Out In The Open

SirDarth's early start was slightly undone by a disconnection fairly early on, and then while I was out shopping for bread and milk some cuddlesome little snookums came along and killed my Berserker, and Fastman's too - Fastman being another knight who regularly pet-levels in that particular part of Merac.  Still, by the end of the lunch break Ratel's horse had reached level 20, so good progress was still being made, and level 22 came along in the middle of the evening.

Darth took a brief break while MistressDomina and MistressSabina temporarily exchanged their armour and weapons.  Kaerella also loaned one of her Stone of Shadow accessories to Sabina, so she was well equipped when she headed for Prokion Temple.

ElfMage had got in touch, asking for a bit of help with her levelling in Prokion Temple, but by the time I got there she'd found herself a diffferent mug, er player, to party with.   I went outside again to renew Sabina's horse buffs, but as happens sometimes, if rarely, something went wrong with the teleport back in, and instead of arriving in the lobby, I ended up a level lower, amid unformed grey textures and with a view of various parts above.  I couldn't move or use the memory scroll to return to just outside - luckily I could use a Scroll of Recall to return to Dratan City, then set out again.

Since Sabina was level 27 now, the obvious place to head for was my favourite upstairs back room.  ElfMage's call had meant I'd gone there a bit earlier than I'd been planning, but I set to work, and then, after a brief coffee break, settled in for a "power hour" with a (200% extra) pssp and a (15% extra) sp.  It puzzles me, I worked hard, and did a lot of mobbing of groups so that Flame Storm could target a whole group of Orcs at once, but, even with the Orc Axemen giving 17325 skill exp and the Orc Sergeants 15592, the hour only brought in 470 skill points.

I did have an interloper, a mage called Atasha who, as she was wearing the previous mage armour set, I assumed not to be very high-level; I warned her that the room was dangerous, but she ignored me and settled in in one corner, and, using attack potions and minerals, but as far as I could see no added defence pots, seemed to get on okay.  She was still there when I left to get lunch ready - my departure was very slightly delayed while I waited for Sabina's drake to level up to 25.  So, 1704 pet points had been needed for that; Sabina had reached level 28 just after the "power hour" had ended, adding 128.66% by the end, while the total skill point gain was 556.

Over lunch, Kaerella went out to mine some stones in Dratan, and over 90 minutes, or nine 10-minute ore veins, got 39 quality stones, 35 imperfect stones, and 53 flawed stones, the equivalent of just about 70 quality stones.  Then it seemed like a good idea, assuming that Prokion Temple would be a bit too crowded to find a good room for MistressSabina, to let Rage head out to the Sphinx types.

BatCow had seen me heading in that direction, or at least towards the teleporter, and so got in touch and joined me there.  She is a pretty fast worker, and, while at 11 levels above her I didn't go up percentage-wise anything like as quickly as she did, I managed to add 37.28%, 2 skill points, and 1335 pet points.  Later on Norcaine members Legacy and Ghostt turned up there; Ghost was a bit surprised to hear Darth on the guild channel respond to what he was saying on the local talk tab, so soon discovered that Rage was also me.

Over the early evening food break, it was Rage's turn to do some harvesting, starting with some herbs - her pet horse does tend to take a fair bit of damage from the Sphinx Fighters.  Darth noticed a Pandora's Box near him, and opened it, releasing a level 50 Beast, so, while he beat a strategic retreat, Rage quickly finished her herb-gathering by boosting the knife and getting a last 27 green herb leaves, then rode into town, transferred to Merac, and rode down to deal with the Beast.  It died easily enough, but there was no gold drop this time.  

Rage went back to Juno to do some mining.  Darth of course continued the pet-levelling; his Berserker got killed again by some sneaky person, and then, only a few minutes later, I actually saw a blue-named knight called "Wimp" dash straight in, kill the Berserker, and rush off - it wasn't as if he was killing Berserkers generally, he just wanted to sabotage a pet-leveller, which seems a bit sad really.

After the break Rage returned to the rolling grasslands of the Sphinx Fighters' part of Dratan, on the southwest uplands not very far from the great pyramid of the Tomb of Theos.  BatCow had been teamed up with a level 28 healer, who she'd helped to reach that spot, so I'd not have been wanted in the party as I'd have "capped" her by being more than fifteen levels above her, but she had gone now, so we teamed up again, and were joined in the party by a level 96 friend of Bat's, VIPER - she apparently had business close by, though I don't know what a level 96 player could be doing in Dratan, other than in a dungeon area like the Tomb.  She rode over to give us horse buffs, which was kind, but got a bit embarrassing and I did have to say in the end that she didn't need to bother, I had a horse too.

