Knight Time in Prokion Temple

The servers seemed stable today; I did have a couple of disconnections, but that may just have been my modem protesting about being left running for a few days without any downtime. If pet-levellers get a disconnection, all one loses is a little time, so there weren't any big problems, and things can be said to have gone relatively smoothly.

Once again I was too busy with other things to play at all in the morning, which gave CaptainScarlet and SirPerivale a clear run; the afternoon session was slightly shorter than usual too. Since one doesn't really know in advance when a "denial of service" attack will come, I wasn't risking MistressDomina or any other character with a big stock of skill points - instead, a knight in his +10 armour set, fighting in Prokion Temple, seemed the way to go.

So, SirDarth headed back to Auzura-4's Prokion Temple, where Jacqueline was already in action; she was in a solo party with a few other people, so I joined that. It was really a continuation of yesterday's party as far as we two were concerned - and, adding the two parts together, Darth added in all 42.09% before the food break, plus 193 skill points and 643 pet points. Darth reached level 33 during the afternoon, which meant slightly less experience and skill exp per kill for both of us, but I think his speed of killing still makes him good value in such a team.

The Orc Axemen are now blue-named for him, which means that it's not worth equipping his drake now. They still give useful skill exp - in fact, to maximise one's skill point gain one could concentrate on them, as while their skill exp is around two-thirds of what Darth now gets from an Orc Sergeant, the amount of experience has declined substantially, so one would get an awful lot of skill points before levelling up again.

After a slightly extended food break, including preparations for my "day out" tomorrow, SirDarth returned to the back room, though not for a huge length of time, adding another 14.09% experience and 99 skill points. He got back into the same solo party; another member, DeathOnTwoLegs, was talking about the differences between the Aeria version of Last Chaos and the German one, apparently experience boosters are even more expensive there, so grinding past level 100 takes a lot of money. He was recommending buying and opening Chaos Balls, if they appear in the Item Mall as a "buy one get one free" offer so that you get 200 for 600 or so aeria points; you might only get one or two chaos smelting stones, but other possible items include a few platinum blessed irises, and other goodies.

Still keeping to "risk-free" characters, I changed over to RedRackham, who had just reached level 31 when last seen; he is now officially a Temple Knight, though I had to spend 228 skill points to learn the Mana Break skill...and to learn that skill I needed level 1 of Weapon Break, which in turn required that I have level 1 of Armour Break, which required level 1 of Fatal Divide, so that was a further 11 skill points spent.

A not very long session in Prokion Temple's back room added 21.09% experience for Red, and 79 skill points, so if he farms all the way to level 35, rather a lot of time will be taken. A supporting role at the Sphinx Fighters would be a bit quicker, I suspect, it all depends how many skill points I want him to have available for guild use, eventually.

Jacqueline had problems with "running out of memory" a couple of times, and in the evening decided to start a new sweet young mage, called Liezl. As a noob character she soon became the centre of attention, apparently, asking suitably noobish questions, but she is now officially in the Guardian system, apprenticed to Maddmary, who kindly gave her a useful accessory, and 100,000 gold, which should allow her to buy all the armour and health potions she needs for a while. The first Pandora's Box she opened gave her 5 moonstones - the second one presented her with a level 30 Pandora's Beast, but with the help of some level 6 minerals, she actually managed to kill it, which took her straight from level six to level nine. At a low level, buffs can make a big difference to one's attack and defence.

CaptainScarlet had kept busy on Samael's pale blue horse, and it reached level 31 today; I've kept going, perhaps we can get it to level 33 if he can manage to wait long enough. Ratel was saying that the value of mounts has dropped a lot recently, and around 350 million seems the top price for a level 37 mount these days. One reason would be the "player appreciation event" - I can't be the only one who has rushed a knight to level 31, got the +10 armour set, and made him into a pet-leveller, it's a swift and easy way to do it, instead of having to get an armour set upgraded rather expensively. Also, the GMs seem to have succeeded in taking a lot of gold out of the game - so instead of inflation we have deflation as prices correct themselves, so that while heaven stones did reach 4.5 million on Auzura for a week or two, now perhaps 3.2 million is a more realistic price.

I went to look round the merchants on Auzura-1, but apart from the occasional accessory with 5% suction of life and a bit of defence, there isn't anything much that interests me. Level 109 weapons and high-level armour, at high-level prices, really don't do anything for me yet. A level 75/77 rogue armour set for Rage, ready plussed, would be nice, but you just don't seem to see that sort of thing. I'd be tempted by a ready-plussed 70/72 set, even, to allow Kaerella to get back into action again.

There was a general GM call for assistance on Auzura-1 a little earlier, when monsters were attacking both gates, but such spawnings are more than usually dangerous, as the critters come right up to the gates - if you are safe inside you can't attack, and if you move through the gateway so that you can attack, you are immediately neck-deep in high-level homicidal monsters. So I wasn't tempted...

SirPerivale had got the pony he was working on up to level 16 now, so that it is now a nice large horse rather than a cute, if stocky, little pony. It's lucky my pet-levelling "business" is mainly for my own characters, or friends or guildies. Maybe this one will end up with my sorcerer, JohnWellington...or maybe Stavanac will decide he has another character who needs a mount. He is ever-so-slightly grounded at the moment, computer-wise, though since he was at home ill yesterday he was able to log on for a while.

