Storming the Castles

There was quite a large patch to download after the overnight maintenance, though it didn't actually do much - it mainly added back the "search" function to Trader Roy's merchant house, though when I typed in "booster" all I got was a job lot of damage boosters, no item drop boosters, skill point boosters, or experience boosters. The Hallowe'en event goes into its second week - we are promised at least three weeks of pumpkin fun, which must mean that they don't expect "Episode 2" to go live until after that.

It was in some ways a relief that the double experience, skill exp, and pet experience was over, it meant that there was no urgent rush to do anything. My pet-levellers on Cariae, Galahad (or XxGALAHADxX, I suppose I should mention occasionally) and RedRackham got into action before breakfast safely; Red did continue after coffee, while Galahad, as he was carrying 39 tool aids, was able to purchase the required number of knight Pickaxes, and head out of Randol's north gate to the mine, where he got through all the tools and their aids, gaining 1053 quality stones. That sets him up for a while - and then Kaerella used the 8 tool aids she was carrying to top up her own stocks. A lot of my Cariae characters seem to have really full inventories, which cuts down their use for mining as the pickaxes and hammers don't "stack", but SirDarth had room for 31 pickaxes, so picked up the extra tool aids he needed from storage, and went out to boost his stock up to 1308 quality stones, before riding down to RedRackham in Merac to pass over a thousand of them.

So, that was one thing to cross off the "to do list". The next thing was to try to get a +10 set of armour over on Katar for ColonelScarlet, since he was approaching level 27 - and having a 30/32 +10 armour set right from then, rather than having to wait until he was awarded a free set at level 31, had to be a good idea.

I had managed to sell a second platinum adrenaline for 8.5 million, thanks to Roy - he took his 5% commission of course, but that still gave me over 8 million, so that in all I had a little under 29 million in gold to play with. So, if I was to get a +10 level 33 weapon as well, items would need to be under 5 million each...

It did take a while, as Roy had literally hundreds of pages of armour to wade through, and they do take a few seconds each time to load. I started very well, with a healer's circlet for 1 million, and kept on browsing. And then I came across a rogue's shirt +13 for 14 million, and pants +12 for 12 million... I just didn't have enough cash for both of them, but I did buy the +13 shirt. Most other bits were 3 million or less, including a single knight sword - I could have had a double sword for 4 million, but Collector Ryl could easily change the one into the other for a small fee. In the end I still had a little over a million, and had the full armour set and weapon, with the chest piece at +13, so I reckon I didn't do badly at all.

Kaerella changed the pieces that weren't already in knight form across, courtesy of Ryl - and also, since the Colonel won't be able to use the level 33 swords until he is level 29, Kae unequipped that level 29 +10 bow of hers, to go back to the +6 event weapon temporarily, and had that transformed into dual swords too.

That was after the lunch break; my shopping went across that time, slightly slowed by a kindly mage called DarkDoomxx who wanted to give me 3400 free aeria points. The only down side was what she needed my password to do that, which rather suggested she was a heartless scammer, but I kept her talking for a while, and took screenshots of the conversation so that I could later post them in the "report behaviour" section of the forum.

I traded the armour and weapons over to ColonelScarlet - and then he and Kaerella both headed for Prokion Temple. Kae needed to lose her 76.51% experience in level 27, so started off by letting the Orcs kill her 26 times, but after that, well, my favourite back room was clear, and even before he could wear all of his new armour, the Orcs didn't give him any great trouble. And when, before long, he was able to equip the helmet and boots, things got pretty straightforward, with the ability to use a bloodseal gem popping up now and then to keep things interesting.

The nice thing with a Combat party is that the fighting member gets almost all the experience, probably slightly more than he would get in a solo party, while the skill exp is equally shared - so while the Colonel added 121.62% during the afternoon, plus 102 skill points, and got one more level for his pony, Kaerella just added 10.19% and 97 skill points.

An archer called MissSupplies came and shared the room, which was fine with me, there were enough Orcs for both of us, especially as she would only stay as long as her horse buffs lasted, and would then run back outside, re-apply the buffs, and run back. I kept her supplied with the Divine Shield buff, which tended to mean that any Orc Soldiers that followed her from her run back would head for me, but that was no problem.

