The Eyes of Spirit

MistressDomina did pretty well selling overnight, though it seems that 175,000 gold for large attack potions, and 95,000 for large defence potions, was a bit too much of a step up from my previous selling prices of 125,000 and 75,000 - so some compromise will be needed next time.  Heaven stones sold nicely at 950,000 though, so it does look as if Auzura prices are moving up more in line with the other servers.

SirDarth started early, and spent most of the day levelling up Stavanic's horse, though it is just coming to the end of its time of just requiring 12 hunger points per hour.  Getting a horse to level 23 is easy enough for a level 22 knight, it's the higher levels, when the pet starts to get more and more hungry, that are the problem.  I did a few calculations based on the figures from the Wet Paint Last Chaos wiki, and, while 105 quality stones ought to be about enough to get you to level 23, to get to level 37 the total is more like 1500, while the total time taken is about 150 hours.

SirPerivale did a little work on my own horse too, but BasheR got in touch; he has decided that at level 70, with +15 armour (which gives a special bonus to magical defence), he is perfectly set to do some Kamira-hunting.   So, I sent Rage out to get the Poison Mists' location onto her memory scroll, and kill as many of them as she could as quickly as possible, with the idea of attracting Kamira, as she tends to spawn wherever in the Dratan map the most action is.  Kaerella certainly attracted Kamira often enough when she was farming there.

It took a while, but eventually at 11:30, UK time, I was able to message Bash that Kamira had arrived, and he came straight over - I partied with him so that he'd get the exact location, and he arrived very quickly.  I wasn't sure what a level 32 rogue could do to help, rogues have no useful buffs for other people and I didn't want to do anything that could mess up our chances of getting a rare drop, so I didn't attack Kamira at all, just the Poison Mists in the area that, being aggressive, were also attacking Bash, and the Death Goddesses that spawn during the fight.  The usual assortment of things dropped, such as a few health and mana pots, five lucky scrolls - and an Eyes of Spirit accessory, which, once identified, adds no less that 168 to long range physical hit rate, plus 78 to close range evasion, and 44 each to health and mana points.

I traded across the lucky scrolls to Bash, as they'll come in useful for future battles with Kamira - it's worth using one of those, and an item drop booster, to maximise the chance of getting good drops from her.  And, as an Eyes of Spirit is the perfect accessory for a bow or crossbow user, BasheR traded the "EoS" across to me.  Hopefully we can attract Kamira a few more times, and get other good stuff to share between us, as at the moment, as we had agreed to share the loot, I owe him for half its value.

Rage stayed out a little longer before lunch, so that she was able to reach level 33 - this meant she could start using the level 37 +13 crossbow.  Rage's total experience gain for the morning session was 50.91%, plus 32 skill points and 1165 pet points.  While she might have got a few more skill points from staying in Prokion Temple until she'd reached her new level, the benefits of making the move early certainly outweighed that.

We tried to attract Kamira again after lunch, but without any luck on my part.  BasheR did find her on a different sub-server, but didn't get any rare accessories dropped.  And then, after no more than an hour, Bash had to leave - and won't be back for a couple of days, he said.  By then, Rage had added just another 17.52%, 14 skill points, and 405 pet points.

As Rage wasn't using the level 29 +13 crossbow any longer, a general swapping-around session, and moving loot to MistressDomino, meant that the crossbow got moved across to MistressDomina, my level 27 mage, who immediately got Collector Ryu to transform it into the equivalent mage staff.  Changing from the +6 event weapon wand to the +13 staff increased her magic attack from 249 to 409, but as staffs are slower to use than wands, it reduced her hit rate from 318 to 257.

So, after getting some bloodseal gems to use on the newly-changed weapon, MD headed for Prokion Temple, and that upstairs back room; even with +7 armour (and +8 shirt) she did occasionally have to use a small health potion, but the blessed rewards helped things along, and by the end of the afternoon 209 skill points had been gained, and 1193 pet points.

During the food break SirDarth was as usual joined in the pet-levelling business by SirPerivale - but as I was dealing with emails and so on afterwards, not to mention doing a bit of blog-drafting (things get a bit difficult to remember in the right sequence if I leave everything until the end of the day), a notice came up that, due to a lot of people reporting problems logging in to the game, we were shortly going to have the servers taken down for about five minutes.  So I just left the pet levellers to it until the disconnection came...and it seemed to last a lot longer than they'd said, with as usual the shoutbox full of people complaining that they had been in the monster combo, or other expensive places, using expensive potions.

But at last the servers came back up, and SirDarth went back to his Berserker; and MrChuckNorris headed out to Prokion Temple's upstairs back room, since, well, it was his turn, yes?  Besides, as Chuck has a very impressively-glowing +15 titan sword, once he graduates to a higher-level weapon (perhaps not a transformed version of Rage's present level 37 crossbow, as a +15 weapon, I would say, is likely to be better than a +13 one even a couple of grades higher), then MistressDomina would get a chance to use it after Collector Ryu had done his work.

