Galahad and MistressDomina went through the night safely on Cariae-4, so that Gal's drake reached level 27 soon after coffee. MD didn't have a very busy time in merchant mode, though the session was saved from being a complete write-off by someone spending 17,800,000 gold, and during the morning someone else spending 29,000,000. Otherwise it was mainly relatively cheap items like drake eggs, drake scrolls, pan flutes, and moonstones that sold.
I had some work to do downstairs, but I did just manage to fit in an hour for RedRydeR in my favourite back room of Prokion Temple on Cariae-4, using a pssp, a psp, and 192 spbs, before lunch. Red went up by 39.69% - and added 1792 more skill points, so by my calculations, as well as the 192 orc sergeants, she must have killed 204 orc axemen.
After lunch, it was time for Red's last "power hour" - but I clicked the wrong item in her inventory, activating one of the useless beginner platinum blessed irises, when I reached the back room, so had to log out and let that count down and vanish. Barbarienne did some checking in Roy's merchant mart instead, on the feeling that it was about time she learned the level 102 skill Fatal Blow - and for that she needed to obtain a "Fatal blow H" skill book, an expensive item. Some people had been trying to sell it for 200 million gold or more, but I'd seen it for 150; early in my search through the fifty pages of "Other" items I saw it for 80 million, which seemed good, but on page 22 NEXUShealer was asking 60 million, so that is the one I bought in the end.
It was just as well I saved that 20 million, as that was the amount of gold that actually learning level one of the skill cost...it also took 1020 skill points. Level two costs another 100 million, and 1100 skill points, but I don't have to worry about that until Barbarienne reaches level 110. As it is, level one gives a guaranteed "critical" hit to one's target, giving double the usual critical damage, which sounds rather good if one isn't using an hour-long crit potion at the time.
Level 104, which is a little over 60% away for Barbarienne at the moment, brings a fifth level of Rise Focus 2, which, for 40 million gold and 1300 skill points, will increase Barb's (long-range physical) hit rate by another 44, so that sounds useful. No other skill books are needed for an archer until level 122, when Deadline needs one.
Before heading into the Temple, RedRydeR had done the two spider-killing quests, so that the rewards could be collected later; that just added 0.16%, a skill point, a guild point, and 8 pet points. Once the pbi had expired, and Red had sold the other four to Geres to avoid any further problems, for 4 gold each, Red headed back to that favourite back room in Prokion Temple.
This couldn't be a full hour's session, as RedRydeR was less than 30% away from the top of level 29, and her plans would have been spoilt if she had reached level 30...so I had to go rather carefully, and it took almost exactly 45 minutes to add 29.00% experience, bringing her to 99.87% of the level. I used an spb on each orc sergeant, on top of the pssp and psp, so got 7.7 skill points each from them, and also, since I had plenty left and this would be Red's last opportunity to use them, on almost every orc axeman, too, for 6.16 skill points per kill. I used 255 spbs in all, adding 1867 skill points, along with getting Red's hatchling into level six and earning 219 more guild points - an average of 7.32 skill points per booster shows that I managed to kill rather more sergeants than axemen, although that meant that I usually had at least four axemen bashing me as I moved around the room to get to the next newly-respawned sergeant.
RedRydeR had been faithfully carrying around her Phoenix Ticket since she first emerged in Randol and got it out of storage, and now was the time to take it to the Phoenix Club Master, and officially enrol Red in the Phoenix system. To qualify for that, you need to have a character at level 100 or more on the same account and server, and the Phoenix Ticket at the ready - and the character you want to make into a Phoenix has to be new.
