Tuesday 8 December 2009

Into the Tomb


ColonelScarlet did log on at breakfast time, and teleported down to south Merac to visit a gnoll lancer, but progress was already starting to slow down for MistressDomino's drake, which only went up by one level during the morning. Still, the lunch break added another level, reaching 18, without any problems.

After coffee Kaerella headed out to Prokion Temple on Katar-4, and had a successful hour there, using a platinum super skill pill. The knight GranTarian was in the lobby when I arrived, and soon came along to the corridor next to me; he just stood there for a while, and then kindly gave me the Divine Shield buff. Eventually he did start to fight along there, but when I asked if he could move along a bit, as I did need the orc soldiers at my end of the corridor to keep me busy during my pssp hour, he graciously agreed. He had slight misgivings about fighting the orc fighters which tend to be in the majority at the far end of that section, but I mentioned that there were plenty of orc soldiers just round the corner, if one didn't mind a few mummies too.

It probably just shows how the condition of Prokion Temple does vary, but in my pssp hour I added 3.96% experience - and no less than 348 skill points, when just around 300 is more usual, which more than made up for the shortfall during yesterday's second hour. And that despite a brief incursion towards the end from a mage called Oneta.

MistressDomino had a quick browse through the merchants in Katar-1 Randol after that, and then set up in merchant mode herself over lunch. She didn't actually sell much, just some quality stones and her whole supply of 500 green herb leaves, but every 1,925,000 helps.

The afternoon session was something I have done before, but not for a few weeks I think. On Cariae-4, my level 92 wizard Keerella headed into the Tomb of Theos, down to the first room with the Anubis Spear Men, the level 106 boss types, and, once I'd found that only one other player was there, the level 83 sorcerer Ignominy, who agreed that there was plenty of room for both of us, Kee was swiftly joined by my level 101 archer Barbarienne. We had a combat party, which Ignominy didn't want to join as our different levels made it almost "bridging"; Kee would do the fighting, and Barb would do the healing, and supply the combat party boost...and also have my level 52 Scra-Chi type "human tribe" pet, SkrappY, out, to gain a bit of experience.

Things didn't really run exactly smoothly - for one thing, while Kee used two hour-long platinum blessed irises, for triple experience, the individual experience boosters didn't always trigger when she killed a Spear Man. Although she landed the killing blow every time, sometimes the Spear Man would be targeting Barb rather than Kee at the time, and that seemed to effect things. The first hour saw her gain 15.46%, from using 18 "xpb", but the second hour just added 10.92%, off 11 xpb. That left Kee still 0.36% short of levelling up, so I stayed long enough to kill another five Spear Men, and a few handy Sphinx Fighters, to get Keerella to level 93.

Perhaps 20 minutes into the first hour a couple of members of the xxTUGASxx guild barged in - I commented that I didn't think there was room for three parties killing Spear Men there, but they ignored me, and Ignominy decided the easiest thing to do was call them "noobs" and move on a little further. The royal knight xXdarkassassinXx seemed to be helping a lower-level friend, RapidaHimortaL, presumably within 15 levels of him for a regular party, to level up a bit; Rapida didn't fight much, but kept near a friendly piece of wall.

In the second hour an assassin-type rogue, Shimm3r, joined the room briefly, but soon moved on; a sorcerer called GlaDIator came in and said hi, and we both fought the three Sphinx Fighters that had followed him in, though he seemed to wish to deny that they had been following him. RapidaHimortaL left, and it seemed that his guildie xXdarkassassinXx did understand English, as he asked to join the combat party, which was fine with me.

Unfortunately he also wanted some healing from Barbarienne, which caused problems. It was easy enough for Barbarienne to use Heal Party, to heal him and Kee, but as ever that tended to attract the attention of other monsters, so Barb tended to find herself fighting a Sphinx Fighter or two. Using the ordinary one-person Heal was a problem, as that has a shorter range, so Barb had to come out of her safe spot. I find it can be bugged, and lead Barb to actually want to move right up to the intended recipient - and moving out into the middle of the room, among the aggressive Sphinx Fighters, meant that poor SkrappY immediately got killed.

