A Bad News Day

The first priority this morning was to move some loot around, to clean out SirGalahad's inventory a bit, and Rage's and MistressDomina's. This meant a fair bit of trading back and forth with my Auzura merchant mage; Rage was also running a little low on quality stones, so went out with 25 hammers and did some quick mining, as she was carrying plenty of tool aids.

As CaptainScarlet had got his drake safely into level 47, it was time to trade that across, too, so Rage now has that drake, in exchange for the level 44 one she previously had. Its health was slightly low, after the Merac Run yesterday - but over lunch it levelled up to 45, which returned its red health bar to 100%.

Once the trading had been done, MistressDomina was able to form a solo party with CaptainScarlet and, while he headed for Maargadum Jail on Auzura-4, she teleported out to the Tomb of Theos. The Tomb was again set on 100% easy, so she went in, and headed, as usual, for the ancient grey mummies.

After the trading-around, MD had a few super skill pills, the non-platinum type that just give double experience, so she used one of these, without boosters, for an hour before lunch. During that time she went up just 0.74%, plus 31 skill points, while the whole session added 1.39% and 41 skill points, plus 1695 pet points. The 15% extra skill exp from her giant skill pill doesn't multiply the double skill exp, unfortunately, so while without the ssp MistressDomina gets 4400 skill exp plus 15%, or 5060, adding the ssp just adds another 4400, for 9460 skill exp per kill, or slightly less than one skill point.

After lunch, another ssp hour gave 0.72% plus 30 skill points, followed by, due to the dungeon time, 0.89% and, again, 30 skill points. The room did get a bit busy; the wizard RunAwaY had been there in the morning and returned for a while in the afternoon, with lots of pots and a lucky spell book, mobbing the mummies but being careful to leave me my spare, but when the royal knight Cosmin31 also started mobbing, things got complicated, and I did mention the possibility of giving his mob the "gift" of Chaos Nova. Still, he calmed down and started to leave enough for me, even saying I could take one of his when he absent-mindedly took them all.

After RunAwaY had left, a ranger called AggressiVe arrived; at first I thought she must be a friend of Cosmin31's, but this proved not to be the case, and they were soon both talking about taking videos, getting people banned, and so on. "Hope you know who I am, boy", AggressiVe said. And when the knight admitted that he didn't know, "Then never go on pvp again - better for you and your guild".

I took some time out once the second hour was over, before I decided that there was time to get up to a red ignition run before the early evening food break. I got to the run, but somehow, when I typed a warning in to AggressiVe that I was about to do an ignition run, it didn't end up in the text panel, which meant various windows opened, and a medium mana potion was used... that's hardly the first time that has happened, but whatever I'd done also made the game very, very laggy, running at no more than one frame per second - and it continued like that over the food break. Even reloading the game-in-progress by changing the screen resolution didn't improve things, so in the end I had to log out without making that run. Still, the afternoon's total had reached 1.67%, 61 skill points, and 2126 pet points.

Later in the forum shoutbox a player called mord asked about that very thing - and LadyBorderlinex said that it comes from hitting "B" when you aren't typing in as text. Apparently mord had it happen a couple of times in Mondshine's Chapel yesterday, which is worse than missing an ignition run I guess.

I logged back in with SirGalahad, who, thankfully, didn't have any lag problems, and took him out to Ebony Mine to lose his experience in level 23, stopping off to mine a few quality stones along the way. He lost his experience safely, and was able to have a short session in Prokion Temple. He ended up having continual first stage ignition, which was fun - but led me to go beyond the end of level 23, so that SirGalahad is now 3.69% into level 24. He has 153 skill points to spend - not a huge number, since dungeon time was running. It doesn't really matter if he does creep up a level or two, as long as he doesn't go past level 25.

Rage logged in for the "Storm the Castle" event on Auzura-6, and teleported down to Merac Castle. [GM]Darasuum was waiting at the start, and chatted with people. Rage actually got into a party with two other Twisted guildies, including Restorator, a cleric. Rage joined the people going in via the southern gate, and everything went smoothly enough. There was an invisible dragon in the inner courtyard, but to my dismay the Halloween pumpkin helm no longer worked to reveal it, so only people who had the item mall "shadow removal powder" active could see and battle it.

