Sunday 29 August 2010

Condition Is Everything

I was determined to have MistressDomina manage a "power hour" today, not least because there is one of the low-chance freebie "raffles" going on this weekend and using boosters is the way to get an entry or ten. So, MistressDomina logged on at about twenty to eleven, aiming for the eleven to twelve o'clock "dungeon time". I managed to get into a rather full Twisted guild solo party on Auzura-4, and headed for the spear man room in the Tomb of Theos. My theory was that this early in the Sunday, the place ought to be relatively quiet, and sure enough, there was just a level 97 knight, Carvante, there, already fighting the nearest pair of anubis spear men. I checked that he was okay about me setting up operations opposite him with the other two, and he was - and proposed a combat party, so I said farewell to MD's guildies, and he recruited me.

When the "dungeon time" began, I started my berserker, platinum adrenaline, and large crit potions, popped an experience booster - and as the spear man I was fighting was almost dead, quickly started the platinum blessed iris too. Before long a level 87 mage called elfera arrived, and she joined the combat party as well. She did attempt to assist me with my kill, but I had to tell her not to as I was using boosters. Since she wasn't confident about making solo kills, she then went into the corner, to get a bit of experience from the combat party and give us the boost.

When the hour ended, MistressDomina had gone up by 53.86% in level 93, after using 37 experience boosters. The dungeon's Condition seemed roughly the same as yesterday, not perfect, but not too hard either. Carvante stayed fighting, after his "power hour" was up, in the hopes of reaching his next level, but without boosters he didn't make a huge amount of progress. Still, it made sense for MD to stick around, near elfera in the corner.

I had a rather quick return after lunch, and did a bit more fighting; some other people were doing a bit of power-levelling, and one of them joined our party - they even brought in somebody else to provide the party recall for their power-levelling, with the promise of a pbi for their time.

Carvante had a disconnection, I think he said his laptop froze, and then got recalled back in, though there was some disagreement about who was entitled to fight that limited supply of anubis spear men - and the power-levelling group and Carvarle left to settle their differences on Auzura-6, a subserver where PvP is enabled. The group stayed there, though Carvante soon returned, and resumed his duties in the party, though now he was mainly on the sphinx fighters.

After a while I decided that, since I was there, I might as well not just wait for the two to three o'clock "dungeon time" hour, but do as Barbarienne had sometimes done, and "frame" it in two one-hour power hours. So, I started well before the 50% boost hour - I used 19 experience boosters before it began, and another 13 while it was running, for, including the small amount of experience made unboosted beforehand, 32.70%. The second hour used 16 experience boosters in the "dungeon time" hour, and another 13 after it, for another 29.21%.

Compared with the morning hour, that represented a bit of a slowdown - 37, then 32, then 29 anubis spear men killed per hour. I might have lost a single spear man per hour after lunch from having to protect elfera, who had moved to a rather vulnerable position before going permanently away-from-keyboard...generally it was only the anubis spear men who spawned near her, but very occasionally a sphinx fighter would come in and attack her - we all tried to stop her from being killed.

Another rogue, an assassin called Yournext, who was just in range for the combat party, had joined us, and Carvante left...and eventually, much to my relief and with only about 15% health, elfera vanished too. Yournext had a red name, though she admitted she'd got it by killing another character of hers; when she finished her pots, she traded me a couple each of the HP and MP stealer pots and a dozen of the more potent Remedy items, which I think, looking back, may be quite valuable - I just use the ordinary Remedy type, costing 5k each. when a spear man stuns me. I gave her ten million for them, which is a bit low, but I don't think she was expecting anything. I had ten minutes or so of my pots left when she said she was heading for Randol, so I asked her to stay in the party so that I had the solo party boost...but she actually stayed in the room for me, so that I had the combat party advantage, which was kind.

