The Fallen GM

My daily posts are getting too long and rambling, so I am resolved to cut them back to a more reasonable length. Let's see how we do today, shall we?

I did attempt to leave RedRackham pet-levelling overnight, but when I checked, he had had a disconnection, and a couple of attempts to reconnect just timed out, so I switched the game, and the computer, off. Looking at the forums today, it looks as if Aeria had a short-notice 1:00am UK time "maintenance", to allow them to roll back the accounts of the many people who had been hacked, which would explain things. The shoutbox today was still pretty busy with people who'd had their accounts stolen, and people who had had their accounts frozen so that they couldn't be stolen now wanting access again, but the Aeria team do seem to be on top of things.

After the usual bit of morning pet-levelling, the new Cariae incarnation of RedRackham headed for Prokion Temple again, after Galahad had unfrozen his experience gain. To supply the solo party, Enchantrella went out mining once more. The back room was free and clear, so Red started the fourth of his +150% experience gain "beginner" platinum blessed irises (three got used in the Tomb of Theos), and settled in for an hour. At level 31 he was getting 19255 experience and 3300 skill exp from each Orc Axeman, and 42680/4400 from each Orc Sergeant, so things moved along nicely, until at 11:10am UK time there was one of those oh-so-annoying unscheduled "server resets", kicking everyone out and giving the "account ID already in use" error when one attempted to get back in. I thought twenty minutes later on a Friday was the time for that particular mess-up. Enchantrella did actually manage to stay connected, but it was an anxious ten minutes before I could get Red back in, and discover that his pet dragon hatchling, last seen losing health at an alarming rate, was in fact still alive.

So, a little bit of the pbi's hour was lost while Red hurried back, though it didn't seem to have counted down during the ten minutes I was out of the game. By the time the pbi expired he had gained 41.10%, which was enough to get him into level 32; the delay from the disconnection meant I didn't have enough time before lunch for a second hour's pbi, but I kept going for as long as I could, and in all went up by 47.26%, adding 93 skill points too - and the hatchling levelled up a couple of times.

Zenderfly had been in touch, and we'd agreed to meet up on Auzura-3 after lunch, so I logged in at 1:15 as SirDarth, and was able to do those Pilferer, Bandit and Berserker killing quests, before switching to Kaerella and enrolling Zen's new healer, Taldea, as my Guardian-system apprentice. My level 10 healer Barbarienne (not to be confused with the Cariae one of the same name with the extra zero on the level) loaned her some armour and weapons, and then Rage logged in, and headed for the Elite Sphinx Speer Man and his friends. We made a party, and CaptainScarlet also joined, to give Taldea the solo party boost. Taldea used a teleport scroll to move to Rage, accepted the horse buffs, and kicked Rage from the party; Rage attacked the Elite, and Taldea also attacked it, in a ks-ing way. It didn't take Rage long, attacking the elite and two or three regular types while it respawned, and rejoining the party and giving horse buffs, to help Taldea to reach level 10.

Back in Dratan City, with the horse buffs still on and a potion of haste I'd passed over ready to use, Tal set off to add Prokion Temple to her memory scroll, while Rage logged off and SirPerivale logged on. Then it was a matter of Taldea keeping by the wall in the corridor there, and Peri fighting the Orc Soldiers etc in the octagonal room, to get Tal not just more experience, but some skill points too so that she would at least be able to do some useful healing. She had started a "beginner" pbi and pssp out with the Sphinx types, and before the end of the second of each, she had reached level 20, completing the Guardian system and earning the event weapon. Peri was up to almost 90% of the way through level 22 by then, so, after Taldea gave back the borrowed items to Barbarienne, and Peri had spent the skill points he had gained, he went back to Prokion Temple and died thirty times to get back to 0.00%.

After a slightly early food break, Memree, my level 31 cleric, logged in, and headed for Merac Castle, where at 5:00pm UK time the "Rescue the Fallen GM" was supposed to start. Taldea and some others arrived almost immediately, but when the announcement of the event came, about fifteen minutes later, we were told that the errant GM was "somewhere in Merac", so had to all go off in search of him. Luckily he was found before too long, and I came across the then-small party that was escorting him back towards the village. Taldea joined us, and along the way the party got bigger, thankfully, with some pretty high level people included, as monsters like "Black Puddings" and a blue dragon tended to spawn occasionally.

I concentrated on using Heal on GM Stratos, mainly, and a little bow-firing at the monsters. I did die once when something spawned right on top of me, but we were near the village by then, so I quickly ran back. CaptainScarlet, meanwhile, had had a bit of bad luck - he had been pet-levelling on Auzura-3, and a wandering level 50 Pandora's Beast had killed him, though luckily not hurt his horse. Cap used the first of his "beginner" resurrection scrolls to spring back to life in Merac village - by which time the Stratos-protecting party was getting close to there. So he joined them, providing some Divine Shield buffs and actually daring to attack a monster or two.

After a final Fluton, some Hands were spawned as a reward, and the GM promised to be more careful when experimenting with dark magic, which was apparently how he came to be wandering, lost and de-powered, deep in the woods. It wasn't a huge reward, just two or three goodies each I guess, but it had been a fun outing.

There was a gap of some hours until it was Cariae's turn for the event, so I was able to send Cariae's version of RedRackham back to Prokion Temple. This time Karella, my level 26 rogue, was in a Combat-type party with him, which decreased his skill exp gain a little but just about doubled the experience per Axeman, and gave about 50% more per Sergeant. The hour using Red's final pbi brought in 51.78%. And as Karella still had SkrappY along, he got some experience too. By 8:30pm Red was around 85% of the way through level 32, so it seemed a good idea to get up-to-date on his outstanding quests, so I left the Temple, and Karella logged out, so that Enchantrella could log back in for a solo party and some mining. Karella had added 10.49%, 85 skill points, and 41 guild points.

RedRackham killed desert spiders and death goddesses in Dratan's desert, and then went to Merac, where the pilferer & bandit quest was available, plus an errand to Rau at the Column of Magic. Killing a few of elite Merac monsters there finally got him up to level 33; in all he had added 92.20% experience, plus 117 skill points, and got his drake up to level 8 and 100% Sympathy.

And then it was time for the Cariae version of "Rescue the Fallen GM". He took a while to find this time, and clues had to be given - he was right in the south-east corner, somewhere I don't think I'd ever been. Zen managed to get a GM into the party - but it was the wrong GM, it was GM Moose, who was also there for some reason. Once that was sorted out, we all set off back across Merac, but Zenderfly decided before long that, since the rewards were fairly minor, and the risk of death, particularly for a mage, was a bit high, she would leave us to it. The journey was long and with plenty of incidents - we were a larger and more high-powered group that the Auzura one, and the monsters we fought reflected that, particularly a mass attack of zombies and skeletons as we passed through a graveyard. The "HitConfirmFkers" guild, who currently own one of the castles, were much in evidence. I got caught by a Fluton's stun towards the end, and my health drained away at an alarming rate, but I managed to trigger a health potion, and run clear, and frantically use Self Heal until I was safely healthy again.

At the end the Hands were spawned, as GM Stratos had only died two-and-a-bit times or something, so we had just managed to win, despite all those Flutons when we were just outside the village. It was a fun event - Stratos dropped some blue dragons on us as a parting gift, and headed off to his next server. After which, well, Enchantrella continued her mining for a little while before logging out, and RedRackham, over on Auzura-4, was able to do a little work on his drake, which was now comfortably into level 34.

Darn, another rather long account, but then, it was an incident-packed day...