A New Friend

The two pet-levellers kept busy through the night again; SirGalahad did manage to attract the attention of the nearest death mask soldier once, but luckily it confined its attacks to him, leaving the pale blue horse alone. Curiously, when Gal equipped his sword and began attacking the soldier, it did then do a single point of damage to the horse - but after it was killed, things went back to normal.

The after-coffee session for Memree and Kaerella on Tairen-5 was rather interrupted by various things; I'd leave the computer for a couple of minutes and come back to find every orc in the room furiously attacking Memree, but luckily with her +10 armour set she can withstand such punishment.

At the end of the session Memree had gained another 6.62%, so she will still need another couple of similar sessions before reaching level 39, which will surely make her the Temple's oldest inhabitant. Or maybe not, I have seen night shadows, who are a minimum of level 90, there, even on non-PvP subservers, just to gather souls, which they need for the use of some skills I think. Anyway, Memree had earned 126 guild points for Discipline; Kaerella had contributed 19, while going up by 4.92%, and they had each gained 122 skill points, taking Kaerella over the 3k mark.

The pet-levellers were back in action over lunch, and SirGalahad on Tairen soon got his horse into its final level, 36. with Galahad on Cariae getting his horse into level 31 soon after.

For the afternoon, I went back to Sarissa, with SirDarth and Kaerella in, of course, Prokion Temple. At level 25, Kaerella was able to stay clicked on to SirDarth, and follow him around as he fought mainly mummies, but also some orc soldiers when they were available. Since it was a combat party, Kae just went up 17.37%, while Darth, who was doing the fighting, added 188.36%, moving up from level 21 to 23. They got 146 skill points each, though Kae's target at present is to get 250, so that she can learn that expensive first level of Resurrection.

My new friend was actually a rogue called xxxXfriendXxxx, who guessed that I was using two computers to play both SirDarth and Kaerella. I was explaining that SirDarth would probably become a pet-leveller, with his spare skill points used to level up the Discipline guild - she was saying that I should just buy a horse. And then she made a remarkable offer, she wanted both my characters to join her level 95 healer (who I think may be called ooiceoo) in a monster combo party, fighting the nivas and wight slashers. She would not only pay the admission costs, she would pay us 25 million gold per character per hour-long session, though of course she would keep all the master coins earned.

I rather assumed that she wanted to do that right away, but, after going back to town, she said that it was late in the evening in her part of the world, so I'm on call for a near-future occasion I guess. She has loaned us a level 29 +15 weapon. She seems to have a good collection of +15 weapons of various levels. She has given us some effort scrolls and health pots... and also given us four bits of the 30/32 armour set, three at the usual +10 and one at +9, which will be very handy for Darth before long. We were asked to pass on a similar kind of favour to someone else when we, or Kae at least, reaches a high level, which seems a nice idea.

After the break in Dratan and Randol, Kae and Darth returned to complete the session - another rogue was rather friendly too, TreTa, dropping a couple of useful rings; she asked to join our party, saying she was level 20, but when, after failing to add her to the combat party, I changed it to an equal type of party, she was revealed to be level 43, so she didn't stay long.

Later it occurred to me that, on past experience, taking a low-level person into a monster combo does tend to boost their experience rather a lot, even if they are "capped" by higher-level team members. That wouldn't matter for SirDarth, but would rather mess up Kaerella's skill point gain - so it seemed like a good idea to develop a substitute character on Sarissa. Start a new healer or a new rogue from level 1? In the end I decided that a mage in their twenties would be useful for buffs... and Keerella on Sarissa was already level 10.

So, after the early evening food break, Keerella and Kaerella logged in - though Kae just stayed around long enough to recruit Kee into the Guardian system, so that reaching level 20 would get Keerella the special "event weapon". Then SirDarth logged on, formed an equal party with Kee, they both got the Elizabuff...and off they went to Prokion Temple on Sarissa-5.

With Kee still in her starter armour, the policy was for her to stay safely in the corner of the entry hallway, while SirDarth fought mummies, ghouls, and, if he could reach them, the occasional orc soldier, while carefully making sure that Kee's orange dot remained fully visible in his compass-map.

The session wasn't hugely long, as there was a "Storm the Castle" event scheduled for Auzura at seven o'clock, UK time, but I managed to get Keerella safely into level 18, while SirDarth himself added another 80.94%, getting him into level 24. They both gained 124 skill points.

[GM]JediMike was in charge of the "StC" event on Auzura-5, and started the announcements 15 minutes before the event, which helped bring in plenty of people - as did his announcement of a BBQ afterwards, heheh. I logged Rage in a little early, as I wanted to finish upgrading her armour, and for that I needed two extreme stones. Luckily Rage had, in storage, plenty of upgrade boxes; I only needed to open six of them to get what I needed, along with two runes of protection 1, a heaven stone, and a package of 5 platinum refining stones, used to, temporarily but without risk, upgrade an item by +1, +2 or +3. I hope that one or two of them will be +2 at least, so that Rage's +13 crossbow can function in the Tomb of Theos as a +15 one for a session or two...