Even with just +4 armour, Chuck had no problems in that room, and in a pretty long session added 421 skill points, and 1707 pet points - before another mass disconnection at about 9:15 pm, UK time.  As the "Mad Monster Spawn" had been going on in Juno on Auzura-3 then, when I logged back in and respawned in Juno, [GM]Krash was just respawning too, and asking "ok did EVERYONE at the MMS get DC'ed?"  The answer was in the affirmative, I think.  In fact, a few minutes later there was another disconnection; Kae had just taken over from Darth to deal with a level 50 Pandora Beast he'd released, and, after killing it, and opening another Box and killing another one, without getting any drops, suddenly  found that shooting at the local Berserkers didn't have any effect.  When Darth logged back in, the GM message, presumably from Krash, was "Test, test one tew?  Ok I think we're back...let's get back to the MMS, and hope LC doesn't break again!"

Well, Chuck spent 149 of his skill points on perfect stone processing, level three - and now has got all his special skills maximised, so that he can now begin "sp farming" in earnest.  He's got 297 sp at the moment, all he needs to do is multiply that by, um, about fifty?  With Rage wanting to keep her levelling against the poison mists generally to times when BasheR is available to come and deal with Kamira, and Kaerella hoping to power-level with BasheR in the Tomb of Theos, that means more time for Chuck and MD, I suppose.

As for the horse situation, my own one, with Peri, is still very slightly ahead of Stavanic's, as it reached level 24 first; it will be overtaken tomorrow morning, though, and then both horses will start to get more hungry.  It looks as if I'm going to need to mine some more stones soon.  Luckily Stavanic has promised to supply some tool aids, I'll certainly need them.

More Pandora Beasts

SirDarth's latest attempt to have an all-night pet-levelling session was not a success; two disconnections meant that in fact he had less than an hour's worth of actual Berserker-bashing, and after the second one I decided that it would just be a good idea to switch off the computer, and give the modem an hour or two's rest.

Still, when work restarted, it wasn't long before our horse reached level 21.  SirPerivale started a bit later with his efforts to level Stavinac's latest pet, but that one reached level 16 by mid-morning.  Looking around at about 10:30, I spotted a Pandora's Box a little downhill from his Butcher spot, and, having despatched his current foe, Peri gave himself Divine Shield, and cautiously approached.  If it disgorged a level 50 Pandora Beast he'd have to run for it, and call for Kaerella to come; if a level 30 type appeared, he'd be able to fight it, it being little stronger than a Butcher; and if it dropped a treasure, well, he'd just need to pick it up. 

Sometimes the drop is just ten small healing potions, though once it has been ten medium ones, which are a bit more useful.  Once it was a level 61 weapon, a Zentian Sword.  It can be five magical or physical attack or defence minerals, level twelve, which are apparently rather valuable - I have seen them on sale for 100,000 gold each or more, but I don't know if people actually pay that much for them.  This time, for a change, however, it was five moonstones.

With SirDarth's horse set to reach level 22 at around the same time that Peri's horse reaches level 17, one might think that we were approaching the time when they could both be fighting everlasting Berserkers rather than all-too-frail Butchers.  SirDarth would be okay with a level 17 horse to give an Armour Increase buff of 135 to defence, with his +6 armour and shield adding 150 defence to the basic armour, but Peri's armour and shield are just +3, adding 68, so a level 22 horse's Armour Increase buff of 160 would be too low to protect him.  In fact, anything more than a single level short of the full thirty levels of Armour Increase, which gives a buff of 250 to defence, would be a bit risky.

Anyway, after Stavinac decided to let his horse level up a bit further, and it reached level 17, I swapped it over to SirDarth, so that it could be levelled without interruptions on a Berserker; by the end of the evening level 20 had been reached.  Various loot items got traded over to MistressDomino - and the level 35/37 titan armour set I'd picked up cheaply, all +4 except for the +3 helm, got traded across to Rage, along with Kae's old level 37 +13 bow.  

Collector Ryu converted the bow into a crossbow for 162,000 gold for Rage, and the armour set for a total of 216,000; I used a lucky smelting stone to get the rogue Rugged Hood, as it was now, up to +4 too.  And then with a few bloodseal gems on board, Rage headed out to that upstairs back room in Prokion Temple for the rest of the afternoon.

Without a "Teatime" bonus or the Blessed Rewards, things were a bit slower, but 51.59% experience got added, which was enough to get Rage to level 32, at which point she could put on the boots and hood.   1601 pet points were enough to get her pet horse up to level 24 - and 193 skill points came in useful, as back in town I spent 1113 of them, on the first levels each of Master Weaponsmith and Master Armoursmith (255 sp), and all five levels each of two new passive skills, Sharpen (327 sp, for an extra 5% chance of a critical hit) and Improved Mana (276 sp, for 405 more mana points, so that Rage now has 1012 in all).

After the break Rage went out to Prokion Temple again; the back room was in use, so I moved around a bit, with most time being spent on the gallery around the central stairs.  Jacqueline came online after a while, and came out to Prokion too, joining the party with me and SirDarth, who of course was still busy over in Merac with Stavanic's horse.  As Jacqui is frozen on level 25 she didn't actually join me upstairs though... and after a while there was an announcement that hordes of Pandora's Beasts had been sighted on our sub-server in Juno, Merac and Dratan.  I said that I'd be heading to Merac... as the main boost from the Beasts is experience, Jacqui decided to switch to Ratel, and we met up in Merac at the first group just outside town.

