In The Fast Lane

It looked as if Aeria were getting on top of their problems last night, or that the main wave of the "Denial of Service" attack was over; they had closed a couple of sub-servers on a couple of the servers, and everything seemed to have settled down, though it was too late for the regular Sunday Quiz, which they, sensibly, had cancelled.

My pet-levellers logged in, and managed to stay in; there was a Pandora's Box last thing, so MistressDomina had to be sent for. I noticed that the remaining time on her crit potion had vanished - the Blessed Iris and 30% elixir potions would have finished anyway, as they go by real time, even when the character is not logged in. I also noticed that the promised items to compensate for MD's losses hadn't arrived, though I checked all the servers in case they'd been sent to the wrong one - but by the morning they had arrived, as a "Spring: Winter Steal" package.

MD did get 72,000 gold from the Beast, and SirPerivale was able to log back in afterwards, and try an overnight pet-levelling session. There was a disconnection about halfway through the night, however, so the computer did get some rest.

Peri and Cap restarted in the morning without any problems; Cap did manage to get the horse up to level 37, though this level, the final one for this particular pet, is liable to take fourteen or fifteen hours of playing time. Peri's drake was well into level 24 by lunchtime, so about ready to be transferred over to Cap, once there is a vacancy.

There was an after-coffee session for JohnWellington and Galahad, in my favourite back room in Prokion Temple on Auzura-3, with no lag problems. John went first, and once he'd found the room free, Gal went to join him. A mage called LoyalGuardianz, which sounds more like a guild than a person, did decide to join me for a while, with crit pot, mana and health stealers, and a pssp active. Gal immediately warned that "this is a dangerous room", but she didn't reply. I don't know how high a level she was, but she wasn't yet in a 30/32 armour set, and when Galahad chivalrously gave her the Divine Shield buff, she reciprocated by giving both Gal and John a Haste buff - level one! I don't think she died, or lagged out, but she left extremely suddenly.

JohnWellington got the "run out of memory" error a few minutes before we would have finished anyway, so we didn't quite manage to get Discipline up to 5000 guild points; he had added 9.54% by then, taking him into level 32 (which made the Orc Axemen blue-named for him as well as for Cap, and greatly reduced the experience they gave), 76 skill points, and 126 guild points. Galahad added 7.86%, 75 skill points, and 128 guild points, before he too logged out.

Back in town, John was able to spend 851 skill points on level 32 skills, so that he is now able to transform himself into a red devil or a small-headed knight. That ought to be fun, if I choose my opponents carefully - the knight has good defence but not-so-good attack, while the devil, they say, has a good attack but isn't too good armour-wise.

After the usual lunchtime pet-levelling, it was time, I decided, to give MistressDomina a bit of a boost, in level and morale, after that Tomb of Theos debacle. I checked the Wet Paint Last Chaos wiki, and saw that the Elite Sphinx Speer Man, since he is elite, gives a quarter more experience than Ratel's Baby Apes. I've seen plenty of other people speedily levelling using a platinum blessed iris for triple experience gain, plus individual experience boosters to quadruple that to twelve times the normal experience, so, as I'd started to "lag" behind Ratel, with his apparently smooth and effortless Ape-hunting in Egeha while it was all I could do to keep logging in my pet-levellers after disconnections, why not use some of my supply of the experience boosters too?

MistressDomina took MrChuckNorris with her to the Sphinx types for the afternoon, just to supply the Combat party boost - and over the two hours or so he added exactly 3.66% experience. There was a group of people fighting the Elite and the others when we arrived, so MD just started off to one side, but it wasn't long before they left, so I moved across to the Elite Speer Man, started a pbi, and got to work.

The general routine, apart from re-applying horse buffs when needed, was to kill the Elite, then the near-end Sphinx Fighter, then the nearest Sphinx Speer Man, and then the Elite again, and so on. Sometimes I had to wait a few seconds for the Elite Sphinx Speer Man to respawn, but generally it worked very well, with the removal of that one Speer Man keeping the Elite accessible. And on the Elite, I'd use an experience booster, so that it gave on average over eight million experience.

By the end of the first hour MD had added 98.94% experience (and reclaimed 6 skill points), and reached level 56, allowing her to start wearing the shirt and skirt from the 60/62 armour set; I kept going, and somehow managed to get 102.54% in the second hour, taking MD into level 57. That was a total of 201.48%, and 11 skill points, plus 1121 pet points. MistressDomina could wear the level 62 boots and headgear now, but Chuck is still wearing them, until he can level up and put on the level 67 ones...still, that particular mage footwear is a sort of "bell-bottom chaps" affair, which looks a bit strange, so perhaps I don't mind MD waiting a bit.

Stavanic had got in touch, wanting my help as, with only access to a rather old computer, the Auzura-1 Randol was a bit too busy for him to visit - what he wanted was an Extreme Stone, at the best price I could find up to 22 million. I wasn't able to do that with my platinum blessed iris running, but luckily Chuck is still carrying some Extreme Stones after opening lots of upgrade boxes, so Steve was able to come out to visit me at the Sphinx types, and I sold him one for 14 million. He also got Chuck to hold some items while he changed to GuildHealer; she took a little while to reach Chuck to take them, as she'd not got the exact location on her memory scroll yet and had to come from near the Tomb of Theos, but presumably it meant she could add the location for future use.

For the evening session, I went to Egeha. It was MistressDomina, now on the older computer, who paid the 800,000 gold to travel there, and then she was able to use her Party Recall card to bring Chuck in. The idea was that this time Chuck would be the one with the platinum blessed iris in the Combat party, with MD just standing within range to add that little extra boost. So, it really had to be Bogles, which are still four levels above Chuck, since they are so passive. MD could just stand anywhere in their area and be safely ignored, while Chuck did the farming.

The only trouble was that even with the pbi tripling Chuck's experience gain, the hour only brought in 15% experience. I continued after that for a while, but it wasn't, obviously, going to be an evening for a "great leap forward" in Chuck's levelling.

Luckily Ratel had come online not long after I reached my favourite Bogle hill, and accepted my offer of a free trip to Egeha. He didn't stay with the Bogles, which was just as well as there is only a limited supply of them - he headed for his pals the Baby Apes, while staying in the party, which worked well. MD was able to put up Recall again as an "emergency exit", just click the "accept" button and any foe that thought it was about to kill you would be left pawing at thin air.

