Cat Fight!

"Pet Paradise" late last night was a bit under-organised, sadly, and perhaps over-publicised; it didn't really live up to its advance publicity. I expect it was the delay in getting the Cariae server back online that delayed its start by about fifteen minutes. [GM]Cara had been the driving force behind the idea, and had promised "The event will be full of Wafes which are excellent pet experience, there will also be pet merchants in the area and a Stone Statue in the middle that non P2 pets can beat on.

"

Initially I sent Rage on Auzura out to investigate, on the feeling that if any slightly higher-level monsters were roaming the south-western uplands of Dratan, she might be in line for an experience boost, and she could use that Stone Statue to level her drake a bit. There didn't seem to be any additions near the Tomb of Theos or in the general sphinx fighter/sphinx speer man area; I did come across some fellow adventurers in the wafe area, including some people below level thirty, who'd really only benefit from the Stone Statue - but where was it?

Curiously, there was no GM announcement to give the location of the Stone Statue - though the event was saved from being a total let-down by the announcement that pet experience had been doubled for the duration, which was useful for me since SirDarth was busy over on Sarissa-4 with his pale blue horse.

Since she is currently carrying my Scra-Chi pet, SkrappY, Barbarienne, my level 101 archer, logged in over on Cariae-5, and teleported to the Tomb of Theos entrance, then rode back to wafe territory. Big extra spawnings of wafes had been added, and Barb fought some of those - sure enough, Skrappy did get 0.02% or 0.03% experience per kill, though he did get hit once, losing a few hundred health. I met a mage who was levelling her polar bear - for her the masses of wafes were useful, as she had "area of effect" skills to kill a number at a time, but I really don't think Barb was killing that much faster than if she had just been fighting the usual gangs of wafes there.

Cariae of course had, as promised, double experience and skill exp - until it was abruptly switched off after a quarter of an hour or so, and still wasn't running this morning... and I never did find any pet merchants or that darn Stone Statue, though apparently the statue was there somewhere. Somewhere dangerous, in fact, as some people got killed there. I think Skrappy did go up about 8% on the experience side, but really, was it worth all the late-night fuss?

SirDarth pet-levelled through the night and into the morning, and so did benefit from the period of double pet experience, getting his horse into level 22 by coffee time. I was just preparing to take RedRyder back to Prokion Temple when Friend got in touch, inviting Darth to a monster combo party.

The party was of the "speedy" type, where the leader does the first four stages solo, thus only having to fight a single wight slasher per stage. Everyone else joined in for the fifth stage, which thus had a full eight wight slashers, and a full eight reward boxes, which drop a random number of master coins. Then the seven of us would take the "quit" option, the leader would do the next four stages, and then we'd all come back in - and so on, so that we all had to pay to enter four times, costing almost six million per player.

Friend gave us all either gold or a share of the master coins at the end; she'd advanced me ten million towards the entry costs early on, which I'd spent, and passed over another fourteen million, so I did end up ahead, but not by a particularly huge amount. I had been expecting a lot of unwanted experience gain, but thanks to missing all those stages, SirDarth added less than 5%, and RedRyder, who wasn't in the first couple of rounds as the party was full to begin with, added 34.38%.

For the afternoon session, RedRyder did manage to go to Prokion Temple on Sarissa-5, after concluding some quests that brought in 23.02% and 20 skill points. The fighting time, generally with orc soldiers and some orc fighters, brought in 135.04% experience, and 611 skill points. As soon as Red reached level 27, SirDarth "froze" her experience gain to 50%, so she earned her first 269 guild points for Discipline as well. A knight called TemplarRules was close by for some of the time, and managed to beg a few small health potions off me. He didn't start off very well, charging into the room I was using and hitting the orc soldier I'd targeted, saying "Don't KS" meanwhile, but he soon settled for a less dangerous room.

Five o'clock, UK time, brought the Auzura "Storm the Castle" event, hosted by [GM]Noboru, which was pretty well attended. I took Rage along to Merac Castle, as usual, though I didn't join the main charge forward after we'd dealt with the initial thorny mantises and male assassinbugs - mindful of past warnings about leaving monsters outside unkilled, I set my sights on the wight slasher that spawns a little way along, protected by death mask soldiers. Luckily there were two or three other people who got involved, as the slasher is a bit high-level for Rage - and very luckily, my Snare worked just about every time.

After that I hurried on to the zamoras, anubis spear men, dark harpies, and so on, and as usual gave my invaluable assistance, Snare-wise. One spear man did focus its attention on me, and I had to use quite a few health potions, but I didn't seem in grave danger. The courtyard was cleared quickly enough - then we charged through the inner courtyard, though by using "tab" I noticed a blood shadow invisible dragon was there, and battled the two flutons in the throne room.

