A Day of Kae

SirDarth headed for the Butchers in Merac again this morning, but when his pony reached level 11, ten levels of the Armour Increase buff meant that his physical defence stat, with the defence-type accessories rather than the hit rate set, had reached 954 - which was just enough to let him venture down to the Berserkers instead, which do have the massive advantage of not dropping down dead after 20 to 30 minutes of bare-knuckle fighting.  Darth's health bar did still fluctuate, but it never got dangerously low.  Meanwhile, the previous horse, which reached level 37, is now in the custody of MistressDomino, and so in theory could be sold if the current price for mounts is tempting enough.

Kaerella managed to head out to the Elite Sphinx Speer Man and his cohorts later in the morning.  xXAcheronXx arrived after a while, he's level 35 now, and asked to come into the party for horse buffs, with the idea of moving outside the compass-map's range for his actual fighting, which seemed reasonable enough.  He did find soloing a Sphinx Fighter rather difficult, as one would expect at that level, and headed off for the Arena before too long.

Kae herself just added 4.63%, 9 skill points, and 305 pet points, before it was time to head back to Juno for some afk lunchtime mining.

Kaerella did the main afternoon session too, soloing the Elite and his friends again, and adding 9.40% more experience, 18 skill points, and 621 pet points.  Early on GreenHealer was there, and wanted to party, though at level 40 she would be "capped"...a difference of more than fifteen levels in a normal party means that, while the higher member still gets the reduced experience from there being another person in the party, the lower person gets only a small fraction of what would have been their share.  I did say I'd change to my level 42 rogue for a party, but when RAGE got there, GH had disappeared - I don't really think her English is too good. So, I changed back to Kae. The level 44 titan SyCoSiS was there for a while, and kindly gave me the buffs Fire Command (increases long range hit rate by 30 for five minutes) and Battle Roar (increases attack by 20 for fifteen minutes) - I did give him some healing in return.  It's a shame he was two levels too low for a party, titan Warmasters seem rather useful with their buffs and stuns.

I was a bit lazy over the food break, and just set Kaerella to mining on one of the low-rise bits, rather than having to dash back upstairs every ten minutes to restart her activities.  I know it's good exercise, but there are limits.  Buy a hammer, mine for a while, then use a tool aid to get 27 more quality stones, that's the idea.

And so Kaerella returned to the Sphinx types for the evening - and kept on going, with the Sphinx Speer Men and Fighters giving about 0.03% each, and their Elite Sphinx Speer Man giving 0.10%.  People did come and go; a titan called Rymcyr was there sometimes, and tended to want to monopolise the Elite at times.  Kae got a few Easter Eggs, and on opening them (as you can't pick up a new one if you've got an unused one in your inventory) got 500 gold, a "green stone" magic accessory (with again no properties), 50 gold, and a ten-minute experience scroll... so nothing particularly dramatic.  The place did get fairly busy at times - towards the end a level 28 healer arrived, and was pretty successful at "kiting" Fighters, hitting with her bow and running before they could reach her.  Risky stuff!  I did say she could "KS" me, ie attack my target, but she hardly ever took advantage of the offer.  

Over in Juno on the same sub-server, Auzura-3, the end-of-week "Mad Monster Spawn" had started - so it was perhaps no great surprise, as the same thing happened last week, when the sub-server crashed at 9:15, UK time... so that was the end of Kaerella's marathon session.  The evening had added 17.87%, 38 skill points, and 1321 pet points, so that in all today Kae had gained 31.90%, 65 skill points, and 2247 pet points.

SirDarth hurried back to his Berserker, but ten minutes later Auzura-3 had another mass disconnection - hopefully the Mad Monster Spawn had ended by then, or maybe the GM was trying to spawn some rewards for the successful warriors, and overloaded the server that way?  Still, SirDarth respawned back in Randol, and went back to levelling his horse, which grew up from a tubby little pony into a graceful young horse when it reached level 16.  With any luck he should reach level 17 by log-out time, if Auzura-3 doesn't suffer any more disconnections.

Norcaine guild member SsnowboardS has reached level 27, and wants his experience frozen so that he can farm his skill points - but unfortunately Ratel had taken back the Guild Master position, and he wasn't sighted today - or yesterday, come to that.  I hope he hasn't run out of his monthly bandwidth allocation already, that would be a problem.

