Tuesday 17 November 2009

Mad Monsters


MistressDomino managed to sell all her empty baskets over the first few hours of the night again, plus some large attack potions and a number of heaven stones, so was able to log out, allowing the older computer some downtime; over on Cariae meanwhile RedRackham had an uninterrupted pet-levelling session, so that his horse got safely into level 35. This is the second of three mounts to get an upgrading; like the one Barbarienne was riding, Enchantrella's was on level 33, while the third one is currently on level 35. For the full attack and defence buffs, level 37 is the way to go.

ColonelScarlet joined up again before breakfast over on the Katar server, with about five hours to go before his current horse reached the magic level; however, just before 9:30 UK time the evil titan MacroMejs turned up, and immediately started leading the Gnoll Lancer I was fighting towards the Gnoll Soldiers and other aggressive, pet-eating types. He seems not to know any English, at least his responses to my remarks were solely in what I assume to be Spanish. The "Scarlet" part of the Colonel's name leads him to what I assume are taunts, "lady Scarlet muack muak", "scarlata la seniorita scarlata" - it is all rather strange, and really a bit sad. Before I left the computers in search of coffee I moved the Colonel across to the Berserkers.

Kaerella just needed 120 skill points, for the final level of expert alchemy, so after coffee she headed to Prokion Temple for that, and got it, plus 33.95% experience and 1271 pet points. After learning that last "special" skill, there was just time to return to Prokion Temple to die a few more times, and get Kae back to 0%. The intention is to leave her there for a day or so, until we know for sure whether "Episode 2" adds any more special skills that can be learnt at a low level.

ColonelScarlet got the horse up to level 37 over lunch, so the first thing to do in the afternoon was to trade it across to Kaerella, who turned it into a mount. There was then some shopping to do, looking through Roy's pages for white pet colouring crystals; it's amazing how much the price people ask varies, I ended up buying three for 600,000 gold, I could easily have paid more than that for one. I also searched for blue pan flutes, so that the Colonel could start work on a "rare" pale blue horse, and the best deal I could find was four of them for 1,500,000, so I've got a good reserve of them now. I've kept the second white pet crystal - and Roy sold the third for me for 350,000, less his 5% commission.

Roy still didn't have any level 33 +15 weapons on his 140-plus pages - not that I looked all the way through, I assume that new arrivals go on the early pages, as the items are in no other sort of order. After MistressDomino's overnight success I'd mentally raised my buying limit from 120 to 130 million - but on Katar-1 I found just what I wanted being sold in merchant mode by xTradeGirlx, and for only 100 million. Collector Ryl changed it into an archer's bow for 100,000 gold, and now Kae is all set to start using it when she reaches level 29.

MistressDomino went out to farm pumpkins, perhaps for the final time - opinion seemed divided over whether the Hallowe'en event would end tonight, or continue until Episode 2 is dropped on us on Thursday, probably Thursday evening or night by UK time. It was to be the last time she would conveniently get a few empty baskets dropped anyway, as towards the end of the session she levelled up, reaching level 21, so is now a level higher than the pumpkin ghosts. The ghosts will continue to drop pumpkins, indeed they do that for Rage and Barbarienne, they will just tend not to drop much else, with the exception of, quite often, a single gold coin.

The spawning points closest to Hunter Dranore were taken, but MD moved on down to a position just across the town moat from the south-east corner of Randol, and did pretty well - though opening all her pumpkins and empty baskets took a significant part of the evening session. She went up by 28.33%, plus a mere 16 skill points and 686 pet points.

After a slightly early food break, it was time for Auzura's Mad Monster Spawn, and for a change I decided to risk taking Rage along to it. The risk didn't entirely pay off, as Rage did die twice, which meant that two resurrection scrolls got used - but she picked up some useful drops from the hands that got spawned, and added 2.56% experience. GM Stratos handled it all expertly, and we juuust managed to kill the last Patriarch Botis inside the time limit, with less than a minute to spare. Rage even got four pumpkins from the local ghost spawning point, but back in town three of them just gave firecrackers.

What with some emails that had to be dealt with, and opening all MD's empty baskets and pumpkins, I was a little late logging on to Cariae, but Damor had just left a message - for some reason the guild message doesn't pop up when I log in, but I can find it on the "manage guild" window. "Thuesday equals Tuesday or however you spell it, I always mess up with those two days... No new news today, so cu Wednesday". Hmm, Thursday is named after Thor, the god of thunder. who naturally comes after his father Woden/Odin's Wednesday...does that help? It is strange to look at Cariae prices; some things are pretty similar to Katar, but while Kaerella has been buying platinum super skill pills for as little as 3 or 3.2 million on Katar, on Cariae you would probably pay six times that much.

I'd been thinking of getting a second mage up to level 10 to take over the merchant-mode duties from MistressDomino, so MistressSabina logged in for a session, while ColonelScarlet, who by that time had got his new pale blue pony up to level 7 and 100% Sympathy, provided the solo party. Sabby had actually logged on briefly in the afternoon, but there had been two level 30 Pandora Beasts prowling around, so MD had logged on to deal with those, and stayed around afterwards.

MistressSabina went up from level 4 to level 9; a rogue she met just outside Velpist Temple, CherryCupCake, very kindly gave her a useful accessory. Sabina got that location on her memory scroll, and the Mad Monster Spawn spot too - and then went into the Temple, and fought wandering zombies to go up to halfway through level nine. One zombie actually dropped three armour pieces, +1, +2 and +3, but none of them were for a mage.

But by then the main evening Mad Monster Spawn time was approaching, scheduled for 10:00pm UK time. All the US servers have it at the same time, so I went along to the Katar one, along with Arrowfighter and another guildie, a mage. Despite dying three times, I ended up around 15% ahead on the experience front, so a little more running around Prokion Temple in her underwear may be in Kae's near future.

Apart from the deaths, the event ran smoothly, with rather less input from the GM, who was probably doing the work in four servers at once. Plenty of loot got grabbed - I was the one who made the guild party, so made sure it was of the Precedence type, so that what you pick up, you keep. I switched from the level 29 +10 bow to the level 33 +15 one, even though that gave a 50% attack penalty, and still hit the monsters for 62 each time. I must experiment with lower-level adversaries, but if the attack power is roughly the same, I may as well stick with using the level 33 one, and get its bloodseals sorted out, and pass the level 29 one over to MistressDomino, to use when she reaches level 25.

After that Kae logged out, and ColonelScarlet switched across to the newer computer, where his pale blue pony soon reached level 10. RedRackham logged in for a while on Cariae-3, and should get his horse halfway through level 35 before he logs out for the night. Let us hope there isn't any more ks-ing; earlier I had a sorcerer called Liuk, of the guild ItalianParty, repeatedly ks-ing the Colonel, and asking to be paid a million to stop - nice, eh? I just used a memory scroll to move across from the Berserkers to the Gnoll Lancers. A level 32 titan called dayking killed my Berserker a bit later, but didn't seem to be aware it was bad manners, and chatted a bit. He didn't seem to know where Prokion Temple was, I hope he managed to find it from my directions...

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