A Big Purchase

I was busy downstairs through the morning again, but RedRackham went down into Maargadum Jail on Auzura-4 to spar with his friend the death mask lancer relatively soon after breakfast, and his Cariae counterpart followed his example a little later. Auzura's RedRackham managed to use a couple of the platinum pet experience potions before lunch, so SirFrancis was getting pretty near the top of his level...then a third ppep actually got Kaerella's drake into level 45 just before noon, which is about as far as a level 35 knight can take a pet, realistically.

The weekend, recently, has always been a time of special offers from the Last Chaos money man Exchequer, so I was hoping to read about some extra-special "buy one get one" bargains over Saturday and Sunday, plus one of the "tiered spender events" where spending a certain amount of aeria points qualifies you for an extra package of goodies. Perhaps they could even bring back the master stone tiered spender event...?

However, there was no big "Budget Box" announcement today, surprisingly; perhaps the problems they had yesterday with the "Parallel Dimension Pet Box", a new kind of box randomly giving pet-oriented items, caused them to divert their resources elsewhere. The only trouble with those boxes, according to visitors to the forum shoutbox last night, was that all they delivered was a "the item does not exist" message. They have now been withdrawn from the item mall. There had been some other interesting "mystery" boxes, which I'd though I might try if they overlapped with a tiered spender event...but they've vanished now, too. So, it looked as if there would be no huge spending sprees for me this weekend - my feeling was that MistressDomina had enough items to keep her going for another week, and if she temporarily ran out of stuff, well, I have other characters I can play who need to farm experience rather than skill exp, so I could still keep active.

SirFrancis had actually got 10% of the way into the new level when RedRackham logged out - and my Auzura level 93 rogue Rage logged in, to team up with Kaerella for the two to three o'clock dungeon time hour, on Auzura-4. I'd already checked the Cariae Tomb, and found that it was down to 60%; luckily, Auzura's was on a more friendly 90% of the way towards the easy end.

The ancient grey mummies room had space for us, we just shared it with the royal knight DRsKnight, with the archer Swenja out in the corridor as usual. Another rogue did come into the room quite early in the hour, but left when she saw that there weren't enough mummies for her as well - indeed, the three of us only just had enough respawns to keep going. Kaerella levelled up, reaching 101 before the end of the hour, adding 28.45% from 63 experience boosters. while Rage made good progress, adding 69.93% from 57 boosters. We stayed on for a while after the hour ended, without further potions, so that in all Kaerella added 28.91%, along with 1778 pet points for her stand-in drake. Rage earned 71.20%, plus 1918 pet points, and they each earned 26 skill points.

Back in Randol, Kaerella traded back the level 44 drake to RedRackham, in exchange for getting SirFrancis returned, now in level 45. Rage then traded her level 39 drake to Red, and got the level 44 one in return, so can now get a better drake buff. RedRackham then, after the animal trainer had got his new drake to give him the maximum armour buff, headed back to Maargadum Jail, to work on this significantly less hungry pet.

After the food break, the Cariae Tomb of Theos was down to 20%; I expect the Auzura one was still pretty friendly, but it would also tend to be a bit too full to do anything useful. Kaerella on Tairen, on level 29, visited Prokion Temple for a little while, and then JohnWellington, my level 34 specialist sorcerer, headed there on Auzura-6, and fought the orc axemen and orc soldiers in the corridor room for perhaps half an hour.

Following a little while away from the computer screens, I noticed in the shoutbox that a new trio of "buy one get one" offers had in fact now been posted - and they included the "Summer Skills" pack, which offers 300 skill point boosters, 10 effort scrolls, and 10 platinum super skill pills, normally for 2000 ap but now at 1999 ap for the first package, and 1 ap for the second. So, MistressDomina logged in to the web mall, and, with gritted teeth, I bought four of the bogo offers.

That takes my Auzura total stash of skill point boosters to 3704, which ought, with a pssp and a 15% pill active, to get MistressDomina more than 20k more skill points, which while it won't get her all the way to the target of 40k, will certainly get her within a reasonable distance of it. Mind you, it is liable to take more than 60 hours fighting the ancient grey zombies. There will be some pssps left over afterwards, at least, not to mention those effort scrolls.

MistressDomina had gone in-game as well as to the website, to download the new purchases and check the totals - and was greeted by a small red circle beneath her feet, as the Dratan Castle Siege was on, and some of our people were helping the allied guild to defend, er, whatever it is that has to be defended there. So, I wished them the best of luck, and then a little later a window popped up to tell me that the defence had been successful - so this should mean another week of the Tomb being in prime condition, which, if MD is busy grinding sp every day, is just as well.

Apparently the Merac Castle Siege is in the early hours of Sunday morning, as far as UK time is concerned, so, while Twisted is hoping to field a strong team for that, I had to bow out, saying that I would have to be getting up about three hours after that, and would be no use to anyone at that time of night.

MistressDomina traded across her large crit potions in exchange for 67 small ones, which ought to last as long as the skill point booster supply, and also got rid of a little loot; and then MD logged out, and RedRackham headed back to Maargadum Jail for another hour or so. MistressDomino, my merchant character, went into merchant mode for a while, but gold is tight in-game now, as drop amounts have been curtailed (and are also reduced when an increased experience/skill exp event is running), and the socketing system and gold costs for high-level skills both drain gold out of the game. She did at least manage to sell a few health point stealer potions, taking her gold back up over 200 million, at least.