Tomorrow I won't be around much, since I'm out all day. Hopefully I'll be able to log on at around seven in the evening, so let's hope that the servers are as stable then as they have been today. The official report from yesterday was "We were attacked again this morning. The attack has been dealt with and all servers are up and stable", which seems to cover it.

Here We Go Again...

There was no possibility of pet-levelling overnight, with the state the servers were in; I managed to log SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet in before breakfast, though, so the pet-levelling restarted. However, there were some disconnections during the morning, and even after the Auzura server settled down, there was talk in the forum shoutbox of Cariae, at least, being out of commission.

So, I'd chosen a good time to be too busy, generally, to play. SirDarth's abbreviated session last night with Jacqueline in Prokion Temple had, I discovered, given Darth 20.53% experience, and 76 skill points, plus 276 pet points for his drake, when he had it equipped.

Between disconnections, Peri and Cap kept going, so that Samael's pale blue horse reached level 29 safely, and Peri got the new pony into double figures.

Checking on the computers, I noticed the 3:00pm (UK time) announcement of the Friday "happy hour", with an extra 50% skill exp, so decided to send SirDarth back to Prokion Temple, to take advantage of the bonus. The back room was clear, so, in a solo party with SirPerivale, and later, when I decided that levelling Samael's blue horse took priority, with CaptainScarlet, Darth set to work. The bonus ended promptly at 5:00, and by that time Darth had added another 30.44%, 1436 pet points, and 276 skill points.

There had been some GM announcements about the rescheduled "Epic Event" at Maargadum Jail taking place on Auzura-3, but without a suitable character for such an event, I wasn't keen on breaking off from getting my extra 50% skill exp to go there. It was meant to start at five, UK time, but they were trying to get people there earlier. Anyway, it was time for me to get some food.

Still, the equivalent event on Cariae was set for two hours later, so I decided to take my level 100 archer Barbarienne along to that one, and there were certainly a lot of people waiting patiently outside when I arrived outside the Jail. Eventually we were given the go-ahead to all crowd into the Jail, which was hard luck on an archer who was using a pssp while fighting the spiked canines on level one - she was advised to change sub-server, which I hope she did, because before long the first high-level monster spawning took place in that main room. I'd seen GMJediMike outside, if he went in I hope he found some armour to put on, usually his titan character just wears the underpants - I saw Moose too, inside, heading down the stairs a few minutes later.

It does make a change to be a high-level fighter at such an event, I never really felt in danger, and gained some useful experience - well, probably less than 0.01% at level 100, but some kills gave me a million or so experience, which looked impressive at the time. After cleaning out the ground floor, alias level one, we headed down to level two, and got rid of its extra inhabitants - and then on down to level three, at least some of us, where there were some Sphinx Commanders in the central area. I did actually retreat up the stairs when I ended up soloing one, as I wasn't using any of the potions that I'd use for an hour of farming in the Tomb with them, but after self-healing a few times returned and helped finish off the last few.

I really don't know if there were any high-level monsters ever spawned on levels four and five; perhaps some people ran straight past level three and dealt with them, but my feeling is that there wasn't anything added down there. All was quiet when I got there, anyway - but that was delayed by a call for help while we were still on level three - a new wave of baddies had spawned back on the top level, so we had to rush back for them, before returning to the depths. I saw Zenderfly down there, she is now in a guild called SafeHaven.

GM Beatrice said that there would be a "surprise" waiting for us outside, so we rushed back all the way up from level five - and I was just in time to grab some goodies, it's lucky that when the various "Hands" are spawned there is a delay before anyone can grab the items. I think I picked up around eight useful items, like skill point boosters, item drop boosters, and large attack potions. And then a second wave of hands was spawned, people rushed to pick them up, and some GM comedian dropped some Barren Eise monsters on top! Fine for me, I could rely on my armour and evasion and continue to try to pick up stuff, but deadly for some lower level people I'm sure.

I do wish that the GMs would say when events were over, people stayed around in case anything else was going to happen, but after a few minutes Barbarienne logged out from Cariae-3 - and SirDarth logged back in on Auzura-4. As events go, well, it made a change from Mad Monster Spawns, but the cramped conditions did cut down on any group strategy, and meant an awful lot of people were rather close together. It doesn't allow the level 10, or indeed level 31, types to just hang around on the sidelines and watch and maybe help a little, but spawning the goodies outside means that they can still grab loot afterwards.

The back room in Prokion Temple was busy, so SirDarth ended up in what I'd call the statue room, not far from the central staircases. While I was briefly afk Jacqueline logged in, having apparently had an awful job trying to enter the game - I think by the time I'd noticed and replied she had logged out again, probably involuntarily. Just as well as my "things seem to have quieted down" remark was, sadly, tempting fate. Very soon after that, CaptainScarlet stopped doing any damage to his Berserker, and things got laggy for Darth too... and it didn't take very long for the "disconnected" sign to pop up on both screens.

A visit to the shoutbox confirmed that it wasn't just me - despite whatever efforts Aeria had been making, the hacker's "denial of service" attack killed the game again, with the servers crashed. So, that was the end of the evening's entertainment, sigh...

Server Attacks

I did try to keep the two pet-levellers working overnight, but it wasn't all that long before they had a disconnection, so a few hours were lost then, before I could get SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet back into action. Still, after that they were okay for a few hours.

There wasn't an opportunity for me to do anything more adventurous during the morning, so Cap was able to continue, switched back from the green drake to the higher-level pink one. The older computer got a bit noisy, as it does sometimes, probably because it had been switched on for rather longer than usual, so it was granted a rest for a couple of hours. The fans continued to be a bit whirry for a while, but thankfully calmed down eventually.

