Here Be Dragons

I set MistressDomina up again for overnight sales, and she kept online until morning, selling most of her items, including lots of Stars and Stripes. The total wasn't as much as yesterday's, but then, one can't sell a level 37 horse every day.

SirPerivale and SirDarth began their pet-levelling work a lot earlier than on Monday, anyway, so that it wasn't long after lunch when Darth's drake reached level 26. By that time Peri's horse was about 40% of the way into level 34.

SirPerivale took time off between coffee and lunch, so that MistressDomina could head for Auzura-4's Prokion temple back room, and use the last of her super skill pills. During its hour she added 227 skill points, so she was pretty busy, gathering big groups of the Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants, and using Flame Storm on them. She continued after the ssp ran out for a while, so the total session added 257 skill points, as well as 8.66% experience and 743 pet points, meaning that MD is nearly halfway through level 33 now.

After Darth and Peri's lunchtime work, it seemed like a good idea to take my level 70 rogue Rage off to Egeha in her own right, rather than just being on the second computer and providing half-price travel for Chuck and Ratel. There were a number of early Egeha quests that could be sorted out - and while the experience they give isn't particularly massive, ieach is equivalent to killing a pretty much boss-type monster.

In Egeha village, Antiquities Dealer Remton wanted me to get some Accessories of the Gods, but my initial reaction was that he could wait a bit as they are found in a fairly dangerous area, as far as I remembered. Grocer Wain wanted me to kill ten Bogles, which I was happy to do - at level 65 they are still green for me, just! Once I'd reported back and got my reward, he then asked me to deliver some medicine to Beldam Juriel, a slightly tricky quest as the Male and Female AssassinBugs around there are aggressive and protective, and the Females are bosses and hard to kill.

Weapon Trader Reman, a bit of a hippy going by his "Hey dude" turns of phrase, asked me to kill three Hadeis out by the graveyard. When I was there, Ceremony Manager Renin (who might be better described as "Cemetery Manager") requested that I kill lots of Dark Bogles, until I'd picked up seven "Grave Robbers' Equipment", and after that asked me to kill three Devil Graves, which must be one of the easiest quests that actually requires some fighting, as Devil Graves are just, well, headstones, that just stand there, they don't fight back.

Those quests were generally open to anyone from level 60; but as Rage was now level 70, some others are available too, if I reach the appropriate far-flung, dangerous places. One quest-giver I did reach was Scout Terry, who tested my bravery by asking me to kill ten Azers, and then when I'd managed that, seven of the Little Scorpionmantises. His next quest asked me to kill, well he said five more of the Little ones, but he actually wants me to fight the full-size Scorpionmantises, so my first reaction was that that can wait a few more levels.

When I got to Beldam Juriel, and gave her the package of medicine, she had a new quest for me, "Old Woman's Revenge", requiring me to kill twenty of the local AssassinBugs - I think it was just the Male ones that qualified, but it was hard to keep the boss-type Female ones from getting involved. I had a spare spot on my memorising scroll, so I saved a small safe area just behind the lady, which was just as well, as after a kill or two I found myself being chased by a couple of Males, and a Female, so a "Pet Return to Village" seemed the best option.

I think there was a little bit of cross-purposes chat on the guild channel, with more than one dialogue going on, but Aszune kindly volunteered to assist me - in the person of her level 93 archer Cenaria. Cenaria doesn't get to play much now, sadly, as she has run out of skill points. She joined the party, and I used Recall to get her to Egeha, and then to Beldam Juriel's location, and, with her rather useful attack and healing skills, we settled in. I think I needed to make the actual "killing blow" for the death of a Male AssassinBug for the death to count towards the quest, as the tally didn't increase each time one died, and so we settled into a routine where she'd deal with the Females, and I'd kill the Males.

As Cenaria was 23 levels above me, I was "capped", and so got very little experience, typically 750-850 experience and 1 skill exp, but I still got my share of the loot of course, and the quest was the main thing. I stayed on briefly after Cenaria, her task completed, left, and on the two conveniently-respawned Males I then got 283,450 experience and 1100 skill experience, with the "solo party" boost from SirDarth.

Since getting to Egeha costs 800,000 gold, Rage stayed in the village there during the early evening food break, so that SirDarth continued pet-levelling solo; by this time he was giving a boost to a black pony belonging to a Norcaine guildie, SmokeinThatKush; this one started at 574/1548 of the way through level 11, and by the end of the evening was well into level 15. I'm not entirely sure how far I'm supposed to take this one, but Smokey is working on getting a few quality stones for me.

Aszune had just about given up on me luring the Grand Gold Dragon, and had moved to a different sub-server. She was just saying that she was going afk for a while, as Rage battled the Baby Apes, when at last the GGD put in an appearance. Luckily she hadn't quite left her keyboard when I typed "GGD!" in hurriedly, and was able to move back across to Auzura-4, register for the party, and take Recall. With a quick "good luck", I moved off back to town, not wanting to spoil the chances of her getting some good drops.

Surprisingly, the Dragon did manage to kill Aszune, but she hurried back and finished the job. Unfortunately she didn't get a rare accessory among the drops, but the usual moonstones, tool aids, lucky scrolls, crystal of experience (greater), and so on did appear, so she probably covered the cost of the brief adventure. I had moved back from town into the general area, though I took care to keep off the compass-circle - I killed a Dark Bogle and it dropped a heaven stone for me while Aszune was fighting, and I think it may be almost as valuable as what the GGD dropped...

When Aszune left and I moved back to the Baby Apes, I found that she hadn't bothered to clear out the Cursed Weavers, so I was slightly restricted as to what I could attack, and before long headed back towards town. "Look out, there are some Cursed Weavers ahead", I warned a titan in a smart wedding-type suit (though carrying that big spiked club does slightly spoil the effect) who was heading in that direction... only to discover that it was Razva125, who I'd teamed with a few times against the Sphinx types. He briefly joined the party to demonstrate that he was level 94 now, and I was suitably impressed.

