Power Failure

I hadn't really meant to leave SirDarth pet-levelling overnight again on Sarissa-4, but he seemed to be getting along nicely, and there was just enough of level 36 left, so I ended up leaving him hard at work - and all went well, so that just before nine o'clock this morning, UK time, the horse reached level 37. I immediately unequipped it - and equipped a level 3 dragon hatchling he was carrying instead. The poor thing hadn't been allowed out for so long that its Sympathy was down to zero, but that soon began to creep upwards.

The "Merac Run" last night was fun, even if it did go on too late. I did lag out once, with all the activity, but was quickly able to log back in again and ride down, and I'm sure the same fluton, or the second of a pair of flutons, was still being battled when I arrived back. Barbarienne got recruited into a party by the level 36 sorcerer SorcererCCXXX, who had also signed up the level 89 mage midnightsapphire, and the level 85 titan cmom2, who is a regular at Storm the Castle and Mad Monster Spawn events. Sometimes I needed to do a bit of Party Heal, but we generally fought separately.

MistressDomino on Auzura-1 managed to sell some items overnight, to top up her gold reserves, but there weren't any rogue gloves or shirts on sale this morning suitable for Rage. So, MD logged out, and, after restarting the game, LordDarth logged in on Hatzring-4, to use his last beginner-type platinum super skill pill. SirDarth had to log out, after his hatchling reached level 4 and 10/100 Sympathy, and Kaerella logged in on Hatzring-4 to give LordDarth a solo party, and do a little herb-harvesting.

LordDarth got the level 30 Mana Break skill, which isn't any great use but was needed before he could become a temple knight when he reached level 31; he was also able to upgrade the Discipline guild on Hatzring to level 5, and then, after getting a little extra gold from Kae, managed to get the guild to level 6, which meant that he could then "freeze" Kae's experience gain to 50%.

The session in Prokion Temple went smoothly, and LordDarth went up by 23.46%, while gaining 182 skill points. His pony reached level 7, adding 1096 pet points. The next target was to reach level 31, so that Darth would get his own freebie 30/32 +10 armour set, and could return the set he was currently wearing, suitably transformed by Collector Ryl, to Kaerella. He would also be able to become a temple knight then.

As that had only taken an hour, there was time for a little shopping after that. On Auzura I couldn't find the gloves or shirt that Rage needs, but MistressDomina, my Cariae-based merchant, had better luck. Last night just before the "Merac Run" she had found a level 86 b5e +15 healer shirt for Barbarienne, to replace the +13 one she has been wearing for quite a while now, sold by TradeMe via Roy's merchant mart for 640 million, and now she found a level 87 +15 helm, which had only just been added to Roy's stocks by Punisher1990, priced at just 470 million.

Barbarienne logged on to receive those two items, and equipping them increased her physical defence from 2615 to 2902, and her magic defence from just 154 to 254. And then Keerella, my level 98 mage, logged on; she already had +15 leggings and headgear, with her other b5e pieces at +13, but MistressDomino was able to buy her a +15 jacket for 499 million, being sold, via Roy, by FoodMart - and the matching boots, again from FoodMart at the same price. Equipping the two new pieces increased Kee's physical defence from 2505 to 2785, and moved her magic defence on from 308 to 408. Now MD will need to sell some more goodies before she can try to get any more +15 pieces! Keerella, who had downloaded quite a few items from the "free spin" promotion, was able to help with MD's restocking.

By the end on the lunch break, SirDarth had got his hatchling to level 5, and back up to 22% Sympathy; but it now seemed a good idea to get LordDarth back in action, this time on Hatzring-5 so that, having run out of b-pssps, he could have the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff.

The afternoon went relatively well; I was joined in the back room by a sorcerer called DarckRaiZ before long, but Darth doesn't kill particularly quickly, so there were, generally, enough orcs to go round. We chatted - he seems to be hoping that 4000 skill points wil be enough to take him to level 85 or so, if he picks and chooses just the skills he needs.

I did have a problem, though - a very brief power cut, lasting no more than a second, which of course kicked my computers offline, and off. It took a while to get them both back online and to get Last Chaos working again, but LordDarth did get back to the room; he himself hadn't taken any damage from the orcs, but his pony had got down to about a third of its health, having just been standing around in-game after the disconnection. DarckRaiZ mentioned that we had just frozen, and he had kindly protected us, which was why my pony had survived.

