The computers hummed into life at breakfast time; I'd done a virus scan on the main one last night, using the "switch off computer after complete" option, and having the machine switched off, rather than hibernating, certainly seemed to make things quicker initially. CaptainScarlet and RedRackham went out pet-levelling as usual, though Red did get a disconnection fairly early on, but was soon back in action.
Over on Cariae-3 after coffee, Galahad and Karella headed for Prokion Temple again. I was resolved to be clever, and at 11:09, UK time, unequipped SkrappY from Karella, and put Galahad into a quiet corner too, while I went off and did some household chores. The forum shoutbox soon confirmed that there had been the usual Cariae server breakdown, with people disconnected and unable to log back in - ten minutes or so later, however, both my computers here finally brought up the "disconnected" window, so on this occasion even doing nothing didn't save me.
Still, that had been about all the time I had for playing anyway, so the pet-levellers got logged back on for a slightly extended lunchtime, finding that Ratel's pet-leveller Leopardknight had decided to join them down in their particular corner of Merac, instead of using the desert spiders near the Temple in Dratan. Galahad had managed to add 15.29% before the disconnection, and 32 skill points. while Karella, as usual arriving only after Gal had checked that the room was clear, gained 5.45% and 30 skill points.
The afternoon session was a bit of a change of pace, as it involved the Katar server, and, mainly, the junior version of Kaerella, who after yesterday's Zombie Invasion there was level 11. It made a strange change to not only go out and fight berserk wolves and jaguars and sasquatches, but for every gold coin dropped to be precious, as I had hardly any money there. Kaerella couldn't afford new armour, and was still in the starter set to begin with, though there was just enough gold, after a few drops at the fringes of the Zombie Invasion, to get her a level 13 bow to replace the level 1 one.
Eventually a level 6 skirt got picked up, and then a Pandora's Box came into sight - when I opened it it disgorged a level 20 Pandora's Beast, the ghostly Sasquatch-type. By running, turning and firing, running some more, self-healing, running, and firing some more, eventually I managed to kill it - and it dropped 4,400 gold, almost doubling my cash reserves.
Level 12 got reached at last, after fighting wandering zombies in Velpist Temple, and Kae had enough money to buy the 15/17 armour set, though for a while she had to make do with the picked-up old skirt. Kae finally had enough cash to buy a bloodseal gem, which at 1000 gold is rather expensive early on, and used it on the bow, being rewarded by the seal adding an extra 18 to her hit rate.
Hunter Dranore had a quest for Kae, the map showed, so I went down to his encampment south-east of Randol; he wanted some sasquatch fur, and as he was giving a little experience, and 700 gold for each batch of ten furs, that was useful. Like Merchant Geres wanting jaguar teeth for necklaces, it is a repeatable quest, so rather handy if one needs to get a little cash together.
Kae also ran down to Prokion Temple in Dratan, so that location is on her scroll now. For the last part of the afternoon I checked all my accounts, as a while ago there was a "tiered spender event" where one got rewarded on every server, and moved the packages across to Kaerella. She may not have any gold, but she has plenty of lucky smelting stones, berserker, power, crit, and adrenaline potions, and even some heaven stones. I think one package which was a freebie for buying something else got delivered to Katar in error, which means that she even has five chaos smelting stones. All those items are getting a bit heavy, but poor Kae doesn't have enough gold to be able to afford to put them into storage...one account puzzles me by having a couple of three-hour Party Recall cards in its records section, I have no idea where they came from.
For the evening, well, since we were getting within sight of the finishing line for Galahad on Cariae in his quest to become a top-rank pet leveller, he headed out to Prokion Temple again. Cariae-3's Temple was busy, including the back room, but Cariae-4's version was generally quieter, and I was able to get the back room to myself. So, Karella moved across and joined me for the Combat party, and over the next few hours Galahad gained the 44.16% he needed, along with another 95 skill points. Karella added 14.94%, which was enough to take her into level 27, and 93 skill points.
Since Karella was now level 27, and Galahad was level 35, we were able to test out the idea for sp-farming a level 35 phoenix character. Karella, now able to wear the whole of the +10 30/32 armour set, killed a sample Orc Sergeant, and, as the non-fighter in a Combat party, Gal got 3569 experience and 2507 skill exp. Karella then killed an Orc Axeman, and Gal got 1660 experience from that, along with 1639 skill exp. The exact figure will vary from one kill to the next, but after Gal's experience gain was set to 50%, as level 35 needs in total 23,223,182 experience, my calculator tells me that 28,000 Orc Axemen could be killed before level 36 was attained, yielding over 4,500 skill points. Use enough platinum super skill pills and you could triple that, even.