BatCow wasn't there all the time, as she too had to go and eat, but it was more fun to team up than just to slog away alone.  When soloing I tended to avoid the Elite Speer Man - he may give triple the experience, but he does take longer to kill, and I don't think he dropped any ready-plussed weapon or armour for us today.  Finally, not long after BatCow logged out for the night, I reached level 50 at long last, and thankfully returned to Dratan City.

Rage could wear level 55 gloves now, but the pair I have, currently being carried by MistressFelicia, are only part of a +6 set, and Rage's current set is part +8 and part +11, so unless I use rather a lot of chaos smelting stones etc, Rage may stay with her current red, rather rare, very smart "lion tamer" costume for a while yet.  But the main thing about level 50, apart from three more stat points to put in Dexterity, is a new skill, Critical Increase.  The five levels cost 573 skill points (level six comes along when Rage is level 80, for another 500 sp, then level seven is available at level 108 for twice that), and it increases my chance that a hit is Critical by 75%... so that if up until now the chance was 10%, now it will be 17.5%.

The evening session added 35.12% experience, 5 skill points, and 1440 pet points, making Rage's totals for the day 72.40%, 5 skill points, and 2775 pet points.  I only got any appreciable amount of skill exp when I was soloing, for some reason having BatCow on the radar too dropped the amount by a factor of ten.  Still, it's not skill exp I'm out there for, even after that new skill Rage still has 12.5k points spare...which would vanish rather quickly if Rage ever gets over level 100 of course, but we'll cross that bridge when our chickens are hatched.

Prizegiving Time

It was another early start for SirDarth, working on giving Ratel's pony a boost; he had asked to have it back when he logged out last night, which seemed a bit strange, but was dissuaded from that, letting Darth continue.  We have loaned him another pet to use while this one is with us, so there can't really be a problem.  And, after being hard at work most of the day, the pony became a (level 16) horse just after six in the evening, which was handy, as Ratty logged in just after that and I was able to pass on the good news.  By the end of the evening, with any luck, level 18 should be in sight.

MistressDomina managed to fit in an hour with a (100% extra skill exp) super skill pill in the morning, in the usual Prokion Temple back room, and managed 407 skill points, which was a remarkably good score.  Continuing on afterwards for a few minutes got the total up to 478, plus 1400 pet points.  MistressDomino logged on to receive the recent loot from MD, Chuck, and Sabina, which included lots of Wendy Bear pieces, and then set up in merchant mode over the lunch break, taking 5.3 million in gold just from selling the pieces - at 50,000 gold each, that was over a hundred pieces.

For the afternoon, MistressDomina continued her skill point farming; as she is currently out of stock of the skill pills, super skill pills, and platinum skill pills, she moved up to using the (200% extra) platinum super skill pills, which meant that the first hour brought in 582 sp, and the second hour 573 - the entire session netted 1170 skill points, along with 2048 pet points, which were enough to promote her drake to level 27.

We did overlap a bit with the Friday "happy hour", which was 50% extra skill exp, and sadly that didn't stack with the 200% extra from the pssp in the way the 50% from the psp would.  But, as soon as the second hour was over, MistressDomina logged out, and MistressSabina, the esteemed guild master of Discipline, logged in, and headed for Prokion.  As she was level 25, she didn't head for the Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen - the Orc Soldiers and Orc Fighters were more her speed.  The fighting wasn't difficult, really, even though Sabina's "Dark" armour set is only a mixture of +4 and +5 items - the 5% suction of life helps of course, while a small HP recovery potion is often useful.

The "Happy Hour" ended rather promptly, unfortunately, but by then Sabina had added 196 skill points, as opposed to the 130 or 131 she'd have got normally, and gone up 85.19% on the experience side, taking her into level 26; 1113 pet points were in the bag, too.  And then it was time for the usual food break, so Kaerella logged on for a little mining.

Afterwards, the next item on the agenda was getting MistressSabina up to level 27, so that she can wear the whole of the next armour set - an armour set she will borrow from MistressDomina, who I guess will go into temporary retirement while Sabina takes her place in that back room.  With MD's armour and staff, Sabina shouldn't have any problems there, even though her skills aren't as fully up to date yet.