As last time, it was a mixture of ghostly level 30 Bandit-types and level 50 Larva-types, and, helped along by Ratel's Divine Shield, we did okay, carefully picking off the level 50 ones one by one.  There were other people there too, so the Pandies didn't last too long - afterwards we headed off to the northwest, and soon found a new group, in the same place that Kaerella had found them a couple of days ago.

It was dangerous work, and Rage came pretty close to death a number of times.  Ratel did actually die once, losing about 30 skill points; he was a bit annoyed, as he, as a Temple Knight, is supposed to be a tank, but hey, the Pandies were 18 levels above us.  There were a couple of the Box-released level 50 ones around too, like ghostly Blood Frenzies, and they kindly yielded up useful amounts of gold when killed.

We decided not to try to find any more groups, and returned to town - we both had the same local quests flagged up, so we both ended up out by Rau up in the north-east part of the map, and dealt with the three assorted elites there, the bandit, berserker and highlander types, for a few minutes.  I then suggested adding the spot with the four level 40 Elite Frenzied Berserkers to our memory scrolls, and, after a mounted "pet return to village", led the way to them.  We were a good few levels lower than Kae had been when she fought them, but with the two of us, and Divine Shield, plus Ratel's stun skill and my Snare, we continued there until Ratel had to log out for the night.

As usual, he had thoughtfully given me a last Divine Shield buff before leaving, so I made the most of that.  And then, well, we had seen when we rode past Maargadum Jail that there was an untouched mob of Pandora's Beasts there, so I rode back, and, while all the level 30 ones had been disposed of, there were still quite a few of the higher-level types to be seen.  So, I managed to get rid of them - easy enough when Snare worked, but even at level five, its maximum, it only works 70% of the time, so there were some more close-run things.  I did the running, and the things got too close!  Still, I just about avoided being killed, and, well, it tidied the place up a bit.

A pretty varied evening session, then, and one that added another 58.68% experience, making 110.27% in all today.  116 more skill points brought today's haul up to 309, though I spent so many that my stash of unused points fell by 804 - and a further 1330 pet points got that total up to 2931.  Rage's new armour set is now fully bloodsealed, but I need another 40% before the new level 37 +13 crossbow can replace the level 29 one.  That will need to be bloodsealed too, I must remember to buy five more bloodseal gems in Randol.

A Team-Up in the Temple

There was actually a spawning of masses of Pandora Beasts late last night, and Kaerella did leap back into the saddle to help deal with them.  The ones in Merac, however, were just level 30 or level 50, so blue-named for Kae, and thus didn't give much in the way of experience, and only small amounts of gold.    A brief trip to Dratan didn't discover any more Beasts - I think that killing the Elite Speer Man and a couple of his friends while I was out there added a lot more experience than the rest of the endeavour combined, but 0.27% experience and 15 pet points do get added to the tally.

It was approaching midnight when SirDarth's horse reached level 17, but I set him up with a Berserker after getting him that latest level of Armour Increase, and he was doing okay - at least, until a disconnection.  I reconnected him, but he got another one not too long after, so really only got around half a full night's work done.  Still, it meant the horse reached level 19 by the time SirPerivale logged on this morning and started work on his pony.

When Peri got to the Butcher spot, there was a level 50 Pandora beast prowling around nearby, of the type released from the boxes - so Darth logged out briefly to allow Kaerella to ride down and deal with it.  It was worth the effort, as it dropped 112,800 gold, which is quite a useful sum.

Browsing around Auzura-1's merchants I'd seen a level 57 +15 titan axe for sale for 70 million, and been rather tempted, on the feeling that one ought to be able to resell it for at least 20 million more.  When BasheR came online while Kae was doing some mining I mentioned it, and he went and bought it, I'm surprised it was still there.  When I mentioned the possibility of a "finder's fee" he just chuckled.  He reported that reinstalling Last Chaos had, indeed, cured his mouse-click problem, which is a relief.  And just before lunch, he reported that he'd sold the axe for 88 million.

After lunch, well, Optimusprime invited me to a rather unsuccessful trip to the Tomb, but at least I didn't have to pay to get in as somebody had Recall.  Fighting the Anubis types worked okay while we had a mage in the party - but at level 78 she "capped" me, so I got less experience there than I would have with the level 63 and 64 types outside.  When she left we were a bit outclassed down there, and after a few near misses and runnings-about I did finally die - and used my resurrection scroll to respawn at the start of the dungeon, rather than try to continue there.  After that, well, a couple of Screaming Zombies got despatched, but it was a Combat Party, so since I was healing rather than firing my bow most of the time, I didn't get all that much experience.  ManosGR then asked for my help in healing while he did a couple solo, which I did while not in a party.  BasheR arrived after that, but he and ManosGR headed down to the Anubis area again, where I wouldn't really be able to follow, so I finally logged out, after only getting 1.79% experience and 111 pet points.

