Sunday 18 October 2009

Mount-Killed


Galahad managed another overnight pet-levelling session, and, once CaptainScarlet had also got set up to level his horse, I left them to it all morning, and indeed over lunch - otherwise the Sunday papers tend to hang around all week...

The afternoon session was pretty busy, though, but not as productive as I had hoped. Still, it's useful to check out one's options. The idea was to let my level 92 mage Keerella do a bit of experience-farming, so that she stays within range of Barbarienne, so they both went to the Cariae-4 Tomb of Theos, in a Combat party.

The idea was to have Keerella fighting the Screaming Zombies, with Barb just supplying the Combat party bonus, and doing a little healing when needed - and also equipping a Scra-Chi pet. Since I'd deprived Zenderfly's AutumStorm of that first hour's experience yesterday in the grave room, it seemed a good idea to equip that one rather than SkrappY, and he did gain a useful bit of experience as the afternoon progressed.

Kee had opened some experience boxes that had been part of a package along with some experience boosters, so she was able to start a three-hour Blessed Iris and, once I'd thought of it, a three-hour Elixir too, so she got 130% extra experience with those two things active, as they do stack. That meant approaching eleven million experience per kill, with Barbarienne getting a little under a million on average too.

A titan called hiperthunder was there when i arrived, and continued for an hour or so, reaching level 85 I think; he was helping a lower-level titan friend, xXMentemaestraXx, for much of the time. Pixiedragoness, an archer, was around for a while, and would have taken up my invitation to join the Combat party if she hadn't been, again, helping a friend to level, in this case a weedy-looking sorcerer. It was an afternoon for that sort of pairing, as the knight sourtis was power-levelling a lower-level knight called Bam13, who quite often asked Barb for some healing, which she cheerfully supplied.

Unfortunately just before the end someone managed to get about three or four loose Zombies onto us all, and in the confusion AutumStorm died rather quickly, I didn't see it happen at all - but he ended up at least 11% into his new level, after I'd got the Archbishop to "unseal" him. I bought a bandage from Pet Merchant Polly to get his health back to 10%, at least...

The only trouble, basically, is that even fighting monsters eight levels above her for over three hours, with a 130% boost, didn't gain Keerella all that much - 8.39%, to be exact, plus 10 skill points - without the elixir and the blessed iris it would just have been 3.65%. The gold drops were okay, and there was a heaven stone fairly early on, but it wasn't a huge return for the effort involved. Barbarienne got 0.20%, less than she would have got from killing a single Sphinx Commander in the grave room (using boosters), plus the 10 skill points. AutumStorm got about 10%, and Kee's drake, Greedo, got some pet points, but the session isn't really something I will be repeating, I think.

After the food break and some pet-levelling, it was time to take Cariae's RedRackham out to Prokion Temple for another experience-farming evening, quickly joined by Karella when I found my favourite room free, which was uneventful enough for me to pay reasonable attention to the forum shoutbox. When the subject of the Sunday Quiz came up, I asked casually if people who sat down in the room, and thus were not expelled if they were on the wrong side for a question, got the prizes - and was quickly told by the gamesages there, predominantly b1ank, that that was a "bug exploit", and if I saw people doing that, I should take a screenshot and send in the information.

There was one visitor towards the end of my session, a knight called Krukke. He seemed to be wearing the 30/32 armour set, so I was surprised when he got into trouble, and had to ask for my help to deal with the mob of Orcs that surrounded him, while hazed in red to show he was using health potions. He had to ask for help a number of times, in fact, so his armour can't have been plussed much.

By the time the Quiz was approaching, RedRackham had gained 36.62%, so he should only need one more decent-length session to reach level 35. He added 172 skill points, too: Karella added 10.88%, 167 skill points, and 55 guild points for Norcaine.

I decided to go to the Quiz on Cariae, since I do seem to have rather a lot of heaven stones on Auzura, and took Kaerella and Barbarienne, my level 48 cleric and my level 101 archer, to the quiz room on Cariae-2. Zenderfly did get in touch, saying she was in the Cariae-5 room, but by then it was too close to the start to change. She told me that she wouldn't be available to play tomorrow, but might be around on Tuesday; she would update the Norcaine guild message to let me know.

It was a matter of keeping a steady nerve with the Quiz, when it started - the third question asked if GM JediMike was in charge of the Old Skool Treasure Hunt, and everyone moved across to the "no" side, X...except a few brave souls, perhaps two dozen or less, including Kae and Barb. After that it was relatively plain sailing for us survivors, except for a question about a teleporter NPC where I could only hope that the wisdom of the majority was right this time. Both Kae and Barb earned their tool aids, moonstones and heaven stones safely... and when I came to put them away in storage, saw that I was quite as well off for heaven stones on Cariae as I was on Auzura.

As usual after that, the Zombie Invasions of Berbank Mill were soon scheduled to start, hosted by GM Kali. Auzura was first, and Memree went along as usual; at level 31, she was always liable to die a time or two, and she did, but we emerged victorious at the end - the village was saved, and the loot was dropped generously for us. One thing I noticed was that, while Memree hit the level 100 Screaming Zombies and the boss-type level 102 Ancient Screaming Zombies for 63, her "critical" hit for the 100 types was around 543 or 552, while for the 102-ers it was still just 63.

GM Kali then moved on to Katar, and with my level 14 archer there, Kaerella, I moved across too. Again there was a death or two, so that at one stage her experience in level 14 was right down to 0.12%, but assisting with some big kills got her up to at least 40% by the end. And again the village was saved, and there was plenty of loot to hoover up.

Things didn't go as well on Cariae, though, and I put that down to the amount of player-killing going on. I was a victim of that right at the start - Barbarienne mounted her horse to apply last-minute horse buffs before the first spawning, and was attacked by a red-named rogue called KamehamehA of the guild "Enraged" - a quick "deadly" hit and I was dead. Luckily pk-type kills don't cause the victim to lose experience or skill points, but it did kill Barb's mount, which cost 243,936 gold to "unseal" to continue using.

KamehamehA did actually attack me again, just after I'd commented that the reason that we weren't doing well against the zombies was because there was too much pk-ing going on - she was lurking around for much of the time, and then going invisible, to go off and launch a new attack. I was sorely tempted to set aside my anti-PvP principles and try to mess with her, but there were zombies that needed to be dealt with. I killed Apes, and Screaming Zombies - with the Ancient Screaming Zombies, and their poisoning skill, I generally tried to assist by targeting ones that were already safely engrossed in fighting melee people. There were some other red-named people in pk mode around, in Enraged and out, which isn't really the spirit of the thing, to my mind.

So, Cariae didn't manage to save the village within the time limit. There were some hands spawned for us, possibly as many as Auzura and Katar - but the catch was that Kali also spawned a few dozen more Ancient Screaming Zombies, which was hard luck on the lower level people. I was able to grab what I could, keeping a careful eye on my health, and then we all set to work to get rid of that final wave. I did get some gold drops - and I also got a level 71 pair of sorcerer pants, which I sold to Merchant Geres afterwards for almost 18,000 more than the pet unsealing had cost.

Galahad had been busily pet-levelling on Cariae while the zombies had been invading the various servers, so that his horse had moved on past halfway in level 31; for a change, instead of CaptainScarlet, on Auzura-4 I logged in SirPerivale, who quickly got his pale blue horse up to level 22. As that's Peri's own level too, today may well be the last time he can work on that one without having to use twice as many quality stones per hour.

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