Anyway, Kaerella had a short look around the shops in Auzura-1, and then MistressDomino set up as a merchant there for a while.  A hundred moonstone boxes went pretty quickly at 99,500 gold each, so that was a quick (almost) ten million to add to our funds, and a little later sixty of the regular moonstones sold too, at the same price.  She was trying to sell some Easter Eggs too, but they were in no hurry to sell.  It's strange, you can only pick one up off the ground if you don't have one in your inventory, but you can trade them between characters, so Kae, Darth, Chuck, and Rage were able to trade Eggs across to MistressDomino, so that she was able to put a number up for sale.

Well, hopefully Kaerella will be able to get the remaining 10% experience tomorrow that she needs to reach level 62; however, there aren't any new skills to learn then.  There will be a new level of Arrow of Silence to learn at level 63 (an increase in its power, and the chance of success goes up from 70% to 75%), but level 66 brings a new level of Slow Shot to learn, which doesn't just increase the power of the attack, it slows the target down a little more too, so that's something to look forward to.  The main thing about level 62 is that Kae will at last be able to wear the boots, and headgear, for the 65/67 armour set, and thus increase her armour rating usefully.  So, unless invitations to the Tomb of Theos flood in, it will be time to take Kae to Egeha for the first time, and farm some Bogles!

The Return of Kae

It was a relief to get back to normal this morning, with SirDarth out fairly early to finish the job of getting the current horse to level 37.  For a change I didn't use any of the "triple pet experience for an hour" platinum pet experience potions, so it wasn't until after six in the evening that we finally got there.

Wouldn't you know it, Stavanic has discovered that he has another character that could really do with a mid-level pet, but I had to tell him that, with the monsters hitting harder, really I can't afk-level a pet all the way from the start, it has to be able to supply some Armour Increase buff.  And anyway, he had already arranged for his friend Bladesrus to take up a few pet-levelling days later this week...

After lunch, MrChuckNorris went out to Prokion Temple, you will be unsurprised to hear, and headed for that upstairs back room.  As there are no "blessed rewards" or bonus events, it was time for him to actually use a platinum super skill pill for triple skill exp, and also a platinum skill pill (otherwise known as "the blue and white capsule") for an additional 50%, so that the Orc Axemen didnt just give 5,500 skill exp, they gave 3.5 times that, or 19,250 - almost two skill points per kill!  The Orc Sergeants, being two levels higher, gave 17,325 skill exp.  The first hour brought in 657 skill points, and the second hour added a further 670.  

By my calculations, assuming that the Axemen and Sergeants spawn in equal quantities, that means just over 360 kills per hour, or one every ten seconds.  Not as quick as an archer like Kaerella, I think (or like Barbarienne over on the Cariae server), but pretty speedy, considering that no platinum adrenaline, crit potions, or power potions were being used.  My theory was that if I had used an extra like that, Chuck would probably have been killing faster than the orcs could respawn.

As usual on such occasions, I did continue for a few minutes after the end of the second pair of pills, so that Chucks's total skill point gain for the day reached 1350 - and 2066 pet points got added as well.  He must be approaching the halfway mark in his Prokion sp farming now.

After the food break, SirPerivale went out to the Treants for a little while, and found that their mobbing habits are a bit more dangerous now than they used to be; his level three pony got a few pet points, but, just as I was logging SirDarth back in, to swap over their pets, Zenderfly got in touch, as she wanted to borrow one of my Cariae-based mage armour sets,  At first she thought it was the level 65/67 set, so I logged MistressFelicia in on Cariae-3 - but that wasn't the one she wanted, and I had to switch across to EnchantrA, as she was carrying the 60/62 set, and trade that costume across instead.  It isn't for its defensive properties that Zen wants it, I see that she is level 109 at the moment, ranked twelfth highest mage on the Cariae server and a member of just about the top guild there, Evolution... she just reckons that it is the best-looking mage set.

Once that was sorted out, Darth and Peri exchanged pets, so that Peri has taken temporary ownership of the new level 37 (as yet unmounted) horse, and Darth now has the pony.  When he took it over, including the two levels of Armour Increase Darth's physical defence was 856; after adding three more levels, and increasing the pony's sympathy a bit, it reached 893, and later, when the sympathy rating finally reached 100%, 895.  That is with a +13  level 25 shield, and the 25/27 knight armour set bumped up by one more each now, so that it is a minimum of +7, with the plate mail and leggings +8.  It's not quite enough for him to fight Berserkers without losing health yet, but it's fine for Butchers, though as ever they do tend to die after a while.

The main evening session, however, went to Kaerella for a change - and it certainly did make a change to go to the Sphinx Fighters, Sphinx Speer Men, and Elite Sphinx Speer Man, as almost their equal, only two or three levels lower than them, and be able to take them on one-on-one without any great risk of anything fatal happening.  Slow Shot may not be as dramatic as a rogue's Snare skill, but it works all the time, not just 70% of the time.  The down side is that the experience gain is rather slower, and Kae only managed to add 14.58% to her experience tally - but three more sessions like that would get her up to level 62.  30 skill points and 1012 pet points also got acquired.