After lunchtime, the sorcerer Samael got in touch with Peri, and I asked him how he was getting on with levelling the pale blue horse - the answer, really, was slowly. He asked if I could level it up for him, which was fair enough, he really should have waited a few days and let me level it up in the first place before exchanging it for that level 24 green drake and a Stone of Shadow.

He was a little bit wary of trusting me with such a valuable thing as a level 27 rare pale blue horse, but the top-level DeathBringers player, the level 55 archer Lylja, vouched for me apparently, and I offered to loan him the level 24 horse I'd been working on, so that he'd still get a useful pet buff and not be risking much. He passed over the pale blue horse, plus four pan flutes as a bonus, and a platinum pet pill, in Randol, and I was ready to go back to work.

It was not very long after that, at approaching 2:40pm UK time, that all the Last Chaos servers crashed. It was the old story of timing out when trying to log in, and getting in only to find that half Randol's NPCs hadn't loaded, so that one reached the teleporter only to find that she wasn't there. I did manage to take Cap out to the Treants in Juno to try pet-levelling on them for a change, but that didn't last long before another disconnection... long enough to show that it is possible, if only for a change of scenery.

Ratel did come online in the early evening, and I warned him that it was a "don't start any expensive pots" situation, with the servers still unstable. "I might go to Proki a bit later, but no way are any of my mages venturing online until the servers are safe."

Sadly even using the Messenger system seemed to make disconnections more likely, so chat was a bit constrained; Ratty was slightly annoyed that he hadn't known about my birthday before reading about it on the blog. Peri seemed better at maintaining a connection than Cap; they were in a solo party with Ratty, and after a while only Peri was still there. Ratel later reported that he had had a "bad disconnection", but had managed to avoid dying.

Later, after Peri had managed to pet-level for a little while, SirDarth logged in, joined up with Peri for the solo party, and headed for that familiar back room in Prokion Temple. Before long, Ratel's archer, Jacqueline, came online, and we decided to team up in that room, as neither of us kills as quickly as a mage, so with any luck there would be just enough Orcs to go round. And so it proved - until Jacqui reported bad lag at just after 8:15pm UK time. A minute or so later Peri disconnected, and I couldn't log him back in - and then the message came up that the servers were coming down for "a quick reset". Jacqui immediately vanished, and two seconds later I got disconnected too. Not much notice of the reset, then. Looking on the forum, Aeria_ks1lent had reported that "Our network is under attack again. We are working on solutions for the issues right now." "Do not use ap items until further notice", a message in the shoutbox was warning.

Well, that was about it for my evening's entertainment; as usual, people were reporting in the shoutbox "already logged in" error messages, and "timed out", and getting into Randol only to disconnect 30 seconds later. And then the engineers were apparently hard at work, so I left them to it. Even at ten o'clock all the Auzura sub-servers were marked as down for "Maintenance", so there was no chance of doing any overnight pet-levelling this time.

The Tears of a Knight

Last night's regular scheduled maintenance didn't bring any surprises; generally, if the "patch" can be added on the newer computer without me having to temporarily disable the Kaspersky Anti-Virus, then there are no great changes. I did leave both CaptainScarlet and SirPerivale pet-levelling until the servers came down, and was able to put them back up later in the night, so that they continued to make progress - and they continued at their work all morning too, as I got on with various other little jobs around the house.

At the end of the lunch break, Peri had got the new horse almost halfway through level 21, with three levels worth of Armour Increase to claim the next time he was back in town. Cap's daylight hours work on the pink drake had got it almost halfway through level 35, while overnight he had got the green one to almost two-thirds of the way through level 26. It's a cunning plan, saving the lower-level one for night work, as it can go for eight hours without being fed, and then switching to the hungrier one when I am actually around.

Ratel, or at least his prospective pet-leveller Leopardknight, was still on the Auzura server in the morning; Leo had managed to sell some items, including a drake scroll, which enables someone, purely for fun, to transform themselves into a small version of a drake and fly around in town or elsewhere. Usually he just sells them for a few gold to the NPC merchant, Geres, but this time someone actually paid a thousand or so for one. He must have sold some other items too, as he was able to come down to Merac and trade another 15 million gold across to Peri - which, as he commented, just leaves another 231 million to go.

When I returned from lunch Cap and Peri had lost their Berserkers - yes, someone had ks'd them. Luckily it was very recent, as the gold the Berserkers had dropped was still lying on the ground. It's strange that the little darlings never stop to pick up their ill-gotten loot, I suppose they do at least feel slightly ashamed of their actions.

Most of the afternoon seemed to be taken up by moving items around between characters, which was relaxing if time-consuming. Kaerella got a new addition to her Friends List, XxPaWaNVaRuNxX - well, not entirely new, as she'd been on it as "pawanvarun" before. "I was hacked and scammed", she told me sadly. I've removed the old version from my list, it is always bad when that sort of thing happens. She was asking me which character I was playing mainly these days, a question to which there is no easy, or indeed short, answer.

As he was carrying quite a few tool aids, SirDarth did some mining, in two trips getting through fifty knight-type pickaxes and acquiring 1.350 quality stones. Some of those have stayed with MistressDomino for either future distribution or possible sale, and 500 went to top up SirPerivale's supplies, which were running a bit low.

