Monday 29 March 2010

A Science Fiction Quiz


Galahad kept busy with his Cariae-4 pet-levelling overnight, so that the horse easily reached level 35; he continued on through the morning and over lunchtime too, so that by the end of his stint level 36 was only a couple of hours away. Keerella on Sarissa-4 did well with some selling through the night, too, with almost everything sold by morning - just a few moonstone boxes were left, and a couple of hit rate enhancing rings that I must have put too high a price on.

I wasn't sure how uninterrupted I'd be after coffee, so, after finding, by sending Cariae's Kaerella out to kill a fox, that the double experience and skill exp on that server had ended, I opted to do a little work on Sarissa with my rogue RedRyder, who hadn't even done the starter dungeon, and so was on level one. Thanks to Elizabeth's Enhancement, by lunchtime Red had reached level ten, having done all the usual low-level quests and killed plenty of foxes, deer, wolves, berserk wolves, and jaguars. The first pandora's box I encountered dropped some physical defence minerals, which are always welcome; the other one I found released a level 30 beast, so I kept my distance. Luckily by that time I'd bought RedRyder a level 13 crossbow, so she hadn't needed to get close to the box to open it.

For the afternoon, still on Sarissa-5, SirDarth and Keerella headed for Prokion Temple again. There was a titan called Rokas_Bledys in the back room, I discovered when I entered, but, given that he didn't seem to be killing all that quickly, I did wonder if there'd be room for me too. "Ah, didn't see you for a moment - are there enough orcs for both of us, do you think?" He didn't reply immediately, and I tried to add him to the combat party, but he cancelled the request. "So get lost ;)" he finally intoned. "Ah you do speak." "C'mon, find other place", he added, as I headed for the doorway. I think that a combat party, plus buffs like divine shield, would probably have helped him, though it's hard to be sure without knowing his level. "Fair enough, if you want them all - sometimes another player is useful, to keep the mobs down", I said, and headed off. Maybe I should have offered him a solo party...

Anyway, SirDarth and Keerella moved across to the mirror-image room, which as usual was free - even the couple of orc soldiers there still give useful skill experience. Keerella tucked herself in by a brazier; she did occasionally get attacked, but, thanks to her new armour, took very little damage before Darth hurried over to deal with the orc in question. By the end of the session SirDarth had added 64.59%, and 479 guild points for Discipline, while Keerella had gone up by 36.90%, adding another 74 guild points. They had each received 341 skill points.

SirDarth went up to level 33 during the session, so that the orc axemen are now blue for him, even if they do still give plenty of experience and skill experience. Back in town, Keerella spent every last skill point she had to upgrade various skills, but she still needs plenty more skill points. Once she has safely reached level 27, I guess she'll need to earn sp and experience, spend the sp and lose the experience by dying a few times, and repeat as necessary.

For the evening, the plan was to get Sarissa's RedRyder through her apprenticeship, so, once Kaerella had become her guardian, Kae stayed in town to give her a solo party while Red went off to Velpist Temple and its wandering zombies. It didn't take long to get to level 12, and then, as she had picked up a drake egg in the temple, she took a trip to Dratan, after talking to Lorraine, got her hatchling... and then headed for Prokion Temple, via Shuraine's oasis. Taking the slightly longer route meant that the trip was easy enough, none of the clever foxes or sand golems got near enough to attack her.

Once the entrance to Prokion Temple was on RedRyder's scroll of memorizing, Red logged out, and she and Kaerella swapped computers, so that Kae could take the lead, Then they both went to the Temple. The plan was for Kaerella to fight orc soldiers, plus mummies and the occasional orc fighter, within compass-range of RedRyder, while Red stayed safely in the starting hallway. I first of all went to the far end of the hall's left-hand corridor, to the start of the circular room, and fought mainly orc soldiers from there, sharing the place with a knight called SStoneColdKiller - he did offer to give me horse buffs, if I went outside with him, but joining and leaving parties seemed a bit complicated, and when entering Prokion Temple there is always the risk of ending up stuck in the foundations.

A rogue called eXistance also started using the room - as SStoneColdKiller kept leaving the room to renew his horse buffs, he couldn't really claim to have it reserved for himself. She asked if I could not attack the orc soldiers - and, when I saw that she was using a pssp (not a beginner one) plus a crit potion and some other expensive buffs, I moved across to the right-hand room, which was a bit less busy.

It didn't take that long a session to get RedRyder up to level 20 - we continued just a little longer, to get Kaerella up to level 27, so that she can now wear all of the 30/32 +10 armour set...and a little longer, to get the circlet and boots their first bloodseals. Then it was time to head back to Randol, so that Red could do the level 20 quests, including getting the "Fatal Neckless of Rogue" accessory, to be used from 20 until the end of level 35. The various quest rewards actually moved RedRyder on into level 21, which is handy, as it means she'll be moving straight from her starter armour to the 25/27 set.

So, RedRyder had gone up by eight levels in the Prokion party, while Kaerella had added 48.62%, with her experience semi-frozen, so that she donated her first 99 guild points to Discipline. They each gained 153 skill points there.

[GM]Kali's "Sci-Fi Trivia" Quiz was the main event of the evening, starting on Katar-5 at 9:30, UK time. Kaerella attended, and managed to be the first person to type in the correct answer to three of the fifteen questions - Hal as the homicidal computer in "2001", "Time Bandits" as a Terry Gilliam movie, and Flash Gordon as Dale Arden's friend. So, at the end I had to whisper [GM]Kali, who then teleported me right across Juno to the elder drakes' valley, and gave me three platinum blessed irises. I asked if the questions would be different on the other servers, and the GM assured me that they would be. She also spawned all the winners our own set of hands of loot, as we had been whisked away just after loot had been spawned for all the attendees.

So, SirDarth went to the second quiz, which was on Cariae - after all, Kaerella could do with some more PBIs there! Some of the questions turned out to be the same, and I was first with "Time Bandits" again. I also got that the characters Arthur, Agatha and Dashiell were named after mystery writers (Conan Doyle, Christie and Hammett I assume, though I only realised who Arthur was a bit later), and that the movie "Zardoz" took its title from "The WiZARD of OZ"...

It was growing late by then; SirDarth got teleported to the same spot, and got his three PBIs, though I didn't notice any general loot-spawning for us lucky winners that time. The quizzes were quite fun, though 15 was less than the "approximately 25 to 30 questions" that the events page on the website had mentioned. And I think all the questions were movie-related, with Men in Black, Star Wars, Star Trek, Spaceballs, ET, and Demolition Man also involved - the events page had said "movies, games, books etc." Still, it was an improvement over most such events, for sure.

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