The Zombies Return

There was one disconnection overnight for ColonelScarlet, but I set him back up in business, and he managed to make pretty good progress, so that by coffee time the horse was halfway through level 25. After his visitors yesterday evening, it was good to go through so many hours without someone killing his gnoll lancer.

After coffee there was time for Memree and Kaerella to do an hour's sp-farming in Prokion Temple on Katar-4, though about five minutes from the end they both had a disconnection, which may well have been a problem at or near this end, as nobody else was complaining when I logged back in. They both rushed back to make use of the final minutes, but the gain was still less than it would have been for a full hour.

Memree reached level 31 during the hour, anyway, and was rewarded with the new set of 30/32 +10 armour, plus the level 33 +10 crossbow and daggers weapons. She switched to wearing the new set until each piece gained the possibility to take its first bloodseal, and then switched back to the ready-bloodsealed pieces, since I hadn't thought to buy her the 15 bloodseal gems that would be needed to give all five new armour pieces all their seals.

Memree's gain during the interrupted hour was 30.40%, plus 100 skill points and 967 pet points; Kaerella went up by just 5.78% and 288 skill points. I think the disconnection didn't just waste about five minutes of pssp time, it had a bit of a "rollback" too, which is annoying. Still, it took Kae's total of unused skill points up over ten thousand again.

Back in Randol, Memree transferred the ready-bloodsealed +10 rogue armour set over to RedRyder, so that she is again able to wear the +10 gloves at least; Red also has the new +10 level 33 crossbow, though she can't use it yet. Various bits of loot were transferred to MistressDomino too. Memree spent all her skill points but 2 on starting to learn her special skills, which meant that she could start doing "suicide runs" to stay on level 31 for a while, which ought to give Kaerella more skill points than if she levels up a time or two.

I switched the modem off over lunch as it had been on non-stop for a few days, which may explain the disconnections last night and this morning; ColonelScarlet did get back into action a little later though. Memree headed down into Merac, and sneaked past the Elite Cerberi to get the entrance to Misty Canyon onto her memory scroll, and then took the opportunity to get the first Introducer Camio to kill her five times, getting her experience down to 0%. Then, back in Randol, she officially became a ranger. "A ranger is an expect (sic) archer and can also make traps", the Master Rogue said. Traps? In Guild Wars, yes, but I haven't come across anything like that in Last Chaos. Memree's health was immediately increased from 988 to 1295, and her mana moved up from 334 to 595. Once her stat points had been distributed as advised on the LC Wet Paint Wiki, with 18 to dexterity and 12 to intelligence, her physical offence had moved up from 532 to 542 as well.

For the afternoon, I ignored the scheduled "Storm the Castle" over on Auzura, since the Prokion Temple back room on Katar-4 was still free. Memree set to work there again, with Kaerella in the Combat-type party, but both hours were slightly marred by the older computer, with Kaerella, running out of memory with 5-10 minutes to go. While the older computer's LC window freezes when the memory message comes up, the party continues for a while - but eventually the party disbands, so Kae has to be logged in again, and hurried back, for the last few minutes. It's strange that the memory error comes up so quickly, usually a two-hour team-up is no problem, and something undemanding like pet-levelling or merchanting can with any luck last the whole night.

Still, Memree added 32.33% and 31.05%, plus 121 and 122 skill points, along with 1072 and 1056 pet points; she also added 364 and 351 guild points, which took the Discipline guild's total to over 6000 - enough for the "guild message" skill to be learned. Since this time I'd brought bloodseal gems along, the armour ended up with its full set of seals, too. Kaerella added 6.70% and 6.52%, plus 345 and 337 skill points - and 62 and 61 guild points for the DarkzersRoughneks guild.

Back in town Memree passed a million in gold across to ColonelScarlet, since he is the guild master, and that's the amount of gold needed for the "guild message" skill, along with the 6000 guild points, and the skill was duly gained. The next thing will be "expension of the guild", for an extra 5 player slots, costing just 2000 guild points and 200,000 gold; taking the guild to level 7 will need a massive 18,000 more guild points, and 2.5 million in gold, along with 550 of the Colonel's reserve of skill points, so getting that many guild points may take quite a while.

Kaerella bought some more herb-gathering knives and mining hammers, and used her collection of tool aids to boost her supply of green herb leaves and quality stones, while the Colonel got the horse just into level 26. Then it was time to move over to Cariae for a while, where Kaerella, my level 49 cleric, had an entirely full inventory, and thus needed to transfer some loot across to my Cariae merchant character, MistressDomina. Her inventory was just about full, so assorted accessories had to be moved to CuddlesMcGraw, who also helped ferry various manuals across to Enchantrella. It was surprising how long it took to get all Enchie's newly-augmented supply of such things into order, but in the end all 25 different volumes, from level 36 to level 72, in quantities varying from 1 to 47, were suitably sorted out, and Kaerella was able to reappear, with 42 empty inventory slots, to get her Elizabeth's Enhancement buff.

