I suppose Last Chaos didn't really "stand still" yesterday, but for a while it did seem as if it was going to be that way. I confess that I thought up that title when the event calendar was still blank, before they patched in all the usual Mad Monster Spawns, but the Aeria silence was odd while it lasted.
SirGalahad, in Maargadum Jail on Tairen-4, kept working on his drake overnight in Maargadum Jail without problems, so that by mid-morning the drake reached level 36. Galahad over on Cariae-4 started up before breakfast, and took his horse out to the pair of bandits in Merac, so good progress was made through level 38.
Pet-levelling was all that I could do during the hours of daylight, as I was having one of my busy days downstairs. However the event calendar was operating properly, to tell me that Auzura-4 would have a Parade at 5:00pm UK time, followed by that absent-minded old Pharaoh losing his treasure again two hours later. And then at 8:00pm both Auzura-5 and Tairen-5 were scheduled to have their weekly "Storm the Castle" event, with Katar-5 and Cariae-5 following two hours later. Sarissa-5 and Hatzring-5 finished the rota at 10:30, but I'm not really qualified to be of much help there.
Galahad logged out from Cariae-4 a few minutes before the Parade was due to start; that left him with less than two hours' work to get his horse to level 39. He had had a Pandora's Box to open a little earlier, but it had only released a level 30 Beast, which was easily dealt with. SirGalahad continued his marathon session on Tairen-4 in Maargadum Jail, though.
[GM]Noboru was in charge of the Parade on Auzura-4, which as usual involved marching around Randol, letting off firecrackers and transforming into dire wolves, sasquatches, drakes or jaguars, from the transformation scrolls provided. There are always people who'd like the GM to give them a polar bear collar, or a +15 weapon, or a few million in gold, but Nobby dealt with them kindly but firmly. As usual the scrolls didn't always work properly. and either some jaguars were too big or others too small - while the titan ScarFACE had the lower half of one leg replaced by the bright red cube, plus a direction arrow or two, which usually someone transforms into entirely...his toes were just peeping out of it. And his head was entirely missing, one could look down his neck and see that he was hollow.
The GM was mentioning the "Storm the Castle" event later, but got slightly mixed up between that and the "Pharaoh's Treasure" as to which subserver was involved, but me mentioning that the website put the StC on Auzura-5 was enough to get her back on the right track.
I spent the intervening time across on Cariae, still as Kaerella but losing ten levels, to my level 57 cleric. I bought an extreme stone on Cariae-4, and got Kae's shirt up to +13, and had another look in Roy's merchant mart for a new circlet - the only candidate is a +5 healer one at ten million, there is a +6 rogue one also available but its owner used an extreme stone to move it on from +5.
Across on Cariae-5, I got the Elizabuff and headed for the sphinx fighters, where the specialist sorcerer danjorge quickly recruited me to his party, along with the archers shyskimi, level 46, and SilverTwist, level 44. Before long a mage called grafity came along, and while she didn't join our party, we tended to share our targets; she is in the same guild as danjorge, so I guess it wasn't really ks-ing in either direction. It was fun to be in a party and do some healing and buffing, but Dan left after a while and the party split up, though grafity and I continued to fight the elite sphinx speer man and the others. There were a few other people there - I actually got to use Resurrection on a rogue called IJGI, when she asked for it - I had to get her to register for a party, explaining that it isn't possible to click on a corpse.
It wasn't a long session, but Kaerella added 15.69% and 14 skill points, plus 680 pet points, and shortly before I left I got a heaven stone as well. Since the new kind of party, while it distributes gold picked up equally, gives items to the actual person who picks an item up, I generally had been holding back, as armour drops would mean more to people ten or so levels lower than me.
