The Temple and The Castle

After an hour or two of gnoll-bashing, SirGalahad was able after coffee to head for Prokion Temple on Tairen-4 and do another hour's worth of skill point farming, using the fourth beginner pssp - this brought in 169 skill points, while going up by 9.73%. Having his experience gain set to 50% means that he has now donated 426 guild points to Discipline. As usual the Tairen-4 version of the Temple was pretty quiet

Back in town, I noticed that a sorceror was cunningly using the name "IGMIMoose", which looks a lot like the genuine "[GM]Moose" if read quickly, though his "hey i gm" remarks were slightly let down by the subsequent "give me 50k plz" begging. Someone else mentioned it in the forum shoutbox, so I ended up posting a screenshot of his messages, along with my "you'll get into trouble using a name like that" response.

There is a special "100% rebate" offer on the item mall's Master Pack today - so if one pays 2500 aeria points for 200 each of the skill points, experience and item drop boosters, within a couple of weeks one should get one's ap back - it seems like a good deal to me! So I'm rather shorter of ap than I was a few hours ago, but richer in boosters on various servers.

Apart from moving items around, and doing that ap-spending, the main feature of the afternoon was the use of SirGalahad's final pssp on Tairen-4. Before going there I moved his pet's stats from Armour Increase to Power Increase, which increased his physical offence stat by about 11% - and that meant that he went up by 11.55% during the hour, and added 211 skill points, which was a useful improvement. It looks as if I'll need to keep resetting his skills fairly often, as that extra attack power seems to be killing gnoll lancers in two-thirds of the time, though the use of a couple of accessories to increase his hit rate presumably has some effect too. At least the defence stat of his armour set alone if enough to keep him safe there, so starting to level a new pet wouldn't be a problem.

For the evening, RedRider stepped up, with SirGalahad providing the solo party while he levelled the horse up to 27. Moving to Tairen-1, Gal had a slight surprise when he teleported in to the gnoll lancer spot, he found he was dangerously close to a level 50 Pandora's Beast, but moving away a little stopped any trouble. Later on, the Grand Red Dragon dropped by, but left again without offering or receiving any aggro. With Elizabeth's Enhancement, a trip to Prokion Temple on Tairen-1 was the plan for Red, and luckily the back room was free, so Red settled in there, with only one fairly brief interruption from the sorcerer XFORZETX, who, after ks-ing a little, decided that the orc sergeants and orc axemen were a bit too strong, and retreated to the corridor again.

By the end of the session RedRider had moved comfortably into level 29 - almost 90% of the way, in fact, having added 179.11% and gained 636 skill points; her hatchling went up from level 5 to 7, as well. Maximising the last available general/attack skills, Tumble Cleave, Flame Shock (a personal dungeon only skill), Swift Bash, and Dire Strike took 381 sp, and the rest of the points went on basic and advanced weaponsmith, plus starter levels of armoursmith, alchemy and mining.

And then it was time for RedRyder to get the entrance to Misty Canyon onto her memory scroll, which she did easily enough; inside, the first Introducer Camio was only too happy to kill her thirty times, to get back to the start of level 29. There seemed to be even more "double deaths" than usual, where the character respawns at the place she was killed and gets killed again, and once Red just lay on the ground dead, with no option to revive her, so I had to restart in Randol and return to finish the job.

So, Red has reached the stage at which she can "bank" skill points in the special skills, for possible future use...and she can attend any available events on the new server, too. It depends if I hear anything more from GhOsTRiDeR about her guild what I get up to next, though SirGalahad does need to reach level 35 to become a "proper" pet-leveller. And of course there are my characters on other servers to remember as well - MrChuckNorris and MistressDomina on Auzura with their substantial skill point reserves, getting Rage to level 73 so that my archer Kaerella can inherit the level 69 +15 weapon there, maybe adding a level or two to Barbarienne and Keerella on Cariae and working on my cleric version of Kaerella on that server too, or even starting a night shadow. There's plenty of choice as to what I can do, and not all of it has to take place in Prokion Temple.

Today's main US-server event was the return of "Storm the Castle", down in Merac, at ten in the evening, UK time. Sadly Katar and Cariae have their events at the same time; Hatzring and Sarissa follow half an hour later, but I don't really have suitable characters there, even if I did want to stay up that late. Since the loot is more needed by my characters on Katar, this looked like a job for my local level 31 rogue Memree.

[GM]JediMike was in charge, but it was just about the full event. "Y'all slow", he commented (as a disembodied "voice") as we fought in the Castle courtyard, but we were a fairly small group, by "Storm the Castle" standards, and did pretty well to kill the Spear Men, Anubis Archers, Zamaras, Dark Harpies, Hell-Otuu, and so on. It was a little before twenty past when the "Thanks for participating in STC!" message came up - there were still some Baals and death knights, along with a few jumping devils, at the other bridge in, but after a little frantic running around I found where the goodies had been dropped, which was in the courtyard rather than outside. I managed to grab a good few item drop and skill point boosters, so the trip had been worth it.

A mage there had been asking one guild what the minimum level was to join - the answer was level 95, but they were full at the moment, so that was one elite guild - GhostRiders, I think. One day I really must investigate the PvP side of things...

Anyway, SirGalahad had kept on working on the gnoll lancers, taking care to stay away from the aggressive gnoll soldiers in one direction, and that Pandie in the other, and by the end of the evening, that reindeer-style pet of his should be halfway through level 27.