A Spending Spree

Galahad took his horse through the night safely, and RedRackham and his drake joined in at what would be breakfast time, if I tended to get up for breakfast on a Sunday, so they were both in action until coffee time, with steady progress being made through the 20,541 points needed to complete the drake's level 41.

After coffee, it seemed a good idea for ColonelScarlet to head for Prokion Temple on Katar-5; there was a rogue already in the back room, though, who seemed to be managing to keep the Orc population down single-handed, so I moved across to Katar-6, the other non-PvP sub-server, where I had better luck - so Kaerella came out to join the Colonel, and took up her position near the doorway, where not too many Orc Axemen spawn.

Before long FuEnTe1 got in touch with ColonelScarlet, and moved over to Katar-6 to join us; I really don't know why, but he asked the Colonel to go back to the teleporter to meet and escort him, perhaps he isn't sure of the route to take yet. He had reached level 26 now, and was wearing the plate mail and leggings from the 30/32 Steel armour set, though he still seemed to take damage rather easily.

Luckily he settled down in a corner before very long, so that Kaerella didn't have to keep healing him, and I could concentrate on the Colonel's fighting. Morning sessions aren't too long, but ColonelScarlet added 39.84% and 103 skill points, while Kaerella got 14.57% and 99 skill points. We would probably have got slightly more skill exp without Fuente1 along, but his presence in the Combat party will have boosted our experience gain.

For the afternoon session I decided that the original Cariae-based Kaerella, my cleric, ought to make a first trip out into the Dratan desert to fight the Giants; they are three levels above her, but the Beast Flyers in Maargadum Jail are now three levels below her, so it was definitely time to move on.

With horse buffs, fighting the Giants was no problem. I did have to use Self Heal very occasionally, and had to keep moving to get to the next one all the time, but they dropped a good number of empty baskets. I had been keeping an eye on the forum shoutbox, and occasionally contributing a few words, so when Roadboss Kamira the Monster made her appearance over my head, I asked there if anyone on Cariae would care to come along and kill her. Someone there did say they'd message their guildies; I don't know if it was that, or just reading it in the shoutbox, but before long the rogue Elphy rode up, and started her attack - inviting me to join in too, though I would have said that that would have hurt the chances of a good drop.

Anyway, I gave her the Mana Shield buff, and started attacking Kamira too; luckily her Snare skill was working nicely, and Kamira went down with no problem - just ahead of another would-be Kamira-slayer, FiTnEssE, arriving. Kamira dropped a Pierce of Wind, which Elphy was happy to get - and she let me pick up the rest of the stuff, such as moonstones, lucky scrolls, a crystal of experience (greater), tool aids, and health and mana potions. I got about three times the experience from her that I got from a Giant, but only the single skill exp.

So, that brightened up the afternoon. With the extra 75% experience and skill exp, Kae gained 14.45% and 90 skill points. The Akane Giants next door, one level higher, would have given about 2% more experience each, but less skill exp, so it wasn't really worth fighting them, even though they are more conveniently grouped across an open area, rather than being strung out along the path like the Giants.

By the end of the early evening food break, Galahad had got the non-purple horse a quarter of the way through level 35, while RedRackham had got the drake to within 90 minutes of the end of level 42.

The next session didn't involve any fighting, though it was still fun enough at the time, and pretty engrossing - it was shopping. MistressDomino over on Auzura had got a fair amount of cash, so what I wanted to do was return my level 67 archer there to action - I did have one set of 70/72 armour, but my level 72 rogue Rage had been using that for ages. So, rather than use item mall stuff to get a set of armour up to a good level, using lots of runes of protection, lucky smelting stones, chaos smelting stones, and extreme stones - what could I get from Trader Roy with a thousand million in gold?

The first item I found was the best, and also the most expensive - a healer shirt that was +15, for 300 million. That price didn't really seem out of line to me, so I bought it, and then, looking through the pages of pants, skirts, and leggings, found knight leggings +14 for 200 million, titan gloves +14 for 185 million, +14 rogue boots for a bargain price of 110 million...and the best headgear I could find was +13, a healer's circlet for 190 million. So, 985 million had been spent, plus a little under 1.5 million to get Collector Ryl to convert the three non-healer pieces.

So, my archer, who goes by the rather familiar name of Kaerella on Auzura, has pretty good armour now, rather better than any other set of mine; it is the highest-level set that can be converted by Ryl, so MrChuckNorris and MistressDomina will be able to take advantage of it in turn. But what about a good weapon to go with it?