Over on Auzura-4, with Kaerella back up to level 67 and a fully-qualified archer, the time for the "Pharaoh's Treasure" had arrived, so I used my Juno NPC scroll to move to the entrance to Velpist Temple, since the last couple of times I've been lucky quite close to there, and headed north. When the announcement of the various possible locations for the treasure came up, I was quite close to one spot - but found it full of sphinx fighters. So I rode on past the Mad Monster Spawn location, and saw that I wasn't far from a second location, so aimed my mount in just about the right direction for the coordinates - and there was [GM]Noboru, and the first spawnings of loot. I was only the second person to get there - so, with the various spawnings over the next few minutes, I grabbed rather a lot of stuff. The Pharaoh did send a few of his fighters after us at the end, but we beat them off easily.
I'm not sure how much stuff Kae picked up, but she certainly went over her weight - 41 tool aids will do that, but even after putting them into storekeeper Bianca's care, Kae was still over 100%
That was a bit lucky, as loot-wise the Auzura "Storm the Castle" event wasn't a success. [GM]JediMike was in charge of it, and also of the Tairen one, and it seems that he isn't too good these days at being in two places at once. Auzura got the usual "StC in ten minutes" GM announcement, but no other ones - and since SirGalahad was still busy on Tairen, I know that there they got a slightly more dynamic ten-minute warning - they also got a five-minute warning, and twice "The battle for Merac's Castle on T5 has started!!! All citizens of Tairen are called to battle on T5!! Show no mercy!!" We got none of that, so we didn't get the usual flood of players arriving as we went along - the people who were there at the start were all we had, basically.
Rage, at level 73, was close to the highest level person there, though I did glimpse a night shadow later on, who would have had to be at least level 90. Without the usual tanks it was hard from the start, and I very nearly got killed by the death knights, who may only be level 50 but are just about raid bosses, with strong magic attacks. We got through them and the thorny mantises, and the anubis archers, and the zamoras, but we had to take the anubis spear men one at a time, and I seemed to end up as the tank a few times, if Snare failed I was at half health instantly.
We only got two local-type messages from [GM]JediMike - the first was "do you guys need help?", and someone did answer in the affirmative, I was too busy staying alive to see it at the time. And the second was "Tairen said hurry up, newbs" - how's that for encouragement? And bang on twenty past, he just put up the official "The 20 minute time limit is up, sorry guys u did not complete StC" - and he wiped the remaining monsters out of the courtyard, and abandoned us. It seemed so unlike his usual behaviour... people stayed around for a while, and got rid of a couple of remaining monsters from outside, but that was the end of things.
So, while we got a bit of experience, thanks to the lack of announcements we just didn't have enough high-level people. It wasn't really Mike's fault, it's a shame that he is expected to run the event on two servers at once - and naturally the comparative newcomers on Tairen would have first claim on his attention. I'd have liked to go to Tairen's event as well as Auzura's, so why wasn't only one at noon PDT, and the other half an hour earlier or later?
A similar clash came along two hours later, at ten o'clock UK time, with Katar or Cariae for me to choose from. I opted for Barbarienne on Cariae-5, who at least can tank an anubis spear man if necessary. I suppose it was probably [GM]stratos in charge, as he was in Randol when I set out, but whoever it was stayed anonymous. They did at least apologise for arriving late, and put up some good "the Storm the Castle event is under way, hurry down" type messages. We were a stronger mob this time, and cut through the regular monsters steadily. The inner courtyard just contained a sphinx commander, which we swiftly killed - but then some barren eises flashed into sight, and when we killed them, two flutons were revealed. Luckily, we had powerful people there by then, and both flutons swiftly fell.
The loot was out well up the road, the same as last week, though the Stratos giant statue wasn't there. With the number of people at the event by then, the two piles of loot lasted mere seconds, so the rewards were meagre, but at least whoever it was, Stratos or someone else, did spawn a final darkmind terrain and judge ballach for us to kill.
By then SirGalahad had been in continuous action for over 24 hours, with his drake two levels higher than it had started out, and getting very near to level 37. It was tempting to leave him to it overnight again, but I reckon the older computer really needs a rest now.
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