Please Stand By

[GM]AwesomeSauce had requested in the Last Chaos forum shoutbox that people who were experiencing the "Update completed. Update is completed. Please, restart game" problem should sent in a ticket, so I did that last thing last night, along with a screenshot - just an area of my older computer's desktop, with twelve of the little pop-up windows cascading neatly down it. I had a reply waiting this morning, but only a kind of preliminary one - as usual in such cases it asks for a screenshot, as a link not an attachment, so without comment I included the link to PhotoBucket again, where "LCerror.jpg" is hosted. They wanted me to check that lastchaos.exe wasn't running, so I did that... since the computer had been turned off overnight, that would have been a neat trick if it was still rumbling away in there somewhere.

I needed to go out shopping this morning, and my main purchase was a new monitor for the older computer, one with a proper high definition screen resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. Unfortunately the older computer, running XP, seems to have no provision for these new-fangled wide screens, and the nearest resolution it offers is 1280 by 1024. This looks better than the default 1024 by 768, but any pictures displayed are going to show some rather tubby people.

Meanwhile, MistressDomino did a little more selling, at least. She didn't sell out of anything, but she sold a few more skill point boosters, and twenty heaven stones, so her gold total is moving on steadily.

For the main part of the afternoon, a newly-created healer over on the Katar server, LadyScarlet, investigated the new quests available, with "LastChaos Newbie" in green above her head. The tutorial quest at the start had been changed, with a "boss" to fight in its main room - a Corrupt Dragon, level five. Luckily he didn't seem inclined to actually attack LadyScarlet, who was using her bow from out in the corridor - but he didn't drop any loot, which seems a bit of a shame.

Elizabeth gave her a present of five small healing potions, which was more useful than the potions of haste that most of the early quests have always given. There are a succession of "quest scrolls" that need to be clicked to be activated, but they just take you to an NPC in town for a small reward, such as three scrolls of recall. But generally it was just a matter of killing foxes and deer for Healer Yabo, and then wolves, and carrying on much as usual. I was lucky enough to pick up a level 33 shield somebody had dropped in town, which meant I had enough cash to eventually buy a better bow; I could probably get her better armour, as well.

I was intending to split the evening session into two parts, but when the "happy hour" was announced at just after 7:00pm UK time, with double experience and skill exp, it seemed to fit best with what I was doing then - which was fighting the screaming zombies in the Tomb of Theos. Not with my Auzura level 92 mage MistressDomina, though; instead I was working on my Cariae level 98 mage Keerella, who needs to reach level 99 if she is going to be able to continue to be in a combat party with Barbarienne...assuming that I will be able to use both computers for LC again before too long.

Keerella was in the Cariae-4 Tomb, which, since the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff for players on level sixty or below isn't available on Cariae-4, is nice and quiet. I had the first part of the Tomb to myself for most of the evening, except for the occasional passer-by, though for the last half hour or so the witch STRAWBERRY was there too. Judging by her 60/62 armour set, the same one that MistressBlaze, on level 57, wears, she was being rather daring. She used masses of pots - a crit, platinum adrenaline, power potion, health stealer, and more, plus quite a few large health potions, but she was managing to kill the zombies. I was able to take a second zombie off her a couple of times, and she did need to do a fair amount of running about.

Anyway, I continued a little past my usual finish time, to get Kee's experience gain up to 5.00%. She earned 43 skill points, which must be her biggest gain in a single session for quite a while, and her drake, Greedo, added 3890 pet points. Keerella's armour is better than MistressDomina's, but her weapon isn't as good, at "just" +15, so the Terra Spear skill tends to do around 24k damage rather than 30k or so.

The possibility of a near-future weekend "master stone tiered spender event" seems to have diminished, as the "new season" of the new Loot Forge isn't just a different selection of gems at various levels, it is upgrading-themed. The more times you risk your stake (which is aeria points - 1 ore is 49 ap, dropping to 35 if you buy, gulp, a hundred at a time), the more likely you are to get something good, though if you fail at any stage you lose your previous prize. Possible prizes include master stones +17, master stones +19, +21, +23, and even +25. These don't take an item all the way from no + at all to the number they give, they will just take your item up one, with that number as the maximum. The prize you get would be a master stone ticket, which can be traded - and then its owner can send in a ticket to have the upgrading applied, as before, by a GM.

I can't say I like the idea, though apparently the price of the +17 ticket is around 600 million on Cariae now, so buying such a thing for in-game gold is a possible option, if one has an item that would be worth that much more if it had the master stone applied to it. It looks as if there are going to be quite a few more weapons around now that are above +15...