Ratel got a bit more ambitious later, which was probably something to do with reaching level 57; thanks to Rage, when she had a Party Recall card a while back, he had the Boucu Demon party location on his memory scroll, so he went there - and while he used an awful lot of pots and magic defence minerals, he was managing to kill them.

He mentioned that Chuck would gain experience more quickly there - so we decided to team up for the Boucu Demons, at least for the rest of Ratty's blessed iris. MD stayed behind, moving to town and putting up the "emergency exit" recall - which we used twice, when a Skinwalker, a boss type that is protective of the Demons, got a little too close. At least I used mine twice, Ratty was so used to the slower method of mounting his horse and clicking on "pet return to village" that he did that the first time.

The Boucu Demons' magic attack is a bit fierce, so that when Ratel's shield stun failed, we were in a bit of trouble. Chuck had his "Smite" stun too, but it is a little buggy, so that even when it fails to work, its icon appears on the monster's bar, and it overwrites Ratel's stun. Still, we survived, and as Chuck does carry a big sword, which does a minimum of 2000 damage there, normally if both of Ratty's shield stuns worked, the Demon would be dead by the time the second one ended.

We were in an Equal party, which was only fair as while Chuck may do more damage, Ratty is at the sharp end, and supplies the main buffs as well as the main stuns. He even passed over a supply of level 3 magical defence minerals for Chuck to use. We went on for a little while after his blessed iris ended, but the second enforced trip back to town, leaving an angry Skinwalker behind, seemed like a good moment at which to end the evening's excitements. Chuck had added at least another 12% there, rather more quickly and without any boosting potions; Chuck's total experience gain from the Egeha trip ended up at a very respectable 31.09%, plus 11 skill points, and 1250 pet points for his drake. For her moral support MistressDomina had added 2.46%, and the same 11 skill points, since only a tiny amount of skill exp had come from the Demon trip.

After that, while Ratel did some shopping in Randol on Auzura-1, looking longingly at a "Tears of Knight" accessory at a comparatively reasonable 720 million, and buying a +5 level 61 weapon for 5.5 million, the most highly upgraded one he could find, it was time for me to log my pet-levellers in. The pink drake that SirPerivale has been working on should reach level 25 by log-out time, while CaptainScarlet has got the pale blue horse more than a third of the way through level 37 now.

There continued to be in-game messages about the "lag issues and DC's", but I didn't have any problems today, thankfully. Ratel did disconnect once while he was at the Baby Apes, but it was between fights, so there wasn't any problem and I was soon able to use Recall to get him back to Egeha. Stavanic reported that he had disconnected once, and his young horse had died because of it. But generally today we got off extremely lightly.

A "Denial of Service" Attack

My duo of pet-levellers didn't last long last night, as could perhaps have been expected. I logged SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet back in at their normal bright-and-early time this morning, but again, they were plagued with lag, and disconnections followed after a few minutes. I did try again a bit later, at around what would during the week be breakfast time, and they managed to keep going; by around nine in the morning, UK time, Peri's drake was a third of the way through level 21, while that pale blue horse that Cap has been working on was slowly approaching the half-way mark in level 36.

Normally, that is the final level, but I think it is about time I sold another horse, rather than just passing it on to one of my newly-levelled characters, so I'm thinking of going on until we reach level 38 this time, which would allow a mount to learn one extra skill, "horse crying". It's not anything I've ever found useful, the ability to attract nearby monsters, but there are people who like to have it, or, from a different skill, a bit of extra health while riding.

The theory was that with any luck the lag would settle down while America is asleep - though that is what I thought yesterday, with disastrous consequences for MistressDomina's skill point total.

This morning I actually saw an in-game announcement: "ATTENTION: We are aware of the lag issues and DC's. Please visit the forums for up to date information. Thank you for your patience." Not that there was much information on the forum, but, it shows willing. That seemed to be the only GM-spam message in rotation.

After coffee, it was time to send Galahad and JohnWellington to Prokion Temple on Auzura-3, on the general feeling that their armour was strong enough to keep them alive during a disconnection, even if a number of Orcs kept bashing away on them. John went first, and found, not surprisingly, that the back room was free, so Gal followed. It wasn't long before John had a disconnection, though - things had suddenly gone very laggy for both characters, with items not being picked up and Orcs not being hit, though naturally the Orcs could still hit us. Galahad survived, and, after the usual series of failures, I finally managed to log John back in, so that he was able to hurry back. They both fought the Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen there, and it went well - though Gal got a disconnection at a quarter to twelve, UK time, and, for a change, a few minutes later John got the old "run out of memory" error, so the session came to a slightly premature end.

Galahad had added 9.15% experience by then, and 150 guild points; JohnWellington got 12.90% and 145 guild points. They got 87 skill points each, too. On the guild point front, another dual session like that will be enough to get Discipline's total back up over 5000, enough for the "expension of the guild" skill. Luckily that sort of guild skill doesn't require the guild master to sacrifice any skill points.

Ratel was happy, he had been doing really well on the Baby Apes in Egeha, and looked set to overtake MistressDomina soon, if he hadn't done so already. He has had absolutely no problems in Egeha, getting plenty of gold from drops, and a useful shield for his future use. Apparently the Grand Gold Dragon did show up at one point yesterday, unsurprisingly, but he was in a general "solo party", and a level 96 party member came across to deal with it. At 11:30 this morning, my time, presumably an hour later for him, he was confident enough to start another three-hour Blessed Iris and 30% elixir. He had sold all his heaven stones from last week's quiz at 3.5 million each, and spent the proceeds on three large crit potions, so the plan was to use them during his three hours, so that he cut through the Baby Apes like a knife through butter. Indeed, at the end of the second hour he reported that he was on the 98% mark, and then levelled up shortly after.

So, plain sailing for Ratty, though my pet-levellers in Merac, which was probably just as quiet as he was finding Egeha, did continue to get disconnections every few minutes, despite of course not using any skills. "2.3 mil accumulated so far, and eight armour pieces", he reported to Cap, soloing the Berserkers after Peri had another disconnection. And soon after that Cap had another disconnection himself, and I gave up on Last Chaos - until the time for the regular weekly Quiz approached. Would our connections last long enough, or would it all descend into chaos?

