The Non-Event

While I did say that RedRackham and SirPerivale would have a "restful night", I didn't mention the indestructible CaptainScarlet, who did attempt to work on his drake overnight. There was a disconnection, but we only lost a little over an hour to that, by my reckoning, so that Cap's drake did reach level 33 soon after breakfast. By then of course RedRackham was back in Berserker-bashing action too, and, while it did take longer than an hour, by coffee time he had at last got his horse up to level 37.

The first thing to do after coffee was to get the Cariae version of RedRackham over to Prokion Temple, to use his fifth and last "beginner" pssp; I wanted to get him there as quickly as possible, as Friday at 11:30am, UK time, is rather often a time when the servers get rebooted without warning, and it would be a bit of a waste if one got disconnected while one had a pssp running at that time. I'd got Enchantrella set up mining on Cariae-3 before coffee, ready to provide his solo party - but when Red got to the back room on that sub-server, it was occupied, so he had to move across to Cariae-4.

Since a while ago both C-1 and C-3 went through a period when they were unstable, it's C-4, the second non-PvP sub-server. that is the busiest one, and boy is Randol full of merchants, the air is just about solid with their signs. Red managed to thread his way through to the teleporter, and got to the Temple safely, which seemed emptier than the C-3 version. The back room was free, thankfully, so Red began to fight, while Enchantrella logged out of C-3, logged into C-4, rejoined the solo party, and headed back to the mine.

RedRackham had remembered to get the highest two levels of Vitality Control, to increase his health regeneration, in Dratan city, and I was happy to find that this meant he could ditch the single sword and shield in favour of using the dual swords to attack the Orcs, without losing health, and when it comes to swords, two is definitely better than one. For the pssp hour, instead of the previous 130-140 skill points, Red this time got 168; as the game didn't kick everyone out at 3:30am PST after all, I continued on until lunch was approaching, and by the end Red had gone up by 14.28%, 208 skill points and 161 guild points. His drake had gone up from level 2 to 4, with its Sympathy increasing from 59% to 75%, too - and Enchantrella had added usefully to her supply of pet-feeding stones.

The horse that Auzura's version of RedRackham had got to level 37 needed to be traded across to JohnWellington, my only main Auzura server based character not to have his own level 37 mount; and then SirPerivale traded across to RedRackham the level 24 horse from Steve that FemeiaVraci had passed across. That meant that Red and CaptainScarlet needed to exchange pets, as Cap should have the lower-level one as he is three levels lower than Red - so over lunch Red was able to work on the level 33 drake, and Cap was able to move the horse further on through level 24. For a change this horse is its natural chestnut colour, so substitutions can be made later if necessary, MistressDomino does currently have charge of a level 25 one.

Lan Hoang of Aeria Games is in one of his generous moods today, and has, I found after lunch, been sending out emails letting us know that a little bonus is on its way. "We like to reward our old, loyal gamers with a little treat: $10 in Free Aeria Points. Check your account (the one linked to this email address) after October 17th and you will find a beautifully wrapped present of 1,000 Aeria Points. Enjoy!" So that is a nice gesture. The email also mentions the upcoming additions to Last Chaos, including the new class and the "raid system" as well as a Spanish-language server. The other main Aeria Games fantasy mmorpg Shaiya is also mentioned, as "our biggest game", which slightly surprises me, but I guess its graphics at least are slicker than LC's.

This afternoon's Friday "Happy Hour" bonus was scheduled to be 50% extra experience, which would be mildly useful for some characters, though not the ones who are more interested in farming skill points at the moment - which means most of them. In the end, I decided that MistressBlaze and MistressSabina ought to have a session out with the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men.

The only problem was that there didn't seem to be a 50% increase in my mages' experience per kill, at three or any time after that - I checked with Ratel, who came online and Iook Athema out to Prokion Temple, I assume, with Leopardknight left outside there to do some pet-levelling on the desert spiders, and he confirmed my suspicions.

Our old friend Kamira dropped by a little before four o'clock, so MistressBlaze logged out and my level 72 rogue Rage logged in, and hurried out to say hello. This time I did remember the item drop booster as well as the horse buffs, lucky scroll, and magical defence mineral, but I didn't get any rare items, just the usual drops of lucky scrolls, moonstones and so on - enough to make Rage's visit profitable, anyway. She logged out pretty quickly, the idea being to save the second half of the lucky scroll, hopefully, for Kamira's next visit, and MB returned for a little more fighting of the local Sphinx types, before it was time to log out for some food.

MistressBlaze added 14.30% experience, while MistressSabina, seven levels her junior, added 33.23%, getting her past the halfway mark in level 40, so that was useful progress, though if I'd known there wasn't going to be an extra 50% bonus, I might well have used some sort of potion to move things along a bit.

CaptainScarlet got his horse up to level 25 during the food break. After that, well, Cap continued for a while, but Red bowed out to let MistressSabina have a brief solo exploration, to see if she had any quests to pick up, at level 40; there wasn't anything, but she went down to level two of Maargadum Jail for a little while, to kill some spike canines and dire spike canines, which are easier to handle there than on the ground floor. 3.07% experience and 9 skill points got added, but I didn't stay long.