I continued to fight Dark Bogles, Hadeis, and other Egeha residents; I even managed to kill one of the full-size Scorpionmantises, meaning that I just need four more for Scout Terry's latest challenge. I moved forward into the ruins where the Accessories of the Gods are to be found, as well as plenty more Scorpionmantises and their offspring; they are a bit strange, the AotGs, as while they are visible on the ground as boxes, one doesn't just pick them up like loot, they have to be "harvested", as if one was using a knife to obtain green herb leaves. It only takes a few seconds, but if you are being attacked by an Egeha monster, that could be too long. However, I was able to find one box that was just far enough away from the nearest Little Scorpionmantises; I'd harvest it, then move back to the wall, and wait while it regenerated, then harvest it again. I needed five in all, but while I was there I got a few more, after all Kaerella will need some, and Chuck eventually too.

The Auzura "Mad Monster Spawn" began at around nine, UK time, or perhaps a little earlier; I hadn't intended to go, but this time there was a special "pet-levelling" aspect to it, with level 90 statues, as seen in Lust Trum Tower, provided for lower-level characters to do some pet-levelling on while the higher-ups were battling the Cave Spirits, Flutons, Darkmind Terrains, and so on. Actually, I saw the titan Razva125 there, and he seemed to be spending most of his time pet-levelling on a statue... But anyway, after killing some more Hadeis and Dark Bogles, Rage logged out, having added in all 15.35% experience, a very useful 35 skill points, and 2035 pet points. There'd been some nice loot too, not just heaven stones but armour and weapons - mainly titan axes, five in all, three level 65 and two level 69.

It was MistressSabina I took there, on the feeling that her pet could do with a bit of a boost. I did get killed once when I was tempted to join in the attack on a nearby level 135 Patriarch Botis - I seemed to lose more experience than skill exp, so that is very nearly a positive thing. Most of the time I was just pet-levelling, though there were two spawnings of goodies, when we all rushed forward to grab what we could. I got, as well as the minor stuff and a few tool aids, 7 large attack potions, 3 large defence potions, 4 item drop boosters, and 2 skill point boosters, so that was a nice little bonus for the day. Sabina was down 2.98% on the experience side, and 2 skill points, but her drake had added 329 pet points.

SirPerivale joined SirDarth in Merac, but I had one of my new-style disconnections soon after ten, which meant the newer computer had to be restarted - we were back in action in about 12 minutes though, most of that time being spent on milk and cookies. And at approaching eleven I saw a bit of red flapping on the screen...and when I zoomed out, it was the Grand Red Dragon directly overhead! A knight called Macmillion apologised, "Cr ap sorry man didn't know you were pet training", but it was hardly his fault if his Berserker-killing in the area had attracted the attentions of Merac's raid boss. Darth and Peri moved down the road a little - as long as nobody attacked the GRD, causing area of effect magical attacks and the spawning of angry Cerebrii, my feeling was that we ought to be okay. By the end of the evening, not only was Darth's pony passing the halfway mark in level 15, Peri's horse was past halfway in level 34.

Downtime

MistressDomino was set up in merchant mode last night, and managed to sell some moonstone boxes, pan flutes, drake eggs, potions of haste, and a level 37 horse, which made a rather nice boost to her gold reserves - but before too long, I think, she got disconnected, as I discovered in the morning. I can't blame the Last Chaos servers for that disconnection - my internet connection had vanished entirely, and I only managed to get things working again at around a quarter to eleven.

So, SirDarth and SirPerivale had a rather late start today. There wasn't time for MistressDomina to do any skill point farming before lunch, either; there was just enough time for her to do some mining though, to use up 24 of the tool aids she'd accumulated recently, and ride down to SirDarth in Merac to pass most of the new quality stones across to him, before she logged out and Peri logged back in for the lunch break.

After lunch, however, MistressDomina went down to Auzura-4's Prokion Temple, and settled in with the Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen in my favourite back room. I used two of the last three super skill pills - the first one brought in 215 skill points, and the second one 211, and, as I stayed on for a while afterwards, the total skill point gain was 451, on 14.44% experience, along with 1262 pet points. Now that the Axemen are blue-named, and the Sergeants green-named and not far from turning blue, the drops aren't as good as they used to be, I don't think there was any armour dropped - but there were still Hands of Bravery, giving Large Attack Potions, as well as Stars, Stripes, and Moonstone Boxes, plus gold.

The next, and last, super skill pill, for an hour of double skill point experience, ought to take MD above 23k of unused skill points, which, while it is less than I was hoping for before the Aeria people changed the maximum "freeze" of experience gain from 100% to 50%, ought to be enough for the foreseeable future.

I didn't really settle down to anything for long in the evening. The first item on the egenda was to get MrChuckNorris, my titan, up to level 54, so I went out to the Sphinx types and fought them solo for a while. I just added 6.48%, which was all I needed to level up, plus 3 skill points and 308 pet points. Back in town, I checked to see if there were any new skills to learn, and found that there was a second level of Toughness to learn - in fact, I should have learnt it when I reached 53. Spending 168 skill points means that I've decreased the damage Chuck takes from Critical and Deadly hits, probably by a further 10 on top of the first level's 80, though the Last Chaos "Wet Paint" wiki isn't absolutely sure of its figures.

Since Steve is spending most of his time on the Hatzring server, I thought I'd better check up to see what characters I have over there - a level ten mage, and a level 10 healer, it seems. I spent a while on the healer, Kaerella of course, getting a few skill points from berserk wolves, but being careful not to get too close to level eleven, in case this version of Kae needs to enter the Guardian system at some point. I added the entrance to Velpist temple to her memory scroll, and the "Mad Monster Spawn" location too. A friendly level 26 rogue, "blackdeathrouge", gave me a solo party. She'd got bored with levelling/farming in Prokion Temple, and so was out in the grasslands of Juno for a change.

