A Desert Event

Today was supposed to be one of my "busy days" downstairs, which meant that SirGalahad looked like having a busy day in Maargadum Jail working on his drake, which reached level 24 not long after coffee. It also meant that ColonelScarlet was able to do some similar work over on Katar-4, also on level five of Maargadum Jail, with his pink drake reaching level 19 mere minutes earlier, and reaching 20 at lunchtime.

The events scheduled for the day were a parade on Auzura-4 at five o'clock UK time, followed by a "Pharaoh's Treasure" hunt two hours later - and then at nine a rotation of Dratan-based monster hunts was to begin, starting on Auzura, for a sensible change, and continuing every 45 minutes on Katar, Cariae, Sarissa, Hatzring, and Tairen. The call to action on the website was "

Foul monsters have used the sandstorms as cover to infiltrate the countryside! Brave adventurers and mighty warriors, Dratan needs you! Depart from the city walls of Dratan and purge these vile creatures from the land!

" - so, who could resist?

I did manage an afternoon session, as much of the "busy" bit for me got postponed until Friday. For that, Kaerella and RedRyder teamed up - but this was on Katar, where Kae was level 31, and Red was level 25. Prokion Temple on Katar-5 was rather busy, I found, but we ended up in the mirror half of the place, in the corridor outside the back room, fighting an assortment of orc fighters, axemen and sergeants.

I didn't want to level Kae up as she hasn't yet chosen whether to be an archer or a cleric (though it needs to be the former - one cleric in the family is enough), but we got pretty close by the end of the session, and, as the non-fighting half of the combat party, RedRyder wasn't far away from reaching level 26 - which will be handy, as it will allow her to wear the shirt and pants of the +10 armour set. At the moment, she does take a bit of damage when an orc picks on her.

By the end of the session Kaerella had added 60.12%, and RedRyder had gone up by 33.02%; Kae had added 339 guild points for the now deathly quiet DarkzersRoughneks guild, while Red had gained 52 for the local branch of Discipline. And they'd got 220 shiny new skill points each.

The 5:00pm Parade with [GM]Valsharyn was fun - as well as the stroll around Randol, we went out into the Juno countryside, where Val ran around at a suspiciously high speed, with us tailing her. Every now and again she would spawn a few hands of loot, but as I remarked at the time, "the cool-down time for Hands rather stops proceedings dead, lol." I did suggest chocolate and melons instead, but perhaps there are rules about what can be dropped when.

Val had been talking about strategy as we paraded. "We are putting the event: Hide & Seek PLUS on ice for a time until we can decide how to manage (to make it a) lot better and fairer", she announced. "Talk guys! This is an event for questions, answers, and things you always wanted to know."

"Any chance of the Zombie Invasions of Berbank Mill returning?" I asked. "It used to be fun to do that after the Quiz on Sunday."

"I'm not on board that long, but I'll (look) into the zombie invasion", Val replied, before moving on to the next item. "We are also planning to split the low and high MMS into three different events at the same time."

"So a mid-level MMS too?" I asked, but the GM's feeling seemed to be that there would be low, high, and an "epic" one, which is fair enough as the really high-level people don't get any challenge from even the main MMS. Though such an event could be tucked away out of sight in Mondshine, I suggested.

Personally, I'm in favour of the MMS events not being at the same time. "Some of us have low and relatively high characters and would like to go to both", I said, also contributing "the announcements get confusing" if the events are at the same time, and that one group could feel neglected if they polish off their monsters and nothing happens for some minutes because the GM is busy at the other location, something Val acknowledged.

"I think the Pandora beast event is useless - the beasts don't drop anything better than other critters of their level, which aren't as protective" - or if they are, aren't crammed so closely together that any attack can bring a whole group down on you. I went on to suggest that a spawning of the Pandora's Boxes would be much more fun, with a chance of good loot and not all the Beasts at once.

xXPhonicXx put in a good word for the "Storm the Castle" event, and [GM]Valsharyn asked what made it interesting. "StC is probably my favourite, I guess", I said, and Phonic continued with "a lot of high mobs and a lot of prizes." To which I added "We work as a team so nicely, and don't get stuff circling around and killing from behind like MMS."

As for Cluedo, I blithely declared that "it takes too long - what, about ten minutes per question?" Other people mentioned that it was only a few people who ever got a prize - so my thought was "If Cluedo, or something, was a joint team effort, and prizes for all got spawned if we worked out the puzzles.... or a prize of extra sp for four hours, or something?"

It was after that that we moved on to chasing Val around Juno. "I will run zig zag across the country back and forth... whenever you are near me for at least two seconds, I drop something." After some random zigging and zagging we looped around from the west gate towards the north one - so I warned her about the bridge being haunted, as [GM]JediMike had revealed recently. After reaching the gate we headed on towards the east, only for Valsharyn to suddenly vanish - I'd been clicked on her to follow.

