Three Different Mystic Swamps

It was lucky I'd decided not to leave ColonelScarlet at work training the current pale blue horse overnight, as the Aeria people made a last-minute decision to bring forward the weekly maintenance downtime by a day, to attempt to fix the annoying party glitches that, apparently, are now being blamed for the frequent disconnections some people, and sub-servers, have been getting.

Still, whatever they did didn't involve any actual new patch, as the newer computer got the game going without having to pause the anti-virus protection to allow such a download. ColonelScarlet went out to the berserkers and bandits, and settled in, with the horse reaching level 28 during the morning.

Kaerella was able to have her third pssp hour in Prokion Temple on Katar-4 before lunch, although towards the end a rogue called BooodaciousChick started taking some of the orc soldiers that I'd been farming, which made things a little awkward. Still, Kae managed to add another 303 skill points, while going up just 3.74%, so the mission can be counted as a success.

Barbarienne over on Cariae-4 did a little mining over lunch, just to increase her stock of stones, which was handy, as Zenderfly got in touch while I was just checking up, mid-lunch, that all was well with the Colonel. She had the full 170 million gold I'd loaned her to return, now, so Barb just needed to run back into town and meet Zen there.

However, there was a shock when I attempted to sign off with a "back to the mine for me, then, cu soon" - Zen's response was "rather not - don't think I'll play Last Chaos much any more. Too much clicking monsters, and too few fun."

"Wow, I'd hate to lose you...have a little rest, but do come and visit. Whatever happens, do keep in touch, eh?"

"Grand Fantasia looks promising. If you want to come with me we can play there together..."

After I'd had to leave the keyboard, Zen added that she'd talk to me again in two hours, which rather changed my plans for the afternoon, which had been, tentatively, to either take Keerella to Lust Trum Tower and check out the sp-gathering possibilities there, or take both Kee and Barbarienne to the Tomb and give Kee an hour or two levelling on the anubis spear men.

Before the main afternoon adventure started, however, the Grand Red Dragon arrived just withing sight of ColonelScarlet, which was strange as nobody else was active in the area. I reported its arrival on the forum shoutbox, and madmancone took up the challenge; his level 51 knight Cone partied briefly with ColonelScarlet to get the location, and rode down.

It took a while for him to kill the thing; in fact, I was able to log RedRyder in and ride down, really to watch, but when he knew it was the same person, he invited me to help. A level 25 rogue doesn't do all that much damage to a raid boss, but I think that the Snare must have been some assistance, stopping the dragon's attack for a few seconds at a time. He warned me to run clear just before the Cerebrii appeared, so I stepped back, though was still able to help a little with them, being careful to target one he was fighting.

I saw a bit of yellow text among the descriptions of the items on the ground - Cone got an Origin of Land rare accessory, which may not be the best possible drop, but it's better than just those buggy mystery boxes that turn up sometimes recently, or no accessory at all. Cone generously let me have the other drops - a crystal of experience (greater), a medal of honor, a hero's necklace (6 to physical prowess, 3 to long range physical defence), 10 each of the medium mana and great healing potions, 5 each of the scrolls of memorising and lucky scrolls, and a few minor cash drops. He then asked if I had a mage, and when I said yes, passed across a level 41 mage staff he'd recently picked up, which was a kind gesture. MistressDomino may well be glad of that at some stage, while she waits for the +15 weapon to be relinquished by Kae and Red!

RedRyder went out to Prokion Temple on Katar-1, with the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff on; after yesterday's "Epic Event" and the GRD-killing she had already got 10.49% experience, but I decided that getting 332 skill points from the mummies and orc soldiers would still be possible without getting dangerously close to level 26 - and so it proved, though she was on 90.03% by the end. The last two available levels of weaponsmithing were then learned, and then it was time for 31 "suicide runs" back in the Temple... or 32 actual deaths, as the "double death" bug with Red respawning at the place of death happened to strike then, as well as a number of times previously. At least she didn't end up in the foundations this time.

To my relief, the "party bug" appears to have been beaten, or at least reset, and Red was able to join a solo party. The party continues to list people who have logged out, though, with blacked out health and mana bars and "X" as the level. After getting the skill points I'd logged out, and relogged in Randol, to find myself still in the party, so to be safe I used the "leave party" option to get myself clear then.

Zenderfly did get in touch, to talk more about Grand Fantasia, though she insists there are no workbenches that need to be dragged somehow into one's own cottage. I did update the game client earlier, but Zen confirmed that the servers had been offline then, which with a closed beta is not that unusual, with bugs being found and corrected. Checking the website, I found that the closed beta had in fact ended, and the open beta has yet to begin, so the servers are getting a well-deserved rest. A chat with Zen later on confirmed that, so any team-up over there remains in limbo until the open beta gets going.