However, that does sound like a rather long slog, with poor Karella having to go downstairs to die a lot of times to avoid levelling up, so I'm not quite convinced how practical the idea is. The theory sounds good though...
As Karella was online, Zenderfly, or Damor, was able to get in touch pretty easily. Her kindly intention to treat me to a free Phoenix Ticket has hit a setback, in that she is suddenly extremely poor - somebody was selling experience point boosters at 125,000 gold each, I'm not too up to date on Cariae prices but that has got to be less than a tenth of the usual price, so they must have been feeling remarkably generous. Zen bought every last one she could, since they are a vital part of levelling up at her level, about 1,500 I think she said.
Zen has "a good feeling" about this coming Wednesday, hoping that the update that introduces the new Night Shadow class will appear - "Twilight of the Night Shadow is almost upon us", as the website says. Well, my feeling is they may wait a bit longer, though the 50% extra skill exp and experience scheduled to begin next Monday would make a fine start to making new characters. It ramps up to double for both types from that Friday to Sunday, before moving to 75% extra from Monday 26th until the 29th, and then the last two days go back to double, with double pet experience thrown in for good measure. There's also talk of a "special bonus" on the weekends, as well.
When the Night Shadows are available, the thing we'll both need to do is make one, and try him out - if he is an effective fighter and fun to play, well, then we can make our Phoenix characters. If Zen isn't too keen on him, she probably won't bother with a Phoenix at all, but has offered to help Barbarienne get back in range of Zenderfly's current level, after which team-ups, perhaps exploring the promised new high-level content, would be something to look forward to.
Once XxGALAHADxX had reached level 35, and, back in town, got the Canid Fence 2 skill and a few other odd skills to use up his skill points, it was time to get him his red name. I don't think he would be allowed to attack a fellow guild member like RedRackham, so it was SirCumference, of a minor guild of mine called TheCircle, at level 20, who I took to join Gal in Prokion Temple on Cariae-5, a "PvP-enabled" sub-server. Gal stopped off in Dratan to visit Jajan, to get a new pony. Cumfy took off his armour and stepped out of Prokion's lobby area, then Gal switched on "pk mode", and struck him down. Cumfy had to return from the lobby, mere feet away, so the deaths needed to get Gal to a -140 good/evil rating didn't take long. Seeing Gal's red name a nearby archer tried to kill him, but her efforts were rather in the "it tickles" class, and he lost less than 10% of his health to her attacks before his time there was over.
So, Galahad headed for Merac's Berserkers, and added the location to his memory scroll - he equipped his pony, took off his sword, and attacked a Berserker bare-handed. The damage he did per hit was 20, which is fine for Berserkers, so all is well. I had a slight worry a few minutes in when I saw that the Berserker was dead, but that was just one of those darn ks-ers. It didn't take long after that for the pony to gain its first couple of levels - and over on Auzura-4, CaptainScarlet set to work on his horse too, which is now getting towards the top of level 29.
The afternoon session was a bit of a change of pace, as it involved the Katar server, and, mainly, the junior version of Kaerella, who after yesterday's Zombie Invasion there was level 11. It made a strange change to not only go out and fight berserk wolves and jaguars and sasquatches, but for every gold coin dropped to be precious, as I had hardly any money there. Kaerella couldn't afford new armour, and was still in the starter set to begin with, though there was just enough gold, after a few drops at the fringes of the Zombie Invasion, to get her a level 13 bow to replace the level 1 one.
Eventually a level 6 skirt got picked up, and then a Pandora's Box came into sight - when I opened it it disgorged a level 20 Pandora's Beast, the ghostly Sasquatch-type. By running, turning and firing, running some more, self-healing, running, and firing some more, eventually I managed to kill it - and it dropped 4,400 gold, almost doubling my cash reserves.
Level 12 got reached at last, after fighting wandering zombies in Velpist Temple, and Kae had enough money to buy the 15/17 armour set, though for a while she had to make do with the picked-up old skirt. Kae finally had enough cash to buy a bloodseal gem, which at 1000 gold is rather expensive early on, and used it on the bow, being rewarded by the seal adding an extra 18 to her hit rate.
Hunter Dranore had a quest for Kae, the map showed, so I went down to his encampment south-east of Randol; he wanted some sasquatch fur, and as he was giving a little experience, and 700 gold for each batch of ten furs, that was useful. Like Merchant Geres wanting jaguar teeth for necklaces, it is a repeatable quest, so rather handy if one needs to get a little cash together.
