Wednesday 17 November 2010

A Long Time in the Tomb

The new week's patch notes announced the return of the Attendance System, though this time giving a boost to one's skill exp gain, rather than regular experience. So, this had been discussed and promised, it was good to see it actually arrive; the notes said an hour per day was necessary, but, after Cariae's Kaerella and Auzura's MistressSabina had been logged in over breakfast, it seemed that only half an hour, as before, was needed. 10% extra skill exp is certainly worth earning - especially if it stacks with other boosts!

"We are working on a formal list of bannable exploits in game that will be posted in the forums. It is advised that you stop using any exploits before this list is posted to avoid an account ban in the future," our product manager announced, which seems a good idea, to make the system more open. He also said that "We have finalized our next list of bugs to submit to the developers. Hold tight and that bug you've always hated may be next in line to get fixed!" Hopefully, there are some lists already with the developers, but it all helps.

The new week has also started something called a "Moon Cake Festival", requiring us to collect ingredients from monsters to make moon cakes. We can then take ten moon cakes, and attempt to make a "full moon cake", which will be bought by the domain merchant for "some serious gold"... however, unusually for an event, there are failure rates involved here, with a 30% chance that you lose your ingredients when attempting to make a moon cake, and a 50% chance of failure, and loss of cakes, when trying to make a full moon cake. The ingredients needed seem to be rather rare drops, too.

Aeria actually added horses and drakes to the in-game item mall apparently - but were soon getting complaints that these pets could not be equipped! Another Epic Fail, then. The items were quickly withdrawn from sale, with people who had already bought them having to send in a request via the Request Tracker system to get a refund. Since, despite being called "horses and drakes" rather than "ponies and hatchlings", these were it seems just level 1 pets being sold for 1 aeria point each, it all seems a rather strange idea. And just after nine in the morning, UK time, I noticed an in-game announcement that the servers were having to be brought down for an emergency maintenance, to fix a problem with the new Attendance system, so MistressSabina and Cariae's Kaerella hurriedly left.

Half an hour later, [GM]JediMike reported that "We should be live any second now", and soon we were told it was safe to return. Apparently, people who logged in for half an hour or more, logged out, and logged back in were treated as if they'd reached the second day of their attendance. Hopefully Mike was able to go off home to bed after that, since it was 1:30am for him.

Barbarienne and Rage signed in for their half hours, with Rage doing some stone mining; and then after coffee, MistressDomina and Auzura's Kaerella logged in, and, finding the Tomb of Theos still at 100% easy, headed for the ancient grey mummies.

I was interested to see how a combat party, with them both fighting, would compare with MD soloing there; MistressDomina started with a ssp hour, and did bring in 33 skill points, and 1.07% experience. Without the ssp and giant skill pill, Kaerella gained 15 skill points and 1.31%. They did continue up until the lunch break, so that in all MD went up by 1.40% and 38 skill points, plus 1328 pet points, while Kae earned 1.70% and 20 skill points, plus 1251 pet points.

During the afternoon, things continued much as before, though I didn't try using another super skill pill. For about an hour the assassin rogue bolster, level 104, joined our combat party, but she left, handily, just before Kaerella had a red ignition run. MistressDomina had a red run too, a little later, which accounted for about 8 skill points, since she was getting 11,000 skill exp per kill. Being two levels lower than the ancient grey mummies, Kaerella just got 9,900 per kill on her red run.

By the early evening food break, MistressDomina had earned 2.71%, 54 skill points, and 2616 pet points, while Kaerella had added 3.30%, 48 skill points, and 2652 pet points.

The evening session ended early, as it often does on a Wednesday - and was more of the same, basically. Both Kaerella and MistressDomina got up to another red ignition run, which, as well as extra speed, gives 150% extra skill exp while it lasts, although it doesn't stack with anything else. The evening session gave MD another 4.48%, 58 skill points, and 3085 pet points, while Kae got 5.48%, 52 skill points, and 3107 pet points. There was a mystery "turbo" event from six to eight, approximately, so from those figures it looks as if it was probably 50% extra experience and skill exp.

The room varied in how busy it was, again, with at one point five of us, though that didn't last long thankfully. I was lucky that things got quiet enough towards the end for there to be enough targets for an ignition run - it can be frustrating if one has the energy stored, but no mummies to use it on.

CaptainScarlet was able to take over while I was otherwise engaged, and started to move his horse through level 35 for a couple of hours or so; later on, SirGalahad was able to go out there to Maargadum Jail as well for a little over half an hour, and lured a spike canine behind the teleporter, to level his pet pale blue pony a little. It moved on into level 14, so won't be a cute little pony for much longer. And SirGalahad's time online meant that he became the seventh of my characters to start towards better a skill exp bonus from the new Attendance system...

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