Friday 11 September 2009

Sphinxes, Foxes, & Zombies


CaptainScarlet and SirPerivale both successfully completed overnight pet-levelling, so that Cap's drake reached level 30, and Peri's horse reached level 19, which is a useful boost - they both got disconnected almost immediately I went out shopping, however. Still, they were able to have a few more minutes, after improving their Armour Increase buffs by two and four levels respectively, before it was time for more active involvement.

The first thing to do was to get MistressDomina up to level sixty as planned, so she teamed up with MrChuckNorris in a Combat party, and headed for the Sphinx types. The recipe was much as before, and luckily Kamira did not put in an appearance; MD used a platinum blessed iris for triple experience, and settled in to kill the Elite Sphinx Speer Man, then a Fighter and an ordinary Speer Man while the Elite respawned. I did have one experience booster left so I used that early on, to make sure I got the almost 20% MD needed, but I needn't have bothered as by the time the pbi's hour was over, I'd got there easily, adding 26.89% in all, along with 507 pet points for MD's drake. Chuck just got 1.80%, but then he didn't have to do anything except stand there to get it, and he and MD each gained 6 skill points.

Back in town, I found that MistressDomina couldn't just learn all five levels of Mana Flow, she had sixth levels of Fear and Freeze Arrow to get too, so in all 1441 skill points were invested. At least this means that if she dies from a disconnection again, she will only lose 440 skill points now. And then it was time for lunch, with Cap and Peri back in action, and the horse reaching level 20.

For the afternoon it was back to the Sphinx types - but this time with MistressBlaze doing the fighting, and MistressSabina supplying the Combat party boost. Since MB is level 44, the fighting was tougher, with ordinary Sphinx Speer Men as formidable for her as the Elite ones are for MistressDomina; since MB is three-quarters as high a level, it makes sense that she only hits 75% as hard, and I imagine her armour is proportionately weaker too.

Again I had the place to myself, except when an archer called SilversLady dropped by - she only sat in the safe area by the campfire though, and left after a while. As MistressSabina is lower level than MB (as opposed to Chuck being higher level than MD), her experience gain was a bit more significant than Chuck's has been, and she went up 19.29%; neither of them got any skill points, as the Sphinx types are so far above them. MB added some pet points, and 62.17% experience, so it was a useful session, helped along by Friday's "Happy Hour" being 50% extra experience. It started on time at 3:00pm UK time, but I didn't stay to the end, I was getting hungry, so left 30 minutes early. For double experience I'd have stayed, but the 50% just wasn't tempting enough.

Ratel got in touch, asking for a solo party, but that got complicated as he is too high-level for Combat, and Sabina doesn't want too much experience, she wants to spend most of level 35 getting a last bit of skill exp from the Orc Sergeants, when she can find someone of a suitably low level to team with. I offered to send Sabina back to town, but in the end Ratel was able to find a different party to join for his solo adventures.

After the break, and its pet-levelling, I was in the mood for something a bit more relaxing, so decided to do a little work on a new knight character, with a view to perhaps having another possible pet-leveller at a higher level than SirPerivale eventually. RedRackham formed a solo party with Peri, for the tutorial dungeon - it's strange, Peri's name doesn't appear on Red's screen as a party member, but Red got the solo party bonus, with a consistent 330 skill exp per soldier until he levelled up; there was even a "Peri has left your party" text message... and Peri's screen showed Red as a party member.

RedRackham got his first two quests from Healer Yabo, and went out to kill the local deer and foxes - after checking storage and finding some useful accessories there to add a bit of evasion and defence etc. However, he'd just finished getting the fox and deer quest items when Ratel was in touch again, suggesting that, as he still had some way to go to reach level sixty, we might go to the Tomb of Theos for the evening...

So, that changed my plans rather. RedRackham and SirPerivale logged out, and MistressDomina and MrChuckNorris logged in, still on Auzura-4, bought some stocks of potions, and headed for the Tomb. I managed to stop Ratel spending his hard-earned gold by going in alone; we made our party, added horse buffs, and MD went in, then used party recall to bring Chuck and Ratty in to join her.

The place was fairly busy - SilversLady was there for one, and MonaLott. We let some lower level people "ks" us a bit, and the level 47 healer Francesca001 joined our party - so for most of the first hour we had healing, which was a great luxury. Ratty, MD and Chuck had all started a three-hour blessed iris for double experience, and an elixir for an extra 30%, so we were in it for the whole evening.

It did get pretty crowded at one stage. It was Ratel who remarked in party chat that he didn't know why an archer called SkillsThatKillz was ks-ing us, as she was obviously high enough level to operate independently, and indeed was partnered with another player called Prada. It may generally have been that she happened to target the same Screaming Zombie that I did, but it was very inconvenient, as her Slow Shot over-wrote my Curse, and then expired after a short time, so that, while the Zombie was still fixed on our party, it was able to run at full speed. I didn't find it possible to over-write Slow Shot, so there was always an awkward gap before I could re-cast my own slowing-down skill. It didn't help that she seemed convinced that we were ks-ing her, sigh...

There was some other player who did the old trick of gathering up a group of the Zombies, and luring them past us, then either leaving or just breaking aggro, leaving them to wander back onto everyone, but we managed to survive that; I don't know for sure if it was Skillz, but Ratty seemed sure that she'd lured at least one Zombie set in "reset" mode onto us - one taken to the far end and then abandoned, so that when attacked its health bar tended to reset to 100% every time it got hurt.

Still, while MistressDomina's health did get dangerously low on a couple of occasions, she managed to survive; there were a couple of laggy times too, though she was at the wall on both occasions. Chuck was unaffected, but on MD's screen everything stopped. So, we were a bit lucky there. Chuck's health did get very low once, and I think Ratty got pretty low as well - and I remember, while she was with us, Francesca001's health bar looked almost entirely empty on one occasion.

I thought that I'd started the boosting potions after only one trial Zombie at the beginning, but my pots outlived Ratel's by a good ten minutes; I'd wondered why he'd announced getting to "a round 12%", after reaching level 58 a little earlier. We continued until my blessed iris ran out, by which time Ratel had got 17% of the way into his new level. By then MD had gained 92.22%, and Chuck had added, being a few levels higher, 77.67%, so it had been a pretty productive session - if rather more tiring, with me having to handle both MD and Chuck fighting, than what I had originally planned for the evening, getting RedRackham through his early levels.

After that, it was just a matter of getting my pet-levellers back in action. It looks as if Cap should get the drake to level 31 before I switch the lights out, while Peri has got the horse into level 21 now, which can't be bad. GuildHealer had recruited a level 21 rogue jamesmiller into the DeathBringers guild, and he immediately wanted some pet-levelling assistance from Peri - so it looks as if I'll soon be working on getting a pony from level 1 to level 12 for him, for 10 tool aids, an item drop booster, a skill point booster, 100k gold, and a red pet colouring crystal...

No comments:

Post a Comment