Storming Castles

SirGalahad did stay in action overnight on Tairen-4 in Maargadum jail - and XxGALAHADxX kept busy fighting his pair of bandits in Merac on Cariae-4 too. When moving SirGalahad back a bit from the central pathway I did manage to attack a beast crawler by mistake, and took a heavy magical hit - but I managed to run to the exit before it could hit me again, and so survived.

After breakfast it seemed a good idea to restart SirGalahad's game, since it had been running non-stop for quite a while; the pale blue horse had gone up four levels since Gal was last in Randol, so this time I used the stat points to get four levels of magical defence for a change, instead of physical defence.

I had posted a grumble about Auzura getting missed out of the low-level MMS sequence yesterday in the "Events" part of the Last Chaos forum, and this morning I found that [GM]Cara had responded, apologising for the mistake they'd made; they did run the Auzura event as soon as they realised, but that must have been while I was elsewhere. Since they do ask for feedback, I posted my own response:

Ah, it's good to know that Auzura did get one eventually, thanks. :)

I was able to get along to the Katar and Auzura high-level Mad Monster Spawns that you hosted, and was very impressed with the "new look", with lots of monsters spread out across just about the whole of the valley. The monsters seemed very well placed, so that with teamwork we could pick them off as we swept round, and it was great to have you there on the spot encouraging us. The bonus purple dragons, darkmind terrains and flutons at the end were good too, I think everyone appreciated them.

Perhaps the low-level MMS needs a new look too. That scheduling problem aside, it is fine that there are no advance announcements, just the "is now starting" one - I know that [GM]JediMike wants people to look at the website schedules and prepare accordingly, so people who take the trouble to be there waiting get the most out of the event. However, if the event starts on the hour, and by seven minutes past the last of the loot is being picked up (which was about the timing on Katar and Cariae) and the "is now over" announcement appears, well, as events go that is a bit short. Sarissa and Hatzring lasted longer, just because they had lower turn-outs I think. Our GM must have been in a hurry to go, as at both of those events he spawned the loot before many of the more difficult monsters had been dealt with, leading to problems and people dying.

Personally I don't enjoy an event as much where there is no GM in sight, and no chat with a GM, just him pushing a few buttons for the starting announcement, the monster spawning, the prize spawning, and the closing announcement. I do like to feel that, for a while at least, we are the most important window on his desktop.

Can't we have multiple waves at the low-level event? Probably Tairen got multiple waves, since they don't yet get a high-level MMS, but I missed that one. People at the other events were certainly ready for more monsters, and hung around hopefully for a few minutes.

We seem a little short of "Pharaoh's Treasure" events outside Auzura these days, which is a shame. I can well do without the spawnings of Pandora's Beasts, they strike me as pointless as the beasts don't drop anything better than any other monsters of a similar level, and are protective in large numbers in a small area, which can be a recipe for disaster. Now, if it was Pandora's [i]Boxes[/i] that were spawned, that would be a bit more interesting...

Anyway, as expected, there wasn't any active LC playing for me during the day. SirGalahad and his Cariae equivalent continued their good work, however, with the Cariae pony transforming into a level 16 horse at around nine in the morning - and reaching level 18 before Galahad had to log out, to allow Kaerella to go online for the Auzura-4 "Parade" event which, with the different timings we have for this fortnight, was scheduled for 4:00pm, UK time.

[GM]Noboru was in charge, and as usual dropped a generous number of dire wolf, jaguar, sasquatch, and drake scrolls, plus firecrackers, and led us around town in a suitably leisurely way. She stayed for the full half hour, giving out more scrolls, and gently deflecting requests for jaguar collars. And of course she reminded us that a "Pharaoh's Treasure" event was due to follow after a gap of ninety minutes.

As usual the transformation scrolls meant that there were one or two rather small people around, not to mention a bright scarlet cube. The actual transformation seems to involve the player shrinking before they change, so size problems aren't too surprising. We didn't get a tiny, or petite, GM this time, though I did notice that, on my screen at least, her sasquatch wasn't as tall as mine by a foot or so.

Kaerella, my level 67 archer, was out in Juno in time for the "Pharaoh's Treasure" event, and indeed I discovered a group of the sphinx soldiers and speer men before the list of coordinates was announced, and fought a few of those until then. I rode north - and the third spot I found was the treasure location, with [GM]Noboru and four or five people already gathering loot. So, I quickly dismounted, said "Hi", and joined in.

There were plenty of waves of loot, and the Pharaoh sent a couple of platoons of his fighters (and speer men) to attack us, though [GM]Noboru, mindful that some people there were low level, was always careful to spawn such things off to the side. The Pharaoh even sent a Patriarch Botis, followed by a fluton, but luckily we had enough rogues to keep them under control, and enough high-level people to damage them relatively quickly.