Then it was time to log my under-powered level twenty titan Cyborg in, just to sort out the quests available to him at that level in Randol. I did want to finish by doing the quests to learn herb, energy and stone gathering, but I couldn't get that type of farming to work. Normally if the Endurance of a tool isn't going down, I sit down, and then stand up again, and then all goes well, but this time I just couldn't get Cy to sit. So, a log-out was called for. A few minutes later I logged back in, and this time there was no problem getting the quest herb, energy and stone, so Cyborg is now the proud owner of nine more potions of haste. He was able to sit down, too.

And that is just about all there is to report on today. SirDarth had continued his pet-levelling, so that his drake is well into level 24 now, while SirPerivale took over from Cyborg, after Kaerella had a quick check on her item mall "Records" section (something expected still hasn't arrived). Peri's horse should end the evening only an hour away from reaching level 34, so we are making progress there, just not quite as much progress today as I might have hoped.

More Time in Prokion

SirDarth and SirPerivale were up early as usual, and Peri's horse reached level 33 during the morning. Darth had to play without any supervision for a while, as before ten I fired up Guild Wars on the newer computer, and that always makes an existing Last Chaos window, even if minimised at the time, go black. Darth continued to pet-level, until I finally closed the Last Chaos window, but I couldn't feed the drake or anything, all I could do was watch things from Peri's point of view. Over in Shing Jea Monastery, in that other game, the Dragon Festival was reaching its climax, and I needed to have a character there to get the newest dragon-type headgear. Well, I think she has almost every other special hat or mask ever issued, so one needs to continue the collection, yes?

After coffee it was time for MistressDomina to head for Auzura-4's Prokion Temple, where she soon reached level 33. This meant that the skill exp per Orc Sergeant fell by 14.3%, and the skill exp per Orc Axeman fell by 20.0%. The Orc Axemen are now blue-named, so fighting them won't add any pet points; the amount of regular experience they give has fallen away very sharply too.

All of this explains why, compared to yesterday's 280-ish skill points in an hour, along with about 14% experience and 800 pet points, this morning's 246 skill points in the hour (249 in all), 8.09% experience, and 657 pet points seems a bit low. As that included a few minutes before levelling up, and used the last of the 15% skill pills, things would be a little bit lower next time, I knew. If the experience gain per hour has been cut in half, I thought, perhaps it was just about time for MistressDomina to come out of the "50% experience gain freeze" situation, and start to level in a normal way.

After the usual pet-levelling over lunch, it was time to finish the job on that spare titan of mine, Cyborg. First of all, Rage partied with him, and used Party Recall to let him get the entrance to Prokion Temple onto his memory scroll (plus the Sphinx types and the entrance to the Tomb of Theos, for good measure); then MistressDomina passed her armour and accessories over to MistressSabina, who at level 30 was just in range of Cyborg, at level 15, without Cy being "capped".

MistressSabina partied with Cyborg, and added horse buffs, and Mana Shield for speed, for him, just outside Prokion Temple, again on Auzura-4. Then, although his own armour is still rather low-level, he was able to run to my favourite back room, and take up a position in a corner, protected by one of the torch/braziers. MistressSabina followed him in, and set to work on the back room's Orc Axemen and Orc Soldiers, in much the same way that MistressDomina had earlier, though using her level 33 wand instead of MD's level 29 staff. Over the next 40 minutes MistressSabina added 15% experience - and Cyborg added five levels, reaching level 20 and completing his Guardian apprenticeship, so that the event weapon appeared in his inventory.

The "Sunday Teatime" started about then, with 50% extra skill experience for two hours, but Sabina didn't stay long, she doesn't need 50% extra, if she is to get any useful number of skill points she needs at least 200% extra. In all she added 15.95% experience, 67 skill points, and 653 pet points.

The best way to make use of the bonus time was for MistressDomina to swing back into action, so as soon as the accessories and armour had been traded back to MD, SirDarth logged in for some pet-levelling and the solo party boost, and very soon MD was back in that room with the Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants. The Sergeants were now giving 4950 skill exp per kill and the Axemen 3300, but as we were still on the 50% freeze of the experience gain, that was as good as using a pssp for triple skill exp without the freeze. MD now only had four super skill pills left, for an hour each of double skill exp, so using the 50% bonus was rather convenient.

There was about an hour and 45 minutes left of the Teatime, and MistressDomina made pretty good use of it, adding 12.29% experience, 1176 pet points, and, I see, exactly 300 skill points, taking her comfortably over the 22k mark.

The early evening food break had the pet-levelling duo back in action; a single Pandora's Box let out a level 50 Pandora's Beast, which Chuck came down and dealt with, gaining 71,200 gold. Soon after that Darth's drake reached level 20, while when he logged out again Peri's horse was just approaching the 30% mark on the journey through level 33.

The main evening session on a Sunday is always a problem, as it has the Quiz stuck right in the middle. I was running a bit late, after delaying my food break until the "Happy Hour" had ended, so, ruling out trips to Egeha or the Forgotten Temple, I logged LordElpus in for a few minutes... and then worked out that I just about had time for an hour's worth of Prokion Temple before the Quiz, so changed over to MistressDomina again.

This was MD's first full ssp-using hour at level 33, so it was interesting to find that she went up 6.88%, which means potentially eleven more one-hour sessions before she reaches level 34 if I don't get her experience gain "unfrozen" from its current 50% rate. Using the 100% boost to skill exp from the ssp, 221 skill points got added, along with 563 pet points. Hitting the Axemen doesn't count towards pet experience now, and I'd have said if anything there were more Axemen than Sergeants in that room's mix; I think we're still getting more than half as many pet points because hitting a group with Flame Storm only counted once before, even if six targets were involved...and as long as at least one of those targets is a Sergeant, it still counts the same way.

