Event-Happy

SirGalahad was back at work in Maargadum Jail at breakfast time today - and before nine I noticed the screen seemed a bit busy. Another knight, wearing a "gang costume" cover, or "bathrobe", was attempting to do a little bit of pet-levelling on my death mask lancer. The poor monster's health was already pretty low, but as usually happens, it switched its attention across to the newcomer, and started to attack him rather than Gal. He soon had to run for his life - luckily the death mask lancer soon gave up the chase, and followed Gal back to the usual position. With just Gal's 46 bare-handed damage, its health soon began to return to normal.

The Last Chaos forum has recently announced the arrival of three new game masters - Embla, Cara, and darasuum, so it rather looks as if Moose and Kali have left us, following the departure of Krash. At least from yesterday's events we know that JediMike and Stratos are still with us. It is certainly sad if we have lost Moose after all this time; Kali started off well but seemed to lose interest, let us hope that these newbies last rather longer. And we have the European team of Valsharyn and Noboru too, both relatively new, of course.

After coffee SirGalahad logged out, just after his horse reached level 22, so that once again RedRyder could accompany Rage to Prokion Temple on Tairen-1. The time there passed peacefully enough, except for the orc soldiers, and by the time the lunch break was looming, Rage was up by 5.26%, 36 guild points and 100 skill points, while RedRyder had moved on by 2.39%, 9 guild points and 99 skill points.

SirGalahad was back in action over lunch, and then it was time for my Cariae cleric Kaerella to have another session - one to get her into level 53, allowing her to learn the first level of Party Heal 2 and start to use her new level 57 wand, which like the previous one is +15. As clerics don't hit particularly hard, and are a bit lacking in attack skills, having a pretty well upgraded weapon is rather important for them.

I did manage to make a party with someone who was registered to begin with, but nobody else joined and he left after about a quarter of an hour - luckily by then another party had formed and I was able to join that one. The session with the akane giants out in Cariae-1's Dratan desert must have lasted a couple of hours, and in all my first, original Kae went up 14.82%, which got her comfortably into level 53, along with 126 skill points, and 1364 pet points. I managed to get all five bloodseals for the new wand - and then back in Randol the new skill only took 150 skill points, as it is just the one level, so I was hardly down on sp at all.

The food break was slightly early, to enable me to be back in time for five o'clock, UK time, when the first of the low-level Mad Monster Spawns was due to begin. Since the low-level versions haven't been too well attended, the GMs cunningly scheduled them for different times from the high-level ones, which also saves them having to split their attention between two locations, with messages at one site confusing people at the other.

The first MMS was on Katar-4, and Memree, my level 31 rogue, found that [GM]OgreKing was already there when she arrived. She did ask him what level was the maximum, as these events are billed as "for low-level players only", but his suggestion of 90 was, I think, a joke.. Anyway, the usual monsters appeared, with salamanders, elite and non-elite sand golems, gnolls, goblin scouts, gnolls, and a whole lot more surrounding us. The battle raged for a while, and then we got our loot.

Next up was the Cariae event, so my very first Last Chaos character, the level 27 rogue Karella (really Kaerella and Keerella are both variants of that name), rode out to the usual location by the lake. As the evening wore on, [GM]OgreKing tended to spawn the monsters well before the starting time, and then just make the announcement for people to come when the time was reached, so I did start to be a rather early arriver, starting things off by myself.

I also got a slight side-track, when I noticed that SirGalahad had been ks'd again. I may have missed some drama there, as someone called Erpiubald had said "HACKER BANNED", so perhaps someone was rushing around level five of the Jail at double speed, and included my poor lancer in his depredations. I hardly think he can have decided that Gal was hacking, the animation for a bare-handed attack is pretty slow.