Rage ended up with 1 skill point booster, 2 large attack potions, 3 large defence potions, and 4 item drop boosters, so [GM]Darasuum was being more generous with the drops than usual...somehow she also picked up a drake egg, and a ring of power with a 75 long range physical hit rate increase, too...as a final present, Dara spawned a fluton just outside the inner courtyard's gate, and declared the event over.

My level 31 rogue Memree went along to the Katar equivalent, at 6:45 UK time. There was no sign of a GM outside this time; I took the conventional route in, and assisted with the anubis spear men and dark harpies, among others. There then came a choice to make - did I follow most of the people from that corner, who were heading out towards the southern gate and bridge, or should I go on to the inner courtyard? I decided to go on inwards, and it was just as well for me that I did, as [GM]Darasuum was already spawning the loot there. As one of the few people there from the start of the loot-gathering, Memree did rather well, with 2 item drop boosters, 3 skill point boosters, 5 large attack potions, and 9 large defence potions, along with 10 tool aids and a few of the small HP and mana recovery potions, but I imagine that latecomers to the inner courtyard were not very happy. The event was declared over after only ten minutes, half the time the more extensive Auzura version had been given.

Cariae was even quicker, lasting no more than eight minutes, with Barbarienne, at level 110, able to play a full part, except against the invisible dragon. [GM]Darasuum was more visible this time, as with Auzura, and the loot at the end was pretty good, with 2 large defence potions, 6 large attack potions, 5 skill point boosters, and 5 item drop boosters being Barb's share. Again, I'd gone for the less-used southern route in, and we'd soon got through and linked up again with the main force.

As Cariae had been so speedy, I was able to switch over to RedRyder, my level 39 ranger rogue on Sarissa, and teleport down to Merac Castle with time to spare, even though the event there started at 7:45. This one did take until just after eight, though mainly due to a little pause after the invisible dragon was down, before the then-anonymous GM gave the "Congratz... meet outside the castle!" message, to end the uncertain minutes when you don't know where the rewards will be spawned. The loot seemed pretty generous to me, as these things go, though the level 38 rogue with whom I was partied, shadowzoe, seemed to do better than me.

As the Hatzring event started at eight, I missed that one - not that I really have a character who'd be much use there. Tairen was scheduled for 8:45, to complete the run, so my rogue Memree, on level 39, went to Merac, and headed south down the main path, as she didn't have Merac Castle's location memorised. She took her time, and fought some elite frenzied berserkers, elite bloody outlaws, and all three kinds of gnoll along the way, picking up a few armour drops. Unlike my other functioning rogues, this particular Memree is actually an assassin rather than a ranger, although she still generally uses a crossbow.

[GM]AwesomeSauce was actually present "in person" when I arrived, looking a very smart rogue in a high-level armour set, and wearing a pumpkin helm. We weren't a very big group, so Awesome was prepared to make allowances for us, but I think in the end we did fight the whole set of monsters - we even had the Pandora Beasts, wafes, and dark bogles in the inner courtyard as well as the sphinx commanders, and an invisible dragon...judging from what was on the ground, I assume there were kamiras too, for the first people in. The loot was reasonably generous, and after that Awesome spawned some level 1 foxes, followed swiftly by a fluton; "Ooh, a big rocky fox", I commented...

"Thanks for coming out guys! You were super fast", the GM assured us. "Beast Hatz's time by a bit." Someone asked if it was over, and she told us "It's done! You beat them all."

At that stage I made my usual subtle cue, "What, no more kamiras... ^^" - and Awesome being awesome, she did spawn a few more of those, which went down incredibly quickly. "More than Tairen", she continued (presumably meaning Sarissa), "but they didn't work together like you all did." And commenting on the departed kamiras, "That was fast lol." I managed to pick up a crystal or experience (greater) at last, five tool aids, and a couple of hero's necklaces.

However, now we came to today's bad news. "Thanks for coming guys. This was my LAST event on LC!" My "eeeep - you are leaving us???" was one of many expressions of dismay. "I've been transferred to a different team", she explained. "Awww...you will be greatly missed :("

"I'll miss you guys too. Come visit me on Kitsu Saga." That was just followed by another "Thanks for coming guys! I'll see you all later!"

So, that was a rather sad end to the day - our favourite game master, who has always taken the trouble to chat with and interact with the players, and go further with extra spawnings and so on than anyone else, is gone. [GM]AwesomeSauce... strange name, great GM.

CaptainScarlet had continued his work on the drake through all the excitements, anyway, back on Auzura-4, and by the end of the evening had got it up to about a third of the way through level 45.