I did later in the afternoon just have time to get that new rogue of mine, RedRider, levelled up a bit. When last seen she was level 7, so the next thing to do, except for forgetting to get her into the Guardian system, was to get her out to Prokion Temple. This was pretty similar to RedRackham's run, though I had her on the older computer, already teamed with SirPerivale, and he was able to give her the Divine Shield armour buff as she ran out of the city's eastern gate. Again I triggered a potion of haste as she approached the clever foxes and sand golems, and again using the only small health potion she'd previously picked up just kept her alive to get through to Shuraine's oasis, where she added that location to her memory scroll. The potion of haste ran out only a minute away from the Temple itself, and the Divine Shield buff lasted a few seconds longer. The second half of the journey is rather easier, as the harpies aren't aggressive, and the larger harpy queens, while they are aggressive, are easy to avoid.

A small search yesterday told me that the proper name for the old-time cowboy hero would be "Red Ryder", but hardly anyone will get the reference anyway, I'm sure I've never encountered him in tv or comics - or was he in movies? Anyway, my Red rogue took up a position close to a handy bit of wall, and SirPerivale started to fight the Orc Soldiers in one of the first circular rooms on the way the the temple's main central staircases. They are one level above him, but with his pet-leveller armour give him absolutely no problems.

The Orc Soldiers gave the most experience, though with RedRider at a lower level, the level 19 mummies actually tended to give more skill exp, I found. Still, getting RedRider up to level 17, so that when convenient she will be able to team with a level 32 character, was the priority, and Peri managed that, despite having a disconnection at 4:28pm UK time and having to hurry back for the last level or so. Peri earned 40 skill points, and went up by 41% experience, so he can probably assist another character before he has to go on a kamikaze mission to get down to the bottom of level 22 again.

Peri and Cap were busy during the food break, and then it was time to take MistressBlaze and MistressSabina out to the Sphinx types again, in Dratan's sunny, grassy uplands. I don't know why that place is so quiet these days, at least on Auzura-4, perhaps everyone is going straight to the Tomb of Theos, but I had the place to myself, and, with MistressSabina just supplying the occasional Mana Recovery boost, which adds 6 mana regeneration per second for thirty seconds, MistressBlaze set to work keeping down the local population of Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men, and definitely staying well clear of the Elite Sphinx Speer Man.

And then at 7:23pm UK time, Grand Roadboss Kamira the Monster arrived, so Sabina retreated into a corner, and MB logged out, to allow Rage, my level 72 rogue, to log in and hurry over. Horse buffs were applied, and the usual level 12 magical defence mineral was started, plus a fresh lucky scroll and item drop booster, and the battle commenced. As Kamira was pretty much clear of the Sphinx types, the fight was easier than sometimes - it helped that Rage's Snare skill seemed to work every time, cutting down on the attacks that Kamira could make, so that she generally managed to keep herself healthy just using the medium size health potions

It wasn't long before Kamira crumpled to the ground, and the level 35 Death Goddesses she spawns were dealt with, so that the usual loot was lying on the ground ready to be picked up, after one Sphinx Fighter in the area was despatched. Lucky scrolls, moonstones, a "medal of honor" of course, experience crystal, the usual resolutely ordinary accessory - I couldn't see anything particularly interesting, even though I had muttered "C'mon, it's my Birthday today" under my breath during the fight. I was using the usual short-cut button to pick things up, and seeing the text appear for each item - and then I read "tears of knight"...

Wow, the most valuable item in the game - now that's what I call a Birthday present, and there was me thinking Kammy had forgotten. I think the price on Auzura has fallen a bit, but at one time they were over a thousand million gold each. Rage quickly passed it over to MistressSabina before logging out, so that there'd be enough time left on the lucky scroll for another Kamira visit. MistressBlaze logged back in, and there was time for a little more Sphinx type fighting before my early Wednesday finish, back in action after a bit of a summer lay-off.

By the end, MistressBlaze had gone up 14.30%, plus 458 pet points, and MistressSabina had added 38.51%; they had both levelled up, MB reaching level 45, so that she could equip the level 50 pair of gloves, and Sabina reaching level 37. Back in town Sabina bought a golden magnifying glass for a million gold, and "identified" the Tears of Knight: it adds 12 to physical prowess (strength), 16 to close range physical attack, and 168 to the close range physical hit rate, so it is an ideal accessory for a knight to use - perhaps the "tears" are tears of joy? I transferred it across to SirDarth, who was already using a Chain of Tiger, giving 16 to physical prowess and 8 to close range physical attack, a Pierce of Wind, giving 16 to swiftness of reflexes (dexterity) and 78 to close range evasion, and an Origin of Land, adding 6 to physical fortitude, 12 to all types of physical defence, and 100 hit/health points. Darth kept the CoT and the PoW, to go with the ToK, but traded the OoL across to Sabina, who has now equipped it herself, though it may end up, at least for a while, with MistressBlaze if she is the one doing the actual fighting.

So, a pretty good evening, which concluded of course with CaptainScarlet and SirPerivale going back out to Merac, and their usual Berserkers. It looks as if the horse Peri is working on will be about halfway through level 22 by the time the lights go out, while Cap's pink drake should be about two-thirds of the way through level 35. I checked up on the levels of drake that my various characters have currently, and SirDarth's one, at just level 24, seems to be the lowest at the moment; MrChuckNorris and Rage both have level 37 ones, while MistressDomina leads the pack with a level 38 one. Kaerella's drake, SirFrancis, is currently only level 34, so he deserves a bit of a boost some time.

