Seven Hours in the Tomb

There was the usual bit of pet-levelling with SirDarth from breakfast time, but I intended to make full use of the sextuple experience and skill exp on the Cariae server today. Before coffee I checked around, and was able to transfer some more experience boosters over to Barbarienne and Kaerella, to boost their stocks - I found that Barb does have quite a few in her storage chest, too. One other item she had in storage was her old level 69 +15 bow, so I traded that across to Kae.

Barbarienne also restocked her supply of Remedy, at 5,000 gold each in Randol - that would be very useful, as it negates the effect of Stun, a skill that the anubis spear men in the Tomb of Theos use quite often. I topped her supply up to 75, but I really should have bought more; luckily Keerella had some too, and was able to transfer them across later.

I had my coffee early, so that Barbarienne and Keerella, level 101 archer and level 93 wizard, arrived at the Tomb of Theos at about ten in the morning, UK time. Once inside, paying the usual 3,000 gold per character level entry fee, we didn't stop at the screaming zombies - instead we headed forward and to the right, to the first big room with the level 106 boss-type anubis spear men, plus level 104 sphinx fighters.

Luckily, nobody was already using the room, which can really only support two people killing the anubis spear men at a time, so Keerella took up a safe position at one side, and equipped SkrappY. The expedition almost took a disastrous turn right away when three sphinx fighters followed us in, and attacked SkrappY, but Kee was able to unequip him just in time, and Barb dealt with them. Kee used a "bandage" to boost SkrappY's health a bit, and he, and Kee, spent the rest of the session on the sidelines, watching while Barb did the fighting, normally just targeting the anubis spear men.

There were various people who shared the room during the day - most of them seemed to be assassin-type rogues, for some reason. Sometimes people piled in and started to fight, and had to be persuaded to move on. which generally people did... though, once she was safely around the next corner, Lettibaby vented her displeasure with shouts of "NOOB" and "FK".

Early on it was a rogue called rxQueen who shared the room; she started at level 82, and when she reached level 83 joined the combat party, only to find that her experience gain then was tiny. That puzzled me, but it seems that the way combat parties work has been changed, and that being within 10 levels of the leader is no longer enough, you need a total range of no more than 10...or perhaps 15, like a normal "equal" party. Back when Barb and Kee would be in a combat party with Zenderfly and a few others in the Commander room, I'm sure we had a wider range than that...

A rogue called JustMe7 reacted to my "There is really only room for 2 people to fight spear men here..." with just a "lol", so, while generally I helped out people who attracted too many of the aggressive sphinx fighters at once, her "pick fighters plz" a few minutes later just got a "lol" from me - including the inverted commas.

Well, I started with the idea of fitting in two hours before lunch, with Barbarienne using the hour-long berserker, power, crit, and platinum adrenaline potions, but since I had the good position, it was tempting to keep going... so I actually had a hastily-assembled cold lunch at the desk while still playing, something I've never done before, and kept going with further hours through the afternoon. And I even delayed my usual early evening food break by an hour, so that in all I used seven sets of hour-long potions, which, with the little bit of bonus time at the end of each hour, and small gaps, plus getting there in the first place, must have meant a session of seven and a half hours in the Tomb of Theos.

As the non-fighting partner, my mage Keerella just went up 19.09%, but that can't be bad for doing nothing - and like Barb, she got 73 skill points. My Scra-Chi pet SkrappY gained 15.22%. Barbarienne herself was adding just over 20% per hour, and reached level 102 before the halfway point... her total gain for the session was 157.86%, on top of the 0.49% (and 3 skill points) she gained at yesterday evening's "Storm the Castle" event. Her drake added 7591 pet points, which shows how busy we were... and 358 experience boosters got used, showing that each anubis spear man took something over 70 seconds to kill.

So, that was quite a marathon. The level 109 sphinx commanders in the grave room, end room, or commie room do give about a sixth more experience per kill, but they take longer to kill, with almost half as many hitpoints again, and the room can get too crowded, so that you are walking around the middle waiting for a "commie" to drop down on you from the ceiling, as is their habit. I would have used less experience boosters there, I'm sure, but I don't think I would have gained as much experience...with the limited-time availability of the 600% experience and skill exp boost, I think I made a reasonable decision.

The evening session started a bit later than usual. As Elvastar wasn't around at the time, I logged Galahad in to do some work on his horse in Merac with the bandits on Cariae-4, so that he could give my level 66, now, cleric Kaerella a solo party. Elva had actually contacted me earlier to see if I was interested in Kamira, but with the space booked and the potions running, I couldn't really leave the Tomb then.

Kaerella did briefly experiment with using the level 69 +15 eblin bow on the outdoor sphinx types, but it didn't seem, for her, to do any more damage than her then-current cleric wand, so Collector Ryl converted it into the level 69 wand, I bought some bloodseal gems for it, and Kae went back out.

Kaerella did level up, getting to 67 about halfway through the session, and adding 117.40% experience, along with 178 skill points and 1921 pet points for SirFrancis. But then, after a brief chat with Elvastar, it was time to log out; Galahad logged out too, having got his horse into level 32, and was replaced by SirDarth over on Sarissa, who began his horse's long journey through level 35 in earnest.