Bash-a-Botis

The main event announced for today seemed to be an extended maintenance downtime for the item mall, which could have been a problem as MistressDomina needed to buy a week-long Giant Skill Pill - but luckily the "billing maintenance" wasn't scheduled to start until later, so the purchase was duly made, as MistressDomina headed for the Tomb of Theos this morning after coffee.

SirPerivale had logged in first, and headed for the spike canines on the ground floor of Maargadum Jail on Auzura-4. Once he was in position safely behind the teleporter stand, fighting the canine and levelling his hatchling, he registered for a party, and MistressDomina, newly-arrived in Randol, picked him up, to make the necessary solo party.

The Tomb of Theos was on 90% when MD entered; she headed for the ancient grey mummies room of course, where Talea, a ranger-rogue from the DreamCatcher guild, and ExerTicum, a level 103 royal knight in Twisted, were already in action. Luckily Swenja seemed to be having the morning off, so MD was able to concentrate on the two or three mummies at the start, or end, of the corridor, so everyone had plenty of targets.

Another Twisted guildie, PunkCharming, had found what he reckoned was a bargain, a +13 rogue event weapon for 25 million, and was asking if anyone could lend him the money to buy it, as he was sure he could sell it on for at least twice as much. As Peri is actually carrying a bit of gold, for some reason, I said that he could borrow the gold from him, in the A4 Maargadum Jail, but just as PunkCharming had got there, and the trade was in progress, at 11:06am UK time, I got a disconnection, first on MD and then on Peri, just as he had entered the 25,000,000 gold into the trade window.

PunkCharming did wonder if his presence had had anything to do with my disconnection, but, given that that does seem a vulnerable time in LC for me, probably not. The trade was finally made back in Randol when SirPerivale respawned there - and PunkCharming was able to buy the weapon, promising me a share of the profits.

Luckily ExerTicum had Party Recall, and so was able to whisk MistressDomina back to the ancient grey mummies with very little time lost; MD's hour was nearly over, but she was able to finish off her pots, and in all used 55 skill point boosters during the hour, so hadn't lost much time. The experience gain was 0.65%, with the last few minutes in the dungeon time hour, while 305 skill points were gained, and 951 pet points.

Looking at the Twisted guild listings, after that hour MD's donation of guild points, from being 50% frozen for experience gain since the start of level 103, had reached 1,191,048 guild points - not as many as ExerTicum, who has reached 1,472,729. He was getting close to his target for farmed skill points, 18.5k...which, as it happens, is about what MistressDomina had then. He was saying that he can kill 70 to 80 mummies in an hour, which is rather more than MD had been able to manage...

MistressDomina continued her skill point farming after lunch, almost entirely in the corridor again. But now I wanted to experiment; MD usually doesn't "waste time" on buffing herself with the wizardly skills of Haste (increases skill casting speed by 50%), Scud (increases the caster's attack speed by 1.5), and Spell Focus (increases magical hit rate by 10), but maybe, even with the slight delays from taking the time to cast the three skills on herself, using them would allow her to kill more ancient grey mummies per hour?

Well, the experiment was a success. MistressDomina's previous record of mummy kills per hour was 61 - but in the first hour after lunch she killed 71 mummies using 71 skill point boosters, going up 0.63% and gaining 394 skill points. During the second hour she again managed 71 kills, somehow adding 1.11% due to the dungeon time bonus, and again gained 394 skill points. This time MD actually used a MP stealer, instead of having to use six of the greater MP recovery potions and a hundred or so medium mana potions - this made life slightly simpler, but didn't change the actual kill rate, it seems. I continued on for a third hour, with once more 71 boosters used, for 0.74% experience and the same 394 skill points - but somehow in the fourth and final hour of an extended afternoon session, MD managed to fit in 73 kills, adding 0.81% experience and 405 skill points.

So, the afternoon session in all used 286 skill point boosters, and MistressDomina went up by 3.39%, 1587 skill points - and her drake gained another 4297 pet points. It was a long session, but it brought MD's stash of unused skill points back over the 20k mark...higher than it has been since she was level 69, in fact.

There was a slightly extended break after that marathon session. Generally I don't find it productive to try and sp-farm with a high-level character in the Tomb in the evening, as the place tends to get too busy...so instead, there was the attraction of the "Whack-a-Fluton" event on all six servers.

As usual, this event was advertised as taking place in the Dratan arena, or "proving grounds", on each server's fifth subserver; in theory there should have been a teleporter NPC close to the Juno arena to make it easy to get there, but I didn't see one, perhaps because that area is so crowded with merchants, so went to Dratan and got the regular NPC there to teleport me out.