CaptainScarlet tried some pet-levelling in the evening, and disconnected before long; when I managed to get him logged back in eventually, he did manage to stick around for a while. That was on the older computer, while on the Vista one I was busy in Guild Wars again, mainly cleaning out the Northlands in Pre-Searing - not that the four boss Charr dropped anything rare, but it gave my level 14 ranger a little more experience and some useful loot.

I logged Cap out at about 8:15, UK time, as it is always a good idea to restart the game before the Quiz - and couldn't get back in, timing out every time. I couldn't log Kaerella in, either. Restarting the game brought up the announcements, and for a change it wasn't just GM events and item mall bargains, we had "Network Issues" as the latest item, and following its link got us to a forum announcement, "Network Issues Explained", by Aeria_ks1lent, LC's product manager, saying in part:

"We first noticed a large influx of traffic early Friday (9/4/09). We attributed this traffic to our exposure at the PAX expo as outlined by Superman0X . The initial assumption proved to be false and the cause of these issues turned out to be malicious and targeted in nature. We began to suspect malicious intent early Saturday morning as the unusually concentrated traffic failed to abate. Our suspicions were confirmed this evening (9/5/09) when we received a threatening email and set of demands from the malicious individual who is behind the attacks on our servers. Before and subsequent to this discovery we have made a number of changes to our network infrastructure to mitigate the outages on Last Chaos. We continue to monitor the situation closely and make improvements to our security and network configurations. We will continue to work tirelessly to solve this issue and bring back Last Chaos to the stable game you have all come to know and love.

"With your support, we will overcome this obstacle. Last Chaos was one of the most popular and fast-growing MMORPGs before this attack and we will be even more successful after it. Prepare yourselves for the fanfare of events and fun that will begin upon the elimination of this current threat.

"See you in game!"

All of which puts a different complexion on things. For a start, it gets rid of the "Ah well, once PAX is over everything will be back to normal" assumption, sigh... Some people in the ShoutBox were having a hard time believing it, but it makes a heck of a lot more sense than the idea of tens of thousands of people at the Penny Arcade Expo relinquishing their current games and all logging in to Last Chaos en masse, and thus overwhelming the servers. Denial of service attacks, usually from the sinister "botnets" of infected computers, have usually been aimed at large commercial websites; they are sent so much traffic that they crash, and then the owners are told to pay up if they don't want more of the same. To target a game like this seems especially nasty - it does seem that Last Chaos is the intended target, and any problems with Aeria's other games are just overspill.

Well, CaptainScarlet had got that pale blue horse almost three-quarters of the way through level 36 before he logged out; and about an hour later he finally managed to log back in. There hadn't been a Quiz, which was just as well as most people wouldn't have managed to get there, and those that did would probably have disconnected halfway through. SirPerivale logged in again too, and that's the situation at the moment, but with the situation as it is, I doubt if they'll stay there very long. At the time of writing, Peri's drake is a little way short of level 22, and Cap's horse has just passed that three-quarters mark.

Day Four: This Time It's Personal

SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet were able to get back into Last Chaos towards the end of yesterday evening, and settle down to a little late-night pet-levelling... but the next time I checked, there had been another mass disconnection, and once again the forum ShoutBox was rather full of annoyed would-be players, GameSages spamming reassuring "thank you for your patience" messages, and the occasional harassed Games Master.

So, both computers got a nice night's rest, before the usual early start on the Saturday morning. The ShoutBox seemed quiet, so Peri and Cap risked the trip back to Merac and, thankfully, were able to start their work.

Ratel got in touch in the morning, and we were discussing whether it would be safe to put in another three-hour stint in the Tomb of Theos today. We came to the conclusion that, if the problem was based on Aeria sharing their broadband access with the current "Penny Arcade Expo" convention, or "PAX", then since that was in Seattle, any problems would be later in the day when the US had woken up, so an afternoon trip would be safe enough again, just as MistressDomina and MistressBlaze had farmed the Sphinx types yesterday without problems - that was my big mistake.

So, after lunch MistressDomina logged in, and got her next armour pieces from MistressFelicia, who had managed to retain all her loot and experience from her fox-fighting adventures, then got the titan pieces changed into their mage equivalents and upgraded to her usual levels. The gloves she could wear at once, though she was a whole level away from being able to put on the shirt and skirt.

Chuck had logged in too, ready, but Ratel, when contacted, informed me that he was already in the Tomb with the archer "Tanger", or "TangerificHeals", so Chuck wasn't required. So Chuck logged out, and CaptainScarlet went back to some pet-levelling.

MistressDomina entered the Tomb, where Tanger and Ratel were fighting a Screaming Zombie - actually, Ratel seemed to be doing all the fighting. I stood politely waiting to be invited into the party, until Ratty asked for help, and so I started to use Terra Spear on the Zombie and we soon finished it.

Looking back I think Tanger must have been having lag problems even then, but innocently Ratel and I both started Blessed Irises and the 3-hour elixirs for that extra 30% experience gain; I started a large crit pot too, and gave one to Ratel to try as well, reasoning that if it increased the damage he could do, I'd benefit as much as he did.

We did manage to kill a few Zombies, but before long Tanger vanished - so Chuck did get the call-up to join us. Luckily I didn't start any pots on him though. Soon it was MD's turn to lag out, though fortunately not when she was in battle, though Chuck and Ratel both remained unaffected.

Since we did have the expensive pots running, and, well, surely it was too early in the (US) day for anything bad to happen, MistressDomina went back again - it's lucky that admission to the Tomb is set to a bargain rate of 1.4k gold per level, instead of the more usual 3k. But this time her luck ran out, and a massive lag spike hit her mid-battle, so that, while Ratel was frantically urging her to run for it, and as far as MD's screen was concerned she was safely against a wall with about 300 health left, Chuck's screen showed her slumped dead in the middle of the corridor.

Strangely, the disconnection wasn't quite complete, as after a while the window with the option to use the resurrection scroll popped up, but despite hitting the "yes" button and opting for the nearest spawn point, it never actually worked, and in the end I had to log her out. Her stats window already showed that she had lost over 500 skill points...up 7.88% on the experience front, plus a few pet points, but down by 509 skill points - which works out at 2% of what had been her total number of unused skill points.

