The new week's patch was a pretty big one, and it brought a few changes - most of them, generally, good, one hopes, though as always there may be some bugs that make things more complicated. As things stand, "Numerous bugs are being investigated by the developers", the patch notes say, "so expect fixes in the near future."
The main thing this time is that we now have the new-look Juno, the, well, junior map where characters spend their first few levels. There are new monsters ("vicious, varied, and colourful!"), more monsters ("grind like never before!"), new landmarks ("what secrets do they hold?"), water safety ("no more falling into the water!"), and additional flora and fauna ("trees and stuff!"). The downside of course is that as expected the place is poorly coded and glitchy, so that attempting to run across a gentle slope can have you running flat against an invisible wall, and sometimes one did actually want to go in the water, but it does look kinda pretty...
There's a new "Dungeon Time System" so that, in every dungeon from Velpist Temple and Prokion Temple to the Tomb of Theos, and on to the highest-level places in Strayana, for one hour in every three, from 2:00am UK time, you get 50% extra experience... which is, I suppose, a little bit useful if you only want to grind for experience for an hour at a go and can fit your efforts to the timing, but will be very annoying for people who are attempting to get skill experience in Prokion Temple.
A new "supporter NPC" for level 61-90 characters, imaginatively called "Middle level supporter", is now in Randol, as well as Dratan, Merac and Egeha, and gives players in that range a 20% boost to physical and magical attacks for three hours. That seems a good idea, but why does it have to be time-limited? If you go to fight in the Tomb of Theos, it will run out before the end of your third hour's worth of pots, and to continue you'll need to leave there, go back to Randol, and then return. Have it end when you log out, by all means, but why time-limit it?
Roy's merchant mart should now be a bit quicker, we are assured, and some missing items have been restored to the item mall....including a sighting of the "Lady Luck" package, complete with chaos balls and various boxes.
One thing we did have running throughout the day was 50% extra skill exp, which is usually a kind of apology for the time that maintenance took. So, it seemed to me a good time to make sure MistressSabina got a chance to go to Maargadum Jail for a pre-lunch session, which overlapped conveniently with the 11:00am to noon "dungeon time" with its 50% extra experience.
After killing the mob of canines that had followed her to the back of the first (or ground) floor, MistressSabina headed for that third main room on the second floor, and stayed there for the session, without any great problems. By the time lunch was looming, she had added 13.07%, 57 skill points, and 568 pet points.
With that extra skill exp running, I had to resist the temptation to take MistressDomina and her party to the Tomb of Theos, and just log MistressSabina back in instead for the afternoon session...which ran pretty similarly to the morning one, although it lasted a bit longer, despite a slightly late start, and indeed an early finish. This time, Sabina managed to add 23.06%, helped along by including most of the 2:00 to 3:00 "dungeon time", along with 129 skill points and 1040 pet points.
I managed to get MistressSabina back to the Jail for almost all of the 5:00 to 6:00pm "dungeon time", and indeed continued for a few minutes after it ended, so that she gained another 19.23%, 92 skill points, and 832 pet points. But by then we were sidling up towards 6:30, UK time, and the first of the evening's "Low Level Mad Monster Spawns" on Auzura-5.
This, I have to say, was not a raging success. The location coordinates were the same as usual, but as the Juno map has been changed, the spot was very close to the new ruined village at the edge of the lake, which has some steep hills, which cannot be climbed, because of all the "invisible walls", except perhaps from one far-from-obvious direction. So, the first spawning of monsters stranded pilferers and elite poison mists on top of these little hills. As there haven't been any other events to actually go to lately, there were quite a few high-level people around, so that everything else got killed astonishingly quickly.
The high-level people then began to ask for flutons, and, although the event is meant to be for people below level 60, [GM]AwesomeSauce allowed herself to be persuaded to spawn some of those ridiculously powerful monsters- and this was bad news for the legitimate low-level people in the area, who started to fall like flies. There were reports in the forum shoutbox about this, and indeed I was warning low-level people that the coming low-level MMS events on the other servers might be a bit fatal, and this made the GM, who also managed to be there, a bit indignant, in a light-hearted way, calling herself "GM-Crankypants", and saying, well, they had asked for them...
It was my level 31 healer Memree who went on Auzura, mainly because my rogue RedRider is on the same account as MistressDomino, who had been set up in merchant mode on Auzura-5, to try and get me some gold there. The Katar server came second, and my level 31 rogue, also called Memree, went along there.
[GM]AwesomeSauce was again in charge, but, naturally enough, she had learned from what had happened before, and was a bit more conservative with the monsters she spawned - moving them a bit further away from the hilly bits too, I think. And I must say that she is reasonably generous with the loot she gives at the end. This time, while flutons were provided, they were carefully moved a little further inland, and people warned that this was for the high-level types. Memree was able to assist, since an extra rogue using Snare is always useful, even if she only hits them for 69 hit points a time.
I'd been lucky to avoid getting my healer killed on Auzura, but my closest squeak actually came on the third server, Cariae, where [GM]Yatou took over. My rogue Karella is just level 28 there, which is fine against orc soldiers, pilferers, elite sand golems, or even elite poison mists, but [GM]Yatou moved on to the barren eises, plus dark bogles, and one of the latter decided that my attempt to use Snare was an unfriendly act...and before I managed to get clear, Karella's health was down to 23, as I reported to Ratel, who had been having a little chat with MistressDomino. He mentioned that he could lay his hands on 300 experience boosters, which he'd need to take his knight further... but that they would cost 465 million, which works out at 1.55 million each. He was not happy with the thought.
Anyway, Karella did get clear, and quickly re-applied her horse buffs and used a medium-size red candy cane left over from Christmas to restore around half her health, and returned to the battle. The dark bogles and barren eises were defeated, and some loot was provided, and all ended happily.
There wasn't time for me to go to any more of the events, sadly, as my usual Wednesday evening rendezvous was coming up, so what happened on Sarissa, Hatzring and Tairen I don't know. Let us hope that any flutons that got invited along were on their best behaviour.
MistressDomino, however, was able to continue her selling stint through the evening. She didn't sell a huge number of heaven stones or experience boosters, and I'm not sure she sold any skill point boosters at all, but the lucky smelting stones went quickly, and the lucky scrolls, and she sold out of moonstones and moonstone boxes as well. Some of the MP and HP stealers went, and a few berserker potions...and it all started to add up to a good boost for her finances, so I ought to be able to have a look through the new, speeded-up merchant mart, presided over by Roy, tomorrow, and perhaps find either a +15 bow for Kaerella on Auzura, to replace her +14 one, or a +15 titan sword for MrChuckNorris to look forward to. And MistressSabina could really do with a couple of better accessories, come to that...
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