I wasn't able to do any active playing in the morning today, but both ColonelScarlet on Katar-4 and RedRackham on Auzura-4 were able to head down to south Merac for some useful pet-levelling before breakfast. It wasn't too long before the Colonel's horse reached level 29; Red's level is almost twice as long though, so while steady progress was made, by lunch there was still almost three hours of work left before the horse would be ready for RedRider to have as a level 37 mount.
I suspected that the 50% extra skill exp might still be running, so after lunch my level 50 cleric Kaerella logged in on Cariae-1, got the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff, and headed out into Dratan desert, where the skill exp was indeed nicely boosted above its normal level. There wasn't a solo party I could join, but before too long someone farming in Prokion Temple registered as wanting a party, so I recruited them, and, now that we had a two-person party, was able to register it, and gain further members - indeed, we got up to a full eight a time or two.
Before very long, though, while I was merrily fighting the Akane Giants, Grand Devilroad Kamira turned up, which meant that I had to transfer leadership to someone else, and log out, so that my level 93 mage Keerella could log in and ride down. After all, if that level 92 rogue the other day could get the usual drops, albeit without an actual rare accessory, it seemed worth seeing what Kee could get.
Kamira was waiting patiently, and, while I gave myself horse buffs, I didn't bother with a magic defence mineral or an item drop booster, I just attacked. I did have to use a medium health potion, but Kamira died pretty quickly, and a quick Flame Storm got rid of the level 35 death goddesses. Kamira dropped 10 great healing potions, 54,600 gold, 5 scrolls of memorising, a hero's necklace (8 intelligence and 4 dexterity), 10 medium mana potions, a medal of honor of course, 5 lucky scrolls, 5 moon stones, a crystal of experience (greater), 5 tool aids - and a Rage of Demon rare accessory. Of the ten possible rare drops, I'd say it ranks about number four or five, which can't be bad - it adds 12 to intelligence, 18 to magical attack, and 100 to health. It's something I had been thinking of buying...albeit on a different server.
Kaerella logged back in, and was automatically back in the same party as before; it wasn't a hugely long session, in all ninety minutes or so, but Kae added 14.54%, 119 skill points, and, for SirFrancis, 1164 pet points. RedRackham got his horse up to 37, too. The reason I had to leave a bit early was that, as far as one could tell from the still-glitched links on the website, Auzura-4 was due to play host to a "Storm the Castle" event at 4:00pm, UK time.
So, I logged my level 72 rogue Rage in, and teleported down, arriving at about a couple of minutes before the hour - and was almost the first person there, as [GM]Valsharyn only then started making GM announcements for it. So, it was about ten past before we actually got going, with not a huge number of people. It wasn't your normal kind of castle storming; in fact, while as far as we could tell from the dots on the compass-map the usual monsters were inside, the gates were never opened, so only a very few of the flying types ever got out to face us. Instead, "mad monster spawn" style, monsters were spawned outside for us to fight. These included akane golems, skeleton soldiers, the bouncing-type cube guards, Terrain type cube guards, and Flutons, so the level of difficulty, and peril, did vary wildly. I did get caught by a Fluton's "flamethrower" once, but using a large health potion, and subsequently some medium ones, kept me alive. I was in a party of eight people, from the mid-twenties to level 115 I think, but this obviously wasn't what they were expecting, and people gradually logged out, until the party completely disbanded.
Meanwhile, "Our Val" was doing her best to make things exciting. "Stall them! Be brave! REINFORCEMENTS !! The enemy seems to be aware of me being of leading assistance!" Her comments interspersed the other dialogue. "They summon the enemies to my spot! I'll cast invisibility, hopefully the ruse will knock the enemy off guard! It seems that the enemy deems XAurorax as new Leader, defend him! The enemy sends his mighty general Commander Agaress and his bodyguards Agaress 1 and 2!!"
"(Agaress) TASTE MY SWORD SCUM!!!!! (Agaress) How could...I ...be ...def...eated???!!!! (Agaress) Cur... ye shall be Cast Manifest!" This led me to comment "I'm thinking Val loves playing with toy soldiers..." as I could imagine a young child with a toy castle and small toy figures coming up with a similar scenario. But we finally got on to "&summon 10 311", which, when it didn't appear as speech, probably had something to do with the loot spawning. "Thanks for attending the Storm the Castle and then kill the besiegers Event!!" My response was "Well we know you are experimenting and trying out new things - keep up the good work ^^". And later the last announcement from Our Val was "Thank you for attending the siege Event! I will work on this event too :)" She had mentioned early on the usual "kill everything within 20 minutes" rule, but in fact we'd kept going for closer to an hour. I had asked if the other servers would have a castle-storming later, before we started, and Val said not.
So my food break was slightly delayed, and I was only just back in time for Val's other EU-only experiment, where she was joined by [GM]Noboru. While it was billed as a "Cluedo" quiz, it was mainly another firecracker and transformation scroll parade about town, with occasional pauses while various clues were given about famous people. The first answer wasn't my guess of Michelangelo, or other people's Leonardo da Vinci or Elvis - I was just too slow to whisper [GM]Noboru with Marilyn Monroe, someone else got in there first. I was baffled by the next two, who turned out to be Alfred Nobel and Santa Claus (people send him demands?), but Val added a fourth, with the first clue "My works got translated in many, many languages", so that I immediately whispered "Shakespear?" - so quickly that the GM's next comment was "...unbelievable...already done", followed by "congratulations RedRider."
So, a few minutes later, [GM]Noboru traded my prize across - a large crit potion, which is a nice, and valuable, thing to have. Probably it will get moved across to Rage at some point, for an hour's worth of lots more critical hits against screaming zombies. Some people did consider the event a bit of a waste of time, but not me!
By the time I'd got the blog drafted thus far and dealt with an email or two, there wasn't a great deal of evening left - but there was time for Kaerella on Katar to have an hour's worth of Combat party with Memree in Prokion Temple. I did have an intruder for ten minutes or so, a knight called XxTomrobdarxXPL, who ks'd and took a few orcs that I really needed, to keep going flat out, but he went away, and by the end of the hour Memree was up 32.27% and 175 skill points, plus 1072 pet points and 364 guild points. More importantly Kae had added 349 skill points thanks to her pssp, plus 6.78% and 63 guild points.
Once Kaerella had moved out of range back to the lobby, Memree continued a bit longer, adding another 7.57% and 84 skill points (since she didn't have to share the sp), along with 86 guild points, and 314 more pet points - just enough for her drake to level up. Then Kae logged out and ColonelScarlet logged in for a little more pet-levelling, while Memree moved to town and spent most of her skill points on the first two levels of Expert Alchemy. When she logged out, the Colonel continued, and should get the horse about halfway through level 30 tonight. With the weekly maintenance downtime approaching, there is no chance of overnight pet-levelling, though. And tomorrow, Christmas begins in Last Chaos...
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