Levelling Pets

There seemed to be no new patch at all this morning, and the weekly patch notes post was similarly minor. "Our submitted bug list is still with the developers. We have not yet received feedback or any fixes for these issues" product manager Xuse2005 reported plaintively. Concerning yesterday's slow-down, "There have been a couple lag spikes recently that have affected a few of Aeria's games. Our team is continuing to investigate the matter". "Our efforts against gold spammers have increased as they are proving to be quite a challenge. We are initiating a new strategy this week to annihilate them", Xuse tells us, before adding, more realistically, "Or at least tame them a bit."

We are also promised that with some new procedures, the weekly maintenance will in future be a lot speedier when there isn't a new patch to be applied, which must be good news for people in the US, who have the downtime in the early evening - though they still won't know how long things will take, until the servers are once again up. They appreciate our (hoped-for) patience as they slowly restock the website's item mall... and there's a "sneak peek" at a new skin for the Knight character, and a new armour, though I think there are those among us who would prefer bug-fixing, and getting skill power more equal between different classes, to be a higher priority than cosmetic changes.

So, the moon cake event continues into a third week, which is handy, as MistressDomina didn't manage to sell any of her ingredients for them before she logged off last night. This morning my usual seven characters logged on for their half hours; SirGalahad was the last of the group, and, as I wasn't able to play actively, headed for Maargadum Jail and did some pet-levelling behind the teleporter on the ground floor, next to another knight called ecinuj2. On the older machine, CaptainScarlet went to the Jail too - on the fifth floor xStrithx was already fighting the death mask soldier against the side wall, so Cap lured the death mask lancer further along past him, and set to work.

Unfortunately, while I wasn't looking someone lured a mass of dire spike canines onto ecinuj2 and SirGalahad, and my horse had died pretty quickly - I think ecinuj2 had been alert enough to unequip his hatchling in time. I only had one dire spike canine attacking me, which I dealt with - ecinuj2 had half a dozen, but he was higher level than SirGalahad, and was dealing with them okay. "Sigh, back to town to get my pet unsealed", I said, and teleported out.

At level 21, it only cost 61,740 gold to get the horse back in action, so I was able to return to the Jail and continue. ecinuj2 said that he was levelling hatchlings to level 16 and sacrificing them, getting a pet part roughly every other time - he wanted to get the materials needed for a dragon sword. Another pet-leveller knight turned up before long, warning that he seemed to be the object of a vendetta from one player, who was persistently ks-ing him. As lunch was getting near, I decided that it made sense for Galahad to leave them to it - and for RedRackham to come online instead, and head for the comparative safety of the fifth floor.

So, CaptainScarlet and RedRackham continued their pet-levelling. I was busy getting my new computer set up and online for a while, as the morning's main excitement had been having a cable connection installed downstairs, but eventually I got SirGalahad working on the new Windows 7-running computer, Last Chaos being one of the first programmes it installed, along with Google Chrome, VLC, and my website builder.

Galahad headed for Prokion Temple as soon as the two to three o'clock dungeon time hour was over, though he only fought the ghouls rather sporadically, as, as part of my "winter upgrade", my new "ready to assemble" computer chair and computer desk had arrived. Putting the chair together took a while, and the result is rather luxurious...it had a tendency to lower itself to its minimum height as soon as I sat down, but I think I've found out how to avoid that.

In the end, before I had to close down the application for something else to install properly, SirGalahad had just added 2.34% and 44 skill points, but he had picked up some relatively useful loot for resale. The whole of it wasn't worth a quarter of the price of one of the weapons the giants drop for MistressSabina, but I hate to see a messy floor...

Later SirGalahad logged back in, still on the new computer, and did some more pet-levelling work, since I could keep an eye on him while I wrestled with assembling the computer desk. That meant I was levelling three pets at once. Tomorrow morning I'll need to work out which desk goes where, and with which computer, but it will be fun, at least for a while, to have LC running on three computers, even if they aren't all in the same room.

A rogue called GummiBaerchen invited SirGalahad into a party, which was fine as long as he was on a different floor - if he had fought within compass-range that would have been disastrous, as Gal would have got way too much experience and very little skill exp. He didn't speak English, and I don't speak German, so the party ended rather soon. It was possible he was just checking that I wasn't away from the keyboard, of course...

As usually happens on a Wednesday, I had other things to do from eight or so, but RedRackham and SirGalahad were able to continue their pet-levelling, so that, while CaptainScarlet stopped on around two-thirds of the way through 47, SirGalahad got his horse to 23, and RedRackham's pony reached level 16, becoming a horse.