The Temple on Cariae

RedRackham managed an overnight pet levelling session safely, on the Auzura server as usual, so that his horse was now well into its final level, 36, before it can become transformed into JohnWellington's mount. It's great to switch on the monitor in the morning and find that the fight with the Berserker has continued safely for the last few hours. CaptainScarlet went to join Red in Merac at breakfast time, to move his drake further on through level 31; I guess we are aiming for the top of level 33 with that one, since that's as far as Cap's pets can go before they start getting twice as hungry, at which point SirDarth would be in line to have his current drake replaced.

Talking of RedRackham, his new Cariae equivalent was the focus of the morning's activities. He put on his brand-new +10 armour set, and equipped the sword and shield, and then went to Lorraine to get his treasure chests opened, which gave us some useful Candies and large attack potions, and did some minor local quests, mainly for a reward of a potion of haste or three. XxGALAHADxX recruited him into the ForceWithin guild, and set his experience gain to 50%; he spent what few skill points he had on the first two or three levels of Uncanny Movement, and then traded SkrappY across to Karella, who gave him enough Orc Ornaments for the quest that requires them.

Red and Karella teamed up; they both had some quests in Dratan, which gave them a few percent more experience - in Red's case, 3.40% more. Red then had to run out to Prokion Temple to get the location onto his memory scroll, with Karella teleporting there. The back room was free, so they settled in there, though there was by then less than an hour left of the moring session.

With RedRackham on level 31, teaming up with Karella, on level 26, didn't really help him skill exp-wise, though it meant he added more experience per kill. When Karella moved out of compass map range he got 4400 skill exp per Orc Sergeant, and 8536 experience (with the 50% freeze), and 3300/3851 per Orc Axeman...with her present the figures varied, but a typical Orc Sergeant gave 2894/11461, and an Orc Axeman gave 2613/6699. Of course Karella then got the same amount of skill experience plus 1817 experience from the Sergeant and 1062 from the Axeman, so between them they got more skill experience, but the focus at the moment is on RedRackham. By the end of the short session Red had moved up from his overnight totals by 13.83%, 41 skill points, and 117 guild points, while Karella had added 18.94%, 43 skill points, and 25 guild points. Red had to use a few small HP recovery potions, as his physical defence and health regeneration were not yet quite good enough to keep his health bar full.

The lunchtime pet-levelling was back on Auzura, and when I returned to the computer, there were some GM announcements about an attack on Auzura-3 Randol by the forces of darkness. I assumed that things had probably already finished, but then another message came up, saying that there were still some Flutons at the west gate, so, as I was about to change characters anyway, I logged Memree in and hurried to investigate. I was very nearly too late, but did manage to land a few hits on the last Fluton of all before it expired... and was thus on the spot when the GM, presumably Xandamere at that time of day, spawned some Hands as a reward to the defenders of the city. I managed to grab four tool aids, plus an item drop booster, a skill point booster, and a large defence potion, which was pretty good wages for my tiny contribution to the defence, though if I'd been there for half an hour or so I might have considered the pickings slightly meagre.

Anyway, just as I was ready to get back over to Cariae, a level 32 rogue called TuIAMordEWkA ks'd CaptainScarlet, who was still levelling his drake, ie killed his Berserker, and my "Please don't ks" led to a discussion about pet-levelling. She was actually using a platinum pet experience potion for triple pet experience for an hour, to move a newly-acquired horse along. She was using her weapon instead of fighting bare-handed, so she killed the Berserkers and Bandits fairly quickly. And after a few minutes this attracted the Grand Red Dragon.

I didn't think we would stand a chance if we fought him, but she was adamant that we should try. So I suggested she waited until her pet pill expired, as we had plenty of time, and logged in Galahad as my character for the fight, who is at least a couple of levels higher than Cap, hits harder as he isn't red-named, and, as a royal knight, can give a Concentration buff to increase the chance that a rogue's Snare skill will work.

Things didn't work well, though I guess if any team-up at around that level, without +15 armour and high-level attack and defence minerals, is going to manage a kill, then a Snare-happy rogue and a royal knight would be the types to go for. I didn't greatly worry about Gal being killed as he has the "beginner" resurrection scrolls to use up, but he managed to stay alive - though he used all ten of the greater health potions he happened to be carrying. Tula did die, and must have used a resurrection scroll as she was back in action very quickly, but we must have pulled the GRD too far from its spawning spot, or something, as, after we'd got its health down to less than 50%, its health suddenly reset to full. Ah well, at least we'd not been set upon by the horde of angry Cerebrii it spawns if its health gets low!

