A Successful Castle Storming

MistressDomino on Tairen-1 joined MistressDomina on Cariae-4 in selling the usual range of heaven stones etc overnight - or at least for a few hours, their supplies had got a bit low when I checked in the early hours, so I decided to give the computers and modem a rest.

SirGalahad went down to do a little pet-levelling before breakfast, though, and it wasn't long before the horse reached level 33. He kept going a little longer than usual as my coffee wasn't as early as sometimes, but I just had time to get Rage and RedRyder over to Prokion Temple on Tairen-1 for an hour before lunch.

Both Rage and RedRyder added 101 skill points; it looks as if just about 100 skill points per hour is what they can get from the orc fighters in the "mirror" corridor room at present. Red picked up some of the loot, but mainly was useful in just standing there and letting the sole orc axeman hit her, while Rage concentrated on killing the fighters. By the end of the hour, Rage had added 3.54% and 29 guild points, while Red had gone up by just 1.25%, and 4 guild points.

SirGalahad was back in action over the lunch break; MistressDomina on Cariae-4 attempted to sell a few items, but without any luck, maybe that is a rather quiet time of day. And then, for the afternoon the idea was to head back to the sphinx fighters and speer men in south-west for a session - though not with Rage and Chuck this time, but with Kaerella and MistressDomina.

Although Kaerella, my level 67 archer, and MistressDomina, my level 61 wizard-mage, are only six levels apart, I didn't use a Combat party, just an Equal one, so they got roughly the same amount of experience; it's not identical, Kae gets slightly more, though I assume it works out as a smaller percentage, but the skill exp is the same. MD just stood at the side, and Kae did the fighting; both sphinx types are green-named to her now, but they still gave useful drops, including a +2 armour piece and a couple of heaven stones.

It wasn't a hugely intensive session; I didn't use any boosters, the main thing was to get back into the way of playing Kaerella as an archer, and also finish getting her armour and bow bloodsealed. Some parts of her set had been bought as healer armour and were already sealed, but others had been converted by Collector Ryl and not fought in since. I did manage to get everything done, except one last seal for the bow, which I must say looks impressively glowy. Kae went up by 6.88%, and MD went up by 11.18%, and they each got 25 skill points, while Kae's drake, SirFrancis, gained 1294 pet points.

Auzura's "Storm the Castle" event was scheduled for seven in the evening, UK time; I had a couple of emails to deal with, but just had time for a short session, so Kaerella got to complete her two outstanding Dratan quests - which involved riding down to the Forgotten Temple, and getting its entrance onto her memory scroll (since there are other quests in there to come, as Rage has shown)...and then venturing inside to kill the spiders, and the legendary slayers.

I took things cautiously, just targeting the first legendary slayer, since their magical attack hits very hard; the spiders are protective of the slayers, so I needed to keep the ones close by down anyway, so fulfilling that quest was a by-product of the slayer-slaying. When my horse buffs expired I went back out and reapplied them, and luckily didn't get stuck in the entrance hall. It all didn't take very long, and just added 0.37% and two skill points - then back in town the quest rewards added 2.55% and another 9 skill points.

By then the announcements for the "Storm the Castle" event in Merac had started; I switched to Rage, and went down early, to find that [GM]Noboru was already there, along with perhaps a dozen other early arrivals. I did ask her about yesterday's parade, and where it had gone, but apparently that was not one of her events.

The GM spawned a first pile of loot at the same time that the monsters appeared - though naturally we gave loot-grabbing a priority - to reduce the lag, yes? We only had 15 minutes to clear the Castle of its monstrous usurpers, and [GM]Noboru warned us to expect flutons in the throne room... she called it the Cathedral, but castles are more likely to have a throne room I think.

Thorny mantises, male assassinbugs, anubis spear men, hell-otuu, dark harpies - we cut through them slowly but surely. One fluton was just outside the throne room, and we wore it down, with everyone conscious that time was running out. Their armour is so good that Rage only does about 135 damage, but I found that her Flame Arrow skill hurt them for over 6000, so I used that as much as I could, and left the Snaring to the lower-level rogues. There was luckily only one more fluton to beat, inside the throne room, and everyone piled onto him - we killed him with just seconds to spare.

Outside the castle again, our GM was generous with the drops, so that we were frantically running from one pile to the next, and grabbing all we could. It was then that Ratel got in touch, but I couldn't reply much until all the loot was safely snaffled. I reported to Ratty that I'd got 5 skill point boosters, 8 item drop boosters, 3 large defence, and 9 large attack potions, and he was suitably impressed.

Ratel had been skill point farming on the cursed liches in Egeha, which made him go through health potions at an alarming rate, but gave good skill exp, and good loot. Sheele last night had been saying that Ratel was now in a guild called "Wicked", which had surprised him - I'd remarked that in teenspeak that could mean "really cool", but actually the guild is Twisted, which also doesn't immediately seem to fit in with his approach to life. And apparently his fellow guildies hate the Illuminati guild, which Sheele's Auzura character BasheR is now in...

I only had time after that for an hour or so more of action, so it was Kaerella out in Dratan again - though this time my Cariae cleric Kaerella, fighting the elite akane giant and its non-elite retinue. Things went routinely enough; there wasn't a solo party available, but luckily someone in Prokion Temple was registered as a potential party member, so I picked him up, registered our party, and all went well, with the party actually reaching the full eight a time or two. By the time I left them, Kae had gone up by 6.16%, 54 skill points, and 583 pet points.

SirGalahad had been back in action for a while by then, and got his horse past the halfway point in level 33. There's no point in leaving him, or a merchant, in action overnight, as the usual weekly maintenance will be bringing the servers down at 1:00am UK time. What the new patch will bring has not yet been revealed, but tomorrow evening promises to be full of the various low and high level Mad Monster Spawns, so that is something to look forward to.