Disconnections

The usual characters played their half hours in the morning, from before breakfast to coffee time; some mining was included, and MistressDomina killed a fox, which gave 1 experience and 2 skill exp, revealing that yesterday evening's double skill experience was still running.

After coffee SirGalahad managed to fit in an hour in Prokion Temple, exclusively killing ghouls; as they are blue they don't drop any armour, weapons or gems, but they do still drop the personal dungeon tickets 2, torn books of life, LacaRette tokens, and moon cake ingredients. By the time the dungeon time hour began, he'd added 195 skill points, while gaining 6.33% experience. The "double" skill exp meant that as well as the basic 1650 skill exp, and the extra 1650 from the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff, and the 330 extra from the 10% attendance bonus, he was actually just getting another 495 skill exp, as that gets him to the maximum of 150% extra.

CaptainScarlet had been providing SirGalahad's solo party, while doing some more pet-levelling work on his level 47 drake; when SirGalahad logged out, I was able to log in his near-namesake on Cariae, XxGALAHADxX, who also headed for Maargadum Jail, to do a little pet-levelling over lunch on his level 36 drake, which was about two-thirds of the way through its level.

Unfortunately, both computers got a disconnection fairly early on in the break, so not much pet experience got added. After lunch, I logged Kaerella in over on Cariae-4, and she checked out the Condition of the Tomb of Theos there. It was on 70%, which seemed just about do-able, so Barbarienne joined her, and they went in. Before long, however, there was another disconnection, and for a few minutes I couldn't reconnect to Last Chaos at all - I'd have thought it was a general internet problem if I hadn't been successfully downloading a file at the time.

Kaerella and Barbarienne logged back in; Kae had gained 0.04% and 107 pet points, while Barb had gained 0.05%, before the disconnection, along with 2 skill points each. However, the Condition of the Tomb was now down to 60%, so I felt that progress there would just have been too slow, and a little dangerous. But, while I was checking the internet for a few things, someone had actually reset the Tomb, so that when I checked again, just before I'd have logged Barb out, the Tomb was back to 100% easy, so my duo went back in.

However, less than an hour later the same thing happened, with the "Connect Info Open FAILED!" message when trying to get the launcher to launch - and I couldn't reconnect to the forum shoutbox either. I was able to start another file downloading, so it wasn't my personal internet connection that was at fault. This time Kae had gained 0.62% and 629 pet points, while Barb was up by 0.57%, and they'd each got 14 skill points. I decided to try for a third time, but they only lasted ten minutes, adding 0.02% each and a single skill point, with 39 pet points for Kae's drake. It seemed a good time to get some work sorted out downstairs instead...

s mentioned yesterday, I was waiting for a delivery - a new computer monitor, in fact. I was keeping a careful watch, hardly a car would go past without me looking out the window, and as four o'clock approached I checked the online "tracking" page for it again - only to find that it said the item had been successfully delivered at 14:02! I could see no note of anything in the front porch, and was starting to seriously think about panicking, when I saw that the item had been signed for by "L/Safe: Porch", and, sure enough, against the far side of the porch, there was my package, which was, after all, only about six inches thick. With a huge sigh of relief I carried it in and unwrapped the monitor, though it can't really swing into action until late next week. I wonder why Amazon.co.uk would supply it with a continental-style two-pin power plug? Luckily I have plenty of spare power leads with the UK style three-pin plug on them.

During the food break I logged Barbarienne in for a while, and she managed to avoid being disconnected, so I decided to make one last try for a reasonably long session in Cariae-4's Tomb of Theos. The Condition was on 90% now, which is still pretty good, so Kaerella and Barbarienne went in, and ran to the ancient grey mummies again. Between them, getting in costs 630,000 gold, so this was their last chance for today, these things get expensive.

Luckily there were no more disconnections, so Barbarienne and Kaerella were able to spend all evening there. Tuffsen, alias Badfairy, got in touch, explaining that she was a bit ill at the moment and wasn't playing much...though she had started a new healer character, which would probably be her "phoenix". xShadowWarriorx, the night shadow and a guildie of hers, was in the room, so I passed across a message or two. He was in our party for a while, so we ran it as a combat party, until he had to go off to help another guildie in Lust Trum tower. Otherwise, the place was very quiet, with only an assassin-rogue arriving a few minutes before we logged off.

The shoutbox was reasonably busy; I was saying that the sooner the GMs appointed LichDemon and Aszune as gamesages the better, as we are so short of active ones now - only for LichDemon to tell us he had been rejected, which seems a remarkably short-sighted decision. The final word on things comes from [GM]JediMike, [GM]Yatou, who turned up in the shoutbox then, told us, and, well, he seems to be going rather slowly. On a day when Giovanna_X and irene_tas are not around, we can go for hours without anyone who can contact the GMs.

Another player rejected as a gamesage, mord, was around for a while; he is a computer expert, and told me the cure for the "b" problem, which I tested just before logging out. If hitting "b" while not in the chat box makes your game lag like crazy with a frame rate of around one per second, you just need to hit Esc, and then "b" again, and all is back to normal.

By the end of the session, Kaerella had gained another 3.39% and 4198 pet points, and Barbarienne had gone up by 3.32%. They had each earned a further 103 skill points, thanks to the continuing double skill exp. Of course the downside to an experience or skill exp event is that it reduces the drop rate; I think I only picked up one piece of armour during the whole evening.

CaptainScarlet did go back to the death mask lancer in Maargadum Jail for a little pet-levelling afterwards; the drake was around 85% of the way through level 47, when last seen. Another knight called xStrithx was already by the side wall, sparring with the death mask soldier to level his horse, so I had to move Cap further along the side beyond him, so that if he left or got a disconnection, the soldier wouldn't wander back to Cap and perhaps start attacking the drake.