Kae's Experiment

ColonelScarlet was busy overnight on the pet-levelling front; he did lose an hour or to to a ks-ing, but good progress was made, which continued through the morning.

After coffee RedRyder went off to Prokion Temple on Katar-1, and got the skill points for a few more special skills - that final level of advanced mining, and a few lower levels of the next skills. There was time to set MistressDomino up in merchant mode at lunchtime, selling the last of Kaerella's supply of heaven stones, put back up to 1,950,000 each; that was about all she sold, other than the three item drop boosters I'd recently obtained. Those seem to sell okay at almost a million each, generally to high-level farmers on either raid bosses or Dark Harpies and so on, a 30% increased chance of getting a good drop isn't worth that kind of money if one is fighting lower types.

The afternoon session saw Kaerella head to Prokion Temple - on Katar-4, as Elizabeth's Enhancement isn't really much use for her at present, since, while it would double the skill experience gain, it would also double the experience, too. I assume it doesn't "stack" with a pssp's 200% extra skill exp.

This time, as an experiment, I went for the level 23 Orc Soldiers close to my favourite back room; I had to fight a few of the level 25 Orc Fighters too, as they are protective of nearby Soldiers, but tried to keep them to a minimum. Using a pssp (and with her experience gain 50% frozen by her guild), while Kaerella is in level 29 Orc Fighters give 3594 experience and 9900 skill exp, so a ratio of 2.75 to 1 isn't bad - but Orc Soldiers give just 531 experience and 6600 skill exp, which is a ratio of 12.43 to 1, which would be hard to beat.

During the pssp's hour Kaerella added 302 skill points, while going up just 3.85% - so Kae could fit in another fourteen sessions like that before reaching level 30. That's a lot of pssps, but if they only cost as much as around four individual skill point boosters, they do seem worth using.

Yesterday I'd bought a pair of level 30 +10 gloves for RedRyder, which she can wear now; I already had a spare +10 leggings, and looking through Trading Agent Roy's items for sale I found boots and shirt, +10, being sold by someone called lina for just a million each. Adding headgear for two million, the seller being one TheMeater, I managed to assemble a full 30/32 +10 armour set for Red rather cheaply. When Kaerella gets to level 31 and is given her freebie set, a set can be transferred over to MistressDomino.

There was time for RedRyder to lose her experience gain again, with one more trip into Prokion Temple's foundations, and some more "double death" strangeness - but the job got done, and as usual a fair amount of abandoned loot got picked up while Red was running about.

After the early evening food break, I was preparing to send Red back out on Katar-1 to earn some more skill points when a disconnection came up; ColonelScarlet on Katar-4 was unaffected, and kept working, with his horse on level 21 by then, despite some ks-ing a little earlier by a knight called huxy.

Red did go to Prokion Temple, but somehow the solo party she was in suddenly vanished, and she lost the "solo boost" - and trying to join another party was foiled as I was "already in" one, allegedly. Logging out or even restarting didn't cure this - I moved briefly to Katar-2, and was okay there, but once I moved back to Katar-1, to get the buff from Elizabeth, I was back in that imaginary party again. So, I was stuck with it.

Anyway, RedRyder settled in with the Mummies and the Orc Soldiers in what has become her own favourite room, and kept bashing away. I got a bit distracted by the forum shoutbox, and my poor hatchling suffered a bit, getting nibbled. The shoutbox was a long time without any gamesage, so I ended up, as KaerellaBlaise, being the one saying when the Quiz would be, and indeed giving instructions on how to move around in the Quiz room, which I carefully copied and pasted, and reused quite often, since the bug in there, which we had been assured was cured, was still in force - nobody could move around by our usual clicking method, so WASD had to be used, and to enable that one has to go into "options" and tick "enter chat", then confirm, and then just point one's character in the right direction and press the "W" key.

Red got a good stock of skill points - 358 of them, for which she went up 91.74%, plus 704 pet points. That had been my target, when I saw I was approaching 300; it allowed her, once back in town, to get the first seven levels of Armorsmithing. The last two levels that Red can get (there are more when she reaches 32) will need another 332 skill points.

The time for the Quiz approached, so MistressDomino replaced ColonelScarlet on the older computer, and Kaerella came onto the newer one. I blame the distraction of being active on the shoutbox, as well as having to use the WASD keys (or, specifically, the W key) to move around, but I absent-mindedly got Dratan and Juno confused as Roy and Siban's location, so both MD and Kae ended up respawning back in Randol after only a few questions; the doors to the Quiz were locked, so we couldn't get back in.

So, there was plenty of time for RedRyder to return to Prokion Temple, and get rid of that 91.74% experience by running around and getting killed 31 times. After that, well, it was time for MD and Kae to try again.

Luckily by this time the gamesage irene_tas had arrived to take control of the shoutbox, so I was able to concentrate more on the Quiz, and luckily there weren't any of the really difficult questions this time through, so MistressDomino and Kaerella both got all their goodies. Kae traded her heaven stones and moonstones across to MD, along with some more quality stones and green herb leaves she'd gathered, and got some tool aids in return.

Sadly, the second quiz starting at 9:30pm, UK time, meant that the various Zombie Invasions had had to be put back, so I had to pass on those this week. Going by recent experience, the rewards wouldn't have been all that big, let's hope that enough people were able to turn up to save the plucky inhabitants of Berbank Mill from a deadful fate.

So, ColonelScarlet logged back on, and headed back to the berserkers and bandits, after spending the latest couple of the pale blue horse's stat points on more Armour Increase. When last seen, the horse was moving steadily through level 22, so there is still rather a long way to go.