So, Sabina went back to Prokion Temple, and continued with those Orc Soldiers and Orc Fighters.  The Orc Soldiers were green-named now, but still gave reasonable amounts of experience, so it didn't take too long to slog through level 26 - 81.44% experience is what I gained, along with a further 104 skill points and 946 pet points, and of course a few pieces of the Wendy Bear puzzle picture.  Sabina is now level 27, and ready for the new armour, and for the Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants.

That left time for Rage to head out to the Sphinx types.  I met another rogue there, BatCow, who was level 37. She knew me, as her titan Zodiac had teamed with me not so long ago - but she's given up on him, he does not have enough skill points, and is building this new rogue.  We teamed up, until she reached level 38, and nipped back to town for her new skills - and had to log out soon after.  I continued for a while; an archer called ckdk12 wanted to team but was only level 32, so had to be content with being allowed to "ks" a bit, and hopefully gained some experience that way.  By the end of the session I'd just added 17.13%, 3 skill points, and 625 pet points.

I'd been eager to give Rage a little outing, as I had been a bit extravagant earlier - I checked the merchant house system and found an Eyes of Spirit accessory for 550 million, as well as more expensive ones, and thought that was a reasonable price for something that is so useful for a bow-user, with its boost for the hit rate and close-range evasion.  So, I bought it, meaning that Rage is now using two of them - and a little later I spent another 65 million on a Stone of Shadow as well.  Rage will have to share the pair of "EoS" with Kaerella, but they make her a formidable bow-wielder, for sure.

There had been a competition on the Last Chaos forum, with the first fifty people to post a screenshot showing all nine parts of the Wendy Bear picture in their inventory being awarded prizes - and tonight was when GameSage TygerMyst was handing out the prizes.  So I had to make sure that MistressSabina was on Auzura-5 at ten o'clock, UK time, standing around hopefully in Randol.

And I continued to stand around for more than twenty minutes before TygerMyst finally arrived - she'd been delayed at work, she said, due to an incident to which the police had had to be called.  My prizes turned out to be a health stealer and a mana stealer, neither of which I think I've actually used yet on Auzura, though back on Cariae at high levels they certainly were useful sometimes.  I do already have plenty of them, but it's the thought that counts, and the pair of them are probably worth at least, oh, five or eight million, something like that.  So, worth the wait I guess.

Two Mages in the Temple

I left SirDarth levelling the new horse overnight; we did get some nasty little creep coming along and killing our Berserker, leaving Darth just standing there, but luckily there was a disconnection not too long after that, so at least the hunger bar stopped going down, and when I was able to set things up again, we continued usefully for the rest of the night. MistressDomino was busy selling stuff too, and did pretty well, getting rid of my supply of Chaos Balls and some other items.

While SirDarth continued working on the horse, I managed to fit in an hour in Prokion Temple for MistressDomina, using the 115% extra skill exp boosts - and got 310 skill points, or 361 for the entire session after continuing on for a bit, plus 1347 pet points.

Over lunch, Kaerella did some mining, including using a number of her tool aids, so that she was able to pass over 700 quality stones to Darth, who had been starting to run a bit low.  Once I was back at the keyboard properly, MistressDomina went back, and did a couple more 115%-extra hours, grabbing 329 and 422 skill points.  The 422 figure is pretty much in line with what I was getting yesterday, so I'm a bit puzzled why the other two hours were so much lower.  The morning one did have a minor interruption or two, but not more than a couple of minutes, I'm sure.  Anyway, the afternoon's total skill point gain was 779, plus 2162 pet points, making a total for today for MistressDomina of 1140 skill points and 3509 pet points.

It was MistressDomina's turn to get rid of some of her stash of tool aids by doing some mining, over the early evening food interval, but after that I switched to MistressSabina, who gets to go to the less advanced parts of Prokion Temple, so far.  A level 20 healer called ElfMage came into the room I was killing Mummies in, and started to make herself at home - we sometimes hit the same Mummy, and I think she was a bit disconcerted that two heaven stones dropped for me in quick succession.  She had a knight with her, but he didn't stay very long; at her request I joined their party, but moving along to the Orc Soldiers, while fine for me and giving them good experience, did prove a bit dangerous for her.  Still, it's useful to have a healer on one's Friends list.

