Wednesday 3 November 2010

Two Levels of Mad Monsters

There didn't seem to be any new patch to download this week. "Bugs, exploits and hacks are all being vigorously worked on and a strategy for fixes is in the works. We appreciate your patience and guarantee good things to come", was how Xuse2005 gave us his latest report; he also mentioned that the Halloween event was continuing into its second week, but that this would be its last.

RedRackham went off to Maargadum Jail for some pet-levelling before breakfast, and found, as expected, that the pet experience was back to normal. SirGalahad logged on too, but didn't do any levelling, he just farmed a good supply of quality stones, using 41 pickaxes (as he had 41 inventory spaces, and plenty of tool aids available), then when Red was back in town, to move from Auzura-4 to Auzura-6, traded 900 stones across to Red. My merchant MistressDomino also traded some stones across, as well as a blue pan flute, a pink drake egg, and a few more platinum pet experience potions.

Once RedRackham was in Auzura-6 and back with his death mask lancer, he provided a solo party for CaptainScarlet, who headed out into Merac, and fought a few blood frenzies and highlanders before arriving at the first main gnoll area. He spent the rest of the slightly short morning session down there, fighting gnolls, gnoll soldiers, and the local pumpkin ghost, and by lunchtime had added 15.27%, 40 skill points, and 883 pet points. He'd picked up a useful supply of pumpkins, empty baskets, and various weapons and pieces of armour by then too. Selling them brought in about 2.5 million gold.

CaptainScarlet spent the afternoon session back in Maargadum Jail, in the combat party with RedRackham, a few floors lower. A level 32 rogue-assassin called ValiROO asked to join the party early on, managed to reach 33, and stayed around almost until two, which was, with the times off by an hour this week, the end of the dungeon time hour; from then on Cap was solo, mainly fighting the two-headed canines on the second floor. Some more loot was gained, and CaptainScarlet levelled up to 37 - which had the advantage of making the two-headers only six levels above him, so that he got an ignition sequence. By the end, he had added another 40 skill points (ValiROO's lower level did cut the amount of skill exp on offer, not that it was huge anyway, early on), plus 43.29%.

Again the food break had to be slightly early, as I needed to get MistressBlaze, my level 87 mage, ready for the Auzura mid-level Mad Monster Spawn at five - which mainly meant borrowing MistressDomina's weapon, armour, and two of her accessories. Some other loot had been moved across, mainly from Cap, and Rage, and MistressDomina, to MistressDomino.

The website had said the event would be on Auzura-5, but from last time I was pretty sure it would be on the sixth sub-server, and the in-game announcement confirmed that. MistressBlaze rode out to the usual spot, close to the sunken village that mysteriously appeared where the Juno lake used to be - and got recruited into a party by the night shadow JacKnJoneS...which was handy, as it allowed me to see the levels of the other members. Jack himself is only level 93, as was Darkonn, but the archer cixix was level 98, which might have been pushing it at an event expressly designed for level 46 to 90. However, after supplying some buffs she left the party, so probably had gone by the time the event actually started - or if she didn't, well, the GMs don't treat it as an exploit or anything, all players are welcome , "but please allow those for whom the event is designed to enjoy it."

The event began with beast crawlers, death mask soldiers and lancers, and a few other types, but there was a slight pause - [GM]AwesomeSauce soon returned, apologising for having had a disconnection, and asking if we had had any monsters - I was able to reassure her that we had had some Maargadum types. After that things ramped up a few notches, so that soon the blood terrains, jumping devils, barren eises, and kamiras were all on top of us. We moved on to skin walkers, endemic demons, mimic crods, boucu demons, and more - but then Awesome got a bit over-enthusiastic, and spawned ten flutons at once. Like many people I'd try to target one of them, and we'd make progress - but then another one would come up, and I'd have to run for safety.

The GM apologised, saying that after the speed at which we'd got rid of the others she had thought we could handle those - and she removed most of them. We killed the last one easily enough without the distractions, and then we were treated to a few more kamiras - and a rather generous display of the usual hands of loot. I'm sure Jack managed to do rather better from the kamiras than I did, but at least MistressBlaze managed to grab 10 lucky scrolls, 5 moonstones, and 1 crystal of experience (greater)...and, from Awesome's loot piles, 5 item drop boosters, 7 skill point boosters, 4 large defence and 3 large attack potions, and a few tool aids etc.

The plan after that was for MistressDomina to head for the Tomb of Theos, with SirGalahad doing a little pet-levelling on a spike canine and providing the solo party - especially as [GM]AwesomeSauce had announced that double skill exp had been turned on. However, when MD got to the entrance, the Condition was down to 50%, which made the place not seem very hospitable. I didn't realise that the skill exp bonus was on all servers, or I might have tried Kaerella on Cariae, if the Tomb's Condition there had been better; instead MistressSabina made a trip out to the giants on Auzura-6, with RedRackham doing some work on his drake in Maargadum. So SirGalahad's trip to the spike canines had been a rather brief one...

MistressSabina's slog with the giants went smoothly enough, so that by the time she logged out, she'd gained 18.10% in level 48, and added 79 skill points; 1208 pet points were earned, too, and she picked up enough weapons to make two trips back to town to sell them necessary. She logged out well before nine, however - as that was when the high-level Mad Monster Spawn on Cariae-6 was due to start.

So, my level 110 archer Barbarienne logged in on the appropriate sub-server. Someone kindly dropped a Juno NPC Scroll in town, which Barb used to take her to Border Guard Tamon; it was a short walk from there to the Kiene Tower at the MMS location. The anonymous GM handled things pretty competently, with warnings when the event was about to start, and when each wave was due. The first wave was easy, with nothing more fearsome than dark bogles, but we moved on to higher-level stuff, leading on to a mass of cave spirits - and then the boss wave, with darkmind terrains, flutons, sphinx commanders, patriarch botises, anubis archers - and some grand red dragons too. I managed to targets two or three of the GRDs, which drop the same sort of loot as Kamira - and was able to pick up some of the lucky scrolls, moonstones, and crystals of experience (greater) that were dropped.

Barbarienne won an bow duel with an anubis archer, and managed to kill a couple of the sphinx commanders too, which like all Tomb of Theos monsters seem much tougher out in the open, perhaps they automatically go to the equivalent of a 0% Tomb setting. All in all I kept busy, providing long-range artillery assistance; it was a fun half hour, and the loot spawned at the end seemed at the time pretty generous...though when I checked my inventory I'd just managed to get 5 skill point boosters, 4 large attack and 2 large defence potions, and a single item drop booster.

That rounded off the evening's excitements nicely, though RedRackham continued his pet-levelling a little longer, getting his drake past 80% of the way through level 43. It won't be too long before someone, probably my titan MrChuckNorris, has a pet drake upgrade.

In the morning I'd sent in a "request ticket", as I'd found that I'd not received a "buy one get one" offer of twice ten scrolls of magical attack, which i thought Kaerella might find rather useful; and in the evening I found that I'd got an email in reply, telling me the items had now been sent to me. Checking Barbarienne's shop records, they were indeed there, so that was a nice quick response. Checking the other servers to make sure the BOGO hadn't gone astray, I'd found a rather useful pack of experience boosters and other goodies on Hatzring, a prize I think from the "attendance" event a few weeks back. I must send in another RT, and see if the GMs can kindly move it across to Auzura.

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