Sunday is Quiz Day

MistressDomino sold her stuff pretty well overnight, bringing in about 14,000,000 gold, money that I thought would be likely to be very useful when one of my rogues on the Tairen server outgrows that free 30/32 armour set. SirGalahad was able to start work at the usual breakfast-ish time, in Maargadum Jail, and it wasn't much over an hour before his horse reached level 36.

After coffee Rage checked up on Merac, where she hadn't been since reaching level 32, and found there was a quest available - just ferrying some report around between the various local magicians in town, and finally out to the "column of magic". There wasn't any fighting involved, but 11.59% experience was gained from the quest rewards. After that she headed on to Prokion Temple, and was joined by RedRyder. After the rather too generous experience gain last time, we headed for a less ambitious room, with orc soldiers and orc fighters - the room next to the fighters-only one that Red had played in solo, in fact. As well as the fighting, there was some chatting with the sorcerer who was in that soldier room for most of the time, Psycopath, who ended up on both Rage's and Red's Friends list.

By the time lunch was approaching both my rogues had added 126 skill points; Rage had gone up by another 14.65%, and 100 guild points, while RedRyder was up by 4.36% and 23 guild points. So, it was time to switch back to SirGalahad.

According to the website calendar Auzura-4 was due to have its "Storm the Castle" event at three o'clock in the afternoon, UK time, so it seemed a good idea to go on that particular sub-server with my Auzura level 72 version of Rage. As she had got a quest to head for the Forgotten Temple, that's where Rage went, to kill five each of the twin hadians and curd hadians - which was easy enough, once I got in to the place. With Prokion Temple, when teleporting in you sometimes end up in the foundations, so that all you can do is use a return-to-town scroll and then come back and try again. With the Forgotten Temple, also known as the Temple of Forgetfulness, you teleport in okay, but a couple of the possible spawning points are caught up in a cage-like structure, and you can't get free... so you have to use a scroll to return to town, and then come back. For me, it was third time lucky, and I was able to finally hurry off towards the interior.

I went along to the end room and fought some jumping devils, since they, like Rage, are level 72. One of the very few legendary slayers I killed on the way there actually dropped a pair of level 62 boots, which used to be very rare, before reaching level 60 earned one a complete 60/62 set. Rage didn't add much, but even 1.59% plus 7 skill points and 261 pet points was a step in the right direction.

A ten minute warning for the "STC" duly came up just before three, so Rage didn't hurry, killing a few more jumping devils before going back to Dratan, moving to Merac village, and using a memory scroll to go down to Merac Castle. I was in fact the first player to arrive, so said "hi" to [GM]Noboru, and let her know that a good number of people had just been setting out on foot to run down to the Castle. So, luckily, we waited, and soon other people did start to arrive.

The Storming was pretty much the regular type, with thorny mantises, death knights, anubis archers, male assassinbugs, some familiar-looking jumping devils, anubis spear men, hell-otuu, dark harpies - and there was one of the "invisible" dragons in the final courtyard, which some of our people could see and fight, while the rest of us, urged on by the GM, went into the throne room and fought a single fluton.

We finished cleansing the castle with a few minutes to spare, and [GM]Noboru told us that the prizes would be spawned back at the start - it's always useful to know that right away, as people tend to run around aimlessly, not knowing where the goodies will be. So we dashed back out across the bridge, and got ready to pick up the loot as soon as it was unlocked and stopped insisting that it was reserved for someone else.

[GM]Noboru was nicely generous with the hands of protection, hands of bravery, and hands of the guard she spawned, and as soon as we'd stopped dashing from one now-vanished pile to the next, some more piles appeared, so Rage went overweight, mainly due to all the tool aids. And that was the end of that, after half an hour or so.

There was time for Kaerella over on Tairen-1 to have a short session before the food break; after claiming a quest reward or two, there didn't seem time to go to Prokion, so Kae used her NPC scroll to move across to Teleporter Rian, and spent half an hour or so in Velpist Temple, in the room just outside the "torn book of life" one. At level 17 it wasn't as hard as before, and for much of the time I had the "assistance" of a lowish-level knight called likingod (some cynics might call it ks-ing on his part). Well, I wasn't on a pssp or anything, so I wasn't too bothered, and even dropped a +3 knight shield I picked up so that he could have it.

By the end Kaerella had reached level 18, having gone up 129.44% in all, plus 46 skill points and 427 pet points, which were just enough to get Kae's dragon hatchling up to level 3. And I got a good supply of cursed bones, a quest item it can be hard to get enough of.