Mad Spawns

It was the green drake that got the benefit of overnight pet-levelling with CaptainScarlet; and then, before breakfast, Cap changed over to levelling the pink drake, and SirPerivale joined him, levelling his plain old-fashioned brown pony. The green drake did go up one level to 25 overnight, and indeed isn't all that far from 26 now; the pink one is too high a level for overnight sessions now.

When RedRackham got to Prokion Temple on Auzura-4 he found the sorcerer Meltin busy there, so he moved across to Auzura-3, where MistressSabina soon joined him. We found that the 50% extra skill exp still hadn't been switched off, so merrily continued until lunchtime - though the idea of spending the whole day there didn't seem very attractive. Red added 18.39%, 139 guild points, and 131 skill points, while Sabina added 5.93%, 163 guild points, and 129 skill points, which took her to a nice round 10.5k of unused skill points. As she had now reached two-thirds of the way through level 36, that's the equivalent of going through the whole of the level if the 50% bonus skill exp hadn't been left running. Sabina also invested the 5,000 guild points in the "expension of the guild" skill, so that Discipline's maximum membership has now risen to 40.

A Pandora's Box did show up during lunchtime, very close to both Cap and Peri - and not far from Corleone guild member DarkKnight45, levelling a pale blue horse, either. So I decided it was a bit risky to have one of my knights open it, in case a level 50 Pandora's Beast popped out, and logged MistressDomina in to come down and deal with it. It was lucky I did that, as the box did release a level 50 Pandy, which immediately tried to attack either DarkKnight45 or his horse, so MD's swift action with Curse and Terra Spear was certainly needed, to stop an innocent party being harmed. The Pandy dropped a useful amount of gold, anyway.

After lunch, the plan was to take RedRackham out to the Sphinx Fighters with MistressBlaze, but I soon hit a problem - the only character of mine with a Party Recall card at the moment is MistressDomina, and she can't be in a party with Red as they are on the same account. I did take Red down south from Prokion Temple to the Poison Mists, and get the Elite Poison Mist's location onto his memory scroll, but I don't really have a suitable character for him to team with there, so in the end I logged Kaerella in, and she teleported out to the Sphinx Fighters' location, then used one of her three remaining "Scroll of Summoning" books, from some old package or other, to move Red to her. He then carefully added the location to his memory scroll.

Those books are useful, though individually they cost 19 aeria points each, in that they let you, as a one-off, teleport any character whose name you type into the box to your location, if they agree to it. For some reason a "Book of Teleport", which allows you to move to another character's location, if they agree, is actually cheaper, at 15 aeria points, so if we'd needed to buy one, it would have been up to Red to obtain that type.

So, RedRackham was able to join MistressBlaze at the Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Speer Men - level 29 and level 44, just right. Red needed to gain almost 140%, and he managed that, though not as quickly as I'd hoped. One of the Sphinx Fighters actually stopped trying to get to MB and attacked him, perhaps because MB had got a Divine Shield buff on which he had supplied. He died rather quickly, but that did at least mean that I was able to use one of his "beginner" resurrection scrolls, usually my characters have too many of them left unused. Reaching level 31 means he has now received and equipped the level 30/32 +10 armour set, and the level 33 +10 sword and shield. He can opt to become a Temple Knight now.

As far as Red is concerned, the heat is off now, so I can take my time. Probably he will do some solo Orc-killing in Prokion Temple to level up, getting the Wall of Belief skill at level 32, and the Canid Fencing 2 skill at level 35, before getting a red name to reduce his bare-fisted attack, and settling down as a pet-leveller, replacing SirPerivale generally - though Peri will remain useful as a bridging character to help level up new characters.

I saw Ratel's sorcerer Elvastar in merchant mode in Randol, offering "Goodies" for sale, so looked at his stock, and noticed that he was selling a Chain of Tiger accessory for 23.5 million. I assumed it was a pretty good price... it gives the character that equips it (in one of their three slots for such things) an extra 8 on their close range physical attack, and gives them an extra 16 to their Strength stats. As RedRackham will have all his native stat points in dexterity, some extra strength for his levelling-up stints seemed like a good idea, so I bought the CoT. When Red has finished with it, I'm sure that SirDarth or Galahad will be glad of it. And later on Ratel was able to bring 74 million gold down to Cap to trade across, as a nice large first repayment of the gold I loaned him for that level 57 +15 weapon. He mentioned that he had actually bought the CoT for 15 million unidentified, and used a gold magnifying glass (cost: 1 million) to identify it, so he made a useful bit of profit there.

Once RedRackham had reached level 31 he logged out, and MistressSabina logged back in. She went out to the Sphinx types to take Red's place for the rest of the afternoon, though, at level 36, her progress was a bit slower than I'd been hoping. In all she just went up 18.00%, though it wasn't a very long session. As for the one who was doing all the work while Red and Sabby stood at the side, MistressBlaze went up 24.87%, plus 815 pet points for her level 27 drake. Hmm, that's one drake that needs a bit of upgrading, I think.

I was about to log Rage in after the food break, when the Mad Monster Spawn was announced, so instead my level 31 cleric Memree was logged in, and teleported across to the MMS location. Usually it is GM Stratos who handles this, but today it was GM Kali, who was as usual friendly and chatty, not to mention a little worried about what the forum consensus about what her Halloween costume should be, will be!

