I was able to leave RedRackham to pet-level through the night again in Merac, and his drake went up by two levels - and a third level before coffee time, getting it into level 28, which is starting to be a useful level. LordDarth had just managed to get his horse into level 33 last night; he went back down into Maargadum Jail on Hatzring-4 at breakfast time today, and, finding the preferred position available, settled in to spar with the death mask lancer there.
After coffee, I let LordDarth continue, while SirKit logged in on Cariae-5, joined a solo party, got the Elizabuff, and headed for Prokion Temple. It was a good old-fashioned solo party, with people reminiscing about the old days and so on, and even a few "party recall" alerts to decline. Apparently the monsters in Mondshine give masses of skill exp, one player who had gone through a few levels there had run out of things to do with all the skill points he had gathered...
The back room with the orc sergeants and orc axemen was free, so that was where SirKit spent his time - and actually managed to reach level 33, so RedRydeR yesterday hadn't needed to stop just before reaching 43. In all Kit went up 21.35%, earning 209 skill points and 145 guild points, before he logged out for the lunch break.
Over lunch RedRackham did a little bit more work on his drake, though the levels are starting to get a bit long for them now - level 28 will take almost seven hours. But once I was back at the keyboard, well, I started with a little shopping around. There still weren't any items that are on Barbarienne's, Rage's, Keerella's. or the Auzura Kaerella's wants lists, but I did find a couple of new weapons for RedRydeR, a level 45 +15 crossbow and level 53 daggers +15, both being sold by AnnaHUN, for 179 and 180 million. Since those were the first highly-plussed weapons at that sort of level I'd come across in 40 pages of Roy's stock, MistressDomina quickly bought them. It just cost another half million to change the daggers (or "ponyshankers") into the equivalent crossbow.
Once RedRydeR had taken delivery of the new weapons, she teamed up, in a combat party, with SirKit, and headed for the elite frenzied berserkers. Red's first kill took her into level 43 - it also brought a hand of the warrior, so, with its heaven stone, that was a nice way to celebrate the start of the new level.
RedRydeR did take a short break from the elite frenzied berserkers, to ride down to the gnoll soldiers, as she had a quest to kill 25 of those, but returned to Kit once that quest was complete. And then at the end of the session, there was another quest to do, which involved a brief trip to Maargadum Jail to kill some spike canines. Red and Kit went in, and that didn't take long. Then Red returned to Merac Village, where she got her quest rewards, while Kit did a quest to kill some bandits and pilferers, and then made a trip, on horseback, out to deliver a message to the magician at the column of magic.
RedRydeR also traded her old weapon, the level 37 crossbow, over to SirKit, and once he was back in Randol he got Collector Ryl to change it into dual swords for him, and bought some bloodseal gems. Red had managed to give her level 45 crossbow all its bloodseals, so is fully set up for the most effective possible fighting now.
In all, RedRyder had added 36.36% experience during the afternoon, plus 102 skill points and 1052 pet points, while SirKit had gained 28.70%, 85 skill points, and 84 guild points.
LordDarth and RedRackham were both in action over the early evening food break, but then it seemed time for RedRydeR to finally get the location in Dratan of the sphinx fighters and sphinx "speer" men onto her memory scroll. I had toyed with the idea of Keerella riding out there and using a scroll to summon her - but I have managed to get other characters there before the hard way, so it seemed worth attempting. The trick seems to be not to take the most westerly road, as that takes you to a rather closely-packed group of the masters of secret technique, gelatinous blobs that are aggressive, and have long-range physical and magical skills.
So, Red set out from Dratan City, and was soon riding past the level 55 dragons, level 56 goblin commanders...and then I was approaching the level 57 masters of secret technique. It wasn't too large a group of them, so I dismounted,, and ran through a gap in their line-up. One of them did chase after me, but I kept going, trying to avoid some more dragons and goblin commanders, and managed to get clear. Then there were some level 59 arcane golems...and once I was past them, I was on the path leading into the green southwesterly uplands of Dratan.
The various kinds of wafe occupy the first part of that area, but, as they, unlike everything else I encountered, are not aggressive, I just rode past them - until the campsite where most people fight the sphinx types, and the first of the two elite sphinx speer men, was close. Since I'm well aware that the speer men are a lot more aggressive than the fighters, I risked going reasonably close to fighters while keeping a respectable distance from the speer men, and reached the camp without any further incident.
After I'd got the location onto RedRydeR's memory scroll, Red logged out, and SirKit logged in, to attempt the same journey. He does have his mount now, and, while he may be ten levels lower than my phoenix rogue, knight armour and health regeneration are pretty good, so it did seem worth trying. And, with rather less skill points stashed, he didn't have very much to lose if he did get killed. It's a pity he doesn't have the "beginner" resurrection scrolls and other goodies, but he was begun a long time before those got added to the game for new characters.
SirKit did take some damage from the first group of dragons he rode by, but his health did indeed soon return to normal, and he followed the route that Red had taken, riding past the group of masters of secret technique, and past the arcane golems, without any problems. He rode past the wafes - and he rode past the sphinx fighters and sphinx speer men too, only dismounting when he reached the campsite's fire. So, he added the location to his scroll too.
While the other monsters mentioned tend to give roughly 26,000 experience each, or three times that for the elite versions, when you reach the sphinx types, things change - a sphinx fighter will give 192,907 experience, and a sphinx speer man will give 212,917, more than eight times as much as the previous monsters. This makes the sphinxsters rather popular, and a lot of people move to their location straight from sp-farming in Prokion Temple, and quickly move through the levels until someone else there suggests that everyone joins together for a party fighting the screaming zombies in the Tomb of Theos...which can lead to further triumphs, or disasters.
Still, SirKit needed to farm some more skill points first, it would be a shame to leave the Temple while he is still level 33 - so he logged out and in again and renewed the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff for a full three hours, and headed for Prokion Temple. The back room and corridor room were in use, so I actually ended up in the mirror half, just down from its corridor room, where a group of orc sergeants and orc axemen were congregated. I only had one visitor, a rogue called fastfingers who seemed about to take over the whole local orc population...but then just stood and got hit, so actually was the victim of a disconnection. Once I realised that I killed the orcs that were attacking her and gave her the divine shield buff - if her armour was the +10 set she'd have been okay anyway, but one can never be sure.
By the time the Elizabuff expired, about four minutes after its timer ended, SirKit had gone up by 32.72%, and added a very useful 478 skill points; he earned 268 guild points for Discipline too.
By that time the "word trivia" quiz on Cariae-5 was approaching, so SirKit headed over to Merac village for that. To my surprise it was [GM]JediMike who joined us there, rather than Kali; I asked him if he'd been on vacation, since it was ages since I'd seen him in-game, but apparently not.
Sadly SirKit proved not to be as bright, or as quick-typing, as some other people there...as Cariae was the third server to host the quiz, the suspicion must be that at least one very swift answerer may have gone along an hour, or half hour, earlier elsewhere, which is the problem with these events, unless they can think of 90 rather than 15 questions. At least I now know that a politically undecided person is a "mugwump", the longest place name in use now is in New Zealand, rather than Wales...and that the Hawaiian alphabet has twelve letters, while the longest word one can type with one's right hand is lollipop, and the only English word to end with "mt" is dreamt...so, who says playing games isn't educational?
LordDarth had kept going, levelling his horse, and reached level 34 at around nine, UK time. Once SirKit had logged out, RedRackham was able to get back in, too, for some quality time with his drake in Merac.
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