A forum thread says "it appears we underestimated the volume of interest that would be generated from PAX", which seems a bit of an understatement. I thought initially that Aeria must be having massive success with inviting people there to try out the game, but it seems that someone in Aeria had got greedy, and hired out Aeria's bandwidth to PAX, so that there wasn't enough bandwidth left for us loyal players - or maybe they genuinely thought PAX's usage would be too tiny to affect us and were just doing PAX what they thought was a minor favour. A bit of an "own goal" there by Aeria. "We have experienced some strangeness with some of our games due to high load", indeed...

Various attempts to log back in didn't get very far - at one point SirDarth was standing right next to MD close to the teleporter in Randol, though she'd disconnected some minutes earlier. And Darth disconnected as soon as he clicked on the teleporter. An attempt to log in with Cap looked promising, in that Randol seemed to be occupied and there were still merchants there, but moving towards the teleporter, the place grew strangely empty, with the non-player characters missing, which is an infallible sign of a disconnection or "lag out". The ShoutBox was as usual very busy.

When I checked later in the afternoon, UK time, Ratel was making use of his blessed iris and elixir in Egeha, fighting the baby Apes, which seemed a bit risky and expensive to me, but he assured me that "as long as I don't use teleport here, I'm fine." I wish he had been able to use it in the Tomb when MD was dying! As for me, I just logged Cap and Peri back on, and sent a "contact us" email to Aeria, to see if I could get back the pots wasted. The response came through after only two or three hours:

Dear Player,

We are currently experiencing issues with our servers and we are sorry
for the inconvenience this has brought you. Since you have lost some
items, we have gifted you with the following:

1 MP Stealer, 1 HP Stealer and 1 Platinum Adrenaline.

We hope you enjoy the items and will work hard to ensure greater
stability in the future.

- Team Aeria

That does look like a "form letter" sent to anyone who complains, as the items aren't anything like as useful as what I lost, but it's a reasonable if impersonal gesture, I suppose.

The game continued to be "up" but with frequent disconnections, and it was often hard to get back in, with "timed out" or other error messages. Once I logged in and only the Katar server was visible, but the attempt to start a first character on that account brought a couple of "timed out" messages at the creation stage, and then more when actually trying to start the character in the tutorial dungeon, followed by a black screen when the dungeon should have loaded for quite a while - the game was clearly still in all sorts of trouble. My new knight did finally make it into the dungeon, and killed a few skeleton types...before being disconnected. In the ShoutBox, GM SupermanOX was saying "Well, I am sure that there will be things learned from all of this, and that we will be reviewing how we host our services"...

It seemed pointless to keep on trying to connect, and even if I got in getting disconnected after a few minutes, so the bulk of the evening was spent playing Guild Wars, getting a couple of characters to the main mission hub in "Eye of the North", recruiting the hero Olias for one of them, and having a look round. It's certainly a lot bigger than Last Chaos's few relatively cramped maps, and with more modern standards of texturing, with a huge variety of items... but LC retains its own charm, and the co-operative player-versus-environment side of Guild Wars seems to have faded right away. If you want to do missions alongside other players, basically you are out of luck, which is hardly "massively multiplayer".

I did manage to log SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet back in at the end of the evening, but how long they'll remain in Merac this time, I have no idea...

Server Crash III: The Big One

I had been intending to leave SirPerivale pet-levelling overnight, but just as I was about to do so, an announcement came up that the Auzura server was going to be taken down for maintenance for an hour or so, starting in fifteen minutes, which meant that logging out was my only option. Apparently this was "due to a zombie attack on our Auzura server compound" - nice of them to take the trouble to give us the technical details. I did hope that whatever the "black ops teams" they sent in to "correct the damage done by the undead" managed to do stopped us from having any more server crashes for a while, but sadly that was not to be.

Today was always going to be one of my busy days, so SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet had plenty of time to continue their pet-levelling efforts, starting before breakfast and continuing past lunchtime. Peri's pink dragon hatchling reached level 16 soon after breakfast, turning into the slightly larger drake version, just as a cute little pony turns into a horse then. The next milestone is reaching level 31, when a drake or horse can be turned into a mount, and then level 37, when a horse can have its attack and defence enhancing buffs both maximised. The situation with a dragon mount is less clear-cut, as there are a number of relatively useful skills to choose from, but 37 is a pretty good level there too.

There were a couple of Pandora's Boxes nearby in the morning that Peri risked opening, once Cap had moved to a safe distance; the first one just released a level 30 type Pandora's Beast, which Peri dealt with easily, but the second released the level 50 type - so Peri quickly vanished, and MistressDomina rode down to deal with it, getting 88,000 gold dropped for her trouble.

Back in Randol, MD took the opportunity to check if she could learn any new skills - and found that level six of Flame Field was available, for 250 skill points, increasing its "power", the multiplier for a normal weapon hit, from 180% to 210%, which may not seem much, but it will work on up to five foes if they are close enough together. It's not a skill I have used, as it seems inferior to Flame Storm, which on its top (fourth) level has 260 power, apparently doesn't need the foes to be quite as close together, and uses a lot less mana, but if I do get to a stage when I'm attacking mobs of high-level critters it might well be useful to alternate the two.

My "busy morning" was actually pretty fruitless, as the delivery I was expecting didn't come in - instead, it looks as if I'll be having a busy Saturday, sigh. Still, that did at least mean I was able to do some LC playing this afternoon.

MistressDomina and MistressBlaze headed for the Sphinx types in Dratan's sunny uplands, and MD started a seven-hour elixir just on two o'clock, with a view to using the last three hours of it in the Tomb in the evening. Things were pretty quiet out there on Auzura-4; a blue-named knight called Visible arrived, killed an Elite Sphinx Speer Man, gathered and killed a gang or two of Speer Men and Fighters, and then rode off; later on MTGOW1 teleported in, and was doing pretty well against the Elite Sphinx Speer Man, though the necessary tactics included a lot of running away.