The Quiz started on time at 8:30 UK time; I was there as Kaerella as usual on Auzura-2, along with Rage, plus Ratel, GuildHealer, and a lot of DreamingRequiem people including Aszune... and almost everyone got kicked out on about the fifth question. I suppose I wasn't concentrating, everyone else was on the side that said that, yes, GMKrash was in charge of the old school treasure hunts... and then at the last minute I persuaded myself to dash for the other side. Rage, who was following me, didn't make it, and respawned back in the middle of Randol, along with almost everyone else.

So, Kae was one of only eight survivors. Luckily most of the following questions were ones we know the answers to, and we all made it through to the end, to get our ten tool aids, ten moonstones, and fifteen heaven stones. By that time I'd got SirDarth back pet-levelling in Merac with his Berserker. And when Kae logged out, well, it was time for LordElpus to kill a few more foxes and wolves.

Ratel and GuildHealer (alias Steve, Stavanic, BringerofHell, etc) were looking at prices in Auzura-1's Randol - heaven stones on sale for ten million, mounts for 800 million, chaos smelting stones approaching 200 million, and all sorts of vastly inflated prices. It all gave Ratty a bit of a headache, and he signed off for the night. Steve apparently has a character or two on the Hatzring server, and he plans to work on them a bit over the next week or two, levelling pets and generally farming, as he reckons that prices are more stable there, so he wants to develop a Norcaine guild there that we could all switch to if necessary. He'll still drop in on us over here from time to time, though.

LordElpus didn't get too bored, as an assassin-rogue had summoned a Skin Walker, a level 82 boss type monster from Egeha, which seemed really incongruous just by the moat around town. She and a knight friend were attempting to kill it, but made very little headway, with the knight dying a couple of times, until they brought in a rather higher level titan to help. It still took a while, though! As I knew that Skin Walkers aren't aggressive, I allowed it to get pretty close to me in an attempt to take a screenshot - and nearly died, an "area of effect" skill it used took me down to 7 health. So, I kept my distance after that.

So, that was the way the day ended; SirDarth had got his drake to level 21 before the end of play, while SirPerivale's horse should have reached about 40% of the way through level 33 by the time he logs out. Peri still has around a thousand quality stones, but that number is going to start to fall quite dramatically over the coming week.

A Fight With Kamira

As usual my brave pair of pet-levellers swung into action just before breakfast, and it wasn't long before SirPerivale got the horse he is working on up to level 32. Peri was able to take a rest after (iced) coffee, though, as it was once again time for MistressDomina to head for Auzura-4's Prokion Temple.

After yesterday getting 405 skill points from a 50% skill exp boost over a slightly extended two hours, this time my first "test kill" showed that unfortunately the GMs had remembered to switch off that boost after the US "Happy Hour" last night, so I was able to use the 100% super skill pill and 15% skill pill stacked together, which gave me 281 skill points over the first hour, and 278 over the second hour - well I did have a rather brief phone call to deal with! That was another 559 skill points in the bank, along with 27.36% experience and 1608 pet points.

After lunch I had to do a little bit of moving items around, and made a new healer character just to carry some spare accessories and event items... I was surprised to find that the name LadyAuzura wasn't taken yet, but it is now! And then Ratel got in touch, asking me what the price was for Chaos Balls currently... I said that I'd sold a few for 1.65 million a little while ago, but that with the way the price of Chaos Smelting Stones has gone up recently, they may be worth more than that now.

It turned out that Ratel had bought one, and, while he'd not got a "CSS", what he had got in exchange for it was a Blessed Iris, giving double experience gain for three hours, and he was eager to use it in Egeha, hint hint.

So Rage logged in, and paid the 800,000 gold to take the teleporter to Egeha; she partied up with Ratel and MrChuckNorris, and used her Party Recall to bring them to Egeha with no further fee. Ratel politely handed over his 400,000 gold, and then Chuck and Ratel headed out in search of Bogles. I hadn't got any Blessed Irises on Chuck, but I did have some of the "lucky draw" Experience Boxes, and while the first one I opened just gave me a 1-hour 30% experience gain bonus, the second one did give a Blessed Iris, so Ratel and Chuck were able to both start the boosts within seconds of each other.

Generally, we stuck to the Bogles for our marathon session, with a few Dark Bogles thrown in. Of course when we happened to get a bit near the first mother Ape and the Baby Apes, Ratel wanted us to kill her... which took a while and a lot of health, and mana, pots, but we did manage it. A little later we moved past her (Ratel used a potion of haste, but that seemed to leave her a bit frisky and rather in the middle of the path, so I used a memory scroll as we'd previously added the Baby Ape location to our scrolls), and started an attempt to farm the Baby Apes.

The first one or two were okay, with Ratel's teleportation skill coming in handy, but the next one, well they are aggressive, and a second one came in on us while we were fighting a first one, and then a third one joined the fight - we both used the Recall that Rage had provided us with, and after that Ratel was content to stay with the Bogles. They may not give quite as much experience, but they are quicker to kill, not aggressive or protective, and there are plenty of them around.

We did have a number of visits from the Grand Gold Dragon, though; Ratel had a close call at least once when he clicked on it, but luckily he didn't have an attack initiated. Sadly, Aszune was offline (and rather unhappy later to know what she'd missed), and though Rage announced the visits on the DreamingRequiem guild channel, nobody else who was on was the right kind of level. The GGD did what Kamira used to do sometimes, after "Arriving" and hanging around for 14 minutes she'd vanish, only to "Arrive" again, seconds later, in the same location.

I was grumbling about this to Greengem593, who'd opened a Friends-type messenger window to see how I was getting on - and, on hearing that it had "Arrived" at our new location, told us she had a level 93 rogue, Kiramin, who used to kill the GGD, though she'd sold her armour. She quickly found her previous armour, joined the party, and took Recall to Rage, who was able as usual to just point out the dots of the other party members on the map.