There was a GM-spam in-game announcement of another special "1 ap" trial offer in the Web Item Mall, so, moving Kae to a safer bit of grass, I went to the website's relevant page, and found that the offer was for the "Web M: Skill Box"... well, for a single aeria point I couldn't go far wrong, so as there were still around 19 left I bought one.  The instructions said that it would only appear once Kae had logged out and back in again, but it was in the "Records" section when I checked a bit later, so I arranged for it to be gifted to MistressDomina, since she is more interested in skill point items than Kae is.

When MistressDomina clicked it open, however, it wasn't one of the "best skill items in game", such as a pssp, just one of the ten-minute +50% "effort scrolls"...but even that has got to be worth more than a single cent, right?

SirDarth continued to move the pony on through the early levels, which are rather shorter than the later ones.  Unless I throw more Chaos Smelting Stones at the problem, the pony will need at least another day's levelling before he can supply enough Armour Increase to keep Darth healthy with Berserkers, I suppose.

Stavanic needed Peri's assistance to transfer his level 23 horse back across from his titan, Devilboy, to his knight, as the lack of the passive buffs had made a big difference.  No wonder he's hoping for an extra pet from me, but he'll have to stand in line, his friend Bladesrus is ahead of him there.  Maybe he'll end up with the pony Darth is currently working on, if some bribery is involved....though he has promised to help Darth level up later, which will be useful, eventually.

The Black Screen of Death

My start today was delayed until the evening, as happens on a Sunday every month or so; so not even SirDarth had the opportunity to do any horse-levelling until gone six in the evening.  The horse started the evening session pretty high up in level 35, though, so had attained level 36 before the regular Sunday Quiz interrupted him.

I didn't have room to mention yesterday that xXAcheronXx was a member of the XxSNEAKYFREAKSxX guild, and suggested that Rage might join them.  The idea was a little tempting, though as xXxDELUXxXx was still in the party at that stage, and put in a counter-bid for his "LastHope" guild, nothing definite seemed to happen.  These things need a guild master or guild adviser to be located, anyway, so seldom happen instantaneously.  Acheron seemed a good person to play with, despite the number of sitting-down "mana breaks" he liked to take.

The Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men didn't drop any Easter Eggs for us yesterday (though Rage did get one today, as yet unopened), unlike the Prokion Temple orcs for example, but on Friday Chuck did pretty well, for a change - instead of the usual 50 gold, 10 herb trunks, or on one occasion 500 gold, he got a Magic Stone accessory, which is a standard type of accessory that one does get as a normal drop...the difference with this one was that it had no enhancing properties at all!  But he also got a heaven stone from one, and a 168 hour potion to add 30% to his experience gain... a whole week's worth.  Not something Chuck wants to use yet, but when he has all his skill points and wants to level up, it is sure to come in handy.  It's in his storage warehouse at the moment,  I assume that it can't be traded across to a different character, like Rage, though.

The evening session wasn't, with its late start and early finish for the Quiz, that much of a marathon, but Rage certainly kept busy.  To start with, she visited Merac to see if there were any new quests - and there were a couple to take care of, one involving killing 25 Gnoll Soldiers, and the other gently introducing her to Maargadum Jail by asking her to collect five Spiked Canine skins.

Both those quests were pretty straightforward; just as I'd got the fourth Spiked Canine skin, though, Darkmager got in touch, asking me to come over to the Sphinx Fighters - which, once I'd got the last skin and my quest rewards, I did.

The place on Auzura-3 was pretty busy.  The leader of the party Darkmager was in, however, the knight LexyPooh, decided that their party was "full"... so I just fought the Sphinx Fighters and Speer Men solo for a while.  Darkmager intended, I think, to get his level, then leave the big party, go back to town, and then return and team up with me, but that last part never happened, though he was apparently still online somewhere.

After a while I got an invitation from xXxDELUXxXx to join him - once I'd established that he was on sub-server six, I moved across, and partied with him, currently level 37, and his fellow titan, the level 49 Cloud.  While my health did get knocked back a couple of times, we did pretty well, concentrating mainly on the Elite Speer Man.  By the time Cloud in particular had got some mana back, sitting down and using a fairly large mana pot, usually the Elite had respawned.  Why they don't use mana pots while fighting, I'm not sure.

