by the idea of horse buffs, so that we were able to take on the Elite Sphinx Speer Man. She left when she had to team up with a friend to level him a bit, but returned when he promptly had a disconnection... before having to leave herself, not long after. Well, it did liven up the afternoon.

Not long before my food break, the team of Kopiteus and TheExecutter arrived, and went just round the corner to fight, but by then I'd just about achieved what I'd set out to do, to make up for having to do a Combat party yesterday. MistressBlaze has now caught up with MistressDomina, percentage-wise, so that they are both 57% of the way through their respective levels. MD added 14.65%, and MB added 43.99%; they each gained 4 skill points, and MD's drake gained 1143 pet points.

Over the food break Peri's new hatchling had its first outing, reaching level 3 - which meant it automatically learnt its first social skill, Roar. I later had it taught the others by asking the Animal Trainer, when I got the first couple of levels of Armour Increase. By that time its Sympathy had moved up from 50% to 65%. I noticed that the nearest other pet-trainer, a red-named knight called PrimarySlave, who tends to fight a Bandit right back in the corner, had, as they are protective of each other, managed to collect four of them, but was still standing. They probably only hit for 1 each, which a knight can easily deal with.

For the evening, JohnWellington and Galahad headed for Prokion Temple; the back room was occupied on both Auzura-3 and Auzura-4, so we ended up in what I call the "corridor room" that I go through on the way there, on Auzura-4 - though Ratel takes a different, slightly shorter route I think. As neither Gal nor John kills as quickly as one of my mages, there were enough Orc Sergeants around to keep us going, with occasional raids on the Orc Axemen at either end. Ratel himself was sp-farming out in the desert, and managed to finish getting all 110 skill points he needed for level four of his level 50 temple knight passive skill, Weapon Perfection, each level of which adds 24 to his physical attack. I checked the Wet Paint Last Chaos wiki, and had to break it to him that level five would need 360 more sp. I think he's going to pass on that one for the moment, with the idea of doing some lucrative drop and sp farming on Bogles later.

To that end, he wants to move Ratel on to around level 62, so as a first step towards that we have arranged for Ratel, MrChuckNorris and MistressDomina to try for a nice long session in the Tomb of Theos tomorrow evening, using a blessed iris each. Chuck and Rage managed that kind of session, and I had been wondering if MD could replace Rage in that sort of team-up; with MD being lower-level than Rage was, having Ratel along seems to make the idea viable right away.

Ratel mentioned that he had got a couple of the more expensive platinum blessed irises, but was saving them to be used as incentives, as he's hoping to get a couple more mounts for his characters, with levelling provided by Peri and Cap... but he was forgetting that his own Leopardknight will soon be able to do that duty. Phew...

Anyway, JohnWellington added 20.31% experience, 230 guild points and 114 skill points, while Galahad, who had arrived first, clocked up 15.18% experience, 248 guild points, and 119 skill points. I was surprised that John's +10 armour was good enough to very nearly stop him taking any damage from the Orcs - better than the mage, or particularly the healer, equivalent, then. He did use the Stone Skin self-buff most of the time to increase his defence; after an application or two, rebuffing would bring up the well-known sorcerer bug of making him invisible, just leaving his name and guild floating in the air. The next rebuff would make him visible again, and the one after that invisible, and so on.

I had intended to try to move all the recent loot across to MistressDomino, who hasn't done any selling for weeks now, and maybe do a little shopping on Auzura-1, but Chuck got talking to a fan - well, a new player, ThePatropt, who was a bit of a fan of the real Chuck Norris. So I was trying to give some advice, and showing him where healer Yabo was for those first two quests... he's added to Chuck's Friends list, but I don't know if he'll stick around, apparently his newer computer is broken at the moment, so he needed a game that the older one could handle.

And then it was time to log the playing characters out, and log SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet in again. Cap continued to make slightly slow progress through level 34; Peri is moving the new pink dragon hatchling rather more quickly, which isn't surprising as a level that needs 846 pet points tends to get finished a while before a 11,237 pet points one.

Last night's maintenance didn't add anything new, so we can't really blame that for this morning's downtime. I guess it's pretty good that, even at three in the morning their time, they do have people who can respond to such emergencies and get the World of Iris rolling again.

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