The evening was always likely to be bitty. Next Galahad (who like Rage is actually all-capitals) checked on his quests, and found that he had ten Pilferers, ten Bandits, and twenty Berserkers to kill, so he did that, ending up with 4.78% and just 4 skill points more. Then SirDarth found that he still had the two quests that involved killing desert spiders to do, even though they are now blue-named for him. He got the ten each of the strong spider thread and spider poison, and then looked in on Prokion Temple since he was near. The back room was free, so he started fighting the Orcs there. At level 35, he is one level too far above RedRider at the moment for a Combat party arrangement, so instead my level 31 titan Cyborg came along to team up with him. It increased the experience he got from killing Orc Sergeants, at least, though the skill exp was slightly down for him... though Cyborg got the same amount of skill exp too.

It was lucky that I was playing on SirDarth, since more of my characters are in Discipline than Norcaine these days, as it meant that Zenderfly was able to get in touch with me fairly easily. The first question was one I'd just been asking in the Shoutbox - what was happening about the mysterious "TBA" event which had been scheduled to begin at 8:00pm, UK time? As Auzura tends to have the events first, to be more in touch with the European time zones, it was logical to come over here to check. Intriguingly, the picture to illustrate the event showed GM Beatrice, in the middle of Merac village. However, nothing was announced, and checking the "Events" calendar half an hour later, Zen saw that the event had been put back to next Friday. All in all, a bit of a GM non-event, they really ought to have put out an announcement about it, after building it up mysteriously on the website. Still, it is understandable, the recent "account hacks" mean a lot of work for the GMs and others, as they strive to repair the damage.

Zenderfly asked for my assistance over on Cariae with some guild changing-around, so Barbarienne briefly became guild master of the original Norcaine there, kicking Taldea, a minor Zen character who had previously held the post. I then had to kick SirDarth from Norcaine, and he was then enrolled in the guild Ancients, which Damor had been the guild master of - the sole member, in fact, but she wanted to keep the name. He kicked Damor, and recruited Taldea and made her GM of Ancients; Barbarienne recruited Damor into Norcaine, and made her GM...and Damor made Barb a guild adviser. I think that was about all...

Zen was suggesting that, when the "Episode Two" of Last Chaos comes out, with the new "Night Shadow" class, we could both make new phoenix characters, and level up together, which sounds like a great idea to me, I've missed our team-ups. I can't say that I'm sure that my character would be a Night Shadow, I'd need to try one out on a different account before committing my phoenix slot (which one receives for getting a character to level 100, like Barbarienne - a special "phoenix ticket" is also needed, but Zen says she can supply those)... the Cariae version of MrChuckNorris, who has never gone beyond level 20, will need to be deleted, but then, the phoenix can rise. It's the sort of thing where it is incredibly useful and morale-building to be teamed with someone who knows what to do.

Zenderfly was also suggesting that tomorrow evening's event, "Rescue the Fallen GM", would, like the recent "Epic Events", be worth teaming up for. The Cariae one is scheduled for ten in the evening, which is just about do-able, but Zen was also suggesting checking out the Auzura version too, due to start five hours earlier, so see how it actually worked, and what perils would be faced. A severely weakened Games Master has to be escorted from Merac Castle to safety, and if they die more than three times, presumably with high-level stuff magically appearing around us, the event is over.

For this, Zenderfly wants to make an Auzura-based healer, perhaps level 15, though I should think it would be worth getting to level 20 for the "event weapon". Unfortunately she had to go incredibly abruptly, so plans to power-level her new character were left a bit unfinished, particularly as to the timing involved. Zen is in favour of my level 72 rogue fighting the level 64 Elite Sphinx Speer Man while her healer is ks-ing from outside the party, after receiving horse buffs... personally I'd think applying horse buffs and maybe a titan's Battle Roar buff and letting a new character fight elder werewolves, drakes, or perhaps Merac's butchers would be just as speedy, and wouldn't need the teleport scroll from the Item Mall.

If she has access to an extra computer or two, it being the weekend, she could just set her character, at level 7 or so, to wall-hug in Prokion Temple while SirPerivale did some fighting, to get some levels and the skill points she'd need to be able to do Heal... ah well, we will see what she has in mind tomorrow, maybe from around 1:30 my time, 2:30pm for her? I must be sure to have a Norcaine member online then so that her member of the guild, our local Zenderfly, can get in touch.

SirDarth's endeavours, on Auzura, had earned him 2.94% experience and 30 skill points apparently; after he logged out, so that Barbarienne and his namesake could appear on Cariae, Cyborg did continue in the Temple's back room for a while, and I was surprised that, despite having a mixture of +6 and lower armour, he didn't take much damage. He actually managed to add 33.10%, since he doesn't have his experience half-frozen, along with 113 skill points in all, which can't be bad. It's a shame he reached level 31 before they started giving away the +10 armour sets.

By logging out time CaptainScarlet had got Steve's horse more than halfway through level 25, while RedRackham had got our drake past the halfway mark in level 33. Pet-levelling makes a nice, and simple, way to end the evening...