Quiz Night

MistressDomino sold a nice lot of stuff on Cariae-1 overnight, so this morning I restocked her supplies of chaos balls and item drop boosters, and so on, and let her sell a bit more, until coffee time. SirGalahad restarted his pet-levelling endeavours too, for ninety minutes or so, though as he was a bit low on quality stones to keep the horse fed, he had to buy a couple of pickaxes first, and use the two tool aids he was carrying out at the Juno mine, to increase his supply

The Discipline Duo, Rage and RedRyder, headed out to Prokion Temple in their usual way, on Tairen-1 after coffee. They started fighting the orc soldiers, and the occasional orc fighter, but halfway through the session Rage levelled up, reaching 33, and this decreased the skill exp per orc soldier by about a third. It also took about a quarter off the skill exp per orc fighter, but decreased the experience gain from them three times as much, making them now Rage's target of choice.

Finding a good place for orc fighters wasn't simple, but I ended up in the other half of the Temple, the "Mirror Universe", in their version of what I call the corridor room, which instead of orc sergeants, and a few axemen at one end, just had orc fighters and a single axeman. It will be interesting to compare a full late-morning session there with the previous spot, but today's hybrid version gave the duo 112 skill points each, plus for Rage 5.09% and 38 guild points, and for RedRyder 1.66% and 7 guild points.

SirGalahad got a further supply of quality stones from Rage before lunch, and then went back to Maargadum Jail, with the horse reaching level 31, the first level at which it can be mounted (if you don't mind non-maximum horse buffs), over the break. MistressDomino was back in merchant mode - but not the Cariae version with her "Reputation" armour and Uncle Sam top hat, but the more modestly stocked Tairen one in her plain old "Apperentice" gear. Still, she sold a few heaven stones, at 950,000 gold as opposed to Cariae's 1,950,000, plus a few moonstones and some Candy (at exactly the same price MD charges on Cariae), and took in almost nineteen million.

The afternoon session featured my level 53 cleric Kaerella on Cariae-1, out in the Dratan desert with the akane giants; I soon managed to get into bluray's solo party, and indeed took control of it when he had to go afk. Kamira stayed away, but it was quite a good session, with a couple of heaven stones turning up; by the end Kae had added 12.81% and 117 skill points, plus 1204 pet points.

Someone yesterday was wondering why Kaerella didn't move on to the sphinx fighters, but I like the skill points Kae gets fighting a foe at her own level, and the experience can't be too much less, as the akane giants are rather quicker to kill. I counted, and Kae managed to kill 34 akane giants in one five-minute horse buff period, with five of those being the elite akane giant, which gives triple the experience of a regular one. The akane giants give 26,400 experience each (or with the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff twice that), while a level 63 sphinx fighter gives 192,907, so I'd need to kill 6 of those in the five minutes, to break even experience-wise. Given the shortage of easily accessed sphinx fighters and the time they take to respawn, and the risk of homicidal sphinx speer men charging in from a distance to attack, I think trying to kill six of them every five minutes without getting killed could prove a bit tricky for Kae yet - and the area is generally quite busy, as everyone has to go to Tairen-1, rather than the other five sub-servers, so that they can get the Elizabuff.

I got a bit busy with other things, mainly getting my computer's music folder into order, in the evening, so, other than SirGalahad continuing his pet-levelling efforts, all that happened before the Quiz was a trip by Rage on Tairen-1 through the third personal dungeon, Ajaka Canyon - the map that has more recently been re-used for the high-level "Misty Canyon" area.

Rage managed it quite easily, thanks to the +10 armour; the only two tricky bits are when the single beast crawler appears in the big midway room, among the large numbers of other beasts, and when Blood Mistress Kamira herself gets involved, as magic attack is harder to resist, but Rage's crossbow soon dealt with them, and everything else.

The reward for a successful completion of Ajaka Canyon has been raised, I see - you now get a dozen moonstones, not just one, plus 50,000 gold, 220,000 experience (which worked out at 1.35% for Rage), and 16 skill points (assuming you have the Elizabuff on). Since the monsters all drop a hundred or two of gold, and there are hordes of them, it's quite a profitable deal. In all Rage added 1.62% and 32 skill points.

The Quiz went well - I think we still lost a few people on the "[GM]JediMike runs the Old Skool Treasure Hunt" question, but most of the questions were the easy ones we know and love, and, as they have probably taken out a few questions that are now obsolete due to schedule changes and GMs leaving, they actually started to repeat questions we'd already had by the end. As MistressDomino's inventory was getting a bit heavy, it was a level 5 mage called Enchantra who accompanied Kaerella to the Quiz Room on Tairen-2 this time, but she proved as clever at following Kae as MD had been.

The US-style "happy hour" started at nine, so I was able to take advantage of the extra 75% skill exp for half an hour or so at least. With the Elizabuff, it meant that at level 29 RedRyder, in a solo party with SirGalahad, got 1062 experience and 5500 skill exp per orc soldier, which seemed almost as good as the Combat parties with Rage - and in the time, Red went up by 2.90% and 111 skill points.

The usual orc soldier room was busy, but I was able to claim the upper corridor that links the two staircases. A mage called Lynda did try to deal with the soldier closest to one end a few times; from the haze of red, she wasn't finding it too easy, so I kept a watch, and if I saw other orcs heading her way, besides the one she wanted to fight, I'd show them the error of their ways. It's rather neat when a rogue can help someone by casting Snare on a monster they are fighting, without hitting it, and I did manage to pull that off once.

After that, I put MistressDomina up in merchant mode on Cariae-4 again, with her normal range of goodies; SirGalahad continued a little longer after that, and was able to get the horse into the start of level 32, before he too got replaced by a merchant, in this case Tairen's MistressDomino.