I kept going until a little after four. MistressBlaze levelled up to 44, just ahead of MistressDomina levelling up to 55; MD had added 15.57%, 4 skill points and the usual sort of number of pet points, while MB had gained 39.24% and 5 skill points. There is a level 44 skill that MB may well learn, Freeze Arrow, but she won't have enough stat points in Intelligence for it until she reaches level 46, since she had to put some points in Dexterity and Constitution for Terra Spear and various passive skills.

There hadn't been any mention of the usual Friday afternoon "Happy Hour", and the "Events" calendar on the Last Chaos website doesn't list one, which is strange - next week it does say we'll have an extra 50% experience gain, though. When I logged in SirPerivale for the usual bit of pet-levelling, after the end of my afternoon session, Elvastar commented on the lack of any event, before switching over to Ratel. I logged in CaptainScarlet as well, taking the opportunity to add Ratel to Cap's Friends list, and left my dynamic duo hard at work.

And then, the next time I checked on the computers, the servers had crashed again, for the third day running as far as Auzura is concerned. I did manage to get Peri back into Randol, but as soon as he moved away from the town centre towards the teleporter, the place was empty, and I disconnected again - another attempt at least had the teleporter NPC visible, but Peri disconnected just as he approached her. Cap managed to get in next, and saw Peri still apparently standing at the spawning point, which would explain an "account is already logged in" type of message. As you can imagine, the forum ShoutBox was getting pretty hectic.

"The servers are fine, we have always been at war with Oceania", GM OgreKing commented, as if it was still 1984. It wasn't too long before things did seem to settle down, and Peri and Cap both made it back to the Berserkers... only to be disconnected about 50 pet points later. At this rate I'll soon need to buy some more memory scrolls, which I use to teleport me to the Berserker clearing.

During that brief return to normality I said to Ratel that we really shouldn't risk going to the Tomb, and using expensive potions, until the server had had time to prove that it was stable again, and he agreed - also warning me about a sorcerer he had just recruited to the guild. He rather feared he had made a mistake, as the sorc had immediately tried to "borrow" a mount, so could well be a scammer/thief.

The downtime continued - and then I managed to log my level 2 mage MistressFelicia in, who's in charge of carrying armour sets that aren't in use, with a view to transferring the level 60 gloves and level 61 shirt and pants, from the set that Chuck got for reaching level 60, over to MistressDomina. I couldn't, however, get MD online to trade with her, it was still the "timed out" message at every attempt. There were only five other people in Randol and Juno, as far as I could see, one of them a low-level sorcerer who was also killing a few foxes, and the others just people standing around in town.

So for a while MistressFelicia happily killed foxes and deer, and then wolves, for Healer Yabo's quests, and got 81.14% of the way through level 4 before at last being disconnected, after a few unsuccessful attempts to pick up the latest 3 gold that a fox had dropped. Whether she will keep that experience gain, not to mention a fox tail, a hand of bravery, and a pan flute, when the servers are up again, I couldn't begin to speculate.

So, whatever last night's maintenance did to the Auzura server, it wasn't enough - though as I understand it, it wasn't just the Last Chaos servers that were affected, Aeria's other server-based games, such as Shaiya and Wolf Team, were also offline. But "it appears that we underestimated the volume of interest that would be generated from PAX", GM SupermanOX put in a forum post - that being a reference to the Penny Arcade Expo, which is currently running in Seattle. And Aeria_ks1lent, commenting on and locking a forum thread putting forward the view that Aeria would do well to invest some of the money they get from ap-buyers in obtaining better server equipment, said "the current issues have nothing to do with the LC servers"...which does seem logical if the other Aeria games are involved as well.

So, the downtime continued right through the evening, reaching my normal log-out time. Maybe it will be possible to log in for a bit of pet-levelling later, but I'm not holding my breath.

Server Crash II

SirPerivale tried another overnight pet-levelling session with his new pink dragon hatchling, but the computer decided that it desperately needed to install a new Microsoft update or two in the early hours, and have a restart, so some time was lost before I discovered that and was able to send Peri back to Merac. Still, by coffee time the hatchling had reached level 12, while CaptainScarlet, who had rejoined the fray before breakfast, had by then got his horse 60% of the way through level 34.

As I was hard at work downstairs, Peri and Cap kept going throughout the morning, so by the time the lunch break was over, the hatchling was safely into level 14... but once again there was a suspicious lack of numbers floating up from the Berserkers' heads, and I noticed that on Peri's screen Cap appeared not to be fighting but just standing there, even if on his own screen he was apparently still in action.

So, it was another server crash for Auzura, though this time it seems that all the other servers kept up. The two accounts that had been busy pet-levelling were again locked out, but I switched over first of all to Enchantrella on Cariae, to make sure that she hadn't died yesterday. Her health was too high for a death, so all was well there - though I didn't feel like taking her back to Prokion Temple, in case yesterday's history repeated itself and Cariae crashed again while I was fighting Orcs.

The Katar version of my archer Barbarienne signed in, therefore, and by battling berserk wolves and dire wolves managed to get up from level 6 to level 8, while I kept an eye on the ShoutBox for news. As usual a lot of people were concerned to find the "account already logged in" message, and had to be reassured that it was "just" a server crash. The GameSage dinosue2 kept matters under control, while Aeria's Kelrya again put in a ShoutBox appearance or two. It may have been early in the morning for the technical people over on the US West Coast, but at least it wasn't quite as early as yesterday.

Finally at about a quarter to three, UK time, Auzura got rebooted, and I was able to send JohnWellington along to Auzura-4's Prokion Temple, swiftly followed by Galahad. I didn't make it a long session, though, keeping in mind that the evening was liable to be a bit of a marathon, and logged off early; John had added 6.13%, 41 skill points, and 69 guild points, while Gal had added 4.34%, 40 skill points, and 71 guild points. Just another 570 guild points now, and Discipline will be able to learn an "expension of the guild" skill, to increase its maximum number of members by five. Not that that's exactly vital, but hey, it's the next guild thing to do.

CaptainScarlet logged back in for some pet-levelling, after Chuck stocked up on medium mana potions; I didn't restart Last Chaos on the older computer, though, as an anti-virus scan was under way, and it moves along a heck of a lot faster if LC isn't running. Cap did open a Pandora's Box that appeared close to him, and got five Magical Attack minerals. And before the end of the usual food break, his pale blue horse reached level 35.