Auzura was the first server, and the event had started when I got there - I went as my level 10 merchant MistressDomino, as I do find being player-killed when we are supposed to be fighting monsters irritating - and being similarly pk'd when there is loot waiting to be picked up is even worse! I don't know who the game master was on Auzura and Katar, though I would guess it was [GM]AwesomeSauce, as, while the announcements were anonymous, they were friendly and responded positively to what we said. Most of the opening flutons had been disposed of by the time I got there, and the GM was asking what other monsters we would like - so I suggested that "a flock of Kamiras" would be good, and that was what we got. At half the level of a fluton, they are a bit more manageable - and of course they drop plenty of goodies!

MistressDomino managed to pick up quite a few moonstones, plus medium mana potions, tool aids, and of course medals of honour - the route back to the arena from the respawning point, when one did get killed by a fluton or whatever, was soon littered with a dozen or more of those medals.

My level 6 mage Enchantrella went along to the Katar event, and so was there from the start, and again we got a full half hour's worth, with plenty of kamiras - I picked up 50 moonstones, 15 lucky scrolls, 4 crystals of experience (greater), 40 medium mana potions, 20 great health potions...and 10 assorted hero's necklaces, some of them quite good as these things go, which was rather useful as Enchie wasn't equipped with any rings, necklaces or other accessories before. We had some patriarch botises to fight as well, and I remarked, "hmm, bash-a-botis", to which the GM replied "I like the sound of that!" She also said at the end "Thank you for coming everyone!! And for the cool new names! Bash a botis!"

The story, however, was quite different on Cariae. My level 12 healer KarambA was at the Dratan arena in good time, but nothing happened and no announcements were made, so I asked in the shoutbox about it - had the GM scheduled to do the event called in sick, perhaps? Luckily the gamesage zhegao was there, and did some investigating - and an announcement soon appeared, apologising for the delay, and saying that whack-a-fluton was about to start - but in the regular Juno/Randol arena.

[GM]JediMike was in charge, possibly replacing the GM originally pencilled in to host the event, and we just got 15 minutes of fluton-spawning and, well, trash-talking. My level 2 healer Barbarienne did cunningly try "phew, at least Mike didn't spawn any Kamiras, that would have been awful... ;-)" - which got the response "I won't spawn something you tell me not to spawn", followed by "newbert". "Well, I didn't say you couldn't, boss - go ahead, be my guest! :)" I replied, but he just said "I won't spawn what you ask, either."

The fourth server was Sarissa, and this too got just 15 minutes of flutons from [GM]JediMike, though at least it started on time. Luckily [GM]Darasuum took over for Hatzring, and we were back in the Dratan arena, the proving grounds. Hints about kamiras were ignored, but he spawned flutons and purple dragons, and apes and anubis archers, and at the end invited us to sit down around him - and he spawned some honest-to-goodness "proper" loot, from the usual "hands", so my low-level healer LadyJane, who put on a couple of levels, got some useful items. He had also spawned some foxes and elder wolves, which gave LadyJane something she could actually kill.

The final server of the six was Tairen; since the event only takes 30 minutes and the gap between starts was 45 minutes, I logged in there with my level 2 healer Barbarienne in good time - only for the GM announcement that we read to tell us that a medium-level Mad Monster Spawn in Juno was the event due to start in a few minutes. We did get a correction later, but Barb greeted [GM]Darasuum, out at the Dratan proving grounds, with "Hi boss - we enjoyed our trips out to the MMS spot in Juno :)", to which he replied "yeah my bad on the event - I really noobed it up today." "No problem", I assured him, "It all adds to the fun."

The monster spawnings were much the same as on Hatzring, and we got the same "sit in a circle round me" at the end, though it was marred for some people by one of the players doing a bit of pk-ing. However, as she is too low-level to be attacked by another player in an arena, Barb wasn't among those killed, and ended up with 4 large defence potions, 1 large attack potion, 4 item drop boosters, 5 skill point boosters, 6 tool aids, 9 small mana recovery potions, 11 small HP recovery potions, and around 129,000 gold from various drops that nobody else had bothered to pick up.

[GM]Darasuum added a final touch with "and now you all die", after which he raced around the arena killing everyone he could - not Barbarienne, though. I guess everyone needs to let of steam sometimes...

So, that ended the evening on a high; SirPerivale had kept busy throughout, pet-levelling, and his dragon hatchling had become a drake. It was well into level 18 by the time Peri had to log out...he might have continued a little longer, but an emergency maintenance was announced for around eleven in the evening, UK time, so it seemed best to get him offline before that actually happened.