A Castle to Storm

The Mad Monster Spawn on Cariae-3 on Tuesday night was a fair amount of fun, with the final wave killed off within the time limit, after which GM Kali was persuaded to do one of her special spawns - which meant lots more Barren Eises for the "light show" they give, plus plenty of blue dragons and other stuff, such as Flutons. I'd taken Barbarienne along there, and after answering a general question or two from her, was persuaded to add a level 6 healer called Amleaay to my "party" - which was just me and RedRackham, who was busily pet-levelling over in Merac.

Amleaay, despite generally trying to stay back, unsurprisingly did die three or four times, but, with the experience gained from being in the party, went up from level 6 to level 13 - I'm sure it would have been more if she had avoided getting too close to the big guys, and remembered to keep within compass-range of me. The party had been set up as "precedence", so what we picked up stayed our own - hopefully she got enough goodies from the hands that were spawned between waves to make the adventure worthwhile.

Generally it is not a good idea to take one's character up so fast without gaining skill exp, but I'd say that often it was a good idea to get a first character up to a useful level, with that free armour set at level 31, farm some cash, and then be able to buy a few things to make it possible for a second character to take things more slowly.

Barbarienne herself managed to avoid dying, though there were a couple of times when running like heck seemed the best option. A little cash was picked up, which was just as well as the great healing potions she had to use are a bit expensive to buy - and on the goodies front, as well as lots of the small MP and HP recovery potions, which I think can be bought for just 180 and 240 gold respectively, Barb was able to grab 14 tool aids, 5 large attack and 8 large defence potions, 7 skill point boosters, and 9 item drop boosters, which seems a lot more than usual.

The weekly "maintenance" for the servers started at its usual 1:00am UK time - and ran for over nine hours, when three is considered to be rather longer than usual. I had attempted to log on at 8:00am, only to get the "timed out" error message a few times, so visited the forum shoutbox and discovered the grisly truth. It looks as if they tried to return the Merchant House system, and Trader Roy, before he was quite ready, and suffered the consequences, for the Aeria people on Pacific time they started work at 5:00pm and didn't get things running until after two in the morning. And then they forgot to turn the scheduled 50% extra experience and skill exp back on...

When I was finally able to get back on after coffee it was just a matter of setting up some pet-levelling, so my Cariae and Auzura versions of the level 35 knight RedRackham both headed out to Merac. Let's see, the Auzura one has the level 35 drake, and his Cariae equivalent was working on the level 34 horse...I think...

It was a big patch to download, which as usual meant that I needed to use the "pause" option on my Kaspersky Anti-Virus before my newer computer would accept it. With Roy back, there will be a lot more items available to buy for in-game gold, albeit at prices that are a few months old - generally things have got cheaper, or gold has become more valuable. After a patch like that, and with the notoriously crash-inducing Roy back in action, I don't think I want to do anything particularly dangerous for a day or two, in case a disconnection catches me out. Strangely, while my visits to Roy have shown the items he has on offer to be scrambled into a random order. some other people don't report having that particular problem.

Both the drake and the horse levelled up before lunch, to levels 36 and 35 respectively; the horse went up first, so for a few minutes they were both level 35.

It turns out that the maintenance, as well as incredibly long, was incredibly bad, and the Egeha and Strayana maps seem to have some sort of problem, though some people seemed able to access them, at least. Apparently the level cap of 145 has been moved, which will need to be fixed, and there are other issues reported..."As well as the Mobs new hit rate, the nameless Floraim monsters and the MC accessories glitch", as the gamesage dinosue2 wearily itemised in the shoutbox, before slightly losing her cool with a player who seemed to think "rebooting" a computer would reformat it entirely.

For the first part of the afternoon I was busy getting token characters made over on the Sarissa server, and downloading the small "tiered event" packages that had ended up there - so if I ever need to play there, most of my favourite character names are reserved, and I have a few lucky smelting stones and so on ready for use.

Then, since RedRider had reached level 25, it was time for her first Combat party team-up with SirDarth, on level 35, in that rather familiar back room in Prokion Temple, on Auzura-4. Darth added 23.51%, and they got 87 skill points each, before it was time to log out and put up my pair of RedRackhams again.

The Cariae version of Red ran down to the Gnoll Lancers, just to get that alternative pet-levelling spot onto his memory scroll, and I saw what dinosue2 meant about nameless monsters - the Elite Frenzied Berserkers, and other recently-added Merac elite types, now don't have a name, just a tiny black box over their heads.

As usually happens on a Wednesday, I had to log off for a couple of hours from eight, but before that SirDarth and RedRackham were able to continue where they had left off - and thankfully GM Kali got into the office and onto the shoutbox, and we were able to ask her to turn the 50% extra experience and skill exp back on. So for almost two hours, at least, Darth and Red had that boost, which meant that SirDarth added another 59.75% and 146 skill points, while RedRider got 31.14% and 145 skill points, as she had only joined Darth in Prokion Temple once he had found the room was clear. So, Darth is approaching level 36 now - I assume a Combat party can continue next time after he levels up, as long as it is started when the characters are no more than ten levels apart. We shall see.

After leaving RedRackham on Cariae-3 levelling his horse, I managed to get back on just before ten, and logged Barbarienne on in time for the "Storm the Castle" event there. Luckily, I'd added that location to Barb's memory scroll last week, so didn't have to ride all the way down there. It's not a long event, and the castle and its courtyards were cleared comfortably inside the twenty minute deadline. After that everyone dashed outside to pick up the loot that Kali spawned, which in Barb's case meant 4 large attack and 3 large defence potions, 3 skill point boosters, 4 item drop boosters, and 9 tool aids, meaning that her inventory is now a bit over-full, weight-wise. I think quite a few people were hoping that Kali would do one of her bonus spawnings of Barren Eises, Flutons and so on afterwards, but nothing happened, so we all started to leave.

As events go, a "Storm the Castle" doesn't attract a huge number of people. You need some high-level types, and also back-up attackers of around Barb's level... but for someone above level 100 there is not a lot of experience to be got, and the value of the drops doesn't really compare with, say, half an hour drop-farming the Dark Harpies. Still, it's a community event, and long may it continue.

RedRackham managed to get his horse past the halfway mark in level 35 by log-out time, despite the attention of a titan called THEKILER who, when Red didn't immediately reply to his "Hi" and "wat lvl you", killed Red's Berserker, and despite my slightly delayed "lvl 35" response, killed my next one. "There are plenty of other Berserkers around, leave me my one please", didn't work, as he killed the next one I began to fight, but after "dont ks plz" he did at last go away.