By the time the Quiz was getting near, and we decided to call it a day, Rage had managed to add 40.89%, which was pretty good, I think - about half of it from the soloing, just about.  The 7 skill points must have come from those quests in Merac - and 801 pet points got added. too.  Delux and Cloud were talking of returning after the Quiz, I hope they didn't, as, well, conditions weren't very good then.

Kaerella and MistressDomino went to the Quiz on Auzura-3... but, horror of horrors, it was an all-new set of questions!  Luckily, the GMs had kindly left the Quiz Room door "open", so that, when everyone got respawned in town for thinking that the best forum for general discussion was "general" rather than "open", and then for not knowing how many eyes the Barren Eise has (5 or 6?), we were able to run back to the Domain Merchant, and re-enter.  I got a message from Ratel saying "how did u do with quiz?" - and while I couldn't type much, being alert for the next question, I did say "a few runs back in so far, lol"... but poor Ratty didn't take the hint, and didn't try to re-enter on his sub-server.  As it was, I missed out on the 10 toolaids, as I either got question ten wrong or wasn't back in in time for it, but both Kae and MD got the 10 moonstones - and the 15 heaven stones.

Sadly, the pressure on the servers was starting to tell; some sub-servers had disconnections, one at question 17 apparently so people missed out on the heaven stones; Auzura-3 had been lucky.  People logging their characters in started to get a black screen instead of appearing in Randol, after log-in and character selection.  An "upgrade event" was begun, which always adds greatly to the server workload - combine that with people logging out and back in to leave the Quiz Room, and using the warehouse to put their winnings away, or buying and selling heaven stones, and it wasn't surprising that there were problems.  

In the shoutbox, game sages were having to say "yes, be patient, I have a black screen too" - the upgrade event was halted, to allow people to log in.  I'd managed to get SirDarth back to work - but then there was a mass disconnection, possibly an attempt to reboot the servers and hopefully get things working properly.  While GM Moose did show up in the shoutbox, to be sworn at by one unhappy player, the comments were moving too fast to keep track of.  Kaerella did finally manage to log back in, to put her Quiz prizes away, but trying any upgrading seemed a bad idea, as that was probably switched off for a while still.  And then there was another disconnection, this time announced, ending a curiously quiet time for in-game GM messages:  "Going to reboot the servers to get things going again - 10 Seconds", followed by "Alright servers going to reboot."

SirDarth managed to get back in, and started some more pet levelling, but by then it was getting late, and for me it had been a long day.  A little later a new announcement came up:  "Rather than cancelling the upgrade event the following percentage will be 175% for 10 minutes then the event will close - we cannot risk anymore than that - thank you for understanding."

Fighting the Sphinxes

Well, it doesn't take very long to open the AVG installation package and choose "repair", after which things apparently run smoothly for the rest of the day, but it seems a strange way to run an antivirus product.  Now that I only have the one pet-leveller at work, it's easy enough to start SirDarth on the newer computer; I think the speed with which the game ran out of memory on the older one might have something to do with AVG wanting to run a full scan every day, as most antivirus types seem to want to do.

Anyway, the horse reached level 35 safely, getting through 7 starvation points every five minutes, or roughly 17 quality stones per hour.  Stavanic brought in a friend of his, Bladesrus, who seemed to want me to raise a mount for some rather small fee, but luckily it seems his pet horse is already level 26, and he'll settle for level 31, which makes for a less daunting task.  He's off for a week from Thursday apparently, so will pass his horse over before he vanishes.

As this is one of my "busy weekends" I didn't do anything active in Last Chaos until a bit after lunch.  The first thing to do was to move the +4 shirt, tiara and gloves from the 45/47 armour set that Kaerella had used across to Rage (Kae never had found the other two pieces), and get Collector Ryu to transform them into their Rogue equivalents, which cost 291,600 gold.  I then checked the Merchant House system, to see if I could buy the leggings and boots, but there were no level 47 boots on sale at all - and only one pair of leggings, at the rather high price of three million. Well, if there was only that one pair available, they must be rare, I decided, so I bought them, transformed them from Knight to Rogue (54,000), used four heaven stones to get them to +3 (so only one failure)...and then moved some lucky smelting stones across from Kae, and got all four pieces up to +6.  So, Rage now has a better armour set than Kae had at this level.

Darkmager had been in touch while I was finishing doing all that, and I'd said that I would meet him at the Auzura-3 Sphinx Fighters in five minutes - and I think I was just about on time.  Whitemessiah2 was already in action, along with a level 31 archer called Killerhealer, who must have been a friend of WM's, as she was clicked on her and afk for almost all the time.  She added me, and Darkmager, and another titan, the level 47 EDWARD, and we all set to work.  It was a bit irritating to have a healer there who wasn't healing, I'm sure we all got through a lot of health pots.  Every time my Snare failed, which seemed rather more often than 30%, I'd take a bashing... but at least I got through the whole session without dying!

