ColonelScarlet had a couple of breaks overnight, but not actually from someone actively ks-ing him. Once the "attack blocked" message came up, so a tree or something must have got in the way, and the second time, as does sometimes happen, tha bandit must have just reset itself to its regular position, something they do occasionally, I remember the treants used to do that a lot.
We are now on the run-up to one of my busy weekends, so, while the amount of playing I did today was only slightly down, it was a lot more than I will be managing over the next few days. There was no morning session; Zenderfly did attempt to get in touch with me over lunch, but, well, I was having lunch at the time.
The break between Grand Fantasia's closed beta and open beta was minimal; as soon as I'd posted yesterday's blog an email arrived from Aeria Games to tell me things were about to start again - at 2:00am this morning, UK time, I believe. Luckily one didn't have to uninstall the closed beta client, it just updated itself, rather slowly, and I was able to log in for a fairly short session. I at least managed to drag the workbench, and indeed some kind of cupboard, into the cottage where my character's sprite-companion hangs out when off duty, and by fighting not just jelly rabbits but smiling and laughing crabs, got Memree to level four. It all seems a bit over-cute, though thankfully our toddler-types aren't sexualised as much as the Florensia ones.
At level five one gets to choose one's speciality, from the usual kind of choice - healer, ranger, warrior, wizard, necromancer, that kind of thing. If Zen is going to get seriously into the game, I think it had better not be her main character that teams with mine, either Memree or a revived Kaerella, or I think I'd hold her back.
But then it was time to get Kaerella to fit in an hour's work with a pssp in Prokion Temple on Katar-4; I had the area to myself this time, and managed to get 307 skill points, while going up by 3.43%. After that I switched to Katar-1, and RedRyder, after getting the buff from Elizabeth, went out to her favourite room, just along the corridor and round the corner, where she mixes orc soldiers with mummies. The target of 332 skill points was reached, so Red has now finished the weapon and armor smithing skills, at least until she reaches level 32. She still needs plenty of herb and energy gathering levels, though, and alchemy, and all the stone, herb and energy processing skills, so she will be staying on level 25 for a while yet.
After the food break, there was just time for RedRyder to get rid of the 84.20% experience she had got up to, by doing 29 suicide runs, as usual made less boring by finding a fair bit of unwanted loot to pick up. I didn't end up in the foundations again, but there were plenty of "double deaths", which I guess speed things up a bit.
The reprise of the third "epic event", "The Crashing Tide", was a bit of a disaster for Rage on Auzura-4 - I really shouldn't have tried to take her there, she may be doing okay at Mad Monster Spawns and Zombie Invasions, but those allow more room, and don't have lethal local types respawning. I teamed up with the archer kukli4kataBG, who remembered me from back in the spring, but her healing was of course no match for the Misty Canyon monsters, or the specially-spawned Patriarch Botises, Flutons, and so on. I used two resurrection scrolls in rather quick succession - and didn't have time to activate a third one before being killed again, so that meant I lost not just 1.68% experience, but 2% of Rage's unused skill points too - which meant 164 of them.
So a switch over to Memree, my level 31 healer, was called for, since she has no unused skill points to lose. She died quiet a few times, but got almost as far as the square main room... onto the stairs down to it, anyway.
The event switched across to Katar-4 at seven, so I was back to my roguish ways with RedRyder, who had recently spent all her skill points of course. Red seemed to be able to make a useful contribution, with Snare, and got into what seemed to be the main front group fighting their way through that square room, assisting with keeping the Flutons and Patriarch Botises under control. She died a few times, often due to the map's local monsters respawning or wandering too near, but was able to run back from the start, avoiding the respawned locals and a couple of Flutons along the way.
My impression is that the event just petered out and ran out of time; there were no announcements, and no sign of [GM]Beatrice; [GM]Kali had been around, but must have had to move on to the next server, Cariae. The group I was with got to the far end of that main room, and into the next lot of steps down, but there were rather a lot of Sphinx Commanders unleashed upon us, and positively hordes of cube guards, as well as the normal monsters for the Misty Canyon map. I did get a fair way down the stairs, but the specially-spawned mobs were pretty thick there. I don't think anyone could have got to what should have been the climax of the event, in the map's end room.
I was interested to find that the "double death" bug I've encountered in Prokion Temple also happens elsewhere; it happened to me at least twice, once with the second death happening so quickly that I'd not even realised that I had "respawned" in an unpopulated version of the map's starting point. The other time I had been on those final stairs, and it enabled me to get a bit further - but if I'd been playing a higher-level character with skill point reserves to protect, that would have been rather annoying, Rage for example could have lost over 320 skill points in three seconds. It seems to me that, if one is respawned back where one died, despite not having a resurrection scroll on, there is a second or two before you can move, which makes things extra dangerous.
As you can imagine it was with enormous regret that I had to log out at eight, rather than have Barbarienne go along to the Cariae version of the event and lose 93 skill points, or some multiple of that. Going by yesterday I doubt if the attendance on that server will have been exactly stellar, so there may well be some more people mourning the loss of hard-earned experience and skill points, for no discernable reward... except for participating in what was, along the way, a fun adventure of course.
ColonelScarlet was able to keep going with his pet-levelling, anyway, though he won't be trying to go through the night. Getting a quarter of the way through level 32 by the end of the evening is pretty good going, I think.
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