Saturday 12 December 2009

A Desert Marathon


I had ColonelScarlet of the older computer overnight, for a change; he did lose some time to a ks-er, but the horse reached level 20 - and by lunchtime reached level 21. On the newer computer MistressDomino was in Katar-1's Randol, selling our loot - and with the heaven stones selling at 1,950,000 gold, including a restock, item drop boosters selling at 895,000, large attack potions at 450,000, and a few other assorted items, MD managed to take in 169 million, which ought to be rather useful.

Memree transferred her recent loot over to MistressDomino, and returned the 25/27 rogue armour set to RedRyder, who also got back her +10 level 29 weapon, so she is now back in fighting condition again, except that she no longer has those level 30 +10 gloves to wear, until Memree earns that new +10 set. We happened to meet Ratel in town on Katar-4; he is only level 22 on Katar, which must seem strange after playing at 86 or 87 on Auzura. Ratty is now on Kaerella's Friends list, and on the Colonel's too; as ColonelScarlet was just on his way back to the gnoll lancers, he was able to give him a solo party for the morning.

I had tipped Ratel off about Elizabeth's Enhancement, the double experience and skill exp, plus a boost to attack, buff that is only available currently in the first sub-server of each server - but he had been less than impressed, since as soon as he'd got to Prokion Temple with it active he'd become a target for pk-ers. If that had been yesterday, that would have been explained by it being the "pk raffle day", rather than people having an aversion to people with the buff active.

The solo party continued after coffee, with Memree being added before she made her trip to Prokion Temple, and then Kaerella replacing the Colonel. The way to change a party's type has changed, but I managed to sort it out, and Memree and Kaerella were able to have their Combat party hour, with Kae using a pssp, in the back room there. Very neatly, Memree reached level 30 just as the pssp ended, having added 49.91% and earned 123 skill points, plus 1074 pet points, which were enough to get her drake into level 22. Back in town she learned her level 30 skills, and opened the last of Lorraine's "treasure chests", for a nice supply of 40 pieces of Candy.

Kaerella went up by 8.81%, which meant that Memree overtook her towards the end of the session; still, Kae has had her experience gain halved for rather longer than Mem, and has accrued 6858 guild points for DarkzersRoughneks, compared to Memree's 1758 so far for Discipline. Kaerella gained another 369 skill points, since her pssp ensures she gains skill exp three times as fast while it lasts.

There was time for Kaerella to do a little mining before and after lunch, and some herb-gathering too. ColonelScarlet was on during the food break - and then in the afternoon Memree went back to Prokion Temple, found that the room was clear, and was soon joined by Kaerella.

During the first pssp hour, Memree added another 42.89% - being in the new level slowed things down a bit - and 129 skill points, plus 1101 pet points. Kaerella, just for standing by the entrance to the room, added 9.06% and 386 skill points. The second hour brought Memree another 39.16% and 119 skill points, plus 1111 pet points, and it was Kaerella's turn to reach level 30, while adding another 7.33% and 356 skill points, which took her total temporarily over 10,000 - though the level 30 skill Double Stingshot cost 228 sp, which took us below that figure again.

Just at the end of the early evening food break the creepy knight "huxy" came up and killed ColonelScarlet's gnoll lancer. I was at least able to say "oh you again" before he ran off, leaving the 210 gold for me to pick up. It was an eventful few minutes, as just after that two lower-level knights appeared, neither above level 20 I'm sure and one below 15, and attacked my new gnoll lancer. One of them was Joker28, I didn't see the other's name, though Joker28 called him "cj".

The idea isn't, as with huxy, sheer malice, it's an attempt to get a lot of experience from killing a relatively high-level monster, while the pet-leveller takes the damage; it happens sometimes when pet-levelling on butchers or berserkers, but it is unusual for people to come so far south on the map. I immediately said "it may turn on you - so be careful", as they do change target sometimes when that sort of thing happens, especially as even low-level fighters are liable to be doing more damage than a bare-fisted pet-leveller, but they took no notice, and one of them soon slumped to the ground dead - the other made a run for it, followed by my gnoll lancer, and I think probably logged out. After that, the gnoll lancer calmly followed me back to our original position, and, with its health regenerating, we went back to our normal routine, and it wasn't long before the horse reached level 22.

For the evening session, Memree headed for Prokion Temple on Katar-4, but, unsurprisingly for a weekend evening, the back room was already in use; I moved across to the other non-PvP sub-server, Katar-5, which I noticed has rather more people in Randol selling stuff, but the back room in the Temple was busy there, too. Oh well, maybe three hours there was enough for one day! Instead, ColonelScarlet logged back in for some more pet-levelling down in south Merac - and over on Cariae-1, my level 49 cleric Kaerella, the original bearer of the name, logged in.

So, with Elizabeth's Enhancement active, Kaerella headed out to the giants and akane giants in the Dratan desert's north-west corner, and stayed there, in a solo party with mainly German players, it seemed, for not much short of three hours. Kamira didn't show up this time, which probably shows that even the desert was relatively busy, but I didn't see any other players while I was out there. Good progress was made, and by the time I logged out, Kae had gone up by 21.59% experience, 133 skill points, and 1798 pet points. I'd kept going for one more horse buff duration than I'd been intending, and was rewarded by the session's second heaven stone from the last giant but three. It won't take as long a session to finally get Kae to level 50, and her new skill, thankfully, so that is something to look forward to.

The Auzura "storm the castle" event seems to have been shifted to Sunday afternoon, so it will be interesting to see what the attendance is like. Having it at 6:00am by US west coast time seems a little unusual, but I suppose they want to get it finished before "Sunday teatime", which ought to be 50% extra skill exp for a couple of hours. And then later there will be the Quiz - there's no scheduled "zombie invasion" for Berbank Mill listed, though. The website is a little glitched currently, with a number of links just returning one to the main page, so we will need to watch out for in-game announcements.

Oh well, one thing we can be sure of is that ColonelScarlet will get his horse to level 23 tonight. Beyond that, well, who knows?

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