A Death in Dratan

MistressDomino and SirGalahad both survived successfully through the night again, though this time my merchant was the MistressDomino on Katar. Heaven stones seem to have gone up in price over there recently; the last time I sold them, a few weeks back, my impression was that they were holding steady at 1.95 million, but MD had a quick look round and didn't see anyone offering them for less than 2.4 million. She put her supply up at 2.35 million, and they sold very quickly. By the end of the night everything had sold, in fact, except her supply of moonstone boxes, so that the Katar cash situation is much improved.

SirGalahad, on Tairen-4, managed to avoid any death mask soldiers this time, which meant that his horse was level 25 by coffee, when he finally logged out, so that Kaerella and Memree could head for Tairen-5's Prokion Temple, and its back room. The session moved along nicely and uneventfully, so that by the time lunch was approaching, Memree, as the active fighter, was up by 31.00%, and 360 guild points, while Kaerella had added 21.69% and 54 guild points. They had each got 227 skill points, which meant that Kae was now able to learn the last level of herb trunk processing, the second level of green herb processing, both levels of zeta wave processing, and the first two levels of epsilon wave processing. Kae just needs another 473 skill points to finish off all the special skills, and then she will be able to start getting her own stash of unused sp.

Over lunch SirGalahad was back in action, and he continued through the afternoon, while over on Cariae-5 my level 58 cleric Kaerella went back to the hidden-away elite sphinx speer man, and the local sphinx fighters and regular sphinx speer men. I had the place to myself, so didn't have the benefit of a combat party, just a solo one, so was moving along a bit slower. The elite sphinx speer man still hit me pretty hard sometimes.

By the end of the afternoon Kaerella had gone up by 41.57%, and gained 69 skill points; SirFrancis, Kae's drake, had gained 1958 pet points.

I did get a disconnection during the food break, which was good timing - much better then than when Kae was among the sphinx fighters. I took the opportunity to check up on my characters over on the Katar server, which is really fourth in my priorities after, in no particular order, Cariae, Tairen and Auzura. Kaerella, my level 32 archer there, was able to join the Discipline guild, as the actual time after leaving one guild before one can join another is apparently not the whole week that the pop-up message says. ColonelScarlet, the guild master for Discipline, logged on briefly to set her experience gain to the usual 50% freeze, and Kae also transferred loot across to MistressDomino, for her next selling session.

Back on Tairen, SirGalahad logged back in, but this time on subserver 5, so that he could give a solo party to Rage, my level 39 ranger-type rogue, while he continued to work on the horse.

Rage teleported out to the poison mists, and had the elite one to herself for a change; there were a couple of other people who turned up there, but they saw that Rage had that area staked out and stayed clear. A level 39 specialist sorcerer called DarKLorD, though, did try to muscle in, and took a few swipes, in knight form, at the elite when I was fighting it.

A 42.02% experience increase had taken Rage safely into level 40, which meant that it seemed about time to try out the sphinx fighters and sphinx speer men. So, after buying a few of the medium-size health potions, I teleported out there. As always with rogues, it depended on whether Snare worked or not, and I did take a few heavy hits, it was a bit different from the earlier Cariae session. To my surprise DarKLorD was there, and I said something along the lines of "this elite you are welcome to."

We did team up, which was a bit rocky as we seemed to end up sometimes attracting different targets, which at our kind of level wasn't a good idea. We added the level 32 mage Wolfyn to the party, but she was one of those people who never bother to top up their health bar, and seemed permanently to be on around 30% health, and not much mana either. Still, the Curse skill to slow down a monster is always useful, as is Terra Spear to hit it hard.

The adventure came to a rather annoying end for me; DarKLorD had gone afk for a while, so I'd changed the party type to combat so that having him on the compass-map was an asset rather than a leaching. Wolfyn attacked the elite sphinx speer man, but didn't stick around to kill it, so I was trying to solo it, and, after one too many failures of Snare, got killed, with its health down to around 10%. So I used the "beginner" resurrection scroll, and opted to respawn where I'd died, thinking that the monster had moved away far enough, and I could easily outrun it anyway. Unfortunately, when I was alive again I was "bogged down" in the ground, and unable to run away, and I got killed again, without a res scroll on.

So, that was a penalty of 125 skill points, and a little bit of experience lost as well. For the remaining few minutes, I headed back to the poison mists, to try and get at least a few of those skill points back. Why are people, even at level 40 or below, so keen to attack the elite sphinx speer man all the time? He may give three times the experience, but he is so hard to kill, compared with his non-elite friends, that he surely takes three times as long to get rid of.

Still, the greater experience that killing the sphinx types gives means that the second half of the evening added a further 45.84% - and as the earlier half had added 140 skill points, and the bit at the end another 14, Rage did end up 29 skill points ahead.

By the end of the evening, SirGalahad had got the horse into level 27. I think the older computer has earned some down-time tonight, so there won't be any pet-levelling, or merchanting, going on while I'm asleep this time.