MistressDomina logged in, and Kaerella logged in beside her, to pass over some crit pots and other useful stuff. She also sent MD an item mall "30 Day package", so that for the next thirty days MD will have a party recall card, and also a card that, if she clicks it, will very possibly allow her to see the health percentage of people not in the party. Oh, and four 7-day potions to increase MD's maximum health and mana levels.

Kae logged out after that - and so did MistressDomina, briefly, as otherwise the flashing "gift parcel" animation, which alerts one to the arrival of a gift from another player, tends to return as soon as one teleports to another area. MrChuckNorris logged in on the older computer in Kae's place, and Ratel, who had been doing some farming on his level 20 sorcerer Elvastar in the Juno map, moved to join us on Auzura-4.

We met at the entrance to the Tomb of Theos, and I told Ratel that I'd got recall, but he still absent-mindedly paid the fee to enter. I at least saved having to pay to get Chuck in, using my recall card for that.

We didn't really start off very well - Ratty used his teleport skill to bring in a level 100 Screaming Zombie, and I think it was on that very first one that he died. Another group were in action there, including Duendesa, and luckily a kindly rogue helped us out by using Snare on our targets a bit. We had both started a blessed iris and a 3-hour 30% elixir (well, MD and Ratty had, I never got round to setting Chuck up that way), so we were in it for the long haul, but the conditions of the Tomb seemed pretty harsh.

MistressDomina had started one of the 7-day health and mana increasers, which was just as well, as she often got down to pretty low health, especially early on. She also started a crit potion, to greatly increase the number of "critical hits" she made on the zombies, and before long Chuck started one as well. They certainly helped, and we also got into the rhythm of things, with MD using Curse to attract the zombie, then retreating, while I got Chuck onto the target, and Ratel used his Shield Stun, followed immediately by Shield Stun 2. Once the timer of Shield Stun 2 was down to its final seconds, Chuck would use Smite. And hopefully the stuns would continue, with MistressDomina retreating, spamming Terra Spear as much as possible, using health potions, and if necessary standing by the wall.

Eventually the other group left, and we had the place to ourselves - until a level 51 witch called XDarkMagician appeared, and attempted to solo kill a Screaming Zombie. She did ask to join our party, but Ratel was adamant that we couldn't expand the party, as that would dilute the experience that the blessed iris and the experience elixir multiplied. It might have been better if we had let her in, as it was she either died or gave up, and while we were fighting our own zombie, the one she'd lured also came back and attacked us. Both MD and Chuck died in the confusion, so that was two resurrection scrolls used up - but Ratel was able to keep fighting at least one of them, so we'd get the experience from it, and it dropped a heaven stone for me, which subsidises the cost of a pair of res scrolls quite well.

We did keep going for the whole three hours; with the late start to the first one-hour crit potions for both Chuck and MD, and a gap before I started second ones for them, it was not quite worth starting third ones, but the lack of the greatly increased number of critical hits did slow us down towards the end, and Ratel wondered what had happened, until I explained. Next time perhaps all three of us will use three each, and really get moving.

At his higher level (61), Chuck just added 25.14% over the three hours, but, with the 130% boost from the iris and the elixir, MistressDomina added 122.99%, getting her well into level 54, and Ratel, a level lower, did even better; the Tomb isn't, at that sort of level, the place to come to for skill points, and we didn't get any, but Chuck's drake added 1066 pet points, and MD's added 1135.

Ratel decided to go to the outdoor Sphinx types for a few minutes before logging out, and MistressDomina joined him there - as did MistressBlaze, after Chuck logged out. With Ratel on level 53 and MB on 43, a Combat party was still just possible, and Ratel changed it to that when I suggested he could, but I'm not sure it did him any favours. A temple knight and a wizard make a great team, with his stuns, buffs and armour and her powerful attack, but the way experience is allocated in a Combat party depends, apart from the bonus for just being there. on the amount of damage done, it doesn't take into account the importance of stuns.

Still, Ratel soon decided that it was time to log out, as his eyes were starting to hurt, and I didn't stay much longer, once the buffs he'd left me with had expired. The few minutes there did add 3.93% for MD, plus a skill point and 185 pet points, while MistressBlaze went up by 5.75%; the last few minutes were in an Equal party.

It was time to set up CaptainScarlet and SirPerivale to pet-level once more, but there was a bit of a scare at just before ten o'clock, UK time, when once again there were no numbers rising above heads, and each screen showed the other character just standing there. Occasionally a number would appear, but after a couple of minutes the "disconnected" window popped up. The ShoutBox did show that other people were having lag problems, but, although I did get "unable to connect to server", "account already logged in", and Peri's first reconnection got him into a Randol with only people and NPCs in the central area, followed by another disconnection, before long I did get both Cap and Peri back to work, and some people in merchant mode survived the problem, at least. And then at 10:25 the same symptoms returned, sigh, though an actual "disconnected" window is better than just standing there I guess. I got back in, though if there are any further disconnections, that will be the lot for tonight. It's just lucky that this didn't happen while we were in the Tomb of Theos...

Server Crash

As usual SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet logged on bright and early, and got some pet-levelling done, but when I returned after coffee there was a suspicious lack of numbers floating up into the air over the Berserkers' heads. I was intending to send JohnWellington and Galahad off to Prokion Temple, so logged Peri out - and was unable to log back in again, while Cap just continued to appear to fight his Berserker without gaining any pet points.

A visit to the Last Chaos forum ShoutBox soon confirmed that the whole Auzura server had crashed, though the others were still going, including my old haunt Cariae, so I logged on SirDarth and Enchantrella there - I had to avoid using the two accounts that had been logged in to Auzura, as they just gave "account ID is already in use" type pop-up messages. I took Enchie off to Prokion Temple on Cariae-3, and fought the Orc Axemen and Orc Fighters there; she is level 27, so Orc Sergeants weren't necessary, and with her +6 armour set she was taking quite enough damage from the level 25 and 27 type Orcs.