Kiramin was a bit under-prepared, and Ratel bravely transferred some suitably large health potions to her during the battle. It went on so long that the horse buffs he had applied ran out, so he had to re-apply them. and I think that this, while entirely necessary, did jinx the possibility of good drops. The rogue's health did go extremely low at one stage, I was advising her to take Rage's Recall and regroup, but in the end she triumphed, killing the Cursed Weavers it spawned too, She was so happy to have managed this that she didn't mind the absence of drops; with any luck the Weavers dropped a little gold, anyway.

So, for the last half hour or so we didn't have to worry about great flapping gold wings overhead. Ratel managed to reach level 47, so is on the lookout for some new armour; both he and Chuck did get heaven stones, and we also picked up a number of Stars and Stripes, and some pieces of armour, mainly titan type, and almost all to Ratel, or so it seemed. By the time the Blessed Irises ran out, Chuck had added a total of 48.46%, along with 5 skill points and 1573 pet points. While he didn't level up, his drake did, and is now level 35.

After the slightly delayed food break, Rage made a trip out the the Forgotten Temple; there are supposed to be some armour items that only drop there, but I didn't get anything like that, just gold, a moonstone box, Stars, and Stripes. I added the location to Rage's scroll, in case the Aeria people do actually improve the skill experience there before Rage outgrows it - it isn't dangerous to get to, but it is a long way. There are some dangerous monsters in there; the level 65 and 67 spiders are passive but protective, while the level 68 Legendary Slayers are aggressive as well as being protective of the spiders, and have a long-range magic attack, Nova Break. The Curd Hadians (level 69) and Twin Hadians (71) are aggressive and protective, while the level 72 Jumping Devils are just aggressive - thankfully all three just have a short-range physical attack, but they hit pretty hard. I didn't tangle with the two oversize boss monsters, the level 73 Barren Eise and the level 75 Blood Terrain. The former has a short-range area of effect magical attack, while the latter goes for short-range physical, plus an area of effect debuff which slows down our attacks.

I'd reached the furthest part of the Temple, and was fighting a few spiders, and individual Jumping Devils, close to the Blood Terrain, when Ratel joined the party for the "solo party" boost, and I invited him to take Recall and come and have a look. Sadly, we were just too far back for him to be able to see the Blood Terrain, but he was suitably impressed by the cathedral-like room...and quickly made his excuses and left. He went off to fight the level 49 Elite Goblins... he needs to farm some skill points for the next lot of temple knight skills, so presumably won't be available for teaming with Chuck for a while. It depends how long it takes, I suppose he may end up teaming, as senior partner, with MistressDomina instead, once she has left Prokion Temple. I do still have plans for her to do some farming in Merac, riding her own red dragon, that idea has just been slightly delayed.

It wasn't long, however, before I got a call from Ratty to say that Kamira had arrived at his location, and he expected me, Rage, to come and kill her, since I was exactly the right level now. It was lucky I'd added the Forgotten Temple's entrance to my memory scroll, I was able, rather than fight my way through the length of the place, to return to Dratan City, teleport down to the entrance, and swiftly ride across to where Ratel was. He kindly loaned me some level 12 magical defence minerals, and put his defence buffs on me, then, once I'd got the horse buffs too, and moved some Great Healing Potions to the skill bar, I double-clicked on the mineral, and on an item drop booster, and attacked the raid boss.

Kamira fought back hard with her fiery magical attack of course, but thanks to the extra magical defence (Rage's is normally 114, along with 161 magical evasion, so an extra 150 makes quite a difference), plus Snare working a time or two, and using a few Great Healing Potions, at the end I was still standing, and Kamira wasn't. The level 35 Death Goddesses she spawns towards the end were no problem of course, and soon I was picking up the assorted drops. As I'd not had a Lucky Scroll to use, it wasn't surprising that there was no rare accessory, but there were the usual sorts of things a raid boss drops - 5 moonstones, 5 tool aids, scrolls of memorising, a medal of honor, 5 lucky scrolls, a crystal of experience (greater), a rather ordinary Hero's Necklace (physical fortitude 4, evasion 11), and a little gold.

So, Rage was now a Kamira-slayer. I paid Ratel for the three minerals, which he let me have at a suitably bargain price, and passed the crystal of experience (greater) over to him as well as a small "thank you" for his assistance and encouragement.

After that, well, LordElpus went out for a fairly brief bit of skill exp farming, and then it was time for SirPerivale to rejoin SirDarth down with the Berserkers in Merac. Darth's hatchling had become a drake now, and ended the day on level 17, while Peri was making good progress on level 32 of his current horse, reaching the halfway mark. We start the day with pet-levelling, and that's how we end, too, which brings our narrative to a satisfactory conclusion.

Another Trip to Egeha

Since I didn't feel like stumbling out of bed and starting Last Chaos when a roll of thunder woke me briefly at 4;30 in the morning, it wasn't until breakfast time that SirDarth and SirPerivale swung into action. SirDarth's horse did, as expected, reach level 31 during the morning; as he had some time off, it wasn't until the lunch break that Peri got his charge up to level 37. I had worked out that 1:10 would be about the time that the horse would get there, but I didn't get upstairs to check until a few minutes later. So, I wasn't able to stop the levelling on 0/14552, but 100/14552 looks almost as neat I think.

MistressDomina headed out to Auzura-4's Prokion Temple a little earlier than usual; as the "APAC" Friday "happy hour" had already happened, there was a chance that the promised 50% extra skill exp gain was still running. And indeed, when I made the first kill of an Orc Sergeant in my favourite back room, he did give 50% more skill experience than usual - at MistressDomina's current level, that's only slightly ahead of what one would get without any boost if one was the same level as a Prokion Temple inhabitant, but it's always nice to get something extra for free.

