A Day for No Pants

I think yesterday's post must have been some kind of record, length-wise. Today, however, was definitely going to be my delayed "busy day" downstairs, so both SirGalahad on Tairen-5 and ColonelScarlet on Katar-4 headed straight for Maargadum Jail before breakfast, to do a session of pet-levelling on the first death mask lancer on the right when you enter level five. Gal got invited into a party as he went into the Jail by a level 44 player called IxIP3Z4001xI, and accepted, saying "I'm just here to pet level, but if you want a solo party that's fine." I noticed that despite their higher level (SirGalahad is level 35) their health went down rather quickly, or at least steadily. They didn't stay around all that long.

The main event today was set to be an Auzuran "Storm the Castle" extravaganza at 5:00pm, UK time, though Auzura also had a "Hide and Seek" scheduled for ninety minutes later, on one of the PvP sub-servers. There was also news that tomorrow we'd be offered a free spin of the loot wheel, one per account - well, we'd need to have the aeria points to pay for the spin, but the ap would be rebated within a few days.

It seems that the polar bears will be removed from the loot wheel soon, so no more will be available, at least for a while... something to do with global warming, probably. To combat this, from six this evening, for an hour per server, GMs would be going around giving away polar bear collars to people who were playing without wearing pants, trousers, skirts. Which, decreasing one's armour rating somewhat, could be a bit risky. Still, it would all add to the fun, was the theory.

The "Storm the Castle" on Auzura-4 was hosted by [GM]Valsharyn, who, unusually, was a bit late arriving. That helped get the number of players who were ready at the start up a bit I suppose, and at seven minutes past five, the storming began. The usual selection of monsters were dealt with; clearing the gateway to the outer courtyard seemed to take longer than usual, I think the high-level people must have all gone in and started on the dark harpies and hell-otuu, and soon after we were all in that area Val said that she would be willing to stretch our deadline a bit since we were low on numbers. But in the end, in the inner courtyard we quickly got rid of the sphinx commander, and used [tab] to target the lurking blood shadow invisible dragon.

I noticed that Rage did lose a little health during that final battle, presumably some invisible fiery breath was involved - but there didn't seem any great danger, especially as my Snare did its job a few times. And then this final monster was defeated, and we'd cleaned out the castle in 15, rather than 20, minutes. [GM]Valsharyn announced that the loot would be spawned outside the "castle room" or throne room, and so it was - not huge amounts, but Rage managed to grab an item or two. Val actually gave us a bonus pile to reward our speed, but strangely for me it went straight from "This item has been reserved for another player" to nothing left. Traditionally, more and larger piles are laid out outside the castle - but the event is still fun.

After some requests, the GM did spawn a fluton for us to finish on, but there was no more loot given out.

After that, Val was in charge of the "no pants" event on Auzura, which she combined with the "hide and seek", which alone wouldn't have been enough to tempt me. One rides around the edge of the map, and every ten minutes an announcement comes up that the GM has found a new hiding place, so one rides around some more. So this time Kaerella rode around, without her skirt on. After the hide and seek part ended, Kae went out to the sphinx types, and fought the sphinx fighters, sphinx speer men, and elite sphinx speer man until the hour was up - and fighting the elite guy, even with a three level advantage, without part of one's armour can be a little tricky. Still, he dropped a +3 and a +4 level 53 weapon, which can't be bad.

The Cariae "no pants" event left some people feeling a bit annoyed, as [GM]Stratos made up the rules as he went along, and instead of looking for people, got people, pants-less, to look for him. The event was, at five to the hour, going to start in ten minutes, and then five minutes later it was still going to begin in ten minutes... and then five minutes later it was all over, the GM announced. Presumably there were some winners, but back in Randol there seemed to be a lot of people who couldn't quite get their heads around the concept of an event, supposed to last an hour, that ended before it began. Oh well, there are still those one per account free goes on the loot wheel tomorrow...

Karella, my level 27 rogue, had been roaming Juno without her pants on, and had been underwater in a quiet little corner of the map where the water actually contains a few fishes, about the only example of wildlife in the game that can't be killed. She mounted up while still underwater - and I found that, while I could see the horse, and the glow from her weapon, I couldn't see Karella at all. The effect continued when I returned to town - putting her endemic pants +10 back on meant that her fairy made an appearance, but she was still absent, leaving the horse without a rider. I assume other people didn't get this glitch, as nobody commented.

After a busy day and a bitty evening I decided that that was enough Last Chaos for the evening. SirGalahad continued work on his drake of course, getting it well into level 28, but the main computer was ready for a trip into a different game.

Tomorrow seems to be a bit mysterious, with the events page taking one to a picture of an interior, which, I found, was itself a link to the "The Shadow of Grei" forum thread, where this remark was to be found. "

Who is this strange Night Shadow that attacks Merac Castle all by himself? What fool would dare to challenge the collected guilds that stand against him?" The event is supposed to take place between 9:00pm and 11:00pm UK time, but on which sub-servers, well, hopefully we will get told in due course.