Storming the Castles

An attempt to pet-level overnight was thwarted by a disconnection after not much more than an hour or so, but when SirGalahad returned to level five of Maargadum Jail before breakfast there was, at least, the Christmas Gift Box still waiting there. He was able to do some pet-levelling until after coffee, and again over lunch - though, unusually for Tairen, he did get ks'd there, so that I came back to find him just standing next to the killed-and-respawned death mask lancer, having received just 1401 experience and 95 skill exp for his contribution to the creature's demise.

For the morning session, it seemed brighter than my usual plan to take SirGalahad and RedRyder to Prokion Temple on Tairen-1 - if it's the busiest place to go, why not go there at the quietest time of day? This meant that I was able to use my favourite back room without any interruptions, so that by the time lunch was approaching Gal had earned 15.77%, 99 skill points, and 154 guild points, while Red was up by 6.48%, 98 skill points and 25 guild points.

Red left the room just before Gal did, so that I could compare what SirGalahad at level 34 got from a kill with a level 29 companion within range, with what he got when it was just basically a solo party. In a solo party, an orc sergeant gave 8,536 experience and 5,500 skill exp, and an orc axeman gave 1,284 experience and 3,300 skill exp. While the figures varied from kill to kill, with RedRyder nearby SirGalahad got approximately 18,000 experience and 4.400 skill exp from a sergeant, and 8,500 and 3,600 from an axeman. Considering that Red gets that much skill exp too, and around a sixth as much experience, the Combat party works pretty well for them, though if I was trying to maximise Gal's skill exp this wouldn't be the best strategy. Those figures include the doubling effect on both experience and skill exp from the "Elizabuff", and the halving effect on just the experience from the guild's 50% experience freeze.

With RedRyder's new skill points, and a few brought forward, back in town after lunch she was able to get the last level of alchemy, and start on the mining skill, which may even prove useful some time. Then she headed for Misty Canyon and the Introducer Camios at its start, to get rid of the experience percentage; there were the usual buggy "double deaths", and, as has happened before, a death from which she couldn't be revived - even the five-minute countdown to respawning didn't work, so I had to log out and log back in again. At least this gave SirGalahad enough time to get his horse into level 34 at last.

So, the afternoon main session was more of the same; I did have a visitor for a while, a level 31 rogue called soyelmejor, and there was enough orc-respawning for SirGalahad and her to keep busy - she is on Gal's and Red's Friends lists now. When she reached level 32, of course, it was time for her to return to town and learn the new skills, so the session ended with just Gal and Red there again. SirGalahad was up by another 22.44%; he had got slightly more experience than usual because he had used one of his "beginner" platinum blessed irises, which have to be used by level 35 anyway or they become useless. They don't stack with the "Elizabuff", unsurprisingly, so it just added an extra 25% for an hour. Gal got 121 skill points and 183 guild points. RedRyder meanwhile got a new 8.21%, 119 skill points and 31 guild points.

SirGalahad then switched over to the older computer for some pet-levelling. By the time I was ready to get active again, the six o'clock, UK time, "Cluedo" event was getting close, so I logged MrChuckNorris in over on Auzura-4. The first of the three questions was someone who was not generally known to be an enthusiast for cars, which led Chuck to suggest Paul Newman - but the second clue mentioned that he was British, had made at least a couple of films, and was known for his mimicry, so "Rowan Atkinson?" was my suggestion to [GM]Noboru - and yes, MrChuckNorris was the winner of that round.

Luckily I didn't get the other two answers; a famous sportsperson turned out to be Martina Navratilova - well, with "Venus Williams?" I at least had the right sport. xXDarkKillerXx won that one, I think. The third clue started with "This person accomplished outstanding work in two different areas, one being humanitarian work" - and Zemilho was straight in with "Angelina Jolie", which was the correct answer, when all I was mulling over was the possibility that it might be Bill Gates.