Generally the MMS was an improvement, with perhaps a little bit of scaling-down of the waves to compensate for Auzura's smaller turn-out of high-level people - and some high-level monster types I'd never seen before. Memree did die a few times early on, but with only a few percent experience in her current level, and 2 skill points, she had nothing to lose, except memory scrolls - but it was annoying once to be immediately killed as I teleported back in. We seemed to manage the final wave within the time limit, but the last spawning of the various Hands didn't include any Hands of the Warrior, the heaven stone one. Kali stayed on after that, though mainly afk it seemed, occasionally returning to spawn a few more of Strayana's vast blue dragons. As so often happens, there was no clear conclusion, people tended to stay in the hope of more monsters, or more loot spawned, and then gradually drifted away. By the time it was definitely all over, just about two hours had passed... so we didn't get any heaven stones, but I added to my supply of skill point boosters, item drop boosters, large attack and defence pots, tool aids, and so on, which can't be bad.

After that, Rage got her long-delayed return to action. As the 50% extra skill exp was still on, a little trip to the Temple of Forgetfulness (or Forgotten Temple) to fight the level 72 Jumping Devils seemed like a good idea - with a few of the level 68 Legendary Slayers as well, in case they dropped anything good. The Devils did drop a pair of level 65 sorcerer gloves, and two level 65 crossbows too, but the drops weren't that exciting. Still, 9.27% experience was gained, plus 19 skill points, and 636 pet points for her level 37 drake. There's no hurry to level Rage up, as level 72 is convenient for when Kamira drops by, but it's good to keep in practice.

Following that session, I took my low-level new rogue, RedRider, out to the elder wolves, dire wolves, and berserk wolves in nice peaceful Juno - and even fought a couple of level 8 jaguars. I just had time to get her up to level 7, ready for a levelling-up teaming with SirPerivale some time, before it was time to put CaptainScarlet back up, to join SirPerivale out in Merac with the Berserkers.

However at about 10:20 UK time I did belatedly notice the messages about GM Kali starting the Mad Monster Spawn over on the Cariae server, so decided on the spur of the moment to go off there. By the time my level 100 archer Barbarienne had rode out to the usual spot, the final wave was being fought, so I joined in, and it was nice to actually do some real damage for a change, and get an appropriate amount of experience for it. Some things were still thirty or more levels above me of course, so I was careful only to attack critters that were already being battled; my default damage on such monsters, like the Patriarch Botis, was 218 - but my critical hit damage was more like 2680-2700, and a deadly hit would be around 4260. The final wave was killed off on time, and the Cariae people were suitably jubilant, though again I didn't see any heaven stones spawned. I managed to pick up some of the usual MMS items, though, before logging out, and letting Cap return to his pet-levelling.

The pink dragon reached level 35 just after CaptainScarlet's return, while Peri had by then got the new horse up to level 18 - a pony no longer. Ratel mentioned that he will be playing on the Katar server tomorrow, but I should see him on Thursday, at least in the evening. The warm-up for one of my "busy weekends" will be starting then, so I'll be busy downstairs on Thursday until the evening, and busy much of the time on the following two days, before going entirely missing on Sunday until well after six in the evening.

A Long Day in Prokion Temple

By moving the pale blue horse over to CaptainScarlet, and letting SirPerivale work on the new pony, an overnight pet-levelling session was possible last night, and worked well - the pony was level 13 by the time I was able to trade the horse back, so that during daylight hours Cap was back to working on his pink drake, and Peri worked on the pale blue horse.

After coffee, RedRackham headed out for Prokion Temple; at level 28 and with +4 Radiant armour, he didn't have any difficulty getting to the back room. On Auzura-4 though somebody dashed in there just ahead of him - and looking in, there were already a couple of other players busy there. So, a switch to Auzura-3 was needed, where, luckily, the room was nice and quiet. Red even fought a few Orcs, while he waited for MistressSabina to log in and join him; his health did go down a little, but with a few health potions he would have been okay fighting there, as long as he didn't go too far in and get mobbed.

But after that he left the fighting to MistressSabina, which meant that the older computer didn't get into "run out of memory" territory. He double-clicked the last of his "beginner" platinum super skill pills - but doing that right away wasn't one of my brighter ideas, as we soon found out that 50% extra skill experience was still running from the late night US version of "Sunday teatime" yesterday, so that instead of getting 150% more skill exp that Sabina, he was just getting 67% more than she was.

Still, Red did add 151 skill points in the b-pssp's hour, and 181 in the whole morning session, along with 20.45% experience and 126 guild points, while MistressSabina added 5.55%, 121 skill points, and 152 guild points.

Over lunch, while SirPerivale and CaptainScarlet were back in action in Merac, DeathBringers guild member Samael was asking Peri if it would be possible to swap his level 24 drake, plus a Stone of Shadow accessory, for a level 31 or 33 unmounted horse. For a guildie, that sounded the sort of thing Peri could do, though not at the moment, as the only available horse is the one in progress, which was then only level 26. My feeling was that I'd have to contact Samael when the horse reached an appropriate level, to see if he was still interested.

The afternoon saw RedRackham and MistressSabina back in action in Prokion Temple, as they are the pair best suited to take advantage of the continuing 50% extra skill exp. Without that I'd have been tempted to team Sabina up with MistressBlaze at the Sphinx types, and start her levelling up, but the extra skill points were too desirable for her... and for Red too, as they do mean that the Discipline guild will be able to upgrade a couple of times quite painlessly, which is much better than having to raid MB's stock of skill points, or Sabina's. Now all I need is the guild points, and a mundane level seven guild will be able to zoom up to the dizzy heights of level nine.

