Stop The Carnival

There wasn't time for any actual playing in the morning, again, but the various characters were able to log in for their 30 minutes each, or more if I was out at the post office, and RedRackham logged in for some pet-levelling too, after MistressDomina had done her half hour. It was just after lunch that RedRackham's drake reached level 41 - and, moving from Auzura-4 to Auzura-5 to provide the solo party, he kept going through the afternoon too, though at the new level the quality stones were being used up rather quickly...it was starting to be reminiscent of when a level 22 knight, fighting treants perhaps, was trying to get a horse all the way to level 37.

The afternoon session saw MistressSabina busy on the second floor of Maargadum Jail...and she finally reached level 43, which meant that the ordinary spike canines are now green-named for her, while the double-headed canines are now her exact level. There were a few people about, and I saw a mage that had recently been "assisting" MistressDomina, it's always good to see one of that bunch getting some skill points.

By the end of the session MistressSabina had put on 29.08%, plus 136 skill points, which took her temporarily over the 11k mark, and 1722 pet points. Sabina's drake was only level 32, so it seemed a good idea to have her take over RedRackham's one - so the pair rendezvoused back in Randol by the animal trainer, reset their drakes' skills, and swapped them across. Red was then able to go back to Merac and get through quality stones at the old, regular rate - while Sabina set her new drake's skills to give her 30 levels of boosting her magical attack, and 10 levels of physical defence.

MistressSabina's existing special skills did not include master armoursmith and master weaponsmith, which have their first two levels at a character's level 32 and 42, with the final level at 52, so I decided that I ought to bank some skill points there. They were both pretty expensive in sp, taking in all 1300 skill points - so Sabina's stash of unused sp has fallen back below 10k again now.

Over the early evening food break RedRackham got his new drake into level 32, which restored its health, previously nibbled at by Maargadum's canines, to 100%, and MistressSabina did a little mining, as her stocks of quality stones were a bit low. But then it was time to log MistressDomina and Kaerella in, still on Auzura-5, and head for the Tomb of Theos, to do a bit of levelling, and a bit of pet-levelling, both for MD's drake and Kaerella's polar bear.

Once again I arrived at a bad time, and encountered a big group of screaming zombies that had been brought down on the people in the corridor by a night shadow called NSattack, who had objected to someone ks'ing him. The poor polar bear cub died in the melee... so Kaerella had to return to Dratan City and get him unsealed, which at level twelve cost 232,672 gold. The poly did die again later, in roughly similar circumstances, though I thought I'd managed to unequip him in time... I wasn't going to bother going back to town and unseal him again just for half an hour, but then Kaerella got a "send error report?" type crash, so spent 256,224 gold getting him unsealed at level 13. It was lucky I picked up two or three heaven stones during the evening, to cover such expenses.

Most of the time it was the usual kind of fun "one for all and all for one" group effort, with a high-level sorcerer bringing in more mobs specially for us. In fact when NSattack returned later, lured a big group, and said "Aren't I evil?", I casually mentioned that some kind, helpful people had been doing exactly the same thing... Still, those large groups were risky for some of our people around level 40, because if they happened to target a zombie nobody else was attacking, then it could easily target them in return.

I stayed a bit longer than I had intended. There had been another "Creature Carnival" scheduled, but despite the best efforts of the GM team, led by [GM]AwesomeSauce, they couldn't sort out a technical problem, and gave up on the "CC" idea... so instead we had double experience and skill exp turned on, which was a very useful boost.

Kaerella was generally just in the combat party with MD, standing at the back doing occasional Heals, especially when we briefly had the level 90 BabevKnight in the party, and looking after the polar bear cub. There were times when she had to take off the cub, when spare zombies were around, and then she did a little fighting. In all she added 16.37%, and 10 skill points, while the polar bear cub levelled up twice, to reach level 14, adding 283.57%. MistressDomina herself reached level 90 fairly early on, and in all went up by 44.08%, plus 11 skill points and 2696 pet points for her drake.

RedRackham logged in afterwards, to do some pet-levelling on his newly-acquired drake, and started its progress through level 33. But, before long, it was time to log out for the day.