Wednesday 11 November 2009

The Big Parade


The new patch's extra security features, thankfully, didn't stop me logging in before breakfast today; over on Cariae-3 Galahad did a little work on the drake, while on Katar-5 ColonelScarlet got on with levelling the horse for Kaerella.

After coffee I was able to take MistressDomino down to Velpist Temple again, to the berserk zombies, the corpse rangers and the skeleton soldiers - and by lunchtime she had reached level 17, and so was able to equip her "event weapon", which even without any plussing increased her attack power nicely. I had checked Roy's stock, and there were no mage event weapons in his lists at all except unplussed ones, varying in price from around 700,000 to 2,000,000 gold.

MistressDomino had gone up by 97.84% by the time the session ended, and added 47 skill points, while her dragon hatchling reached level 5, adding 771 pet points - and Colonel Scarlet had got the horse to level 21.

For the afternoon, I tried teaming up Kaerella and MistressDomina in Prokion Temple - since they were now ten levels apart, a Combat party was now possible. After Kae had died enough times to get her experience down to 0% of level 27, she went to my favourite back room, and while she didn't exactly dominate it, staying back near the entrance and just attacking one Orc Axeman or Orc Sergeant at a time worked okay, even if the Orc in question did often bring two or three of his colleagues along.

MistressDomina was able to run to join her there easily enough, but, just as a character who is really too high-level for that room is given more experience and skill exp by teaming with a lower-level character, Kae, who solo is just right for the Axemen, got dragged down by MD's presence, so that they each got about a third of the skill exp that Kae would have got without MD being in range.

So, once MistressDomina had reached level 18, she ran back to the start, and did some fighting for herself, while Kae continued in the back room. So on the newer computer Kaerella was fighting Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants, and on the older machine MistressDomina was fighting Ghouls and Mummies. Neither of them was going flat out, and for safety I didn't equip MD's hatchling, as Ghouls in particular can be notoriously peckish when it comes to pet-nibbling. Still, by the end of the session Kae had got 126 new skill points, so that she could use 125 of them to get all but the final level of Absorption, for energy-farming, and gone up by 39.32% experience again. MistressDomino had gone up 158.24%, getting into level 19, and earned 93 skill points.

After the usual food break, the first of the parades through Randol, to mark "Veterans Day" in the USA, was scheduled for 5:00pm UK time on Auzura-3, so Kaerella went along to that, in her sturdy new armour, and joined the march around town, grabbing plenty of the firecrackers that were dropped by GMs Kali and Krash. The changes to the chat filter mean that one can actually type in "firecrackers" now and not have it banned as awfully rude.

The parade was certainly colourful, with firecrackers going off all the time - and ended at the Arena, with a mini Mad Monster Spawn. Kae did die once, but there's no penalty for a death in the arena, and she got a little experience from the kills she was associated with, though found it wisest to stay outside most of the time, especially when the limited space there filled up with cave spirits. The "flamethrower" debuff/hex from a Fluton does actually effect people standing outside the arena, but alone it doesn't actually kill you. Flutons and purple dragons and various cube guards, it was quite a busy few minutes - a pity that Kae doesn't yet have a good weapon to go with the armour...

After that, for the main evening session MistressDomina took the starring role, while ColonelScarlet continued work levelling the horse. At level 19, MD seemed ideally placed to do some "pumpkin farming", since the pumpkin ghosts are level 20, and would thus give reasonable experience and skill exp, and also have a chance of dropping the Empty Baskets that are another part of the Hallowe'en event.

The location I chose was just by Hunter Dranore, and things went pretty smoothly, though an unofficial team-up with a 13-year-old Croatian boy, XKiLlErX, cut down on my exp gain for a while. MD reached level 20, and killed three Pandora's Beasts, one at her level and two at level 30 - and her drake levelled up to 6. In all MistressDomina added 113.74% experience, but just 26 skill points.

The announcement that Katar's own Parade was about to start called me back to town, where I found that not only was an old quest that ColonelScarlet had "failed", "The Bow of Yabo", still glitched, the two quests that come in at level 20 that have never worked at all now at least get you to a reward dialogue and, again, a glitched "quest failed".... and as well as that, while GM Krash was dropping firecrackers, and transformation scrolls this time, my "pick" hotkey didn't work, so I didn't get a thing, until right at the end I managed to grab a Sasquatch transformation scroll. Some other people mentioned the same problem.

While the parade around town was similar to the Auzura one, this time there was no mini-MMS, we didn't end up in the Arena - instead, Krash led us out through the north gate into the Juno countryside, where there was much transforming, and even more firecrackers let off. And then Krash bade us farewell, as he needed to move on to the Cariae parade - leaving us with a Patriarch Botis as a leaving present.

Deaths out in Juno from a monster do give a death penalty, but luckily our rogues kept applying Snare, and, although we were an ill-prepared group, we gradually wore the Patriarch's health down. I missed most of the time, and when I did hit only did 44 damage, but I still got just over 11,000 experience - not a lot, but more than a Pumpkin Ghost's 4,400, though the Ghosts at least give 1650 skill exp rather than just 1.

After that, MistressDomina switched over to merchant mode on Katar-1, hoping to sell some quality stones and heaven stones, etc, while ColonelScarlet continued his pet-levelling, getting the horse up usefully into level 23 before log-out time.

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