Keerella's Blog

Unbloggishly, here we read from the top down - so the month continues here at the top!

Keerella's Blog - stardate July 2008 (2)

At The Temple - 17th July

I wasn't able to play until the evening today, though Karella did some herb gathering and mining during the afternoon, with the occasional crash, and MistressDomino did some selling - quite a bit of selling, in fact, so there are a number of millions of gold to be moved across to Keerella at some point. It looks as if Item Drop Boosters are going up in price, even if Pan Flutes and Drake Eggs are falling.

Itura had got her new mage Zenderfly up to level 15 already. I'm sure it would have been more, she's the speediest player I know, but she had some college work to do to. So, naturally, she was thinking in terms of not Velpist Temple in Juno, but Prokion Temple in Dratan, and wanted to team up with Enchantrella since she is within 15 levels; she confirmed that the idea originally with SpirisSorc had been to do a similar team-up, but she had got tired of the sorcerer style of play, and the way the spirits didn't last very long at all against higher-level monsters. So, Enchantrella, having got the place on her scroll, zipped over there, and the party was made. It wasn't really that necessary a party, as Zen never came on my radar at all, it could just as well have been SirDarth fighting there, as it was in effect a solo party.

Anyway, Zenderfly was most impressed with the experience and skill exp from even the Ghouls and Mummies at her level - and, while Enchantrella fought in her room and went up a little, enough for the third level of Scud at least, Zen went up two levels. She was asking me if I had a mage "event weapon" I could lend her, but I spent a while searching my various storage inventories, and I do not seem to have one. On the armour front, EnchantrA is holding a +3 set of the Night armour, level 20/22, and also a +4 set of the Dark armour, level 25/27, which I can gladly lend her, the same way that Itura is wearing a set loaned by Kaerella, but there doesn't seem to be anything suitable on the weapon front, other than a level 25 staff which would be no better than the event weapon. There ought to be such weapons on sale, suitably ready-plussed.

Sorting through inventories seems to take quite a while, particularly when one ends up exchanging items between two characters on different accounts, but there was still time for SirDarth to go and spend an hour or so himself with the Orc Sergeants back at Prokion Temple - which is also known as Procyon Shrine, just as Juno's Velpist Temple can also be Belfist. A further 54 skill points were safely added, and Darth's drake is now about 40% of the way into level 33. Darth's experience-gain is still "frozen" at 99.66% of the way through level 31, so the experience he would have gained was given to the guild.

One of Norcaine's more recently added members, BadBoyfoLife, contacted me to find out why he was no longer in the guild - all I could say was that that does happen, sometimes people do get randomly removed from a guild, it's just one of the minor quirks of Last Chaos. Since Darth was deep in the Temple, it made sense to bring Kee up on the other computer and have her in Randol handle the request for re-admittance. And Kee is now his Guardian, too! Strangely, when I was checking up on things online just now the message came up that he'd left the guild again, so the bug may well have recurred.

As far as Guild Advisers for Norcaine go, my feeling is that we don't need permanent advisers, whose only advantage over other members is that they can recruit new people. As guild master I can give people titles, though unfortunately "Guild Officer" is one letter too long - and it ought to be easier for whichever character of mine is gm to be able to appoint anyone as guild adviser temporarily when they happen to be in the right place to recruit someone. Obviously the main active people who would be part of a "guild officer" level would include Itura, Zeratus, Sheele, and probably a couple more, so raising one or two above the rest just doesn't seem the best way to go.

Riddle of the Sphinx - July 18th

I seem to have done a lot of odd little bits and pieces today, so it's all starting to blur together. As far as I can remember things started with FoxHunter despatching a few more Berserk Wolves, and indeed some Jaguars as well for a bit of variety, but after that it was time for a few trips to Prokion Temple - not only my level 24 rogue, Karella, has it on her memorising scroll now, but my level 21 archer/healer Barbarienne as well, and they both got some useful experience, separately, on the ground floor there fighting the Ghouls and Mummies and junior orcs. There are areas down there I don't think I've explored before, though unless the place gets very busy one doesn't really have to go far in, at that level.

