A Spending Spree

The late-morning session today, after SirGalahad had done a little pet-levelling on a couple of berserkers in Merac, involved him taking a trip to Dratan on Tairen-1, as one might expect. First of all he had a couple of quick quests to do, involving killing some desert spiders, which are conveniently to be found close to Prokion Temple - and once the necessary quest items had been obtained, it was time to go indoors there.

The back room was busy, but what I call the "corridor room" just had one sorcerer, XxChoasWizXx, working at one end, with plenty of spare orc sergeants, so I installed myself at the other end. That seemed to work well, though when another sorcer, Zitrone, also started fighting there we rather overwhelmed the orcs, so it was lucky he didn't stay around long. SirGalahad reached level 30 fairly early on, and ended the session there with a gain of 47.95% and 118 skill points - though getting quest rewards back in Dratan City and Randol added another 25.83% and 24 skill points.

SirGalahad was able to spend 228 skill points on the level 30 skill Mana Break, which is needed before one can choose whether to become a temple knight or a royal knight - and 740 skill points, plus three million in gold, to take the Discipline guild up from level 4 to level 6, which means now that it will be possible to decrease members' experience gain by 50%, which is very useful when farming skill points. The temple knight level 32 passive skill Wall of Belief will take another 327 sp, adding 155 to his physical defence stat, and then at level 35 Canid Fence 2 will need 60 sp more, adding another 120. Considering that Gal's stat at level 30 was 567, or 717 with 19 levels of Armour Increase from his pet, those will be useful additions.

The first task for SirGalahad after lunch, after some spreading around of recent armour loot drops between the appropriate characters, was to do the "Death Goddess" quest, which involved going to the middle of the desert and killing 35 death goddess monsters - half woman and half snake, and with the disconcerting habit of changing their faces from a rather pretty woman to a devilish mask every few seconds. "Death Goddesses are demonic creatures of divine and infernal origins", the quest-giver, the Royal Guard Captain in Dratan City, had explained. "They hypnotize their prey and store them to consume later, but there is never any hope for the unfortunate who fall under their spell." After that was done, the important thing was to return to the Captain, and grab the level 29 +2 beast shield, an improvement over the level 25 one Gal had been using.

That shield wasn't due to be used for long, though, as the quest reward had brought SirGalahad to within 20% of level 31. A session in Prokion Temple got us there, so that the afternoon had added 35.53% and 128 skill points - as expected, the level 30/32 armour set, plus level 33 shield and both kinds of level 33 swords, the one-handed type (used with the shield) and the duals, all appeared in Gal's inventory, all at +10.

So, SirGalahad left Prokion Temple on Tairen-1; his next few sessions should be using his "beginner" platinum super skill pills on Tairen-4, to try and get a few more skill points together while the orc sergeants still offer good amounts of skill exp. The next thing was to travel down to the south of Merac to get the gnoll lancer pet-levelling spot onto his memory scroll, which was an easy enough journey. Fighting a gnoll lancer does seem to work for him, even without a shield equipped, though his health bar was a little unsteady, since he doesn't have that level 32 passive skill yet. 945 physical defence (not using a shield) seemed just about enough - and hitting a gnoll lancer bare-handed for 32 seemed to be something it can stand, so I did think that perhaps Gal could manage without getting himself a red name to reduce his attack power. Equipping the +10 shield made his health bar a lot steadier, but making the choice to become a temple knight, while it increased his health and mana usefully, also increased his bare-handed hitting to 42, which did start to make inroads on the gnoll lancer's health, so it looks as if a red name will after all be needed. But that will have to wait for level 35.

The evening session saw SirGalahad busy in Merac with a succession of gnoll lancers, while RedRyder was hard at work in Prokion Temple. Doing a few quests first added around 32%, but the main part of the session was in the room alongside the back room, with mummies and orc soldiers, so that in all 136.90% and 79 skill points were gained. That meant Red had reached level 25 - and was able to learn the first four levels of Regain, a passive skill which speeds up health and mana regeneration. She was also able to put on level 30 gloves, and buy level 31 shirt and pants ready for level 26.