Anyway, the reason for the slowdown in MistressDomina's kill rate was that the Condition of the Tomb of Theos had deteriorated. The spear men had got tougher, and I noticed that the damage that MD's terra spear attack did, already well down from its peak, had fallen by at least another thousand. And MD was starting to take some serious damage, her 10% suction of life accessory was no longer enough, generally, to keep her healthy...I was using a lot of medium health potions, and some larger ones too. So, I was quite glad when that second set of pots was finished.

In all, MistressDomina had added 115.77% from her three hours with pots, and the bit of in-between-time. 4 skill points had been gained, and her drake was ahead by 3762 pet points. She had reached level 94 during that second hour, so she is firmly back ahead of Chuck now.

Back in town, there was a new passive skill to learn - the seventh level of Staff Mastery, for 400 skill points, which added 11 to her magical attack. That may only be around 0.45%, but it all helps. MistressDomina then rode across towards the arena, and watched some of her guildies. You can't actually fight people in your own guild, so one member had been kicked specially, and was presumably allowed back in later. And then, after passing over a couple of hit rate rings to a rogue I'd met, in his or her sorcerer guise, in the Tomb before, it was time for my break.

The evening is of course shortened by the Sunday Quiz, at 8:30pm UK time, for which one needs to set out with a few minutes to spare. Unfortunately I was running a little late, but I decided to take MistressSabina to see if the beast flyers on floor three of Maargadum Jail on Auzura-4 were free - and for a miracle, they were. One slight problem was that I didn't manage to find a solo party until about halfway through Sabina's pssp-using hour, which must have cut back the skill points gained, but when the pssp ran out, she had gained 132 skill points, while adding 4.65%. I did stay there a bit longer, since I doubt if I have enough pssps to do the whole level, and by the end, Sabina had gained a total of 154 skill points, 5.75%, and 1294 pet points.

MistressSabina had actually got the "attendance bonus" timer running when she logged in, as she had only got about halfway through the 30 minutes countdown on her most recent appearance, before the last maintenance removed that. When the timer reached zero, though, there was no announcement - so that's the end of that. She had picked up a good selection of gems, tool aids, heaven stones, and tokens from the beast flyers, so, once she was back in Randol, Sabina was able to make her five spins of the LacaRette wheel, using "course B" as usual, and for a change none of the five prizes was a single potion of haste - instead, she got two packs of five heaven stones in succession, which rather makes up for MistressDomino not being able to go to the Quiz tonight. She also had time to increase her supply of quality stones, buying sixteen mage-type hammers from Geres and going out to the mine.

And then it was time to go to the Quiz Room on Auzura-2, so Kaerella logged in to go there solo. The good news was that the room is now normal, we can once again just click on the floor to move to that spot, instead of having to use the WSAD keys. The quiz was a bit slow to start, after its usual "start" cue had appeared, but after that we rolled merrily along. Curiously, most of the room forgot that teleporter Nadil is associated with Lust Trum, and our numbers were a bit sparse after that question, but Ratel and his family were among the survivors.

Ratel, however, did tell me that he is moving house, just to a different part of the same town in South Africa, tomorrow, and his internet service provider has told him that it will take around three weeks to get his internet connection working at the new address. So, Twisted, and I, will be without him for almost all of the coming month...He wasn't happy about that, but I reminded him he could spend the time reading his vampire books - he has become a bit of a "True Blood" fan apparently. I also advised him to make sure the kettle and teapot weren't packed away too deeply in the moving boxes...

Once Kaerella had got her Quiz loots, she logged out, which at certain times in the past has been a wise move, as any disconnections right after the quiz did tend to remove recently-acquired stuff, such as heaven stones, from everyone's inventories. I kept an eye on the shoutbox, and put MistressDomina on Cariae-5 into merchant mode for a while, where she quickly sold her stocks of chaos balls, moonstone boxes, and mana stealers, which boosted her gold reserves nicely...though without Ratel to rely on, I'm a bit stuck for moving stuff between characters until I manage to get a second computer back in-game.

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