High Finance

RedRackham hurried back to Maargadum Jail in Merac on Auzura-4 before breakfast, to continue working on levelling Kaerella's pet drake SirFrancis for a couple of hours, and that plan worked fine. The older computer, though, had its problems, and when I tried to start Last Chaos on it, started up incredibly slowly. MistressSabina appeared eventually, after a very long loading time, and was able to download a couple of packages from the item mall, but the momentary freezes that one can get in a highly-populated Randol were not so momentary now. So, it seemed like a good idea to close the game, and restart the computer.

This time, the Last Chaos loader window appeared promptly, but only to inform me that it couldn't connect - and my ISP's clever connection-fixing program stepped in to set things right, only to get hopelessly lost fixing wireless networks I don't have. Luckily a "system restore", that high-tech version of giving the computer's case a swift thump, sorted things out, but it all took up valuable time.

So, MistressDomina, in a solo party with MistressDomino, was a bit later heading for the Tomb of Theos than I'd have liked, which meant that half her morning "power hour" took place during dungeon time. The titan SwedishTitan was in the room, getting some levelling help from the assassin-rogue XnOnAmEx, who I assume was using Distracting Shot to present her friend with a nearly-dead mummy to finish off. SwedishTitan was, in fact, the rogue Cherena, who I'd met before. Cherena is now level 103, and set with the same massive hill of skill point farming to climb...but at least she managed to level up her titan this morning.

By the end of the hour, MistressDomina had added 0.77%, 985 pet points and 312 skill points, from 56 skill point boosters - I had found another twenty skill boxes, and as well as a few effort scrolls, two lots of five skill point boosters, and some super skill pills and platinum super skill pills, they'd given MD eight more of the 15% "training spell books", so that, adding one of those, each kill gave 5.544 skill points.

I had been slightly distracted during the hour, as specialist sorcer guildie ChronoX had been complaining that he still hadn't been able to sell his extra-good Necklace of Earth accessory for 900 million, even though he'd seen people trying to sell ones less good for a billion. It has 2 x 93 hit rate, 2 x 30 increase critical hit, and 5% suction of life. Eventually, after a little mental calculation, I said, "ChronoX, how would 400m + 150 small crits sound?" The small crits were the ones MistressDomino had bought yesterday for 2 million each, so in fact I was offering 700 million - though he feels that they are worth perhaps 3.5 million each, making my offer possibly worth as much as 925 million to him.

"That's 700 mil only, if you take notice of the price one dude was selling those crits for yesterday", he said, to which I replied "Depends what you think you can sell them for." "Not for 3.75 mil at least, not a single crit pot sold", he said. "But I'm fair, because I need money - so it's yours, then. I will keep my shop open till every pot is sold, darn it."

So, He made a rendezvous with MistressDomino in Randol, and the trade was made. Then, after MistressDomina's hour was over, she teleported back to Randol and got the accessory from MistressDomino. It means that, equipped with one less evasion-based accessory, MD's evasion will be down, but her hit rate should be nicely boosted.

The first afternoon session was slightly more than half completed before the dungeon time started, so added 0.72%; 325 skill points were earned from the use of 59 boosters, though MD might have got a couple more skill points if a level 91 titan called FiilhOsDeMaPuTaA from the OREDRofHELLL guild hadn't for some reason come in and attacked a couple of the mummies MD was fighting. Luckily he did stop after that, and collaborated with a level 39 rogue, Rilanda. from another guild one sees quite often in the Tomb, Cleopratra. And yes, both guilds do spell their names exactly like that.

The other afternoon hour also had a rogue getting involved towards the end, the level 32 assassin-type dieko14, but by promising a little ks-ing time once my pots had finished, after a few minutes I got her to stop and wait, though she was slightly worried that I'd just vanish. MistressDomina went up by 0.71%, 970 pet points and, from 58 boosters, 321 skill points...and then stayed around to earn another 0.14%, 6 skill points, and 602 pet points, while dieko14 ks'd and reached level 33. It would have been more useful for her if she'd had the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff on, but probably she'd already died before successfully getting past the screaming zombies. She tried to borrow 10 million from me to buy accessories - that idea didn't appeal, but I did give her a ring with 55 close range physical hit rate.

Just before I was finished FiilhOsDeMaPuTaA returned, as he had said he would; he was trying to raise cash for new boots by selling a few small crit potions, but I still have plenty of those. Maybe he let rieko14 ks him a bit, later, who knows?

As usual my food break on a Tuesday was a bit longer than average; the double pet experience, beginning at 6:00pm UK time, had already started when I logged RedRackham in on Auzura-4, and guided him down to the fifth floor. He had a suitably long session down there with SirFrancis - and level 43 was reached during the evening.

On the newer computer, my level 92 rogue Rage, in a solo party with RedRackham, headed for the Tomb of Theos on Auzura-4. Unusually the two Condition bars weren't the same, but one was 90% and the other was 100%, so that was near enough to perfect. There was a mage pet-levelling halfway down the opening corridor, and another mage bringing in mobs of screaming zombies and disposing of them, but wisely not using chaos nova. For a little while Rage just fought the screaming zombies one by one, but then that started to seem a bit unambitious, so she headed for the anubis spear men's room. That was fairly busy, if you counted another couple of pet-levellers in corners; I had thought of just battling the sphinx fighters for a while, but it seemed easiest to move to the first corner after that room - and fight the two anubis spear men that spawn there, one after another.

So that's how the rest of the evening passed. A couple of people did fight one of "my" spear men, but moved on afterwards when asked - there are more spear men further in, after all. When the eight to nine o'clock dungeon time hour began, I started the usual selection of potions and a platinum blessed iris, and used experience boosters - in the hour, Rage used 50 experience boosters, and added 80.85%, getting her safely into level 93. Considering that, with a +19 weapon MistressDomina (as opposed to Rage's comparatively normal +15 blue-named crossbow) has to get through masses of mana potions and blast away with terra spear all the time to kill that many ancient grey mummies, which are not nearly as tough, it just shows how effortlessly rogues can progress. Rage added 85.50% in all during the evening, plus 6 skill points and, thanks to the double pet experience, 6086 pet points.

Unlike almost all my main characters, Rage doesn't have a suction of life accessory, but her evasion-based ones were good enough to mean she took very little damage from the spear men, and her normal health regeneration was enough to keep her happy most of the time. Occasionally I did have to use a small health potion, but a restocking of the medium-size ones before I went into the Tomb was an unnecessary precaution, as it turned out. She still got stunned a few times, but luckily she did have a supply of Remedy.

While RedRackham continued to work on Kaerella's drake, now level 43, on Auzura-4, I logged in his namesake on Cariae-4, and he too did a bit of work on his level 43 drake. It shouldn't be too long before SirFrancis can be returned to Kaerella...and then the level 44 stand-in drake she had can, I think, be passed across to Rage, so that the level 39 drake she currently has can take its turn at being boosted by a few levels. The double pet experience, however, was switched off at around ten past ten.