To my relief, the Phoenix Club Master accepted RedRydeR's application - and she was suddenly level 35, with a special +4 level 50/52 armour set and two +4 level 53 weapons (daggers and crossbow), a special garishly luminous orange piece of headgear, which can be worn at any level or permanently melded to the helmet of your choice, a "resurrection of phoenix" item which lets you choose to be resurrected where you were killed rather than back in town (but doesn't ameliorate death penalties, so is mainly of interest for arena fighting), a permanent, until level 100, buff called "blessing of phoenix" which adds 5% to attack and defence, a "phoenix colour crystal" to colour your pet red-and-white...plus 30 extra stat points, and 1200 skill points. The maximum skill points you can get when becoming a phoenix is 4,000, but each time you level up takes 100 off that, and Red had levelled up 28 times.
RedRydeR hurried back to the Temple, to use the last ten minutes of the pssp and psp, and added another 34 skill points, 0.22%, and 5 guild points. The extra sp came in handy, since, back in town, there were a lot of skills to learn; Red hadn't previously had time to get the level 25 ones, and now the level 30, 32 and 35 skills were available too, including new armoursmith and weaponsmith levels, so 2549 skill points were rather quickly used up. Red also opted to become a ranger rather than an assassin, before learning the level 32 and 35 skills.
There was a Parade on Auzura-4 at 6:30, and Kaerella went along to that - in fact she was just heading out to harvest some green herbs and mine some stones about twenty minutes before the scheduled start time, and [GM]Valsharyn was already chatting to some people close to the herb garden.
The Parade went much as usual, with firecrackers and transformations, though looking back Kaerella perhaps talked a bit too much, saying how she preferred the regular low-level MMS to Val's special one, and answering questions that were really aimed at Val. Things continued for a while after the strolling-about ended, with the GM continuing to spawn the transformation scrolls and firecrackers - I had hoped that, as on a previous occasion when Valsharyn rather than Noboru had run this event, we might end up with a kind of game of tag outside town, with the GM spawning loot whenever someone got close to her, but such frivolities were not indulged in.
There was time after that for RedRydeR, back over on Cariae-4, to go back to Prokion Temple for an hour, and use one of her "beginner" pssps, the type that only give 150% extra, despite their text description, rather than 200%, and are thus not suitable for using with the individual boosters - and can't be traded, or used after level 35.
The orcs seemed a lot weaker now than they had been earlier, and were now blue-named for Red, after she'd zoomed up six levels. In the solo party with Galahad, the orc axemen gave 642 experience and 2750 skill exp, while the orc sergeants gave 948 experience and 5500 skill exp (as opposed to 2200 before the b-pssp was started), so a whole hour just moved Red on by 1.64%, plus 38 guild points, while adding 191 skill points.
Well, RedRydeR could do with a little more in the way of a stash of skill points, so we'll certainly use the other four b-pssps in a similar way, but after that we will at least move to Cariae-5, I think, and use the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff, so that the experience gain will double, and the skill exp decline slightly to 4400 per sergeant and 2200 per axeman.
The event which had won the forum poll for today was an "Old School MMS", so I logged my level 31 rogue Memree in on Katar-5, and found that "old school" didn't mean multiple waves out at the usual high-level MMS location, it meant defending the gates of Randol itself, more a "GM Kratos World Defence" kind of deal. Luckily Memree is still working on getting her special skills maximised, so wasn't carrying a stash of skill points - so a couple of deaths when big monsters spawned close to her didn't matter. I also got a "send error report?" crash of the game, which wasn't entirely surprising as a heck of a lot was going on at once.
[GM]Cara was on hand to provide some loot at the end, but true to the [GM]Stratos tradition, the spawning was a bit on the skimpy side, particularly for such a large turn-out. With high-level monsters spawning unpredictably, and bad lag problems, it didn't seem worth staying up late to go to any other server when their turn came up. So, Galahad continued to work on that drake until the end of the evening, and MistressDomino on Auzura-1 put in some time in merchant mode, selling a good lot of item drop boosters to bolster her cash reserves nicely.
Galahad's drake should reach level 29 by closing time; there is no chance of overnight sessions, as the servers will, as usual, go down for their weekly maintenance at one in the morning, UK time. What new stuff will this week's patch bring, I wonder?
No comments:
Post a Comment