The orc-bashing continued, and then, minutes after DarckRaiZ had gone off for some food, it happened again - the computer screens went black, and it was "game over". This time when I got back on, the pony had died - but at level 9 it only takes 4536 gold to "unseal" a pet, I discovered. It was just about time for the food break then, so I didn't try to restart the game, I just checked that there wasn't a problem with the local power socket or something. I was relieved to find that, in my bedroom, the clock radio's time display was flashing, so it must have been a general power supply fault, a mini power cut.

LordDarth had gone up by 113.53% during the afternoon, which meant that he had reached level 31, and got his own freebie 30/32 +10 armour set, plus +10 level 33 sword, shield, and dual swords. He was now able to make the switch to being a temple knight too, though he can't learn the first "tk" skills until he reaches level 32. His pony had gone up by two levels to reach level 9, and he had earned another 388 skill points

Luckily there were no further problems with the power supply during the evening. Since LordDarth had now been able to cut Kaerella's experience gain to 50%, and had also returned Kae's +10 (or, on some pieces, more) armour set, Kaerella was able to have her own outing to Prokion Temple on Hatzring-5, with Darth taking his turn to do some herb-farming while providing the solo party. I did check out the back room, but DarckRaiZ wasn't there, and while Kae's armour meant she didn't take much damage, I decided that the orc soldiers and orc fighters in the corridor outside would probably be easier kills.

By the time Kaerella had got 58.03% experience and 259 skill points, her inventory was full, as she was carrying various old armours and some pots, and there had been rather a lot of armour drops. So, she teleported back to town, and spent her sp on various skills, including another level of Resurrection, then, after selling the loot, headed for Maargadum Jail and did twenty "suicide runs" to get back to the start of level 27.

After getting the Elizabuff again, Kae went back to the temple for a further 45 minutes or so, and got a new 30.97% experience, and 137 skill points to spend; her dragon hatchling reached level 8, too - and the Discipline guild on Hatzring had got its first 221 guild points by then, as well.

The Sunday Quiz was approaching, so Kaerella and LordDarth on Hatzring logged out, and Kaerella and MistressDomina logged in on Auzura-2, since that seemed to be a server where I could do with some more heaven stones to sell, and headed for the Quiz Room.

The quiz itself passed without any problems. I saw Ratel there, along with Liezl and Argoth, and did say a few things on the Norcaine guild chat channel, but Ratty can't have been watching it. Running three characters at a Quiz can't be simple, these days. One thing that was strange was that some characters, including mueqita and XxCarmenxX, seemed often to just stand on the "wrong" side of the room, but not get kicked when the countdown for that question ended...so there seems to be a new exploit out there, unless it was just lag.

It was certainly laggy after the quiz ended, as it often is; my first clue was when Kae and MD weren't able to put their armour back on, having removed it, as most people do, during the quiz to make life easier for the servers and computers. The armour finally appeared in position a few seconds later. After Kae passed her prizes across to MD, they both logged out - and logging

MistressDomina back in, on Auzura-1, along with my merchant MistressDomino, wasn't easy, with a lot of "timed out", "unable to connect to server", and "account id already logged in" messages before we finally succeeded.

MistressDomina traded across various loot, spin wheel prizes, and quiz prizes to MistressDomino, once the lag allowed the trading to be started. There wasn't really time for any adventuring, which might have led to problems if there had been any further lag spikes anyway, so I just set MistressDomino up in merchant mode near the arena in Randol, selling her usual selection of items. I would have liked to have set her Cariae equivalent up to sell stuff too, but they are on the same account, so instead it was the Katar version of MD who set up shop on the older computer. Maybe the prices there have risen since I was last there, but she actually sold out within an hour, taking in almost 124 million. On Auzura sales were slower, though the berserker potions and large defence pots went fairly quickly, so MistressDomino will probably be on duty through the night.

The evening's event was a "Race to the Finish", but it started fairly late, and didn't involve mounts, so I assume it was just a bit of a potion-fest, with people using expensive pots... what good is a race when some people are a lot faster than others? The coming days seem rather short of worthwhile events, with no special European ones on Auzura mentioned at all, sadly.