Before I'd set out, MD had opened twenty skill boxes, getting 4 platinum super skill pills (which will be passed on to MistressSabina), 4 five-packs of skill point boosters, 2 effort scrolls, 3 of the 15% skill pills, and 7 of the super skill pills - but now I didn't have to use any of them, or indeed fight quite so hard and fast. I added 28.13% experience, the equivalent of two full-speed hours' worth (or 28.29% if one includes the experience from killing a level 30 Pandora's beast back in Juno), 2301 pet points, which were enough to get MistressDomina's drake up to level 31, and 405 skill points, taking MD's unused sp total back over the 21k mark.

The "Stars" and "Stripes" seem to be dropping quiet nicely, though the special top hats seem a bit rare as yet. MD got 9 Stars and 6 Stripes during the session, along with 6 moonstone boxes and seven assorted pairs of boots. There was just time after that for MD to do a little mining, since she had a good supply of tool aids in her inventory, as they too drop quite often in the Temple. Fifteen hammers and tool aids were used, to get 405 quality stones, but when she rode down to SirDarth to trade them across, MistressDomina cut down severely on her existing supply of them, passing a full 800 over.

After lunch Darth unleashed another level 50 Pandora's Beast; Chuck disposed of it in the normal way, and got the full 103,200 gold dropped as a reward. Then various items had to be moved around, including pets, before LordElpus had a trip out to the wolves, and foxes. At level eight now, level one foxes still give 412 skill exp (or 618, with the 50% extra event running) and 1 experience; the level 2 wolves also just give 1 experience, at least while a player's experience gain is halved, and 550 skill exp, so in theory, as the whole level needs 16,855 experience, one could gain 927 skill points by just killing 16,855 wolves. That would take rather a long time, though.

After a while it was time to do something other than racing around bashing wolves, so I decided to see if that storage titan of mine, Cyborg, could be levelled up a bit more, with, again, the use of horse buffs to give him an amount of defence and attack way beyond the normal amount for his level. So he and MrChuckNorris went out to the Elder Werewolves, followed by the Treants, the Butchers, and finally the Berserkers; Chuck would apply the horse buffs, and then leave the party, while Cyborg killed as much as he could. It was really only against the Berserkers that he took much damage, and needed to use a small health potion for just about every one, but by the end of the session Cyborg had gone up from level 10 to level 15. And reaching that level raises the possibility of him teaming up with MistressSabina, who is only 15 levels ahead now, in Prokion Temple. With the horse buffs he ought to be able to reach that back room without being killed, I suppose. Still, there's no great hurry; he has taken Kaerella as his guardian today, so has ten days to get to level twenty.

Over the food break SirPerivale started work on the level 31 horse he received from SirDarth; Darth himself had the level eight dragon hatchling in his inventory, the one swapped for one a few levels higher to give one of Steve's characters a helping hand. Its Sympathy had fallen to about 60%, while the horse was being levelled, but the figure gradually rose, and did just manage to reach 100% by the end of the evening.

However, there was a break from pet-levelling, as again Rage took over the older computer to buy a teleport to Egeha for 800,000 gold, and Recall both Ratel and MrChuckNorris there. Ratel was in favour of the Apes, presumably mainly the Baby Apes, but my feeling was that, with the speed at which we could fight them, the last few minutes of our previous trip showed that the humble Bogles would be hard to better - non-aggressive, and plenty of them in the same area.

So, we concentrated on Bogles, and if Ratel did manage to die a couple of times, well, that was mainly a bit of lag, and probably would have been worse elsewhere! After a few minutes Ratel remarked that the Grand Gold Dragon must be near, judging by the lag he was experiencing, and sure enough the "GGD" soon arrived close by. We didn't have any trouble this time, as it wasn't directly over us - this is normal behaviour as far as I remember, the Great Gold Dragon does tend to appear alongside rather than overhead, so that even in the old days when raid boss monsters were aggressive it seldom disrupted a party. Rage was able to announce its arrival on the DreamingRequiem guild channel, and the mage Aszune quickly signed up, took Recall, and ran to where Chuck and Ratty waited. They carefully moved away for the actual fight, after providing horse buffs, as Aszune hadn't got a horse on that character today... so watching Aszune's health bar was how we followed the battle.

Despite a lack of level 12 magical defence minerals, Aszune triumphed without her health dipping very far, and was delighted to report that a rare accessory had dropped, a Stone of Life (100 extra health, +16 to physical fortitude/constitution), as well as Lucky Scrolls etc. The Cursed Weavers spawned as usual - for some reason a couple of them headed for us, possibly because we'd supplied the horse buffs (some monsters can be sensitive about such things), so we made a quick retreat towards town. Aszune killed them all, and kindly left a couple of their cash drops on the ground for us.

Rage also assisted Aszune by helping her transfer a highly-upgraded rogue armour set from XxAcheronxX to her rogue NightBlade, and using Recall to get NightBlade to that Boucu Demon spot. Using plenty of expensive pots, NightBlade was able to add quite a few levels by fighting along that road. Chuck commented that she'd added 9 levels, while so far in his session he'd added about 9%, which was only a slight exaggeration.

Rage left Egeha after that, to use Recall to help NightBlade to get the entrance of the Tomb of Theos onto her memory scroll too. At level 45 now, she was going to try her luck against the level 100 Screaming Zombies - I'm sure she did fine! Rage then logged out, and SirDarth was able to get back to levelling his hatchling.

Ratel had to log out at about 8:15 UK time, by which time he'd safely reached level 46, but Chuck continued on for another hour, using rather more health and mana potions. In all, Chuck went up 23.85%, adding 9 skill points and 1464 pet points, so that was a useful session.

SirDarth's hatchling was well into level 11 by the close of play, while SirPerivale's horse was at least most of the way through level 31. Getting that horse all the way to level 37 will, as usual, take quite a long time, and a lot of quality stones...

