Back to the Castle

I was still working my little socks off today downstairs - but I made sure that SirGalahad on Tairen-1 and ColonelScarlet on Katar-4 kept busy too, and checked up on them regularly. Gal's drake reached level 32 early on, and went straight through that level, reaching 33 early in the evening, despite losing a little time to a ks-er. And the Colonel just managed to get his pink pet up to level 16, and full drakehood, before he had to log out to allow Rage to go to the Auzura-only Merac Castle storming.

It was a bit of a contrast with the other all-server "Storm the Castle" events - when my level 73 rogue arrived, at only a couple of minutes before the hour, she wasn't the first to get there, instead there were dozens of people waiting, and [GM]Noboru was there chatting. Obviously there had been some advance notice given, via in-game GM announcements.

The storming went pretty well, though at the hell-otuu stage I did get a "send error message" crash. Luckily it didn't take long to get back into the game and teleport down to the start again, and join back in. The battle had moved on to the inner courtyard by then, so I snared one of the sphinx commanders. Time was running short, and there were two flutons in the throne room - Noboru had called it "the cathedral" earlier, warning us to look in there, and I'd gently suggested that it was in fact known as the throne room, since it does have a throne at the end...and what castle comes with its own cathedral?

We all concentrated on one of the flutons - the other fluton concentrated on one of our number, who ran like heck, very wisely, followed by the fluton... that meant we just had the one in the room to work on, until the other reset after losing touch with its target. We killed the first fluton, and started work on the second. Noboru told us that there was less than a minute to go - I'd switched from being one of the many people using Snare, or other stun-type skills, and concentrated on Flame Arrow, which let me hit the fluton for more than 6000 damage, as often as I could.

With seconds to go, we made it...though [GM]Noboru later did say that she had been intending to spawn three of the flutons! There was an invisible dragon in the inner courtyard too, but as far as the deadline goes, invisible monsters don't count, right? We killed that quickly enough, with people using the "tab" key to target it, and then dashed back outside the castle, where generous quantities of loot were spawned for us.

I did manage to mention that it would be nice to see the Zombie Invasion events again, and the GM responded that she would bring the subject up. She also spawned another fluton, just to demonstrate her power at level 139 - I think it was more to do with being a GM than being level 139, but the fluton only lasted mere seconds. I did enquire if she had played LC at all as a normal player, and while she didn't really commit herself, the feeling was that she had, but of course wouldn't want to give out any details.

There was to be a "Pharaoh's Treasure" hunt about 90 minutes later, so Rage logged out, and, over on Tairen, Memree logged in, and after spending her skill points, headed for Prokion Temple for an hour or so. It was pretty busy, but I managed to take charge of the room with the mummies and a single orc soldier when someone else left, and made useful progress - 100.94%, 188 skill points and 548 pet points, so Memree reached level 24. Back in town, a new quest added another 4.41%, and almost all the skill points quickly got spent.

I did unravel the mystery of the level three Venom skill - one of the properties of the rogue "neckless" necklace is 3 to poisoning, so it is that particular accessory that is randomly applying that skill. It seems a bit strange to have an accessory that applies attack skills at random, but as it is only high-level fighting where sometimes you don't want to use skills, and the "neckless" only works up to level 35, it isn't greatly important.

I was back on Auzura as Rage by about five to seven, UK time, and rode around Juno, waiting for the "Pharaoh's Treasure" event to start. The various coordinates were announced, and I galloped across the fields on my white charger, watching the figures for my position change, and did manage to get to three locations, but they were ones that just had sphinx speer men and sphinx fighters, blue-named now for Rage. I'm very bad at working out where on the map any coordinates given are, I just watch my own figure and try to go in a direction that gets the figure moving up or down as required, but when the spot with the loot was announced, I was actually able to get there in time, to find [GM]Noboru and a dozen or so people, and the hands of loot just being spawned.

So, I was able to grab another three or four each of the good items. After enough people typed in a nonsense word that the GM gave us, a fluton was spawned, and, slightly slowly, we managed to kill it, and were given just one more small pile of loot - all I got from it was a large defence potion. In a discussion of flutons I suggested how cool a fluton transformation scroll would be - think of a parade around Randol with some people in fluton form. [GM]Noboru was rather taken with the idea, but I doubt if it is practical.

Rage was just standing around in town after that. Ratel had got in touch while I was picking up the "Pharaoh's" loot, he was busy in Egeha trying to farm some skill points. "My current tally is 170, and it took me one month to accumulate that", he told me.

He reported that he was fighting cursed liches and cursed weavers, which both have magical attacks. "My physical defence is 4k - but these weavers and liches are making me use pots like candy. I know they use magic attack, but still, at +11 plus, my armour should offer some protection, lol." I wondered if the mall-provided magic shields were any use. "They help a lot, but they cost a fortune. It's even too expensive to use level 12 magic defence minerals. Luckily I have enough gold here to cover the costs - but I have to keep a contant watch on my hp. It's like being in Proky with no plussed armour."

So, Ratel is going to be staying on level 90 for a while, and has no plans to take any other character of his past level 70. "Level 73-77 stuff is rare, and besides that, the critters are simply too strong, Aeria seems to be of the opinion that when you reach these levels, you either buy ap, or are rich enough to buy the pots and stuff with coin. I'm out of luck on both counts, lol."

When Rage (or maybe Kae) is within 15 levels, we might do an experimental team-up to see what sort of experience, and skill exp, we got from monsters between our levels - which probably would mean boucu demons or little scorpionmantises. But that is probably some time away.

Ratty finished his session in Egeha, and went to replenish his stocks of green herb leaves, since his pet takes a large amount of damage - and then we actually met up in town, with him looking very impressive in his best armour, and six to eight inches taller than Rage. But it was soon time for him to log out for the night.

It was handy that Rage was just standing around in Auzura-4's Randol, as while I was chatting with Ratty, the announcement "Random prizes are falling from the sky on A4 in Randol" came up, so I joined the other inhabitants in racing around town hopefully, looking for goodies. I didn't actually manage to pick up anything, though I did see someone picking up a berserker potion and one or two other things. So, some people were lucky, but it doesn't seem an event worth giving up a farming session for.

Feeling a bit tired after my recent exertions, I didn't do anything more exciting than looking through some pages of Roy's merchant mart for the rest of the evening. A death mask soldier did attack SirGalahad's drake at one stage, but I managed to notice what was going on, and unequipped the drake, equipped the sword, and gave the monster a thorough chastisement, By the end of the evening that drake should be at least halfway through level 33, so, as there's no point in getting it to a higher level than its next owner, that particular job will be coming to an end pretty soon now.