It was time for my rogue Rage to finally leave the defunct CONFLICT guild, so I deleted the character and then cancelled the deletion, so that she is now guildless, and then headed for Prokion Temple, now without the experience freeze that couldn't have been removed if I'd stayed in the guild.  It was a pretty productive time on the upper floor in that first Orc Axeman and Orc Sergeant room, though at times they did seem to hit unusually hard, and once my health got very dangerously low as I dashed to safety in a corner.

At about a quarter to four there was a mass disconnection - and Rage was about the first person to respawn in a deserted Randol.  Rather than go back to Prokion for just a few minutes, I rode out to Juno's Treants for a change, which, since they did drop a heaven stone, was a good idea.  The whole session meant that Rage had reached level 28, going up in all by 125.87% and gaining 244 skill points, plus 1024 pet points, which got her faithful horse up to level 23.

After the food break, Rage's campaign continued, starting off in the first Orc Sergeant room just off the entrance hallway.  Jacqueline came online, and, as Rage is on her Friends List, got in contact; I asked her to re-freeze MistressDomina's experience, so she switched over to Ratel - and rather than switch back, he decided to come out as his knight and join me in Prokion Temple.

Ratel found that my favourite upstairs back room was empty, so invited me to join him there, and we suitably dominated the Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants there. though we both had the "run out of memory" error at different times - mine gave me the chance to get Rage's level 30 skills and opt to become a Ranger, which is the crossbow-using type of rogue, as opposed to the dagger-wielding Assassin.  Ratel is a little over half a level ahead of me at the moment - he reached level 32, and was able to get some of the newly-available Temple Knight skills.  That's the shield-using, protective kind of knight, as opposed to the dual sword wielding Royal Knight.  Ratel, however, doesn't have a large number of skill points saved for future use, he plans to take things as they come.

It was great to be able to team up like that; we made it a combat party, so that while loot and skill points were shared, our experience was boosted by the other's presence.  We got our main experience from our own kills, but got some from our companion's, too.  Ratel kindly kept me buffed with Divine Shield, so that the Orcs were generally unable to harm me - earlier I had been using a few health potions.

I think there was a boost to experience even before the Sunday teatime was announced as being 50% extra experience for a couple of hours; certainly, Rage's experience gain of 434.14% in total seems pretty good, even for Proki.  She did get the benefit of the Blessed Rewards, with their chance of extra experience, skill exp etc, until she hit level 31... she ended up with 337 more skill points than she started the day with, and that was after spending 207 sp to learn Invisibility (you are invisible, unless you attack, for 35 seconds) and 238 sp to learn Detect Weakness (increases hit rate by 15).  Her pet horse added 4472 pet points in all.

And then it was time for the Quiz; as both Auzura-1 and Auzura-3 were flagged up as "congested", I took Ratel's advice and arranged for Kaerella and MistressDomino to join him in Auzura-2, though its past record has been a bit dodgy, Quiz-wise, with a mass disconnection during the very first Auzura one, and another week a dc shortly before the Quiz that re-locked the door to the Quiz room.  This time, though, we were fine.  A number of the top Vendetta guild people, including CorNut, were there, and before we started there were three of four Games Masters too, showing their uber level armour.  I don't think they stayed around to win themselves some tool aids, moonstones, and heaven stones though.

The questions were the usual ones, so we did okay.  Ratel sold at least some of his afterwards - it was slightly annoying that he sold to SrDias when he was saying "buying hs 800k", and then a minute later he increased his buying price to the whole one million, but 700-800k does seem the more usual price people are starting to offer after the Quiz.  Ratel was able to return two million in gold he'd borrowed a while back to help him buy his current armour, something I'd completely forgotten about.

So, while Kaerella is really waiting for some more power levelling sessions with BasheR, it looks as if my rogue will get the chance to move up a few levels.  I've never taken a rogue this far before, so it should be fun.

A More Restful Time

Stavanic took his horse after lunch today, after it had reached level 22. and passed over a pan flute to start a new one for his healer, plus 100,000 gold, which ought to pay for quite a few quality stones.  I also swapped ponies a bit later between SirDarth and SirPerivale, as the pet experience rate was increased at around four o'clock in the afternoon UK time (eight in the morning on the US west coast, someone was in the office early) to 175% - the upgrade success rate was also increased to 150%.  It seemed possible that Darth might be able to get his pony up to level 17 by the end of the evening, which might allow an overnight pet levelling session...though it was rather vague how long the boosted rate would last.

MistressDomino had a reasonably successful selling session overnight on the Auzura-1 sub-server, though she didn't have a great amount of stuff to sell - so just over ten million was a good result.  She does have quite a few Chaos Balls, but only sold two or three, it seems that 750,000 gold each is a bit high.  I was slightly surprised by how quickly large attack potions sold at 125,000, not that I had many - that's a lot more than they were fetching on Cariae a few weeks ago.  And the large defence potions sold at 75,000 too.

Normally my merchant takes up a position between the animal trainer and Bianca's warehouse chest, but for a change MistressDomino went to the group of sellers by the arena.  It does have the advantage of being out of range of the gold spammers!  Most merchants seem to sell mainly the various lucky draw boxes at present, because there are so many packages from the Item Mall that offer them, and the packages are promoted pretty aggressively, not just "buy one get one free", but "buy three get five free", or "buy seven and get a wonderful bonus package".  I don't know how long the market can absorb so much stuff like that, the pet lucky draw boxes have already made pet colouring crystals all too common.

