Death in the Early Evening

MistressDomina got into merchant mode fairly early, for a Sunday morning, and it wasn't long before she sold out of her heaven stones; some damage boosters and a lucky spell book or two sold, as well. I'm just about out of item drop boosters on Cariae now, however, so there weren't any more of those to sell.

I logged MrChuckNorris in over on Auzura-5, mainly to check how ready he was to go soloing in the Tomb of Theos. One thing I did was use up some of his tool aids to increase his stock of green herb leaves, since his drake is sure to take plenty of damage there. He had a good supply of unidentified platinum refining stones in storage, so I opened a few of those, and got the three +1 and two +2 stones ready for him; he could do with a supply of power potions, and to borrow an accessory with 10% suction of life from another character, but otherwise he is just about ready to rumble.

My level 47 wizard on Auzura, MistressBlaze, also did some herb farming, and mined some quality stones too. She then went out to the sphinx fighters and sphinx "speer" men in Dratan's grassy south-west uplands, staying just long enough to reach level 48. She is a character without a big reserve of skill points, unlike my witch MistressSabina, but back in Dratan City I spent 327 sp to get her the first five levels of Freeze Arrow. It's not as useful as Terra Spear, but it's handy to have.

The new level meant that MistressBlaze qualified for a couple of quests; one was just a message-delivery to Rau at the Column of Magic, but the other entailed a ride down to the south of the Merac map to fight a few Salamander Ruins. That didn't take long; once she'd got her quest reward for that, her totals for the morning were 18.03%, 16 skill points, and 68 pet points.

The main afternoon session belonged to Kaerella on Katar again, who managed to get the back room in Prokion Temple on Katar-5 to herself. Before heading out, though, she'd checked in with the Master Healer skills trainer, and learned the first level of Rise Focus 2, for 110 skill points, increasing her long range physical hit rate by 44.

It didn't take Kaerella long to get that 110 sp back, and by the end of the afternoon she'd gone up by 6.21%, plus 72 guild points, and 288 skill points. It would be nice to get Kae up to a stash of 20k unused sp before she gets her experience gain unfrozen - so, just another 1,100 to go.

After the early evening food break, my sole assassin, Tairen's Memree, found a number of quests to do, in both Merac and Dratan. There were various messages and packages to do with a wedding in Merac Village, plus a trip out to Owl Village, where Memree was requested to get three orc soldier hearts. That tied in quite handily with the border guard captain's wish for Memree to kill ten highlanders - so Memree rode down the road south, before using the memory scroll to move straight to Owl Village for one reward, before getting two more rewards back near the teleporter.

The Dratan quests involved poison mists and their neighbours, the brutal deer of the desert. "Mucus of deadly poison" was required from the poison mists, and "horn of sand deer" from the deer. I decided to try to head across to the south-western uplands after that, remembering a journey across with another character some time ago.

Somehow I managed to avoid any sight of the masters of secret technique, which, given their magic attack, was useful - I did however get three dragons following me at one point. As an assassin, Memree can do the Death Motion skill, to lie on the ground apparently dead...it seemed to me that she still took damage from the dragons' fiery breath, so it was lucky her health wasn't too low at the time. When she stood up again, they came back, but Memree was able to out-run them, and then rode past the akane golems. The various types of wafe aren't aggressive, so just edging past the sphinx fighters and sphinx speer men got Memree safely to the camp, where she quickly memorised the location, before fighting a couple of sphinx fighters. A third sphinx fighter, though, unfortunately got in a couple too many lucky blows when it was nearly dead, and managed to kill her - so her "beginner" resurrection scroll has now been used up.

After getting her quest rewards, Memree finished her session in Merac, mainly with the elite frenzied berserkers, though a knight called Rebel75 insisted on fighting them too, which slowed things down a bit. There was then time for a little bit of green herb leaf and quality stone farming, before it was time to head for the Sunday Quiz. In all, Memree had added 40.68%, 68 skill points, and 572 pet points.

The Sunday Quiz itself went smoothly, after last week's drama - it was a little strange to see the question as to whether [GM]JediMike or [GM]OgreKing ran the "Old Skool Treasure Hunt", but enough of us knew that, when we used to get such an event, it was Mike who ran it, for everyone to migrate to the correct half of the room. So, MistressDomino and Kaerella left on the 22nd question, with their prizes safely in their inventories - Kae passed her heaven stones and moonstones over to MD.

I did see Ratel at the quiz, along with Liezl and Argoth, and we wished each other good luck; this time I think Ratty did make it through to the end without any disconnections, at least I didn't see any "logged out" messages. After that, well, it seemed a useful idea to move loot from various characters across to MistressDomino, so that I can do a bit of selling on Auzura for a change during the coming week. The post-Quiz lag soon settled down generally, but when MD tried to open the pages of Roy's merchant mart, that was, as usual at such a time, completely lagged out.

MistressDomina's selling spree on Cariae-4 had ended just before the quiz, with some healthy sales, so that her gold situation is pretty good - until I find the level 107 helm that Barbarienne needs, or some other expensive but vital item, anyway.