Kaerella went out to the west of Dratan, to the giants and akane giants, and set to work; there wasn't a solo party to join right away, but before too long xxxnexusxxx formed a party, which I joined - he was in charge of yesterday's party too. The afternoon "Sunday Teatime" was actually on, I assume as usual it started rather late, and it was good to find that it did "stack" with the Elizabuff, so that, with Kae on level 49 each giant gave 2337 skill exp, and each akane giant, a level higher, gave 2200. It wasn't too long before Kae finally levelled up, reaching the big five-oh; since I was now closer to their level, the giants now gave 2475 skill exp each (a basic 990, plus 990 more from the Elizabuff and 495 from the teatime event), and it was the akane giants' turn to give 2337. I used "pet return to village", and invested 573 skill points in my new skill Magic Research, which as promised increased my physical defence by 130 (10%), and my magical attack by 84 (just over 11%). There was still time for a little further fighting, so I rode back out, and by the end Kaerella had gone up by 11.78% and earned 97 skill points, though spending so much sp meant my total was now down to 7,700. Kae's drake SirFrancis got 980 pet points, too, which works out at around 2.8% of his current level.

The session drew to a close, because the Sunday Quiz was almost upon us. The party disbanded, ColonelScarlet logged out and, with LC restarted, RedRyder logged in on Katar-2; three of the six Katar sub-servers were "congested", I noticed, which just shows what a busy time that is. Kaerella logged out of Cariae-1, and her level 30 namesake logged in on Katar-2, and headed to join Red in the quiz room.

They still haven't sorted out the WSAD-only glitch in there, of course, but people seem to be getting used to it. We lost a few people along the way, but almost everyone made it to the end safely, and got their tool aids, moonstones and heaven stones - including Kae and Red. The GMs managed to avoid using the question about [GM]Krash hosting the "Pharaoh's Treasure" event, which was just as well, as there was a forum announcement yesterday that he was no longer working for Aeria. That's rather sad, as he was in many ways the most human and responsive GM at his events; the phrasing of the announcement leads us to suppose that leaving was not entirely his own idea. Kae traded the heaven stones and moonstones across to Red, and got Red's tool aids in return, for her next mining session.

There was a bit of a glitch then, which other people mentioned in the forum shoutbox; attempting to log MistressDomino in, the first attempt timed out, and subsequent attempts failed because "the account is already logged in". I tried with a couple of other accounts, with the same result, but eventually ColonelScarlet was able to return to his gnoll lancers, and Memree had time to spend almost all her skill points before heading out to the traditional Sunday "Zombie Invasion" of the sleepy little village of Berbank Mill.

There was no mention of the event on the website, so it was a relief when the in-game announcement had come up. Next Sunday has it listed on the events calendar, though the link for details is among those glitched, and just returns one to the front page. [GM]Kali was in charge as usual, and as usual didn't really have any interaction with people - her avatar was glimpsed before the Invasion was started, but that was all. Still, she very wisely decided that the turn-out was not particularly strong, so while we had masses of apes to deal with, she didn't hit us with the Screaming Zombie and boss Ancient Screaming Zombie wave. Memree did get killed once when a gang of apes hit her from behind, but otherwise things went okay - and we got a generous double spawning of loot at the end.

Given the lack of information, I had to ask in the shoutbox, and was assured that Cariae was the next server for the Invasion - I suppose Auzura's earlier castle-storming was instead of having zombies to deal with. So Barbarienne headed out to Berbank Mill, and was ready and waiting when the first monsters spawned.

Once again there were a heck of a lot of apes, with a relatively small number, along with the junior-level zombies, quickly followed by a veritable horde. I found myself solo-tanking about twenty of the brutes, so did use a few health potions. Luckily things settled down after that, and I was able to tank a screaming zombie or two, and then move to a more "artillery" type role to assist other fighters in the area. And it wasn't too long before we were congratulated on our win, and the loot appeared. I seemed to pick up a useful amount, though it was actually just two skill point boosters and two item drop boosters, plus four large attack potions and the usual minor stuff.

And that ended the excitement for the day. ColonelScarlet continued for a while, getting the horse more than halfway through level 26, but it was soon time for him, too, to log out.