Monday 22 February 2010

A New Recruit


Not that I usually have breakfast on a Monday, but SirGalahad went down to his favourite death mask lancer on Tairen-4 at breakfast time anyway. Since the session would only last a couple of hours, I didn't bother to run ColonelScarlet on Katar-4 down through Maargadum Jail's levels to the same spot, I just teleported him out to a location in the open countryside with a couple of bandits. There is a slightly higher risk of being ks'd perhaps, having someone come along and kill the bandit leaving knight and drake standing around uselessly, and there is also the risk of a wandering level 50 pandora's beast coming along, if somebody has released it from a nearby box - but as subserver 4 doesn't have the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff, there are unlikely to be many people around.

After coffee Memree and RedRyder teamed up as usual and, after getting the Elizabuff, since as usual they were on Tairen-5, headed out to Prokion Temple. The place seemed unusually busy for a Monday morning, and I found it a bit difficult to find a good place for orc axemen and fighters, moving on a couple of times when the available space wasn't big enough. I ended up on the gallery around the central stairways, fighting mainly orc axemen, with a few fighters and even a soldier or two - and orc sergeants as well, which seemed to spawn as replacements for axemen occasionally in some places.

So the experience side of things did move on slightly more than I'd expected, though that probably isn't a bad idea. It will be useful when RedRyder reaches level 31, for one thing, as that will allow Kaerella to have a +10 armour set. Memree went up by 26.14%, while Red added 6.50%; they each gained 146 skill points, to go some way towards replacing the ones spent yesterday.

There was apparently a "Shadow of Grei" event yesterday evening at Merac Castle, but the newbie GMs involved didn't really publicise it in advance, and any in-game announcements were only on the servers involved, so a 9:00pm Auzura start, and a 9:45pm Katar start, went unannounced on Tairen and Cariae, where SirGalahad and Kaerella were busy, sigh.

The afternoon session saw Rage and Kaerella head, in their turn, for Prokion Temple on Tairen-5, where our favourite back room was free, so we settled in there, with as ever some extra alertness needed for when Kae got attacked, standing at the side. Well into the session KateNash got in touch, and came to join me, though she remained in a solo party with a guildie of hers. She is worried about her skill points; it seems that she has spent all her gold on using 10-minute 50% extra skill exp scrolls, which stack with the Elizabuff, but is concerned that, even with +10 daggers, she doesn't kill fast enough for a productive hour using one of her pssps.

Still, when I left for my food break, she was just about to start using a pssp, so I hope it provided a useful boost for her total. By then both Kaerella and Rage had added 232 skill points; Rage had gone up by 21.56% in level 37, adding 349 guild points, while Kaerella had moved on by 20.26%, and 50 guild points.

After the break, it was time for [GM]Valsharyn's Auzura-4 Mad Monster Spawn. At the low-level location she uses, she started by assuring us that only monsters up to level 60 would be used, and anyone above that level really ought to go to the high-level MMS... hmm, I wonder how come I was nearly killed by level 67 wane spiders from the Temple of Forgetfulness? Luckily they didn't one-hit me and I was able to run for it, with the spiders returning to their starting point in time to be about the last things killed on that wave.

We certainly got plenty of waves, and plenty of loot spawned, but there were so many people there that the waves of regular stuff, like desert spiders, butchers, and salamanders, lasted mere seconds. Which led Val on to spawning skin walkers and scorpionmantises, and even at the end wight slashers. One wonders how high some of the people there were, as none of those lasted very long. Still, we got a new wave of loot every time, so we did pretty well.

Once the junior event was finally over, my level 27 rogue RedRider used a memory scroll to teleport directly to the high-level location, where the final wave was well under way. Strangely, there seemed to be a shortage of rogues, as often, on the remaining flutons and patriarch botises, I seemed to be the only Snare-flinger available, and the melee people seemed to melt away rather, so that I got killed at least four times, but beamed straight back, after re-applying the horse buffs, and began snaring again.

I ended up being chased by one of the final monsters, not wanting to get too far away or its two-thirds health would revert to full health, which would have been a disaster as we were approaching our deadline. Everyone else seemed to be just standing there or concentrating on the other surviving monster, so if my Snare failed, I was in big trouble - but after circling the field, finally some other people took an interest, and other snares and stuns were used, and, with the other monster down, this one too bit the dust at last, inside the deadline [GM]Valsharyn had given us.

The final loot spawning was generous, and I picked up my share...between the low and high locations I managed to pick up 13 item drop boosters, 8 large attack and 12 large defence potions, and 11 skill point boosters, plus lots of tool aids and the small recovery pots.

Back on Tairen Kaerella then had a total of 467 skill points to spend, so was able to get the final two levels of expert weaponsmith, all three levels of basic and the first level of advanced armoursmith, and the two levels of basic and the first level of advanced alchemy, so that's a reasonable step along the way to getting her special skills sorted out - there are still all the gathering and processing skills to get as well, of course. Then it was time for her to get rid of her 84.02% experience in level 27, and set the clock back to zero again.

Rather than head all the way south in Merac to the Misty Canyon entrance, Kaerella just went to Maargadum Jail, where the spike canines on the ground floor were pretty efficient at killing her. So, that little task was quickly accomplished.

KateNash got in touch while I was doing that, and asked for my help in levelling a new character of hers, which was pretty good timing - so I met her level 6 sorcerer IIGeorgeII back in Randol, and went out to the nearest elder werewolves and blood wolf, giving him the horse buffs for extra attack and defence, then leaving the party (as otherwise, being more than 15 levels ahead, I "capped" him). He levelled up pretty quickly there - and then after a few levels we moved across to Dratan, and ran out to Prokion Temple, with Kae doing any necessary fighting to clear a path past the silver foxes and the sand golems, and providing horse buffs in case of problems. Once George had got the entrance to the Temple onto a memory scroll I provided, Kae gave him horse buffs, and logged out.

MistressDomino, after making some inventory space, went out to join George, and stayed fighting the mummies and ghouls for just about two hours, by which time George was almost halfway through level 19, despite having his experience gain cut to 50% after a while - he'd volunteered to join Discipline, which was easily done as MD is a guild adviser, and SirGalahad was able to do the 50% freeze right away when asked.

MistressDomino did pretty well for herself too, helped along by an extra 50% experience gain for the second half of the session, when a "happy hour" began. In all MD went up by 313.27%, and earned 310 skill points - her hatchling, which started from scratch, got well into level 2, as well. The loot wasn't bad; it included a heaven stone, so when George had to go back to town for new armour, I traded across not just a "return to town" scroll, but 500,000 gold as half its value... with the stern warning not to let Kate get her hands on it, heheh.

SirGalahad kept busy all evening, and by log-out time ought to have got the drake pretty close to level 25.


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