The Long Run

LordDarth headed back down into Maargadum Jail on Hatzring-5 at breakfast time today - only to find the knight Dompteur already fighting his usual death mask lancer. Darth moved along to the next one, which has almost as safe a position, and settled in.

After coffee, LordDarth supplied a solo party for RedRyder, who decided to head out to Velpist Temple in Juno first, to get the four cursed bones that Jajan requires for a quest. A level 11 knight called ElLoco came into the same room, and asked for a party, so we brought him in - Being in a party with Red, on level 23, who was killing skeleton types of around her own level, rather helped him along, and he reached 14 by the time I had all four cursed bones, and returned to town.

RedRyder then headed for Dratan, got the quest reward, and a new harpy-killing quest, from Jajan, and teleported to Prokion Temple. With un-plussed armour, even when level 24 was reached the level 23 orc soldiers still did a lot of damage en masse, so Red generally stuck with ghouls and mummies still - but by the time lunch was approaching she had gone up by, in all, 82.84%, plus a first 280 pet points for her dragon hatchling, equipped some of the time, and 140 skill points, which were quickly spent back in town, improving Red's passive skills.

Over lunch, LordDarth managed to get his horse into level 29, while RedRyder did a little mining - though with only the first basic mining level, she didn't get very much in the way of stones. And then it was time to hop across to Cariae-5, and log my level 35 phoenix rogue RedRydeR in.

Prokion Temple's back room was free, so Red got to work there, and by the end of the afternoon had added 6.81%, 79 guild points, and 319 skill points. There wasn't any drama there - but on the older computer, LordDarth noticed that the other pet-leveller, Dompteur, was being attacked by a death mask soldier, which does happen in that room. Sadly his pet had already been killed; I moved along to kill the soldier, in case its attacks were hurting Dompteur, and while I managed that, the death mask lancer he was fighting started attacking Darth... so we ended up with both knights back in my position, and both of the death mask lancers attacking me.

Dompteur logged out soon after that; I hope he didn't blame Darth for his pet's demise. Darth moved to the position closer to the door that Dompteur had been using, and eventually managed to get the far lancer to "ping" back to its correct position, so he was back to pet-levelling on a single lancer.

For a change, my level 40 witch MistressSabina had an outing on Auzura-5. There was a quest available in Merac to kill ten highlanders, so she started off by doing that, and then visited Maargadum Jail, though not going beyond the first area. I was just a little too late teleporting inside to be able to save a knight's hatchling; I assume he'd been pet-levelling on a spike canine, but someone had moved him forward a bit and lured a pack of the aggressive, pet-eating dire spike canines onto him, and by the time I'd killed a couple of them, the hatchling had vanished.

I spent some time killing spike canines, since they are Sabina's level, and the dire spike canines too, which are a level higher. After a while a level 31 sorcerer called DAVID9 invited me into a party. He never said a word, but eventually he got into luring a big group of the dire spike canines and two-headed canines for us to fight - Sabina's Flame Storm skill was useful then, even if it did make most of the canines transfer their attentions from the sorcerer to me. A level 37 rogue called SlayerXGanja was also there, and was briefly in the party a couple of times.

It wasn't a hugely long session, but MistressSabina added 19.69%, along with 73 skill points - enough to get her total above the 10k mark, which isn't bad, if she's not aiming to go far beyond, say, level 70. 1013 pet points were just enough to get her drake into level 31, too.

For an even briefer session, MrChuckNorris logged in, and checked Dratan for quests, finding that, at level 67, he had the first two quests set in the Forgotten Temple, requiring him to kill spiders and legendary slayers. So, as he did have the place on his memory scroll, he went down there, and did the necessary fighting. Including the quest rewards, he just added 2.84% and 11 skill points.

I noticed that I had a mage, Memree, on Sarissa who was only level 5, so as I had some time to spare did a little work on her, fighting berserk wolves and then, to get the "Necklace of Geres" quest done a few times, jaguars. I'd not played Memree for so long that she still had a "special server" buff on, from many many months ago when Sarissa had "special server" status, so that everyone below level 30 got little "Aladdin's lamp" style buff-drops. This particular buff gave her 50% extra experience for a few minutes, and I discovered that it did stack with the Elizabuff - at level 7, in a solo party, Memree got 265 experience per berserk wolf while it lasted, and just 212 after it expired.

Memree ended up at level 9, as nine o'clock was approaching, and I needed to log in on Auzura-5 with my rogue Rage (or RAGE, to be strictly accurate), who is level 91 now. At least this week we all knew that, despite the map on the website, the "Dratan Run" would start from the south gate, not the west one; the giant warrior statues were all in place when I got there about five minutes early, and then, the monsters arrived - and, after killing a couple, and ignoring a couple of others, I actually managed to pick up some loot, two or three each of the usual, or what used to be usual, item drop boosters, skill point boosters, and large attack and defence potions, plus of course some tool aids etc.

If the GM in charge does actually lay down any further loot along the trail, I imagine it all expires and vanishes before we get there, as there are a lot of monsters along the way to deal with, generally around the level 130 to 140 or so range. Rage did as much as she could, using Flame Arrow to give ten to thirteen thousand damage to flutons, patriarch botises, reinforced troll types, and so on, and Snare as well. I had resolved to only stay for half an hour, but in the end I stayed for 45 minutes - it was at that point that a Lilit took a dislike to me, I'm sure I'd not attacked it, and chased me back down the road, with my health cut back by around a third. That seemed a suitable incentive to head back to town, before my luck ran out.

There seemed a pretty good turnout, with some really high level people there, but I'm sure it will take a while for them to reach the far end of the trail. I was recruited into a party by a level 84 knight called RayHaskins, but he left before I did.

LordDarth had kept busy in Maargadum Jail, and got the pale blue horse into level 30 before the end of the evening, which is at least slightly past the halfway point in the trip to level 37.