SirDarth himself had a session on the upper floor again, adding 55 more skill points easily enough; by the end of the day he did actually have enough skill points unused to advance Norcaine by a level if it was necessary, but these points are for his own use, and anyway we don't have the guild points that would also be needed.

After the food break, we were expecting the Friday afternoon "happy hour", which, if the apac version, held very early in the morning our time, was any indication, was going to be double pet experience and 50% extra skill exp...but nothing happened at the usual time. Keerella was thinking of heading back to the Akane Giants, after a short session earlier, but Escadalia got in touch, and invited me out to the Pyramid area in Dratan, where Sphinx Fighters and Sphinx Spearmen (well, they call themselves "Sphinx Speer men" actually) can be found - at level 63 and 64, they did, as Esca assured me, give good experience, easily as good as the times we'd "ks" Damor at the Boucu Demons, though nothing like the "power levelling" when she'd leave the area and we'd manage the killing blow!

There was an Elite Sphinx Spearman there too; I see that both the weapons that I got allocated from our loot were plussed, level 55 Soulcarron's Gloves +2 (rogue) and level 53 Helerfords Axe +1 (titan), so maybe he dropped those, he certainly respawned very quickly. The only time I'd ever been in that area before, I'd been riding, and got myself and my mount suddenly killed without ever seeing what hit us, but this time everything went smoothly. Esca warned me that the sphinx types hit hard, and they did, but we kept on top of them. She also warned me that it was a place that Kamira tends to visit rather often, so we had to be careful. As Esca is currently six levels ahead of me, I was happy to let her take the aggro, with me using Terra Spear from behind, but often a spearman would respawn right where I was, or we'd end up fighting four or five.

Zenderfly (aka Damor and Itura) got in touch, via the Norcaine guild channel, to say she was bored, and wanted to move over from Norcaine to Dominion, and could I relay that to Esca, so I did; Esca was using a potion to enhance her critical hits, so wanted to finish that first, but then we went back into town - I kicked Zen, and Esca enrolled her. Kee was up 19% on the day by then, including the earlier Akane Giants soloing, but I headed back to them, as, at approaching eight UK time, the "happy hour" had finally begun, with the same bonus that our "apac" friends had had earlier. A good solo session there meant that by the time I was finished, Kee was up 24% on the day in experience (mainly due to Esca's sphinx fighters), and, thanks to the "happy hour", 2148 pet points and 76 skill points.

My pet leveller, Leo, hadn't been out to tangle with a Treant for some weeks, but as the blue pan flutes are on special offer this week, I bought one, and he exchanged it for a cute little blue pony in the same way that one gets a normal one, with Jajan - and then headed for Treant Central. Unfortunately, it looks as if the afk pet levelling, at least for level 22 knights and Treants, has been "nerfed" by that big patch we had a few weeks back. Leo now just hits them too hard, he does 28 damage every time he hits the Treant, so, left alone, the Treant dies within a few minutes. There is nothing wrong with Leo's build - he does have one skill that increases the possibility of critical hits, but without a weapon equipped such hits don't do any more damage than regular ones. So that cute little pony looks set to remain cute and little. I wonder if the higher level pet levellers, who used to use gnolls or gnoll lancers, are still viable...? Very high level people use some stone statues in Egeha, but they tend to be in perilous places.

Extra Time - July 19th

Leo kept busy today levelling my little blue pony - he was on the downstairs computer in the morning, so that I could easily check every 15 or 20 minutes, and change his attack from one of the Treants attacking him to the other, and then in the afternoon and evening he switched over to the upstairs machine, so I was getting plenty of exercise dashing upstairs to check on him. Not that it would have mattered greatly if the Treant being attacked actually died, there are plenty more of them down by Velpist Temple, it would just have wasted a few minutes. And these were minutes not to be wasted, as our ace Game Masters had absent-mindedly (or kindly) left the "happy hour" bonus from yesterday running overnight, and into the new day, so the pony went up twice as fast as normal. Not that I noticed that right away, but as it was, I made pretty good use of it.