We finished comfortably inside the time limit, and dashed back outside the Castle, where our favourite GM spawned plenty of the traditional tightly-packed circles of StC loot. Some people were asking for flutons to fight, but I reminded people that there was probably still a blood shadow in the inner courtyard, so quite a few of us hurried back, and dealt with it. Before that, Rage's experience gain had been 0.89%, but the blood shadow brought it up to a nice round 1.00%.

RedRyder had reached level 28 by the end of the afternoon session, so for the main evening slog, it seemed a good idea to start using her five "beginner" platinum super skill pills. So, SirDarth switched back to Sarissa-4, to provide a solo party again while he pet-levelled, and Red moved there too - since the pssp doesn't stack with Elizabeth's Enhancement, it made sense to be in the less busy fourth subserver without the enhancement, and add experience half as fast, while getting 150% extra skill exp from the pssp.

So, the first hour in my favourite Prokion Temple back room added 50.99% and 524 skill points, plus 305 guild points; Red equipped her dragon hatchling, which she hadn't used before, to help pick up loot, and it got comfortably into its second level. The second pssp's hour added 47.88%, and got Red into level 29; 519 skill points and another 305 guild points were earned. There was just time for a third hour, which added another 42.38%, 495 skill points, and 293 guild points - the hatchling was well advance through level four by then. I had no visitors, so it was a pretty productive three hours. And RedRyder has another two of the pssps to use...

At nine the first of the [GM]Cara versus [GM]Kali "Cat Fights" was scheduled to begin over on Katar-5, at the PvP arena in Dratan - it was so long since I'd been there that it took me a moment to remember which Dratan NPC offers free trips there! It's a much more elaborate set-up than the Randol arena, with viewing areas at ground level, and balconies, with the arena itself enclosed by the building. I went upstairs to watch; as a precaution I'd gone along as a level 2 knight, SirKitBreaker, since characters below level 15 aren't able to join in with PvP, and I only wanted to watch. The actual fight between the mage Kali and the archer Cara was brief - the fun came when they spawned masses of monsters in the arena, and, perhaps because of a glitch, some of them were spawned on a balcony too.

Loot was spawned in the arena itself, though even if I'd managed to find a way to get down there, the flutons would probably have killed me before I managed to grab anything. I did however manage to grab some unclaimed gold that the monsters on the balcony dropped when they were killed...

There were threats that people would be banned for entering the arena while the "Cat Fight" itself was in progress, but some people did fool about - others may have accidentally fallen off a balcony, while apparently there was a glitch that meant that one or two people who were innocently watching from upstairs appeared to be standing in the arena itself.

Cariae was the second server to host the "Cat Fight", so I took my level four healer FoxChaser along. I was starting to get an idea of the layout of the place, so managed to watch from downstairs, by a gateway onto the arena. It was a non-PvP area I was in, the same as standing just outside the Randol arena, so even when, after Kali had won the fight, the place filled up with flutons, we were safe there. There was a spawning of hands of loot, and I did manage to avoid the roaming and rampaging flutons long enough to pick up some of the usual items, item drop boosters and so on, before getting killed and having to run back.

Time was moving on, but as Sarissa came next, I decided to go along, this time using a level one mage, Emraine, with absolutely no experience or skill exp. This time [GM]Cara won, though Kali seemed to think that Cara had cheated by boosting her stats. There were flutons and barren eises, which are a bit of a Kali trademark, but when the loot was spawned in one big heap, I think they must have been dealt with. The lag was absolutely terrible; it always gets a bit laggy when the server has all those hundreds of individual bits of loot to deal with, but this was "seconds per frame" stuff.

Despite the lag I managed to get to the loot pile, which was still at the "reserved for another player" stage initially... before long I started to pick things up, but it was very slow, and if a fluton had still been prowling around I'd have been killed instantly. I think a titan or two may well have tried to kill me, but that's the beauty of taking a low-level character into the arena when loot is spawned, while monsters can kill you, other players can't. Eventually things speeded up again, as the loot was finally cleared away. Emraine did pretty well there - at her level, even the small mana and HP recovery potions could well be useful.

By then it was time to log out, though SirDarth continued his work levelling the pale blue horse for Kaerella, getting it more than halfway through level 24 by the end of the evening. I had visited Cariae a few times during the day, to carry out a "fox test", killing a fox to see if it gave 1 or 2 for experience and skill exp gain, but there was no bonus double experience of skill exp running. I thought it was supposed to be up for around 48 hours, rather than 48 minutes or less?