Killerhealer left after a while, but the rest of us continued until it was time for my food break.  While I didn't get any skill points, Rage had managed to add 954 pet points, and 42.19% experience.

The evening was fairly similar, though with a different cast.  It was the level 35 titan xXxDELUXxXx who invited me out to the Sphinx types, over on the PvP-enabled sub-server Auzura-5,and we started off well.  He wanted to include the Elite Speer Man, and we did indeed manage to kill him. Delux's health was a bit low as he typed in "Clean kill" - but sadly he hadn't noticed that a regular Sphinx type had been spawned close by, and was attacking him.  He toppled to the ground, dead.  Since he didn't have a resurrection scroll or skill point restoration scroll active, he reckoned he had lost around 500 skill points, so he was not happy.

After a while he brought in the level 33 royal knight xXAcheronXx, who was able to supply me with the rogue's favourite buff, Concentration - increasing the chance that Snare would succeed from 70% to round about 87%.  So, there were still times when I had to run like heck, just not quite as many.  Delux is a "warmaster" type titan I think, with a massive sword instead of the huge axe that Darkmager carries, and we was able to give me a useful buff too sometimes.  But what a lazy pair, every few minutes they'd call for a break, and sit down to replenish their mana.

I did mention that larger mana potions can be bought in Strayana, so hopefully they'll take the hint, invest in some, and almost double their work rate in future.  We did have a little bit of high drama, though; Delux saw another pair there, again a titan and a rogue, get more than one Sphinx type on them, and moved in to help them kill one, but they interpreted this as ks-ing, "kill-stealing", and the rogue, Jaimi, went into PvP mode, which puts a large "X" alongside the name.  

Delux was quietly confident, and went into PvP mode himself - and had his second death of the evening.  I don't know how exactly things work, but apparently that death cost him skill points too,  So, not too good an evening for him.  But the three of us continued, joined by another titan a few levels higher, Cloud, and then the two titans left Acheron and me to duo some as well.  Jaimi returned, and I think Delux and Jaimi may well have another fight, but in the less sp-costly environment of the arena.   Delux was asking me what level I thought Jaimi was - I looked at the armour, which was my old set, so she's either below level 40 or a bit slow to change.

Acheron levelled up, and it wasn't long after that that I levelled up too.  So, as I do have to prepare for an early start tomorrow, I said my goodbyes, and headed back to town.  Level 42 means that I can wear the headgear for the armour set now; apparently level 47 boots are dropped sometimes by the level 51 Rough Jaguar of the Desert, down in the south of Dratan.  Maybe I should investigate, some time.

Rage had added a further 852 pet points, and gone up by another 41.93%, to make a total gain today of 1806 pet points and 84.12% experience.  At only one skill exp per kill out there, no new skill points were added - but at level 42 I was able to get the second levels of Master Weaponsmith and Master Armoursmith, so that was another 690 sp safely used, with Rage still having over fourteen thousand to put against future skills.

Tomorrow, as far as Last Chaos is concerned, I'll only have an evening session of an hour or two, and the Quiz, so there should be rather less to report.  Never fear, though, I'm sure I'll think of something to write...

Levelling Up

The AVG installation was still messing around - I redownloaded it from Grisoft themselves, and all is sweetness and light now... or at least, until I next switch on that computer!  SirDarth therefore started off on the main computer today, and did some sterling work, moving over a bit later to the older machine.  The horse levelled up, and is now level 34, so hungrier than ever.  He has passed the halfway point in level 34 by the close of play today, perhaps getting a little further as long as I don't get some passing player decide to kill my target Berserker again.  That happened a time or two today, with a knight called berethor being the latest such villain.  I noticed that he'd managed to get the Grand Red Dragon to appear; I doubted if he'd be able to kill it, and sure enough the "GRD" made another visit less than an hour later, so was alive and well.

The double skill exp and harvesting continued today on Auzura-3, until it got turned off at about ten to four in the afternoon, UK time.  Rage had been doing plenty of mining, while I was busy downstairs, and is now pretty well off for all three kinds of stone.  The lure of that free double skill exp was too much to keep me working all afternoon, and before too long MrChuckNorris headed for that back room in Prokion Temple, passing fellow Norcaine member Ghostt on the way along the corridors.

