New Content

The morning's post-maintenance patch was quite a big one, and the new post in the "patch notes" thread, with the sub-title "Sweet sweet content", quickly explained why. There are new quests for people in the 100-140 range, there are improved drops, the guardian system has been enhanced, and the "ignition system" is here - kill monsters, get a special energy which can be used to give yourself a buff for 1.5 or 2 minutes, increasing the damage you deal - or even increasing your skill exp or experience gained. "With this content released our next focus will be bug fixes and the next round of content", Xuse2005 told us...though one glitch was "fixed", I found when MistressDomina logged in, as her "widowmaker" C2 costume cover had at last expired, leaving her just wearing the standard 85/87 mage armour, until I invested another 75 ap in a new costume cover.

The changes to the guardian system seem unimportant; the apprentice still gets the new weapon at level 20, while the guardian doesn't, apparently, get any reputation points then, but only at levels 35, 40, 45, and 50. Which is okay, but reputation points don't really do much - rumours of a desirable upgrading item at level 50 turn out just to be something that gives 15 reputation points. Apprentices apparently get 24-hour buffs of some sort when they reach levels 10, 20, 30, 40, and 45. A guardian now has to be at least level 50. The ignition system seems to need around 80 white-named monsters to be killed to fill the bar, someone reported, which would take over an hour for MistressDomina...

I managed to fit in one hour's sp-farming for MistressDomina in the morning, with the ancient grey mummies on Auzura-4, while CaptainScarlet, providing the solo party, did some pet-levelling on a spike canine in Maargadum Jail behind the teleporter. The Tomb was on 90% when MD entered, and fell to 80%, a guildie informed me, during my hour, so the killing wasn't quite as speedy as usual, and only 69 skill point boosters were used. Still, that did add 0.96% experience and 383 skill points, plus 1076 pet points.

The "ignition system" seemed awfully slow; it took 20 minutes to get through the first stage, about 25 minutes for stage 2, and at the end of the hour's fighting MD was less than halfway through stage 3. The thing resets to zero if one logs out apparently, so long sessions would be needed to get anything useful, it seemed.

MistressDomina did get three new quests from Tomb Guard Atum, but none of them are at all exciting - just instructions to kill 50 each of the anubis attackers, sphinx fighters, and infected grey mummies, for 47,286,018, 46,261,017, and 40,967,269 experience, respectively - no skill exp, and no gold. Killing an infected grey mummy normally gives 9,012,878 experience, so all the quest does is, in effect, increase that by 819,345 each - 9.1%. Not much of an incentive to fight those types, instead of "boss" ones like the ancient grey mummies and anubis spear men.

I did manage to fit in four "power hours" in the afternoon, starting early and finishing late. The first hour just used 66 boosters, as I did have a disconnection - this wasted some time, and also reset the "ignition system" back to zero, which was a bit annoying. CaptainScarlet, still providing the solo party, managed to avoid disconnecting, though he did come close to it with a "lag spike" or two then. Still, 0.70% experience was gained, and 368 skill points, as well as 1006 pet points.

The second hour ran more smoothly, with 72 boosters used, for1.06% since most of a dungeon time hour was in it; 399 skill points were earned, plus 1043 pet points. In the third hour of the afternoon the ignition system finally reached level four, so that I could discover that the extra skill exp it promised did not stack upon the pssp I was using, which makes it not much use, though the speedier killing for 90 seconds was handy. 75 skill point boosters were used, and 0.85%, 423 skill points, and 1056 pet points were added. The fourth hour had a couple of lower-level ignition boosts in it, so that another 75 boosters were used, adding 0.79%, 416 skill points, and 1074 pet points.

The ignition system had just completed its first level when the potions ended, so I triggered the boost for that, as otherwise it would be wasted...which meant that in all the afternoon session added 3.48%, 1608 skill points, and 4241 pet points, with 288 skill point boosters consumed. So, including the morning hour, that was almost 2,000 skill points added.

The drops had certainly changed in the Tomb - there were more of them, for one thing, so that by the end of the afternoon MistressDomina was having to discard the bandages and a couple of accessories just to make room. The armour pieces were generally ten levels (two sets) higher than before; MD ended up with 7 items of level 97 headgear, 3 pairs of boots of that level, and, dropped by a screaming zombie, a pair of level 95 gloves. Hopefully they will sell to Geres for slightly more gold than level 85 and 87 pieces.

The evening, at least for those of us on UK or European time, offered a series of mid-level mad monster spawns. I just went along to the Auzura and Cariae ones, which were a bit of a contrast. On Auzura-6, starting at 6:00pm UK time, [GM]Darasuum was in charge; I took MistressBlaze along, since at level 67 she is nicely at the middle of the recommended 46 to 90 levels for such an event. After a low-level wave to lull us into a sense of false security, the GM really socked it to us, with masses of monsters more suitable for a high-level event - MB had to run for her life from the "area of effect" magic that was dumped on top of us, and only just managed to get clear with about a hundred health left. She had to be very careful after that, but managed to survive - luckily we had some pretty high-level people there. The night shadow JacKnJoneS said afterwards that he was level 91, but I suspect that by now he must be a bit higher than that. He boasted that, from a group of kamiras, he'd managed to get "1 ToK, 1 CoR, 1 OoL, 1 EoS, 1 PoW, 1 EoWM", which seems exceptionally good luck... Darasuum did spawn some loot at the end, but I think I just managed to grab one skill point booster and one large attack potion, as the spawning was a bit thin.

My phoenix ranger-rogue RedRydeR went along on Cariae at 7:00pm, where [GM]AwesomeSauce was running things, though unlike on Auzura, we didn't actually see the GM. She had some connection problems, too; I'd had a phone call so missed the opening minutes, but we did have to wait around a bit for further action. Generally it was all manageable, and thanks to her good 85/87 armour RedRyder was just about able to "tank" zamoras and endemic demons, and even skin walkers, though all help was welcome.

Unfortunately, as a final "gift" someone asked for a fluton, and [GM]AwesomeSauce granted that request. It had slipped my mind that using Snare on a fluton quite often made one its main priority, when it gets loose, and this one stunned me, and while I was helpless, killed me. I waited until it had moved away and respawned, carefully starting another resurrection scroll, the last one Red was carrying. It took quite a while for us to finally kill the fluton, and while we were still fighting it, the GM spawned our loot right where it was, which strikes me as a bit naughty. I did manage to grab my share, though it meant I had to stop attacking for a few seconds, but anyone lower in level, without good armour, would have missed out. Still, before that Red had managed to get involved in fighting the kamiras that had been spawned, and while she'd not seen any rare accessories, had managed to grab a few of the lucky scrolls, moonstones, crystals of experience (greater), and so on.

As usual on a Wednesday evening, I had to stop my adventures a couple of hours early, but while CaptainScarlet logged off, having got his drake to level 24, I was able to log RedRackham on, and he went down to the death mask lancer on floor five of the Jail. Unusually, CaptainScarlet's spike canine had been killed two or three times during the afternoon and evening, so operating out of the way on floor five seemed a safer idea. By the end of the evening, RedRackham's drake was approaching a third of the way through level 40.