Haunted Halloween Deathtrap

SirPerivale stayed online overnight to level his horse, which by breakfast time was up three levels, and definitely starting to eat its way through the quality stones more quickly. Galahad over on Cariae logged on then as well, and they both spent the morning constructively. Peri did get a message from Samael asking him to level a new horse for him, from 2 to 28, but he was offline by the time I got up. He'd better have a substantial bribe to offer...

I was busy working downstairs again all morning, and went out shopping in the afternoon, so there was plenty of pet-levelling done. There was just under an hour of the afternoon left when I got back, which didn't seem long enough for a trip to any version of Prokion Temple - so instead the Katar version of Kaerella headed out of Randol in the direction of Hunter Dranore, to do his repeatable quests to kill sasquatches and werewolves. 700 and 1000 gold a time was very useful. with Kae's cash reserves so low.

On the way there I encountered a Pandora's Box, which released a level 20 Pandora's Beast - with a little retreating I was able to kill it, but it didn't drop any gold, which was a bit of a disappointment. Luckily I found another one a little further along, which also disgorged a Beast - and this one did drop 6,200 gold, which made Kae feel a whole lot richer.

Kaerella did both quests a few times, and levelled up to level 15, which ended the sasquatch quest, but replaced it with one to kill the little treants in that area - so it looks as if a further visit to Dranore is in Kae's future. Back in town she sold a few drops, and used her skill points to get what skills she could including a level or two of the new level fifteen ones. Then I set her up in Merchant Mode over the food break.

She didn't manage to sell anything while I was downstairs, but, just at the end, somebody bought the two skill point boosters she'd picked up at zombie invasions, and as they were worth over a million each, suddenly Kaerella was rich - or she will be until she tries to buy any ready-upgraded items.

But the evening session was due to begin now, and what I wanted to do, in Zenderfly's absence, was have another go at levelling Keerella, my mage, up. My feeling was that at level 92 she is a bit low for Sphinx Commanders, but the Anubis Spear Men ought to be do-able, particularly if Barbarienne was there to provide the Combat party, some healing, and have AutumStorm equipped to get some experience, Like the Commanders they are boss types, so take a while to kill, but give almost 19 million experience - just about 85.6% as much as the Commanders, so a useful chunk.

Barbarienne entered the Tomb of Theos and ran down to the first main square room where these indoor Spear Men are (not to be confused with their outdoor "Speer" Men brethren), along with a few aggressive Sphinx Fighters, and after checking with the duo already there that they thought there was room for me as well, I brought Keerella in too, using a Teleport book to beam her direct to Barb. And Kee, with her level 49 drake Greedo equipped, attacked her first Anubis Spear Man, started a platinum blessed iris for an hour's treble experience gain, clicked the first experience booster - and away we went.

Zenderfly got in touch almost immediately, suggesting a 3:00 to 6:00pm, UK time, session tomorrow for Barb. She was happy to have read that AutumStorm had levelled up, and promises to reward me with extra levelling sessions, or some of her large stock of experience boosters, if I continue to level him up. She told me that a "Remedy", bought from the magical trader in Randol, will remove the effect of the Spear Man's shield stun skill, and very kindly brought me fifty of them, coming into the Tomb specially. She was also advising Kee on what skills and buffs she ought to use, and indeed which potions to run to get the most out of each pbi period.

The other people using the room came and went: Hercules27, BiTha, BlackAnGel... but the most memorable, for all the wrong reasons, was the rogue StubbornFighter, who we were all telling not to "ks", "kill steal" - when she fired her crossbow at my current Spear Man a few times, I got about twenty million experience less than usual. She just wouldn't stop, which was a bit strange as she was a member of EpicGuild, which I think is a pretty well-regarded group. Luckily a more responsible member of that guild, the royal knight MaGiCiaN, arrived after a while, and was able to persuade her to stop, much to my relief, and the relief of the others there too.

Kee's first hour added 16.33%, which rose in the second hour to 18.59%, and in the third hour to 20.02%, using respectively 20, 23 and 25 boosters. For much of the third hour I had the room to myself, which did speed things up a bit. A total experience gain of 55.04%, plus 4 skill points, seems pretty good to me, though it is an expensive undertaking.

Three hours was quite enough - and got me out of there in time for Cariae's version of a Halloween event, "The Haunted Jail" - as far as I could tell Auzura didn't get the event at all, though they did get a rather simpler monster-fest in the Randol Arena earlier. Barbarienne, who'd added 0.39% for her Combat party duties in the Tomb, plus those 4 skill points, rode down to the Jail entrance a little in advance, and was sitting there when an announcement of the availability in the Web Item Mall of "three for the price of one" hundreds of experience boosters was made. "Limited quantity! Get 'em while you can!" Luckily I was logged in to the website, so was able to buy one set, and then another - though the site got a bit slow when I attempted to snap up a third set, and by the time it settled down they had sold out. Those things sell fast!

When the event began, we went in, and suddenly the first level was full of monsters, such as the good old Barren Eises, apes, dark bogles, and more. We cleaned out that level, and most of us raced onwards - too quickly in fact, as we had to go back from level five to level two when the GMs finally spawned their stuff there. We cleaned that out, and went to level three, but that had a lot of the cave spirits, level 130-plus versions of all six player classes, and as we know from the mad monster spawns, those can be deadly.

Indeed, I don't have any idea what killed me, Barbarienne was suddenly dead on the ground. I used my resurrection scroll, choosing to spawn back at the start so that I could regain full health, buff, and activate a new res scroll before returning to the fray. It took quite a while to clear out level three, but we managed it, and ran through the small and claustrophobic level four to level five, where Sphinx Commanders, Anubis Archers, a Patriarch Botis or two, and of course Flutons awaited. I got stunned, unable to move, with my health down to 1 single hit point, but escaped with my life, and got through the portal back onto the stairs up, where I healed myself fully before going back down.

We didn't manage to kill all the monsters inside the designated time limit, I'm sure those Flutons alone would have taken ages - but the GMs kindly spawned us plenty of rewards anyway, and removed the remaining monsters so that we could pick up the items in safety, down there on the fifth level. Hopefully Barb picked up enough goodies to compensate for the cost of a resurrection scroll...

Galahad had been providing a solo party for Barb from his pet-levelling position not far from Maargadum Jail, and by the end of the evening had got his horse halfway through level 33. He did get ks'd by someone who killed his Berserker, but I noticed that before long, unlike poor DeathEclipse nearby, who stood inactive for hours. CaptainScarlet over on Auzura got ks'd too a little later, soon after his horse reached level 36, but was back in action almost immediately. It seems a good idea not to attempt another overnight session, though, with that sort of thing going on.

Stop press: An email has arrived telling me that the account with Keerella on it has had a "temporary" ban put on it for "bug exploit - wall hugging", with immediate effect, which rather disrupts near-future plans...I suspect the last trip to the grave room was involved, but nobody said that Kee should stop standing where she was. I remember than Damor ostentatiously moved away from the wall when the gamesage ADISA arrived, but I'm sure she reassured us that nobody would be reported for being near a wall.