Kaerella did take a trip out to the open-air Sphinx Fighters later in the morning; they are a lot easier to fight now, but give a lot less experience percentage-wise, so only 6.71% experience was gained, along with 14 skill points and 528 pet points.  BasheR was saying that we ought to get Kae high enough to use a level 69 bow, +15 of course, and then, using the party recall cards, take it in turns to power-level each other, so it really doesn't seem worth going out solo to get such small amounts on Kae,

So, in the afternoon MistressDomina ("MD" - note the subtle difference in name between my fighting mage and my merchant one) did a few quests, such as visiting Translator Edgar in the Dratan desert, and Shuraine at his oasis a little way east of there.  She stopped off at the oasis for a while to fight the sand golems, but the elite one didn't drop anything useful.  Five more quantities of "soft sand" were obtained though, which may come in handy for another character.

After using "pet return to village" while mounted to get back to town, MD bought some bloodseal gems, as her Vanishing set wasn't yet fully sealed, and then used a scroll to get to Prokion Temple.  The main aim was to get MD to level 27, and that was accomplished - 102.70% experience gain got her there, also adding 152 skill points and 1405 pet points.  

After the food break MD continued, now wearing the full Vanishing armour set, part +8 and part +7 so pretty good at keeping the Orcs from hurting her.  Another 35.72% experience got her halfway through the level, which is far enough to go - she now needs Ratel to freeze her experience gain again, and he hasn't been on today.  Another 74 skill points were enough to get the last level of that Anti-Magic passive skill, so she now has all her level 25 skills maximised, while 645 pet points helps her drake along towards level 21.

So, the rest of the evening belonged to MrChuckNorris, whose armour may only be +4, but he does have the use of the level 29 +15 weapon, so he really cuts his way through the Prokion Temple Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants.  His experience gain is frozen, but 534 skill points got added, which means he is pretty close to having all the available special skills maximised now - as far as I can tell, it's just the third and final level of Flawless Stone Processing that he still needs to learn, he has 25 of the 149 sp needed for that.

MistressDomina had only ventured as far as the upstairs "gallery" around the central staircases in the Temple, generally, but Chuck went for the room off there with the statues, and its mixture of the Axemen and the Sergeants, and kept it pretty much under control, though his poor drake took a lot of damage along the way.  A knight called Malorian1 did try to "muscle in" at one stage, but that room really doesn't have enough Orcs spawning quickly enough for two fighters killing at Chuck's speed, so he moved along after a few minutes.  A sorcerer called Dumbledor was luckier, as he started to kill there just as it was approaching Chuck's log-out time.  Chuck's drake added 2449 pet points, so is more than halfway through level 25.

While Chuck was learning his special skills, BasheR reported that he was having a problem with his mouse - at least, he couldn't right-click and hold the ground to move the game's camera angle around.  A restart hadn't cured it; after discussing it, we decided that it would probably be a good idea to download the recently-updated LC client from FilePlanet, then uninstall the game (keeping the screenshots folder safe), perhaps do a bit of disk defragging, and then install the new client.  That is something it is a good idea to do sometimes anyway, let's hope it cures the problem, so that those trips into the Tomb of Theos for power-levelling can go ahead.  He can use the arrow keys to rotate the viewpoint, but that is a rather less intuitive way to do things, not ideal in dangerous places like the Tomb.

Power Levelling

The morning started with putting SirDarth and SirPerivale up in Merac with the Butchers to level the two ponies, as has been our habit lately, but after coffee Kaerella replaced SirPerivale on the modern computer, and headed out to the Sphinx Fighters.

However, Kae didn't actually do much, just adding 5.79%, 4 skill points, and 175 pet points, as I got distracted, and ended up playing actively as SirDarth on the older computer instead.  Things didn't begin very promisingly, as a titan called SnOzA approached Darth, and attacked "his" Butcher.  Normally this means that the Butcher dies, leaving the afk pet-levelling character just standing there... but as SnOzA was only level 13, the Butcher changed its target, and killed him.

Like most titans, SnOzA wasn't one to give up easily, and came straight back - not realising that pet levelling characters are usually afk, he asked to join the party, so I transferred leadership across from Kae to Darth, and added him to the party after a little persuasion.

Well, as a new player I felt he deserved some encouragement, so SirDarth and the titan teamed up, and fought the Butchers, with SirDarth always hitting first, and using the Divine Shield buff to keep us healthy.  We even went on down to the Berserkers, and those bandits that were far enough away from their friends not to call in a whole mob of them when attacked.  Going a little further along the road, I did actually attack a level 37 Blood Frenzy, which isn't a good idea when one is only level 22 - I had thought that a level 38 Doom Slayer was just out of range, but it wasn't, and launched its magic attack on me, so we had to run for it.  Luckily the Blood Frenzy gave up the chase, and I was able, with a health pot, to kill the Doom Slayer.  After that excitement it was back to the Berserkers.

