Progress for Pets

The double pet experience was still running in the morning, so both SirGalahad and RedRackham headed straight for Maargadum Jail before breakfast. Gal arrived first, and had to kill a dire spike canine, using his dual swords, before luring a less aggressive spike canine back to behind the teleporter, and equipping his level 14 pony. When RedRackham arrived, I noticed that Gal's health was down to about a third - I hadn't remembered to re-equip his shield, which, with its 231 defence, makes rather a difference. Once the Royal Shield +13 had been equipped again, Red gave him the divine shield buff to help his health recover, and then headed down to the fifth floor, to spar with the death mask lancer. He started a one-hour platinum pet experience pill, to get 6 pet points at a time.

Red was able to begin a second ppep before I headed out shopping. My trip took a little over two hours, so that when I got back, the drake, which had reached level 42, was down to zero on its starvation bar. That means it no longer gains pet points, and loses sympathy - but it had only happened very recently, as the sympathy was only on 99%, and the missing 1% was soon regained once the drake had been fed a few quality stones. Red soon started a third ppep; unless anything goes wrong, each ppep hour adds over 6000 pet points. By the time the afternoon session began, Red's drake was only a thousand or so pet points away from level 43.

However, as RedRackham is on the same account as MistressDomina, he had to log out, while SirGalahad provided MD with a solo party; by then, thanks to the double pet experience, Gal's horse had just reached level 19.

When MistressDomina reached the entrance to the Tomb of Theos, she discovered that the Condition was at the maximum easy end of the scale, so all seemed set fair for a session with the ancient grey mummies. And so it was; with the double skill exp running, MD got 1.012 skill points per kill (0.44 x 2, plus 15% from the giant skill pill), so it didn't seem worthwhile to do any "power hours" with platinum super skill pills. So, with buffs but without any pots, MD settled in for the session.

There were various dungeon runs through the Forgotten Temple scheduled, starting at five o'clock with Auzura; that one, and the run on Katar an hour later, were both being handled by [GM]Darasuum, he mentioned on a visit to the forum shoutbox, which, given his record of not being the most generous of loot-spawners, wasn't a great incentive to risk taking Rage, or maybe Kaerella, along there...so I continued with the ancient grey mummies. The run on Cariae at seven was more tempting, I was certainly considering taking Barbarienne along to that...but, well, the monsters that have been spawned there in the past have tended to be a little bit heavy-duty, even for her, and who needs to risk using a few more resurrection scrolls...?

So, I just continued where I was, and by the end of the evening, MistressDomina had gone up 5.40%, 231 skill points, and, thanks to the double pet experience, 14,164 pet points. So that must have been almost seven hours of fighting, at 33 skill points per hour...which shows that things are rather slower when one doesn't use pots. Various other people came into the room, there was one mage wearing the 60/62 armour set who managed to "kite" a couple of mummies successfully, which was a bit nail-biting. Sometimes the room was pretty full, and at other times I had it to myself. The archer xDestinyx came and fought there a number of times, and indeed was back in action when I logged off.

SirGalahad was the one who had some drama, while he was pet-levelling. Working just behind the teleporter in Maargadum Jail is a rather public spot, even on the fourth sub-server, where you can't get the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff, and he did get ks'd a time or two, with people killing his spike canine. There was one night shadow, AngelofDaeth, in particular...why would anyone of level 90 or more be visiting Maargadum? "I don't like afk pet-levelling", was his excuse. "I don't like ks-ers", was my response. "Levelling your pet if you play and not if you are away thats sucks andf made pay 4 pets mud", he added cryptically, but luckily he left after that.

AngelofDaeth, or a friend, had lured the aggressive, pet-eating dire spike canines onto SirGalahad twice, and it was lucky I was around, and able to unequip Gal's horse before it could be killed. As it was, the second attempt took the pet's health down to 25%...luckily it levelled up soon after that, returning its health to 100%. By the end of the evening, Gal's horse had reached level 24, so that was rather a lot of levels to get through in a day - ten of them.

RedRackham was able to fit in another hour or so once MistressDomina finished, and in fact "looked after" Gal's spike canine for a few minutes while I restarted the game on the older computer, so that Gal didn't have to take the time to lure a fresh one out of the main room to fight with. Red then ran down to level five, and the death mask lancer; with the aid of one more platinum pet experience potion, the drake soon reached level 43, and started to make some useful progress through that level, which is 24,405 pet points long. Tonight's scheduled weekly maintenance will probably end the double-time, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?