RedRyder Steps Out

SirGalahad on the new Tairen server had a session in the morning, getting a quest reward or two and then heading out into the Dratan desert, first of all to kill some "Ramians", or dark goddesses as they are now called. There was a level 50 Pandora's Beast around, which my fellow knight ArthurPendragon had a go at, before very wisely running back into town - he did suggest after that that we might team up to fight it, but I declined the offer, those things hit hard and don't usually drop anything useful.

I moved on to Shuraine's oasis after killing the 15 dark goddesses, and set about killing the sand golems there, without any trouble even though they were five levels above Gal; the elite version was made of sterner stuff, though, and would get me down to below half my health before it died, so I'd only fight him when, fighting the others, my health had had time to regenerate.

Kamira turned up before too long, and I didn't do anything about it, figuring that nobody online on Tairen would be high enough level to deal with a level 70 raid boss, but another knight, TestFyre, lower level than me, judging from the way he had to run from sand golems, contacted a friend, Tiernan of the BritishBulldogs guild. Luckily when Kamira left she immediately "re-arrived", so Tiernan, a level 61 rogue, arrived in time to deal with her. I don't think a rare accessory was dropped, I saw a couple of "special item boxes" so probably she was teamed with TestFyre. They kindly left me the 10 great healing potions, at least I assume it was intentional.

My main reason for fighting sand golems was to get "soft sand" for a quest, but they also drop level 27 helms; sadly I didn't get a knight one, though the elite sand golem did drop a +4 healer one. A sand golem also dropped me a new level 25 shield; I got a heaven stone and a couple of the "hands of the guard", with skill point booster, item drop booster, and a couple of tool aids, so the session wasn't bad on the loot side - and right at the end SirGalahad reached level 24, having gone up 100.50%, and added 48 skill points and 65 pet points - I soon discovered that the sand golems were very keen on pet-eating, it seemed that just about every one I targeted would take at least one bite from my poor pony.

Lunch had to be slightly early, as [GM]Valsharyn had scheduled a "storm the castle" event on Auzura-5 for 1:00pm, UK time. When Rage, my level 72 rogue, got there, only about five of us had arrived, and it looked as if we'd have our work cut out. Val herself did join our party, so we could see that she is only a level 141 mage, not the 165 most GMs go for. She left though when the party was full, to leave room for someone else.

Luckily more people did arrive, and we progressed through Baals, Death Knights, wafes, jumping devils, anubis spear men, anubis archers, sphinx commanders, hell-otuu, dark harpies, zamoras, and more. There was even a blue dragon at the end, but only people who had "shadow powder" active could see and fight it. The rest of us went into the throne room, where [GM]Valsharyn spawned some of the usual piles of loot for us. I think she generously spawned three separate piles, to reward us for our valour, but by then there seemed to be more people around than usual, so things got snapped up pretty fast, making it not the most rewarding of castle-stormings.

As usual Val stayed around to chat and hear suggestions, and as usual a number of people requested an upgrade event. I commented that one always heard complaints after such an event about all the breakages, but Val promised to bring the matter up. I'd earlier asked if she was in the Aeria office, or able to work from home for this, and was told that it always had to be done from the office. More experimenting with different level challenges at Mad Monster Spawns seems to be on the cards...

After that, the main afternoon session was held back over on Tairen-1, with SirGalahad now able to take on orc soldiers and orc fighters in Prokion Temple. Some of the time I was teamed with a level 20 rogue called Ninjaki, who seemed to operate on around 10% health most of the time - some people just don't bother with health potions. This time the experience gain was 163.20%, plus 189 skill points, taking us into level 25, before the early evening food break; I left Gal in the lobby there while I was away from the keyboard, and continued afterwards, in the corridor outside my favourite back room, until the three hours of the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff was just ending, so that another 54.05% got added, plus 86 skill points.

After that it was time to get a bit cunning, and do two things at once. SirGalahad switched to the older computer, and went out to the treants, not far from Velpist Temple. to level up his pony a bit. Generally he would have two or three treants attacking him, and failing to do any damage; hitting bare-handed for 29 he did damage them, though, so I needed to switch targets occasionally, to let the old target recuperate. A titan did kill the treants once, but went off when my pony picked up the loot and I went back to treant-fighting; a low-level knight called jesus wanted to add me as a friend, but also attacked my current treant, which started to chase him - it turned its attention back to me eventually, after giving him a scare, but I'd been moved out of position, and a great horn beast came in after a little while, and attacked the pony. Luckily I saw what was happening in time, killed the GHB, and moved back into the proper position.

Meanwhile, on the newer computer, it was time for the Tairen version of my rogue RedRyder to venture forth. She had reached level 5 before today, but that was just from being in the Discipline guild hall and opening Christmas Gift Boxes, which like Pandora's Boxes give a disproportionate amount of experience for a low-level character. Being three levels ahead meant that Healer Yabo's quest to kill deer was no longer available, but he gave Red the fox and wolf quests, so she started with those, and, helped along by the "Elizabuff", went from foxes and wolves on to dire wolves and berserk wolves, and then on to jaguars, including getting their fangs for Merchant Geres to make into necklaces. There was a knight called Sizzlin, a member of the "Addicted" guild, also killing jaguars - he was moving suspiciously fast, I casually mentioned that a friend of mine had once tried a speed hack, but found it led to a lot of disconnections. Sizzlin made no reply...

I had thought of letting SirGalahad power-level RedRyder a bit, but in the end I just traded a couple of pan flutes across to Gal, and Red went along to Velpist Temple. After starting with the usual wandering zombies off to the right, I continued with the room with the ancient and berserk types, ahead and up the stairs, carefully avoiding the red-named skeleton soldiers. And then I went off to the left from the starting area, to the anteroom to the "Torn Book of Life" quest room, with its berserk zombies, corpse rangers, and skeleton soldiers.

A level 15 pair, the healer lamuerte2026 and the rogue Warhammer, invited me to party with them, so Red ditched the solo party with SirGalahad, and joined up; we also added the level 10 knight Kight. I think everyone levelled up at least once during the session, though Warhammer, usually a level ahead of me, was a bit more impetuous and did die a couple of times. It was fun to party, anyway, though I don't think Kight or lamuerte2026 spoke much English. Another healer, natth, was also in the room - I think we helped her out of a scrape or too, at least I hope she didn't think we were ks-ing.

The party ended eventually, and RedRyder's three-hour Elizabuff was ending too, so Red logged back in in town, spent her skill points, and then, as towards the end she had managed to grab a drake egg, headed for Dratan to get herself a hatchling. And while she was there she made the run out to Prokion Temple to get that location onto her memory scroll. At that stage Red was about 60% of the way through level 16, but it didn't take long, fighting some handy ghouls and mummies, to reach level 17 there, which made a good end to her first evening of adventuring. I noticed a rogue in the DestructioN guild there called "Oppsie", and wondered if the rogue from yesterday with the disputed name had bought herself a character renaming card...

Adding it up, in all RedRyder went up 1,195.94%, which can't be bad, and exactly 300 skill points; and meanwhile SirGalahad's pony, which had reached level 6 during his more active adventures, moved on to level 9 - and, continuing on afterwards, was well into level 10 by the time the older computer was switched off. Gal may not be able to afk-level a pet yet, but this was the next best thing.