A Welcome Disconnection

Things still seemed a bit bleak in Last Chaos on Sunday morning. ColonelScarlet had had one final disconnection last night, but did manage to get back in and move the horse on to its next level before logging out, so that was something.

It being a Sunday, RedRackham and ColonelScarlet logged in a little later than usual; their slowed-down attack animation still looks strange, but all went okay up to coffee time, and we have confirmed that the actual gathering of pet points hasn't been slowed.

I had been contemplating starting the power skill point farming, at level 27, of either Katar's Kaerella or Cariae's Enchantrella in Prokion Temple, since Sunday morning isn't a particularly busy time there, but in the end, given the uncertain times we are living in now, I opted for sending Rage out on Auzura-4, back to the Sphinx types. This time it was my mage MistressDomina who went with her - and as she is only level 61, the party had to be equal rather than combat, meaning a bit less experience for Rage, and a bit more for MD - though a lot more experience and skill exp for Rage than if she was there solo.

There was a disconnection at around 10:40, UK time, though, so it was lucky I wasn't on a pot-using character - the "don't use pots" warning still applied. Rage was fighting an Elite Sphinx Speer Man at the time, but had only lost a little health, I found when I logged both characters back in.

I continued until about 11:30, and then decided that it was time to read the Sunday paper and prepare for lunch. Rage had at least reached the 60% point in level 72, after adding 1.46% experience; both she and MistressDomina had gained 7 skill points. MD had added 3.64% experience, so not a big deal, though it's a while since she added anything. Since she must have one of the biggest reserves of skill points of any of my characters, currently just over 22,000, I really ought to develop her a bit more.

RedRackham and ColonelScarlet took over the computers for an extended lunch break with the Berserkers, and only the Colonel, on Katar-4, got a disconnection, which seems a better than average score. Red got his horse two-thirds of the way through level 35; the Colonel only lost 41 pet points from the dc "rollback". For some reason the older computer's log-in screen still showed each server as having a singly non-PvP sub-server, its third, although the true situation, as shown on the newer computer, is that the third is a "Raid" one, while the fourth and the fifth are the non-PvP places to go.

I caught up on some newspaper-reading and other downstairs stuff, before Galahad, my level 34 royal knight on Auzura, logged in and headed for Prokion Temple; finding the back room free, RedRider, my level 26 rogue, went to join him and formed a combat party. I had to be fairly prompt with my log-out for food, so Gal only added 9.23% and 58 skill points, while Red added 6.66% and 56 skill points.

Logging in with Kaerella on Cariae after the break, I was just in time for the projected 5:00pm rendezvous with Damor and Zenderfly - only to find a message saying "possible power-levelling session at 10 am your time - be ready :)" - oh well, I was only seven hours late. But I assume that, given the possibility of disconnections and the continuing advice not to use pots, Zen had decided against it... if it had gone ahead, she would have been able to contact me via ColonelScarlet I suppose.

Kaerella stayed around on Cariae for a while, in case Damor logged in, and added 0.88% experience, 5 skill points, and 177 pet points. And over on Katar-4 ColonelScarlet had a disconnection, and lost 183 pet points, which for him is over ten minute's worth.

One thing I hadn't investigated was the new non player character in Randol, Elizabeth, and her "enhancements for new players" - double experience, skill exp and attack (both magical and physical) for three hours, it seems. One of the many bugs means that she is only present on each server's first sub-server at present. The attack buff doesn't seem as good as advertised, it just increased my archer Karanne's physical attack stat, at level 24, from 200 to 240, but the experience and skill exp was doubled, and while logging out ended the buff, teleporting to Dratan and on to Prokion Temple was okay. It actually doubled the experience and skill exp reward from completing a quest, too, which may not have been intended. So, unless they get Elizabeth to appear in all the sub-servers in person, rather than just being shown on the town map, those first sub-servers could get a bit busy. Apparently Elizabeth's Enhancement is available right up to level 60; I wonder if it "stacks" with the boosters from the item mall?

One bug we had been told about was that in guild halls, one could only move around using the new WASD key system - so really it was no big surprise to find that the quiz rooms, which are really designed as a larger version of a guild hall, had the same problem. As well as the Episode 2 bugs, some of the sub-servers were in trouble - people who'd been logged in to Katar-3 had been kicked out last night, but were still theoretically connected there, and thus unable to log in elsewhere. Usually Aeria's techie people solve this within an hour, but this time, fearing damage to the data, it continued all today, to the great annoyance of some shoutbox visitors, not surprisingly. Aeria want input from the developers in South Korea before doing anything drastic.

Katar 3, 4 and 5, by the time the Sunday Quiz rolled around, were all in deep trouble - and sub-server 2, where I'd intended to go, wasn't opening its quiz room doors either, so Kaerella and MistressDomino had to move across to Katar-1 - as only two out of the six Katar quiz rooms were working, it was a bit crowded. With a little advice I was able to open "options" and click the "enter chat" box, so that my WSAD keys were enabled. After a little experimentation, I soon worked out that pointing Kae in the right direction, and pressing W, was the way to go.

Luckily, MistressDomino was able to click on Kae and follow her this time, and, while the lag meant that MD was a bit slow to follow, we made it through safely to the end, even though around half the people got booted on question 18, concerning Krash and the Old Skool Treasure (or "Teasure") hunt. MD logged out and RedRackham logged back in for a while - but when he got another disconnection, for me today's pet-levelling was over.

Kaerella logged in on Katar-2 again for a few minutes, in the hope that Ratel would get in touch as planned, but the server trouble must have put paid to that idea. There were still a few long-suffering people standing by the domain merchant on Katar-2, hoping that the quiz room doors would open for them...

But, once I'd disabled WSAD, it was time for the usual Zombie Invasions of beautiful downtown Berbank Mill, starting with Auzura. I decided to live dangerously and take Rage along - and dangerous it was occasionally. We missed the deadline to kill all the zombies and apes, and trying to pick up the loot spawned then was just too risky, though Rage did get an item drop booster and a skill point booster before her health got rather low, and she had to run for it. I'd been recruited into a party with the level 14 "iownyou2", who was level 16 by the end, and the level 36 titan Atrius; we all continued to clear the place out, which in all took 40 minutes, twice as long as it should. Rage did actually get a heaven stone dropped by an ape she killed.

Kaerella was late for the Katar event, then, but it was still in full swing when she got to the Mill, and she started to join in - but within a minute she got disconnected. I logged back in, and was among the first people to get back there - after [GM]Krash, though. The zombies too had been disconnected, so, he decided, we'd won, and generous amounts of hands of bravery, hands of protection, and hands of the guard were spawned. So, with not too many people back yet, Kaerella was able to get a good amount of loot.

When my level 101 archer Barbarienne got to Berbank Mill on Cariae-2, the event had already started, a few minutes early; it was nice to see the monsters white-named rather than red, anyway, and I joined in, tanking a few apes and a screaming zombie or two, and generally making sure only to be the long-range artillery assistance with the ancient screaming zombie boss-types. We didn't beat the deadline, but Barb was at least able to pick up items even with zombies in the area, and once that bit of hoovering was done, we didn't take long to finish clearing the area. Despite the many kills Barb had made or greatly assisted with, all the experience only added up to 0.04%; Rage, on the other hand, had added a useful 2.11%.

And then it was time to log out for the night; with the continuing disconnections, it certainly wasn't worth trying to set up any more pet-levelling.