Sunday 15 August 2010

A Spending Spree


I got Keerella and Barbarienne online to earn their attendance allowance for the day, and noticed that, at a little after midnight, [GM]Yatou was chatting in the shoutbox, from home rather than from the Aeria office. But I got distracted from that, as suddenly the older computer's monitor went black, and nothing I could do would persuade it to come back to life.

In the end I had to switch that computer off manually; I waited till Kee had finished her half hour, as Barb could see she was still in town. And then it was a matter of finding my first-ever old flat-screen monitor, a 15" one, and then scrambling around behind the computers, trying not to trip over or pull out any other wires, and switch the screens over. Luckily the old NEC model came to life without any problems, though it only wanted to run Last Chaos at 600 by 800 pixels...which wasn't too bad until I tried to open the inventory of the next character to be putting in their half hour, only to find it had vanished off the side of the window. Changing to 1024 x 768 allowed me to get it on-screen, though with the task bar getting in the way a bit...switching to full-screen mode solved that, but may have contributed to a "send error report?" crash a few minutes later...after which we were back to 600 x 800, which I again updated to 1024 x 768.

I asked [GM] Yatou if we could expect the experience from the sphinx commanders to go up by 50% soon, as initially promised by product manager Xuse2005 when the experience boosts for many monsters were brought in. "Kaerella, it's up to the devs in the end when they feel ready to hand us stuff", he told me, with a sad face. I also asked if he ever played Last Chaos as a "civilian" - "nah, I can't Kaerella", was the reply. He stayed in the shoutbox until gone 1:30am, California time, chatting with people.

After coffee MistressSabina headed for Maargadum Jail again, and managed to add the 14.02% she needed to reach level 46 - as that is going to be a prime sp-farming level for her, on the beast flyers, I returned to town after that. She also gained 58 skill points and 607 pet points. The central area of the third floor had been in use when I arrived, so I'd concentrated on a side room for a while, until the middle was vacated.

Reaching level 46 didn't bring any new skills for MistressSabina, but it does allow her to wear the level 51 Bluses shirt and skirt, which are both +13 - wearing them instead of the level 46 "Asuquted" +12 pair increases her physical defence from 1024 to 1076, which ought to help when fighting the beast flyers next time. Loot was moved across to MistressDomino, who in return traded across all five platinum super skill pills she had. Sabina also reset her experience gain to 50%, just for the one level.

On Cariae after lunch, MistressDomina, my merchant, managed to buy SirKit two pieces of the level 85/87 armour set, "Blue Abyss", both blue-named with all five evasion seals, for 600 million gold each. The helmet, a Casting Up Blue Abyss helmet +15, was sold, through the merchant mart, by Criminalic, while the Antistune Blue Abyss Breastplate +14 came from DuBlade. The only other possible pieces that were "b5e" were not upgraded at all, and still rather expensive. Still, equipping those two pieces did increase Kit's physical defence from 2805 to 3286, which can't be bad.

I decided to take Barbarienne to the anubis spear men for a couple of hours in the afternoon, including one "dungeon time" hour of 50% extra experience. Keerella went with her, of course, but, perhaps because of the way the game, and computer, had been shut down by the power button earlier, Kee had problems. As soon as she reached the spear man room, her game crashed. When she tried again, the game crashed after she'd fought one sphinx fighter which had followed her, just as her drake was picking up the gold it had dropped. A third time, the game crashed as she was running along the corridor approaching the room... but it was fourth time lucky, as Kee reached the corner of the room safely, and I just let her stay there, looking down and not moving. She did have to fight a couple of sphinx fighters, but let Barb pick up the drops.

Barbarienne took up her position on the far side of the room; a royal knight was power-levelling a night shadow in the other half, and another night shadow, probably providing a combat party for them, was battling the sphinx fighters for much of the time. I started the first of the two "power hours" ten minutes ahead of the "dungeon time" - due to Kee's problems one or two kills were when Barb was without a party, maybe a couple more when it was just a solo party since Kee was out of range, but Barb added 20.35% experience in that hour, using 48 experience boosters.

The second hour only had ten minutes of "dungeon time, but, again using 48 experience boosters, Barbarienne earned another 15.66%, which compares very well with the 11 or 12% she was getting before the experience changes were made. So, in all Barb added 36.01%, along with 5 skill points and 2152 pet points for her drake. Keerella added 0.98%, 6 skill points, and 9 pet points.

Barbarienne had a small scout-around afterwards, and confirmed that the remaining lengths of corridor leading to the "swimming pool" area do seem to have a useful further supply of anubis spear men, as well as more sphinx fighters, so if on a future visit I find my favourite room in use, I'll just need to keep moving a little further.

