A Varied Evening

Two things happened right at the end of yesterday evening - one good, and one bad. The bad one could have been a lot worse, though! I suddenly noticed that the screen of SirDarth fighting a gnoll lancer on Sarissa-4 seemed to be rather fuller of gnoll fur than usual, and, zooming the view out a bit, saw that he was actually surrounded and being attacked by three gnoll soldiers, who are pet-eaters - and the drake was down to 76% health. So, the first thing to do was un-equip the drake before it could get killed.

I saw, from the note of some experience and skill exp gained, that the gnoll lancer had been killed, or "ks'd" - and I also saw the mage serina coming back with half a dozen more gnoll soldiers for me, which she brought right up to where SirDarth was standing. She then teleported to a few yards away, so that they forgot about her and started attacking Darth.

So, serina is still up to her evil little tricks against pet-levellers. Oh well, Darth had succeeded in getting that drake up to a useful level, so I may not need to do any more pet-levelling work on that server for a while. It was late in the evening, so, after standing there for a while, with even the big group of gnoll soldiers unable to do any damage to him, SirDarth logged out.

The other thing to mention was the arrival of two emails from Aeria, one from "The RT System itself" and one from "support". The one from "The RT System itself" referred to the second sending of my request to have a weapon upgraded, after the first attempt had had a "Failed to Send Message, please try again", and was just a standard "Incorrect Submission" job, but "support" was better. "

Dear MistressDomina,

Congratulations on your Master Stone Upgrade qualification. Your Master

Stone Upgrade is now complete. Your Red devil Staff has been upgraded

from 15 to 17. Enjoy!"

So, I logged in with MistressDomina on Auzura, and yes indeed, her level 85 staff had been upgraded from +15 to +17. Now, she just needs to gain another five levels so that she can use it...and she also needs to get the 85/87 armour set, which will be expensive.

The successful upgradeled me to wonder how the new socketing system will affect Master Stone upgrades. Since, in effect, the Game Master would have destroyed MD's old +15 staff and created a +17 one, would he or she also have taken the time to replace any sockets that had been added? It would slow down the process of going through a whole long list of people who had qualified for upgrades. Or do they have a way to change an item's in-game coding now?

Today there would be no actual adventuring until the evening session, but RedRackham went out to the gnoll lancers on Cariae-4 to do some more work on his drake, moving it on through level 37. As I'd noticed at the low-level MMS last night that RedRyder on Hatzring had only a level one hatchling, it seemed a good idea to let my pet-leveller on that server, LordDarth, do some work on a hatchling. He is actually still holding the level 37 horse that RedRyder ought to have, so a trade of two pets can be made to RedRyder before too long.

LordDarth isn't a red-named, minimum-hit type pet-leveller, so I was interested to see how he'd get on, now that the bare-handed attack speed has been raised. His pet-levelling has always been done on level five of Maargadum Jail, sparring with a death mask lancer, which was strong enough to take his hits of 44 damage without losing health.

Well, the new situation is that the death mask lancer does lose health, even without LordDarth having any hit rate enhancing accessories equipped...but not all the time. The health decline was slow - but if Darth wanted to reliably go for long sessions down in the Jail, he would need to get at least a slight decrease to his power, by getting a red name. For the first hour or so, the lancer's health bar went down about four times as quickly as the hatchling's hunger bar, but then it started to recover. So, things remain a bit unpredictable. Darth did actually get a disconnection at around 11:30, but RedRackham rode through safely - which is strange, as the Cariae server is usually the most likely to play up at that sort of time in the morning. Darth's run back down the Jail's levels was enlivened by a mass of gold to pick up, along with a pan flute, which all helps.

On his second visit to the death mask lancer, the same thing happened - the lancer's health dropped steadily, and then rallied. Both Darth and Red had a disconnection just before two o'clock, which was probably my modem misbehaving; by then Darth's new hatchling was near the top of level five, and up to 98% Sympathy. RedRackham's drake had recently reached level 38. Again after Darth's return the death mask lancer's health fell steadily, and then rallied.