Ratel came online and joined the party; he managed a lunchtime trip to Egeha, and was back there again later, bashing the Bogles, and the Apes, and even a couple of Azers, though he needed magical defence minerals for them. I did try to suggest that the arcane golems in Dratan, at his own level, would allow him to make better use of the bonus skill exp, but they give such small amounts of experience that he ruled them out. Still, by the end of the evening he had managed to get up to 200 of the 360 skill points he needs for the final level of one particular skill, but it was obviously slow work, not helped by my cheerful reports from Prokion Temple on the sp that Red and Sabina were gaining. But he ended the evening at 87.5% of the way through level 59, so level 60, and that freebie armour set, is getting closer.

By the time I took my early evening food break, after about a solid three hours I guess, RedRackham was up another 36.24%, 214 skill points, and 224 guild points, while MistressSabina had added 11.69%, 210 skill points (since Red again arrived first), and 266 guild points.

My break was a fairly short one, so Red and Sabina stayed in the room, and resumed their slog quickly - for around another four hours, I suppose. Red reached level 29 before too long, and went up by 54.16%, also adding 370 skill points and 397 guild points. He can definitely afford to upgrade the Discipline guild twice now, with all those spare skill points. MistressSabina did well too, adding 17.04%, the same 370 skill points, and 468 guild points. A reserve of 10.3k skill points isn't huge, but it's bigger than it looked like Sabina would manage, thanks to Red being able to boost what she gained due to his lower level, and the 50% extra skill exp today, which meant 701 rather than 467 today in total, assuming that I'd stayed in Prokion without the extra skill exp running.

It depends whether the extra skill exp is still switched on tomorrow what I do. In theory Sabina could stay in that back room all day, but on standard-rate skill exp I really don't think I could stand it. I may need to log Rage on for the evening session to help Ratel reach level 60 in the Tomb of Theos - though with only 12.5% to go, he can probably manage to reach his target on another trip to Egeha, and get some skill points as well. I think I will have to start off with what may be MistressSabina's final excursion to Prokion Temple, if the skill exp is back to normal, but after that a team-up for Sabina with MistressBlaze, out by the Sphinx types, is definitely on the cards.

There really isn't much to report today, beyond the session details. A rogue called The LastHeros did run into my back room, kill an Orc, and then run out again; oh, and a sorcerer called Meltin did look in. He had actually been against the wall when Red first arrived, not far from the door, but hadn't stayed around. In the evening our Norcaine guildie BasheR had been online, but as neither of the characters I was playing were old ones, or in Norcaine, he concentrated on chatting with Ratel, so I only learned stuff second-hand.

It sounds as if BasheR may be taking a vacation from Last Chaos for a while; apparently there was talk of Ratel logging on to his account occasionally just to keep it active, but that really isn't something to be recommended, as account-sharing, even in the most innocent way, is something the Aeria people don't like at all - Rage was in a rather promising guild where the guild master allowed one of his guild advisers, a trusted friend, to log on to his account, just so that when he was away people could still have their experience frozen or unfrozen... but for that the account got banned, destroying the guild. So my advice was not to do anything that could lead to that sort of trouble.

And, after Cap and Peri were back on the pet-levelling, Samael got in touch again; he had decided not to wait, and wanted to trade the Stone of Shadow and the level 24 drake, which I discovered afterwards to be coloured green, for the horse now, so Peri moved back to Randol to do the trade, and then returned to Merac, and started to work on his new green drake.

Pipped at the Post

CaptainScarlet did try to pet-level his pink drake overnight, but some little darling came along pretty early and killed his Berserker, so a few hours were lost. Still, by morning the drake had gone up to level 33. SirPerivale joined him out in Merac for a while, but level 25 is about high enough for Peri to take a pet, it starts to get hungry, so later on I transferred a pan flute across to peri and he went to Lorraine and Jajan to get a new level 1 pony to begin work on. By the end of the lunch break it was approaching the top of level 2, and had gone up to 65% Sympathy.

But after coffee there was time for MistressSabina and RedRackham to head for Prokion Temple on Auzura-4, where luckily the back room was available. Sabina may have run out of skill pills, but Red does have the "beginner" plus 150% platinum super skill pills to use up, so he used the first of those, gaining 197 skill points in the hour. He went up 62.84%, getting him to level 26, so that was a good start. Sabina added 10.59%, 164 guild points, and 80 skill points

After lunch, and a bit more pet-levelling, Sabina and Red returned to Prokion Temple, where they settled in for the long haul. RedRackham started another beginner pssp, and this one brought him another 205 skill points. In theory the "Sunday Teatime" was due to start at 3:00pm UK time, which was only just over half an hour away, and I was pretty sure that the 50% extra skill exp from that wouldn't "stack" with the 150% extra from the b-pssp, but knowing that these events tend to run a little late, I went ahead and used another pill, gaining another 171 skill points. In fact it wasn't until about 4:30 that the "teatime" began, so I could have used a third pill in the afternoon - but by the time I took my food break, Red had gone up another 43 sp, and was almost halfway through level 27, with 319 more guild points.