Next up after Cariae was Sarissa, where my top character was a level 10 healer, Kaerella of course. So, I had to be pretty careful. The monsters were all spawned ready when I arrived, and I tried to keep to the level 14 berserk zombies, which aren't protective, so just come one by one. They move nice and slowly too! I did have a couple of scares, one when I discovered that a low-level type of harpy there was in fact protective, so I got chased by four or five at once - and I also accidentally hit an elite sand golem, which was way out of Kae's class, so had to run until I was out of its range. Still, as well as the loot, including plenty of gold dropped by the mobs, Kae levelled up.

It was a relief to move on to Hatzring, where Kaerella is level 22. I had just enough money to buy her the appropriate shirt and skirt for her level, and then headed out to the lake, where again the monsters were all waiting. At level 22 I had a wider choice of targets, though I still had to be careful.

The Auzura event was scheduled for seven o'clock; this was a server where I had a pretty wide choice of characters at an appropriate level, so for a change I chose Galahad, my level 34 royal knight (or GALAHAD to be exact), and played a MMS as a melee character. It was lucky I had a mount for the horse buffs, and some small health potions, as it wasn't too easy, especially when the goblin scouts and elite goblin scouts came in as a group - but it did make a change, and all went well.

We had an announcement for the Auzura-4 "Storm the Castle" event, while we were busy despatching goblins and gnolls and salamanders - it was strange to have the two events at the same time. True, the STC is designed for fairly high-level characters, but a lot of people have a high-level or two and low-levels as well. When we finished in Juno, I quickly changed over to Rage, my local level 72 rogue, and galloped to the teleporter to get to Merac - so it was a bad moment for BasheR, who hadn't been in touch for many months, it seems, to say "hi", all I could do was say "hi" back...but it's good to know that he is still around, and that his account hasn't expired.

Rage teleported down to the castle, and galloped into the courtyard - and was just in time to assist with the final Fluton in the throne room. And in time to assist with the picking up of the loot back outside afterwards; I noticed that JadaMarie, a healer who used to be in Norcaine, had made the move across too. [GM]Noboru was very generous with the piles of loot, so I did pretty well on that server, all in all.

Katar, Cariae, Sarissa, Hatzring, Auzura, and then Auzura again for the Castle... I very nearly forgot that Tairen was due to have a low-level MMS too, but luckily the announcement came up on SirGalahad's screen, so I dived back in, this time with my level 32 rogue Rage (xRAGEx). As Tairen don't yet get a high-level MMS, this was pretty well attended, but there were plenty of monsters for all...and plenty of loot too.

This being a Wednesday evening, I had a couple of hours away from Last Chaos, which was probably just as well as attending all five high-level MMS events, after the six low-level ones and the brief bit of castle-storming, would have been a bit much. So Katar and Cariae were able to have their events in peace, and at ten taking a level 11 healer to Sarissa's event seemed a little bit over-ambitious.

I did however take my level 22 Kaerella to the Hatzring event, which was one of [GM]JediMike's specials - just the one fairly big wave of monsters, including cave spirits and screaming zombies, and a generous spawning of loot afterwards. Kae managed to keep out of trouble, and without high-level critters wandering in her direction, stayed alive, and got her share of the loot.

Auzura was last on the rota, which seemed a bit unfair as it is supposed to run to more Europe-friendly timing; but at least with Mike's type of MMS things don't last too long, and it was all over, after the cave spirits, zombies etc had been dealt with, by a quarter past eleven...and that included picking up the generous supply of loot. RedRider, my level 26 rogue, had been able to assist in a number of kills, with Snare - she did die once right at the start, being in just the wrong place when the monsters were spawned, but otherwise kept out of trouble.

It is great that the GMs have obviously started to put a bit more effort into these events, not trying to have one person running stuff in multiple locations on multiple servers at the same time, just by some keyboard shortcuts to spawn a pre-set grouping of monsters and with no interaction. Hiring three new GMs, as well as the European-server crew. looks like a good move.

SirGalahad meanwhile had kept hard at work, so that by the end of the evening the horse was two-thirds of the way through level 24.