A Change of Pace

I had a couple of shopping trips to make today, but I still managed to get the usual characters qualified for their daily "attendance allowance" to keep their bonus experience rate of 10%. There was time for a reduced-length trip to Maargadum Jail for MistressSabina, my level 42 witch, so, in a solo party with MistressBlaze, who did some herb-farming while she "attended", Sabina headed out to Merac.

I was glad to find that the 50% extra skill exp "turbo" event still hadn't been switched off - presumably the experience was increased too, though that isn't as obvious to spot. I wasn't in the room on the second floor of the Jail long before one of MistressDomina's ks-ing companions from yesterday's visit to the Tomb of Theos, the level 37 knight nwa4f, arrived, and suggested a combat party, so Sabina ended the link-up to MistresBlaze. He mentioned that he only has about 500 skill points, so a visit or two to Jail to get some more seems pretty sensible.

Having him in the party about halved the skill exp per kill, naturally, but hopefully between us we killed twice as fast. He didn't bother to pick up any gold - in fact, I think a couple of gems I got were actually dropped by the canines he had fought. He left slightly before I did; another knight appeared, suggesting a party, but I had to say I was about finished for the morning. Sabina had added 17.02%, 63 skill points, and 539 pet points - I did have to unequip her drake fairly often when the dire spike canines, and two-headed canines, attacked the poor thing.

Over lunch RedRackham was back in action - and for most of the afternoon too, as I had that second shopping trip to make. Still, there was time for Kaerella and RedRyder on the Katar server to take a trip out together to Prokion Temple, and the corridor room - a sorcerer did trespass a bit at times, but by the end of the session Kaerella was safely in level 37, and still getting useful amounts of both experience and skill exp, thanks to being in the combat party with Red, ten levels lower. Kaerella ended with 22.22% earned, along with 281 guild points, while RedRyder got 20.46% and 41 guild points, since she gets very little more than a seventh as much experience from Kae's kills. They each got 167 new skill points, which is great for Kaerella, though not really that good for Red, though it does take her over the 3k mark.

I had been thinking of taking Kaerella and RedRydeR off to the Tomb of Theos in the evening, but there was a new player in the shoutbox, Sweptmano, a level 23 healer, wondering how she could avoid dying so much - a couple of other players helped her, the gamesage Coraan and PkingArcher, but I thought I might as well log in over on Sarissa-5 to see if there was any advice etc needed. Kaerella over there is level 28, so we made a combat party (since Spentmano needs skill exp more than the regular kind), and went out to Prokion Temple. We killed some orc soldiers, and plenty of mummies - and after a while PkingArcher rode out to the temple, she'd been busy grinding in some high-level spot before, and traded some gold and other goodies across to Sweptmano - Coraan earlier had given her some quality stones and green herb leaves for her pony.

Sweptmano now had enough money to buy the 30/32 +10 armour set, which it is useful to be able to wear from the moment one can, rather than waiting until level 31 when you get it free. So I ended up searching through Roy's merchant mart, and found the five pieces at a reasonable price - as Kaerella herself only had about 700k, Sweptmano passed across 10 million, which I thought ought to be enough. I found one knight piece and four sorcerer pieces, all put in by different people, for a total of 5,899,999 gold, which I thought was pretty good... it cost 144,000 for Collector Ryl to convert it all into healer gear. I passed the pieces across to Sweptmano, along with the nearly four million change, but she insisted on trading back two million to me for my efforts.... though I at least managed to trade across three level 26 items I'd picked up, plus three level 29 smelting stones that I'd been carrying, so that she was able to upgrade her current armour set a little.

We went back to Prokion Temple after that for about another half hour; PkingArcher (I assumed, though it might have been Coraan) had given her some sp-boosting items like melons, so she used a few of those, while we fought orc soldiers as fast as we could. One problem she had was fairly frequent disconnections, so it was just as well I was there to protect her from the orcs when that was happening. Apparently her family acquired a new telephone, and whenever it rings, it breaks the connection to the game...

Anyway, I logged out a little later than usual; Sweptmano had just logged back in from another disconnection, I don't know if she risked going back to the orcs solo. Kaerella had gone up by 41.49%, plus 221 skill points and 131 guild points for the local branch of Discipline. Sweptmano had reached level 24, and her pony had added a couple of levels I think. And over on Auzura, RedRackham, despite being ks'd a couple of times, did some good work on his pale blue horse, getting it into level 35 before the end of the evening.