For MistressSabina the afternoon had added 23.42%, with her reaching level 36 halfway through; as well as 399 more guild points, she had added another 193 skill points. I'd already started a rather hurried food break when, unannounced, the skill exp went up by 50% for the "teatime" bonus, and we finally lost the 50% experience bonus that had been running up until then, but it lasted a full two hours, until 18:37, so that by the time the Quiz was approaching, I'd had most of the two hours at 50% extra, and then another b-pssp for Red. So, RedRackham's evening totals were 84.87%, taking him almost a third of the way into level 28, plus 351 more guild points and 368 more skill points, while MistressSabina added 15.80%, 434 guild points, and 283 skill points. REd's experience gain would have been a little lower, but I'd absent-mindedly started one of the beginner platinum blessed irises instead of the pssp, so for that particular hour he got an extra 150% experience, as well as the extra skill exp.

RedRackham has learnt Divine Shield and Uncanny Movement now, so, while he does need to keep back 327 skill points for that level 32 passive Temple Knight skill Wall of Belief, and maybe even 60 points for the level 35 passive skill Canid Fence 2, he does have plenty of spare skill points, which a regular knight would put into other passive and general skills which just aren't relevant to a dedicated pet-levelling character. So, it looks as if Red will be the character to donate 599 skill points to upgrade the Discipline guild to the next level... once the necessary 19,620 guild points have been obtained. At the moment, taking away the 5,000 needed for "expension of the guild", I see that Discipline is about a quarter of the way there, with eighteen members in all, with an average level of 15. It's possible he might even get the 653 sp needed for the level after that, though that would need a further 21,385 guild points apparently. By my calculations he has 76 skill points towards that at the moment...

Ratel was in the party for solo purposes for most of the day, adventuring in Egeha and against the Sphinx types. He switched to Elvastar, his level 22 sorcerer, in the evening, and was somewhere in Prokion Temple, though staying clear of my room to avoid getting his experience and skill exp gain messed up. Once he'd got to 99% of his level, he spent all his skill points on suitable skills and then went and died 33 times to get down to less than 1%, so he is taking skill point farming in Proki pretty seriously this time. It may well take three more such sessions to get all the sorcerer skills up to level twenty maximised. Ah well, Orcs make a change from Baby Apes and the other Egeha monsters he was fighting earlier.

Aa eight approached, half an hour before the Quiz was due to start, Elva logged out, and Ratel went to Auzura-2 - where he found someone selling a level 57 +15 weapon for 350 million, which he was probably right to think was a pretty competitive price, these days. He asked me if I had 350 million that he could borrow, so I logged Red out, and logged MistressDomino in on Auzura-2, where I traded the gold across to him. Unfortunately, by the time we'd done that the prospective seller had ended her merchant mode, probably to get ready for the Quiz, and Ratty wasn't even sure of her name. I said that he should keep the gold for a day or two, in case he saw her again... but luckily within a few minutes he had located her, alinutz17, spoken to her, and bought the weapon safely - for 30 million less than he would have paid before! So, a good result there.

Memree and Kaerella joined Ratel in the Auzura-2 Quiz Room, and he traded the surplus 30 million back to Kae. He'll have to take a paper round to earn enough gold to pay me back... either that or get his propective pet-leveller, Leo, into action. The quiz itself was, as we went along, chiefly notable for the number of "X or O" answers that stayed on the same side, one after another. We started with four questions to which the "O" option was the correct answer...and then the next ten were all "X", before three more over on "O". We got our tool aids, moonstones, and the first five heaven stones for getting question 18 correct, but, like about half the people there, we got the next question wrong, so didn't get a chance to add a further ten heaven stones to our total. I thought that level 35 was the maximum level at which an eligible character could become a Phoenix character, but a maximum level of 30 is "true" - it's just that when they become a Phoenix type, they then move to level 35, sigh.

To wind down I decided just to take my level 3 rogue RedRider out to kill some foxes and wolves on Auzura-4, but before very long an announcement came up for a "Zombie Invasion" event which was about to start, so, checking the website and discovering that Auzura-2 was the venue, I decided to send Memree, my level 31 cleric, to investigate. There was quite a crowd at Burbank Mill in Juno when I got there, waiting for GM Kali to spawn the first wave - which was mainly the low-level Velpist Temple type of zombie, which presented no challenge, but with quite a few level 74 boss-type Apes along. Subsequent waves were chock-full of level 100 Screaming Zombies and level 102 Ancient Screaming Zombies, though, which were more of a challenge - and we were working to a tight deadline, if any zombies at all were still around after 15 minutes we'd lose. There was also the chance that they might "infect" a GM or GS, making them turn on us, but luckily that didn't happen.

We beat the deadline, and prizes were spawned in the usual way, though as Auzura-2 is a PvP-enabled sub-server, there was always the chance that some player-killer type would decide to get rid of some picking-up competition. I had seen a few players with the "PvP active" sign over their heads, and did see an innocent healer struck down, but Memree survived that and the zombies - she actually added 1.24% experience from her rather feeble attacks on various monsters. As for the loot, it wasn't as much as one would get from a Mad Monster Spawn, but she did manage to grab a skill point booster, 3 large attack potions, 4 large defence potions, and a few tool aids and small HP and MP recovery potions.

That was a nice little extra adventure to end on, and after that SirPerivale went out to join CaptainScarlet in Auzura-4 Merac, with the Berserkers. The pink drake was by then approaching three-quarters of the way through level 33, too high a level for Cap to work overnight on it, while Peri's new pony soon got into level 5, with its Sympathy already past the 85% mark.