Greater Experience

Apparently it was another rather lengthy maintenance time last night - if it started at around 5:00pm in California, it must still have been going until around midnight, so our American friends lost the whole evening. We are promised "something exciting very soon" in the way of new content, which I assume is mainly the new-look, but buggy, Juno.

One fix that has been brought in apparently is that the experience given by all monsters has been raised by an average of 50% - some just have had 5% added, some as much as 400%, the product manager says, though he was unable to supply a full list yet. One example he gave is that sphinx commanders now give an extra 50% experience, though, looking at the forum shoutbox, I soon saw that some early arrivals in the "grave room" disputed that. The old figure for their experience, in a solo party, was 22,089,028, which multiplied by a pbi and an xpb would be just over 265 million, so that in a combat party you might hope to hit 300 million fairly often - will that really rise to 450 million? Not this week, anyway, despite what the developers said, as the experience per "commie" currently remains unchanged.

Another new idea is an "Attendance System", which also boosts one's experience gain. If a specific character logs on for at least half an hour a day ( standing around in town is enough, actual fighting isn't needed), on the second day they'll get an extra 3% experience, on the third day an extra 4%, on the fourth day an extra 5%, and on the fifth day an extra 10% - and if they manage to "attend" every day after that, they will continue to get that extra 10%. So, if one wants to do some serious experience-gathering, you need to plan five days in advance...while if you, on the other hand, want to farm skill points, you'd have to only do so on alternate days. I see that an "attendance check" buff counts down at the top left of the screen, so that you don't need to use a stopwatch.

I was busy downstairs, and on more mundane computer tasks, until mid-afternoon, but MistressDomino did some more useful selling on Auzura-5, including some item drop boosters that I downloaded from the "records" section of the item mall, and moved across to her. And I managed to get today's "attendance check" completed for Rage, MrChuckNorris, Kaerella, MistressBlaze, and MistressDomina on Auzura, and Barbarienne, Kaerella, Keerella, and RedRydeR on Cariae...if I want all those characters to reach and maintain the 10% boost I'm going to be busy.

It was confirmed that, despite what Xuse2005 had told us, based no doubt on what the Korean developers had told him, the experience on the sphinx commanders was unchanged - which meant that both the ancient grey mummies and the anubis spear men are now better for experience, at least this week. Those wacky devs must have forgotten to change the actual figures for that particular monster type in last night's patch.

MistressDomino came out of merchant mode finally, having taken in enough new gold for me to be able to justify spending 1,250 million gold on a pair of mage leggings being sold via Roy's merchant mart by sirLOBB4. They are +13, blue-named, and have the usual five evasion-based bloodseals, so equipping them instead of the level 71 Darkpeal pants +14 increased MistessDomina's physical defence from 2239 to 2301, and more importantly increased her evasion from 1093 to 1283 - the main reason the Antistune Red Respiration Pants +13 were so expensive is because they have a sixth seal, offering a 30% increase to Stun resistance. Very useful if one is going to be fighting the anubis spear men!

There was time for a short afternoon session, and for it my level 41 witch, MistressSabina, went to the dire spike canines on level two of Maargadum jail, over on Auzura-5. As far as I could tell the experience they gave hadn't been boosted at all - I know I'm there more to get a few more skill points, but still! Sabina added 7.66% experience, 36 skill points, and 591 pet points.

As there was going to be double pet experience from six o'clock in the evening, UK time, I moved the level 24 pale blue horse that SirPerivale had raised a while ago across to RedRackham; Peri is only level 22, while Red, on level 35, can take a horse all the way to the start of level 37 without the animal starting to get extra-hungry. Red then went down to the gnoll lancers on Auzura-5, and started to work on his new acquisition.

This left SirPerivale without a pet, so he took a drake egg out of storage, and went to Lorraine, and then on to Jajan in Dratan, to get himself a brand-new dragon hatchling. He then headed for Merac, but, since he doesn't have a red name to reduce his attack, even at level 22 he hits bare-handed for 26, so that butchers and berserkers lost their health rather rapidly. He went to Maargadum Jail, but found that a level 41 dire spike canine wore his own health down a bit. He managed to get a regular level 40 spike canine back to the usual pet-levelling spot there, close to the teleporter, but it too was able to reduce his health a bit at times - though at least the canine's health stayed pretty much full. So, it looks as if Peri will need a pet that can give him a few levels of Armour Increase, before he would be able to do any afk pet-levelling there. Or, since four pieces of his armour set are +12, and able to have an extreme stone used on them to make them +13, his armour could be upgraded a bit more if strictly necessary.

RedRackham took charge of the level 24 pale blue horse, anyway, and went straight to the gnoll lancers on Auzura-5. The four hours of double pet experience meant that, by the end of the evening, the horse was more than halfway through level 26, so that was pretty good progress.

Normally on a Wednesday I need to log out of Last Chaos on the main computer to join up with some friends elsewhere, so I decided to do something relatively low-key for the first half of the evening; my level 98 mage Keerella headed for the Tomb of Theos, but just to visit the screaming zombies, with a view to getting a few skill points, and masses of pet points for her drake Greedo. The arrangements for later fell through, however, so the session ended up as a full-length one.

Keerella went on Cariae-5, with a view to being able to help a few lower-level characters who might be there wanting to "ks" a bit - and I soon had the mage DARKEN and the archer FIASEOxxx "assisting" me, after they had both politely asked if they could. I think the archer stayed long enough to add two or three levels, using a pbi, reaching around level 47. She then asked is she could switch over to her knight - so I was soon joined by the level 65 royal knight ERAGOON instead. Things generally went easily enough, though sometimes the place got a bit crowded. ERAGOON is looking forward to reaching level 73, as he has dual swords of that level, +15, waiting.

The assassin-rogue DIGENETHY did the trick of bring back a large mob of screaming zombies, and a few infected grey mummies, and then using Death Motion to turn them loose on everyone else, but people seem to be getting wise to that sort of thing, and generally just moved away. I had a number of them around me, so used chaos nova a few times, and a flame skill - I noticed that I did need to use a medium health potion to keep Kee's health up, and Greedo's health took a bit of a hit, which shows that even with Kee's excellent armour, going into a full mob of screamies is no picnic.

A sorcerer with a pet polar bear was trying to level his pet, but it got killed twice - luckily someone had a party recall, so he didn't have to pay to get into the Tomb again after going back to town and paying a million or so to get the poor thing unsealed. He did try to "hook" it behind a pillar at the side of the corridor, but it still tended to come out fighting sometimes, if he came too far back.

Towards the end another knight, the level 47 SIRMATTY, asked to ks a bit too, and, after ERAGOON had about a third disconnection, he was my only ks-er for the final few minutes, though a rogue called DangerDagger was asking to be power-levelled at the anubis spear men. But it had been a long enough session, by then, so my thoughts were fixed firmly on logging out.

The enhanced experience from a screaming zombie, up from 4,501,453 to 8,777,055 today, meant that Keerella, even when getting just around two-thirds of the experience from each kill, added exactly 2.00% during the evening, rather more than she'd managed from her recent adventures in the Tomb of Theos. 21 skill points were gained - and no less than 6982 pet points, though that only works out at around 14% of Greedo's current level.