So, Chuck slogged away there, continuing a little while after the double skill exp ended, so that he could level up his drake, which now does out-rank him.  Luckily that doesn't increase the drake's appetite, he'll have to reach level 29 while Chuck is still frozen on 27 for his starvation rate to double.  In all the drake added 926 pet points; his new level needs 6700 in all, so that should take quite a few sessions.  On the skill point front, 316 was the number gained, so we are definitely over a third of the way there.

After the early evening food break it was Rage's turn for some action; in theory the "happy hour" was 50% extra experience, and she's the prime candidate for more of the stuff at present.  It was quite a marathon session at the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men... and wouldn't you know it, the only time I had to use a resurrection scroll was when the party was at its largest.

WhiteMessiah2 was already in action there when I arrived, she's a level 45 rogue now, and she was teamed with a level 47 archer, Talinha.  They kindly let me into their party, and before too long the titan Darkmager got in touch, and came out to join us.

Really, that place is best for bow-users, archers and rangers; Darkmager gave us the usual titan buff and did his best, but if he ran forward to attack our bows' target, quite often he'd attract two other Sphinx types in too.  Which is probably why I ended up taking the safer option of respawning back in town and using a memorising scroll to go back out.  I did see Ratel at that point, presumably he'd just arrived in Dratan on the way to the Poison Mists, but I couldn't really stop to chat, and SirDarth's offer of a party for him was not accepted, perhaps Ratty had specified a combat type, which Darth would be too low for.

Darkmager got a disconnection, but managed not to be killed while it happened; he did return to us, and managed to level up to level 39, though he had to leave early for a Birthday party for a family member.  A little later Talinha also had to log out, but WhiteMessiah2 and I continued, if anything more quickly.  She'd take the lead, and if her Snare failed, well, with any luck mine would work...or our combined archery would kill the target anyway.  She kindly handed over the tool aids dropped, you'd almost think she knew I needed plenty of quality stones for pet levelling.

But Poland is an hour ahead of England, so she got tired; she may well have been there for quite a time before I got there, of course.  I continued solo for a little while, and then a sorcerer, FreeDivingMaster, arrived, and asked to team up.  He was only level 28, fresh out of Prokion with all his skill points, but he did make things easier, and was sensible enough to wait until I'd lured the Sphinx type in question.  When a heaven stone dropped and it went to him, he wanted to hand it over, but, really, I didn't need "payment", I'm sure I have got more of them in storage than he has.

I'd initially just wanted to get to level 41, but when I'd managed that and equipped my shiny new level 45 +15 crossbow, well, getting FDM to level 29 was a reasonable aim, as was getting the bow ready for its first bloodseal gem, and finally getting Rage's horse to its new level, which I managed by log-out time.

At FDM's urging we did take out the Elite Speer Man a time or two, but his suggestion that I was so good that we ought to go to the Screaming Zombies in the Tomb of Theos, well, that seemed a bit over-optimistic to me.  If Rage was wanted in a nice big party with another rogue, a royal knight, a healer, a mage, and a couple of others, that would be worth trying, but the two of us wouldn't have got very far, I think.

Rage did actually go up by a skill point, as well as getting her pet horse 1479 pet points - and the experience gain was 92.41%, so I think we must have had 50% extra experience switched on for at least some of the time.

Back in Randol, Rage was able to give her pet an extra level of Armour Increase, and also to get level six of Mental Defence for 150 skill points, increasing her magical defence by another 8.  And I really need to think about getting her the 45/47 armour set, since she can now wear not just its gloves, but shirt and leggings too!

Double - Mining?

That AVG installation decided that it wasn't properly installed, and couldn't even find its files to repair them, so I had to uninstall and reinstall it - what it will decide tomorrow, I daren't speculate.  Luckily I'd put SirDarth on the newer computer, so his pet-levelling activities in the morning weren't delayed by the general fun, frolics, and restarts.

Later on Darth moved across to the older computer, and Rage was able to do some mining - and discovered that harvesting had been turned up to double.  Sadly this didn't mean that using a tool aid would give 54 rather than 27 quality stones, but every time one stone would normally have been picked up, Rage got two instead.  Auzura had lost its "recommended" status, so there were no new "blessed rewards" being dropped.

We also had double skill exp switched on, apparently as an apology for another unscheduled downtime last night after I'd logged off, so when I was at last able to play properly, MrChuckNorris was the ideal character to play, since he's my main current skill point farmer.  That favourite Prokion Temple room of mine was free, so he settled in there for the afternoon.  Towards the end another titan turned up, SirEsahc, who, like the previous visitor, was slightly low level for there, but at least had the sense to use a large defence potion and physical defence minerals too.

