The overnight patch seems to have been designed to mollify Mondshine top-level players, with their repeatable quests getting six times the experience they'd recently been getting, and more skill exp too. That was about all, really, except a warning that next week's maintenance may take longer, as all servers will be getting "major hardware upgrades". This should allow Aeria to make daily back-ups of all data, to avoid any repetition of Cariae's rollback of an entire week, not too long ago.
Since the platinum refining stones to temporarily make Kaerella's armour, on Auzura-4, a full +15 set weren't added until after coffee yesterday, I decided to try to fit in two hours before coffee today, to make the most of the defence bonus while it lasted. MrChuckNorris stayed in Juno, where I soon set him up to do a little mining, while he provided Kae with a solo party - and Kae headed for the Tomb of Theos.
Checking the "Condition" of the dungeon, I saw that the bars, when 0% means maximum hard and 100% means easy, were set at around 55%, which seemed a bit challenging, but I decided to go in anyway. Killing her first screaming zombie without pots was a bit of a battle, with Kaerella losing more than half her health - but heck, I was there, and I had the place to myself, so I started the usual pots and a platinum blessed iris, and set to work.
With the potions on, things were a lot smoother, so things went pretty well. At the end of the first hour Kae was near the top of level 82, having added 182.87% - and the second hour added another 170.03%, taking Kaerella comfortably into level 84. Kae's drake, SirFrancis, added 1963 pet points, and we even gained 3 skill points. Over the two hours, 244 experience boosters were used.
Having just a solo party rather than someone in a combat party (and within compass range) reduced the experience gain by perhaps 10% on average - each kill gave 54,012,636 experience, using the platinum blessed iris and the experience booster. When Kaerella was level 81 the level 100 screaming zombies started to give 55 skill exp, and the percentage gained per kill was1.53; the skill exp rose as she levelled up, to 110, 165, and 220, while, as each level needs more experience to complete, the percentage from a kill went from 1.53 to 1.42, 1.32, and then 1.23 at level 84, meaning that around 81 screaming zombies would need to be killed to get all the way through that level - or 975 without using the pbi and boosters.
The platinum refining stones were still active when the second hour ended; I had heard of people getting "stuck" with them active, but they all safely ran out at around 11:20am, UK time: "The period of [Balsamic Tiara] platinum item has expired and it no longer works", a pop-up message helpfully explained. Kaerella killed perhaps three or four more screaming zombies after the pots and pbi ended, and found them a lot easier to cope with than that first one at the start; I left the Tomb and checked the place's Condition again, and found that at some point it had been changed to a rather easier 80%. Kaerella then headed back to town.
After coffee, I was able to get Kaerella another level, the third, of Rise Focus 2, increasing her hit rate from 1276 to 1320 for 250 skill points - and the third level of Deadly Shot 2 as well, for 350 skill points, increasing her chance of "deadly" hits from a stat of 417 to 427. Vital Spot Blow 2 level 3, for an improved rate of critical hits, costing 350 skill points, comes next, when Kaerella reaches level 86.
A GM announcement had said that an extra 50% experience was running today, but it didn't have any effect in the Tomb of Theos for me; it wouldn't have stacked with the boosters I was using, but the few screaming zombies I killed right at the end still only gave their regular 4,501,053 experience each.
There was time before lunch to do a little shopping, or at least searching through Roy's merchant mart stocks. I still drew a blank in my search for "b5e", blue-named, five-sealed evasion-based, rogue jackets and gloves for Rage on Auzura, and there were no suitable +15 mage gloves for Keerella on Cariae either - but I did find a healer pair of pants, and boots, for Barbarienne, being sold by SHeryl for 700,000 gold each. That was more cash than MistressDomina was carrying, but luckily I was able to log my Cariae cleric Kaerella in, and trade 200,000,000 gold across to MD.
MistressDomina passed the Ebade Boots of Dimension +15 and Antistune Pants of Dimension +15 across to Barbarienne, and equipping them increased Barb's physical defence from 2732 to 3189, and her magic defence from 254 to 354. Now, like Keerella, Barb just needs +15 gloves to complete the +15 set...while Rage also needs gloves, as well as a jacket.
