Taking the Plunge

As the GMs now have the annoying habit of not running "happy hour" events for four hours, but just two, then a gap of five, then two more hours, there was more double pet experience to come last night - from 1:00am to 3:00am UK time. So, I left both CaptainScarlet and RedRackham at work on Auzura-4 on the fifth floor of Maargadum Jail for the night - though Cap switched over from the level 45 drake, which would have got hungry too quickly, to the level 33 one he was also carrying.

Both knights did get disconnected, however, as I discovered when I checked up at about 3:30, so missed the two hours almost completely - but luckily, as quite often happens, the GMs had forgotten to turn off the double pet experience when they left the office for the day. So, I was able to hurry my pet-levelling pair back to the Jail, and back into action, before going back to bed. CaptainScarlet had actually been ks'd after around an hour, so at least the disconnection saved his drake from getting too hungry.

At what, if it hadn't been Sunday, would have been shortly before breakfast, I checked up on Cap and Red - and switched CaptainScarlet back to his level 44 drake. He started a one-hour, triple experience platinum pet experience potion, so that instead of getting two pet points at a time, he'd get six...you never know whether various boosts are going to add or multiply, but in this case they multiply, which is useful.

Sadly, when I next checked, both characters had not just been ks'd, they had had death mask soldiers lured onto them by a pair of ignorant Germans, of the kind who just can't get it into their thick heads that the USA version of Last Chaos allows pet-levelling, including "afk" and not using a weapon. The sad little German version of the game may not allow this, but that is just their own local rule, and I do wish people like Kessi ("Waffe aniegen", or "Weapon put on") and annalein ("pet lvl no") would wise up. It seems to be stupidity rather than malice, but Red's horse took a lot of damage...it was lucky I checked when I did, or it would have died.

Luckily they didn't stick around - "Pet level is okay in LC USA", I'd told them. "You Germans are a real pain." RedRackham was able to continue pet-levelling on the now-respawned death mask lancer, with his horse regaining the lost 48 health points an hour later when it levelled up to 33, and CaptainScarlet fought the death mask soldier that had been lured in, with his drake reaching level 45 before too long. As the morning continued, Cap used another two platinum pet experience potions...before lunch, I restarted the game on both computers, since they'd both been running LC so long. And then RedRackham transferred his supply of the potions across, so that CaptainScarlet was able to use a couple more potions over lunch, getting his drake into level 46.

RedRackham's horse was right at the top of level 33 when I logged him out - and CaptainScarlet's drake was a quarter of the way through level 46. Tuffsen had told me that she was in the ancient grey mummies room, so Kaerella logged in on Cariae-4, registered, and was Recalled down there. However, Tuffy's sorcerer, BadFairy, didn't stick around very long, but went off to do elite monster combos...

I intended to take RedRydeR down to join Kaerella, rather than Barbarienne, since Barb's drake wouldn't benefit from the double pet experience, as she is too high a level. However, when I logged RedRydeR in, almost as soon as I'd checked her inventory, the game crashed, with strange streaks of colour all round the Randol spawning area. I logged her back in four times, I think, but each time the game crashed to "send error report?" as soon as she appeared in town...and then I got a flicker of a blue screen, and the older computer restarted. It took a while to get running again, but informed me that it had recovered from a serious error, so my plan was to do a System Restore - which was, indeed, I noticed, one of the options that the help page suggested.

It took a few minutes, but at last the computer was set back to last Tuesday, and the anti-virus re-updated - and logging in to the game was again possible. It does sound as if there is a possible weakness with the graphics card, maybe I'd better not pull any long overnight sessions on that machine - or if I do, let it have a rest in the morning.

By then, BadFairy had left. Instead of taking another character into the Tomb, I just logged on the Cariae version of RedRackham, so that he was able to head for Maargadum Jail, and do a few hours double-speed work on his level 37 drake...though it didn't actually level up by the time the Quiz was drawing near.

Kaerella just fought the ancient grey mummies unboosted for the rest of the afternoon, which meant that by the time the food break came along, she had only added 0.56% and 8 skill points, plus 2982 pet points. There were other people around, a couple of friends seemed to be helping an archer to sp-farm, and later there was an assassin-rogue for Kae to buff. A level 31 rogue showed up, asking to be allowed to ks, or be power-levelled, or could he have a free costume cover, and the assassin ended up encouraging him to attack the mummy he was fighting - at which point he used his Distraction skill to lose aggro, which meant that our low-level visitor died. But really, at that level, Prokion Temple is the place to be, farming skill points.

A night shadow was sharing the room when Kaerella finally left, to get ready for the Sunday Quiz. By then the evening session had brought in another1.54%, 23 skill points, and 7574 more pet points. So, Kae makes rather slow progress when she doesn't do power hours - we will have to move her on towards 103 soon, I think, though a few free skill points are always useful. Kae's drake SirFrancis had a useful boost, but is still only around 40% of the way through level 53.

The Quiz went smoothly enough on Auzura-2 for Kaerella and MistressDomina. We moved to the "wrong" side for question 22, which was again stressing that one shouldn't give out account details to anyone, and as usual spawned back in the middle of Randol... but before long we, and everyone else, soon fell into the ground, into a strange netherworld. Looking up, we could see the buildings, in the same way one can see Prokion Temple from the inside if one gets teleported into its foundations in error. The npcs were down there too, and, once MistressDomina had transferred her loot to Kaerella and logged out, Kaerella was able to trade with MistressDomino, my merchant, too, with MistressDomino able to put items into storage.

It was all very strange. Once my merchant had logged out, CaptainScarlet headed for the Jail on Auzura-4, but Kaerella stayed a little longer. She has a Juno NPC Scroll, so could even visit Border Guard Tamon out side in the countryside - but she, he, and his guards were still below ground level. She did manage to pass the town's gateway guards and reach the foxes and deer, "pushing" a ghostly kind of box she was in - once she had re-equipped her bow she was able to target the foxes and deer, but she could only kill them if they came inside the box.

In the end Kae used the Juno NPC scroll to get to the teleporter, and moved to Dratan, where everything seemed normal. Using the teleporter system to return to Randol, she found herself spawning at the proper ground level...in a rather quiet town...

Investigations completed, Kaerella logged out - and RedRackham headed to join CaptainScarlet in Maargadum Jail. The double pet experience was still running, so Cap had started another platinum pet experience potion, which meant that by the end of the evening his drake was almost halfway through level 46; Red's horse very quickly reached 34, and started to make a bit of progress through that level.