After a few clues, we found her in the moat, and then attempted to run on round - I think I was one of very few people to get through the narrow part, and I actually managed to climb up the bank and out onto the grass. I mounted up and rode around, in case there was still a main party of people somewhere. The town itself seemed quiet, and just as I was riding out into Juno again, Val teleported me to her on a hill close to the moat.

"Wow."

"Were you still drowning??"

"No, I did manage to get out, thank you. I was riding around town wondering where everyone was - I couldn't find any group."

"Lol, sorry then. I'll take another dive for them. Sorry for the inconvenience."

And with a final GM announcement just after that, the event was over. I think I'd picked up four small HP or mana recovery potions, but it was fun - and I had also had a chance to say how lucky Auzura was to have her, "and Nobby", doing events that the other servers missed out on. And by the time I'd got most of the details typed out here, the "Pharaoh's Treasure" event was approaching.

[GM]Valsharyn had "tweaked" this event since last time, and this time every announced location had its collection of sphinx fighters and "speer" men, plus their elite varieties and indeed some of the large desert-based jaguars. So, it was lucky I was on Kaerella, to whom they are all green-named. I arrived at the one location where loot would appear soon after the announcement came up, and found people fighting the sphinx types, and was able to join in and help them finish them off. The loot spawned was in rather small amounts - but a mysterious GM message appeared saying "the last round starts in 5 minutes!!"

So, not knowing what that was about, whether that meant that a new location would be announced, most of us stuck around. And then a new message came up: "The Pharaoh made yet another incredible mistake! He sent his treasure and three of his guard squads to ONE location! He will haste his attempt to make this unhappen. You only have 5 minutes until the treasure vanishes!!"

And then a large number of fresh sphinx types, and the giant jaguars, appeared, and it was quite a fight, particularly for the people who were standing where the monsters were spawned. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to drop them on you", Val said shortly after that, followed by a warning, "One wave is still to come..."

So we fought on; I'm sure we had a few people who were well above the sphinx types' level, and Kae did her bit as heavy artillery. "The Guardians dropped right upon the defenders of the last position! The Heroes have defeated the guards and were able to loot the treasure!" Val announced, correctly, and we grabbed a more generous amount of loot this time. It wasn't as much as Kae's lucky early find last week, but 6 item drop boosters, 3 large attack and 4 large defence pots, 3 skill point boosters, 7 tool aids, and 8 small HP and 16 small mana recovery pots, well, isn't bad for half an hour's work.

"This was just a 'If I do this' modification event. Again, I won't drop them on you, I will spawn them at a point where you know where it is, because time's running out then", Val added, so hopefully next time the new spawnings of guards will be off to one side, but in sight.

There was time for a brief session on Katar-5 with Kaerella after that, first of all to opt to become an archer, and then to kill a few clever foxes of the desert, and claim the quest reward, which was enough to take Kae into level 32, so that she could learn two new skills, the attack skill Rapid Arrow and the passive skill Bow Mastery, increasing Kae's physical attack by 70. Then there was just time to go out to Shuraine's oasis to farm 10 soft sands; after claiming the reward for that, Kaerella had earned another 18.71% and 70 skill points - though learning her new skills, including "special" armour-making and weapon-making ones, meant that her unused sp total was actually down by 1,029.

At nine on Auzura the message came up "Dratan is under siege! Go out and secure the resource points or Dratan will fall!" Unfortunately it didn't specify which sub-server this was to happen on, any more than the website page for the day had. Auzura-4 seemed quiet - but on Auzura-5 I found a few people moving around in Dratan, and eventually there was a GM announcement about orc hordes. I found one group of orcs and helped with them, and then moved to Serel Farm, where a large band of monsters were clustered round the entrance, including dark treants, scorpionmantises, and, when we got further inside, Performers and Introducers and their Misty Canyon friends. [GM]Ozymandias, a rogue, was in charge, and spawned us some loot. When we finished there, word came that "the archaeologist" was under siege - which had to mean Shuraine at his oasis.

It was a shame RedRider, my level 27 rogue, had recently taken the location of that oasis off her memory scroll to make room for Val's junior MMS site, but it's only a short ride from town. The battle there was long and fierce, with RedRider getting killed twice, as well as having some near squeaks; the first time I used a "beginner" resurrection scroll, but the second time, as Red has no store of skill points, I just respawned in town and rode back. Eventually we did manage to kill all the monsters, and [GM]Ozymandias spawned generous amounts of loot, mainly in the oasis itself.

That was the end of the event, and time for me to log out. SirGalahad continued a little longer, of course, getting his drake safely into level 26.