Tuesday 13 October 2009

Zombie Time


While CaptainScarlet on Auzura-4 did a full overnight pet-levelling stint, XxGALAHADxX, on Cariae-3 and on the older computer, did a kind of compromise half-night, which gave that machine some down-time, which I'm sure it appreciates.

I didn't have coffee as early as sometimes, so it didn't seem worth taking a couple of characters to Cariae-3's Prokion Temple, given that the Cariae server was highly likely to fall over at about 11:10 UK time. So, for part of the time SirDarth did some mining, getting through 36 tool aids and knight pickaxes; he then visited Galahad, who was still busy levelling his pony down in Merac, and traded him across a thousand quality stones. As Darth used to do some pet-levelling himself, he also had a good supply of the imperfect and flawed stones, so Galahad got a thousand imperfect and five hundred flawed stones too.

Galahad continued with his pet-levelling, while the newer computer was used to do for the Hatzring server what I did yesterday for the Katar one, though I didn't find any big surprises in the records section of the item mall this time, just the tier one and tier two packages from the old "tiered spender" thing, in most of the accounts. I gifted the packages across to Barbarienne, who for some reason is a level 10 mage there. Some of the accounts didn't have a character ready made, so I did a few "tutorial dungeon" battles along the way.

Back on Cariae-3, Galahad did get the usual disconnection at around 11:10 UK time; people are getting so used to this that the reaction in the forum shoutbox was pretty much resigned to it. A few minutes later Gal was able to log back in and continue, while over lunch CaptainScarlet joined him - at least, they were in the same bit of Merac, just on different servers.

For the afternoon, now that I've got Gal set up as a pet-leveller, he can supply a solo party for another character, a bit more productively low-maintenance than having Enchantrella or someone mining. So it seemed like a good idea to take Barbarienne down into the Tomb of Theos to fight the Screaming Zombies for around two and a half hours, just to see what that got us. The drops were okay, gold-wise, and more than made up for the 300,000 gold entrance cost; Barb's reindeer pet got 2375 pet points, which must be almost as speedy as Gal, but 0,95% experience gain is a bit minor, and 25 skill points, or around ten per hour, isn't too thrilling either. That would mean killing a zombie around every forty seconds, which I suppose would be about right.

The Tomb entrance area started off fairly quiet, but got busy as time went by, and I had some occasional ks-ers, who usually asked permission first. The rogue cashdestroyer1 was there again, as well as another low-level rogue, Chamanas. The mage GingerBeer had been levelling on the Spear Men further in; I remember her from the old Merac days...

The food break was very slightly early, as the Auzura Mad Monster Spawn was scheduled for five o'clock, as far as the United Kingdom is concerned. As usual recently it was Memree who went along, my level 31 healer - she is actually a cleric, but is using a bow generally at present. GM Stratos was in charge, with two of his giant statues, and the monsters were much as usual, though he must have got distracted, or had a disconnection, as there was a rather long wait after one wave. We had been expecting a spawning of prizes, but when he did get back it was a new wave of monsters he conjured up. Later the website mentioned that a local storm had been interfering with their internet, that probably explains the delay.

Memree died, I think, four times, but still ended up with 4% or so experience in her level, after slipping back to zero. There was a kind of "bonus wave" at the end as a farewell present, with lots of Screaming Zombies, which at level 100 are a bit out of Mem's class, though not as much as the level 130-plus cave spirits etc. She actually got a drop of 15.730 gold from one zombie. The Hands that did get spawned were in quite generous numbers, so as usual Memree managed to grab a few skill point boosters, item drop boosters, large attack and defence potions, tool aids, and of course plenty of the small MP and HP recovery pots.

Using the Cariae Norcaine guild's pop-up guild message that one gets when logging on, Zenderfly had asked me to meet her at five on Cariae, so my mage Keerella was in town over there; at about a quarter past, a new message popped up that she had been delayed by a couple of hours, so Galahad got back to working on his pony.

I had a little bit of work to do when the MMS was over, and then when I was ready to plunge back in, the GM-style message came up that GS Airadella was just about to start one of her word-unscrambling quiz-type events in Merac on Auzura-2, so Barbarienne, out of curiosity, went to see what that was about. There were ten scrambled words or phrases, and the first person to unscramble one, and type it correctly, won a prize. They were surprisingly difficult to work out, but I did manage to win a prize for "bloodsealing" - five large chocolate bars, which boost attack for five minutes apparently. Other answers included "mercenary certificate", "Punisher Mahlax", and "Speedhacking".

It was during that time that Zen did get in touch, commenting that she was surprised by the figures I quoted for the experience and skill exp gain of a level 35 character Combat-teamed with a level 27 one, the skill exp was more than she expected - and could I check up what figures one would get with a level 20 teamed with the level 35 character, in an Equal party?

I said that I could do that, as on Cariae I have quite a few level 20 types, and once Airadella's quiz was over, I had a look to see what I could do. A level 20 knight, I thought, for the best armour rating - but the only ones I checked had no decent armour for their levels, just higher-level sets they were storing. So in the end it was the mage EnchantrA I picked, as she at least had a +3 armour set of the right level.

As her previous levelling had been in the Tomb of Theos, I had to run her out to Prokion Temple to get that location on her memory scroll. Galahad accompanied her for the first part, and found a level 40 spider-ghost Pandora's Beast to kill - it dropped 37.800 gold for them. Gal then gave EnchantrA the Divine Shield buff, and she triggered a potion of haste, and ran on to the Temple, not taking much damage from the foxes, even though they are still red-named for her.

My favourite back room was being used by a titan called xGhostRiderx, using a pssp, but he didn't mind me doing my experiment when I explained it. Gal killed two Orc Axemen, and got 3985/3948 experience from the kills (with his experience gain 50% frozen) - EnchantrA got 5263/5214, with no experience freeze. They both got 1831/2093 skill exp.

xGhostRiderx was happy for me to take Orc Sergeants off his back, I guess he was level 27 and thus concentrating on the Axemen. The two I killed gave 7321/7114 experience to Gal, half-frozen, and 9669/9395 to EnchantrA, unfrozen, and 2406/2536 skill exp to each of them.

So, about 2k skill exp from an Axeman, or 2.5k from a Sergeant, which isn't bad, but quite a lot of experience, so that level 35 wouldn't last all that terribly long for the Phoenix character...well, maybe 5800 Axemen, for around 1160 skill points? The level 20 type would tend to want to level up a bit before that, I suspect, though multiple suicides would be an option there.

There was time for a visit to the Katar server after that, where my healer Kaerella reached level 13, and indeed got to halfway through it. After killing some jaguars for Geres, she managed to get to the Mad Monster Spawn location and get that onto her memory scroll, and then moved on to Velpist Temple, with its wandering, ancient and berserk zombies. There was no getting away from zombies today.

At ten, the Mad Monster Spawn on Cariae-3 was scheduled to start, so Barbarienne, in a solo party with Galahad, rode over to the MMS location, and had the usual enjoyable half hour or so - there was one moment when I suddenly noticed that Barb's health wasn't around 3200, it was 8 and falling, but I managed to survive that, though for an archer it takes an awful lot of Self Heal to get back to full health. GM Kali ensured that all the usual prize Hands appeared, and we all lived happily ever after, though as Kali seemed to be handling four Mad Monster Spawns on different servers at once, there was no final group of monsters after the last official wave.

By the end of the evening Galahad's pony had become a big strong level 16 horse, but of course there is a long way to go before this one reaches level 37.

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