Random Rewards

MistressDomino on Tairen did manage to sell her soccer balls eventually at 75,000 gold each, and the golden soccer balls at ten times that; she sold a fair amount of other loot too, so my cash reserves on that server have received a nice boost. When I checked during the night, everything except some item drop boosters had sold, so I shut down operations - which was rather lucky, as apparently there was another of the unscheduled maintenance downtimes at some point, to reboot the item mall, so MD would have been at risk of losing her cash if she had still been online.

The main addition to the item mall seems to be the soccer costume covers, at 100 aeria points each - fifrteen different countries get their own football "strips", including the US, Korea (do North and South share the same colours?), Hong Kong, Taiwan, Spain, Germany, Turkey, France, Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and Russia...but not including England. I can see some people sorely tempted to "ragequit" over that...

With the late morning and the whole afternoon likely to be taken up with work downstairs, my only chance for some soccer ball farming was straight after breakfast. RedRackham had already gone back to his gnoll lancers on Cariae-4, and soon got his drake into level 19 - but for the farming, it was the Hatzring server's turn.

My choices on that server are somewhat limited, but I opted for my rogue RedRyder there, who is at the start of level 24, with just a level 25 +1 crossbow. She soon found that the triangle balls took her a while to kill - she hits them for around 320 damage a time, which would mean probably seven hits would be needed, but she misses them a lot more often than she hits.

Still, she went out, courtesy of the Juno NPC scroll, to Hunter Dranore on Hatzring-4, and fought the triangle balls by him, and also the other two local locations I'd previously used, settling into a triangular run after a while. I didn't see any other players, even Randol itself was just about deserted, and by the time my coffee was brewed, Red had got 120 soccer balls, and 7 golden ones. A pandora's box had given her five physical defence minerals, too, which as usual for such drops were the level 12 type.

That just about concluded the active work for quite a while, though I did leave RedRyder out by the sasquatches and horn beasts, so that, when I checked up on RedRackham's progress, I could get her to kill the latest triangle ball. RedRackham, meanwhile, continued his pet-levelling work, so that the drake was well into level 21 by the time of the early evening food break.

SirKit had a few items to catch up on, and was able to get a couple of new quests. There was another delivery to make to Magician Rau out at the Column of Magic, while the "Sharp Tooth" quest tied in nicely with the "First Class Salamander Skin" one, as the cerebrii drop some of the teeth, and they are in the same spot as salamander ruins, which provide red leather for Armour Trader Clain in Merac village. As I've mentioned before, the "Sharp Tooth" quest is an unusual one, as it needs two types of drops - teeth from the cerebrii in south Merac, and another type of teeth from the rough jaguars of the desert, who hang out next to the ravenous larvae in south Dratan. So, once Kit had finished in Merac, he had to ride down through the desert in Dratan to kill some rough jaguars.

Also in Dratan, it seemed about time SirKit added the entrance to the Tomb of Theos to his memory scroll, so he teleported down to the sphinx fighters, and rode swiftly through their ranks until he reached the comparative safety of the non-aggressive wafes. From there it was an easy ride to the Tomb entrance, since I do know which turns to take to get there.

Strangely, I didn't see any triangle balls in Dratan, although in Merac they'd been all along the path Kit had rode along, at fairly short and regular intervals.

One other thing SirKit needed to do was change the two level 53 +15 weapons he was carrying, a healer wand and a rogue crossbow, into knight weapons. It is handy to have both of them, so that as well as dual swords, Ponaitrun's Dual Sword, he can also use a single sword, Scott's Painful Reminder, and a shield, if his skill Shield Strike is needed...which it may well be if he teams with RedRydeR in the Tomb of Theos at some point.

The various bits of fighting, and quest rewards, moved Kit on by 9.28% and 21 skill points, as well as 7 pet points; he then spent 250 skill points on the sixth and final level of Two Weapon Fighting, adding an extra 18 to his attack while he is using dual swords. At level 50 he would be able to add a further 120 to his physical attack, courtesy of Two Hand Control, for 573 skill points, I noticed; that particular passive skill ought to work with both dual swords and a single blade, apparently.

Then it was time for RedRydeR to take over the newer computer, and SirKit to get onto the XP-running older one; they teamed up, and headed out to the usual elite sphinx speer man and his friends.

The first thing I wanted to do was check out one of the new types of level-limited platinum blessed irises, to make sure that it would give a 200% boost to experience. With SirKit out of compass range, and thus providing a solo party, the experience for RedRydeR from killing a single sphinx speer man rose from 212,197 to 636,591, so all was well on that score. With Kit in range, the figure fluctuates from one kill to the next, but, at about two-thirds of the solo rate, did about triple when the level 61-90 pbi had been started.

SirKit just settled for double experience from his Elizabeth's Enhancement buff, but RedRydeR did pretty well during the hour the pbi lasted, going up by16.41%. For the whole session, which was around two and a half hours, Red added 23.25% in all, plus 23 skill points and 1792 pet points. SirKit, meanwhile, gained 87.68%, taking him into level 50, plus 45 skill points.

Back in Dratan, RedRydeR discovered a new quest to do on her next outing, "Sphinx's Wicked Intention" - she will need to kill five each of the sphinx fighters and sphinx speer men, so that won't be any problem. SirKit will need to collect five "rotten flesh" from the death knight lancers and death knight soldiers on level five of Maargadum Jail, which ought to be simple enough...and deliver the package to Healer Yabo as well, for an extra reward. He could also attempt to kill the boss down there, the Death Knight of Iris, but I think we can file that one away, and lose it.

The theory about the "soccer" costume covers, and the strange-seeming collection selection of the countries represented, is that they weren't in fact designed with the current football world cup in mind, they are perhaps more for the next international Last Chaos tournament, as the countries are those that have their own versions of LC - or have signed up to have one. So, as there is no England-based company providing LC servers, there is no England costume. It makes sense out of something that was otherwise rather a puzzle.

RedRackham went back to the gnoll lancers, with his drake in level 22 now... and, over on the Hatzring server, RedRyder set up shop next to Armour Trader Rowel, hoping to sell some soccer balls. After a few minutes there was an announcement of "Random prizes in Randol!", so RedRyder quickly stood up, and was able to grab a large attack potion, a skill point booster... and a "great HP boost potion", which increases a character's health points by 30% for a day. That might be reasonably valuable, assuming that it can be traded...