High Finance

RedRackham took the night off. I very nearly put MistressDomina up in merchant mode on Cariae overnight, but decided that, with the GMs apparently working on a fix for problems with party-making, specifically some people's inability to leave a party, or even be kicked, the risk of an unscheduled maintenance raiding MD's inventory was too great.

Still, my pet-leveller was able to return to action at breakfast time, and worked steadily to get his horse up to the next level - and indeed level 33 was reached early in the afternoon.

SirKit logged in after coffee, and, for just over half a million for the pair, converted RedRydeR's old boots and hood into their knightly equivalents. Equipping them increased his physical defence from 1817 to 1923, which is probably rather more than he needs at present. Catching me in a good mood, a level 5 sorcerer called 816MAFIA managed to talk me into giving him some cash - I passed over 25,000 gold and three assorted accessories, since those are useful early on.

There was already a royal knight hard at work in the middle of Maargadum Jail's third level, so after killing a beast scythe or two up on the edge, Kit returned to town, and checked to see if there were any quests available. There were two, both being offered by the border guard captain - so first of all he rode down to the south-east corner of the map and the giant larvae, to kill ten of them, and then after getting the reward for that he returned to Jail, and killed the necessary thirty beast flyers in the convenient side room. Shortly after that the other knight left, so I was able to take over the central area for the rest of the morning.

As SirKit is a level above the beast flyers now, and the experience and skill exp gain was back to normal, the gain wasn't as swift as it was yesterday, but it was still all useful stuff. The rogue Isgor did ask about joining the party, but at that time the solo party I was in was full. A knight called LoganwitziG dropped by, but in lower-level armour, and wearing the ringmaster "Uncle Sam" top hat, wasn't there to fight, but rather to chat, it seemed.

By the end of the session SirKit had gone up by 22.24%, 180 skill points, and 1515 pet points....and getting the reward from Great Magician Minearm for the beast flyer quest after lunch added another 4.37% and no less than 60 skill points. Minearm then gave Kit the "beast leader" quest, to get three rings from the beast crawlers, so a trip down to level five is in his near future.

After lunch I had some paperwork to do - game-related stuff, but it took a while, as I'd decided that I really needed to know what undownloaded packages and other items I had on which servers and which accounts. Over the years, I have been tempted by various bargain offers, and it would be impossible to remember where everything was. I have very little on the Sarissa and Hatzring servers, except a few small loot wheel prizes... since I've played a little more on the newest server, Tairen, I see that there are a couple of useful packages waiting there to be used. The Katar server does slightly better - but my main two servers are Cariae, my original one, and Auzura, with its more Europe-friendly event times, and now at least I know where everything is.

It also helped to know which accounts had fairly full records sections, as you are only allowed 25 spaces across all the servers...particularly as there was a rather tempting offer today. with a 75% rebate on the "one and Only" pack, which has 50 heaven stones, and 25 each of the two types of rune, the MP and HP stealers, the large crits and berserker potions...and, more importantly, 25 chaos smelting stones. 13,999 aeria points is a lot of cash, but at a quarter of that, after the rebate, well, it's a reasonable deal. And this weekend there was an "instant tiered spender" event running, which meant that if one spent over 10,000 ap, one was given 6 MP stealers, 6 HP stealers, 29 platinum adrenalin, 4 power potions, 14 large crit potions, 4 berserker potions, 65 heaven stones, 20 lucky smelting stones, 3 platinum blessed irises, 3 platinum super skill pills, 275 experience boosters, 275 skill point boosters...and 10 more chaos smelting stones. The tiered event had been running for a day or so - but it overlapped with the rebate event by a few hours, making a rather delightful bargain. If one can get round to using all that stuff!

The paperwork meant a much abbreviated afternoon session, but once that was done, my Cariae mage Keerella logged on. I'd noticed that a knight of mine, sirDarth (not to be confused with SirDarth) was only level ten, so it seemed like a good idea for Kee to "power level" him in the Tomb of Theos. Keerella teleported out to the Tomb's entrance, and found that it was set to maximum easy; sirDarth already had the location on his memory scroll, so joined her there, and formed a party; he became her apprentice in the Guardian system too. Kee gave him some gold, so that he could afford the 30,000 admission fee (and a bit more in case of a disconnection), and in they went.

It didn't take too long to get sirDarth to level 20, helped along by the Elizabeth's Enhancement buff; in fact, Kee got him to level 22 before the early evening food break, so that he can wear the 25/27 armour set if necessary, and open another of Lorraine's treasure chests. Darth got his event weapon, and Keerella got ten more reputation points, to help her keep her thirtieth position on the Cariae reputation rankings. I must mention that only one other player who is under level 100 is ranked higher...

When the early evening food break began, sirDarth logged out, and RedRackham logged back in for some more pet-levelling, this time on Cariae-5 so that he could give Keerella a solo party. Once I was back at the computer, Kee returned to fighting, mainly to earn some pet points and a few precious skill points. The Tomb had been fairly quiet, as the Dratan Castle Siege had been going on, but then a few people arrived, mainly rather lower level that Kee. A level 39 assassin asked if she could ks me, and I agreed. She used a platinum blessed iris for triple experience, and a crit potion to increase her attack, which makes all the difference against monsters so much higher-level, and, since my experience fell from around 4.5 million to 2.7 million, she was managing to inflict about 40% of the damage.

By the end of the hour xXQcMawiiXx had gone up six levels - which makes me wonder if one of my characters could get a similar type of boost from ks-ing Kee, or Barbarienne, or Rage. It would be simpler than a full-on "power level", and not much different from just having an equal party with the lower-level character assisting, so it may well be something to investigate. Anyway, by about ten past eight, UK time, Keerella had earned 1.20% for herself, 20 much-wanted skill points, and 3646 pet points, as well as getting some gold, a moonstone box or two, and one minor armour drop, which will soon be sold to Merchant Geres.

For the Sunday Quiz, Kaerella and MistressDomino went along to the usual room on Auzura-2. Argoth, Ratel and Liezl were there, so Ratty did pretty well for heaven stones, but he told me afterwards that the computer that Ratel was on had developed a hardware problem. This was after question twenty, luckily, but is still a bit of a financial blow. Kae and MD got their prizes too - and then MD logged out, to allow RedRackham to get back to work.

Kaerella moved over to Auzura-5, as [GM]Stratos had announced that he was going to hold a "race" there. His idea of a race is a bit different from what [GM]JediMike or the now-departed [GM]Cara would do - he announced the winning coordinates, and getting there was up to us. The only problem was that his "finishing line" was high at the edge of the map, and almost impossible to get to. Since I had pet-levelled on treants there a while ago, I went along to my climbing-up point and attempted to ride or run along the line of peaks, but someone else got there first. It's a good view from up there, anyway. There was a second race, to a similarly inaccessible point across the lake, but I didn't manage to get there. Apparently the winners got 25 chaos balls each, which seems a reasonable prize.

So, apart from checking that the new item mall goodies had safely arrived, that was the end of today's entertainment, though RedRackham continued until the end of the evening with his pet-levelling endeavours. SirKit had noticed a few other pet-levelling knights in action fighting gnoll lancers when he'd ridden to the giant larvae, but they generally went further along than Red's preferred spot.