After coffee I was able to fit in a short session - not too short, though, as my aim was to get MistressDomino (Tairen server version) from level 2 to level 10, so that over lunch she could go into merchant mode, and do a bit of selling. As they float in the air, in a generally standing-up position, mages make better merchants than the other classes, who just sit on the ground; rogues in particular hug their knees and look extremely small and unimportant.
So, there was limited time available. MistressDomino, in Tairen-1, got the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff and started off with the usual fox, deer and wolf quests; as sometimes happens, a Pandora's Box turned up at just the wrong moment, so that the experience gained from opening it meant she skipped one level entirely, and was thus unable to do the quest in which Lorraine hands out a memory scroll. As the scroll costs 1000 gold to buy, about six times the gold MD had at that stage, that was a little annoying, but the Box dropped five level 12 physical defence minerals, which ought to be quite valuable.
MD didn't take long to get up to the berserk wolves; as I put all her skill points into the passive skill Casting Guard, to improve her physical defence, despite the usual mixture of starter armour and what I could pick up she took negligible damage from them, or from the jaguars. Merchant Geres had his necklaces of jaguar teeth a few times, and I finished by fighting a few level 12 sasquatches, to get up to my target. There was just time to set MD up to sell heaven stones and some other assorted items, like moonstones and moonstone boxes, and then I had to vanish for lunch.
SirGalahad had been indulging in a bit more pet-levelling with the butchers in Merac, as well as supplying the solo party bonus for MD, and after lunch it was his turn to be the centre of attention. I had got a level 29 +4 sword from one of Lorraine's treasure chests, so his attack was slightly improved, but as he doesn't have the passive skill that would improve his number of deadly/critical hits, he is still not the fastest killer, and generally the three orc axemen just beyond the "corridor room" in Prokion Temple were enough to keep him busy. Luckily the 50% extra skill exp from yesterday's last "Sunday Teatime" had been left running, so at level 27 each orc axeman gave 13,750 skill experience instead of the basic 5500, though when he reached level 28 this went down to 12375.
A level 27 sorcerer called XFORZETX took up position in the corridor room itself for a time, after two people there had had a bit of a disagreement over which targets were whose - "you come to the arena on Hatzing, noob" being met with "no, you come to Sarissa". Forzet did get into trouble with too big a mob, though, and ran for it, bringing them on to me, though I didn't have any difficulty with them. On his return he suggested we team up, so I added him to the party for a while, which worked okay, but he left a little while before I did. By the end of the afternoon session SirGalahad was up 114.72%, and had added 295 more skill points.
The early evening food break was taken a bit early, as over on Auzura-4 one of [GM]Valsharyn's "Mad Monster Spawns" was scheduled for 5:00pm, UK time. As usual I didn't risk Rage's supply of skill points, or expensive resurrection scrolls, so instead RedRider, on level 26, went along - after spending the odd 7 skill points she'd picked up previously on zeta wave processing. The event didn't start very promptly, but as usual Val perceived the invisible vortex that was due to spit out some monsters at us - no wonder they were mad!
RedRider did die a couple of times, and neither time did I see what hit me, but as ever it was a fun battle, and I think Red's Snare came in useful, even if the 50 she hits monsters for, generally, doesn't actually worry them much. Luckily there were no cave spirits involved, but we still ended with flutons and patriarch botises. Val puts so much more thought and interaction into these events than any other GM does; she seems to have been granted a fair degree of autonomy for what she does on the European server, which is great.
I kept a note of my supplies, before and after picking up the various loot drops, and can report that Red got 22 HP and 21 MP recovery potions, 10 large attack and 8 large defence ones, and 8 each of the item drop and skill point boosters, plus 17 tool aids, so it was a profitable outing.
Profits had also been made on Tairen over lunch and during the afternoon, with, after about half a million over lunch, three million during the afternoon getting into MistressDomino's coffers. She did well during the evening, after a long period when only a few tree ornaments got sold, at 95 gold each, taking in almost another five million, so, while most of the heaven stones from the Sunday Quiz have now vanished, we are now officially not poverty-stricken; the Discipline guild will be able to get its next upgrades tomorrow.
The main evening session was more slogging in the Temple for SirGalahad, but this time I decided to try my favourite back room there. Gal still has basically an un-upgraded level 25/27 armour set - the gloves now are level 30, and the leggings, since they were a quest reward, are +1, but none of the items are bloodsealed, and that applies to the level 25 shield too. But, with fifteen levels of the Armour Increase buff from his faithful horse, he had absolutely no problems in there, even when attacked by half a dozen level 27 orc axemen and level 29 orc sergeants. The extra health regeneration he has, courtesy of the special knight "neckless", must help, but it just shows how resilient knights are, as long as there is no magic attack involved.
A sorcerer called CROCKSTAR came in and shared the room for a while, and then later a titan called Xaen - I'm sure that he was relatively high-level, with at least a +10 weapon, as he did kill the orcs remarkably quickly, though luckily there were still enough for me too. When my pony had reached level 16 earlier today, and become a horse, I'd used a reindeer transformation book on it, so my pet was now a "Rudolf" - it doesn't seem quite as responsive to the "pet item pickup" button as before, but it generally responds eventually. Xaen wasn't picking up any loot, except armour or moonstone boxes, so my poor pet tended to wander most of the room, trying to pick up stuff, when all I really wanted it to do was pick up what my own orcs had dropped. Still, I gained a bit more cash that way I guess.
At the end of the session SirGalahad was approaching the top of level 29, having added another 109.41% experience; the extra skill exp did get switched off during the session, unfortunately, but Gal still managed to add a further 258 skill points - and Rudolf went up by two levels, reaching level 18. It shouldn't take too long tomorrow to get Gal up to level 30, when he has to learn a new skill (without which he wouldn't be allowed to become a temple knight, once he is level 31) - and will be able to upgrade the Discipline guild. MistressDomino transferred enough gold for that to him, so it should all be plain sailing.
While I was working on the blog entry, Gal went out to Merac for a little more pet-levelling. This time, with 17 levels of Armour Increase, for a total physical defence stat of 704, I decided to try him on the level 34 berserkers, instead of the butchers, and while his health bar did fluctuate a little, it seldom went down very much. He is hitting berserkers for 31 now bare-handed, which is very slightly more than they can stand, but they do tend to last rather longer than the butchers did. Once he reaches level 31 and has the +10 armour set, we will be able to try the gnoll lancers, down to the south of Merac. Before log-out time, the horse, or reindeer, did level up, so is now level 19.
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