A New Setback For Pet-Levellers

Last night's patch was at first glance minor, though it was big enough for me to need to "pause" my antivirus protection to get it downloaded. Some mall items in the in-game mall have been reduced in price, but this slight improvement is overshadowed by the removal of, among other things, one of my favourite packages, the Egeha Package which, even after it had the 30-day party recall removed (reducing its price from 599 to 499 ap), had a useful selection of stuff: 5 teleport books, 5 summon books, 5 resurrection scrolls, 50 greater healing pots, 50 large defence potions, and 50 large attack potions. Even at today's trimmed prices that selection would cost you 1087 ap to buy separately, sigh...

Anyway, I got Last Chaos updated, and attempted to log in for some pet-levelling at about eight o'clock, UK time, but I repeatedly got the "could not connect" message - and eventually discovered, by checking the forum shoutbox, that the servers were all down for an emergency maintenance...I thought they checked the new patches on a test server before applying them to the main game? There was of course no estimate as to when the servers would be up again, but when I tried again at around half past. the game was actually working.

LordDarth hurried down to level five of Maargadum Jail in Merac - but Dompteur had beaten me to it, and was in the best spot. Still, Darth settled in with the next death mask lancer along, and started to move his horse along towards two-thirds of the way through level 35. RedRackham over on Cariae-4 was also set up, fighting bandits in Merac, and soon got his drake into level 31. So, while I was to be busy downstairs for the morning, at least the pet-levelling side was covered - or so I thought.

Unfortunately, after a while I checked, and RedRackham was just standing there...he had killed his bandit, even though he was still only hitting it for 18 damage a time. Sure enough, when Red took on the other bandit, its health began to decline slowly, while over in Hatzring-4's Maargadum Jail, the death mask lancer's health bar was down to about 75%...looking through the forum, I notice a mention of the no-weapon attack speed being increased. After teleporting to a different spot, a berserker's health started to decline too, so RedRackham moved to the gnoll lancers, which, at level 39, are a bit more robust, but did still seem to take some damage. Meanwhile in the Jail, the death mask lancer's health bar did seem to be declining too, so I had to take occasional breaks from attacking it. Sadly the actual rate of getting pet points seemed unchanged, at around a thousand per hour.

The new event hinted at last week turned out to be the "Wendy Bear" one, where we pick up as loot drops nine different squares which, put together, form a picture of a teddy bear. Take all nine pieces to a special NPC in Randol, Saroyan, and, after playing rock paper scissors, you stand a chance of winning a costume cover, or some other prize. This event is scheduled to last for two weeks; I did think that, if the costume cover was the same as the last time this event ran, soon almost everyone would be running around in school uniforms, but kaynah80 in the shoutbox reported that he got the knight pirate costume, so perhaps we will all soon be pirates.

By lunchtime, the health-erosion of the gnoll lancers and death mask lancers seemed to have settled down, though I noticed that Dompteur's death mask lancer was down to about 20% health then. All the messing around meant that I'd done less work during the morning than I'd intended, which means that I'll have more stuff to do tomorrow, even after doing a bit more downstairs work in the early afternoon.

LordDarth's horse reached the start of its final level, 36, soon after two, which was at least a sign of useful progress. The "Creature Carnival" event this evening, with its hour or so of double pet experience, should be useful, I felt, in getting a bit further along.

The afternoon session was a bit short, so SirKit headed for Prokion Temple again. The solo party I joined dwindled a bit, so that I became its leader after a while. I had a bit of trouble with a level 25 knight called Knigith21234, who didn't seem to grasp the solo idea of a solo party, and rather expected me to be standing in the hallway at the Temple to welcome him...or when he saw we had a level 94 party member, maybe we should all join him killing screaming zombies or whatever? I think he was a bit young, so one has to make allowances.

