Mad Monster Spawns

The patch that had to be downloaded this morning seemed promisingly substantial, but in effect all we got were a few new in-game item mall packages, and a fix for the "quiz move bug", which I assume means that we won't have to use the WASD keys in the Quiz Room to move in future (though we'll have to wait for Sunday to be sure), plus "back-end security changes". I noticed that the forum announcement wasn't made by Aeria_ks1lent, but by his new co-product manager, Xuse2005.

SirGalahad and ColonelScarlet were able to set to work pet-levelling at breakfast time, and, despite a disconnection the Colonel soon got his pink drake into level 36. And then after coffee there was just time for a trip out to Prokion Temple's back room for Memree and Kaerella, on Tairen-5.

The target was 204 skill points each, and we reached that with time to spare; Memree went up by 23.44%, adding 322 guild points to Discipline's total, while Kaerella added 19.04%, and 48 guild points. So, after they logged out from there, and SirGalahad returned to Maargadum Jail, Kaerella was able to spend her 204 skill points on the final two levels of gamma wave processing, concluding her acquisition of all the available "special skills". Then she too headed for Maargadum Jail, and quickly managed to die 23 times, to get her experience in level 27 back down to zero. There were only two appearances of the "double death" bug during that, which seemed better than average.

ColonelScarlet went online over lunch, and then, while SirGalahad continued in Tairen-4's Maargadum Jail, my Cariae cleric Kaerella headed out to those sphinx types, and the hidden-away elite sphinx speer man. The session, with a solo party, was uneventful, and lasted a little over two-and-a-half hours; by the end Kae had earned 41.17% experience, along with 70 skill points and, for SirFrancis, 2022 pet points. So, Kaerella has reached the halfway point in level 59, which is pretty good progress. At level 60, the passive skill Cure Resource will use up 889 skill points, so the more we can get before then the better.

SirGalahad got his horse up to level 30 during the afternoon, and continued his efforts through the evening. Like many Wednesdays, I knew I'd have to log out from soon after eight - but that still left time for the low-level Mad Monster Spawns, running from 5:30pm, UK time, at half-hourly intervals.

Katar came first, so my level 31 rogue Memree went along. The Kiene Tower appeared with two or three minutes to spare, and, along with the GM announcement, the monsters started (madly) spawning right on time. It was an anonymous deal, there was no interaction with whichever Aeria employee was pressing the keys; the usual monsters spawned, and after six minutes they had all been killed, and a fairly generous amount of loot was provided for us. While we were picking it up, the announcement that the event was over appeared...so that was that.

On Cariae, my rogue Karella, still on level 27, went along to the usual spot. Things went pretty much the same as on Katar, with the whole event over by seven minutes past, but at least the loot was good. Then came Sarissa, where my healer Kaerella is only level 22 - this time the event did last twice as long, but I think that was mainly due to a lower turn-out. I seemed to have the place to myself for the first few minutes, and was relieved to see that Baal was reacting to someone's attacks, as it showed I was no longer alone. [GM]Darasuum was in charge this time, and did chat a little, and put in an appearance next to the tower. He assured us that the night shadow glowing sphere he was carrying was not just a globe, it was a skull called Horatio...

[GM]Darasuum conducted the event on Hatzring too, and that also took about twelve minutes; Kaerella was the first person there, other than the GM himself.. "Hi, I see you brought Horatio along", was my greeting, to which he replied "indeed". On Sarissa he'd made a tiny typo in announcing the event, saying it was "not" happening instead of "now" - on Sarissa he got a bit closer with "no" happening. "Lame", he commented, and then did a follow-up to get things right.

Hatzring went pretty similarly to Sarissa, with a small but plucky band gradually being reinforced, so that Kaerella had the green and white-named monsters on her bit of the countryside mainly to herself.

Sadly, the European-style MMS on Auzura, hosted I assume by either [GM]Valsharyn or [GM]Noboru, clashed with the regular low-level event on Tairen at 7:30pm. I had hoped that the Tairen one would be over quickly and I'd be in time for later part of the Auzura one, but when I moved across I didn't find any traces of anything still going on. Still, my need for loot is greater on Tairen.

The low-level Mad Monster Spawn on Tairen was in the capable (if invisible) hands of [GM]JediMike; I assume that he had done some advance announcements for it, as when I arrived at the Kiene Tower, instead of being the only person there, at least thirty people were there waiting for things to happen. This meant that, when the monsters appeared, they all got killed with amazing rapidity. Mike gave us a second wave, and a third, and we steamed through them all - so that Tairen managed three waves in the time Sarissa or Hatzring had taken for a single spawning.

As ever with [GM]JediMike, the loot supplied was pretty generous, though there were so many people there that it too vanished pretty quickly. And that was about the end of my adventures for a while, as other commitments were about to come up.

The good news was that I was able to get back online in time for the high-level Cariae Mad Monster Spawn, which was scheduled for 9:30, so Barbarienne, my level 101 archer, rode on down to the location in Juno, and was one of the earlier arrivals, as was my least favourite gamesage, Adisa. The bad news was that the Aeria offices had got a problem - no game masters were able to get online. From some messages in the forum shoutbox I got the impression that the Katar event, which had started half an hour before, had been left unfinished - and the Cariae one was unstarted. The gamesages in the shoutbox couldn't do anything about gold spammers, or other scammers, reported, as the GMs weren't online.

[GM]SupermanOX did get a message into the shoutbox about the problems, but of course he didn't know how long their downtime would last. I relayed that to our little gathering, saying that it was a good sign that he had been able to get online, but Adisa pointed out that it didn't mean he was in the office. "True", I replied, and, knowing that gamesages and GMs can communicate via Yahoo Instant Messenger, I added "He doesn't show up on YIM?" Adisa's reply was priceless, "I won't confirm nor deny anyone I have on my YIM."

So, we hung around for a while, but in the end, after about 45 minutes in my case, it was time to log out for the night. At least SirGalahad had been spending his time productively, and his horse actually reached level 31, the first level at which it would be possible to turn it into a mount, at the end of the evening.