Three Zombie Invasions

RedRackham managed another successful overnight session, which meant good progress for Samael's horse XxEmOxX through level 36. The horse finally reached level 37 at around lunchtime - the next thing to do will of course be to actually manage to contact Samael to hand it over. CaptainScarlet restarted his endeavours at what, technically speaking, could be termed breakfast time, if one was in the habit of having a breakfast on Sundays, and his drake got to level 29 just before noon.

There wasn't any expedition to Prokion Temple, either on the Cariae or Auzura servers, in the morning, as I was expecting a couple of my favourite cousins to visit me for lunch - so that meant less playing, and more pet-levelling. They left before the middle of the afternoon, though, so I was able to take full advantage of the "Sunday teatime" bonus, which was going to be two hours of 50% extra skill experience.

So, which character should benefit from this? I opted for giving JohnWellington, my level 33 sorcerer, an all-expenses-paid trip to Prokion Temple, accompanied by, on level 24, my rogue RedRider, in the usual Combat party combination. I'm not sure what time the bonus actually started, there weren't any announcements at all (I may have benefitted from a similar event on Friday and just not noticed it), but it did get turned on at some stage, and ran for a nice long time, ending at 6:24pm UK time. I did take a little time out before that to eat, but not very long as I was still feeling rather full from lunch.

JohnWellington and RedRider kept going for a while after that, but there was some serious lag at 7:17, and John disconnected - Red, as she wasn't doing anything at the time, survived it, and so did the rogue Sunnychild who had recently joined me there, coming in at a time when John was briefly taking a rest. RedRider left then; it had been a marathon session, and John had added 36.13% experience, 277 skill points, and 591 guild points, while Red had gained 33.91%, 272 skill points, and 85 guild points.

After that JohnWellington did some minor quests; these included killing ten Pilferers and ten Bandits in Merac, which did actually attract the Grand Red Dragon, but there didn't seem to be anyone online who would be interested in it. And, after visiting Rau at the Column of Magic, John logged out, having added another 5.01% experience, partially in quest rewards, plus 2 skill points and 7 guild points.

After MistressDomino had a little browse round the shops in Auzura-1, it was time to head for the Sunday Quiz, so Rage joined Kaerella there, on Auzura-2 as usual. Before long Ratel arrived too, along with, thanks to that new router of his, Liezl and Leopardknight. He had a slightly close shave on one of the tricksier questions, "which item can you not feed a horse", but we made it safely through to the end, which meant that Ratel and family were better off by 45 heaven stones, the biggest stash of them he has ever had, it seems, so he was rather happy about that, estimating that he ought to be able to sell them for three million each.

The "Zombie Invasion", run by GM Kali, was next - it was announced initially as taking place on Auzura-1, so Memree headed out to Berbank Mill there - at which point the announcements changed to the usual Auzura-2, so everyone had to log out and move over. That was a bit of a bad start, and, frankly, when the spawns of the various kinds of zombie began, plus not just Apes but the level 115 Cube Guards, those of us who were there got just a bit overwhelmed. Not that Memree makes a huge contribution, damage-wise, though I noticed that on one particular kill I got 222,637 experience, so I must have been doing something right.

This event is a short one, and we only had 15 minutes to kill all the invading monsters... not only did we not manage that, it took us almost twice that time before the area was clear. So, no drops for Auzura... Memree did get killed once, but that doesn't really matter, which is why she is the one who goes on such adventures.

By then, GM Kali had already moved across to Katar; my archer Kaerella is only level 10 there, but she bravely sallied forth on Katar-2, and, well, made even less impression on the monsters, I guess. Still, it was exciting stuff, and the Katar players were just able to meet the deadline - I think Kali may have stretched it by a minute or two to be nice, but hands of loot were spawned, and everyone went away happy.

It was ten o'clock for me now, but Cariae was next, so I logged Barbarienne in on Cariae-2. Level 100 makes more of an impact than level 10, so I made a full contribution there. To my surprise Zenderfly wasn't able to turn up, I'd avoided joining a party in the hope that she'd be along, but the Cariae people were equal to the task set them. There did seem a number of people in PvP mode, and in fact one rogue did briefly attack me, but swiftly apologised, I think she had mis-clicked and had meant to go for a zombie.

I generally tried to be a powerful back-up, but I did get one Ancient Screaming Zombie targeting me, and while I did pretty well to begin with, eventually it used its poisoning skill on me successfully, and my health drained away at a frightening speed, so I had to run for it - it's annoying when that happens, as if one has to run to a safe distance, the monster's health tends to return to 100%..

Cariae did better than Katar, anyway; GM Kali spawned the first hands of loot while we were still fighting, which was mildly annoying, I was going one-on-one with a (regular-type) Screaming Zombie, and suddenly loot spawned around us. I ended up stopping attacking so that I could pick up some items before they all vanished, then finishing off the zombie. For some reason we got two more spawnings of hands, though I didn't seem to do very well on getting any of the good stuff, it was mainly the small recovery potions that ended up in my inventory. We also got a high-level monster or two spawned, including one of Egeha's gigantic Blue Dragons.

So despite attending three Zombie Invasions, I don't think I managed to pick up very much loot; just minor amounts of gold on Auzura, not a lot on Cariae, and on Katar too only two or three good items, like large attack and defence potions and an item drop booster. Though with a level 10 character, those small HP and MP recovery potions will probably be useful if I play her some more.

CaptainScarlet had been working on his drake meanwhile, getting it most of the way through level 29, and it was now time for SirPerivale to join him. His pony soon levelled up to 15, so there is now just one more level to go before it becomes a stylish looking horse rather than a cute, if chubby, little pony. They grow up so fast...