ElfMage left after a while, and once MistressSabina reached reached level 25 I headed back to Randol, and upgraded the "Discipline" guild to level 4, which took 120 skill points and 500,000 gold, and got a few skills with the remaining points I'd earned.  There weren't quite enough for the new third level of Flame Storm, so I went back to Prokion for another briefer session and got a few more.  With the various skill-learnings it got a bit complicated, but I'd say around 150 skill points got earned in all, as well as 1615 pet points, and, as Sabina's experience isn't frozen, 59.40%.

MrChuckNorris managed to have a not very long session with the Poison Mists.  Fellow Norcaine member Legacy, a level 33 assassin-type rogue (which means using daggers rather than a crossbow) made the trip down from Prokion to join him - being in the same party meant he could see Chuck's dot on the map.  Legs was a bit underwhelmed with the amount of experience the Poison Mists gave, considering that he is six levels below them, and soon went off to try the canines in Maargadum Jail instead.  They weren't very generous, either.

Chuck only added 11.03% experience, 13 skill points, and 350 pet points, but hey, it makes a change from mage-style goings-on in Prokion Temple.  Levelling up there isn't fast, but it makes sense to get to level 38, and learn the Fire Command skill to increase the hit rate of bow and crossbow users in a party, before trying to get into a party to fight the Sphinx Speer Men and Sphinx Fighters.

Bid Time Return

SirDarth continued with the drake-levelling up until noon; by that time the little fellow was level 23, and 2955 out of 4354 pet points along towards the next level, so just about right to be MistressSabina's pet, giving 22 levels of Armour Increase, which adds 170 to Sabina's physical defence.  I was intending that SirDarth should start another drake, but, after trading across a drake egg from MistressDomino, I was in rather a hurry, and actually activated the pan flute quest with Lorraine, as that is the first option to come up.  So, Darth got a cute little new pony instead, which by half past four was just reaching 100% Sympathy, and halfway through level 6.

There was time in the morning for MistressDomina to do an hour's skill point farming in my favourite back room in Prokion Temple, and, using a (200% extra skill exp) platinum super skill pill and a (50% extra) platinum skill pill she managed to add a massive 682 skill points in the hour they were active - 734 in the whole session, plus 1142 pet points.  As usual, as the Orcs are MD's level, the loot drops were good, with plenty of Wendy Bear pieces, moonstone boxes, and the various Hands.

MistressDomino, my merchant mage (and thus not to be confused with MistressDomina), did a little selling of the bear pieces over the lunch break, and also got rid of the platinum harvest boosters that were gained from the Easter Egg event, so I decided to have a look through the available monster combo-type accessories in the Merchant House; I found a necklace which only gave 5% suction of life, and decided that it was worth just about 15.5 million gold asking price.

So, in the afternoon session, MistressDomina didn't need to use the small HP recovery potions, the "suction of life" kept her health nicely topped up.  It's not a steady and predictable health recovery rate, just a rather random addition of about 60 health points at a time, but it did the job.

As well as the necklace, I passed fifteen of the Skill Boxes across to MD, and she opened them - there were some platinum super skill pills revealed, which is nice, and also (100% extra) super skill pills and the (15% extra) skill pills or "training spells", as well as a few of the ten-minute scrolls.   So, for the afternoon session the idea was to use up some ssps and sps.  Luckily the usual room was still available; 417 skill points got added in the first hour (which would have been 679 with the maximum-bonus pssp and psp), and 416 in the second hour, so I was pretty consistent today.  The whole of the afternoon session added 896 skill points, as well as 2386 pet points, which were just enough to get MD's drake to level 26.

So for MistressDomina that was, in all, 1630 skill points today, and 3528 pet points.  In theory she is about a third of the way to the sort of total for skill points at which most of my characters leave Prokion Temple, but if possible I want to keep her there a little bit longer.

Kaerella did some mining over the early evening food break, for a change, replenishing  her supply of quality, imperfect and flawed stones - and then it was time for MistressSabina to come out to play, for at least half a session.  As with most Wednesdays, I'd have to log out at around eight UK time, but that still left plenty of time to get things done.

So, the first thing to do was check on any newly available quests - and I found that the first of the two quests that need 10 Soft Sand was now available, so Sabina teleported out to Shuraine's oasis, and settled in to farm the Sand Golems there.  They may be yellow-named for her, as they are a few levels above her, but with her mount's attack and defence buffs, and her newly-boosted level 23 drake's Armour Increase buff too, they didn't give her any problems.  It took a while, but I got the twenty pieces of Soft Sand needed for this quest and another one, and also levelled up, reaching level 24.