SnOzA reached level 16 by the time lunch was due, so that gave him a useful bit of "power levelling", and hopefully his share of the gold dropped will help him to get new armour.  But then it was time to get SirDarth back to the Butchers for some more afk pet-levelling; I'd already replaced Kae with SirPerivale again.  When one of Stavinac's characters came on to enquire, I was able to tell him his horse had moved on to level 16; he's talking of me getting it all the way to 25, but if he wants to go that far some bribery will be needed.

After lunch I moved some items around, including sellable loot to MistressDomino, and quest items, transformation scrolls and production manuals to my knight CALM.  MistressDomina has now got the 30/32 armour set from Kae, but only a +8 level 29 weapon so far.

As SirDarth's current horse-in-training, the one for Stavinac, had reached level 17, I decided to see if Darth could now last okay against a Berserker, since with his bare-knuckle hit of 26 damage a Berserker will last forever, while a Butcher dies in about 15 minutes.  And, with a physical defence rating of 834 including 16 levels of Armour Increase (horse), defence & evasion type accessories, and the +6 armour set and shield, Darth did hang on in there, though his health bar did sometimes fall a little.

But once Kae was back and ready to head for the Sphinx Fighters, BasheR got in touch - he had managed to zoom up all the way to level 70, mainly using the Tomb's level 106 boss-monster type Anubis Spear Men, and was offering to give me a bit of power-levelling too.  So, an offer that couldn't really be refused - I happily agreed, and headed over to the Tomb of Theos.

My attempt to run down to the room with the Anubis Spear Men didn't last long, and that was one resurrection scroll used - the Screaming Zombies hit hard, even if one is just trying to run past them!  BasheR lost his way on his first run, and had to return to the start, after getting involved with the Anubis Archers and their annoying "snare" skill.  But he was kindly able to use a Scroll of Summoning to get me to the right place on his second attempt.

There had been talk of power levelling being thwarted by the last big patch, but apparently that is only if the player being levelled hasn't hurt the monster at all before the higher-level person loses aggro.  Things seemed to work just the same as when Zenderfly power-levelled Barbarienne in that Tomb room on the Cariae server, though as always there is an element of risk there - I used three more resurrection scrolls over the hour, but luckily dying didn't wipe out my Platinum Blessed Iris or my large crit potion.  Usually my death was my own fault, but if BasheR's stun skill Dash failed to work, then things were a bit fraught - I did manage to overcome the odds a couple of times and kill rather than be killed, so things evened out.

Zenderfly had said that an archer was just about the easiest type of character to power-level, with the general ranged attack and the Slow Shot skill, but the Tomb was set on "hard", and Bash didn't find the Anubis Spear Men anything like as easy as when he was power-levelling himself.  His pet died right at the start, so that he lost its buff, and generally my Heal skill was used quite a lot.  I had bought an hour's Party Recall card, for the losing-aggro bit, so he was able to go back to Randol and "unseal" the pet, which helped.

The general procedure was for BasheR to target an Anubis Spear Man, while avoiding the aggressive level 104 Sphinx Fighters (not to be confused with the level 63 ones outside the Tomb) that share the room.  I could also target it from a distance, but we needed to avoid using debuffing skills as that tends to increase the monster's attack power.  I'd use the Recall card, and also trigger an experience booster.  When the Spear Man was down to below about 5% health, Bash would use his stun skill, and then accept the Recall, and quickly leave the party - I'd then use Slow Shot on the dazed Spear Man, and keep shooting until it was dead.  If it wasn't stunned, then hopefully Slow Shot would slow it enough for me to kill it.  Once the Spear Man was dead, we would remake the party, and on we'd go.  To begin with, the twelve-fold increase in experience (three times four, for the PBI and the booster) got me up 60% of a level, though as we moved up a level or two that dropped down.  It would have been slightly more if we'd thought to have SirDarth in the party too to add the solo party bonus when Bash had left, but one can't think of everything, and 681.15% for an hour's work can't be bad, yes?

Adding seven levels increased Kae's Dexterity nicely, and also meant that I could get level six of Slow Shot (250 skill points, an extra 5% slowing in the target's speed, and an extra 40% to power) and Poison Arrow (300 skill points, and again an extra 40% to power, so that it hits for 420% of a regular shot's potential damage), and the first five levels of the passive skill Force Arrow (889 skill points, adds 50 to attack and 90 to defence).  It also meant Kaerella needed new armour, so I checked out the Merchant House for level 65/67 items, to add to the skirt that ANGELOFSKY had kindly given me.  

Prices for armour pieces varied, but I spent around 500,000 per item, though it cost 114,000 gold, a bit more than I'd expected for an unplussed item, to transform the level 56 rogue shirt into its healer equivalent.  To get all five pieces to +3 took 22 heaven stones, a 68% success rate, and then using 15 lucky smelting stones meant I had a new +6 set of armour.  The old "Mending" set gave me 1032 defence; at +3 the new "Serenity" set gave me 1029, but at +6 that moved on to 1136.  That will be a useful boost, though I can't wear the new tiara and boots without penalty until I level up again, meaning that my current defence is 1094.

