Two Mad Monster Spawns

I wanted to give both computers a little rest, so didn't try any overnight pet-levelling. CaptainScarlet got to work on the pink drake bright and early, though without a companion - after the fan-noises from the older computer recently I didn't switch it on until after lunch.

There was some busy-ness to take care of downstairs in the morning, so Prokion Temple had to get along without the presence of SirDarth, RedRider, JohnWellington, or RedRackham, for a change. Still, this did mean that Cap was able to get the pink drake up to level 37; this level takes 14,552 pet points to get through, but I would like to get this drake to level 38, so that I can substitute it for MistressDomina's current one without her losing any buff, since her current neutral-coloured one is that level.

After lunch, since things have been behaving themselves lately, I took MistressBlaze and MistressSabina out to the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men, in the sunny grasslands of south-west Dratan. The place does definitely seem quieter than it used to be, there were no rogues at all around. The mage Francesca001 did show up briefly, and towards the end of my stint two members of the GadiRLatinoS guild, the mage patanegra and the archer matadora, arrived.

From the way patanegra gathered a mob of Sphinx types and then killed them with only one or two area-of-effect spells, it was immediately apparent that she was a bit high level for the place - she was certainly using the level 70 skill Chaos Nova, which hits up to ten monsters and has a 560% power rating. She may have been trying to attract Kamira, but didn't try for long, and was soon just attacking the Elite Sphinx Speer Man, getting its health down as far as she could, accepting Recall from matadora, and letting her guildie deliver the killing blow. I checked, and matadora was using a platinum blessed iris and an experience booster, so it was a traditional bit of "power levelling". Sadly the second or third kill went wrong, and matadora died; they did at least one more kill after that, but soon left. I hope they weren't going to waste the rest of the pbi time...

Anyway, soon after that it was time for me to log out for the early evening food break. MistressBlaze had added 11.22% and 401 pet points, while MistressSabina had added a useful 31.21%. I must admit I hadn't been fighting very intensively, doing a few other things on the computer as well.

Generally the Auzura Mad Monster Spawn is scheduled for 9:00am Pacific Time, or five o'clock in the afternoon for Britain, and usually it actually gets started at around 5:20pm, UK time. The website as usual said "9:00am", but it also said "TBA", so perhaps it wasn't entirely surprising when GM Kali didn't start things rolling until just after six. Memree went along, and avoided any deaths, though I did have to run for it when a group of Death Knights glided after me, and an Anubis Archer knocked my health right down at one point. The final wave was a close-run thing, we managed to kill the last Patriarch Botis with about four minutes to go - and that left a Fluton, which we only just managed to kill, with everyone attacking it, by the deadline, thus earning another wave of goodies. There weren't any heaven stones, again, though, I don't know what has to be done to earn a spawning of those.

Memree did pretty well at the loot picking up, and while I'm not quite sure what Memree had in her inventory already, it certainly felt like a lot of stuff - 10 item drop boosters and 6 skill point boosters for a start, as well as large attack and defence potions, tool aids, and so on.

One high-level titan, Ownage4U, was a bit grumpy afterwards. He did pick up some items, but in reply to someone else said "It's not free, I had to use a crit and a mp stealer just so we could win for you noobs - and for what, 8 boosters of each kind and 15 tool aids and some hp and mp regens. Let's see what you win next week when none of us high levels show up."

I had a bit of work to do for a while after that, but noticed on Cap's screen an announcement that the Mad Monster Spawns on the other servers were going to be earlier than usual - at eight by UK time, in fact, or about five minutes from when I noticed the message. So, I logged Barbarienne, my level 100 archer, in on Cariae-3, and rode out to the usual location.

I noticed that Zenderfly was there - and after a little while she invited me into her party. She is level 113 now; she mentioned that she had gone up 30% this morning, and I think she said that another 50% was planned for tomorrow, so she is keeping busy. Rather a lot of experience boosters are involved, not surprisingly.

GM Kali was in charge of this MMS too, though over on Cariae she wears a different armour, as she is a mage rather than an archer. It is possible that she was also hosting the MMS on Katar, Sarissa and Hatzring, there is a fair amount of time between the announcements and the spawnings etc, so "playing" on multiple computers would be possible.

While my level 31 cleric had got through the fighting on Auzura unscathed, not only did I get my health set down to 1 once by the Fluton's "Flame Thrower" debuff, I did actually die once, so had to use my resurrection scroll, and hurriedly activate another one. I don't know what killed me, Zen mentioned later that all the Spirits, the high-level images of all six character types, are protective, "attack one, get ten free", so maybe that had something to do with it. Memree hits for 58, but Barbarienne, 69 levels higher, manages, um, 218... but at least her critical and deadly hits are three or four thousand or so. Zen at least managed to avoid any deaths, leaping on her horse and using "pet return to village" when needed. She did have Recall too, which was useful. I spent a bit of time healing her, and a level 50-ish character who was also in the party, so didn't attack as much as usual, but I noticed on at least one occasion I got more than four million experience from a kill.

It was great to team with Zen again after all this time, and hopefully we'll do so at future MMS events on Cariae, at least until she gets more than fifteen levels ahead. It's fun to play as a (relatively) high level character sometimes! Sadly she is too high-level now for Barb to be in a Combat party in the Tomb of Theos with her, unless there was a party leader at a level somewhere between us.

The Cariae people managed to finish the final wave a little more quickly than the Auzura players; looking back I'm surprised that Zen hadn't brought a full team of high-level players from her guild, but perhaps the change in time had thwarted any such plans. It was approaching nine by the time the MMS ended, and Kali did take the trouble to say that it was over, which is an improvement over the GM Stratos approach. So all I needed after that was a wind-down for half an hour, which was achieved back on Auzura with a level two healer of mine, LadyJane, who, by killing deer, foxes and wolves, ended the brief session 3.48% of the way through level 5, with 36 skill points ready to be invested.

CaptainScarlet had been busy levelling the pink drake since the start of the food break, so by log-out time he'd got it more than halfway through level 37. SirPerivale was able to log on for a while too, and by the time he too logs out, his horse should have reached level 23. As the usual maintenance down-time for the servers is scheduled for 1:00am, UK time, there is no point in leaving Peri or Cap pet-levelling overnight, but hopefully they'll manage a fairly early start tomorrow.