Old Haunts Revisited

RedRackham went out to do some pet-levelling before breakfast, and moved his drake on usefully through the first part of level 41, using quite a few quality stones. However, last night's double pet experience hadn't been left running, as has been known to happen.

After coffee, MistressDomino went on a two-item spending spree. "Season Two" of the Loot Forge had definitely ended, replaced by a thoroughly uninteresting chance to win, or lose, ordinary booster items etc, which means that there aren't any further master stones being won... so, having checked that there still weren't any suitable +15 weapons for Kaerella or MrChuckNorris available to replace their +14 bow and sword, I saw an archer called ZapphirA selling a master stone +17 at the relatively reasonable price of 600 million, and bought it. Someone else had a few they were selling for 650 million, which also wasn't bad, I think, but I resisted temptation there.

Checking through Roy's merchant mart, under the "Other" category, I found a master stone +19 on page 25 being offered by xDarkHellxNS for 850 million, which also seemed good to me...luckily, I just had enough gold left to buy that one as well. So, with the three master stones Kaerella has, I now have two +17, a +19, and two +23, with those last two definitely available to trade for other lower-level stones.

As it happened, I was able to do a "power hour" during the eleven to twelve noon dungeon time hour this morning, so MistressDomina and Kaerella logged in on Auzura-4, and managed to get into a Twisted guild combat party - and were Recalled straight into the anubis spear man room. We moved along to the first corner of the corridor and, after getting rid of the fighters that had followed us, had a pretty productive hour. There was one time when another guildie took one of the two spear men that MD relies on there, but he quickly apologised and moved on.

MistressDomina used 47 experience boosters during the hour, as well as the usual hour-long potions, and, adding in a kill or two before the hour and one after it, gained 39.44% experience, with her drake adding 1071 pet points. Kaerella, without potions or boosters, concentrated on the local population of sphinx fighters, and gained 8.18% plus 947 pet points; they each added 3 skill points as well.

It was handy to have an almost full combat party of Twisted guild members, even if there was seldom more than one further member within compass-map range. Kaerella was the lowest level member, with the highest one reaching level 99 during the hour. I guess Kae will have to do a little power-levelling too, though it would be useful if I could get her bow up beyond +14 first.

For the two to three o'clock dungeon time hour, it seemed a good idea to try to get Keerella up to level 99, preferably in a combat party. It's a shame she can't party with my cleric over on Cariae, Kaerella, but they are on the same account, so SirKit got volunteered instead.

I went for the "double power" set-up again, in the ancient grey mummies' main room, and things ran smoothly enough - SirKit added 102.20% from using 47 experience boosters, or 107.82% including kills before and after the hour, getting into level 92; his drake added 1318 pet points, and reached level 37. Keerella did reach level 99 in the first ten minutes or so, and went up by 21.81% in the hour, using 44 experience boosters, or 21.96% in all, while Greedo, her drake, added 1223 pet points. They each gained 13 skill points.

Back in Dratan City, SirKit had the eleventh level of Concentration to learn, for 300 skill points. He picks and chooses which skills he learns, but this one is important, at least if he teams up with my Cariae ranger, RedRydeR, and uses it to increase her chance of Snare working. According to the Wet Paint Wiki's calculations, Snare, with level 11 of Concentration, ought to have a 210% chance of success, which may be a slight exaggeration...

RedRackham then headed down into Maargadum Jail, to spar with the death mask lancer again. The plan was for MistressSabina to follow, once he'd checked that floor three was clear - but it wasn't, so, while RedRackham did stay on Auzura-4 and pet-level, it was MistressBlaze who had a short session for the rest of the afternoon. She went out to the elite sphinx speer man and his cohorts, but didn't stay all that long, just adding 7.47% experience, 12 skill points, and 237 pet points.

I took my early evening food break even earlier than usual, so that I could be back online in time to take advantage of the five to six o'clock dungeon time hour. As Cariae's Tomb seems less busy than Auzura's, it seemed a good idea to let my level 92 cleric Kaerella team up with my level 90 rogue RedRydeR, and head for the ancient grey mummies for a double power hour.

There was a royal knight there already, JedriBosS; I did mention our combat party, but as I suspected he was farming skill points on level 103. He had to go after a while, to do some homework he said, but stayed, afk, to one side. While he was fighting, there were enough of the mummies for three, but if anyone else had been there it might have been a slightly tight squeeze.

