Sunday 24 October 2010

Two Quizzes, and a New Auzura Problem

RedRackham went out to do some pet-levelling on Auzura-6 soon after breakfast time, or the time I would have breakfast if it wasn't a lazy Sunday morning. After coffee, SirGalahad headed for Prokion Temple, in a solo party with Red, and managed to get 232 skill points while reaching 99.78% of the way through level 23, helped along by a level 4 ignition sequence. Then Gal spent all but 3 points on assorted special skills, which probably got him to around the stage he was at before the Auzura rollback, and went to visit the degraded golien commander in Ebony Mine to lose the experience.

A second trip to Prokion Temple brought in 182 skill points, as dungeon time had started, and those too got spent - on two 89 sp skills, leaving 4 remaining, though by the time 33 more deaths had been suffered in Ebony Mine, those had also gone. There wasn't time for another Prokion trip - but SirGalahad did a quest to kill some dark goddesses, which led on to a couple more quest rewards, and one of the soft sand-collecting quests, which, given how long it takes for sand golems to drop that item, is probably not worth his time.

Over lunch RedRackham on Cariae joined in the pet-levelling too, so that his drake is now past 60% of the way through level 45. On Auzura, Red's drake moved past the 75% point in level 42, but still has quite a way to go to get back to its pre-rollback level. Talking of the rollback, I was surprised to see on his text that Discipline member LostSpeed had logged in and out, as she had asked to be kicked from the guild so that she could move on to Twisted. MistressSabina had done that, but that action too had been rolled back.

Tuffsen was around, and lured Kaerella and RedRydeR to the Cariae-4 ancient grey mummies with promises of candy...and she did indeed give me a gift of ten pieces of that, which was rather a good present. It was lucky she did help me to decide to go to Cariae rather than Auzura, as poor Auzura did have its problems during the rest of the day. I don't think there was an actual disastrous crash during the afternoon, but at about 2:15, UK time, and again at 3:50, there were reports in the shoutbox of mass disconnections, followed by the "account already logged in" message. Some sub-servers lost the double experience and skill exp, too.

Anyway, on Cariae all went well while we were busy in the Tomb, though as the Sunday Quiz approached, there did seem to be signs of lag. Kaerella did a "power hour" during the two to three o'clock dungeon time, using 39 experience boosters and going up by 23.22%, which took her into level 98, plus 14 skill points and 1030 pet points. After the early evening food break she did another one, too, and as this included a level three ignition sequence (damage increased seven-fold for 90 seconds), followed by a level two sequence (treble damage for 120 seconds), and right at the end a level one sequence as well (double damage for 120 seconds), this time 46 boosters got used, giving 25.09% in level 98, plus 15 skill points and 1035 pet points.

BadFairy stayed out of the combat party, though the archer NaOmi and the titan BRA1N did join up. By the time I logged out to go to the quiz, Kaerella's total experience gain had reached 51.12%, plus 68 skill points and 5863 pet points. Without any boosters or pots, RedRyDeR had managed to add 11.96%, along with the same 68 skill points, and 6723 pet points, as Red does tend to be able to continue fighting at times when Kae is technically afk.

Given the Auzura server group's recent and ongoing problems, I really didn't think that going there for the quiz was too bright an idea... we might lag out and thus move too slowly, or disconnect, or emerge triumphant only to later get rolled back to before the goodies had been given out. So, it was Cariae-2 that hosted Kaerella and MistressDomina, my merchant mage, this time. I always stand on the "X" side of the quiz room, as, for as long as I can remember, the answer to the first question has always been "X"...that's saved me a time or two when I've not immediately noticed things starting up. And this time it saved me, too, as suddenly, just after 8:30pm UK time, everyone waiting on the "O" side, or that half of the central carpet strip, vanished, booted out.

Some people say that the quiz window with the first question did appear for a fraction of a second, but I didn't see it. The survivors soon recovered from the initial shock, and the rest of the questions all went smoothly for us, so that at the end Kaerella was able to trade her moonstones and heaven stones, plus her relatively recent oddments from the Tomb such as moonstone boxes and pan flutes, across to MD. RedRydeR also logged on briefly, so that her loot could be moved across too.

There was plenty of indignation in the forum shoutbox, from innocent people who'd been booted out of the quiz on all servers before they were even aware it had started, so the GMs reacted swiftly, and announced a second, bonus quiz to start an hour later - or in 50 minutes time, by then. "Sorry about the newb move earlier and enjoy the bonus quiz", they said, which was fair enough. Everyone would be welcome.

So, instead of letting SirGalahad have a quick trip to Prokion, or something, I got ready for the second quiz. This time I decided to see if I could increase my assets on the Tairen server, so my merchant mage there, Enchantra, logged in on Tairen-2 and headed for the quiz room... swiftly followed by Kaerella of course, who is only level 29 there, and still in need of a lot of skill points if she is ever going to go much further. She has +11 armour, though her level 33 "pheonix" bow is only +10.

The quiz went much as it usually does, though I was struck by there being a bit of bad language beforehand, something one tends not to get on Auzura - or if one does, it's in a language I don't know. Many of the questions were the same as before, as the GMs only have a limited number to choose from, but all went smoothly, though they paused after question 20, to stress that the "not giving someone your password even if he says he is a GM" question is important, before the final two questions, which are just used to help people leave the room.

Sadly, afterwards the shoutbox was busy with people from Auzura reporting a mass disconnection at the quiz on one sub-server, and also people losing parts of their inventory when they logged out and then back in again on a different sub-server...the first couple of inventory lines, or sometimes more. Luckily [GM]AwesomeSauce was able to get on and reassure people that the problem was being worked on, but there were a lot of unhappy people out there...

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