In theory double pet experience, along with an increase of the experience and skill exp gain back from 75% to 100% extra, was supposed to come in at breakfast time or before, but it was quite a few hours later that things were adjusted. Still, that meant a few hours of double-speed pet-levelling, so that by the evening RedRackham had got his drake up to level 32, and Galahad's horse was moving up nicely through level 34.
I did manage to get online more adventurously at around three o'clock, UK time - a session of just ninety minutes seemed about right for Kaerella (the original variety, the Cariae level 48 cleric), and a trip to Maargadum Jail. The level three central area was not in use on C3, to my relief, so, with Galahad providing the solo party boost while levelling his horse down with the Gnoll Lancers, Kae settled in.
One reason for playing as Kae there with the event bonus running was that she hits very speedily, and with the Beast Flyers coming in from all directions, there's very little wasted time, so the pet-levelling there is pretty good anyway - and today it was twice as good. In all Kaerella added 9.92% experience, 89 skill points, and 3064 pet points.
I did have one visitor towards the end, of the "charge in and start fighting everything" variety, a titan called JessPark - though as he was only level 35, he didn't kill very quickly, so didn't harm my progress greatly. We did chat, and I strongly advised him when I left to go to one of the side rooms, since they only have four Beast Flyers in - if he was solo in the central area he could easily get overwhelmed, and I'd already seen him dash to the wall to recover health a few times.
Looking through my screenshots folder a little later, I noticed that Kaerella was fighting the Beast Flyers there exactly a year ago, three levels lower and in different armour. Damor did get in touch at around four, and though I did respond, probably not very quickly, but before she logged out, perhaps some lag got in the way. Still, our online chat time was scheduled for six, and then we did talk,
By then, I'd had my food break, and my (Cariae) rogue Karella had gone out into Merac. I'd worked out that "empty baskets" would only drop if one killed critters that were a higher level than one's character, so at level 27 Karella was perfectly poised to fight the level 28 Butchers there - and, sure enough, plenty of the baskets dropped for her. I didn't get a full set of six different candies from the first 28 I gathered and exchanged, but another 18 got me to two full sets, so Karella now has the necessary headgear to fight the pumpkin ghosts, as she did last year; the remaining candies were put in storage for transfer to another character, though I don't really need another pumpkin ghost hunter, and, judging by last year, the pumpkin helm is stolen from one's inventory by Aeria at the end of the Hallowe'en event.
Damor gave me lots more information about the new bear-type pet - the "bear facts", you might say. They have a skill to heal themselves, but each time it is cast, it costs you gold, which vanishes from your inventory. The other skills just take mana. There's a poison skill, a defence buff, which lasts 30 minutes, and a buff which makes their owner regenerate health and mana at 100 per second for five minutes. The last skill of the bear's initial stage makes an enemy unable to use skills for 3 minutes. Then, when the pet reaches level 50, everything resets. This time, there's an attack skill, a hit rate debuff, an attack and hit rate buff for the pet's owner, and a skill to blind one's foe for 20 seconds. Then for the third and final evolutionary stage, there's an attack with a chance to stun for 5 seconds, attack and defence buffs for the pet, a sloth skill, and one called "raising hp and mp by paying money", which looks like another way to take gold out of the owner's inventory. There are a couple of skill books needed, apparently, which like the Ichi and Scra-Chi one can be obtained from the moonstone statue. The German LC had a bug where NPCs would buy them for 100 million gold each, so some people got rich rather quickly, on the first day.
The forums over at the German Last Chaos aren't very happy about all this, as the pet can only be bought from the item mall, and these rather heavy-duty skills make a big difference, especially to PvP. They say it unbalances the game, as well as giving an unfair advantage to people who are prepared to part with real-life cash. You can see their point - will this polar bear type of pet, which looks a lot more animal-like than the cute and cartoony Ichi and Scra-Chi, come to Last Chaos USA soon? Probably, but we will have to see how Aeria have managed to tweak things. Taking on one of these fluffy companions seems a major undertaking, with the levelling to 50, in the same way that Ichi and Scra-Chi level, not being all that quick an operation... and then the animal resets, and you have to level them again in their second, bigger configuration, and then it resets again...
But I just had time to take notes of what Zen, or Damor, had told me, before Karella logged out, and over on Katar Kaerella logged in - as the time for this week's "Epic Event", "The Evil Shroud", was near.
We were on a PvP sub-server again, Katar-2; Kae teamed up with LordDarkzer and another healer,Arrowfighter, and we all used the teleporters spawned outside the north gate of Randol to beam directly to Velpist temple, where the action was to take place. The whole temple had a lot of high-level monsters in it, unsurprisingly, including ones I'd never seen before. I did actually get killed by monsters once, but that was on purpose, I was very close to levelling up, and I wanted to keep the option open of doing some more sp-farming in Prokion Temple first. Otherwise, the deaths were of the pk'd type, with SuperKillRogue and a mage called This IsNotAmerica the culprits.
Being only level 25, Kae was a bit on the periphery of things - as indeed was LordDarkzer, at level 43, who got pk'd rather more frequently I think. Still, the final stages cunningly took place close to the entrance hall, where GM Beatrice was finally killed... but is this the end of the story? I think not.
It wasn't the end for me, as Cariae was next on the rota for the event, so Barbarienne logged on, got recruited into a party with a few others of similar levels by Hercules37, and teleported to Velpist Temple. She was able to roam around more freely, and do a lot more damage to the monsters - though there were so many "cube guard" and other types of monster I'd never seen before that it was difficult to know just how dangerous various rooms and corridors were. A level 115 "cube guard" version of Kamira seemed a bit nasty, for sure, and there were cave spirits around - I got stunned a few times, but luckily triggering the great healing pots kept me alive in such circumstances.
I did get rather trapped in a far corner of the place, so followed Zenderfly's example from yesterday and just logged out, then logged back in, horse-buffed, used the teleporter, and got back into slightly safer action. ChefOfPain recruited me that time, as she had at the recent Mad Monster Spawn (assuming she is also ChefDuPain), and I was able to provide some healing, though she got pk'd a time or two. Barbarienne got pk'd once, by a rogue called Beasthunter, who I last saw running into a group of monsters in her underwear repeatedly. No wonder the guild she is in is called "Suicidal"... "If people are too scared to fight the high-level monsters, they can always just pk the people who are doing so", I remarked brightly.
Well, in the end Beatrice was killed. As GM Stratos said, "My thanks. Beatrice had grown too powerful and had to be put down. We had no choice." Apart from the one pk-ing, Barb did keep alive, and was even able to grab some loot from the Hands that Stratos spawned, though as there were still some Scissorfist Golems around at the time, I had to keep a wary eye on my health while I grabbed stuff.
It was then time for Galahad to join RedRackham at the Gnoll Lancers for some quiet pet-levelling, but before too long a wandering level 50 Pandora's Beast took Red by surprise, and killed him. Red was able to use his "beginner" resurrection scroll to avoid losing any skill points, opting to respawn back in town - he went back to the Berserkers and, with the Beast perilously close to him too, Galahad used a memory scroll to move there too. I'd been wondering if those "beginner" scrolls worked during level 35, and they do - Red was able to activate a new one.
Leopardknight was around and said hi; he reported that his original sorcerer Elvastar has reached level 60, while Ratel has got his hands on a Tears of Knight accessory - though with the mc accessories he has, giving 60% to critical hits, plus 10% suction of life and suction of mana, he isn't actually using it. Nice to have, though. With the double pet experience running he was hoping to pet-level overnight, let us hope that nobody comes by to kill the Berserkers that are being fought there.
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