We only really fought for the hour, this time; Kaerella used the bow again, just switching to her wand when the Encourage buff had to be applied, and used 47 experience boosters, gaining 78.90%. RedRydeR was able to use the mid-level attack-increasing buff and a cheap level 61-90 platinum blessed iris for the last time, as she levelled up - twice, in fact, gaining 164.95% from 72 experience boosters, which shows how much faster she kills than Kaerella, even though, with a platinum adrenaline and the fast bow fixing buff, Kae's bow-pulling elbow was moving extremely quickly. Red was killing more than 50% more quickly, it seems. Kaerella's drake, SirFrancis, gained 1117 pet points, and RedRydeR's drake added 1102; Kae and Red each gained 12 skill points.

I quickly changed over to MistressDomino at six, and headed for the Randol arena on Auzura-5, to be teleported to the Dratan PvP grounds, where the "Whack-a-Fluton" event was just starting in the arena there. The reason I went as MistressDomino, my merchant mage, is that she is level 10, which is too low for her to be killed by other players in an arena. So, I could just fight the flutons, hitting them for 29 damage, without having to worry about some fluton sympathiser pk-ing me. The flutons killed me a few times though! I noticed there was no loot spawning at the end, though at least a few people got heaven stones dropped by a purple dragon. The guild master in charge wasn't actually visible, but it was quite a fun half hour. I didn't notice any Twisted guildies there, though DrJirri was one of the most prominent fluton fighters.

After that, RedRydeR was able to learn the fourth level of Reinforce 2, for, like SirKit's level 92 skill, 300 sp, increasing her physical attack stat by 12. And then MistressDomina and MistressBlaze logged in, and headed for the screaming zombies at the start of the Tomb of Theos, for the usual sort of fun. However, that was not to be a long, evening-filling session, instead word came over the guild chat that a monster combo party was being formed - and MD was invited.

So, I bade farewell to the Tomb gang. MistressBlaze had added 33.63%, taking her halfway through level 59, along with 390 pet points. MistressDomina's increase was a bit smaller, at 0.59%, plus 4 skill points and 643 pet points.

There was no experience to be gained at the monster combo in Dratan City - MD's guildie starmunch is the one who tends to organize the teams, and she is level 131, while for our first run we had a level 149 ranger along, KaraSwift. xDyaboluSx was level 139, while guildies WolfDC (108), Dropkick (104), and IIGEMATRIAII (98) are all higher-level than MD. The cleric, though, Carlien, was level 85.

As tends to happen, the leader did the first four rounds solo, fighting just a single monster per round - the niva to begin with I assume, before the wight slashers took over. After that we all piled in, though there was a strange bug towards the end. MD's terra spear just didn't work a couple of times, and I had the message "you are too far away"... and then I was in the same circular room, or a similar one, but alone, and everyone else wondered where I was. We all had to use town recall scrolls to get back to the anteroom, and tried again... but someone else had the same problem, vanishing from the room everyone else was in, before at last we completed the twentieth round. To do that round with less than eight people would have cut back the number of boxes containing master coins we'd get.

We did well, anyway, with WolfDC collecting a total of 271 master coins; my share was 33. Half of us were in favour of doing another run after that, so starmunch, Carlien, WolfDc and I were now joined by our Twisted guild master SacSalop, a level 133 specialist sorcerer, and guildie PurpleDawn (85), plus Lyn26 (108) and another wizard, Olena (101). Things went without any glitches this time, though the total number of coins fell to 225. Still, 28 master coins made the effort involved more than worthwhile. The general feeling after that was that we'd done enough, so I said goodnight and logged out.

Between the two monster combo runs, I'd had enough time to log RedRackham in and take him to Maargadum Jail for a bit more drake-levelling. This wasn't on Auzura, though, as he is on the same account there as MistressDomina; instead, his Cariae namesake had an outing, to work on the level 41 drake he is carrying. Another knight, Looon, was already pet-levelling on the usual death mask lancer, rather to my surprise, so RedRackham had to move further along the room, to the second lancer, and stayed in action there until the end of the evening.

It must be many, many months since I did a "proper" monster combo, not counting an extra-fast one on a minor server (as far as my characters are concerned) where a couple of my Prokion-level characters helped make up the numbers. Back when Zenderfly would bring Keerella into a lot of mc parties, there weren't any level 149, or indeed 133, characters around, very few players who went there were over level 100, so killing the monsters took rather longer. This time, MistressDomina was seldom able to use terra spear more than once on a wight slasher which, now, are green-named for her.

Still, it was fun to revisit old haunts, and made a good way to end a busy day.