The soft sand does actually have to be delivered to a different location out in the Dratan desert; as Sabina is still 13 levels below her horse, that horse gets hungry awfully quickly, and using the horse buffs had really drained the yellow starvation bar.  Luckily, she had picked up a few tool aids lately, so the best thing to do was to return to Randol, buy a few mage-type mining hammers, and go out to the local Juno mine.  So, that's where I headed - encountering a Pandora's Box along the way, which dropped five of the top-level physical attack minerals, which are rare and valuable.

So, I used tool aids on the hammers, one after the other, selecting "quality stones" and doing the usual mining chores, getting a good stock of stones to keep my mount plump and happy.  I had a new quest to visit Wild Collector Kal, so I fed the horse, and rode across Juno to his location, completed that quest, got the reward, and went back to town.  Then it was a matter of feeding the horse up fully, taking the teleporter to Dratan city, and, mounting up again, riding off down the city's main street towards the south gate, to go to the desert location where the quest reward awaited...

And it was at that point, at 7:35 pm UK time, that the server, or maybe just the Auzura-3 sub-server, chucked everyone out.  It wasn't easy to reconnect either, there were lots of "timed out" messages and a disconnection or two at the character selection screen, but at last both MistressSabina and SirDarth were able to get back in.  Instead of being on horseback, Sabina had her drake equipped... there is often a little "rollback" after a disconnection.  But further investigation showed that the horse hadn't yet been fed - and that all the stones I'd mined weren't in my inventory.  The quest for Wild Collector Kal hadn't been completed, or indeed begun, and those five physical attack minerals had vanished from my inventory - and in fact I'd only got nineteen of the twenty Soft Sand pieces I'd farmed from the Sand Golems out at Shuraine's oasis earlier, so that was a very biiig rollback...

Well, there wasn't time to do everything I'd hoped to do, but I got the Kal quest, bought the hammers, did the mining, visited Wild Collector Kal, not far from Velpist temple... but there wasn't time to head back to Dratan, so MistressSabina ended the evening 58.28% up, as far as experience goes - luckily the rollback hadn't taken her below level 24 again.  Sand Golems don't give as much skill experience as Prokion Temple monsters, about a seventh as much, in fact, as I was below their level, so only 26 skill points got added, plus 767 pet points.

SirDarth got a bit of a scare, later - I found him being attacked by a wandering Pandora's Beast.  He's have been dead, I suppose, if the Beast hadn't chosen to attack his pony first.  It was lucky I noticed what was going on, Darth was able to make a run for it, and unequip his pony when it was on about 40% health - pets may be expensive to heal, but they take a long time to die, one point at a time.  

Darth logged out, and Rage logged in, teleported to Merac Caron, and rode down to battle the Beast.  Rather than try Snare, which only works 70% of the time, she used Flame Arrow to start off, which has a rather better success rate, and it was soon dead, dropping 42,600 gold.  After that Darth was able to log back in; the pony soon levelled up again, restoring her health to 100%, and everything returned to normal.  By my usual log-out time, she should be well into level 11.  I really don't know if she will go all the way to level 37, the later stages are rather a lot of work so I don't want to do it all the time.

MistressDomina Steps In

Due to a rather early start, SirPerivale actually finished getting his horse to level 37 at around nine o'clock this morning, and is now able to take a well-earned rest. I'm sure the Butchers will be glad about that!  SirDarth however was able to continue raising the drake for MistressSabina, though there was a brief break mid-morning when a Pandora's Box showed up, and when opened released a level 50 Beast.

Even with his excellent armour, Darth knows enough to run for it when one of those things turns up; it did in fact manage to attack the drake, which took 5 points of damage before Darth got clear and managed to log out.  This was a job for Rage, who logged in, teleported to Merac, and rode down to deal with it.  The Pandora's Beast dropped 71,200 gold, so it was worth the effort; Rage logged out again, and SirDarth returned and continued the pet-levelling. The drake reached level 19 before lunch, and the levelling-up cured that 95/100 health rating.  By the end of the evening he was comfortably into level 22, so that drake has almost been taken as far as he needs to go.