Kae also ran down to Prokion Temple in Dratan, so that location is on her scroll now. For the last part of the afternoon I checked all my accounts, as a while ago there was a "tiered spender event" where one got rewarded on every server, and moved the packages across to Kaerella. She may not have any gold, but she has plenty of lucky smelting stones, berserker, power, crit, and adrenaline potions, and even some heaven stones. I think one package which was a freebie for buying something else got delivered to Katar in error, which means that she even has five chaos smelting stones. All those items are getting a bit heavy, but poor Kae doesn't have enough gold to be able to afford to put them into storage...one account puzzles me by having a couple of three-hour Party Recall cards in its records section, I have no idea where they came from.
For the evening, well, since we were getting within sight of the finishing line for Galahad on Cariae in his quest to become a top-rank pet leveller, he headed out to Prokion Temple again. Cariae-3's Temple was busy, including the back room, but Cariae-4's version was generally quieter, and I was able to get the back room to myself. So, Karella moved across and joined me for the Combat party, and over the next few hours Galahad gained the 44.16% he needed, along with another 95 skill points. Karella added 14.94%, which was enough to take her into level 27, and 93 skill points.
Since Karella was now level 27, and Galahad was level 35, we were able to test out the idea for sp-farming a level 35 phoenix character. Karella, now able to wear the whole of the +10 30/32 armour set, killed a sample Orc Sergeant, and, as the non-fighter in a Combat party, Gal got 3569 experience and 2507 skill exp. Karella then killed an Orc Axeman, and Gal got 1660 experience from that, along with 1639 skill exp. The exact figure will vary from one kill to the next, but after Gal's experience gain was set to 50%, as level 35 needs in total 23,223,182 experience, my calculator tells me that 28,000 Orc Axemen could be killed before level 36 was attained, yielding over 4,500 skill points. Use enough platinum super skill pills and you could triple that, even.
However, that does sound like a rather long slog, with poor Karella having to go downstairs to die a lot of times to avoid levelling up, so I'm not quite convinced how practical the idea is. The theory sounds good though...
As Karella was online, Zenderfly, or Damor, was able to get in touch pretty easily. Her kindly intention to treat me to a free Phoenix Ticket has hit a setback, in that she is suddenly extremely poor - somebody was selling experience point boosters at 125,000 gold each, I'm not too up to date on Cariae prices but that has got to be less than a tenth of the usual price, so they must have been feeling remarkably generous. Zen bought every last one she could, since they are a vital part of levelling up at her level, about 1,500 I think she said.
Zen has "a good feeling" about this coming Wednesday, hoping that the update that introduces the new Night Shadow class will appear - "Twilight of the Night Shadow is almost upon us", as the website says. Well, my feeling is they may wait a bit longer, though the 50% extra skill exp and experience scheduled to begin next Monday would make a fine start to making new characters. It ramps up to double for both types from that Friday to Sunday, before moving to 75% extra from Monday 26th until the 29th, and then the last two days go back to double, with double pet experience thrown in for good measure. There's also talk of a "special bonus" on the weekends, as well.
When the Night Shadows are available, the thing we'll both need to do is make one, and try him out - if he is an effective fighter and fun to play, well, then we can make our Phoenix characters. If Zen isn't too keen on him, she probably won't bother with a Phoenix at all, but has offered to help Barbarienne get back in range of Zenderfly's current level, after which team-ups, perhaps exploring the promised new high-level content, would be something to look forward to.
Once XxGALAHADxX had reached level 35, and, back in town, got the Canid Fence 2 skill and a few other odd skills to use up his skill points, it was time to get him his red name. I don't think he would be allowed to attack a fellow guild member like RedRackham, so it was SirCumference, of a minor guild of mine called TheCircle, at level 20, who I took to join Gal in Prokion Temple on Cariae-5, a "PvP-enabled" sub-server. Gal stopped off in Dratan to visit Jajan, to get a new pony. Cumfy took off his armour and stepped out of Prokion's lobby area, then Gal switched on "pk mode", and struck him down. Cumfy had to return from the lobby, mere feet away, so the deaths needed to get Gal to a -140 good/evil rating didn't take long. Seeing Gal's red name a nearby archer tried to kill him, but her efforts were rather in the "it tickles" class, and he lost less than 10% of his health to her attacks before his time there was over.
So, Galahad headed for Merac's Berserkers, and added the location to his memory scroll - he equipped his pony, took off his sword, and attacked a Berserker bare-handed. The damage he did per hit was 20, which is fine for Berserkers, so all is well. I had a slight worry a few minutes in when I saw that the Berserker was dead, but that was just one of those darn ks-ers. It didn't take long after that for the pony to gain its first couple of levels - and over on Auzura-4, CaptainScarlet set to work on his horse too, which is now getting towards the top of level 29.
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