Saturday 6 February 2010

Another Turbo Boost


The preparations for tomorrow were just about concluded before lunch, which was useful, as it meant some playing could be indulged in in the afternoon - which is better than the last couple of days, and a lot better than tomorrow, when both computers will be off until gone six in the evening. Ah well, it's only once a month or so.

SirGalahad on Tairen-1 and ColonelScarlet on Katar-4 were both busy levelling their drakes this morning; the pink one the Colonel is working on reached level 17 by mid-morning, while over the lunch break that one got up to level 18, and Gal's drake reached level 34. The Colonel is actually still carrying an unmounted level 37 horse, and its Sympathy has fallen below 80% now, since it has been missing out on the pet-action lately.

The item mall has a special 150% rebate offer today - buy 10 experience boosters for 100 aeria points, and get 150 ap back in a week or two. The catch is that you have to predict which of the two American Football teams wins their "Super Bowl", if you nominated the Saints and it's the Colts who end up marching in, then you don't get any rebate at all. Still, if one bought ten tickets for each team, after the rebate one would end up with having paid just 500 ap for 2000 xpb. A "Turbo" event was due to start at six in the evening, UK time, promising 50% more experience, skill exp, or pet experience for four hours. As before, the website says that they will update the page a day in advance to tell which of the three boosts it will be, but, also as before, nobody had remembered to do that. Auzura was also down for Hide & Seek and "Cluedo" events.

While SirGalahad kept going in Maargadum Jail, my new rogue on Tairen, Memree, had an afternoon session, and went up by 236.30%, getting comfortably into level 26. Quite a lot of the experience gain, at least 70% I think, was from quest rewards, starting with killing 17 clever foxes of the desert; for a change I actually killed enough harpies to get 5 each of their tears and feathers, though by the time I picked up a fifth feather I'd got 4 spare tears. It did take a while, as the harpy feathers in particular were a fairly rare drop. Foxes and harpies naturally led me towards Prokion Temple, so I soon ended up in the room with mummies and a single orc soldier, though when I reached level 25, and was able to equip level 30 gloves and the level 29 crossbow (just a +4, but that was one better than the level 25 one), the mummies' names went blue, so, while they still gave useful skill exp, they no longer helped with pet experience.

I moved along to another room I tend to use, alongside the "back room" with its orc axemen and sergeants, which had more orc soldiers and less mummies - and used a health potion or two, since Memree's armour was basically un-plussed.

A trip back to Randol was useful for investing the latest crop of skill points - I'd gained 229 of them by then, so was able to get all five levels of the new level 25 passive skill Regain, so that Memree's health and mana regeneration increased by 5 per second. That made things a bit easier.

It was then time to farm the sand golems, to get the 20 helpings of "soft sand" needed for two different quests, 10 each. As usual that took a while, even if occasional generous sand golems would donate two at a time. A titan called balkom arrived after a few minutes, but he only seemed interested in the elite sand golem, sitting to regenerate his health and mana between its spawnings. Memree reached level 26 while I was there; once the total for the soft sand was "20/10" I made my way west across the desert to Translator Edgar, and completed the "Translator Edgar Old Document" quest - and then back in Dratan City Occultist Pianon was finally ready to give me the "Sand Golems" quest to collect the other ten, so I was able to complete that quest immediately.

The next few quests, starting with Lorraine in Randol next time Memree levels up, are Merac-oriented, but there are plenty more in Dratan yet, as Kaerella's recent adventures over on Cariae prove. But the return to Dratan City marked the end of Memree's afternoon, during which 302 skill points had been earned, plus 691 pet points, as well as the 236.30% experience.

Talking of Kaerella, my level 54 cleric on the Cariae server, it was her turn for an evening outing today; as usual, the idea is that, on the first sub-server, where one can get the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff, Prokion Temple gets too darn crowded in the evening, especially at weekends, and taking a suitable-level character there opens one up to getting killed by higher level people who go there for a killing spree. The desert, though, is big, and one rarely sees anyone else. Not many people farm the ravenous larvae, as is shown by the rarity of the level 47 boots that they drop sometimes. They certainly are pretty "ravenous" when it comes to attacking pets, I often had to use a few green herbs to top up Kae's drake's health.

There wasn't a solo party available when Kae started, but EssensofElegance, the level 46 ranger, was registered for a party, so I picked her up, and launched our own solo party, which did get up to a full eight for a while. At six, UK time, the "Turbo" boost for the next four hours was announced - an extra 50% experience and pet experience. The experience per larva did increase, though not by 50% as it was already on 100% extra thanks to the Elizabuff; it went from 55,000 to 68.750 per kill. I'm not entirely convinced about the extra pet experience, which is hard to pin down, it looked to me as if SirGalahad was still getting around 1000 pet points per hour.

Still, Kaerella had a good long session, and even had to travel back to Randol to renew the Elizabuff for the last half hour. Either I've made the same mistake twice, or the countdown is slightly bugged for it, I was sure it was just running out in Dratan, so moved back to Randol to renew it - only for the clock to be set to two more "hours" (5 minutes, real time)...

In all Kaerella went up by 19.03% over the session, plus 189 skill points and 2073 pet points. I could have moved over to Auzura for their Hide and Seek event, and then later their hard mode "Cluedo" quiz and parade, but the extra experience was too tempting, and no doubt there will be more parades over coming weeks.

SirGalahad kept going faithfully in Maargadum meanwhile - his drake should only be an hour or so away from level 35 by the time he calls it a night.

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