Reaching level 25 also meant she was able to use her level 29 crossbow; Gal had passed two of them over to her, which he had picked up as loot; Red had got one of them made into two smelting stones, one of which worked, so that the Gust Crossbow was +1 - but then, looking through Roy's range of items being offered for sale, I spotted a +4 level 29 sorcerer weapon being offered for only 100,000 gold by CaBoOse, so bought it, and had it converted into a Gust Crossbow for a further 9,000 gold. It's always good to have a weapon with a glow...

To start with, the room was a bit fierce, and Red seemed to be using a lot of the red candy canes to boost her health, but once she had got Regain, and was moving up to the better armour, things settled down. The second part of the session was a good long one, and I continued until Red had a total of 333 skill points (including 5 carried forward); by then she had added another 144.31%, and her dragon hatchling had at least reached level 4.

Back in town, all those skill points got spent to maximise Regain, plus the attack skills Poison Capsule and Hawk Strike. I was going to buy the level 32 hood and boots from the armour trader, but decided to see what people were selling, or attempting to sell, through Roy's merchant house - and saw a pair of level 32 knight boots, +10, for only 750,000 gold. Red didn't have the cash for that, so I quickly switched to MistressDomino, and after buying the boots, checked out the headgear on offer - and found eventually that KTrioKO had put up all five pieces of knight armour at 750,000 each. MD had enough money to buy them all, plus the 144,000 to get Collector Ryl to convert them to their rogue equivalents, so, now that they've been traded across to RedRyder, she is wearing, at level 27, the full 30/32 +10 armour set. It's lucky I didn't need to buy a +10 weapon as well - Red will need to be level 29 before she can use one. and the plan is for one of SirGalahad's two level 33 weapons to be converted for her.

MistressDomina was able to go back into merchant mode for a while after that, and managed to sell some more heaven stones, now at 495,000 each, plus moonstones and moonstone boxes and a few other minor items, so that her cash reserves have been entirely replenished. When Red reaches level 31 she should get given a further +10 armour set and both rogue weapons - so they will probably end up getting converted for Kaerella's use.

At ten o'clock, UK time, I had an appointment over on Katar-4 with the Mad Monster Spawns, presided over now by [GM]JediMike. For the second week, the MMS was in two parts, one for lower levels and one for higher levels. At level 31, Memree qualifies for the lower group I think, so I went to the lakeside location, and joined in with the enthusiastic slaying of a wide variety of junior monsters, only a few of which were red for her. I'm sure there are monsters conjured up there which are seen nowhere else in Last Chaos USA - but when we swing into action, they don't last long. Mike spawned a generous helping of the usual Hands... and the event was over after no more than eight minutes.

I used a memory scroll to move over to the normal MMS spot - and could only see monsters, and three or four people watching from nearby. It looked as if the monsters had taken control, but I managed to edge along a bit, and found that people were actually fighting - I took a shot or two at an anubis archer. And then I saw the Hands being spawned a little further down the slope, even though there were still plenty of monsters about, so made my way over there, and was ready to grab stuff as soon as it became available - there is always a delay after a Hand is spawned by a GM before anyone else can pick up the goodies. There was plenty of stuff to pick up, and [GM]JediMike spawned some more for us when the first drops were all done - but the event was over before a quarter past ten.

That does seem to be Mike's way of handling events recently; he cuts down on the amount of action, but compensates by being generous with the loot. Still, there were some people at the Katar MMS, at least, who felt let down by not having the usual four or so waves, and boss monsters; if they'd started hour-long potions, they'd not be getting full value from them by any means.

Still, it was past my usual log-out time, so I didn't mind the event's early finish. SirGalahad was able to do some more work with the gnoll lancers while I worked on the blog; the reindeer-style horse should be past the halfway mark in level 22 by log-out time. There will be the usual weekly maintenance shut-down of the Last Chaos servers later tonight; what tomorrow will bring I don't know, perhaps the polar bear pets? I've seen one of them around, presumably owned by a raffle winner, and he looks a cute little fellow, rather more realistic than Ichi and Scra-Chi, thankfully. And maybe the Tairen server will start to get its own events?