Combat Party Time

There was time before lunch for an hour's worth of fighting in the Tomb of Theos, so for this session Keerella was on the older computer, in a combat party with Barbarienne, my level 105 archer. We went to Cariae-4, since that ought to be less crowded than C-5, and entered the Tomb.

Barbarienne fought a single screaming zombie, now green-named for her, at the start, just to see what the condition of the place was like - and it dropped a heaven stone. After that, with Kee following Barb, the duo ran down to the anubis spear man room, and found only one person fighting there - a knight who kept right in a corner fighting a spear man, I never actually saw them move from there so eventually decided they were pet-levelling.

Barbarienne began a platinum blessed iris, plus a crit potion and a berserker potion, and started to fight the anubis spear men - and Keerella, without any pots, started to fight the sphinx fighters that are also in that room, which give slightly more experience than the screaming zombies.

The only incident was when a ks-ing night shadow called HellAeoN came in, attracted all the sphinx fighters, and used his area of effect skills on them. This meant Keerella had to target a more distant sphinx fighter - though whatever skills a night shadow has meant it was attracted to HellAeoN too, who then objected to Kee "ks-ing" him, which seemed a bit rich. Before he left, he gratuitously attacked Barbarienne's current spear man with some vivid green skill, which meant that Barb got about 70 or 80 million less experience when she finally killed it. I do hope I get an opportunity to return the favour some time...

Anubis spear men take a while to kill, so during the hour Barbarienne just used 26 experience boosters; she added just 5.46%, and 1039 pet points, while Keerella added 0.40% and 989 pet points. They each earned 4 new skill points. I got the feeling that the "Condition" of the Tomb was a bit middling, both Barb and Kee quite often took quite a bit of damage.

I managed to fit in four hours of spear man farming in the afternoon; the Tomb's Condition seemed much improved, with no more healing needed, and rather faster killing. For the first hour, Barbarienne used 38 experience boosters, and added 8.04%, using the crit and berserker potions again. After that I added a platinum adrenalin potion as well, which acted to speed up Barb's attack, so that during the second hour of the afternoon 47 experience boosters were used, and 9.82% experience was added. The third hour disposed of another 46 boosters, for 9.70%, and the final hour saw Barb crack open a last 51 boosters, for 10.52%. I had the room entirely to myself for that last hour; previously for an hour or so the night shadow AIRON had been in the room too, and we were able to chat a bit. Generally he only went for the one anubis spear man on the other side of the room that the pet-levelling knight Dyonysos wasn't using, but occasionally a swapping of spear men did cause a very slight pause in Barb's battling.

I did ask in the shoutbox about people pet-levelling on anubis spear men, and Supraklr said that temple knights do do that sometimes. It does seem a little selfish to clog up the spear man room like that, but it's a slight risk - people who disapproved, or just wanted that spear man as one of the two they could grind on, could kill it, and then use it as normal every time it respawned.

Given that each anubis spear man killed, with a pbi running and an xpb used, helped along by the combat party boost, gave very slightly over 0.20% experience, the whole 105th level looks like using 500 experience boosters, as well as ten each of the relevant potions. So, levelling is starting to get expensive. Reaching level 106 will mean that Barbarienne can wear her new leggings, and thus the old +15 ones can be moved across to Kaerella. Reaching level 107 should have a similar effect on new boots, though I don't yet have a level 107 helm for Barb... and level 109 would allow the purchase of a new more powerful bow. That seems a long way off!

After an extended Sunday early evening food break, it was Kaerella on Katar who logged in, joined by RedRyder there. Kaerella is level 35, and RedRyder 26, so another combat party was the idea. Perhaps due to a certain Association Football match in South Africa, Prokion Temple on Katar-5 wasn't very busy, and I was able to claim the back room, with the orc sergeants and orc axemen. Although she can't wear the +10 hood and boots yet, the other three armour pieces meant that RedRyder didn't have any trouble as she stood watching, letting Kaerella do all the work.

By the time the Sunday Quiz was approaching, Kaerella had added 44.09%, and RedRyder had added 37.56% - and they'd each got 322 skill points. Red will have to start her main sp-farming when she reaches level 27...but Kae now has over 18,000 skill points saved up, which ought to be just about all she needs for a while.

The Quiz itself didn't run smoothly - there was a glitch which meant that some questions got replaced by other questions while they were counting down the remaining time. That meant some quick moves across to the other side had to be made, and sadly on the twentieth question itself, MistressDomino wasn't fast enough, so she only got the five heaven stones, not the full fifteen. Kaerella was in time, though... she had been having problems along the way, even though she wasn't accidentally clicked on anyone else, often

when I used "W" to move her to the other side of the room, when I let go of the key she'd immediately try to run back the way she'd come, until I clicked her onto someone else who'd got there.

So, twenty instead of thirty heaven stones; the forum shoutbox was a little busy with people who'd been kicked out that way, and the game masters were wondering what the glitch had been. Some players from Hatzring were there too, as, with advance warning, right after the quiz they'd briefly taken that server down to put right an instability with Hatzring-3. Hatzring was soon back in business, however.

Over on Cariae-4, it was time for a little selling, so MistressDomina logged in, and went into merchant mode, while Kaerella just stood around chatting with Elvastar, alias Ratel, who on Auzura is just level 32 at the moment, a specialist sorcerer. He had lost his connection during the quiz, sadly. He was now using a platinum super skill pill and a stock of skill point boosters, to get Elva a stock of skill poinst for future use, and it didn't take very long to get over a thousand sp - though the skill point boosters vanished with frightening rapidity. In the end he used 408 over the pssp's hour, for 1561 skill points.

MistressDomina didn't do badly, selling out of moonstones, physical attack potions, mana stealers, chaos balls, and berserker potions, plus a few item drop boosters. The moonstone boxes, large attack potions, damage boosters, and lucky smelting stones didn't want to go, it seemed, but a useful 230 million came in, which may mean a bit of shopping for armour becomes possible again on Cariae.