SirGalahad began his pet horse's final day of training bright and early, though he had to log out after coffee so that the usual team of Memree and Kaerella could go to Tairen-5's Prokion Temple for their session.
The back room was in use again; I could have stopped in the corridor room, but opted to run through the Temple to the mirror half, and go into the subtly different mirror version of the back room, which has a couple of orc soldiers in it as well as the axemen and sergeants. After a while I just ignored those two, as they don't give much experience or skill exp now. Towards the end they both settled on attacking Kaerella, so she just stood in a corner and let them attack, while Memree got on with the fighting.
We continued on just long enough to get Memree into level 38; she went up by 22.35% and 362 guild points, while Kaerella added 17.37% and 54 guild points. They both earned 235 skill points, though when she was back in Randol, Memree had some skills to learn, which used up 518 sp. She ought to have grabbed the first level of Coup de Gras 2 at level 35, a passive skill which increases her chance of a critical strike by 60, but hadn't spoken to the skills trainer lately. For 38, the new skills available were the first five levels of Double Strike, a dagger attack with an extra 130% power, and my favourite, Death Motion, which lets the character fall to the ground and lie there, apparently dead, for up to 100 minutes, ignored by monsters - though it doesn't work in PvP apparently. Very useful if you need to go afk, though I found that daggers do have to be equipped for it to work.
For the afternoon I decided to continue with Memree and Kaerella, which was handy as I was also chatting with a friend, Elys, on Windows Live Messenger, so not giving the game my full attention. "You're kind of a persistent player", she remarked, "With lots of characters, whatever game you play. And not only many characters, but play a lot of all of them." That's true, I have lots of Guild Wars characters, and played a lot of different types with Dungeon Siege too... we were discussing Guild Wars 2, and the possibility of reuniting a number of our friends in a guild there, but that game probably won't be around until next year, even in its beta stage.
So, it was useful to be playing in a non-risky environment; with the +10 or higher armours, Memree and Kae aren't in much danger from any orcs. This time my favourite back room was available, as I'd hoped. I did have one visitor, the level 29 mage kickazz, but she soon realised that the place was too dangerous for her without the +10 armour. She mainly needed some cracked axes for a quest, so I gave her the five she needed, and she beat a hasty retreat.
By the end of the afternoon, Memree had gone up by another 10.19% and 183 guild points, and Kaerella had moved on by 9.12% and 28 guild points. Memree being in level 38 now did cut back the experience gain per kill from the orc sergeants a little, and from the axemen very substantially, though the skill exp wasn't hit as badly, so they still managed to grab 194 skill points each.
Over the early evening food break SirGalahad finally got his horse to level 37, so once I was back in action, trading it across to Memree was top of the agenda. Memree swiftly turned it into a mount; using Death Motion while mounted is rather impressive, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work in town.
I'd checked Roy's merchant mart again, and found a slightly cheaper blue pan flute - 1.8 million instead of a full 2 million! So SirGalahad spent just about all his gold on that, got it transformed into a cute little blue pony, and took his new charge down to meet the death mask lancer in Maargadum Jail.
On the main computer, Kaerella on Cariae, my cleric, logged in, got into a solo party with the level 136 titan meatmog and others, and headed for her usual bunch of sphinx types. This time the plan was just to use a blessed iris, which gives double experience gain for three hours, and with the aid of various old radio shows, I made it all the way through. The first hour added just over 11% experience, and the whole session added 36.12%, plus 47 skill points and 2623 pet points for SirFrancis.
There seemed to be a number of minor "lag spikes" where I'd still be hitting my target sphinx fighter, but without any result; that sort of thing makes me wary, as it could lead to a disconnection, with my character left standing helpless and possibly getting killed - 216 skill points would be a lot to lose. So, I was relieved to reach the end of the session, and return to town. I do get the impression that even now the Cariae server isn't as reliable as some of the newer ones, for that sort of thing.
SirGalahad kept going, levelling his rare pale blue pony - Kaerella rides a pale blue horse on Cariae and Auzura, so it will be nice if she can ride one on Tairen too. I wouldn't usually pay that much for a blue pan flute, to start such a pony, but they do seem very rare on Tairen at present, and a horse raised from one is generally considered more valuable than an ordinary one. It took till about ten o'clock, UK time, for the pony's Sympathy to reach 100%... and by bedtime it ought to be comfortably into level 7, which is a useful start.
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