SirGalahad kept going through the food break - there was one point at which the death mask lancer moved a little too close to the nearest death mask soldier, so that the soldier got involved in the fight too, and did get the horse down a few health points before I saw what was going on. I quickly equipped Gal with his sword, and he killed the soldier before returning to bare-handed sparring with his lancer; by then, the horse was just about halfway through level 36.

Kaerella returned to Prokion Temple and the room with the mummies and single orc soldier, until she reached level twenty - and then, having gone up by 199.76% and added 97 skill points plus 475 pet points, it was time to head back to Randol to grab the new quests, and of course the special healer accessory, the "Holly Neckless of Healer" - oh well, I doubt if I could spell Korean very well either. It adds 16 to intelligence, or "power of the mind", plus 100 to mana, 9 to magical attack, if I use a scepter rather than a bow, and "increase MP recuperative power: 20%".

There had been another "Cluedo" event scheduled for Auzura-4 at 6:30 UK time, but I decided that it wasn't really worth the time it took, so didn't go - which was lucky, as ten minutes after it should have started, an announcement came up that it had had to be cancelled, and that a "hide and seek" event was to replace it.

Doing the various messenger-type quests, plus killing some elder werewolves and drakes for Border Guard Tamon, and fifteen death goddesses just outside the Dratan city gates, added another 63.84%, 67 skill points, and 129 pet points - but then it was time to return to Prokion Temple.

It wasn't a terrifically long session, just 38.35% experience - but SirGalahad, as guild master, did "freeze" Kae's experience gain to 50% at the start, to help her get more skill points per level. And then it was time for the Sunday Quiz.

As usual recently I went to Tairen-2 for that. SirGalahad logged out, and MistressDomino logged in after restarting the game - thanks to all her recent sales, her weight was low enough to get the prizes without any danger of reaching the 150% maximum. A couple of minutes later Kaerella logged out, and after restarting the game, logged back in on Tairen-2. I noticed that Tairen-1 was "congested" when I reached the subserver choices, so the new server isn't doing too badly for players now.

Inside the quiz room, it looked as if there was at least one player trying to run multiple clients, with a number of identical rogues with short nonsense names all clustered together. Someone said they were reporting it on the forum shoutbox, but in fact they got a question wrong and vanished before the prizes started coming. We did lose perhaps half our people as we went along, but Kae and MD emerged victorious. I had the strange sensation, as the quiz progressed, that it wasn't just MD following me around, there were others too, which is a bit flattering.

So, after respawning in Randol, Kae's new goodies and general loot were traded across to MistressDomino, who then logged out to let SirGalahad get back to his favourite death mask lancer. With any luck by log-out time his horse will only need about 90 minutes tomorrow to get to level 37. Kaerella browsed around town a little, and then spotted that a rogue called LoneVamp was selling items at the price she thought they ought to be, on a new server...and that included three platinum super skill pills at 3.5 million each, which is certainly cheaper than any others I've seen on the Tairen server. I switched quickly across to MD, as she had enough money to make the purchase, and she was able to buy those three pssps, so that should help RedRyder along a bit.

A healer called Pascal dropped a few drake eggs and pan flutes near the animal trainer, and MD was among those who managed to grab a couple...but there was soon a small crowd around her hoping she would drop more free stuff, so that her kind gesture was soon over. Actually, Kae had bought a couple of drake eggs at 10,000 gold each earlier, from someone in merchant mode who was asking for quick cash... and then, out when fighting drakes to get three green orbs for a quest, a knight called peterz10s had opened the trade window with her, offering 16,000, and asked for a drake egg - so that was a quick profit and a happy customer.

I had been thinking of just letting Kae use some of her tool aids to farm some green herbs and quality stones until log-out time, but at nine the announcement came up that the US "Happy Hour" (we no longer get a European one in the afternoon) was starting early, with 75% extra skill exp, so Kaerella hurried back to Prokion Temple to get at least 40 minutes of it - and getting the divine shield buff, adding 75 to physical defence, courtesy of the knight nelutzul a few times helped me along.

By the end Kaerella had reached level 22, which is really all she needs at the moment, with a further 63.30% experience, and, over the two most recent sessions, 224 skill points and 758 pet points. The 75% bonus to skill exp did just about "stack" with Elizabeth's Enhancement, I found, so that at level 21 each mummy gave 11,000 skill exp, and the lone orc soldier gave 12,375 skill exp, rising to 13,062 when Kae levelled up.