There were some disconnections today, starting with the traditional 11-ish one, UK time, on Katar rather than Cariae, which took a few minutes for the techies to sort out. Cariae-5 and Cariae-6 had problems later, apparently, though my pet-levelling tends to be on Cariae-3 so that didn't effect me. The afternoon problems I had on Katar were of the lag-out type. the first of those happened when Kae was (on purpose) dead on the floor, her respawning was much delayed and followed by the "disconnected" pop-up. ColonelScarlet got disconnected at precisely 3:00pm and 3:45pm, UK time, which comes under the heading of "suspicious activity" somewhere on the interweb, but the Orcs couldn't hurt him, and didn't do too much damage to his pony in the time available. Kae stayed online though, which saved a couple of memory scrolls. Katar did have some problems in the early evening, too, but I wasn't over there at the time.

The "Storm the Castle" event was due on Auzura at 6:00pm, so I planned to do a little blog work after I'd finished eating - but uploading the DarkDoomxx screenshots to PhotoBucket, and making the forum post about the scam, including a transcript of the conversation, took longer than I expected, so Rage, my Auzura rogue, was only just in time to ride down to Merac Castle. Except that when I got there, only about six others had arrived, including DianaPrince.

There had been no announcement in-game, which explained the lack of people, but a number of us posted in the shoutbox, and the gamesage there, Dietzman, did manage to remind the Aeria office that something should be happening - so at a quarter past the hour, the message went up that the "Storm the Castle" Auzura event was to start in five minutes.

I was doing a tiny bit of blog-typing when I noticed something unusual in the bit of the LC window that wasn't covered up - it was, I discovered when I got that window on top, the tail of a Scorpionmantis! So I made a quick retreat from where I'd been standing, applied horse buffs, and joined in the monster massacre. Despite our still fairly low numbers, we managed to work our way through the Anubis Spear Men and Archers, Hell-Otuu, Dark Harpies, and so on, with reinforcements arriving as we fought. At the end there were a couple of Egeha's raid boss dragons - but they are only visible, or attackable, with either a special item mall potion, or a jack-o-lantern pumpkin helm, which Rage didn't have, so she could only watch arrows landing on nothing. And at last the message of congratulations came up - we'd done it, and our prizes would be spawned back outside.

There was actually a short delay before the prizes appeared, but it was all very generous, so that, with our low numbers, everyone was able to fill their pockets. And then Rage logged out. Catching up on the blog seemed to take a while after that, but Galahad and RedRackham made good use of the time, and despite the occasional ks-er, the horse moved on strongly through level 33, and the drake passed the halfway mark in level 40.

Katar was having problems, the shoutbox warned me, so it was the Cariae version of Kaerella who logged in eventually for an hour of Beast Flyer fighting in Maargadum Jail. The 50% extra experience and skill exp had been switched on by now, and that helped Kae to add 6.57%, 63 skill points, and 1103 pet points. That stint gets Kae up to the 7,500 unused skill point mark.

The Cariae "Storm the Castle" event was scheduled for ten, UK time, and Barbarienne only just got there in time, as it looked as if I needed to get her a pumpkin helm. Karella got the six different candies out of storage, and passed them across, and Barb was then able to get the helm from a convenient scarecrow. The event started promptly, and went smoothly, with me losing a bit of health only a couple of times. There weren't any invisible, or with the special helm non-invisible, dragons, though...

I had one of the spawnings of loot almost to myself until the very end, and was thus able to pick up a further 15 small HP and 14 small MP recovery pots, plus 10 tool aids, 6 item drop boosters, 5 large defence and 2 large attack potions, and 6 skill point boosters, so my trip had been worthwhile - and it's always fun to be part of a successful group activity like that.

There was a little time for pet-levelling afterwards, and with any luck Galahad's horse will reach level 34 by the end of the evening. There will still be quite a way to go before Red's drake reaches 41 though, and with its current appetite that isn't something we can do overnight.