SirGalahad headed for Merac at breakfast time, only to be recruited into a party by a level 24 knight called Nightterror; I assumed he wanted a solo party, and indeed he went off to kill some berserkers, but I also ended up explaining the way that weapon upgrading works, and other stuff. Still, Gal got down to level five of Maargadum Jail and settled in to level his drake, which reached level 22 during the morning.
After coffee, Rage had, after going up two levels yesterday, got some new quests to do, and I also decided to give some of her existing outstanding quests a go. Normally I don't bother with salamander skins and tails, as they don't drop very frequently, but this time I decided to see how things would go. The worst dropping, for frequency, turned out to be silver fox feathers, which, given their name, is hardly surprising - how many foxes with feathers have you ever seen? As far as I could see, only the elite silver fox of the desert would drop that particular item, the surrounding regular ones just dropped a little gold.
So, it was quite a wander around Merac and Dratan Rage had, killing berserkers, gnolls, blood frenzies, and doom slayers in Merac, and then the salamanders and silver foxes. After I'd got the final "feather", I moved across to the ravenous larva spot and tried soloing them, which was fine if Snare worked, but used up a medium red candy cane, for 500 health restoration, if it failed. I guess Rage is still too low to get useful drops, such as those level 47 boots, from them, so that expedition wasn't crowned with success.
After all the quest rewards had been gained, Rage had gone up 50.85%, 486 pet points, and 169 skill points, so it was in fact a useful session....and had allowed SirGalahad to continue his drake-levelling work, of course.
For the afternoon, Kaerella over on Cariae-1 went back out to the ravenous larvas, joining a solo party before too long. Kamira put in an appearance after an hour or so, so I had to leave the party, saying that I'd be back, and change across to Keerella - and she had to make the ride down from Dratan, as the location was new for her, which took five minutes or so. Kamira dropped the usual goodies, but no rare accessory - and when I logged Kae back in, she was no longer in her party. It took a little while to find a new solo party to join, which was mildly annoying, but eventually all was back to normal, and by the end of the afternoon Kae's experience gain had reached 10.16%, along with 1579 pet points and 120 skill points. Kae had put a couple of pairs of level 47 boots, and two shirts, in Roy's merchant mart as they appear to be rare, and this session yielded another pair of boots, this time of the titan variety.
The Last Chaos website and its Events calendar proclaimed that there would be a special European-team pair of Mad Monster Spawns, with the low-level one down by the GHB lake at 5:30 UK time, followed by the main one an hour later in its usual spot. And, while there wasn't the traditional ten minute warning of magical vortices being perceived, a number of people were waiting by the special Kiene Tower, which appears close to the lake when such events are due, as the witching half-hour approached.
I rode across to the high-level location while we were waiting, as last time the low-level event was held there, but nothing was happening, so I teleported back to the Kiene Tower... and a few minutes later, an announcement came up about the magical vortices, completely contradicting the website - the low and high events were to be at the same time, and the low one was going to be at Val's other location, over by the little treants and werewolves not far from Hunter Dranore. Starting at once!
So, knowing where the location was, I rode swiftly across, and was I think one of only two people fighting the first wave of desert spiders, salamanders, orcs, elder drakes, and butchers. Luckily other people soon arrived, and further waves were spawned and fought, though without any rewards between waves, since I suppose [GM]Valsharyn was busier with the high-level people than with us. It gets confusing when he makes GM announcements about waves, we never know which location it applies to.
Unfortunately Val started to get a bit carried away, probably confusing the two locations himself; a spawning of a few elite sphinx speer men in the middle of out main group killed a few people - they are level 64, after all, and the GM had carefully made sure that almost all of us were at level 30 or below, even advising someone in their low fifties that they should move to the high-level spot. Still, the Snare from our rogues brought the situation under control. So then suddenly we had at least a dozen Death Knights in our midst, which may be only level 50, but, as Kaerella on Cariae recently found to her cost, are "raid boss" level and do hefty magic damage. I didn't try to attack them, it would have been hopeless, but, with them heading in all directions, one group quickly ran me down and killed me.
I didn't want to use a resurrection scroll, and I didn't have that spot on my memory scroll, so I decided, after respawning in town, that it would be a lot safer to go to the high-level MMS, which I did have the location of memorised, and see how they were getting on. So, that's where I teleported to - Val was making some sort of apology and promising the survivors at the Dranore spot a big loot spawning, but that would have been over by the time I got back.
The high-level people were on the boss wave by then, so I joined in helping to deal with the remaining flutons and a patriarch botis or two, trying to time my Snare to take over when the previous rogue's one expired. Val promised extra loot if we killed them all inside the time limit, and, as we succeeded in doing that, gave us three waves of the usual hands of bravery, hands of protection, and hands of the guard...which was probably just as well, as by then it seemed that a lot of low-level people were there. I expect the more sensible ones had been there all along.
RedRider was a bit vocal about the mess she felt things had been; [GM]Valsharyn was perhaps unwise to say that she had had fun at the low-level spot, as dropping death on the heads of level 20-30 types isn't exactly fun if you're on the receiving end. "Looks as if the high-level MMS ran okay, except for starting before the announced time on the website... just the low-level was a Fail. Low-level was a vicious joke :-( " InvisibleKnife said "Low-level was too hard", and Red asked "Why have the Kiene Tower up, if you don't use that location? If everyone at low-level was supposed to be around level 30 or below, spawning a dozen Death Knights was - well, I guess you had 'fun' anyway."
That was about the end of the relevant dialogue; Red stayed around killing blood wolves and great horn beasts for a few minutes, to get back the skill points that the Death Knight death had cost, and was able to tell some people who had come at the website-announced time that yes, the MMS was over. "Yup, a lack of communication between Val and the website". So, it all wasn't really Val's finest hour. My record of the messages doesn't scroll back that far, but I think RedRider did suggest that [GM]Valsharyn should get the details of how to do a proper low-level MMS from [GM]JediMike or [GM]OgreKing...so maybe those Death Knights were aimed at her personally!
Looking back at the text messages, I see that BasheR was at the high-level event, and got 4 skill point boosters from the first of those three waves of loot alone, so he did okay - nice to have him actively playing.
For the rest of the evening, I decided that, if Rage is outgrowing Prokion Temple, then RedRyder might want to have another buddy to play alongside - so it was time to do a little work on the other rogue I had started on Tairen, Memree. So, she formed a solo party with SirGalahad, got her Elizabeth's Enhancement buff, and went out to do Healer Yabo's quests killing deer and foxes and then wolves, and continued on with berserk wolves and jaguars, as well as making a trip to the wandering zombies in Velpist Temple, followed by more jaguars, plus sasquatches. She did get a drake egg fairly early on, so has a level 1 dragon hatchling to help with picking up the loot, and I remembered to enrol her as a padawan of SirGalahad, so she should be his fourth successful graduate of the Guardian system.
At level 12 Memree went through the first personal dungeon successfully, gaining 57% experience and picking up very nearly 2,000 gold; she reached level 13 shortly before tackling the Balrog himself. To finish off, there was just time to take a trip to Dratan, to get the small quest reward from Bant there, and to make the run out to Prokion Temple, where, after memorising the location, she actually managed to fight a few ghouls without getting killed.
By the end of the evening, SirGalahad had got his drake past the halfway point in level 25. There doesn't seem any great hurry to level the drake up, though, so both computers can have a nice rest overnight.
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