By the time I was ready to actually do some playing, LordDarth's hatchling had reached level nine - while RedRackham had, out in the open, got his drake more than a quarter of the way through level 38.

MrChuckNorris had a brief session; he got the quest to kill curd hadians and twin hadians in the Forgotten Temple from the Archbishop in Dratan, and teleported to the temple's entrance. Running past the legendary slayers, it didn't take long to get the necessary kills, and once he'd moved back to town, the Archbishop gave him his reward - and then asked him to go back and kill some jumping devils. So, this time he ran past the slayers and the hadians, and killed the jumping devils, reaching the final room. He still had a couple more to kill when his horse buffs ran out, but didn't encounter any problems. The quest rewards added up to 2.77% experience and 16 skill points, the actual fighting gave only a little extra, making the totals for the whole brief session 3.39% and 19 skill points. It's just as well Chuck doesn't need to farm in the Temple, as it would be rather slow going.

The main part of the evening saw Kaerella in action - my level 34 archer on the Katar server, that is. It seemed a good idea to get some of her quests done, though I'll wait until she is level 35, or maybe even 36, before claiming the rewards. In Merac she already had the quest to kill some bandits and pilferers, and she was able to get the one to kill berserkers as well, so she took a trip south out of the village to get those ticked off her list. In Dratan, she had the two salamander quests to do, one to collect their tails, and one to collect their skins. These aren't the easy kind of quest where every kill, or about every other kill, effortlessly deposits a new quest item into the quests part of the inventory - these two quests require the items to actually be dropped by the salamanders, or the elite basilisk, and picked up into the normal inventory.

To begin with, a number of the salamander skins dropped, but no tails - but then things switched over, and Kaerella ended up with about double the number of tails needed before the tenth skin dropped. A few of the socket-filling gemstones dropped...and the elite basilisk dropped a crossbow that already had a socket. I commented in the forum shoutbox, and [GM]Ozymandias agreed that some drops were like that - but if you wanted a chance of more sockets, you could still run the process that adds sockets to an item. I then asked him if items with sockets would be a problem for master stone events, but he told me that having a GM add master stone type extra +1s to an item wouldn't harm its range of sockets, so that's good to know.

Personally, I don't think I am likely to make the effort to add sockets and gemstones to items below level 73, or, in practice, level 85, it seems too much expense and hassle, particularly if Collector Ryl not only removes sockets if he changes the class of an item, he makes it impossible to socket it again.

Once the salamander quests were completed, Kaerella moved into Prokion Temple nearby, to spend some time with the orc axemen and sergeants. The back room was in use, so I ended up on the central gallery, above the central stairs, and in one of the rooms leading off it. I checked the "parties recruiting members" window quite a few times, but whenever I applied to the one party listed, I got a "party is full" message...so if it was full, why was it still showing up on the list?

By the end of her session, Kaerella had added 10.95% experience, 149 skill points, and 107 guild points, plus, from the outdoors part, 344 pet points for her drake. She had picked up enough tokens to be able to have a spin or two on the Lacarette wheel, but by then her inventory had got almost full. That's one problem with all the gemstones, they do fill up one's inventory.

RedRackham had kept busy with his pet-levelling, so that his drake passed the halfway mark in level 38. And, late in the evening, MistressDomino tried to do some shopping for her near-namesake MistressDomina's 85/87 armour set. She managed to get "light" green-named five evasion seal gloves and circlet, both +15, for 400 and 295 million from gman69 and Totyi, and a blue-named five evasion seal +13 pair of boots for 400 million from sirLOBB4, but the only possible jacket was only b4e and unplussed for 60 million, and the only evasion-sealed pants were b6e +13, with the sixth seal being 30% protection from Stun effects...and at 1.15 billion it was slightly out of my price range. But three reasonably good armour pieces are a start.