I forget if Zen has ever tried Guild Wars... there is a free trial available, though it is a bit of a download, and offers only a rather limited amount of playing time. The various parts of the entire game are pretty cheap now, and do tend to get discounted in online stores...and of course there is nothing more to pay, once you have bought the game.

By the end of the early evening food break, the usual miniature light show signalled that ColonelScarlet had got his horse up to level 29; each level is longer than the previous one, and this level is liable to take over seven hours.

The second of the [GM]Beatrice "Epic Events", entitled "The Corruption of Merac", had its repeat outing this evening, starting again with Auzura at six o'clock, which meant a trip for Rage down to the swampy part of the Merac map on Auzura-1. I don't know why it was on a PvP-enabled subserver, but Rage was among the first to get there, and I didn't see anyone go into PK mode at all. The event went pretty well, and no resurrection scrolls had to be used, at least not by me, and when the loot was spawned at the end, in the middle of Mystic Swamp, Rage was able to pick up her share.

It was time to make a swift move across to Katar, then, as seven o'clock was approaching; luckily ColonelScarlet was at work there, so I was able to see the announcements that were being made, which said that Katar-4 was the subserver to use. RedRyder, since she has nothing to lose, was my character of choice - and her Snare skill would be useful. The ride down was easy, once one was out of Merac town and able to call up the map of the whole area, and early on I was sensible enough to get the location onto my memory scroll, so that when I died, which happened three or four times, it was simple to get back.

Things were a bit different from Auzura, though; I don't think there were quite as many people, and halfway through most of us got bogged down on a Fluton who just wouldn't die - as happens sometimes he was "bugged" so that when people used a skill like Snare, Curse or Sloth on him, he'd immediately go back up to full health. The high-level people doing the tanking were yelling, if one can do that in the text box, for people NOT to use any skills, but there was always someone who'd add a skill, and back the Fluton went to 100% health. RedRyder's pet hatchling went up at least 400 pet points just fighting him. I joked that my hatchling had started at level 8 but I'd be riding him home as a dragon...

It was while I was helping to fight the Fluton, or rather pet-levelling on it, that Zenderfly got in touch again; I did hope that I had persuaded her to join in the Cariae event later, but it does seem that she is really not into playing Last Chaos at the moment.

The games masters spawned our loot just by me, which was nice - the middle of the swamp would have been a bit unhealthy for a level 25 character, with doom slayers and blood frenzies respawning. So I stopped attacking the Fluton to pick up as much as I could, and then rejoined the battle...not that a level 25 rogue, even with a +10 crossbow, does a Fluton much harm. And finally the GMs relented and cleared the monsters away - and gave us a second wave of goodies, which was a thoughtful gesture, especially for the people who'd been too busy fighting the Fluton to pick up anything before. So RedRyder did extremely well for the usual star loot items, the large attack and defence potions, item drop boosters, and skill point boosters, plus a nice new supply of tool aids.

Over on Cariae-4, as had happened when the event had originally taken place, Barbarienne was first on the scene, because I knew where to go - other people had been waiting in central Merac for the coordinates to be announced. I was there before the monsters were spawned for the event, in fact, but kept well back so that they didn't spawn on top of me. I was halfway through my first Sphinx Commander when the first people arrived, and assisted me in finishing it; and very welcome they were too, outside the Tomb those guys tend to hit rather hard.

We were strangely low on numbers on Cariae, I don't know why; luckily we did have a few high-level types to take the lead, so that generally I was able to relax as the long-range artillery. What was worrying though was that three times the game stopped working for me, and stayed "not responding", so that I had to close Last Chaos and then restart it, riding down from town again. Luckily nothing attacked me while I was, presumably, just standing there in-game.

We did our best, anyway, and when the loot was spawned, it didn't have to be divided up too many ways, so Barb quickly went up over 100% for her inventory's weight, which reduced her dexterity a bit; 150% is the absolute maximum. The GMs announced that the event was over, but that they would leave the remaining monsters for us to finish if we wanted to, while they went on to Sarissa for the fourth iteration of today's entertainment... and it took us a good half hour more, until after 9:30pm, to get rid of the remaining monsters, mainly Flutons. All that meant that Barbarienne added 543 pet points, a skill point, and 0.10% experience; Rage had added 1.68% earlier, but then, levelling at 72 is quicker than at 101.

The older computer did run out of memory at one point, but otherwise ColonelScarlet continued with his work almost undisturbed, so that the pale blue horse was at least two-thirds of the way through level 29 by log-out time.