"There Was an Issue"

My two merchants both did some useful business overnight, with, naturally enough, MistressDomina on Cariae-4 taking in rather more gold than MistressDomina on Tairen-1 managed. But then, my needs on Tairen are rather less, so it all levels out.

MistressDomino logged out from Tairen at breakfast time, to allow SirGalahad to return to Maargadum Jail; on his way down to level five he got recruited into legendarynoob's combat party, which lasted for a while. There seem to be a number of farmers in the Jail at the moment, as well as pet-levellers.

I wasn't able to have an actual morning playing session, so MD and Gal were both able to continue until after lunch, when it seemed about time for Rage and RedRyder, the Discipline duo, to head for the orc fighters in Prokion temple again.

The omens seem good for the teaming of Rage and RedRyder, at levels 33 and 29 respectively, against the level 25 orc fighters; it took a little while to get to the "mirror universe" corridor room, but the respawning was almost fast enough to keep Rage busy, and by the end of the session Rage had gained 189 skill points and Red had got 185 - I guess a few times Rage was just too far away when she made a kill. Rage went up by 6.75%, while RedRyder only added 2.35%, getting her to very nearly halfway through her level.

SirGalahad went back to his pet-levelling after that, and then after the early evening food break I remembered about the "Parade" on Auzura-4. However, I was ten minutes late getting to Randol, and although I looked all round town, and outside the gates too, I couldn't find any trace of people parading around, though there were occasional GM messages about it - they even had a little game in which people had to stay close to the GM while she raced around, so that prizes would be spawned.

After that, the main job for the evening was to try to get my ranger-type rogue Rage (as in RAGE) on Auzura up into level 73, finally, so that she could start using her +13 level 73 crossbow. As only a little over 5% was needed, my plan was to take her out to the sphinx types, rather than do anything expensive or risky, in a Combat party with MrChuckNorris, who as well as providing the boost that you normally get from having a member of such a party close by, could give her the two useful titan buffs for bow-users - and, since he was just below the level of the sphinx types, increase Rage's experience gain and skill exp from negligible to useful.

That all went to plan - until a disconnection got us both. Standing on the side, where a player rarely gets attacked (just once for him today) Chuck was safe enough, but it was an anxious time waiting to be able to reconnect to the server, to see what had become of Rage, who had been attacking a sphinx fighter at the time, in an area where fighters and speer men did respawn The Last Chaos website seemed to be down as well, after one fleeting mention of a dc in the shoutbox - I wondered for a while if the problem was at my end, but I could log into other sites such as Hotmail okay.

Finally Chuck managed to connect, and after a few more tries Rage got in too - but her health in the character choice screen was on zero, so she had died, losing 2% experience and 158 skill points, which was extremely annoying. "We didn't crash the server. There was an issue, it has been resolved", said [GM]OgreKing in the shoutbox. Nice of him to appear there - but a pretty pompous thing to say, and I could cheerfully have throttled him.

Well, Rage and Chuck returned to the sphinx types, and luckily the server behaved itself for the rest of the evening. Elvastar logged in and chatted, and then changed across to his level 90 knight Ratel and rode out to me to return the two chaos smelting stones he'd borrowed some weeks ago, which I'd completely forgotten about. I asked if Sheele had managed to contact him a day or two back - Ratty hadn't been on then, apparently, and indeed isn't playing every day, confessing himself a bit bored with the game at present. Sheele was online this evening, so the two of them were able to have a long chat and get back up to speed.

Without the disconnection and the 2% setback I'd have probably had time for something else as well this evening, but as it was, Rage reached level 73 at around my usual log-out time, so that was the end of active play. Chuck, as the non-fighting member of the party, had added 2.83% and gained 22 skill points - Rage ended up having gained 5.16%, but was down by 136 skill points. Just as her total was starting to recover from that previous death at an "epic event", sigh...

Anyway, now that Rage could equip her new crossbow, the level 69 +15 one was traded across to my level 67 archer on the Auzura server, Kaerella, my highest-level character of that name, and transformed, thanks to Collector Ryl, into an archer-type bow, an "eblin bow" +15. So Auzura's Kae is now ready to rock again, at last.

So, to back up Kae's future efforts there, it was the Auzura version of MistressDomino who is getting left in merchant mode overnight, or at least for a while. It didn't take long to sell some Candy at 75,000 and nine heaven stones, all she could carry without going over the weight limit, at 2.25 million, plus a few moonstones and moonstone boxes at 59.500, so it seems that the prices on Auzura still tend to be a bit higher than average. I looked in Roy's merchant mart to see if anyone was selling an "Eyes of spirit" accessory at a reasonable price, for Kae, but couldn't find any cheaper than 220 million, so it looks as if Rage may well end up loaning her one, in exchange for the "Pierce of wind" Kae currently has equipped.