I didn't do any sustained fighting in the morning session; instead, MistressDomino took in the loot from my other characters, and I made careful notes about the armour sets that I have.  There was much exchanging of the "Wendy Bear" pieces, leaving most of my main characters with three sets each, and a few bloodseal gems distributed to where they were needed.  

I decided to upgrade the shirt and pants of Rage's current level 50/52 armour set from +8 to +11, so that she can now wear the whole set instead of still wearing the +11 shirt and pants from the previous set; I am pretty well off for chaos smelting stones at present, so, why not?  You don't see many rogues around wearing that rather smart red "lion tamer" style armour, so she should stand out a bit.  I may upgrade some of the other sets too, if Chuck doesn't need a high physical defence, well, MistressDomina probably will when she takes it over!

MrChuckNorris became my first character to play the "rock paper scissors" game with the special extra NPC in Randol, opposite the Domain Merchant.  After two draws, he lost the third game, which meant that he won the "school uniform" style titan armour-covering set, something that would otherwise cost 25 aeria points from the Item Mall.  MistressDomino quickly opened an Upgrade Box and got 5 bonus books of melding, which she passed across to Chuck; the costume doesn't include headgear, but for the next thirty days he has a reasonably smart blue suit to wear, with +1 more upgrades to the boots and gloves, and +2 to the jacket and trousers.  Apparently various potions are given out if you win the game, but getting the costume-cover is fine with me.

After lunch it was time for MistressDomina to do some serious skill point farming in Prokion Temple.  Two hours with a super skill pill and a skill pill therefore passed relatively smoothly in my favourite back room -  426 skill points were gained, which was remarkably good for one hour, followed by a more average 394.  As usual, I stayed on a little longer there, and the whole session brought in 905 sp, and 2540 pet points.

Following the early evening food break, my first thought was to let MistressSabina have a go, in the rather easier lower-level rooms of the Temple, but as she is without her pet while SirDarth levels it up, in the end MistressDomina got another session.   This time my favourite back room was in use, and not by anyone who had cheerfully barged in on me while I'd been fighting there, so I went on round to what I call the corridor room.

A small area just outside the main room regularly spawns three Orc Axemen, which is useful as they are exactly MD's level, while almost all the Orcs at that end of the room are Sergeants.  I settled in for an hour, anyway, with the same two pills, and wasn't surprised to find the total not quite as high, as a fair amount of running around has to be done: 356 skill points.  I decided to change over to Chuck and head for the Poison Mists, but ran back to check my favourite room first - and found it empty.

So, MistressDomina took possession of that room again.  I'd run out of (100%) super skill pills, so decided to use a (200%) platinum super skill pill, and, rather than a (15%) skill pill, a (50%) platinum skill pill, which meant that the Orc Axemen now gave 19250 skill experience each, and the Orc Sergeants 17325... what would have got me 400 sp before would now get me 650, by my calculations.  I didn't get quite that high, but the first hour brought in 641 sp, and the second hour a further 627.  

Having those pills active meant that I'd ruled myself out of attending the usual Tuesday evening "Mad Monster Spawn", and I was a bit worried, when the announcements of its approach came up, that it would crash the sub-server, as it has done a few times recently - which would be bad news if I had expensive potions active, I'd either lose valuable time, or even lose the potion itself.  But luckily Auzura-3 remained stable, and, again, I continued on a bit longer, mainly to finish off the current small HP recovery potion, so that the total for the evening session reached 1667 skill points, plus another 3169 pet points, taking MD's drake up to level 24.

So, MistressDomina had a pretty busy time today, with over five hours of Orc-fighting; 2572 skill points is a good step forward, and 5709 pet points is slightly more than a whole level, at her drake's current stage.  I do want MD to have more unused skill points than Chuck, Rage or Kae, when she leaves Prokion Temple, so there will be plenty more sessions to follow.  The drops of the Wendy Bear pieces are useful, and MistressDomino managed to sell quite a few today.  In all this afternoon and evening MD picked up 70 of them in Prokion Temple, varying from 2 to 13 of each of the nine pieces.  There being a limit to the number of costume covers one can use (they can't be traded, and their 30 days of use starts counting down as soon as they arrive), I do need to sell them while the Event lasts...