There was time before the early evening food break for MistressDomino on Auzura to try some more shopping for MrChuckNorris. He already had the Antistune Pants of Thunder +15, b5e, and from Roy's merchant mart I was able to get Speed Up Boots of Thunder +15 for 500 million from IIINICINHOIII, who was also the vendor of Ebade Gloves of Thunder +13 for 480 million (I get the idea that the level 85 gloves, at least in their b5e form, are a bit rarer than the other armour pieces, generally). EliteSoldier provided a Casting Up Helm of Thunder +8; the breastplate was a slight problem, and in the end I bought an Antistune Jacket of Thunder +10 from SHINEE for 250 million, even though an extreme stone had already been used on it, so it can only easily be got to +12, rather than +13. I had to compromise on the Hero Sword of Hell +14 too, from xSTARKx, which is a g5 one with a good hit rate...but isn't +15. Still, it has an attack stat of 1179, which is a nice improvement on the 957 his current level 69 +15 sword gives.

For the evening, up until Sunday Quiz time, it seemed a good idea to take MistressDomina, Kaerella and the polar bear cub to head for the Tomb of Theos again, on Auzura-5, where as ever quite a few familiar names were fighting the screaming zombies. Elvastar got in touch, and changed across to Ratel to come and join our combat party - he's level 94 now. He had misgivings about the lag in Auzura-5, which as usual was a bit overloaded, but things settle down once one is through the crowds in Randol, and teleported to Dratan, so it wasn't long before he joined us.

It must have been a bit of a shock, and he commented that his guildies in Twisted wouldn't have believed it, but the place, the corridor and the first main screaming zombie room, were exceptionally busy. I think he had fun, letting the people ks him - he certainly used his teleport skill a few times to stop zombies chasing some fleeing lower-level player. His armour must be pretty good now, he was tackling multiple zombies and not losing any health at all...but that's knights for you.

As usual I enjoyed it, it's like a little "mad monster spawn" with plenty of people working together. There are always a few people who complain about being ks'd, but if they want to avoid that, they just need to go further in, or try a different subserver. There was I think one attempt to bring in a group of screaming mummies, down the corridor, but it rather fizzled out, and I think just about everyone had a good time.

Ratel logged out slightly before MD and Kae did, to make sure he had time to get ready for the Quiz, but a few minutes later, my characters logged out too. MistressDomina had managed to reach level 92, going up by 5.76%, with her drake getting 1600 pet points, while Kaerella added 2.74%. They each got 5 skill points, and the polar bear cub, while it didn't quite reach the end of level 30, did gain 75.13% experience.

The Quiz went pretty smoothly this time, though as usual there were a few complaints in the forum shoutbox. After the older computer's crashing experiences earlier, I was slightly worried; the game there now starts up at the 800 x 600 size, which means that one can't access the inventory, but it presumably is less resource-hungry that way, so I kept it like that for MistressDomino, when she and Kaerella logged in as usual on Auzura-2; it meant that she couldn't take off her armour, but only about half the people in the room do that anyway.

Most of the people got through to the end safely, though it seemed to me that we did lose a significant number of people on whether the spirit cave is in Strayana or Egeha. Kaerella traded her prizes across to MistressDomino, and then they both logged out. As usual, logging back in at that point was tricky, as so many people are doing it... relogging forces the game to "remember" your new loot, so that it can't be lost in any disconnection. The trick is to ignore the "timed out" message, rather than clicking its "okay", and just waiting for the next stage to load.

MrChuckNorris logged on to look through the available accessories in Roy's merchant mart - not usually a good idea straight after the Quiz, as Roy has in the past just about ground to a halt due to lag, but the improvements to the merchant mart do seem to be working. Page loading had slowed down, until it was, well, similar to what it was before the last maintenance at the best of times, but things quickly recovered.

It's amazing the way prices vary, looking through all the various necklaces that Roy had to offer. I ended up spending much of MistressDomino's remaining gold on a Necklace of Earth being sold by LuckyOne for 90 million, which gives 5% + 5% suction of life, 93 hit rate, 5 defence, and 8 physical fortitude. When Chuck gets to fight the ancient grey mummies, I'll have to see if 10% suction of life is enough; he already has one Necklace of Wind that gives 5% suction of life, 6 + 6 for all types of physical defence, and 16 dexterity, so I can either equip that, or a Ring of Air, picked up a while back when fighting the screamies, which gives 56 hit rate and 75 close range physical hit rate.

So, Chuck has his accessories, he has new armour and a new sword waiting for when he can use them, and he has some platinum refining stones to make his current 70/72 armour set all +15 for 24 hours... so he is ready to roll with the ancient grey mummies, when I am ready. His current armour set isn't fully bloodsealed yet, but a few hours fighting should see to that.

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