Unusual Visitors

RedRackham headed for Maargadum Jail after breakfast, and soon got his latest drake past the midway point in level 42; a little later I logged in my Cariae merchant, MistressDomina, to see what she could sell - the empty baskets sold right away, at a price they hadn't been moving at on Auzura. The only other item to sell out was the mana stealers, but a useful amount of cash was brought in.

The afternoon session started a bit late; by then RedRackham had got his drake past three-quarters of the way through level 42. He logged out, and SirGalahad took over the pet-levelling side of things, on Auzura-6, fighting a spike canine and getting his pony into level 13. CaptainScarlet, however, was the active character, and spent most of the session fighting elite frenzied berserkers, which despite their name are the "boss" kind of highlander. He sold the armour drops, except the +4 pieces, for over 4 million gold, afterwards, and the session gained him 19.71%, 22 skill points, and 937 pet points for his level 33 drake.

For the evening, I was thinking of going to the Tomb of Theos on Auzura - but when Kaerella checked the Condition, it was on Maximum Hard. Fragiii was in the shoutbox later, saying that he was outside drop-hunting - there was, he hinted, a reason for the Tomb being that way, but, of course, we don't talk about bans in the shoutbox. So the Castle-owning guild must have been "On Strike"...

Anyway, I switched across to Cariae-4, where the Tomb was on 90% easy. Now that Kaerella has reached level 100, she is within combat party range of Barbarienne, on level 110, so that was the party I made. A night shadow called erevos was farming skill points in the main room, so Kae and Barb generally kept to the corridor, though Kaerella included erevos in the buffing. He was so grateful for Charm that he very kindly gave Kae a blessed iris, which gives double experience for three hours. Kaerella, since the plan was to be there for a bit over three hours more, activated the blessed iris.

It seemed a good idea to switch the party type to equal rather than combat, since Barbarienne was killing rather more quickly; that way, Kaerella would get more experience. So, we could have done that sort of team-up before...

Before long, Barbarienne had an in-game message from...and here's a name from the past... Zenderfly. She asked if I was busy, and when I said I was fighting the ancient grey mummies on C4, said "brt" (be right there). She soon arrived; at level 113 she was a bit high for mummy-fighting, but she joined the party and fought a few. Her higher level rather cut the amount of skill experience per kill, which was hardly unexpected.

I gathered that Zenderfly had been playing Grand Fantasia, and was checking out the changes to Last Chaos, to see if they appealed - the Ignition system, Dungeon Time, Socketing, that sort of thing. She was interested in teaming up to try out the Akan Temple "raid"... with the blessed iris running I wasn't keen on trying it immediately, and, with my "busy Sunday", I won't be available until the evening tomorrow, but we've made a date to team up at 5:00pm, UK time, on Monday for that.

Zenderfly then went off to Strayana, staying in the party for chat and, I suppose, the solo party boost, before finally logging out. Soon after that, I noticed that two low-level sorcerers had arrived, both with the "LastChaos Newbie" title over their heads. I didn't make any notes or take screenshots; the guild name seemed Spanish, and I think one was called pasme. I didn't mind when they started to ks, they didn't seem to be taking much of Kaerella's experience; they each levelled up at least once. After Kae buffed them, they did concentrate on ks-ing Kae rather than Barbarienne.

I'm no expert on the attack speed with a fallarm, but it gradually occurred to me that their attack animations seemed unusually fast. A pair of rogues in the ThePhoenix guild arrived, and I whispered to RangerX "do you think my 2 ks-ers are attacking suspiciously quickly?" Her reaction was immediate, saying in general chat "WTH - SPEED HACKER LM", which led to the dodgy duo disappearing rather abruptly.

RangerX and Chaosowners stayed for a while, more interested in drop farming than anything else as far as I could tell; Barbarienne concentrated mostly on the mummies at the beginning of the corridor, and there were enough targets to go around. Thinking back, I wonder how the two sorcerers got to the ancient grey mummies room. I never saw them run into the room, I only saw them standing in the room, and I remember wondering if there was a third higher-level person I'd not yet noticed who had Recalled them in. Perhaps, as well as the attack-speed hacks, there is some hack that allows a cheater to move to any location they wish? Outside on the main open maps that seems theoretically possible, as a memory scroll will do that, once you have been to a location once and saved the location, but doing in inside a dungeon area would need to be a bit more sophisticated.

For the last part of the evening, Kaerella and Barbarienne had the room to themselves, except for the night shadow erevos, who had remained afk, to be able to restart his sp-farming later I assume. By the time I logged out, Kaerella had gone up by 5.34%, 60 skill points, and 3967 pet points, which doesn't seem a huge amount, considering the blessed iris and 50% extra skill experience for a couple of hours from the "Turbo" event. Barbarienne added 2.97%, the same 60 skill points... and, as fighting blue-name monsters wouldn't have helped her drake, SkrappY was equipped for most of the time, and added about 7% in level 54.

Kaerella ran out of the Tomb afterwards, and found that the Condition had dropped to 70% by then. Still, it had to be better than over on Auzura... Just as I was about to log out, Tuffsen, or BadFairy, was asking me if I could remember the account name of a friend of hers, who had bought an epic scroll from her. Luckily I could remember the "maxhatz" name, but checking on the forum got me to an "access denied" page, which tends to be a bad sign.