Business As Usual

SirDarth began his work on MistressSabina's hatchling in the relatively early morning; SirPerivale also continued work on his horse for much of the time, though gave way to MistressDomina after coffee, so that she could head for Prokion Temple for an hour or so before it became busy.  Darth did have a slight surprise when he first teleported to his usual Berserker spot - the Grand Red Dragon was close by, but luckily nobody attempted to fight it, which might have led to fiery breath and assorted Cerebrii in the area.  Peri had a surprise too, as Butchers run out of health in around 30 minutes when he fights them, he often has to finish off a nearly-dead one and home in on another, when I check up on his progress, and the first time I did that today, the dying one dropped a heaven stone for him.

MistressDomina found the favourite back room uninhabited, so was able to use a 100% super skill pill and a 15% skill pill for an hour, bringing in 397 skill points; the whole session added 444 of them, and 1090 pet points.  After Peri took the computer back for the lunch break, she continued with the afternoon session, using the same two pills; the first hour added 407, and the second added 388, slightly reduced by a phone call.  Continuing on for a little while afterwards, again, brought the afternoon's total up to 853, plus 2385 pet points, which took MD's drake safely into level 23.  The only interruptions came from a rogue called Italia, who would come into the room and then attack an orc or two, but usually left pretty soon or hugged the wall for a few minutes, then fought some more.

Peri's pet-levelling stint over the early evening food break brought the horse up to more than two-thirds of the way through its final level - but then it was time for Rage, my level 49 rogue, to have at least a brief outing.  I headed for the Sphinx Fighters of course, where the rogue TinySickNinja, often seen giving advice in Randol, was at work with some of her friends.  Things did get a little crowded; it seemed that a Tomb party was mustering there - though they had enough rogues apparently.  The place seemed a bit empty when they all left., but soon after that, Rage's pet horse levelled up, reaching level 34 now.   There is no great point in taking a pet horse past level 37, so that will be another prospective mount, and another dragon hatchling for SirDarth to level up a bit, as a replacement.  It seems to me that, apart from developing a valuable mount, a drake is the best pet to have, they do seem to be better and quicker at picking up items, and less likely to get stuck.

Rage just added 6.88% experience, 2 skill points, and 306 pet points, before I headed back to Dratan City to spend her horse's new stat point on a slight armour increase.  I met xXArcheonXx there, a level 22 rogue, who turned out to be Acheron's newest character, and a member of the TrueGamers guild already, the same guild as TinySickNinja - who had raised the possibility of Rage joining that guild, before getting sidetracked into banter with her friends.

As the Elite Speer Man was getting ignored, I decided to give Kaerella an outing there for a change - and there is always the chance, when one logs on, of a friend issuing an invitation to something more exciting.  Not tonight, though, so Kae just farmed the Elite, and a couple of the regulars between its spawns.  Jacqueline came online, and I was suggesting that a higher level pet, with more of an Armour Increase buff, would help her in Prokion Temple.  SirDarth could boost her pet for a day or two.  Jacqui seemed to think this was a nice idea, but in the meantime asked for assistance in moving her pets around so that she had the highest one currently available, rather than Argoth, so I logged in my storage-type sorcerer, LordElpus, for that, before Kae returned to the Sphinx types.  It wasn't a hugely long session she had there, adding just 7.98% experience, 20 skill points, and 705 pet points.

Jacqui reported that she'd used her 15 heaven stones from the Quiz successfully... well, upgrading a couple of items by three or four without breaking them!  The borrowed weapon is still one plus ahead of the bow she upgraded, so she'll continue to use that one, unless I need it back.

MrChuckNorris had a similarly brief adventure, out in Dratan desert with the Poison Mists; he seemed to be gaining experience about twice as quickly as Rage, despite fighting monsters only around 3 levels above him, and added 11.03% experience, 13 skill points, and 350 pet points.  Rage hadn't had any plussed drops from the Elite Speer man, but the Elite Poison Mist did at least drop a Chaos Skirt +1.  Chuck tends to just put ordinary armour loot into the Merchant House at three or four thousand above the sell-to-npc price, so that, with the deposit involved, he doesn't make any useful extra amount of cash, but the things sell quickly and hopefully find good homes.

So, all my main characters except MistressSabina saw at least some action today - Sabina missed out as her pet is currently with Darth of course.  The hatchling changed into a drake, and in all went up nine levels today, getting well into level 19 by the time things close down around here.  As for SirPerivale's horse, well, some progress has been made, in the times when the newer computer hasn't been hosting Kae or Rage or Chuck or MD, and we are now about three-quarters of the way through level 36.