That is where I hit a problem, as a level 69 +15 weapon proved hard to find - the only one I saw was overpriced at 520 million, which I didn't have, anyway, even after Kae and Rage had both traded their cash reserves across. But Rage is level 72, and the first non-convertible weapon, which can't be equipped before its actual level (as opposed to four levels before, previously), comes at level 73. The best level 73 crossbow on sale on Auzura was just a +13 one, but that does give one the option to increase it to +15 for 24 hours by the use of a +2 platinum refining stone, when necessary - so, I bought it for 175,417,616 gold. This means that I need to level Rage up by around 84% so that she can move on to that crossbow's level, and at that point, she can pass the level 69 +15 weapon she has been using across to Kae, who can convert it into an archer-type bow. After all, having two +69 weapons would have been a bit over the top...

By the time all that was sorted out, there was just time for ColonelScarlet to start the Discipline guild on Katar, spending 220 skill points to get it to level 3; level four costs 240 more sp, which is no problem for the Colonel, but also a million in gold, and on Katar that still seems a lot of money, so a bit of selling of items will be needed first. MistressDomino, on level 10, was the first recruit for the new guild; as it will be helpful to get her up to level 20 or so, to assist Katar's Kaerella when she gets up to level 33 or thereabouts; she will need to enter the Guardian system soon.

And then it was Quiz time. Katar is where I need more cash, so that's where I went - to Katar-5 in fact, since that was where Kae's guild leader, LordDarkzer, was, and another guildie or two. Unfortunately, the usual confusion over which GM does which treasure hunt event cropped up early, and Kaerella and MistressDomino were among the brave few who defied the majority and voted that Krash did indeed host the "Pharaoh's Treasure" events. The other guildies vanished, and there must have been less than twenty of us left in the Quiz room. We managed to get through to the finish, though, and get our goodies - the usual tool aids, moonstones and heaven stones.

After the Quiz, on Sunday as usual came the zombie invasions of the poor defenceless hamlet of Berbank Mill, starting with Auzura. The website said Auzura-2 was the sub-server in question, but when Memree got out there and found the place almost deserted, an announcement came up that it was about to start on Auzura-3, a non PvP sub-server, so I quickly switched across. The battle, hosted by GM Kali, was as fierce as ever, but judging by the generous amount of Hands spawned at the end, we just made it - every Ape, Screaming Zombie, and Ancient Screaming Zombie had been despatched. There was lots of loot to pick up, though I expect Memree mainly got the small HP and MP recovery potions - but with a few item drop boosters, skill point boosters, tool aids, and large attack and defence potions thrown in, hopefully.

Katar came second, at 9:30 UK time, and didn't do as well - there were still quite a few zombies "alive" when the deadline was reached. LordDarkzer hadn't joined us there, and put the failure down to that - but was suitably envious when I looked in my inventory and found, despite the comparatively meager consolation-prize hands spawned, that I'd got a couple of both types of booster, and large attack and defence potions too. Picking up such items is always tricky when there are still fighting-mad zombies in the immediate area.

Curiously, unlike Auzura the Katar event was on a PvP-enabled sub-server, but there didn't seem to be all that much player-killing going on, and I wasn't a victim of it. Kaerella did die a few times - and twice there was a kind of "bug" I had recently encountered in Prokion Temple too, in that she died, respawned back where she was supposed to respawn...but was suddenly back where she died. The second time, Randol was deserted, with no NPCs even, so I thought I'd disconnected, until I was suddenly back at the zombie fight. It's possible that I didn't get the death penalty then. Lord Darkzer did mention that something similar had happened to her recently too.

Cariae's zombie invasion was also on a PvP-enabled sub-server, but Barbarienne braved it anyway. I think there was a fair amount of player-killing action, a titan called MIKE16 in particular wasn't fighting zombies, he was prowling around the edges of the group, and ended up with a red name. As usual Barb tanked Apes and Screaming Zombies, using quite a few great healing potions, but tried generally to support other people with the Ancient Screaming Zombies - I did end up face-to-face with one of those, and got poisoned, but luckily it was almost dead by then.

Cariae's event ended in success, and we were able to pick up our loot - and after that it was time for a little bit more pet-levelling, before a rather late finish to the day. I moved the horse across to RedRackham, as Galahad does come on the same account as Katar's MistressDomina, and by closing time the horse was approaching two-thirds of the way through level 35.