So, the return to Cariae was delayed a little, but RedRackham headed back to Prokion Temple finally on Cariae-3, this time just in a solo party - Enchantrella provided that, buying herself a hammer from merchant Geres and going out to mine some stones. I just needed to restart her activities every ten minutes when the mine she was working vanished and then respawned, and over the next couple of hours she got a good selection of quality, imperfect, and flawed stones, before at the end using a tool aid on the hammer to get a final 27 quality stones. The only incident was when a healer called "chobits" did the old practical joke of using a tool aid-boosted hammer on the mine I was using, to make it vanish prematurely. "Funny haha", I commented, sarcastically.

RedRackham had a rather busier time, of course. He did have one strange visitor briefly, I think with a name like "KingSmart", with a dark blue school uniform cover on his knight armour, and the fish skeleton type cover on his dual swords. He just stood near the middle of the room for a while, ignoring the attacks of the Orcs. I was going to say something along the lines of there being plenty of Orcs for two, but suddenly he killed the whole mob of Orcs that had surrounded him, and then vanished. He must have been pretty high level, I suppose, so what he was doing in Prokion Temple on a non-PvP sub-server I can't imagine.

Red kept going for two hours, using the first two of his five "beginner" platinum super skill pills; the first one brought him in 136 skill points (as opposed to 54 without the pssp), and the second added another 132; as well as the 268 skill points, he added 14.30% experience and 162 guild points.

I'd been able to get the first three levels of Vitality Control before moving to Prokion Temple this time, which meant I didn't have to use any more small HP recovery potions, so the fighting was nice and simple. And afterwards I had enough skill points to maximise the level 30 skill Mana Break, which a knight has to get before he can choose to become a temple or royal knight, and get the fifth level of Canid Fence; that just left the last two levels of Vitality Control to get before points can start to be saved up for Wall of Belief, which comes available to a temple knight when he reaches level 32, adding 155 to his physical defence.

It's a shame that Wall of Belief isn't available earlier; as it is, Red has to be equipped with a sword and shield, and thus doesn't kill as fast as he would if he wasn't using a shield, but dual swords instead. Though he might be okay if he had a good Armour Increase buff from a pet, I suppose...

After a pet-levelling food break again, RedRackham returned to Prokion Temple, and Enchantrella returned to the mine. The first hour saw Red gain another 136 skill points, and the second hour's pssp brought in 133. I kept on going for a while after that, and ended up with a total gain of 320 skill points - which, with the 7 left over from earlier, is handy, as it means that Red currently has exactly the right number for the five levels of Wall of Belief he can learn at level 32. Of course, despite adding 20.66% in the session, and 233 guild points, he is still half a level away from that, so it ought to be possible to get Divine Shield too, especially if we keep that 50% freeze on.

Apart from a sorcerer who ran into the room with his spirits, and then quickly ran out again, my only visitor was a level 29 mage called daarld, who stayed a while, but when she realised that I was running a pssp, and that there really weren't enough Orcs there to keep both of us busy, quickly left. She did return to the doorway briefly to ask if I was well off enough to want to buy something to make me gain sp more quickly, possibly a platinum adrenaline, which was thoughtful, but I had to say that I only had just over a million.

I'd seen Ratel log on earlier, but he didn't reply to Enchantrella's "hi there", so was probably in gold-spammer territory. He did get in touch though towards the end of the evening, saying that Shawshankz was online, and wanted me to register to join their party. So Enchantrella left RedRackham's party, which may well mean he had to kill a couple more Orcs to reach his target, before logging off and letting his Auzura equivalent set up for some pet-levelling, and registered for the party.

So, Shawshankz is still playing, and has reached level 105 now; he mentioned that Astarael and some others are currently trying out the new NCSoft mmorpg Aion, I wonder if that is why Zenderfly hasn't been at the last few MMS-type events? Shaw is saving up for some platinum blessed irises so that he can add another level or so, he already has the skill point boosters needed.

Anyway, Shaw vanished from the conversation, and it was time for me to leave Cariae too; I logged in SirPerivale and his pale blue horse, now level 21, for a little pet-levelling session alongside Red. By log-out time Red's horse should only be about an hour away from level 37, so he won't be doing an overnight session. It should be a restful night for both of them. I ignored the GM announcements for "Stone Statue Defence", the latest PvP event that is being tried out this week. The two teams on Auzura were split between knights, titans, & healers, and the other three classes, but the announcement later for Sarissa divided them up as knights, titans & sorcerers versus the rest - just checking out how different team-ups work, I suppose. The event known only as "TBA" listed for tomorrow may be more interesting, though.