More Black Screens

Well, it's always a relief to get one of my "Busy Sundays" out of the way - it's five weeks until the next one, so, although there are other distractions, I'll be able to concentrate on Last Chaos a bit for a while.

The day started early - but only because I'd left MistressDomino in merchant mode overnight.  I checked on her progress, and saw that she'd got about 46 million, including selling three Easter Eggs, and then logged out, and switched off the computer and the modem for almost exactly twelve hours.

When I got back online, just about the first thing I did was get both SirDarth and SirPerivale up and running as pet levellers - but when I got back from eating, they had both been disconnected.  Ah well, at least they'd done about 25 minutes each before losing the connection.

For once, I don't think it was a problem with the Last Chaos servers; my local connection seemed not to like having been offline all day, and in the end, restarting the modem seemed to sort things out, but it was all very strange, I think I must have had a tiny trickle of a connection, as Darth did manage to log in again, and, while Peri just got "timed out" messages, he appeared successfully in Randol - but a quiet, empty Randol.  First the place was entirely empty in one direction - Geres and the other NPCs near him were there, but Storekeeper Bianca, the Animal Trainer, etc, just weren't to be seen.  A few players stood around near Geres and company.  On a second attempt, the spawning area was pretty full of players, but all standing there doing and saying nothing.  So, "connecting into a disconnection" would about cover it.

It took a while, but finally all was well again; SirDarth returned to his Berserker, and MistressSabina headed for Prokion Temple, and a convenient room full of Mummies.  They may be four levels below her, but still give 3300 skill exp each, and as boss critters a useful bit of experience too.

Jacqueline was in the Temple too, and in the solo party, closing in on level 28, and still complaining that she had to spend more time healing herself than actually fighting.  It wasn't a long session, though, as soon Jacqui was reminding me that the Quiz was about to start.  So Darth and Sabina logged out, and Kaerella and Rage logged in, and headed for the Auzura-4 Quiz Room.

There was talk of the Quiz Room doors being closed once the quiz started, but I think people were managing to get in again.  The questions were the same as last week's, and by now we were all starting to get the hang of them.  The Barren Eise has six eyes, the Spirit and Quanian's Caves are in Strayana, game masters won't ban you for refusing to give them personal information, but will do for sharing an account...many of the answers are indeed common sense.  Rage and Kae both got the full set of prizes, the tool aids, moonstones and heaven stones, and they both logged out safely.  Knowing the disconnection possibilities with so many people online, it was sensible to log out and "force" the game to record the new additions to my inventories....a disconnection, incorporating a rollback to before the prizes were given out, would cause riots, but it could happen.

And of course logging back in was the problem - well, not logging back in, one could easily enter one's account name and password, choose the server and sub-server, choose the character to play, and watch the bar for Randol-loading go to 100%, it was after that when one found oneself staring at a black screen.  SirDarth got in fairly easily, but MistressSabina didn't.  And then Darth got another disconnection after only a couple of minutes with his Berserker.

Darth's next session lasted a little longer, but he, and Sabina, who had got in finally, got another disconnection a bit later.  By now, despite the delays and disconnections, Darth's horse was approaching level 37; it wasn't worth sending Sabina out to do anything, but she could stand around in town casually, hoping to be able to take the newly-finished mount, and lend Darth her hatchling for a day's levelling to boost its level a bit.

MistressSabina's short session earlier in Prokion Temple had added 43.09% experience and 80 skill points, giving her 108 unused skill points - enough for the fifth level of some skills, though I opted to wait until she has the 151 needed for Mage Armour, and keep other fifth levels for later.  She also will need 120 skill points for guild upgrading, but that can't be done until she is level 25, so she needn't start saving up for it yet.  729 pet points got added too.

Anyway, Darth's horse made it to level 37 - and 200 pet points beyond, as I got distracted by a contest on the forum which meant I had to take a screenshot of Sabina, with her inventory open to show the Wendy Bear pieces, then process the shot, upload it to PhotoBucket, and post it in the forum.  Darth and Sabina then exchanged pets, and Darth went back out with the level hatchling for a last few minutes, while Sabina mounted the horse, and got the attack and defence boosting skills up to their maximums.

So, despite the disconnections, black screens, and other problems, the Quiz at least went well, and the horse is now a full-strength mount, so not a bad evening all in all.