A Crash on Cariae

I remembered that I had some work downstairs that needed finishing this week, so spent most of the morning getting that done, which meant that there was no trip to Prokion Temple this morning for any of my assortment of rogues. This meant that SirGalahad and ColonelScarlet had a clear run for pet-levelling; Gal's drake reached level 26 during the lunch break, while the Colonel's pink drake got to level 25 soon after he started, and reached 26 not long after Gal's.

SirGalahad was down in Maargadum Jail with the death mask lancer as usual, but, with his reduced attack, ColonelScarlet was out in the open in Merac fighting a pair of bandits. Well, as they are protective he was just fighting one of them, but the other one was fighting him too. While Pandora's Beasts may be a slight drawback to pet-levelling outside, the Pandora's Boxes can be a bit of a bonus. The Colonel's activities did cause a couple of boxes to spawn near him; if a level 50 Beast had been released he'd just have had to move to a different spot, but the second one just released an easily-killable level 30 bandit-style Beast, while the first one dropped five of the very useful (and rather valuable) level 12 magical defence minerals.

I had left both computers on overnight to do some selling. MistressDomino on Tairen did okay, though raising the price of heaven stones to 1.1 million meant that only a few of those sold. Over on Cariae, with a larger stock, MistressDomina boosted her stash of gold considerably, mainly by selling experience boosters at 1.45 million each, which seemed to be the price that other people were charging. Selling a few hundred of those is serious money, though if Barbarienne wants a top-grade new bow I still probably don't have enough. It may help get my local cleric version of Kaerella her next set of armour, though.

For the afternoon, Rage (or xRAGEx), my level 37 rogue, and Kaerella, my level 27 healer, got their "Elizabuff" and headed for Prokion Temple on Tairen-5; I was relieved to find the back room free, and settled in there. After almost an hour an archer called Astonia, in the WarriorsOfChaos guild, came in without a word, and started killing the orc axemen and orc soldiers too, so there was the occasional time when we both had to wait for the orcs to respawn. Things got worse when a titan called unkoye came in too; he was a member of the "RageClan" guild, so Rage said "Cool, the clan named after me", but got no reaction.

I don't think unkoye was high enough level, he seemed to get through a few health potions, and he didn't stay long. The orcs there do operate a strict dress code, if you don't have at least +10 armour they try very hard to kill you. Kaerella in her corner took a few knocks, but Rage managed to take any orcs off her fairly quickly. Astonia vanished after an hour, still without saying anything.

By the end of the session both Rage and Kae had gained 268 skill points - enough for Kae to get the other two levels of advanced armoursmithing, and the first of the three levels of the expert variety. Rage had gone up by 25.12%, and another 406 guild points for Discipline, while Kaerella, starting level 27 from scratch again, got 23.78%, and 60 guild points.

Aftre the food break, while ColonelScarlet went on working on his pink drake, it was time to get the Valentine and Origami event items sorted out, as after tonight's maintenance they'll probably no longer work. MistressDomino on Cariae had a good stock of the origami papers left from the previous time such an event had been run - they had said that it would be possible to exchange papers for 30 days after the event ended, but they had lied. She only had one gold paper, but putting that and two silver papers gained MD a heaven stone. It is possible to "combine" 5 silver papers to make another gold paper, but I must have done that ten times and it only worked once - still, that netted me another heaven stone. Three silver papers got me ten moonstones, which was useful, while three red papers got me ten great healing potions. Not a hugely generous prize, but those pots do cost 5,430 gold each, so it was worth standing by Lorraine and going through all my stock. Three green papers just gave 500 gold, less 100 for the cost of the operation...well, getting rid of those papers helped to subsidise the earlier folding.

Kaerella, still on Cariae, had three large chocolates and three medium chocolates, so spent 10,000 gold each on two chocolate boxes, and 1,000 each on six wrapping papers. The box with the three large wrapped chocolates got her five effort scrolls and five experience scrolls; the other box got her the same, plus five small defence potions.

Back on Tairen, Rage took my supply of medium and small chocolates along to the domain merchant, and, buying the wrapping papers and chocolate boxes from Magical Shopkeeper Coen nearby, got through eleven boxes, thus getting 55 each of the experience and effort scrolls, which MistressDomino is now looking after. MD also used up the Tairen supply of origami papers, getting some moonstones and great healing potions.

All of that took a surprisingly long time, but I still managed to let my Cariae cleric Kaerella have about 90 minutes out with the sphinx fighters and sphinx speer men. As before the area was pretty busy, as to have the "Elizabuff" you do all have to be on Cariae-5. I got into a solo party, which included another level 55 type, the titan SpAcCaInFeRnO, who, I could see on the map, was farming the dragons for skill exp - but he did move out to where I was a bit later, so that we teamed up, though he was so used to using health potions that I didn't need to do much healing. He drifted away into the wafes before too long, though.

Kaerella did well, going up by 29.10% and 30 skill points, plus 1092 pet points for SirFrancis. Back in town I found I had a silver origami paper and two red ones, so exchanged them for two moonstones; I had enough medium and small chocolate to do a box of each, and got the normal five each of the two kinds of ten-minute scrolls from the first box - but the storekeeper wouldn't sell me a second box, which turned out to be the first sign that Cariae-5 had crashed. So it was lucky I was safely back in town when that happened...the shoutbox as usual got busy with people complaining that they were "already logged in".

SirGalahad on Tairen-4 was unaffected, however, and got his drake well past the halfway point in level 26 by the time the older computer was switched off.