I asked on the forum shoutbox if the Archbishop was again able to "unseal" dead new pets, as a recent bug had glitched the process so that one ended up with a permanently 0-health pet - and Coraan, the gamesage there, told me that in fact the Archbishop shouldn't have been able to unseal dead pets in the first place, and that now only the animal trainer could be used. Which was unfortunate - I went along there after I'd left the Tomb, and for unsealing a level 52 Scra-Chi he charged 2,123,232 gold. At least poor SkrappY was returned to life with 40% health, the Archbishop always restarted one's pet with zero, and the new pets regenerate health awfully slowly.

xXdarkassassinXx had moved away to an earlier part of the Tomb before the end, so the last part of my session there was relatively uneventful. By the time I left Keerella had added in all 26.75%, while her pet drake Greedo had gained 2247 pet points. Barbarienne, from slightly under 4 million per kill as her combat party bonus plus a few Sphinx Fighters, had added 0,20%; they had each gained 2 skill points, as well.

ColonelScarlet was able to log back in over a rather extended food break, as I had some emails to attend to; the drake reached level 19 then. And soon after nine, level 20 was reached.

The main part of the evening was really a double session for RedRyder, on Katar-1. After getting the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff I went out to Prokion Temple, of course, and, while adding 56.26% experience to the 31.42% I'd had after Red's most recent Epic Event appearance, went up from 6 to 224 skill points, which I then promptly spent on some assorted special skills. A quick trip to Misty Canyon, and a few tiny attacks on the first Introducer Camio there, got rid of the experience - and when I got back outside, an Elite Cerebrii killed me too, giving me a free trip back to town.

After getting the "Elizabuff" reapplied, I took the teleporter to Dratan - and saw that someone had discarded three monster combo-type necklaces on the ground. So, I equipped my drake and used "pet item pickup", to nonchalantly pick them up - well it would be a waste if they just lay on the ground until they evaporated! The Necklace of Wind just offered 58 hit points and 6 to all kinds of physical defence, while one Necklace of Thunder just gave a 30 "increase critical hit". The other Necklace of Thunder gave that too, along with 56 to evasion and 8 to all types of physical attack, so that one Red is now using. I'd admit that they aren't the best necklaces one might get, but I'm sure they are worth a few million each...

Arriving back in Prokion, I went to my usual room, not noticing that I was too close to another solo party member, whose blob appeared on my compass-map - SiLeNtHeAt was, at level 32, in my favourite back room. As soon as he pointed this out, or at least as soon as I noticed his text, I moved a bit further along, but luckily he left the party before all that long, and I was able to move back to RedRyder's normal position.

Someone in the party had asked when the MMS was, and I stopped to type in "about 70 minute I think" - and when I looked back at the screen, a titan with a red name, and the big "X" alongside it to indicate that he was in player versus player mode, was standing beside me. He moved off without attempting to kill me, though. I mentioned it on the party chat, and the level 73 mage "slili" was interested enough to ask me to say if I saw him again. Some people do like hunting down the red-named types...

That session got me 286 skill points, while I went up by 80.40% - a slightly higher percentage than normal, as moving along a bit had meant I fought some orc fighters, who give a bit more skill exp but a lot more experience, at Red's level. I also picked up a couple of heaven stones, which is always good, and Red's dragon hatchling went up by 899 pet points. It is still only level 10 though, so I think Red will be asking ColonelScarlet for some assistance on that front. Spending the skill points means that now Red has all but the final level of stone processing, and both levels of zeta wave processing. Just another 922 skill points, I think, and all the special skills she can learn now will be at their maximum.

All the US servers (Cariae, Katar, Sarissa, and Hatzring) were scheduled to have their Mad Monster Spawns at ten, so I made sure to have this blog as up-to-date as possible before then, and resolved to go along to the Katar one with RedRyder, since I'm more in need of loot there, and Red is reasonably well prepared - "MMS" is the first location on her memory scroll.

[GM]Krash was in charge for us, and managed to drop the first two waves right on my head without any warning - but, including those, I think Red only died six or seven times, and ended up with a new 20.10% of experience. We didn't manage to kill the final boss wave inside the deadline, so Krash left us the monsters to finish off. There were still a few Flutons and Patriarch Botises left when I had to log out for the night. The loot spawnings that we did get were generous, anyway, and I managed to grab a healthy share. As it happens, I was quite often fighting alongside the mage slili, who I assume was doing rather more damage than I was. Still, all my Snare prowess was generally useful, I hope.

ColonelScarlet had got the drake well into level 20 by then, so he did pretty well today too, despite taking the afternoon off.

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