Prizes Galore

The pet-levelling session that LordDarth began on Hatzring-5 yesterday at breakfast time continued overnight, and into the new day. There was a time when the game, on my older computer, would run out of memory or play other tricks after just an hour or two, so it's very useful that things have settled down now. Auzura's MistressDomino was in merchant mode overnight, and continued until coffee time - she sold a useful amount of stuff, the trick will be to actually find the items I want to buy with the gold I've now got.

RedRydeR on Cariae logged on after coffee, for another session in Prokion Temple on Cariae-5. There were plenty of solo parties to choose from, which also meant that the server was pretty busy - the back room was in use, so I ended up in the corridor room, which has a reasonable supply of orc sergeants, plus a few axemen at the ends. I could wish that the orcs respawned a bit faster, but it's not a bad place to play. Its one big disadvantage is that other people tend to come in and make themselves at home, but luckily that didn't happen this time.

I managed to keep going longer than I'd expected, which meant that Red ended up having added 4.56%, taking her past the halfway point in level 35 and giving 53 guild points to Discipline. 227 skill points were earned, which was the important thing. At that rate of progress, the whole of level 35 would be worth very nearly 5,000 skill points; Red should get slightly more than that, due to the use of her "beginner" platinum super skill pills early in the level...

For the afternoon session, I stayed with RedRydeR, but started off by doing most of her outstanding quests - which meant heading for Merac, and killing pilferers, bandits, berserkers, blood frenzies, doom slayers, and gnolls. So, I covered quite a bit of ground. I don't intend to claim the quest rewards until Red has finished levelling, and sp-farming, in Prokion, but then they ought to provide a useful little boost.

One thing I did notice was that, while I passed four or five pet-levellers, they had all been ks'd, and were just standing there without fighting anything. One of them was being attacked by a pilferer, which I'm sure would do them no harm...but it looked as if the pilferer had killed their pet. I was looking through the screenshots part of the forums a little later, and there was a thread to do with serina, also known as manavich. Apparently she had run out of pet-levellers on the PvE subservers, and gone onto a PvP one - where she was recognised, and mount-killed (killed while riding her mount) a couple of times. Nice to think that it was serina who had to go and pay to have her pet unsealed, for a change, rather than one of her many victims.

After the time in Merac, RedRydeR went over to Prokion Temple again, and spent the rest of the afternoon there. I had to move around a bit as the place was pretty busy, and spent some time on the gallery above the central stairways, before ending up in the "corridor room", which had been in use earlier. In all, Red managed to add another 8.60%, and 100 guild points for Discipline, plus 336 more skill points. It wasn't quite as good a ratio of skill points to experience as usual, due to the visit to Merac. I also did accidentally get onto the compass-map of another member of the solo party, who was level 16, and that really boosted my experience gain for a kill or two...something to check out further when RedRydeR levels up, I decided.

With that in mind, after the early evening food break I logged on a level 20 knight on Cariae-5, one I'd never done much work with, SirKit. I spent what skill points he had on the first four levels of Canid Fence, for extra defence, and the first level of Vitality Control, for increased health regeneration, and then, after finding a solo party, and getting the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff, teleported to Dratan, where, first of all, he did the quest to kill 15 death goddesses, and then after getting the reward teleported to Prokion Temple.

It shows how well-armoured knights are, in that the ghouls and mummies did him no damage at all. Granted, he was using a level 25 +3 shield and level 25 +3 gauntlets, but his chest armour was still level 5, his boots level 1, and his leggings level 21 +2. Oh, and he was wearing the Halloween "evil headband" for a knight, giving just 30 defence, until he picked up a level 22 helm of the brave, giving 46 defence.

SirKit reached level 21, anyway, which was the object of the exercise, so that he can team with RedRydeR when Red had reached 36, without being "capped". He went up 91.27%, and gained 105 skill points, which allowed him to get the fifth level of Canid Fence, three more levels of Vitality Control, and the first three levels of Uncanny Movement, to increase his running speed, as well as the first level of the personal dungeon skill Fatal Divide, which he probably won't use, but is needed before he can start learning some other skills.

Reaching level 21 allowed SirKit to wear the level 26 plate mail and leggings, again +3, so his defence has risen nicely. The +3 helm and boots are waiting for when he reaches level 22, when he'll be able to wear the whole of the "Radiant" set.

There was still an hour or so to go before I'd need to head for the Quiz Room, so for a change it was the Kaerella on Katar who had a chance to head for Prokion Temple on the fifth subserver. She is level 32 now, and the orc fighters give the best ratio of skill points to experience... but the place was, as usual for a Sunday evening, rather crowded, and the "mirror" corridor room, which I find is the best place for orc fighters, was already in use.

For a while I moved around, trying to find another good supply of orc fighters - but then I discovered that my favourite back room was free, so decided I might as well stay there for half an hour or so, if I tried to concentrate more on the axemen than the sergeants. By the time Kae logged out, she had added 16.42%, along with 178 skill points - as she'd been able to equip her drake in the back room, since the axemen are still green-named for her, 654 pet points got added too.

At about ten past eight LordDarth logged out; in all, his horse had gone up eight levels during that marathon session, from yesterday morning to this evening, and was now around 80% of the way through level 27. It still wasn't quite halfway to the start of level 37, in terms of the total number of pet points needed, but it was good progress, for sure.

MistressDomino logged in in Darth's place, on Auzura-2, and after lightening her inventory a little by putting her 160 remaining item drop boosters into Bianca's storage, went into the Quiz Room. And then Kaerella logged out from Katar-5, and her namesake logged in on Auzura-2, and hurried to join MD.

The Quiz itself was a bit of a bloodbath. The question that tripped almost everybody up was the one about the number of oases in Dratan - 5 or 7? I remembered that it was the lower number, but almost everyone else went for the other half of the room, and vanished... and the doors had not been left open this week. We also lost some people on the question about which side of the Dratan map Prokion Temple is - which is east, not west. By the time we safely got to question twenty, only nine people were left... so it looks as if that particular server, at least, may be a little short of new heaven stones this week.

TinyFox holds his own little quiz after the official one most Sundays, I think, but this week people were being encouraged to hold their own "Cinco de Mayo" events, so his quiz was mentioned in a forum thread. So, RedRydeR went along to the announced location, next to the arena in Cariae-1 Randol. There were fifteen questions, I think, and many of them did have a "Cinco de Mayo" theme - it's a Mexican holiday apparently. I managed to be the first to answer one question, Red's a ranger so ought to know that Flame Arrow is a ranger skill, after all... and the prize was rather better than [GM]Kali's single pbi, I got two pssps, plus a mana stealer.

TinyFox passed my winnings over to me at the end, and made the slight mistake of going away from his keyboard while still clicked on to RedRydeR, so may have been slightly puzzled to find himself out deep in the countryside when he returned.

There was another event over on Katar-4, being held by the "big titan" DeadlyMatic, assisted by MegaBabe, so the local Kaerella went along to that, and managed to pick up a couple of tool aids early on, plus Remedies and Candy. There was a race on horseback from the north gate to the west gate, going the long way round, which on my screen I won, but not on other screens, and there was a hide and seek which I didn't manage to do...followed by a "yes or no" type quiz, with plenty of prizes dropped for us all. DeadlyMatic was generous with the prizes, and another titan, Shinkara, passed over his winnings to me, and maybe a little more... and at the end our host gave us all some more goodies, so Kae ended up with a fine selection of magic attack and defence minerals, item drop boosters, effort scrolls, and even a master coin or three.

That took over an hour, so once it reached the end, it was definitely time for me to log out. By then LordDarth had got his horse safely into level 28, before he too logged off for the night.