Just before I logged out for the food break, Chuck stopped fighting and just stood by one of the fire-braziers while I made some notes, and the next time I looked, SirEsahC had vanished, leaving some gold not picked up, so he might have got too many orcs picking on him, and died.  Still, Chuck had added 1852 pet points, and no less than 714 skill points.

The evening was a little more varied, but started with Chuck heading back to Prokion Temple.  After a while Ratel came along to join him, which probably decreased the rate of skill exp gain a little, but he is always good company, and his Temple Knight protection buffs saved a few small health potions.  Ratel and Chuck were joined a bit later by another Norcaine member, the level 24 knight SsnowboardS, who presumably was just curious as to what the deeper parts of the Temple were like.  He ought, we thought, to be okay in the corridor outside our room, which is just Orc Soldiers and Fighters, but he did manage to die once, before he got the hang of racing into the nearest corner when his health got low.

Ratel reached level 33, and went off, following my directions, to the Poison Mists; when Snow logged out, I decided that I was due for a change, and so Chuck logged out too - having added another 1463 pet points and 587 skill points.  1301 skill points in a day seems pretty good to me, thanks to that double skill exp being left on.  Interestingly, the guild chat had reported that, at least in the evening, the double skill exp wasn't on in the Auzura-1 sub-server, but over in Auzura-3 we kept the bonus.

I changed to Rage, and, as I still had the Poison Mists' location on my scroll of memorising, teleported out to Join Ratel there.  In theory, Rage is now a level high for the Mists, but that's close enough, and it was a real luxury not have to keep re-applying the horse buffs, as Ratel kindly kept supplying them.  I got a level 37 crossbow as a drop, and was saying that I generally sold them for just below 75,000 gold via the Merchant House, when I noticed that it had been dropped by the Elite Poison Mist, and, checking my inventory, saw that it was +3... so a bit more valuable than the regular ones.

Ratel was talking about borrowing Rage's +13 level 37 weapon when Rage no longer needs it, which will be once she reaches her next level... but some sort of deal with BasheR seems to have superceded that, with him getting a share of a level 33 +15 weapon instead.  That extra two plusses more than compensates for the lower level, so we should see Ratel doing a fair bit more damage now.  And I think the Poison Mists kindly dropped him a new level 37 shield.

There were announcements of Pandora mobs spawning, but we remained untempted; after all, even the level 50 types don't give much greater experience or skill exp than the Mists, and have a distressing tendency to kill people.  Looking on Darth's screen a minute or two later, I saw that he was rather close to a newly-spawned mob of them, so carefully drew him in closer to the cliff.  Luckily nobody inadvertantly lured any of the Pandies in his direction, and it wasn't long before the whole area was cleared out.

Ratel went off to exchange old and new weapons with BasheR, and Rage, after using the last of his Protection buff, decided to call it a night too.  For such a short session, 9.55% experience gain was pretty good, plus 48 skill points and 556 pet points.

Stavanic, after discussing it with Ratel, dropped by to see if there was any way to make an alliance between Norcaine and his DeathBringers guild "official", but we couldn't find any options in the Guild Management screen.  SirPerivale had dropped by, too, after using the last of a skill exp enhancing Blessed Reward by killing some Butchers; he traded some quality stones across to Darth, who traded some tool aids and pickaxes over in return.  With his Divine Shield buff, and Stavanac's defensive horse buff, he was able to pet-level his level three pony for ten minutes or so, the main trick was to know when to stop, as when the buffs ran out, his health was sure to run down rather quickly.

It was about then that Darth's horse reached level 33 at last - and by the end of the evening the horse was, well, at least a little way into the new level...

A Hit Rate Improvement

SirDarth began his horse-levelling nice and early, but we do seem to have a problem with the older computer - it gets an "insufficient memory" crash on Last Chaos.  Recently that has happened two or three times a day, but today it was every two hours or so, which is a bit too frequent.  I'm wondering if it is anything to do with my change of antivirus last night - the old one's year expired, and as I'd had problems trying to apply a "free upgrade" to it a few months ago, starting a new year seemed a bit risky... so I uninstalled it and went for AVG instead, which has the advantage of being free.

Darth also had someone lure the Blood Frenzies from around the corner onto him, so that the next time I checked his screen, he was lying dead.  He didn't lose any of his 12 unused skill points, or any experience, but the horse was killed, and at level 30 it costs 182,700 gold to get a pet "unsealed".  So, SirDarth has moved further away from the pet-eating, aggressive monsters... the only drawback is that he is now on the edge of a busier area, so the risk of someone just passing by and killing his Berserker, either innocently or maliciously, is increased.