Kaerella herself only did about 124 damage, though more for a critical or deadly hit - and that is with a level 69 +15 bow. With all the loot she was able to pick up, her inventory weight went over 100%, decreasing her dexterity - and I think the damage she did may well have dropped by a point or two.

There was time for a tiny bit of downstairs work, again, before the sequence of "Storm the Castle" events began at 7:00pm. As usual the GMs were running them two at a time, so I opted for RAGE on Auzura-5, as opposed to a lower level character on Tairen-5...though Tairen, I could tell from SirGalahad's screen, was getting advance announcements 15 and 10 minutes before the event, and Auzura wasn't.

And then I had a bad idea - I logged out SirGalahad on the older machine, and logged in my level 41 rogue xRAGEx, who did have the Merac castle location on her memory scroll. Partly I suppose because I wasn't giving that screen 100% attention, this version of Rage managed to die three times, losing 367 skill points and 2.42% experience. The third time was the annoying one, as [GM]Stratos spawned some monsters back up the road where he puts down the loot, and Rage died pretty much instantly, not knowing what hit her.

Still, at least the Tairen event started on time; Rage of Auzura was able to tell JadaMarie that, since we were about the only people there. Tairen managed just about the full range of StC monsters, and did it within the time limit. Of course with Stratos the loot rewards were extremely puny, but I managed to pick up one skill point booster, one item drop booster, three large defence potions, and five tool aids, plus three small HP recovery potions and one small mana recovery potion. Not much compensation for the skill points lost - but then, that particular rogue isn't intended to get to level 100 or anything, she ought just to end up as a useful mid-level character.

Possibly because Tairen's Rage did ask about the Auzura "StC", [GM]Stratos did finally start things off at about ten past the hour there, spawning the usual monsters by the bridge and making a first announcement. To his credit, he did make other announcements exhorting people to join us, and he did forget about the time limit. We started off small, but grew to quite an army - though as usual things were slow to begin with, particularly on the anubis spear men. There was an invisible blood shadow dragon, but this one was in the outer courtyard, so some people were fighting it while the rest of us were still clearing out the hell-otuu and spear men from the far end, but things went okay, and we cleared the castle out.

[GM]Stratos summoned us back to his usual spot up the road, and things were a bit more elaborate this time - a squad of wight slashers and wraiths, along with death knights, bore down on us, and had to be despatched, before the usual darkmind terrains and purple dragons spawned. And by this particular GM's standards, the drops were almost generous, it wasn't just one thin heap he treated us to, but three or four. I got three tool aids, three large attack potions, a large defence potion, an item drop booster, seven small HP recovery potions, and two small mana recovery potions. Not a huge compensation for quite a lengthy fight, but I think I did pick up a little gold early on.

SirGalahad logged back in and retreated to the relative safety of Maargadum Jail, with his horse recently started on level 27; the Cariae "StC" was scheduled for nine o'clock, UK time, so I had a little time to spare before that. Katar was also due to start then, but fighting at two events at once is definitely hazardous to my health.

After taking Sarissa's Kaerella down to Merac Castle to get the location onto her memory scroll, and getting MistressDomino on Sarissa up to level 4, it was time for Barbarienne to head for the Cariae castle-storming. We were quite a powerful group right from the start, helped no doubt by the announcements that [GM]Stratos carefully made. We carved our way through the regular monsters, though apart from a sphinx commander or two, I think, the inner courtyard was strangely empty.

However, Stratos then summoned us to his favourite place back along the road towards Merac Caron, and things were more elaborate than last time, with the wight slashers, wraiths and death knights, followed by darkmind terrains and flutons, so that it was as big a battle, fighting the monster "counter-attack", as the actually storming of the castle - we fought our way back up the road far enough to reach the region's regular monsters. The loot was if anything slightly more generous, though nothing to write home about, and as usual a few purple dragons got dropped on us just after we'd finished grabbing the loot - it seems to be the Stratos way of saying goodbye.

I was assuming that the Sarissa event, half an hour later, would be run by [GM]Stratos too, but instead we had someone who wished to remain anonymous. This was a more basic "StC", though it had all the usual monsters for the actual storming, including the sphinx commanders and an invisible blood shadow dragon in the inner courtyard. My level 23 archer there, Kaerella, probably didn't do an awful lot of damage to the monsters she targeted, but she did manage to stay alive.

I paused in the inner courtyard, as one is never sure with this event where the loot will be provided - and indeed that was where the clumps of loot did appear. Again it wasn't a huge amount, I think I just got one each of the skill point and item drop boosters, a few large attack and defence potions, and so on, but the people who had hurried back outside, expecting loot or further monsters there, were rather annoyed to find that they had missed out, and that there weren't any other monsters to fight - and the GM, if it was a GM, had departed, without really a proper goodbye message.

SirGalahad, meanwhile, had managed to get his horse past the halfway mark in level 27, before he logged out for the night. It's time to let that older computer have a rest for a few hours, I think.