With the usual weekly maintenance downtime last night, there wasn't the possibility of doing any overnight pet-levelling, but XxGALAHADxX went out on Cariae-4 before breakfast, and SirGalahad went down into Maargadum Jail over on Tairen-4. The gnoll lancer part of Merac on Cariae-4 was pretty full of pet-levellers, it seemed, but Gal found himself a spot and set to work.
Aeria_ks1lent reports that the fixes for the reported bugs that the Korean developers have supplied are "not functional", or "completely and utterly broken", so can't be released onto the live servers. [GM]Cara does mention fixes for two issues, but "aeria_ks1lent will no longer shoot laser beams out of his eyes" really only applies to the Aeria office, I assume, though "pets will no longer eat their owners" is good news. Seriously, those "fixes" came from a little comic she supplied to explain the benefits of the weekly maintenance downtime... The only changes at all are some new packages that have been added to the in-game item mall, which would be interesting if we ever got "buy one get one free" offers there.
It was a bit late last night, after all those races around Juno, when I finished the day's blog, so I didn't have time to mention that [GM]JediMike had revealed another part of the hidden lore of the World of Iris. He'd already mentioned how the bridge we cross to get from one gate to the other was haunted - now he told us of a special gym he uses to work out, located just by the storekeeper Bianca in Randol. "It's like the rec yard in prison", he commented when I said, in a later server, that we'd all been working out there to prepare for the races.
Mike won most of the races, but he was philosophical when he didn't manage to reach the finishing line first. "Awww. I lost. Maybe winners need to lose, y'know? I don't want to have a big ego, so maybe I need to lose."
Anyway, this morning after coffee Galahad and Barbarienne traded pets - the drake, on level 43 and 3,564 out of 24,405 pet points, went across to Barb, and the horse, on level 38 and 1,459 out of 15,862 pet points, went to Gal. Barbarienne also traded her more recent loot drops across to MistressDomina, who is my merchant character on Cariae, and MD traded Kae's old level 57 cleric-type wand across to Karanne for safe keeping, in exchange for Karanne's own assortment of loot.
After that, it was time for Rage and RedRyder over on Tairen-5 to make a combat party, get the Elizabuff, and head for that orc axemen and orc sergeant-rich back room in Prokion Temple. I didn't get any visitors, and, while the session was a little shorter than average, Rage managed to add 5.99% and 114 guild points, while RedRyder got 3.73% and 17 guild points. This meant that Rage has overtaken Red, and is now further through level 38 than Red is through level 30. They each got 108 skill points, which takes Rage past the 5k mark for unused skill points, though unlike RedRyder, or Kaerella on Tairen, she doesn't have any sp "banked" in the available special skills.
Over the lunch break SirGalahad went down into Maargadum Jail for some more drake-levelling, and Galahad (or XxGALAHADxX) on Cariae-4 headed for Merac too, to move his newly-acquired horse on a bit through level 38. Not that levels above 37 are particularly useful, but it seems a shame to waste the pet points in the new level which have already been gained. He ran out of Merac village and across to the pair of bandits that I've been using on a couple of other servers, got that location onto his memory scroll, and settled in for a couple of hours of bandit-bashing.
One thing I've finally done is remove Kaerella on Katar from the DarkzersRoughneks guild, which seems to be entirely dead these days, I never see anyone else on. That means Kae won't be able to join another guild for a few days - and then will be able to join the local branch of Discipline, which will be glad of any guild points she can earn, once her experience gain is set to 50%. Kaerella had contributed 8,152 guild points to DarkzersRoughneks, which was a bit of a waste, the guild actually has 42,066 points spare, enough to upgrade the guild from level six if the leader, LordDarkzer, had had the inclination.
Since Rage and RedRyder's campaign is the most important for me on Tairen at the moment, they were back in action, in the Temple back room, in the afternoon. The sooner Rage leaves there and starts to level up the better, which she will do once she reaches level 39 - and another priority is for RedRyder to reach level 31, so that a new freebie set of +10 30/32 armour is obtained, which will make Kaerella easier to play.
I did have an interruption fairly early on, when the knight LarryWolfsbane and the level 27 titan Chevyz dashed in and started fighting the orcs, but I wasn't too worried, as I didn't think they'd stay around very long. The room makes you use a lot of health potions if you've not got that +10 armour set yet. Sure enough, they both headed for the doorway after a few minutes, with a pack of friendly orcs following them, eager to wave goodbye.
Chevyz did ask a few minutes later if there was room in our party for him, and my response was that, as Rage was level 38, that would probably cut down his experience gain too much - though it might have been better to shift the combat party leadership to RedRyder and add him, just to see how his lower level would change things.
Anyway, by the end of the afternoon Rage had added another 11.39%, and 216 guild points, while RedRyder had gained 7.09%, and 33 guild points. And they were each up by another 200 skill points. Over the early evening food break I just had XxGALAHADxX in action with the pair of bandits in Merac, working on the level 38 horse.
Normally, in recent weeks, Wednesday has been the day for the pan-server "Mad Monster Spawns", starting with the low-level type on all six servers, one every half hour, and then after a break, while the GM has a nice lie-down in a darkened room, the rotation of the high-level MMS on the five grown-up servers. But today the event calendar drew a blank, something that hasn't happened for months. There has always been some event on each and every day, except on 24th November when a scheduled MMS got cancelled... but today everything was uncannily quiet.
