The Old Team

There was plenty of time for pet-levelling again today, as my preparations for the weekend continued. Both RedRackhams headed for Maargadum Jail's fifth floor on their fourth subserver; on Auzura, after fighting the death mask soldier and eventually killing it, for 594 gold, Red settled down to fight that first death mask lancer, while on Cariae, no fighting was needed - but a knight called SirMoe was battling the first lancer, so Red had to move along to the second one.

After lunch I did manage to log MistressDomina in; she made a party with SirPerivale,on Auzura-4, who dashed off to Maargadum Jail's ground floor. He intended to get a nice non-aggressive spike canine, but couldn't get to one without attracting the attention of one of the aggressive, pet-eating dire spike canines. I did try fighting the dire spike canine, but, at his level and with only a +6 sword, Peri really made very little progress, missing a lot, so in the end I settled for using that monster, lured it into the corner behind the teleporter, and set to work. To my relief it kept focussed on Peri, rather than his pet, and by the end of the afternoon the hatchling had reached level 11.

MistressDomina headed for the Tomb of Theos of course, and the ancient grey mummies room. The first hour used the last of her 15% training spell books, on top of the platinum super skill pill, so that using 61 skill point boosters MD earned 338 skill points, while going up by 0.71% - the last quarter hour was in the two to three o'clock dungeon time hour. I wasn't sure if the ten-minute "effort scrolls" would stack with a pssp, so tried one out - but it didn't, so the second and third hours just used a pssp each, along with the usual potions. Hour two used 57 boosters, to gain 302 skill points, while going up 0.80% (about 40 minutes was in dungeon time's 50% boost), and the third hour used the same, for 301 more skill points. As that was entirely outside a dungeon time hour, just 0.60% was added to MistressDomina's experience tally.

So, over the three hours, MistressDomina had gained 941 skill points, on 2.11% experience, along with 2922 pet points - which got MD's drake comfortably into level 47. Early on the royal knight Cosmin31 had been the only other player in the room, though during the dungeon time hour a group of three were doing a little power-levelling; there were always just enough mummies to go around.

At the start of the food break, Auzura's RedRackham headed for floor five of the Jail again. Soon after five, UK time, he started a platinum pet experience potion, to gain triple experience for an hour, which moved SirFrancis past the halfway point in level 44.

Luckily I didn't start another one, as the same problems the game had yesterday returned. As 6:30pm approached RedRackham's pet-levelling was not really working properly - when I clicked to use a quality stone there'd be a delay before the bar moved, and the usual "18" stopped appearing over the death mask lancer's head occasionally, before returning. In the shoutbox, people were reporting strange lag-based effects, and disconnections. And then at 6:35, the "disconnected" window popped up.

"Okay everyone, there are some lag problems with the servers right now", the gamesage in the shoutbox, gAmmAv2, told us. "The source of the lag, and a fix for the lag, are currently being investigated. I'll update you as soon as I get updated."

I didn't actually notice any further reports but, as happened yesterday, everything settled down again; people are starting to worry that it is deliberate hacking, since a while ago Aeria was subject to a "denial of service" attack and ransom attempt. I'd been checking to see if I had any skill point boosters, skill boxes or platinum super skill pills tucked away on another account, but only found 200 of the spbs; MistressDomino bought one pssp from Roy's merchant mart for 12 million, all the rest he had were 14.5 or 15 million each, and while today's "BOGO" offers included a ten-pack of the experience-boosting platinum blessed irises, they didn't include the skill exp equivalent, but only the ordinary super skill pills, which only give double skill exp, and so aren't any use for using with the spbs...very little use at all, in fact.

MistressBlaze did log on for another short session - this time she rode down to the entrance to the Temple of Forgetfulness in the Dratan desert, and went inside, just to the first room, to kill some of the legendary slayers, and the local spiders. The quest rewards gave her 2.45% experience and 9 skill points, so that the whole expedition gave her 3.66% and 13 skill points, plus 25 pet points. It's handy to get that location onto her memory scroll, anyway.

The eight to nine o'clock dungeon time hour was on the horizon, so Barbarienne logged in on Cariae-4 to check what the Condition of the Tomb of Theos was there - and, for a change, it was at 90%. So, Keerella logged on too and joined Barb at the entrance; they formed a combat party, got the horse buffs, and went in, heading for the anubis spear men.

The first corner after the main spear man room was being used by a knight when I arrived, so Barb and Kee back-tracked into that room - but when Barb checked less than five minutes later, the corner was clear, so we moved to that spot. Barb and Kee had only been fighting for ten minutes when the dungeon time hour began; Barb started the potions then, and started her power hour, while Keerella just fought the sphinx fighters.

One advantage of that corner was that a third anubis spear man is quite near, and, as nobody was fighting on that stretch, Barbarienne was able to attack that one sometimes, as, with her level 109 bow, she does kill pretty quickly, especially when an adrenaline and a crit potion are active. In the hour Barbarienne killed 63 anubis spear men, using experience boosters, and gained 28.14% experience, plus 15 skill points.

We had double experience and skill exp running, so it seemed a good idea to move across to the ancient grey mummies for the last half hour of our session. That also gave Keerella the chance to get the mummy bandages she needed for a quest. The time spent there, still in a combat party, meant that for the whole session Barbarienne' experience gain went up to 29.17%, plus 29 skill points and 1209 pet points. Keerella gained 3.28% experience, the same 29 skill points, and 1821 pet points.

One landmark was reached at last during that session - after quite a few weeks, Keerella finally had enough skill points for level 9 of Freeze Arrow, so back in Dratan City that level was acquired, increasing the skill's power from 360% to 400%. The skill's final level, to take it to 440%, did come available when Kee reached level 100, but she would need to get another 650 skill points before she could learn that...it will probably be more sensible to save up sp for the level 102 skill, Fire Ball, which needs 1020 sp for its first level.

It made a change to get the Barb 'n' Kee team back in action - and teaming them against the ancient grey mummies may be something to make a habit of, as both characters do need more skill points now, if they are going to go any further. Once they had both logged out, there was time for RedRackham and SirFrancis to go back to the fifth floor of Maargadum Jail for an hour or so, to end the evening.