Mainly Cariae

MistressDomino spent the night in merchant mode, though her sales were less than spectacular; prices do seem to have fallen quite a bit on Auzura in the last few weeks. Her supply of skill point boosters sold, plus her recovery boxes and some tower boxes, health stealers, and mana stealers. Luckily her item drop boosters were finally snapped up while I was having breakfast, which made the total a bit more respectable. Ten chaos balls also sold before coffee.

The "Exchequer's Budget Box" offers for the weekend were largely unremarkable, featuring a "spin to win" raffle for people using the Loot Wheel...the poor Loot Forge has never had any promotion like that at all, and is definitely the poor relation at the moment. A 50% rebate deal on all premium packages is also promised for Sunday, but I don't think there is anything particularly tempting for me there.

Before the eleven to twelve dungeon time hour there was time for MistressDomino to look round the merchants, and the prices of the remaining master stones on Auzura was certainly going up; yesterday I had a look round on the Cariae server and they were already too high for me there. Perhaps because there doesn't seem to be a way to refine one's search of Roy's merchant mart's "Other" category to bring up the master stones there, I found one more +17 one being sold by StoMe for 750 million, 100 million cheaper than his only competition - and thanks to the overnight and morning sales, I could just afford it. That meant that, later in the day, I was able to send in my request for master stones to be applied to Kaerella's +14 bow. Hopefully the requests are settling down now, and the wait for a GM to apply the stones won't be too long.

MistressDomina asked her Twisted guildies what the Tomb setting was like, and the reply was "bad" - the Dratan castle-owning guild hadn't reset it. I went out to check, and indeed it was down to 50%, which would have made progress there a bit slow and perhaps even a bit dangerous, so I switched across to Cariae, and found a relatively friendly 65% there.

So, my cleric Kaerella and my phoenix ranger RedRydeR headed for the ancient grey mummies again, and found their main room free - except for PrinceOfHell in his corner, actually pet-levelling on the screaming zombie this time. We only got there a couple of minutes early, and didn't stay after the hour ended, since lunch was fast approaching by then. Kaerella got pretty close to the top of level 93, adding 58.37% while using 47 experience boosters, while RedRydeR did level up to 93, adding 83.72% from 57 boosters. They each earned 11 skill points; Kae's drake gained 1109 pet points, while Red's gained 30 more than that.

The Auzura Tomb hadn't been reset when I checked after lunch; it was down to 30%, and, when I checked a few minutes later before my character there logged out, it had slipped further to 20%. Luckily the Cariae Tomb of Theos was still in reasonable Condition - so it seemed high time that Barbarienne and Keerella teamed up again, since Kee is once again only ten levels behind.

The corner beyond the square, or perhaps rectangular, anubis spear man room was occupied again, so I had to settle for the room itself. XmUffinMulEX was busy over on the far side, power-levelling someone - which left the two spear men on the near side for Barbarienne, while Keerella kept busy, as usual, on the sphinx fighters. The only slight fly in the ointment was a titan called BRA1N (with a drake called P1NKY of course), who'd been afk over on the far side, and returned to action for part of the hour, grabbing some of the spear men, instead of leaving then to Muffin and me. At one stage he went afk in the fighting area, and Keerella had to twice take sphinx fighters off him - I rather hoped he was having a disconnection, but that was not the case.

So, Barbarienne did have a few times when she had to wait a few seconds, or just fight a sphinx fighter while she waited. With her level 109 bow, she kills rather quickly now, so, apart from the platinum blessed iris, I only triggered a platinum adrenaline, since adding a crit or a berserker potion seemed like overkill. Despite the minor setbacks, Barb went up by 22.30% in the hour, plus a kill or two before and after, using 50 experience boosters. Keerella just added 1.41%. Barbarienne's drake added 1212 pet points, and Keerella's added 1123; they each gained 7 skill points.

There was time before the early evening food break for MistressSabina to make the trip out to Maargadum Jail on Auzura-4, accompanied by RedRackham, and for a change she found the third floor's central section available. A knight with a number rather than a name did turn up very soon after, but mainly killed the beast archers, and didn't stay long - he probably got a disconnection. I probably should have got a screenshot of him in action, as it seems that he may well have been using a "speed hack", but with Sabina's platinum super skill pill running, I was rather concentrating on getting full value from it. He asked me if I used "super attack", which I now assume is the name of a hack.

By the end of the hour, MistressSabina had gone up by 4.55%, and earned 135 skill points, as well as 1017 pet point for her drake. RedRackham had had to fight a death mask soldier before taking up his usual spot, but the horse buffs Sabina had applied in Merac Village lasted just long enough to speed up the fight a bit. The soldier actually dropped a heaven stone for him - though this stroke of luck was slightly eclipsed when, after the hour was up, MistressSabina did five spins of the LacaRette wheel, and got five heaven stones, not once but twice!

With the Auzura Tomb just about on maximum hard, Cariae was again my destination, for the evening session, as soon as Katar's Kaerella and ColonelScarlet had exchanged drakes. This meant that Kae there now has a level 39 drake...and ColonelScarlet is working to level up the level 28 one.

ColonelScarlet was able to spend the evening down sparring with the death mask lancer on floor five of Maargadum Jail, as Keerella on Cariae does her best skill point farming solo. Once she was in the Tomb on Cariae-4, she joined a solo party, and set to work killing screaming zombies.

Before long I was asked by an archer, Xx1995xX, if she could ks, and agreed - I also had a ranger for a little while "helping" me too. Cariae-4's Tomb was fairly quiet, at least compared to subserver 5; there were a few other people about, later on, but generally there was no difficulty getting enough targets.

The solo party I was in grew and then shrank, with most of its members in the Tomb. Finally, as my usual logging-out time approached, only Kee and the leader, the level 90 witch DOFsBest, remained. She was down with the anubis spear men, with her health bar dipping alarmingly sometimes, and she invited me down to join her, in a combat party, reckoning the two of us would kill four times as fast. So, I left Xx1995xXr, if only a few minutes earlier than I would otherwise, and ran back down to the spear man room. We teamed up fighting the anubis spear men - as the dungeon time hour had finished by then, we had the room to ourselves, but had absolutely no problem with a lack of respawns. I suppose Kee not using expensive pots may have had something to do with it, but even using terra spear a lot more than usual, the killing seemed a bit slow.

Still, we killed quite a few spear men over about an hour, before our session ended. DOFsBest is a member of the DisciplesOfFoamy guild, and was saying that it had lost a lot of members. People do move on, and Cariae is not the busiest of servers now.

The evening's "Turbo" event had just been 50% extra experience, which rose to 100% extra during the eight to nine o'clock dungeon time hour, and 50% extra skill exp. Keerella's total experience gain for the evening was 3.09%, but 24 skill points were also gained - and 3813 pet points. ColonelScarlet had kept pet-levelling throughout the session, though fairly soon after Kee logged out, he got a disconnection, and it didn't seem worth him returning to action just for half an hour or so.