After that, there was some general movement of items to MistressDomina, and some clearing out of Barbarienne's rather full inventory - and Kaerella's too. It might be possible for Kaerella on Cariae to emulate her Auzura namesake with some hard work in the Tomb, though her 70/72 Balsamic armour set isn't quite as good, so she would need four +2 platinum refining stones, and one +1, to get to maximum armour - and as a cleric, her attack won't be as great. Still, having four parts of Barbarienne's old +13 armour set, ready for when she can reach level 86 and 87, in her inventory ready for use has got to be a bit of an incentive.
The afternoon wasn't very productive, after all that. The 50% extra experience was running, which ruled out most of my characters who are skill exp farming in Prokion Temple; I had a rather short session with xRAGEx on Tairen-5, since at level 41 she has left the Temple, but fighting the sphinx fighters and sphinx speer men does cut into her health rather quickly, particularly when Snare fails. I took her along to Maargadum Jail, and she can fight the dire spike canines easily enough, so perhaps she ought to spend some time there.
SirGalahad had been providing the solo party for Rage, doing a bit of pet-levelling work down on level five of the Jail, and his hatchling reached level 6, and then level 7. After Rage logged out, he did the same service for my junior mage Enchantra, since it seemed a good idea to get her to level 10, so that she could set up in merchant mode if necessary. She started at level 6, and, once she'd made the extra 42 skill points she needed for the fifth level of Casting Guard, to increase her defence, made the trip out to Prokion Temple, to get it onto her memory scroll.
A few more trips to the jaguars to do the repeatable quest for Merchant Geres got Enchantra up to level 10 - and, as she at last had got a drake egg as a drop, she made another trip to Dratan, this time just to visit Jajan and get herself a brand-new dragon hatchling before logging out. In all. Enchie had gone up by 338.68%, and got 53 skill points.
SirGalahad continued his work on Tairen-5 through the early evening food break, so that his hatchling got into level 8, and a 66% Sympathy rating, but then it was time for LordDarth to have a session in Prokion Temple on Hatzring-5, accompanied by Kaerella; it certainly doesn't matter if he levels up slightly more quickly, missing out on a few skill points, and Kaerella can just do some "suicide runs" in Maargadum Jail to work off any excess experience.
We got settled in in our back room, but after a while we had a visitor, a level 23 titan called mosesswe, who asked to join the party. At that level, he got through a lot of health and mana potions - big ones, at that, so it was no wonder he was low on gold. He proudly showed me the level 33 +10 sword he had spent all his cash on, maybe I was being a bit negative when I said that I hoped he hadn't paid more than 2 million for it, as the freebie armour and weapons do seem less common on Hatzring than elsewhere. He'd paid 4 million.
I was able to tell him he'd get the full +10 armour set, and weapons, when he reached level 31, warning him to have enough inventory space...and I did advise him that if he fought critters around his own level or slightly below, he'd get more skill points and use less health pots. He can just go with a few levels of some skills, or avoid them entirely, but he has to get all five levels of the level thirty titan skill, and 228 sp is rather more than he currently has...
He left shortly before I had to finish; it being a Wednesday, that was just after eight in the evening, but LordDarth had still managed to add 90.35% experience. Kaerella had gained 44.10%, which she'll need to lose, slightly more than she would otherwise have got, but she did some fighting too, as well as a fair amount of titan-healing. He did at least manage to reach level 24 during the session. Oh, and LordDarth and Kaerella each gained 201 skill points.
SirDarth kept busy levelling his drake, but shortly after ten I noticed that the mage serina had turned up, and was luring an elite bloody outlaw onto him - "a VERY naughty girl", I commented, unequipping the pet. "I'm stopping lag dummy" was her excuse. "Oh, you aren't the moron who thinks pet-levellers cause lag", I responded with my usual tact. I tried to persuade her to check out this lag thing with the gamesages on the forum shoutbox...but no luck.
I used a scroll to get back to town, and then ran down to Maargadum Jail to get that location on Darth's memory scroll. I went inside, and joined three other people who were pet-levelling on the spike canines, just around the teleporter... but serina showed up after a few minutes, and lured us all away from our place of safety, and along into the middle of a mob of the aggressive, pet-eating canine types.
Luckily nobody was terminally away-from-keyboard, so no great harm was done, I think. I moved SirDarth down to level five, and a death mask lancer, and luckily serina didn't follow. I just hope serina is confining her activities to that server, since my pet-levelling will soon be moving elsewhere, but it would be nice if she could be persuaded that what she is doing is wrong-headed.
No comments:
Post a Comment