Everybody Out...

The overnight maintenance brought only the tiniest patch, with no changes to anything other than the item mall, so I was hopeful that there wouldn't be any need for unscheduled further downtimes to put anything right. We are halfway through the Wendy Bear event now, which means that more people seem to be wearing the pirate armour cover than not.

At breakfast time, RedRackham went out on Cariae-4 to do a little more work on his drake with the gnoll lancers. An hour or so later I noticed that a pandora's box had appeared close to him, so RedRydeR teleported down to open it, and to deal with a level 50 pandora beast if one was released - but all we got was a drop of ten small healing potions. That spot is actually pretty close to the level 50 salamander ruins and level 51 cerebri, so my phoenix rogue tried them out while she was there. With their magical attack the cerebri could do some damage, but neither monster gave very impressive experience. RedRydeR gained 0.29%, a skill point, and 31 pet points.

MistressDomina had taken in about 178 million last night before logging out, which isn't anything like enough to buy any of the armour items on her wants list, so went back into merchant mode on Cariae-4 after that for a while. She sold the few heaven stones she had in her inventory, followed by three lucky smelting stones...and then somebody bought 150 item drop boosters, which helped to move MD's total another step back towards respectability.

After coffee, RedRydeR headed for Maargadum Jail and, finding floor three free, started to fight the beast flyers, and their friends the beast archers. SirKit logged on, and Red recruited him into the combat party; he then hurried to join her, just standing at the side providing the combat party boost. There were no visitors; by the end of the session, Red had earned 31.13%, 106 skill points and 1528 pet points, while Kit had added 14.92% and 99 skill points. Plenty more pieces of the Wendy Bear had been picked up, as well as a couple of heaven stones.

Over lunch, RedRackham had got his drake past the halfway point in level 38, which meant that it was definitely time to arrange a trade with RedRyder. So, that drake was passed to RedRydeR - and her drake, a quarter of the way through level 20, went to RedRackham, for a bit of a boost. RedRackham's supply of quality stones was getting a bit low, so RedRydeR bought seventeen rogue-type hammers from Geres, headed for the mine, and used some of the tool aids she'd picked up recently to mine 459 quality stones. RedRackham followed her there, used the one pick-axe he had, with a tool aid... and traded the few Wendy Bear pieces he'd somehow acquired for RedRydeR's supply of quality stones.

RedRydeR and SirKit then headed for Maargadum Jail together, for a session which, due to its late start, wasn't all that much longer than the morning session. RedRydeR levelled up to 47 in a little under an hour, so I equipped her with her level 52 hood and boots to complete her 50/52 set, used her new stat points to increase her dexterity... and then found that SirKit, his dual blades flashing, was fighting alongside me, rather than standing at the side - how could this be?

It was in fact my recently-added friends list pal, the level 44 knight uffo1, who had just arrived, asked to join the party, and after a minute or two hurried off somewhere. He may have gone down to level four or five, or he may have gone into one of level three's side rooms, just off my radar... but his health bar went inexorably down, and after it reached zero, he logged out. He did log back in, but didn't say anything, and left the party before long.

By the time the early evening food break was approaching, RedRyder had earned 33.85%, while SirKit had gained 18.06% - and they had each got 122 new skill points. Over the break, RedRackham did a little pet-levelling work - and then it was time for the evening session, though, as usual for a Wednesday, it would not go on as late as on other evenings.

Since RedRydeR and SirKit had had the other two sessions, this time it was SirKit's turn to take the lead, with AmityBlaise tagging along. They headed for Prokion Temple of course, and for a change found the back room free - there was no sign of ThunderStorms at all. xXSorcexX did put in a brief appearance, he vanished so suddenly after a minute or two that he may have died - and that was it, apart from a junior mage who ran in, saw that the place didn't lead anywhere, and ran out again.

By the time I had to log out, SirKit had earned another 20.74%, while AmityBlaise was up by 17.46% and 53 guild points - they had each gained 209 skill points.

RedRackham logged in while I was away, to do a bit of pet-levelling on the lower-level drake - but wouldn't you know it, somehow our Aeria chums had got something to do with the item mall, and billing, not sorted out during the scheduled maintenance, so once again there was an unscheduled downtime - so when I checked on Mr Rackham, he was disconnected, and there was an announcement that the Cariae two-hour event had been cancelled. By Aeria games standards a half hour downtime is "brief" I guess, so at 9:50pm UK time, after [GM]Ozymandias had tipped off the forum shoutbox that the servers were back up again,

RedRackham was able to return to the gnoll lancers in Merac.

"Cariae/Sarissa events are being cancelled today due to the downtime and issues that have arisen", they announced. "To make up for this, there will be a 150% xp/sp event running on all Cariae/Sarissa servers from 3pm-5pm PDT" - a bit late to be any use to us Europeans, and, really, just switching on 50% extra experience, even with skill exp added, is a poor substitute for a proper actual adventuring event.

Curiously, I don't think RedRackham lost any pet experience at all from the disconnection, but I'm glad, after last week, that I didn't have MistressDomina on Cariae, or MistressDomino on Auzura, in merchant mode. In fact, I decided to cancel my tentative plans to set MistressDomina up to sell her items overnight...

And that was just as well, as, after RedRackham had added a mere 414 pet points, the Cariae server crashed. The pet-levelling appeared to go through the motions, but no points were added, and no damage numbers floated up over the gnoll lancer's head, and after a while the "disconnected" window came up again. The people in the forum shoutbox were not happy. [GM]Ozymandias mentioned that the GMs weren't taking any messages or tickets - "We have to deal with the servers first". So, it doesn't look as if I'll be doing any overnight pet-levelling, even.