A Surprising Castle

ColonelScarlet had a narrow escape last night. I checked up on his progress, down with the Gnoll Lancers, and found that he had been ks'd - and that he had been moved a long way from his original position, taking him close to some of the aggressive, pet-eating Gnoll Soldiers. The knight Tupper (in the TupperwareParty guild, of course) told me, when he saw me moving under my own power, "You were lucky. MacroMejs has it in for us pet levellers. He attacks your mob and lures it to here - you follow. He has killed me 2 times so far." Scrolling back, I saw that Macromejs had said "Otro q palma xd. ColonelScartel caeras jajajajaja", and then whispered specifically to the Colonel, "Ya falta menos - jajajja - zzzzzzzzzz." What "another q palm" and "it already lacks less" mean, I'm not sure, but it all didn't sound friendly.

Not being fully awake, I wasn't able to see which way I should go to get back to safety, so used a memory scroll, after thanking Tupper, to move to the nice friendly Berserkers. By the morning, the happy ending to the tale is that the horse was halfway through level 35.

Last night I had set MistressDomino up in merchant mode, but she sold all 132 empty baskets swiftly (which at 59,500 gold each neatly covered the cost of those two platinum super skill pills I bought earlier), and a few other items, so I was able to log her out before I went off to bed, which gave the older computer a rest.

The morning session after coffee started off with Kaerella looking through Roy's merchant mart for a level 33 +15 weapon, without any success; when I didn't have enough cash a couple were available for 120 million, but now there are none. That left time for a slightly short visit to Prokion Temple; the Zombie Invasion last night had given her 8.65% experience, and this morning she added another 24.33%, along with 86 skill points and 84 pet points. Looking at the "potions" section, I saw that someone was selling 5 platinum super skill pills for 16 million, working out at 3.2 million each. That seemed good to me, so I bought two of the three packages they had put up.

Over lunch, RedRackham got his horse up into level 34 - and a little later ColonelScarlet got the Katar horse up into level 36. Then Kaerella headed back to Prokion Temple. A level 30 rogue called xAltair (doesn't she know you are supposed to have an x at both ends of the name?) was already there, but away from the keyboard, so I just set to work, and when she did return there were enough Orcs to go around.

I didn't stay too long, as my experience percentage was starting to get a bit high; adding 21.10% got me to over 80%, so I went back to town and used the latest 75 skill points, plus 14 carried over, to finish off stone processing. By my reckoning, only expert alchemy's three levels were left then. 761 pet points were earned, too.

Once the skill points were spent, I went back for 27 deaths, picking up plenty of empty baskets, plus some weapons and plenty of gold, by running around the Temple in my underwear. Some people just don't like to stop to pick anything up, if they are using a skill potion, I suppose.

After that there was time for MistressDomino to have almost an hour farming pumpkins out by Hunter Dranore in Juno. Her hatchling levelled up, reaching level 7, with 645 pet points gained. MD got 22.16% experience, and just 15 skill points - which must mean around 90 pumpkin ghosts were despatched, since they give 1650 skill exp each when you are, like MD, their level. Not every ghost drops a pumpkin, but some drop one plus an empty basket, and one even managed a Hand of Bravery.

For the food break, RedRackham joined in on the pet-levelling again, and then, as six o'clock was approaching, Rage logged in on Auzura-3, to see if the scheduled "Storming the Castle" event, moved forward a couple of days to make room for the Episode 2 excitements, was going to happen.

Rage got to the area outside Merac Castle at about five to six, and was almost the first there - luckily an announcement that the event was starting in five minutes then came up, and GM Kali arrived.

We started off without all that many people, but more people turned up as we rolled along. One of the big "Blood Shadow" dragons appeared in the main courtyard, as it did two weeks ago - and this time, as Rage had a pumpkin jack-o-lantern helm, I could see and fight it. Except for a stray Wafe that was stuck in a wall, so that nobody could attack it, everything went pretty smoothly, and we rushed back outside. I suppose Kali got called away from her desk as we had to wait a while, but eventually the usual generous spawnings of loot appeared, and everything was grabbed.

SirDarth logged onto Cariae-3 a little before seven in case there was any appearance by Damor, but no windows popped up - and checking the guild window after a while, I saw "no updates so cu thuesday", which either means Tuesday, Thursday, or, as a cross between the two, Wednesday...

So, Kaerella logged back in over on Katar-5, and this time got the 183 skill points that were needed for the first two levels of expert alchemy, along with 50.22% experience and 1845 pet points. There was just time before the Cariae version of "Storm the Castle" for Kae to return to Prokion Temple, after spending all those skill points, and die the necessary 17 times to return her experience to 0%; I was chatting with xAltair, and recommending "Storm the Castle" as an event a ranged attacker could go to without any great risk - and then I had to change across from Katar-5 to Cariae-3, and take Barbarienne down to Merac Castle.

This time, the event was drastically different, so I rather hope xAltair didn't go along to the Katar one, which was on at the same time. There were a lot more people there, which was just as well, but the monsters were different from the usual ones - and I'd say on average at least twenty levels higher. We were doing okay, and just about had the final courtyard finished before the deadline... and then we saw the throne room itself, with Patriarch Botises and plenty of other very nasty stuff. Barb very nearly died, getting a Botis debuff that drained her health, and I couldn't even use a great health potion, or move... luckily the effect wore off when I was at about 100-150 health, and I managed to run outside, trigger the health potion, and use Self Heal many times. It was then that Kali announced that we had failed - though some drops would be spawned outside.

Instead of the many large heaps, we just had three of them, so the loot per person wasn't great. I noticed on ColonelScarlet's screen that Kali told the Katar people that she was giving them some drops even though they had failed, since the monsters were new this time, but next week - no drops unless Merac Castle was entirely cleared before the time was up.

Back on Katar, Kae passed over today's supply of empty baskets and other loot to MistressDomino, who then went into merchant mode, with 116 empty baskets to sell, plus heaven stones, moonstones, quality stones, and other stuff. ColonelScarlet is actually only four or five hours away from finishing his current pet-levelling task, so can't really be left working overnight - instead RedRackham logged in over on Cariae-3 to work on his level 34 horse instead.