There were reports of further server problems on the ShoutBox, so to be safe I unequipped Enchantrella's drake, since a disconnection might well mean that in-game I theoretically just stood there being hit, and it is expensive to "unseal" a pet if the attackers decide to focus their attacks on it. It was lucky I did that, as a minute or two later Cariae too suffered a crash, and I was disconnected - I'd just started running back to the entrance hallway, and though Enchantrella wasn't followed, she was still taking hits from the Orcs.

Both SirDarth and Enchantrella over on Cariae do have mounts - and I found that Darth's was down to only 3% Sympathy, and Enchie's to 0%, which seemed strange as the characters haven't done anything lately, and anyway, since when do mounts lose Sympathy just because they are not being used?

The Katar server survived, and I did do a bit of fox, deer and wolf fighting with a couple of low-level characters, but at last word came that Auzura was back up, so CaptainScarlet was able to log back in, followed by SirPerivale. In the ShoutBox Kelrya, billed as "Aeria: Admin", asked if things were okay now, and I was able to say that I'd got back in safely. I noticed that Cap's horse's starvation bar was about 8 lower than before, and the pet points had decreased a little, but that ground was soon regained, and the horse reached level 34 before lunchtime, with Peri's drake reaching level 26 as well.

So, after lunch it was time to find that drake a new owner - JohnWellington now has it, though he doesn't currently have a mount. I must count up how many of my characters do have mounts some time. MistressDomino had a pink drake egg in her inventory, so she passed that over to SirPerivale, and Peri went to Lorraine and Jajan to get himself a brand-new "pink dragon" hatchling. Actually, it's more of a pale mauve, and looks even cuter than the usual type.

For the main afternoon session, MistressDomina and MistressBlaze headed out into the Dratan uplands to visit the Sphinx types. Two archers, both in the "gang" bathrobe-style costumes, were there when I arrived, Duendesa and xDigitalx, but they didn't stay very long. After a while a level 50 rogue called "alinutz17" arrived, asking if I needed any help. She vanished before long, but then returned, and joined the party with MD and MB, tempted by the idea of horse buffs, so that we were able to take on the Elite Sphinx Speer Man. She left when she had to team up with a friend to level him a bit, but returned when he promptly had a disconnection... before having to leave herself, not long after. Well, it did liven up the afternoon.

Not long before my food break, the team of Kopiteus and TheExecutter arrived, and went just round the corner to fight, but by then I'd just about achieved what I'd set out to do, to make up for having to do a Combat party yesterday. MistressBlaze has now caught up with MistressDomina, percentage-wise, so that they are both 57% of the way through their respective levels. MD added 14.65%, and MB added 43.99%; they each gained 4 skill points, and MD's drake gained 1143 pet points.

Over the food break Peri's new hatchling had its first outing, reaching level 3 - which meant it automatically learnt its first social skill, Roar. I later had it taught the others by asking the Animal Trainer, when I got the first couple of levels of Armour Increase. By that time its Sympathy had moved up from 50% to 65%. I noticed that the nearest other pet-trainer, a red-named knight called PrimarySlave, who tends to fight a Bandit right back in the corner, had, as they are protective of each other, managed to collect four of them, but was still standing. They probably only hit for 1 each, which a knight can easily deal with.

For the evening, JohnWellington and Galahad headed for Prokion Temple; the back room was occupied on both Auzura-3 and Auzura-4, so we ended up in what I call the "corridor room" that I go through on the way there, on Auzura-4 - though Ratel takes a different, slightly shorter route I think. As neither Gal nor John kills as quickly as one of my mages, there were enough Orc Sergeants around to keep us going, with occasional raids on the Orc Axemen at either end. Ratel himself was sp-farming out in the desert, and managed to finish getting all 110 skill points he needed for level four of his level 50 temple knight passive skill, Weapon Perfection, each level of which adds 24 to his physical attack. I checked the Wet Paint Last Chaos wiki, and had to break it to him that level five would need 360 more sp. I think he's going to pass on that one for the moment, with the idea of doing some lucrative drop and sp farming on Bogles later.

To that end, he wants to move Ratel on to around level 62, so as a first step towards that we have arranged for Ratel, MrChuckNorris and MistressDomina to try for a nice long session in the Tomb of Theos tomorrow evening, using a blessed iris each. Chuck and Rage managed that kind of session, and I had been wondering if MD could replace Rage in that sort of team-up; with MD being lower-level than Rage was, having Ratel along seems to make the idea viable right away.

Ratel mentioned that he had got a couple of the more expensive platinum blessed irises, but was saving them to be used as incentives, as he's hoping to get a couple more mounts for his characters, with levelling provided by Peri and Cap... but he was forgetting that his own Leopardknight will soon be able to do that duty. Phew...

Anyway, JohnWellington added 20.31% experience, 230 guild points and 114 skill points, while Galahad, who had arrived first, clocked up 15.18% experience, 248 guild points, and 119 skill points. I was surprised that John's +10 armour was good enough to very nearly stop him taking any damage from the Orcs - better than the mage, or particularly the healer, equivalent, then. He did use the Stone Skin self-buff most of the time to increase his defence; after an application or two, rebuffing would bring up the well-known sorcerer bug of making him invisible, just leaving his name and guild floating in the air. The next rebuff would make him visible again, and the one after that invisible, and so on.

I had intended to try to move all the recent loot across to MistressDomino, who hasn't done any selling for weeks now, and maybe do a little shopping on Auzura-1, but Chuck got talking to a fan - well, a new player, ThePatropt, who was a bit of a fan of the real Chuck Norris. So I was trying to give some advice, and showing him where healer Yabo was for those first two quests... he's added to Chuck's Friends list, but I don't know if he'll stick around, apparently his newer computer is broken at the moment, so he needed a game that the older one could handle.

And then it was time to log the playing characters out, and log SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet in again. Cap continued to make slightly slow progress through level 34; Peri is moving the new pink dragon hatchling rather more quickly, which isn't surprising as a level that needs 846 pet points tends to get finished a while before a 11,237 pet points one.

Last night's maintenance didn't add anything new, so we can't really blame that for this morning's downtime. I guess it's pretty good that, even at three in the morning their time, they do have people who can respond to such emergencies and get the World of Iris rolling again.

