Levels 106 and 50

The usual seven suspects did their half hours of attendance; I did kill a fox or two, but they just gave one experience and one skill exp, so the double experience event from yesterday was safely switched off. Just as well really, as it hinders as many characters as it helps.

CaptainScarlet got back into pet-levelling action after that, and once SirGalahad had finished his half hour of mining, RedRackham went along to the death mask lancer too. He had actually managed to get his horse into level 22 just before logging off last night, so the horse was able to learn another level of the Armour Increase buff (or "amor increase", as the game rather charmingly calls it for a horse) before Red set off for Merac.

I was far enough ahead with my preparations for tomorrow for MistressDomina to be able to log in ahead of the two to three o'clock dungeon time, and check the condition of the Tomb of Theos on Auzura. It was at the 100% easy end of the scale, so my archer Kaerella logged in too and joined her, making the combat party at the entrance. They went in - and while that first corner after the main anubis spear man room was being used, the room itself was deserted, so we settled in there.

As usual, MistressDomina concentrated on the spear men, while Kaerella farmed the sphinx fighters. When the dungeon time hour began, MD started the berserker, adrenaline, and small crit potions, swiftly followed by the platinum blessed iris when the current anubis spear man's health was approaching zero. After about 45 minutes, MD levelled up, reaching 106 - by the end of the hour, she had used 62 experience boosters on the 62 spear men she'd killed, going up by 29.03%, and 9 skill points.

After running across to the ancient grey mummies room, finding it fully occupied, and running back to the spear men, my duo put in almost another hour's worth of fighting, unboosted; the whole afternoon session gave MistressDomina 29.83%, 16 skill points, and 2065 pet points - which towards the end of the session got her drake into level 50.

Kaerella got a few weapons as drops from the sphinx fighters, and completed the quest to kill fifty of them again; she went up by 2.54% in level 101, and got 14 skill points and 1517 pet points, as she did take a little time off while I concentrated on MD.

The food break was a lengthy one, so RedRackham and CaptainScarlet got back into Maargadum action; Red's horse reached level 23 then. And after that, MistressSabina replaced Red on the newer computer, and headed out for the giants.

Double pet experience was due to start at six, UK time, but as usually happens the GMs forgot all about it. Luckily a GS appeared in the shoutbox eventually, and was able to pass on a message to remind them - so the event began forty minutes late. CaptainScarlet immediately popped a platinum pet experience potion, to boost his pet points up to six at a time. Things went smoothly until a little after eight, when Aeria got another of those "lag spike" network issues, and everyone, except merchants or people just standing around in town, got disconnected.

CaptainScarlet was on his second platinum pet experience potion by then - and MistressSabina was two-thirds of the way through fighting a giant at the time. Nobody could log back in for two or three minutes, and then Cap did manage to get back on, and hurried back to Jail. The forum shoutbox was running awfully slowly, with any new post taking quite a few seconds to actually appear - people reported problems logging in to the site, too.

When I finally managed to log back in to MistressSabina's account, her health was on zero - the disconnection had got her killed. With the problems with the shoutbox showing that the problem wasn't over, and people reporting continuing log-in and disconnection problems, it didn't seem a good idea to risk Sabina getting killed again. So, with the death penalty - with a disconnection there is no opportunity to use a resurrection scroll to avoid it - MistressSabina's session ended with her up just 11.99% and 1545 pet points - and down by 214 skill points.

That ended my active playing for the evening; it was just as well the mass disconnection hadn't happened while MistressDomina had been on, as 2% of her skill exp would have been around three times as much as Sabina lost. And for many people the timing was terrible, as they would have only started a dungeon time "power hour" a few minutes before, complete with expensive hour-long potions.

Anyway, RedRackham's pale blue horse made useful progress through level 23, two pet points at a time, and despite losing some time to the disconnection, CaptainScarlet got his drake to almost 85% of the way through level 48 before that second pet potion ended, and then continued with just the event's double pet points. By the end of the evening, Red's horse had reached level 24, thanks to the continuing double pet experience, and Cap's drake was only about three hours away from its next level.