Guild Wars managed to sort out its "hat shortage" bug by late yesterday evening, which ought to be an example to us all; my headgear-collecting character there managed finally to get the second new kind of icy "crest", which is more handsome than the usual hats they come up with. NCSoft do seem to be moving into the "micropayment" model now to keep GW revenues up; besides extra storage and character renaming and remodelling, you can now spend real cash for a pair of new Dwayna and Grenth themed costume covers.
After a final appearance at the GW festivities, held at midnight last night PST, or 8:00am UK time, it was time for Last Chaos to start up, and for SirGalahad to venture down to level five of Maargadum Jail once more, starting off on the newer computer, and then switching across to the older one after coffee. For some reason I can only adjust the brightness of the picture when LC is full-screen, rather than windowed, so I switched to running it like that, as otherwise the Jail is unusually gloomy, and it's hard to find one's way about.
Kaerella started up on Cariae-1 after coffee, joining a solo party and heading out to the akane giants and regular giants, and, in particular, to the elite akane giant close to the "Tomb of Theo" (not to be confused with the "Tomb of Theos") entrance. I remembered to put the spot onto Kae's memory scroll, which will save a bit of time in future.
It wasn't long before Kamira turned up, so Kae temporarily left the solo party, and Keerella rode down to deal with my visitor. This time I remembered to get the special drop-enhancing buff from the Christmas tree in Randol, and it may have helped - as well as the usual assortment of items, Kamira dropped a rare "Chain of Tiger" accessory, which gives its wearer 16 strength and 8 more close-range physical attack - making it useful for a knight or a titan. When Kae rejoined the party, other members were suitably congratulatory.
Lunch had to be slightly early, but by the time Kaerella left the party and logged out, 8.96% had been added, and 57 skill points, taking her stash of unused sp above the 8.5k mark, along with 684 more pet points.
The early lunch was to make sure my level 72 rogue Rage would be in time for the "Storm the Castle" event on Auzura-5, scheduled for one o'clock, UK time. While still fun, this turned out to be a very conventional affair, with everything by the book, which is not what one expects from [GM]Valsharyn, starting with jumping devils, barren eises, anubis archers, wafes, anubis spear men, dark harpies, hell-otuu... and ending with a couple of sphinx commanders in the Castle's throne room. As we were a fairly small group again, it all took us a while, and it was just about 1:30 when we fought the Sphinx Commanders. After that, we all followed Val back outside, for the loot, but it was a very small pile of goodies, and all I got was a single HP recovery potion, six MP recovery ones, three tool aids, and three skill point boosters. Ah well, I'm sure [GM]JediMike will be more generous at the next Katar STC, if he's still doing it - [GM]Kali was in charge of those until recently, but perhaps she has taken a few weeks off.
For the later part of the afternoon, well, first of all RedRyder went to Prokion Temple on Tairen-1 and found the back room clear, but before long I decided to try teaming her with SirGalahad there, in a Combat party, with Gal doing the work, so Gal stopped his pet-levelling in Jail and switched to the newer computer, then took over in the back room. Red switched to the older computer, and soon joined him. She is only three levels below him at the moment, so, while between them they got more experience and skill exp than Gal would have got solo, Gal himself got less than he otherwise would. Still, it seems as simple a team-up as the one Kaerella and Memree have on Katar, so is worth continuing with, particularly when Gal levels up a time or two.
It wasn't a hugely long session; SirGalahad went up 25.35% and 114 skill points, while RedRyder added 14.61% and 146 skill points - enough to learn basic armoursmith and the first two levels of advanced armoursmith, with 2 sp left over. After that Gal went back to Jail, with his horse moving on satisfactorily through level 30.
For the evening, the dynamic duo returned to Prokion Temple; both the back room and the corridor room, as I call them, were in use, so SirGalahad ended up upstairs just close to the central staircases, with RedRyder standing close by. With their +10 armour sets, the local orcs didn't hurt them at all; as I was also watching a tv show and then an old western movie, and thus wasn't giving the Last Chaos window 100% attention, I didn't risk equipping Gal's horse, which tends to lose health quite steadily when orcs are around.
I stayed for the whole three-hour duration of the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff on both characters, and by closing time SirGalahad was 49.34% up, and had gained 250 skill points, as well as 337 guild points. As she'd arrived slightly after Gal, RedRyder was just up by 242 skill points, along with 14.62% - an almost identical amount to her previous session, which, while shorter, had included some actual fighting, as opposed to just standing around for the Combat party percentage. She got 58 more guild points, so that Discipline now has 2185 of them; 6000 will be needed before that "guild message" skill can be learnt.
That was the end of the evening's entertainment, except for SirGalahad's trip down to the fifth floor of Maargadum Jail, where he soon got the horse past the halfway mark in level 30. That means that the horse is only hours away from being mountable, though as usual we'll be going on to level 37 for the full level ten horse buffs. Gal himself is still 20% away from level 33, so it looks likely that the horse will overtake him, level-wise, soon.
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