An Unexpected Visitor

In the end they didn't run the maintenance shut-down at the usual time last night, instead it was rescheduled for 7:00pm this evening, which rather cut down on my possible playing time today. As presumably a lot of people make other arrangements for the Tuesday shut-down, it all seems a bit counter-productive.

Still, the pet-levelling started before breakfast today, with, first of all, SirPerivale trading his level 23 horse across to SirDarth, in exchange for the level 1 dragon hatchling that Darth had got from Jajan a few days ago. Then Peri headed for Merac, where he was soon joined by CaptainScarlet, who quickly got the white horse up to level 34.

Someone did "ks" Cap during the morning, so that his Berserker was killed and he just stood there for a while; it was probably the same person who opened a Pandora's Box, releasing a level 50 Beast which was prowling nearby when I checked on Cap...luckily, not too close by, though they do move around so that both Cap and Peri were in danger.

So, Cap logged out briefly to allow Chuck to ride down and deal with it. Now that Chuck is level 61 the Beasts are blue-named to him, so it's not surprising that no gold was dropped. I suppose in future MistressDomina will have to take over the Beast-killing duties.

SirPerivale got the new hatchling moving along nicely, except for one hiatus when the crafty Berserker managed to get a tree between it and Peri, so that the "attack blocked" message came up, and aggro was lost until I noticed the lack of activity and restarted the fight. As usual it took most of the morning to get the new pet's Sympathy up from 50% to 100%; by that time it had reached level five, so was ready to start contributing a useful Armour Increase buff.

For the afternoon session, a trip to Prokion Temple was required - and this time I went for the team of my level 35 back-up wizard MistressBlaze and my level 31 pet-leveller CaptainScarlet. Well, it makes a change, yes? MistressBlaze really won't get much in the way of skill exp there unless she has a lower-level party member within range, and Cap, well, I would like to get him up to level 32 so that he can learn Wall of Belief, a passive skill which will increase his physical defence.

The back room on Auzura-3 was in use when I arrived, so I retraced my steps to the corridor room - it's lucky I wasn't using any skill pills, as the respawns there are a bit sparse, and one can't really get a big mob together to use Flame Storm on. Before very long, leaving Cap there, MB headed along to check on the back room. The good news was that the previous player had left - the bad news was that a level 82 SkinWalker, a rather tough boss monster, was there instead!

I knew that SkinWalkers were passive, so MB killed a few Orcs there, but it would just need the SkinWalker to wander within range of Flame Storm for MistressBlaze to be suddenly dead, so I logged her out - and logged in my level 72 rogue Rage instead.

Rage hurried to Prokion Temple, which luckily she still has on her memory scroll, and rushed to the back room. A SkinWalker is no pushover even for her, and it took quite a while, and a lot of Snare usage, plus quite a few great health potions, but finally the SkinWalker died. It dropped a heaven stone, which Rage couldn't pick up for a while, I assume because loot from specially summoned monsters like that is specifically for whoever used the summoning scroll, but eventually, as with all loot, it became available, so Rage grabbed it. Rage gained 4,130,724 experience and 550 skill exp - and, after waiting to make sure that another monster wasn't going to appear, logged out.

CaptainScarlet hurried along to occupy the room, while MistressBlaze logged back in and returned. And so the pair of them settled in, and spent the rest of the afternoon with MB happily roasting Orcs, and Cap picking stuff up, occasionally fighting an Orc, and generally giving moral support.

The Orc Axemen tended to give around 1100-1200 skill exp each to both MB and Cap, and the Orc Sergeants about 1600-1800, so fighting them was better than going out into Merac or to the Poison Mists for MB, with Cap's share as a bonus, but it not as much as a player would get when closer to their level. In total MistressBlaze added 13.35% experience and 121 skill points; Cap must have gained a similar amount of sp, and is now almost a quarter of the way through level 31. He can now afford the first four levels of Wall of Belief, which just cost 111 skill points, and will increase his physical defence by 105, which can't be bad; for level five, and adding another 50 to his physical defence stat, 216 skill points will be needed, so some more sp farming, on the way to level 32, must be in Cap's future. My hope is that, when his defence has been increased, he will be able to pet-level on Gnolls or Gnoll Lancers which, being right down to the south of Merac, are less likely to attract passing ks-ers.

Cap teleported back to town, and resumed his pet-levelling over the food break, joined by SirPerivale. Well, not exactly "joined", as Cap was still on Auzura-3, and Peri as usual was on Auzura-4, along with Koolyo and a couple of others. Cap did have a visitor, a fairly low-level mage called CasCas, who was trying to do some pet-levelling herself by attacking, without a weapon, Cap's Berserker. It probably wouldn't have worked with Peri, as he hits for 26 at a time, but with Cap's red-name reduction to his hitting power he only hits for 17, so the Berserker's health was holding up pretty well.

However, I did warn CasCas to be ready to run, as a Berserker will change its aggro-target after a while in circumstances like that - and before long, she did get killed. She returned once, but after another attack, I think wisely decided that the risk wasn't worth it.

The evening session was always going to be a short one, but there seemed to be time to send MistressDomina out to the Giants and Akane Giants for a while, so that is what I did, though a bit half-heartedly, tending to retreat to a safe place and allow my health and mana to regenerate every few minutes. I was chatting to Ratel, who was saying how much he'd like to get up to level sixty, even if the "Player Appreciation" armour deal ends. I had to say that Chuck wasn't currently available for a teaming, as MD has to get back within range of him, so if Chuck levelled up again at the moment that would be a big problem. We were just arranging for a Ratty/MD team-up, at least for the half hour or so remaining before the maintenance, when I noticed that my last message hadn't appeared in the chat window.

It was a disconnection - a mass disconnection, with CaptainScarlet too getting that window, and "account already logged in" when one attempted to log back in, or "failed to connect to server" with a different account. On the Last Chaos ShoutBox the gamesage Dinosue2 was insisting that it was a server crash, not a deliberate no-warning early start to the maintenance - until the game master GM Kali appeared and said that it was a deliberate action, and apologised for the lack of warning.

Well, the estimated time for the maintenance was around three hours, so that was going to take me up to my usual log-out time anyway. It's possible I guess that there may be time for some late night pet levelling, but, that's the end of the excitements for today.