The Importance of Potions

Well, CaptainScarlet and SirPerivale returned to duty on the pet-levelling front at a suitably early pre-breakfast hour, so that Peri's drake reached level 25 during the lunch break. Cap's pale blue horse had reached level 33 by coffee time. As the drake was now two levels above Peri, it was starting to get hungrier, so the time is now approaching when it will be necessary to find it a new home.

Initially, for the after-coffee session, I despatched MistressSabina and JohnWellington to the Auzura-3 Prokion Temple, but, with Sabina now on level 35, there was very little experience or skill exp coming in for the team. So, Sabina logged out, after gaining just 0.12% experience and 3 skill points, and Galahad, on level 33, hurried to Prokion to take over.

The session lasted a bit over an hour, and Galahad added 8.24%, 135 guild points, and 66 skill points, while in all JohnWellington added 11.85%, 133 guild points, and, thanks to using his last "beginner" pssp, 142 skill points.

In the afternoon, MistressDomina took MistressBlaze out to the Sphinx types again. For much of the time I had the place to myself, but then people started to turn up, like the level 35 rogue tin9999, the level 50 guess-what XXRogueXX, who tried to persuade me to go to the Tomb with her, a mage you can't have been above 35, MTGOW1, who died at least five times, a level 32 sorcerer guildie of hers called xXxSeraphimxXx, a high-level mage called Nourc who gathered up all the Sphinx types in a sp-farming kind of way, and Selamon from the AllStars guild, who concentrated on the Elite Sphinx Speer Man.

So, things got a bit busy. Luckily only tin9999 and XXRogueXX were there when Kamira put in an appearance; I said I was getting my level 72 rogue to deal with her, but I think at least one of them attacked Kammy and got immediately killed. They seemed to "ks" a bit when Rage was fighting her too, which may have affected the chances of getting good drops, but, while there were no rare accessories, Kamira seemed to drop all the usual lucky scrolls, moonstones, tool aids, and so on.

By the end of the session, MD had gone up by 12.88%, plus 922 pet points - and MB had added 40.56%. They each gained 3 skill points, as well. So Peri and Cap were able to log in for a little pet-levelling, over the early evening food break.

CaptainScarlet had the opportunity to continue levelling the pale blue horse for a while longer, as attending the Auzura-3 "Mad Monster Spawn" only involves one character. This time it was my level 31 cleric, Memree, who had the honour. I was thinking vaguely that she could use up her "beginner" resurrection scrolls, but as she actually had zero skill points, and had only just started on level 31, she had almost nothing to lose by dying, so on the three occasions when she did take a dirt nap, I just respawned back in town and teleported back.

It was fun, anyway, though Memree tended to miss a lot more than she hit, with such high-level targets, and if she hit, only do 44 damage. Somehow that was enough for one Grand Gold Dragon to drop ten Great Healing Potions and a Crystal of Experience (Greater) just for me, though, and from the hand-spawnings of loot I picked up a few large defence potions, large attack potions, tool aids, skill point boosters, and item drop boosters. It seemed that we weren't quick enough on the final wave to earn any heaven stones; truth to tell, we weren't all that powerful a congregation, and the absence of our premier tank, MortimerJones, probably didn't help.

At the end GM Stratos announced a "Fluton Party" slightly further along, with a couple of dozen of the near-invulnerable beasties, but he relented and removed most of them, dropping in a few of the Strayana purple dragons instead. Once we'd dealt with them, well, he'd just faded away, which was a bit naughty really, people did hang around for a while in case there was anything else in the way of either monsters or loot. It would be a sensible idea if he ended with a "Thanks guys, see you next week, I'm out of here" message, so that people knew that the event was officially over.

I switched to MistressDomina to check to see if Ratel or Leopardknight were online - and Leo was. He mentioned that he'd checked up on his character at about 6:00 am and found an Orc Sergeant actually attacking Leo, who had mysteriously moved a little way out of the safe area, but he was able to log out without dying, and was 23% into level 20 by then. I offered to team MistressSabina up with him, but he was busy catching up on his Juno-based quests, and generally terrorising the local Blood Wolf and Pandora's Beast population.

So, MistressDomina and MistressBlaze were able to head back to the Sphinx types for the bulk of the evening session. Before long a level 50 titan, Lukas1, suggested that we have a Combat party, which seemed a good idea, even though it would slow down MistressBlaze's experience gain... we did try recruiting other people to it, but BigBoss1 didn't stay long, and others seemed already to have their parties. MTGOW1 seemed to be doing better now, and was around for a while.

Lukas1 was using a lot of potions - a platinum blessed iris and experience boosters, for a start, as well as a crit pot, berserker, adrenaline, shield, and large attack and defence potions, and it certainly paid off, by the time we finished he had reached level 55. He mentioned that it was all about the titan skills - he had used the same buffing with his knight and it was much slower. It was quite an expensive way to gain levels, especially as he had to go afk for about the last quarter of the first of the two main hours.

He left a ring on the ground, I think he said afterwards that he was short of inventory space, and I, not liking to see stuff left lying around, ran over and picked it up. "Wow, that is quite a good ring - hit rate 18 plus short range physical hit rate 75. Do you want it?" Not surprisingly he said "Well, yes in fact :)", so I traded it across.

By the end of the evening MistressBlaze had reached level 43, so she can now do a Combat party with MD without a third person in-between; she added 21.27% experience in all, most of it rather slowly in the Combat party set-up, plus 6 skill points - she also ended up with a heaven stone and a level 53 mage staff +4 in her inventory, which I didn't notice arrive.

MistressDomina had gone up by 25.59%, plus 7 skill points - MB had been absent for a little while, so that SirPerivale could at last recruit GuildHealer into DeathBringers, and pass the position of guild master across to her. MD's drake had added 1003 pet points as well.

When I logged SirPerivale in afterwards, I found that Lukas1 was in merchant mode under the headline "Absolutely Unbelievable" - and discovered he was offering a package of nine pet colouring crystals, including a white one, for only a million. Peri didn't have enough gold to pick up that bargain (I'd have said that half a million each was a pretty good selling price), so MD hurried back into Randol, and made the purchase, before logging out so that CaptainScarlet could reappear.

Peri and Cap headed for the Merac Berserkers of course; by the end of the evening Peri's drake was approaching halfway through level 25, while Cap's horse was about two-thirds of the way through level 33.