Still, the horse ended the evening well into level 31, meaning that Darth is just about back to where he was before he and Rage swapped pets...if with rather less quality stones currently, a bit of tool aid-using mining will soon be called for, or an exchange with SirPerivale.

Rage had a morning session out at the Poison Mists, which was enough to add 17.96% and 50 skill points, plus 932 pet points (though I over-estimated the last gain yesterday by 600, it seemed too low so I thought what looked like a zero in my notes must be a six); Kamira continued her policy of staying away, though BasheR seems to have such a wide network of lurers now that he was able to find her quite a few times today.  His level 19 rogue, BadToTheBone, does some luring too now, and, to keep in touch with his network, has been recruited into Norcaine.  If BasheR has got an expensive Mall-bought "spell of luck" on, it makes sense to log out as Bash between Kammy encounters, so that its hour lasts for plenty of such battles.

Rage did some mining over the lunch and evening food breaks, but the afternoon was another chance for MrChuckNorris to head for that room in Prokion Temple, where he was almost uninterrupted.  One titan did run in a couple of times, but my suspicion that he was a bit low-level for that area was confirmed when he slumped to the ground, dead.  Chuck had no such problems, though he did have to use a small healing potion very occasionally, and a few of those 30-point pet healing pots too on his drake.  The session, including fairly brief farming of the Sand Golems at Shuraine's oasis before and after, just in case Kamira could be tempted to appear there again, added 1947 pet points and 569 skill points, so we are perhaps a quarter of the way to when he can have his experience gain unlocked.

The evening was, well, the chances of it being a short one were about fifty-fifty, really, which made advance planning difficult.   Darkmager invited Rage out to the Sphinx Fighters, and when I got there he was already teamed with the level 30 sorcerer BestkillerCZ, and the level 36 archer GreenHealer.  In theory we ought to have made a pretty good team, but Green and Best both tended to lure different Sphinx types at the same time, and I don't know if Dark was doing something else or having some bad lag episodes, but he had a tendency not to react very quickly to what was happening.  

A Kamira-hunter dropped by, as they do, to ask if we had seen the lady recently - Kanykei was a level 66 archer, offering a five million gold reward.  I think Dark's hope that just saying "Yes, she's over with the Poison Mists" would get him the cash was a bit over-optimistic.

I died once, from a different Fighter to the one I was targetting, and was probably lucky not to die more often.  BestkillerCZ didn't stay in the party very long, and GreenHealer left not long after - things did seem safer after that, but Darkmager did die at the end, he just seemed to stand there telling me that he'd gone up a level every day recently, with the Elite Speer Man hitting him.  He told me slightly later that he had had a disconnection.

As I was getting pretty close to level 40 by then, I moved across to the Poison Mists, and, 0.03% at a time, got my level.  It looks like another pretty useless one to get, just letting me add three points to Dexterity, though I could sort out the gloves for the next armour set, I guess.  There is a new skill to learn at level 41, level six of Mental Defence, which will increase Rage's magical defence by 8 - which may not sound much, but it is only 62 at the moment.  Apherion was there too, and just needed 8% to reach level 41

There weren't meant to be any great changes in this morning's post-maintenance patch, just the new item mall packages and the belated addition of "Easter Eggs" as rare drops.  I had to open one of those, as you are only allowed to carry one in your inventory at a time, and all I got was 10 herb trunks, but apparently there is a slight chance of moonstones or even a heaven stone.  To everyone's surprise (including the games masters) though, some changes to evasion and hit rate have been made to some of the classes, with better hit rate and evasion for both rangers like Rage and archers like Kaerella, so that's nice, though it will probably all get changed again in a week or two.  At least SirDarth still seems able to pet-level on the Berserkers, with enough of an Armour Increase buff from the pet in question.  Specialist Sorcerers and Temple Knights seem to be the big losers, with slower hit rates and worse evasion.

As it turned out, I didn't have any other call on my time for the second half of the evening, so Rage went back out to the Sphinx fields, and, as nobody else was around (except KnightVailant briefly, inquiring after Kamira), tried some careful soloing, which meant that they gave about a third of a percent each - more than ten times what I'd get from a Poison Mist, but these monsters are rather more deadly!  Finally, remembering that I was now the same level as the Elite Frenzied Berserkers, and that I'd taken the trouble to add their location to my memory scroll, I went off to Merac and dealt with a few of those.

In all, the evening session had added 31.86% experience and 18 skill points, plus 804 pet points, so that Rage's totals for the day were 49.82%, 68 sp, and 1736 pet points.  So, not very dramatic, but we are making steady progress on her, and indeed on Chuck.