Egeha and Prokion

MistressDomino did some more selling for the first few hours of the night, and sold out of her heaven stones, empty baskets, and Hallowe'en candies, though the moonstones and moonstone boxes remained; she was able to take the rest of the night off, while ColonelScarlet continued with the pet-levelling, except for a break caused by a disconnection, getting the horse into level 31.

Before coffee I was able at least to use a second "unmounting" card, to get Enchantrella's level 33 mount over on the Cariae server back to pet status; she then traded it across to RedRackham in exchange for one of the level 37 horses he had trained. Enchie was then able to mount the level 37 horse - and Red went off to start levelling the level 33 one towards that level. The poor animal hadn't been equipped for so long that its Sympathy was down to almost zero, so that to begin with the armour buff it gave was pretty minor, so it's just as well that Red doesn't rely on that when fighting Gnoll Lancers.

Kaerella headed for Katar-5's Prokion Temple after coffee, and found the back room free, so settled in there, in a solo party with the Colonel. She soon got the 10 skill points she'd lost last night back, and by the end of the session had added 100 in all, going up by 19.65%. Fuerte1 had been in touch, and came to join me, still, like Kae, on level 27. The level 31 rogue SilentFright arrived later, and Fuerte1 suggested we should party together, which she agreed to do - as she was already in a solo party we had to break up ours, and I think Fuerte1 had got called for lunch by then, as he didn't respond to his new invitation.

SilentFright very kindly gave me a level 53 +3 bow she'd picked up, but it will be a while before Kae gets that high. When Kae reached her new skill point target of a total of 204 I had to leave; back in town Kae got the last two levels of green herb processing, and then returned to Prokion for 22 deaths to get back to 0% again.

ColonelScarlet got the horse up to level 32 just before lunch; once Kaerella logged out, RedRackham over on Cariae-3 was able to spend an hour or so working on the level 33 one he got from Enchantrella. It's strange to have two such similar knights both fighting a Gnoll Lancer in the same location, but on different servers.

The afternoon was a change of pace for me - over on Auzura, I took my level 72 rogue Rage off to Egeha, a map I've not visited in a while, though Rage has spent time there before, as have MrChuckNorris and MistressDomina. Rage had only got a little over a million in gold in her inventory, so spending 800,000 gold to get to Egeha was a major investment - but by the end of the afternoon she was almost 5 million up, due to generous cash drops and also a selection of armour pieces which were swiftly sold to the local merchant.

As ColonelScarlet was still busy over on Katar-5, to get the solo party bonus I had to find a random party, and luckily there was one going, headed by the level 56 mage Lycano. As it happened, she ended up in Egeha too, and for a while was just down the road from me fighting Bogles, while I was fighting Baby Apes. She was just too low for me to suggest a fighting team-up, as 15 levels difference is the maximum for that. It was useful that she was there, as she was the one that attracted the attention of the Grand Golden Dragon.

I was probably a bit spendthrift to actually use a platinum blessed iris for my hour fighting the Baby Apes, and their boss-type Ape mother; since Rage had rather a lot of the "training spells" left in her inventory that add 15% to one's skill point gain I used one of those too! That hour brought in 18% and 15 skill points - the experience gain was helped by me using a one-off experience booster each of the five or six times I ended up fighting the mother.

I'd decided to get Rage a jack-o-lantern helm before I set out, as she had all six different Hallowe'en candies, and it was lucky I did, as a pumpkin ghost respawned right by my Baby Apes, and I was able to get a few pumpkins, which, when I opened them back in the village, gave me various scrolls, firecrackers of course, and a heaven stone.

After that I moved across to the old Boucu Demons spot. I didn't use any boosts there, mainly because there could be little waits before one side's Demon would respawn, and as usual sometimes a Skinwalker would run in too when I attacked the Demon to the east, so, as I had been taught by Damor, I would mount Rage's horse and use "pet return to village" when that happened, Skinwalkers simply take too long to kill - after killing the Boucu Demon and picking up whatever it dropped, that is. I'd then wait a minute or two for the Skinwalker to reset before venturing back.

The total experience gain for the afternoon was 28.46%, so a couple more outings like that would get Rage to level 73. The 20 skill points will come in handy I'm sure, and 1410 pet points were earned, before RedRackham logged back in for the duration of the food break, getting his horse 30% of the way through level 33, and moving its Sympathy up to 37%.

For the evening, it was time to have another serious Prokion Temple session with Kaerella, and try to take a big bite out of the remaining skill points needed to "max out" all the special skills, for gathering, processing and crafting. So that's what I did, with a nice quiet productive solo session, while the Colonel continued levelling the horse for Kae down in Merac. I only had one visitor, a red-named knight who attacked a few orcs, found that the room was a dead end, and rushed out again. I was keeping tabs on my skill point total, so that I'd get an exact number that I could spend, and ended up reaching 278 skill points, along with 77.23% experience and 2937 pet points, which moved Kae's drake on to level 21.

Back in Randol, I spent all those skill points - but I worked out that that still leaves another 886 sp to "bank" before Kae can start earning skill points for future regular skills, and begin to level up. And at the end of the evening, I was lucky enough to spot an announcement that the web item mall's "Platinum" section had been refilled, so was able to stock up on platinum skill pills for the main part of the skill point farming.

The only other thing to do before retiring Kaerella for the day was to get her to die 26 times in Prokion Temple, as usual made slightly more interesting by picking up the loot that other players were ignoring. It's strange, some people don't even pick up the Hallowe'en event's "empty boxes", which MistressDomino has been having no difficulty in selling at 59,500 gold each.

After that, MistressDomina logged in and got the latest loot for resale, plus some heaven stones from Kae's storage, and set up in merchant mode on Katar-5 - and ColonelScarlet moved over to the newer computer for some more late-night pet-levelling, shortly after the horse reached level 33.

We are starting to get a little more information about the "Episode 2" material that is being added to the game. It won't be with us after a normal Tuesday night maintenance, instead Thursday is the day - probably starting up pretty late in the evening, as far as those of us in Europe are concerned. A new continent, new monsters, new skills,,, a lot of things are probably aimed at keeping the high-level people happy, as they are the ones who have to spend the most money to keep advancing, but the new "Night Shadow" class should be interesting. I just hope that we don't lose any of the content that we already have, and that the core of the game remains the same.