My favourite back room was in use when I arrived, so I had moved on to the corridor room. The rogue Liubov joined me there later in the afternoon, so there was a slight shortage of orcs for two - luckily when I investigated, the back room was then free, so I finished my session there, whispering to Liubov that she now had the other room to herself.

By the time SirKit logged out, he had gained 12.00%, along with 184 skill points and 117 guild points. For the early evening food break, RedRackham logged back in, and headed for the gnoll lancers in the south of Merac. He took off his hit rate accessories, to try to avoid damaging his sparring partner, but its health bar was still a bit unsteady.

The reaction on the forum to the disappearance of many items from the in-game item mall, such as the warehouse expansion card, shadow removal powder, physical and magical defence shields, memory scroll card expander, the one-day warehouse card, and quite a few others, led to lots of new threads - [GM]SupermanOX tried to make a more "official" thread for the subject, locking the others and referring people to his thread... and then Aeria_ks1lent came along and locked that one too. Apparently [GM]Cara has promised that most of the missing items will be returned, probably to the web version of the mall, but what a strange decision to remove them in the first place - the matter just wasn't thought through. Unlike the bare-handed hit rate problem, we can't blame the South Korean developers for this one.

On the pet-levelling side, RedRackham chatted a little with KiaOra, and LordDarth chatted with xDARKSHADOWx, and later with Dompteur, and it is safe to say that nobody was very happy with the situation. Dompteur recalled how things got changed a couple of years ago, when suddenly the physical attack of the monsters was increased - this is a bit similar, but at least it's the monsters that are unexpectedly dying this time, rather than us.

The evening session was going to be a short one, since, as with most Wednesdays, I'd have to log out at around eight, so RedRydeR headed for Maargadum Jail on Cariae-5, and went straight down to the third level. The beast flyers there are level 46, three ahead of Red, and they and the level 42 beast archers are protective of each other, which makes for a rather busy central area - it looks really impressive when a player is mobbed by half a dozen or more beast flyers, with their big wings, with three or four beast archers also attacking from a distance.

Kaerella spent quite a while in level three's central killing area farming skill exp some months ago, and to survive she needed the 50/52 armour set, all +13 - which meant she was a level above the beast flyers. RedRydeR, I discovered, was okay there in the 45/47 armour set, with pieces ranging from +8 to one +13, though having a 10% suction of life accessory certainly helped.

For a time a specialist sorcerer called Naturist barged in and fought the central beast flyers too - I think he'd have been better off in one of the side rooms with just three beast flyers and a few beast archers, judging by the red haze of health potions in action. Towards the end a knight was sitting watching, probably hoping I'd vacate the spot soon, as it is quite a popular one - it's quite often in use even on the fourth subserver, when I run through to pet-level.

A level 44 rogue called BoneS (or some similar version of that name) was in the same solo party, and apologised when she ran through the middle, heading for a lower level - I wished her good luck down there. She did invite me, once she had come up again, to join her at the sphinx fighters, but by then I only had about half an hour left... and besides, I was getting some useful experience, skill points and pet points with the flyers. It is useful that neither the beast flyers nor the beast archers are pet-eaters, though you have to be slightly careful on the way in as the beast scythes, up on the gallery, are inclined to nibble on a pet if they get the chance.

By the time I did have to log out, RedRydeR had earned 33.70%, 159 skill points, and 1315 pet points, so it had been a worthwhile trip... and it did make a change from the orcs in Prokion Temple.

LordDarth had been able to continue his pet-levelling while Red was fighting, though as well as keeping the horse from losing too much of its hunger bar, I had to stop Darth fighting the death mask lancer for a minute or two every now and again, to let it regain its health. Late in the evening RedRackham was able to log back in too, and teleport to the gnoll lancers again, to take advantage of the last part of the Creature Carnival's double pet experience. This time his gnoll lancer seemed able to keep its health, just about, but this does seem to vary. By the end of the evening, Darth had got his horse to around three-quarters of the way through the final level necessary, thank goodness, while RedRackham's drake had safely reached level 32.