As one or two people complained, it is a rather slow event, and it was after half past six by the time [GM]Noboru kindly traded across my prize, which, like RedRider's at the previous event, was a large crit potion. RedRider got William Shakespeare, and MrChuckNorris got Rowan Atkinson, so there is certainly plenty of variety in the questions that [GM]Valsharyn thinks up. A shame we didn't get a parade or anything this time.

The main evening session was over on Cariae-1, out in the Dratan desert with Kaerella, fighting the elite akane giant and his chums. I was in a solo party led by bluray, as Kae has been a number of times, and he was showing pretty much saintly tolerance of a level 27 Brazilian player called "fatalidgtty", not kicking them from the party despite the requests for power-levelling and gold - and I think he even followed Blu to Strayana and went within compass range to leach some experience from him as he fought the dark harpies, or some such local monsters.

Another party member left briefly and then returned, saying they'd killed Kamira - but it turned out that that had involved a shift to Cariae-2, and before too long the Cariae-1 version make a visit to me. So, Kae logged out and Keerella logged in and rode down, fighting Kammy easily enough. There was no rare drop, but there were the usual goodies, including lucky scrolls, a crystal of experience (greater), moonstones, tool aids, and so on. I finally added the location to Kee's memory scroll, to save time in future; she had got Lust Trum tower as one of her five memorised spots, but it is now possible to use a teleporter NPC to get there straight from Egeha village, to make things simpler for new night shadows.

Kaerella returned to her farming, and by the time nine o'clock was approaching, had added 14.44%, plus 91 skill points and 1123 pet points. Three more of the level 57 boot production manuals had dropped, but I was told that they are not as valuable now as they used to be, though if I actually made the boots, they still sell for a million or three.

At a little after 8:50 Kaerella logged out, and for a change, given the choice of attending the Cariae or Katar "Storm The Castle" events, I opted for Cariae, and logged in my level 101 archer, Barbarienne. For Cariae, it was just as well I did, as there were only four of us there when the event kicked off, with thorny mantises, jumping devils, death knights, and baals. The slightly creepy gamesage ADISA was the only one there when I arrived, and she, an assassin type rogue, fought well; more people arrived as the minutes passed, and we fought our way through the zamoras, anubis spear men, hell-otuu, and dark harpies. When the inner courtyard seemed clear, suddenly a number of blue dragons appeared - and while we were dealing with those, some Judge Ballacks too, but by then we were more than a match for such beasties. A frantic rush followed to find where the reward of the Hands of loot would be spawned, but the GM, Stratos, put up a message that they were inside the castle, his first actual interaction with us - and Barb managed to grab, I think, around twelve goodies, plus a few tool aids and the inevitable small recovery pots.

Hatzring and Sarissa followed at 9:30, but, strangely, Auzura was added to the list as starting at ten, despite [GM]Valsharyn having done his own "STC" recently. So, My local level 72 rogue Rage logged in in time for that, and teleported out to the location. Again we started with very few people, when without any announcement the first groups of monsters appeared on the bridge. I had rather assumed everything would be the same, but when after the main area was cleared I headed for the inner courtyard, expecting the blue dragons to appear, nothing happened - we had fought generally the same monsters until then, with perhaps a few extra wafes, male assassin bugs, and of all things some death mask lancers, but the inner courtyard remained empty, and the loot wasn't spawned in there - it was done in the traditional manner for castle-storming, with a good number of nice big piles outside the castle. It was certainly a lot more loot than Cariae had got, and Cariae hadn't done badly. Barbarienne had added 0.27% from her efforts, but, being quite a few levels lower, Rage added 2.27%.

Through it all SirGalahad on the older computer had been spending the evening with his death mask lancer, pet-levelling, and getting his horse past the halfway stage in level 34. As the regular weekly server maintenance is scheduled for 1:00am, there is no point in trying to leave him at work there overnight. The Christmas event will end then, and no doubt a new patch of some sort will be applied. Will the pet polar bears finally be on sale in the item mall, and if so, how much will they cost? They may be the sort of item that one ought not to buy until a "tiered spender event" gives a special bonus for buying expensive stuff.