Many Mad Monsters

The update from the overnight weekly maintenance was minor - tiny, in fact, amounting to a couple of tweaks to the item mall's offers, and a pirate costume for the night shadow. Still, we are assured, after the Last Chaos product manager visited the game's developers, BarunsOn Games, in Korea, that many improvements are on the way, not least to skill point acquisition...and with the third anniversary of the non-beta game due next month, some epic events are promised.

Meanwhile, SirGalahad got a surprise when he reached Maargadum Jail's fifth level this morning - not only was the knight legendarynoob pet-levelling on Gal's usual death mask lancer, another knight was using one just across the central path as well. Gal was able to find a third lancer further into the room, though, and settle in, though he moved to his regular sparring partner after someone, probably the knight GiaS, ks'd all three of us, and legendarynoob was just left standing there not making use of it.

After coffee the intention was to take Rage and RedRider to Prokion Temple, but, with them in Dratan City and ready to teleport, I got side-tracked when a level 13 mage, GAMER, decided she wanted to join Discipline. It was only after she joined that I found her grasp of English was a bit tenuous, which for someone from the Ukraine is hardly surprising... After Gal had 50% frozen her experience gain I switched to Kaerella, since Kae was, at level 22, close enough to party with her, and took her to Velpist Temple (after making sure she got the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff) for a start. The room outside the "torn book of life" room already had one player in it, but their "go away noobs" welcome did mellow enough after a few minutes for him to ask for a healing or two.

Gamer asked about a horse, and showed me she had a pan flute, so we went to Lorraine, and then teleported to Dratan to go to Jajan. She got her pony, and I gave her a few quality stones. After that we went to Prokion Temple - Gamer took an entirely different route to the one I always use, past spiders and basilisks, with me clicked on her while I got SirGalahad back into action. I think she understood the advice to get the entrance onto her memory scroll - and after that we fought the ghouls and mummies, and the occasional orc soldier, close to the entry hall for a little while.

I did however notice that Gamer had lost the Elizabuff, and suggested she should go back and get it again - perhaps she died while returning from Velpist Temple (my explanation of how to use the Juno NPC Scroll can't have got through). She had at least reached level 14 by then, and after Kae logged out for lunch must have continued back in Juno, as when I checked after lunch she had reached level 17 - and by late evening was on level 21.

Kaerella, level 22 on Tairen, went up by 35.47%, 74 skill points, and 56 pet points from that unexpected adventure. Over lunch SirGalahad continued his pet-levelling, with his horse reaching level 34.

For the afternoon session, it seemed like a good idea to work on my top character on the Sarissa server - my healer, named Kaerella, who was only level 11. So, jaguars and sasquatches and werewolves were worked on; she tried the first personal dungeon, and failed twice in rather low-level armour, then succeeded when her armour, and the Arcane Knowledge passive skill for increased defence, had been improved. A final session with the ancient and berserk zombies in Velpist Temple ended with her safely in level 14 - so she was liable to be a bit less vulnerable later.

The session did end a bit earlier than average, as the first of the low-level Mad Monster Spawns was due to start on Katar at five o'clock, UK time. I took my level 31 rogue Memree along, and found that it was [GM]OgreKing in charge, waiting around by the special spire that they conjure up at that particular location. He tends to spawn the monsters about ten minutes before the announced time, and then when the hour is reached put up a message that it is "already in progress", so I am about the firt person to start fighting generally - and this was no exception.

After Katar came Cariae, so I traded down to my level 27 rogue there, my one and only original character Karella. And after that, [GM]OgreKing moved on to Sarissa, with me close behind - but this time as my level 14 healer Kaerella, who had a more dangerous time. When the hordes were first spawned I concentrated on the berserk zombies, but some of even the low-level types are aggressive, and it wasn't long before I was running for my life, my health very low, followed by a dozen angry monsters. Luckily they don't have very good memories, so if one gets far enough away that they aren't on one's compass-map, they tend to forget what they were doing, and amble back to where they were, or even "ping" and reset to that position.

So, Kaerella lived to continue fighting, and did manage to level up, reaching level 15. So it will be time to buy her new gloves, and generally move her on a bit for next week.

Most of the junior MMS events started ten minutes early, and only lasted about twenty minutes in all, with two main waves, though they could sometimes be augmented by other minor spawnings as they went along. The first wave of loot was often put down with some monsters on top of it, making things a little difficult for low-level characters, but it was generally all fun.

After Sarissa came Hatzring, where Kaerella is level 22, which made things a bit easier, though the ability to know when to run like heck still came in useful. And then for Auzura I had rather more choice of characters, so opted to try my level 37 temple knight SirDarth. Ratel was there too on his low-level character Athema, though he mentioned that he wouldn't be taking his level 90 knight to the high-level MMS later, as he'd had to work very hard to collect 140 skill points and didn't plan to lose any.

Truthfully, while Darth was never in danger really, I didn't find it as enjoyable an experience. [GM]OgreKing was saying that people up to level 60 were welcome, but even at 37 there were times when there just were not any suitable monsters to attack, just stuff that was too low to be any use. At level 37, Darth could use a level 41 weapon, too, so his level 33 sword, although it's +10, isn't that quick at killing now either...

Still, the sequence ended with Tairen, where Rage, on level 33, was better matched to the monsters. As usual I went for salamanders and elite sand golems, as they have useful drops for quests - and I managed to kill enough pilferers and bandits to fulfil a quest from Merac. It is quite a mixture we get at these spawns, from level 14 berserk zombies up through other Velpist Temple inhabitants, the elder drakes from outside there, and versions of treants, horn beasts, drakes, and jaguars that I've never seen anywhere else. From Merac there are the butchers, pilferers, bandits, berserkers, and blood frenzies, and there are Dratan monsters too, with the regular and elite sand golems, elite goblin scouts - and plenty more.

All in all across the six servers I picked up some useful amounts of loot from the hands that the GM spawned, and on Sarissa and Hatzring some nice cash drops from the monsters too. There was even some ready-plussed armour at some point along the line. The high-level MMS sequence started at nine, UK time, again happening every half hour, but without Tairen on the end as there aren't enough high-level players on such a new server yet. As usual on a Wednesday I was away from Last Chaos for a couple of hours from eight, which is probably just as well since eleven events in a row might have been a bit of an overload.

I did however drop in on the senior MMS on Hatzring, which was a shorter and simpler affair than the junior one, lasting a little under ten minutes from start to finish, with some cave spirits, plus Punishers, Performers, Introducers, and a few golems. Still, the loot spawned was pretty generous. Auzura was due at eleven - which was a bit late for me in theory, but if it was only going to last ten minutes, plus loot pick-up time, well, perhaps RedRider, my local level 26 rogue, could make an appearance?

SirGalahad kept going throughout all the excitement - and the horse just reached level 35 by log-out time.