Another Warm One

Thursday was another "phew what a scorcher" day in sunny old England, and what's more, I'd temporarily forgotten that I was liable to be busy downstairs for most of the day. Still, SirDarth and SirPerivale are always able to continue their work, so while the skill points and experience weren't being added to, at least the pet points kept rattling in.

The new patch was a pretty big one, and the full announcement confirmed that the big "Uncle Sam" style top hats are involved in the "Independence Day" event, as well as "Stars" and "Stripes". Unusually, the game reset some of its basics - the window size was back down to 1024 by 768 pixels, which, while that was the size of the first LCD screen I had, a few years ago, looks a bit small on today's widescreen monitor. It was easy enough to reset the size option, though. I'm not sure if it's just a reset of one's preferences or not, but typing by default goes straight into the text box now, without clicking or using "enter" - if you want to bring up one of the game's windows, such as the "D" equipped pet details, you have to involved the "alt" key as well. This is perhaps better than starting to type a message and not getting it into the text box, so that all sorts of unwanted windows open and close.

So, there was no morning trip today to Prokion Temple for MistressDomina, and no sunny afternoon with the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men for MrChuckNorris. SirPerivale did manage to get his horse up to level 36 by coffee time, however, so the final level is now under way. Darth's horse reached level 29 soon after that; as, with his current armour, Peri can only level a horse at the Berserkers comfortably from level 31 on, when it can give him all 30 levels of Armour Increase, the timing seems pretty good there. Once Darth's horse has been moved across to Peri, I think there was a guildie who was asking to have his current pet given a few extra levels...

In the early evening, I moved SirDarth across to the Auzura-4 subserver, as it tends to be quieter - and Peri took some time off, while MistressDomina made a belated trip to the Auzura-4 Prokion Temple. Despite the rather more popular time for playing, the Temple was generally not very busy, and both the "corridor room" and my favourite back room were free. So, MD settled in with her super skill pill, and got 262 skill points in the hour, plus 13.70% experience and 940 pet points.

Stavanic/Steve was online in Prokion Temple too, but he was in Auzura-3 and finding it a bit busy - he, as his level 20 healer GuildHealer, and another player had had an argument about who was ks-ing whom, and he returned as his knight to continue the discussion, though in a non-lethal way as it's not a PvP sub-server. The other player was gone by then, though. He asked me to check if a particular room, with just Mummies and one Orc Soldier, was free on Auzura-4, and as my hour was just ending, I was able to wander around until I found it, and assure him that, while I'd had a chat with a couple of rogues there, they were just passing through.

So he moved over, and got Darth to give him a solo party, while he used a ten-minute effort scroll, at least.

Steve has, it transpired, started a new guild, as well as the DeathBringers guild that SirPerivale is in; this new one is called FantasyWarriors, and he needed one of my characters to join, for the same reason that Peri is in the other one - so that he can transfer, via me, the guild master position from one character to another. As he'd used my storage titan Cyborg (obviously a teen titan) before to transfer items and pets, it was Cyborg he wanted me to log in.

So, his titan Fanfrit recruited Cyborg to FantasyWarriors - he made Cyborg a Guild Adviser, but he couldn't make him Guild Master. I knew that you needed a level 10 character to start a guild, but it seems that the minimum guild master level isn't just for upgrading, it's for all the time, so poor Cyborg, at level two, wasn't qualified to become GM. Still, Steve isn't easily stopped - he changed over to GuildHealer, who currently has custody of the level 34 mount I trained for him, teamed with Cyborg, and we went out to the Sasquatches. GuildHealer would apply the horse buffs, much as Chuck did once yesterday for Fanfrit, and then leave the party, while Cyborg did some killing - and killing level 12 critters at level two certainly makes you level up quickly! It didn't take very long to outgrow the Sasquatches; as long as the horse buffs lasted I was fine, even though Cyborg had only the starter armour and sword, and even after putting what he could into storage, was still slightly over the 100% for his inventory's weight, and thus a little low on dexterity. The level 17 Elder Werewolves were our next stop, once the Sasquatches were no longer red-named for me - I even managed to kill the level 27 Blood Wolf they guard a couple of times, though he was able to do me quite a lot of damage.

GuildHealer had a disconnection when I was in level nine, which slowed me down rather, but Fanfrit arrived after a few minutes, at level 10, and together we killed a few more Sasquatches until Cyborg levelled up. So then Cyborg was momentarily, successfully made Guild Master, before passing the position across to Stavanic, who has temporarily left Norcaine for it. Steve's guild enterprises seem pretty complicated, but then, so are mine, with my own guild, plus Adviser status in Norcaine, Rage active in DreamingRequiem, SirPerivale in DeathBringers, and now Cyborg in FantasyWarriors, to say nothing of the Cariae server's guilds.

Cyborg only had about 36 skill points in all, so was only able to get the first couple of levels of four useful passive skills. Well, I doubt if he'll go any further, unless Steve has some reason to power-level him to twenty. being level ten meant he could go to Lorraine to get his first "treasure chest" opened, and he was in luck there, he got five of the valuable Candy health and mana boosters. He had also picked up moonstone boxes, plus stars and stripes, along the way.

After that it was nearly logging out time anyway, so the plan was for SirPerivale to join SirDarth at the Berserkers. Darth however had two Pandora's Boxes close to him, jigging around anxiously, so they had to be opened before Peri logged in. Sure enough, the first one unleashed a level 50 Beast - the second one, which Darth was able to hit as he strategically retreated, just gave ten small healing potions. Darth's horse did lose 5 health before Darth managed to unequip it - he raced to the bottom of the hill leading towards town, but the Beast, as its equine target had vanished, didn't follow, and Darth was able to equip the horse again and continue working... while Chuck logged in.