Going back to the open-air Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men, it was a surprise to see that the Fighters were now white-named, only two levels above me, with the Speer Men yellow-named at three levels above me.  They were certainly easier to kill now, but give a rather smaller percentage increase for each kill, so that an evening session just added 11.42% experience, though they do now give a bit more skill exp, so that I added 26 skill points, as well as 879 pet points.

So a great step forward today.  Now I just need to sell lots of things, so that Kae will be able to afford a new weapon... Stavanic's horse had reached level 20 by the end of the evening, and will probably go on being levelled by SirDarth for one more day.  Would you believe he has another character, a healer, also in need of a mid-range pet, to keep me busy after that?

The Tomb & The Temple

I did manage to set up SirPerivale for a while in the morning against his usual Berserker, using a second platinum pet potion to speed up the final level for his horse, before breakfast, and after that SirDarth got his second pan flute exchanged for a level 1 pony, and went out to fight the Butchers and start its levelling.

Kaerella did manage a fairly short morning session with the Sphinx types, and added 13.77% experience, 9 skill points and 446 pet points; she picked up a level 56 tiara and a level 53 crossbow, which might be worth selling on the Merchant House system.

Stavanic logged on for his usual pre-school playing time, and told me that his friend no longer needs that horse mane, so the life of the level 10 pony has been saved - instead, I get to level it up a bit more for his second knight to use.  By the time he told me that I'd got the new pony up to level 5, which is handy, as it means this one has become the next candidate for SirDarth's levelling - a horse for Darth to use himself when he adds a few levels, gets his skill points, and leaves the pet levelling behind.

It was just after two o'clock, UK time, when our current horse, the one for MrChuckNorris my titan, reached level 37.  So, amidst widespread rejoicing, the horse was transferred across to Chuck, who, after passing some tool aids across, turned it into a mount, set up the level 10 horse buffs, and, in theory at least, rode off into the sunset, or maybe dawn.

SirPerivale then used his stock of thirty tool aids to mine some quality stones, after buying thirty knight-type pickaxes from Merchant Geres - he now has over 1200 quality stones, which should last for a while, or at least until the new horse gets to a high level.  SirDarth traded the level 5 pony across to Peri, before settling in to level up Stavanic's pony some more with the Butchers.  Maybe it will reach a high enough level tomorrow to give him enough Armour Increase buff to move back to the Berserkers?

Once Peri was logged out, Kaerella was able to log in, and, just starting to head towards the Sphinxsters, was contacted by Corbenik - so we met out there in Dratan, and teamed up.  Before too long another archer arrived, ANGELOFSKY, in a higher-level armour set than me, and suggested a team-up once she'd checked our levels.  She was level 62, we found once we were all in the same party; and when she suggested we could move across to the Tomb of Theos, we readily agreed.

The three of us did pretty well, though Angel did have a tendency to stand and fight, which with the level 100 Screaming Zombies isn't too good an idea.  She did die once; later she mentioned that she has a high-level knight on the Katar server, which may explain why she didn't automatically run to the wall when a zombie headed for her.  And I reached level 54!

A level 68 knight called ChaosKnight7 joined us, but he "capped" Corbenik, being more than 15 levels above him, so Corbenik gracefully bowed out, heading for the Randol Arena for a change.  And having such a high-level "tank" was great... except that he vanished after no more than three zombies, leaving Angel and me a bit stuck.  Maybe he got a disconnection, which happens in the Tomb more than it does in most places, or maybe he just has a short attention span.

So, not having a "stun" skill, Angel and I headed back to the Sphinx types, and had a great time owning them there, with two bows in action even the Elite Sphinx Speer Man was pretty much helpless against us.  I continued for just a few minutes after she finally left, to get the last few pet points needed to get SirFrancis up to level 32, and then took my food break.  The total experience gain for the afternoon had reached 51.98%, along with 14 skill points and 798 pet points.

Angel very kindly gave me a level 66 healer shirt, and with any luck we will be able to team up on not just Sphinx Fighters, but Egeha's Bogles, or even Boucu Demons, some time soon, though when she suggested the Demons I had to say that Kae hadn't yet been to Egeha, and so did not have the Boucu Demon spot on her memorising scroll.

For the evening, it seemed a good opportunity to give MistressDomina an all expenses paid trip to Prokion Temple.  I'd got Ratel, our friendly Norcaine guild master, to unfreeze her experience gain a day or too ago, so the idea is to level her up from 23 to 27, and pass over the level 30/32 armour and +13 level 29 weapon that Kae used for sp farming there, so that MD will be ready to roll.  Or ought she to wait until Chuck has finished with his +15 weapon?

So, MistressDomina had a good long session with the Orc Soldiers and the Orc Fighters, mainly, and went up from high in level 23, to fairly low in level 26 - 222.07% experience gain, in all.  She added 305 skill points, helped along by the Blessed Rewards, so that, with the 162 she was already carrying, when she returned to Randol she was able to get most of her level 25 skills - she still needs the top three levels of Anti-magic, though (permanently increases magical defence), which will take another 210 sp.  Still, getting the whole of Fast Spell Casting (10% quicker spell refresh speed) and Scud ("Personal buff skill that increases your attack speed by decreasing your offense speed, thus allowing you to attack faster. Does not work on other players."), plus a third level of Flame Storm, increasing its power from 130 to 190, can't be bad.  Oh, she gained 2266 pet points, as well.