So, I assumed nothing was happening, and was quietly looking through Roy's merchant mart on Cariae-5 when at six o'clock, UK time, there was a GM announcement that the low-level Mad Monster Spawn was starting. So I quickly swapped over to my level 27 rogue Karella and teleported across, and was about the first person there. The usual monsters were all laid out for me, so I took care of the appropriate ones for my level - and gradually other people came along, so that by ten past the last monsters were killed, the usual hands of loot were spawned, and there was a brief announcement that the event was over.
I'd missed the Katar event half an hour before, which I assume was done by the same last-minute, anonymous person; they did the Sarissa and Hatzring one too, to which Kaerella, at level 22 and level 24, went along, with no talking and no advance notice, and just the single big spawning of monsters, followed ten minutes later by the loot. My worry is that it is [GM]Stratos, and that after all this time he is no longer interested in the game, or in interacting with the players, and may soon drift away from us entirely.
However, things were different when at 7:30 it was Auzura's turn; I'd logged RedRider, my level 27 rogue, in suitably early, and we got advance notice, and, while [GM]JediMike remained invisible, he did chat with us, and he did restock the monsters when we ran low - and he did the same with the loot too. It was a great relief to feel that we were in his friendly, supportive presence.
The final low-level "MMS" was the Tairen one, and I took my level 38 rogue xRAGEx along - which made a change, as it meant that monsters that I was used to seeing as white-named, or even red-named, were now blue-named, so that I was able to go more for the elite poison mists. I did have to run like heck when a boss Baal giant spider took a dislike to me, but I survived. The event kept going nicely, with a second half after the first loot-spawning, so that we had double the chance to grab as much loot as we could.
Right at the end, after I thought that [GM]JediMike had left, I remarked, "I wonder when Tairen will get a high-level MMS...", and when I looked at the chat box again, I saw that the GM had replied. "Soon, Rage", he said. "High levels are pretty tough - I don't want to set you guys up for failure."
Cariae's high-level MMS was at 9:30 - due to other Wednesday evening commitments I don't usually get the chance to go to that, but this time I was free, so my archer Barbarienne was the first person to get there. Level 101 is pretty medium-level these days, but I provided long-range artillery support - one golem did attack me, and gave me a nasty poison debuff, so that I ended up, after a brisk sprint, using Self Heal a few times until it wore off.
It took a while to get rid of all the cave spirits, and Judges and Introducers and golems and splendid tussock moths and swamp trolls, but we managed it, and rallied at the Kiene Tower for our loot. After that, Mike seemed to be teasing us, talking about a second harder wave of monsters - but were we up to fighting them? He didn't want us all to get killed and blame him. We buffed up ready, and then the spawn came - of loot. The GM had decided that what he had got planned would just have been to hard for us. So he gave us the reward anyway, mentioning that the MMS would be changing soon, something he has been working on for a while.
It is awkward, making sure we have a challenge, and fun, but don't all wind up with multiple death penalties. We do have players who are level 150 or more - but it is hardly worth their while to come to a spawning of monsters from about level 115 to 135. Even Barbarienne at level 101 only gained 0.04% experience, so it has to be about fun and teamwork and a challenge, and loot.
One other thing I was doing this evening was getting my level 57 cleric Kaerella on Cariae her new armour, something I've not finished doing yet. I was lucky enough to find the level 61 skirt, leggings or pants, at +11 for 60 million, which I thought was pretty good - so imagine how quickly I snapped up +11 boots for half that price, when I saw them on Roy's listings. The best I could find for upper body armour though was +6 at 5 million; I'd already got +7 gloves, but I couldn't find a suitable piece of headgear, I'll have to keep looking for that.
I do have a pretty good supply of chaos smelting stones on Cariae, which can be used on items to get them as high as +12 with no risk of breakages, and I had some upgrade boxes - three of which gave me extreme stones, which can be used, once only per item, for a plus to get things up to +13. So the boots and skirt, after spending a million or so to get Collector Ryl to convert the purchases into the healer type of armour from titan and rogue stuff, were easy, just a chaos smelting stone followed by an extreme stone, and +13, my target, was reached. The gloves were harder, I used the chaos smelting stones, and then attempted to get from +10 to +11 using a heaven stone and a rune of protection II...but after three failures I gave up and used another CSS.
By the time I'd finished, Kae had three +13 items, and the shirt on +12... and she was still wearing the old headgear. Still, this set-up has increased her physical defence from 1431 to 1555. And the new "peaceful" armour, in pale purple with some green details, looks rather good, I think. Kaerella will automatically get a free +5 set when she reaches level 60, but it is useful to have a high-grade set as early as one can.
Once Kaerella had finished her expensive upgrading, SirGalahad went back to Maargadum Jail...and got his drake to level 35 before the end of the evening. And over on Auzura, my level 73 rogue Rage went along to the MMS at 11:00pm, and managed not to be killed, which is the main thing. The fighting was fun, and, as ever with Mike, the loot was good, a fitting reward for all our efforts. Checking the event calendar I see that the blank day has now been mysteriously filled in, and that Auzura had a Cluedo event earlier, as it often does. I wonder how the square on the events calendar came to be blank for so long?
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