Two New Investments

The changes from last night's regular weekly maintenance are as usual disappointingly minor. The July 4th event has ended, as expected, and a couple of Mondshine quests have been made repeatable rather than just once a day, while the "giant skill pill" now works as it should, instead of apparently just adding to one's physical offence, and an exploit which let people wear higher-level armour if it was melded has, they say, been fixed.

Talking about melding, there was also news about that bug which meant that people have for the last two weeks been unable to meld costume covers onto their armour. A week ago we were led to believe that the developers were apparently "still working on it", but it was "trickier to fix than had been expected", or words to that effect. And now this time, the Aeria people have had to shame-facedly admit that the change was in fact deliberate. "

Costumes CANNOT be melded to socketed gear, this is AS INTENDED by the developers. We are unhappy with this as well and are working on getting it changed.

" It just shows how terrible the communication is between Aeria's California branch and the developers in South Korea, despite product manager Aeria_ks1lent's trip out to meet them.

MistressDomina went into merchant mode for the morning on Cariae-4, and managed to sell some item drop boosters. SirKit logged on briefly too, and found a couple of new quests in Dratan City. The Herbologist Trainer there had "The First Class Spiderweb Collection", the first quest needing a trip into the Temple of Forgetfulness, while Occultist Pianon offered "Sphinx's Wicked Intention", which meant that Kit needed to take a trip out to the sphinx fighters and speer men, and kill five of each.

There was no great point in heading to the Temple of Forgetfulness until Kit has at least the quest to kill the legendary slayers as well, but a quick trip out to the sphinx types was easy enough to fit in. Even staying around until a second set of horse buffs ran out only got the experience gain up by 0.41%, but Kit did add a couple of skill points, as well as 67 pet points for his drake.

Back in Randol, a visit to the Master Knight skills trainer revealed that level eight of Concentration was now available, for 200 skill points, so Kit got that - it increases the skill's "power" from 55 to 70, which ought to mean that it improves the chance of someone's skill, such as Snare or Shield Strike, succeeding.

I then switched across to RedRydeR, my level 87 phoenix rogue, and had a look through Roy's merchant mart, hoping to find a good level 85 crossbow at a reasonable price - and I found a level 85 Darkness Shadow Bow being sold by RedMind for 450 million, which seemed good to me. It is a blue-named one, with all five bloodseals - which means that on top of its 430 basic attack, and the 633 + 75 for the +15, it increases its long range physical attack by 9 + 9, all types of physical attack by 8 + 8, and attack by 5. So, it's a more powerful beast than a green-named crossbow - though a green-named one does have useful hit rate extras. RedRydeR's old level 69 Pillgrip Bow +15 meant that her physical offence stat was 1685 (with a 1239 stat for her physical hit rate); now her physical offence has moved up to 2085, even if her hit rate stat has dropped by 74. That just left Red needing level 87 boots, to replace the level 77 ones she has been wearing, one of the armour items kindly given to her by MEDSx.

After helping transfer RedRydeR's old weapon across to SirKit, MistressDomina went back into merchant mode. SirKit then visited Collector Ryl to transform the level 69 crossbow (for 820,000 gold) into Eglain dual swords +15. Kit is on level 64 at the moment, so can't use the new weapon without penalty until he levels up, but when he does reach 65, his physical offence stat will, in turn, rise from 1312 with his level 61 Torain dual swords to 1448. He also took the opportunity to change Red's old 70/72 armour set into its knightly equivalent; when he can wear it all, at level 67, his physical defence will rise from 2337 to 2916, it seems.

After lunch RedRyder did some green herb leaf farming, and then passed over the results to MistressDomina, along with some other items that had been in storage on her account; MD then went back into merchant mode, and the herbs sold rather quickly, so that was a relatively quick five million or so earned. She stayed in merchant mode for the rest of the afternoon, and into the evening, though sales were a bit slow.

RedRyder had seen a pair of fine b5e level 87 boots for sale via Roy's merchant mart; the problem was that they were rather expensive, as +15 items do tend to be, so I was hoping that MistressDomina would take in enough gold to cover their cost. Customers, however, seemed few and far between, though MD's gold reserves did gradually increase over time.

The main afternoon session, however, involved Kaerella on Katar, who, after her recent big move forward, adding 44% in level 35, needed to move a little more slowly, just in a solo party. The back room of Prokion Temple on Katar-5 was available, so Kaerella settled in there.

I did have one visitor, a rogue called lOrD, a name that looks rather strange until one decides that it starts with a lower-case "L". She did stay for a few minutes, trying to kill everything before I could, but I rode it out, and, since I was killing enough orcs to make the place not really attractive for her, she eventually backed down and left, though she did look in again later to check that I was still in charge there.

The session just added 5.46% and 53 guild points for Discipline, along with 254 skill points - and of course the skill points were the main object of the exercise. At that rate, doing the whole of level 35 in a solo party, in that back room, would have brought in 4,650 skill points.

For the evening session, while MistressDomina continued to try to sell some goodies on Cariae-4, my level 41 rogue over on Tairen, xRAGEx, logged in, and headed for Maargadum Jail to get a few skill points, and some experience, from the spike canines, dire spike canines, and their two-headed friends. As this was to be one of my early-finishing Wednesday evenings, I only spent about two hours there, almost entirely on the second level. Rage did reach level 42, while adding 29.58%, 147 skill points, and 1224 pet points for her level 37 drake.

Since Rage had levelled up, there was a new quest waiting in Merac Village, "Spike Canines Skin", requiring Rage to kill a few of the Jail's canines to get five skins. This shouldn't be a problem... it's slightly strange to have a quest to kill creatures that are a level or two below one's own level, but it's all good experience.

MistressDomina's sales did continue through the evening, and finally, when I was able to check up on things again, she had just taken in enough money to buy RedRydeR her boots - Ebade Chaser Boots +15, with the full five evasion seals and the blue name, sold via Roy's merchant mart by Cloroform for 899 million gold. So, Red is now pretty well equipped for her next adventures, or will be when the boots are passed over to her tomorrow.

I did think about leaving MistressDomina selling overnight, to get a bit of gold together again...but both computers are eager to download some new Windows updates, so would tend to switch themselves off automatically as soon as I turned my back.