The next step will be for Kae to hand the armour and weapon across. MD won't be able to wear the headgear and boots until she reaches level 27, but the rest just needs Collector Ryu to convert it from healer stuff to the mage equivalents, and MistressDomina will become a good deal more powerful.  Those Orc Axemen had better watch out...

The Return of Roy

SirPerivale went out straight away to work on the horse this morning, and before too long SirDarth took a pan flute to Jajan in Dratan City and started a brand-new pony.  A friend of Stavanic's needs a horse mane, apparently, and is prepared to pay well for it; Steve thinks that he'll have a better chance of getting a horse part if he sacrifices a level ten one, rather than just level one brand-new ponies, so we're levelling this one for him, for a share of the reward if he eventually gets the part he needs.  I can't say I'm very happy with the idea of "sacrificing" a pet, but that part will be up to Stavanic, not me.

As soon as Kaerella logged on later in the morning, a summons to go to the Tomb of Theos was received from BasheR - so over I went, to join him (level 54 now), the level 55 titan Tynian, and the level 62 rogue xSpykex.  Optimusprime did arrive in the Tomb before long, but wasn't allowed into our party, sadly, or maybe he was trying to join another team that was also at work there.

Corbenik contacted me, though, and I gave him our leader's name so that he could apply in advance rather than paying to enter the Tomb without a party place, and he came in; we also gained the level 56 knight XxGaZixX, who, like Tynian, comes from Turkey.  He did tend to die a time or three, I think Bash's +15 armour was a good investment, he lasted much better.

I had a disconnection fairly early on, and when I got back xSpykex had left, and the party was being remade.  BasheR invited the level 44 cleric Ewli to join us, which was useful as it meant I could do less healing and more bow-using, but she had a tough time of it, particularly whenxSpykex rejoined for a few minutes, so that she was "capped" and getting very little experience.  I think she died three times, she doesn't seem to have quite got the knack of hugging the wall tightly when the Screaming Zombie targets her... I avoided getting killed, though a number of times my health got perilously low, it fell to 110 on one occasion.

It didn't take very long to get the 15% I needed to reach level 53, anyway, which meant I could equip my level 57 bow for the first time - my physical offence stat has gone up from 932 to 1098, or 1101 when I added the newly-earned Dexterity levels.  By the end of the session, my total gain was 46.84%, plus 240 pet points; the low number of pet points rather shows how much healing, rather than attacking, I had to do.  

With other people there luring Screaming Zombies, and seemingly other Screaming Zombies popping up out of nowhere, it was a rather dangerous session, particularly for poor Ewli and XxGaZixX, and I'm rather glad that the suggested move deeper into the Tomb didn't happen, I for one wouldn't have found it easy to run down past the local inhabitants, and I'm sure it would have been suicide for Ewli.  Still, our Zombie-fighting was good experience!

The afternoon session was rather quieter, just Kae and the Sphinx types; Corbenik got in touch at one stage, but just to chat.  With Kae's better bow and better armour the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men seem a bit easier, though the Elite Speer Man can still be tricky.  The stay with them just added 19.98%, and 11 skill points, plus 623 pet points, though I did spend 250 sp on level six of Arrow of Silence, meaning that Kaerella's store of unused skill points has now gone down below 12,000.

Today's new "patch" was tiny, by the way, though we are assured that the mount-to-pet crash has been sorted out and the cure will be enabled soon.  There are very few new "Spring break" packages in the Item Mall, even, though its web-based equivalent seems to be getting bigger.

And Trading Agent Roy is back, much to the relief of people who had lots of valuable items entrusted to his Merchant House.  I've managed to buy 4 Candy for 15,000, a large attack potion for 25,000, and 26 tool aids for 15,400, nice cheap prices, and I can't help suspecting that the first and third of those involved people who didn't realise that they were setting the price for the entire set, not per item...some people were attempting to sell individual Candy or large attack potions for 200,000 or more, which seems over-hopeful to me.

As usual with a Wednesday, I had to make a fairly early exit, so the evening session with the Sphinx types only added another 16.57% experience, along with 9 skill points and another 519 pet points, meaning that Kae's progress for the day was a respectable 83.39% experience, plus 20 skill points and 1382 pet points... which means that SirFrancis might well reach level 32 tomorrow or the day after, depending on how much attacking, rather than healing, I do.

I must confess that an early exit didn't seem like too bad an idea, as soloing the Sphinx Fighters, and Speer Men, does get rather boring after a while.  Going up to a level or two from them would mean Bogles, but they are in Egeha, and hit pretty hard - and the mount-to-pet crash bug would be sure to strike, which would be annoying after spending the 800,000 gold to get there.  The Forgotten Temple mobs are a bit dangerous in their habits, with some magic-users, so soloing there wouldn't be a very good idea.  So, that leaves me with rather limited options at the moment, especially if the people who'll team with me in the Tomb of Theos tend only to be around early in the day.   It's enough to make a return to Cariae country seem rather tempting...

Ah well, Kaerella does have a good armour set and an excellent bow now, so let's hang in there and see what happens next.