It's lucky that I wasn't attempting any merchant activity, or pet-levelling, overnight, as there was a "quick one hour unscheduled maintenance" at some point. "
We noticed some instability with a few of the game servers and made some small backend changes to fix the issues
" Aeria_ks1lent reported. They also managed to speed up the process of buying stuff from the in-game item mall, apparently.
For the morning session, my level 98 wizard Keerella headed for the Tomb of Theos on Cariae-5 - and SirKit, my level 55 royal knight, went along too, though not in the same party, as his experience gain would be severely "capped" if he was partied with someone more than fifteen levels above him.
The Condition bar bug was still in effect, so going in was a bit of a gamble - but things seemed okay, and generally things worked smoothly, with Keerella attacking a screaming zombie, luring it back to a safe distance down the corridor, and then standing up to it and just hitting normally, while SirKit also attacked. Kit had the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff to double his experience and skill exp gain and increase his attack a little; there were some rare occasions when a second zombie got involved too, and a couple of time Kit did take damage, but he was never in any immediate danger.
There were two solo parties available, so for the solo party boost Keerella joined one, and SirKit joined the other - and eventually they both became party leader, leaving the whole of the subserver's solo party goodness in my hands. Kee gave up leadership over the lunch break, but nobody seemed interested in taking the responsibility in Kit's party, which was full anyway, so he just kept the position while I was afk. With the usual party member turnover, Kee regained her party's leadership later.
By the end of the morning, Keerella had only added 0.49%, but she had gained 10 skill points, and 1696 pet points; SirKit, on the other hand, had gone up 119.30%, and so moved into level 56, so that he could wear the mail and leggings from the 60/62 armour set. He didn't get any skill exp, but his drake got 1328 pet points.
My duo stayed in the Tomb over lunch, but SirKit did have to return to Randol at the start of the afternoon session, to get the Elizabuff renewed. We had a pretty long afternoon session, so that Kit's buff did run out shortly before the end. I had quite a number of people besides Kit ks-ing Kee; curiously the only person who actually asked permission to do that didn't stay long. EgyptMage was around for most of the afternoon, and the temple knight xTALICx was a constant part of the team, except when he went back to town to learn his new skills when he reached level 38. He used teleportation a few times, but I had to ask him not to, as it really was simpler for Kee to get and maintain aggro by just using her ranged attack. Bringing an aggressive level 100 zombie in next to a level 38 character could mean a sticky end was on the cards.
There were plenty more "unofficial helpers", mainly rogues and an archer or two; the titan THor arrived mid-afternoon and didn't object to their "helping" him, luckily. I did try to convince one low-level rogue, around level 22, that she really ought to have more than 500 skill points saved up before trying to power-level, but I don't think I got very far. When I finally left, the remaining people were xTALICx, an assassin and an archer; I don't know if they were able to continue, but it may well have got a bit dangerous.
During the afternoon Keerella added another 0.79%, plus 15 more skill points, and 2719 pet points; SirKit went up by 153.47%, and 1958 pet points. Kit reached level 58, so was able to wear the whole 60/62 armour set, which is a strange one - for knights the gloves and boots are "Nation", the shirt and pants are "Drun", and the helm is "Juellepac". He was also using the level 61 Torain dual swords +15, and by the end of the afternoon all the bloodseals had been applied.
Back in town, SirKit was able to learn the sixth and final level of Vitality Control, increasing his rate of health regeneration, so that's useful. Keerella had finally got enough skill points for the fifth and final level of Spell Focus again, which increases magical attack hit rate for five minutes - 151 sp may not seem much, but at her level raising her stash from 62 had taken quite a few sessions. The next target I suppose would be level nine of Freeze Arrow, but that will need 550 sp. Ah well, she has 12 sp left over, just another 538 to go...
After the food break, in Dratan City SirKit got quests to deal severely with some akane golems and wafe debirches, which involved teleporting to the sphinx fighters and backtracking a bit, and then, after the wafe debirches were dealt with, he got another quest to kill "wafe thieves", which seemed to mean wafe debirch leaders and wafe revertins. The quest rewards came to 8.84% and 51 skill points, while the totals for the session, including fighting, were 9.64%, 63 skill points, and 116 pet points.
At 6:30 UK time an announcement came up, "All Hide and Seek events today have been cancelled, enjoy 175% SP gain for the next 4 hours!" That was then extended to "Enjoy 175% SP gain until 3pm PDT!" So, it seemed a good idea to switch over to a skill exp farmer. I opted for my level 35 version of Kaerella over on Katar - so she logged in over there, as did my local pet-leveller ColonelScarlet, to supply the solo party boost and do a few hours of work on his level 39 pink drake.
The back room of Katar-5's Prokion Temple was actually free, so Kaerella settled in there, and was almost uninterrupted - there were a few people who looked in and then tiptoed away, and as often happens a couple of people who ran in, found that the room was a dead end, and hurried out again. Kae stayed there until the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff had just counted down to zero - by which time she'd added just 7.75% experience and 90 guild points for Discipline, and earned a very useful 447 skill points.
It was just as well I'd chosen Katar, as at around nine, UK time, there was a server crash - this time involving Tairen. As usual the forum shoutbox got rather busy rather quickly, and a number of GMs appeared to reassure people... [GM]Darasuum admitted that he had eaten the server cords, though he may have been bluffing. I even did a small bit of assistance, reassuring people that "account already logged in" messages were just a symptom of the Tairen server problem, and shouldn't be taken seriously.
ColonelScarlet managed a useful pet-levelling session, though, as he currently hits a gnoll lancer for 20 damage at a time bare-handed, the lancer in question's health did fall over time, and after three hours or so was below 50%. Still, the pink drake got past the 40% mark in level 39 - once Kaerella starts adding a few levels, she will have a useful buff from that pet.
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