Chuck rode down and dealt with the Beast, getting 77,600 gold this time, and then SirPerivale was able to replace him on the newer computer. It looks as if about three more hours tomorrow will see his horse reach level 37 - and Darth's horse should have reached 31 about an hour before that, so all is going smoothly on the horse-levelling side here. Except when people come along and kill the Berserkers Darth and Peri are sparring with, that is. That did happen a time or three today, once I saw the culprit, a rogue called Sp33dy, who actually got a Hand of the Guard drop from one kill. The weather forecast does say that things should cool down a bit over the next few days, so, once I finish the downstairs work tomorrow morning, hopefully I'll be able to do a bit more playing tomorrow.

A Hot Time

In the end Chuck did ride down last night and kill the wandering level 50 Pandora's Beast, getting 72,000 gold for his trouble; it wasn't just SirPerivale and SirDarth who were pet-levelling there, another knight called Capitan was also busy. This morning Peri and Darth didn't get a particularly early start, but were both in action slightly before eight in the morning, UK time - and Darth's horse reached level 27 before lunch.

My mage MistressDomina, or indeed since she is level 32 now I should call her my wizard, was able to head out for Prokion Temple on the Auzura-4 subserver, and put in her regular hour's skill point farming in my favourite back room. Using a super skill pill, for double skill exp, rather than a platinum one, giving triple skill exp, cut back her skill point gain, but she still managed to add 264 skill points while the pill lasted - 265 in all in the session, due to the usual "test kill" at the start and finishing off the current mob at the end. A gain of 13.94% experience reinforces the idea that there ought to be five more sessions before level 33 is reached, at that point we'll possibly stop the "50% experience freeze" situation, and just start moving onward and upward, though MD is likely to still be fighting Prokion Temple's Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen for a couple of levels yet.

And one MistressDomina stops hunting there, and levels up enough to graduate to a different armour set, then it will be MistressSabina's turn to gather some more skill points from Prokion Temple's Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen. She of course doesn't have any points at all saved up yet, and is already level thirty, after upgrading the Discipline guild so many times, so she'll never have a huge stash of sp.. still, it will be useful to have a witch-type mage who doesn't risk a big death penalty, to take to Mad Monster Spawns and that sort of thing. And I've never actually played a witch...

Once I was back in Randol, I reported a couple of gold-spammers on the official Last Chaos forum's shoutbox, and they were soon silenced by the GameSage who was on duty, which was good; their incessant spamming, usually a number of posts per second, does stop real players from chatting and generally makes the place unpleasant. It looks as if the new procedures they've put in place have helped to cut down on the spammers, or at least on the time that each spammer remains in action.

But then it was time for Peri to log back in, joining Darth for some more pet levelling over the lunch break.

After that, Chuck logged in, and headed for the Sphinx types, in a solo party with SirDarth. The mage Wortex was there, but didn't seem inclined to suggest teaming up, and didn't stick around long, so Chuck just fought solo, avoiding the Elite Sphinx Speer Man. However, back in the real world, it was just about the hottest day of the year so far, and the room with the computers in is south-facing, and, well, with two computers putting out a fair bit of heat themselves, things were starting to get a bit warm.

So, with regret, Chuck's session came to rather a premature close. He had only added 3.47% experience, 3 skill points, and 182 pet points, so it hadn't been a very long session. I went downstairs, for a cooler, north-facing room, after getting Peri back to work.

A level 7 titan called Fanfrit had added Darth to his friends list; I had rather assumed it was Stavanic, er, Steve, but I'm not entirely clear on that. Anyway, he wanted horse buffs, so Chuck ended up logging back in a for a few minutes, and accompanying him to the Treants close to Velpist Temple in Juno. I did drop a memorising scroll for him, so that he could get the Temple entrance memorised, but even with horse buffs I don't know how long he was going to last fighting level 27 Treants, which do have the tendency to come in from all directions if you attack one of their number. Still, they don't move particularly fast, so he may have been okay. I'm not sure that he wasn't hoping that Chuck would hang around and re-buff him every time the horse buffs ran out, but I wasn't going to stay in the hot room for that, so Chuck logged out, Peri logged back in, and I scurried off downstairs.

So, the day's adventures rather petered out, though this meant more time for SirDarth and SirPerivale to do their work...and also meant that I had time to finish reading a novel that in theory I should have finished yesterday. There wasn't the usual server maintenance last night, and there was an announcement on the website to that effect, how people could continue their play without interruptions... but this evening there was a new announcement, that there would be server maintenance today, and at 1:00pm PST...which is nine o'clock UK time, and thus a bit inconvenient normally for us European types.

So, Peri won't be able to get his horse to level 36, which might otherwise have been a possibility tonight; Darth did have time to get his four-legged friend well into level 28, however. A little before eight the Grand Red Dragon put in an appearance, but after the usual 14 minutes got bored and went away again. As usually happens on a Wednesday evening, though we skipped the last two weeks, I had other things to do from eight... though Darth at least did keep pet-levelling until, a few minutes earlier than advertised, the Last Chaos servers came down.

The weather forecast for Thursday is for more of the same, unfortunately; hopefully at least a morning session will be possible. On Friday, things should be cooler, I'm happy to report.

The "patch notes" inform us that, when the servers are back up, as is appropriate for a week containing the 4th of July there's be an "Independence Day" event, with drops of "stars" and "stripes", which are items that give a bonus to damage and xp/sp gain... I suspect that large Uncle Sam type top hats may be involved too. The hardware for a couple of the older servers is being upgraded - "All Katarian and Cariaeian players rejoice, as your latency problems will be heavily reduced after this maintenance" - so maybe the down time will be a bit longer than average. Oh, and the level cap is being raised to 145 from 140, apparently it should have been the latter all along, since level 145 weapons had appeared in the game but couldn't yet be used. Not a problem I encountered... And of course the item mall will have been updated too.