Rage's boots had given 121 + 151 defence while at +12, but making them +13 moved the bonus on by another 19; similarly, her gloves had given 118 + 147 defence, but also added 19 more. That just leaves the matter of getting a set of bonus books of melding, and sending across a cover-costume for Rage, so that the +13s become, for a month, +14s... and then she will be ready for the Tomb.

When Rage arrived outside Merac Castle, there were at least a couple of dozen people there, including [GM]JediMike himself - what a change from the usual start! I got recruited into a party by the archer XxHelenaxX, which was a great luxury as she did some healing when necessary. Mike had made plenty of announcements, so people kept on arriving - and then it was time to start, and in we surged, to battle the usual monsters.

Male assassinbugs, thorny mantises, anubis archers, jumping devils, barren eises, zamaras, hell-otuu, anubis spear men, dark harpies - they were all present and correct, and we battled our way through them. There was one of the Strayana invisible "blood shadow" raid boss dragons to fight in the inner courtyard - I don't think there was anything hostile in the throne room itself, unless our vanguard killed them while the blood shadow was being dealt with. We were well inside the time limit, I think it all only took us ten minutes - and then the announcement came up that the loot was to be spawned back outside, so we all hurried back, and as usual we were all generously rewarded by the most generous of GMs.

The Cariae "StC" wasn't due until nine, so I had time to get Keerella and SirDarth back online for a while first. Kee spent her skill points, mainly on passive skills to increase her defence and hit points, after checking out the quests she had open - they got her 5.11% experience and 16 skill points. She finally got herself some up-to-date mage armour too. Back in Prokion Temple, this time, after taking Keerella clicked on to SirDarth into the middle of the action proved a bit dangerous, Darth tried one of the rooms at the end of the hall, and was able, in a round room, to fight quite a few orc soldiers, if he could get them into the half of the room nearest to Kee.

The place did get a bit busy, mainly with healers and rogues it seemed - annoyingly there was some ks-ing, and when an orc soldier I'd been fighting was pulled away by a ks-er, when it dropped a hand of the warrior the heaven stone was allocated to the ks-er since they had the aggro when it died. Still, Keerella managed to get up to level 20, finishing her apprenticeship; she gained 227.61% and 80 skill points. I just had time to get SirDarth into level 25, adding 72.15% (and 83 skill points - I guess three or four kills must have been out of range of Kee), before it was time for the Cariae storming of the castle.

This particular "StC" was quite a contrast to the Auzura one. For a start, though Barbarienne was no earlier arriving that Rage had been, she was the first person there. The first announcement came up at 5 minutes before the start, which made it pretty tight timing for people who had to ride or run down from town. Really it was only four of us that were there at the start; I asked for a party, and the level 111 titan BaronOfSweden added me, and gave me the useful titan warmaster buffs.

I found myself tanking a thorny mantis, when things started, but luckily someone managed to use Snare on it successfully before it hit my health too badly. An anubis spear man came for me too, and, as they tend to do when out of the Tomb, did a lot of damage, but he got dealt with as well. As the Baron was in the thick of the fighting, I was able to re-supply the horse buffs. Things were going well; more people arrived, including [GM]Cara... and then, just as we were finishing clearing the main courtyard, the monsters counter-attacked, with flutons, squads of death knights, wight slashers, and more. [GM]Stratos had arrived by then, too.

Still, we carved our way through this new threat - but then, once the castle was cleansed, rather than be told where the loot was to be spawned, we were told that there was a new threat to deal with, and we were given coordinates quite a distance across the map - which, when we got there, we found to be the Dread Garden, with its doom slayers and blood frenzies augmented by a mass of huge darkmind terrains and flutons.

We had enough high-level people to overcome them, and the loot was spawned there - but it was in Stratos-type amounts, so I ended up with about one of everything, though I did pick up two small chocolates too. And that was the end of the festivities.

Some people were not happy; if you didn't have a mount you'd have had difficulty reaching the Dread Garden in time, and our lower-level people would have been in mortal peril if they'd tried to pick up loot, with doom slayers and blood frenzies respawning there. The unexpected death knights back in the main courtyard would have been a nasty and probably fatal shock, too.

Sarissa's event was starting at half past nine; I had been intending to go to it, but taking either Kaerella or SirDarth along would have been pretty suicidal if Cara and Stratos were planning the same extra entertainments again, so I decided to pass on that.

The weekly server maintenance was scheduled for the early hours of the morning, UK time, so there was no question of any overnight pet-levelling. Still, by the time SirGalahad logs out that pale blue horse destined for Tairen's Kaerella should be at least a third of the way into level 36.