Tuesday 22 December 2009

A Choice of Monster Spawns


There were a few Christmas Gift Boxes in the Discipline guild hall again this morning; those shiny Santa hats are starting to take up a lot of inventory space, if tonight's maintenance patch doesn't make it possible to trade them. I think some use of the "garbage disposal" option will be needed tomorrow. There was some more standing around in the guild hall for the first part of the morning, and then after coffee Memree and Kaerella headed for that back room in Prokion Temple on Katar-4 - only to find it already in use!

Luckily the other non-PvP server, Katar-5, had room for us, so we settled in, with Kaerella standing near the doorway with a platinum super skill pill running, and Memree doing all the work. Conditions continued to favour us, and Kaerella gained a record 420 skill points, while going up by 8.18%; that added 76 guild points to the DarkzersRoughneks guild total. Memree meanwhile went up by 38.95%, adding 140 skill points, 439 guild points for the Discipline guild, and 1082 pet points, which were enough to move her drake up a level. Once Kae had left, Memree continued briefly, to get up to 153 skill points, enough for her to finish learning imperfect stone processing and get the first level of advanced energy gathering; that added another 1.62%, 19 guild points, and 60 pet points.

There was just time before lunch, once Memree had spent that sp, for Memree to teleport over to Misty Canyon, and persuade an Introducer Camio to help her get rid of that 40.57% experience, which it was happy to do.

For the afternoon, ColonelScarlet went back out to his current monsters - what type they are is a secret shared only with huxy! Meanwhile, RedRyder went to Katar-1, got the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff, and headed for Prokion Temple, and the mummies there.

My theory is that the Brazilian version of the game (which is closing down, hence their migration to Last Chaos USA) has swifter monster respawning - how else can one explain the way a Brazilian player will sweep into the room that one is already playing in, and assume there are enough monsters for them too? I'd managed to get the room with a nice collection of mummies and a single orc soldier, but for a lot of the time I ended up involuntarily sharing it with a Brazilian, usually a rogue. The worst one was FreeDeathLecter, who consistently ks'd me, while pretending that I was ks-ing her. You can't argue with these guys, as they seem completely uneducated, as far as the English language goes. FreeDeathLecter even attacked me as a final gesture, though not hitting hard enough to kill me.

Other annoyances were the rogues jowbody and HunterSky, though the latter's visits, while frequent, tended to be brief. The mage DearthQeen and the titan ISlayerI also put in appearances. At least the knight Knify spoke English, I didn't mind sharing the room with him for a while, and he's on Red's Friends list now.

Still, while the fighting wasn't as flat-out as it could have been, by the end RedRyder had gone up by 16.19%, and just 26 guild points, in the course of adding a very useful 376 skill points. It might not have been as many as Kae had earned earlier, but this time no expensive pssp was involved. I'd been looking at the prices people are charging for a pssp, and it seems that they are hard to find for below 5 million on Katar these days. Kaerella was very nearly out of stock of them now, so in the end I paid 4.8 million each for five, bought from Nipi near the Katar-1 arena..

ColonelScarlet got the horse up to level 34 soon after six... and not long after that it was time for Cariae's Kaerella to ride out to the giants and akane giants on Cariae-1.

The session went pretty well, and Kaerella reached level 51; at that point I went back to town, and, as Kae's inventory was entirely full, transferred items across to some other characters; the manuals for making level 49-57 armour and weapons got moved across to Damorella, and some recently acquired accessories got stashed away too.

Kaerella went back out once she had some inventory space, but the session came to a slightly early end when, while she was fighting the elite akane giant near to the "Tomb of Theo" entrance, our favourite raid boss, Kamira, arrived. So, Kae logged out, and Keerella hurriedly logged in, and rode down to visit her. Kee didn't even have to use any health potions during the fight; the usual useful goodies were dropped, but no rare accessory, maybe it would help if one of those platinum drop boosters was used? I've seen them on sale at wildly varying prices, from 1.2 million to more than ten times that.

So, once Kee logged out, the session was over. Kaerella logged back in, just to put a few things into storage, and found she was still in the solo party she had spent the evening in. One heaven stone had been picked up; also, for the first time for Kae the elite akane giant had dropped a ready-plussed item, a level 45 mage wand, Crick's Bane +1.

There was time to get email and the blog so far sorted out, before the expected "Mad Monster Spawns" on the US servers, which were due to start at 10:00pm, UK time. I'd decided to check out the new low-level version on Katar with Memree, so was on the alert for any messages on ColonelScarlet's screen. And, sure enough, one appeared with ten minutes to spare.

The "lowbie" event was quite fun and well-rewarded with the usual loot, but it only lasted 15 minutes. I saw some familiar monsters, and some I'd never seen before - and I did have to run for my life when a horde of goblins charged at me. The early finish meant that I could move across to the usual MMS spot, and help out the "highbies" - and grab some more loots of course. I assume both events were run by [GM]JediMike, who kept a pretty low profile; the final wave for the high-levels was unusual, in that it didn't contain any Flutons or Patriarch Botises, though there were Almas, cave spirits, and other tough monsters. We hadn't cleared them all by 10:30, but the GM spawned the loot and declared the event over, thanking us for attending, so we all paused to hoover up what we could - and then went back to finishing off the monsters. After which, it was time for Memree to log out.

Server maintenance was, as usual, scheduled for about 1:00am, UK time, so there was no point in leaving the computers running. Hopefully the holiday packages in the in-game item mall, which currently tell you "the item does not exist" if you try to purchase one, will become available. "Think of those packages like gifts under the tree, look but you can't touch" was how Aeria_ks1lent put it. Probably we'll get the polar bear pets too, which do look a bit seasonal. Let's hope that they don't bring too many bugs with them. When ColonelScarlet finally logged out for the night, he had got the horse more than a third of the way into level 34, so he too did pretty well today.

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