FoxHunter was out hunting Berserk Wolves for a while in the afternoon; she joined a solo party, so didn't get that single experience point, and thus remains comfortably inside level 5. Her pony got the double experience benefit while Foxy was fighting - and there was of course 50% extra skill exp too, which helped her skill point total along nicely. The outing ended with a "send error report" message, though - you don't have to be actually mining or farming, the area around the mine, the herbs and the stone energy henge can be crashy too...

And so my rogue Karella, the first Last Chaos character I created (hence the slightly simpler name than Kee and Kae), but still only level 24, had her turn, and went out to the Treants - she was pretty close to Leo, in fact. She might have got more skill points and experience in Prokion Temple in Dratan desert, true, but that is a place where one has to concentrate, and leaving the screen every so often to check on Leo upstairs would have been a little awkward. It let her make more use of the double pet points, as those hungry ghouls, mummies and orcs do try to snack on pets, so you can't always keep them equipped.

But after food, it was time to get a bit more serious, and try to do some work on Keerella, against the Akane Giants; there is a "safe" spot there between the main group and a lower group, so I was able to go there whenever I needed to check upstairs. So, I settled in for a long slog there; Galandorius had gone to Prokion Temple, and started one of the three-hour boosters, a little while later - it brought home what a long slog it was when he later mentioned that it had finished! I went on a little longer, just to get my experience gain to a nice round 10%... Kee is now only 2% below level 52, and the 97 skill points gained today mean she has 254 spare skill points... which may seem a lot, but there are sixth levels of both Fear and Flame Field which become available at level 53, and they need 250 points each, so I can't just "power level" up.

The "happy hour" bonus was finally switched off at just approaching 7:00pm UK time - first the pet points went down to one at a time instead of two, and then a minute later the skill exp went back to normal. Still, it was very useful while it lasted.

Kee's drake levelled up at last, reaching level 40, so spending the new "technical point" improves her defence slightly, when the drake is equipped; the new level takes 18845 pet points, so may take a while. Leo did very well, and got his pony changed into a horse, at level 16 - you can't ride it yet of course, but it is a lot bigger. The next level, to reach level 17, takes 2382 points, each level takes more points than the one before, which is one reason a level 37 horse, with the two horse buffs maximised, costs a lot more than a level 31 one, the first level at which a horse can be changed into a mount.

As for Norcaine, well, things were very quiet today, but I talked to Zeratus and Galandorius about a Guild Meeting, and we agreed that next weekend woudl probably be a good time for that - Zeratus will be away for most of the coming week visiting relatives, while Darkstorm44 is off on holiday to France for three weeks, so will miss it. I just hope we can agree a time when Itura and Sheele will be available too, and preferably Angeloflyght and anyone else we can catch. But finding a time when almost everyone will be available won't be easy, that much I know.

Downs and Ups - July 20th

Leo was up comparatively early for a Sunday. His blue horse did actually manage to reach level 17 last thing last night, after the blog was uploaded; he reached level 18 during the morning, and level 19 not long into the afternoon - by the end of the evening he was well into level 21 in fact, thanks to the "teatime" bonus.

Meanwhile downstairs it seemed a good idea to get a young mage called NorcaineMerchant up the remaining three levels to level 10, so that she would actually be able to go into merchant mode. She only had the starting armour and weapon, so was having a difficult time with Jaguars and even Berserk Wolves, needing to stop and regain health rather often, but a level 13 Norwegian mage called POwerfUl befriended me, and was a great help, even buying her better armour. If one was looking for a new player to "adopt" and assist, I'd have thought that one with a name like that, and with a pet hatchling, wouldn't be one's first choice, surely one would assume that it was not the player's first character, but as that particular account doesn't have great amounts of cash, I was happy to accept. I did manage to trade an experience booster to her, and she was lucky enough to pick up a Heaven Stone, so I don't think she ended up out of pocket, but it does show how friendly and helpful some players can be. And, by fighting Horn Beasts, Werewolves, and even the occasional Drake, NorcaineMerchant reached level 10, and POwerfUl reached level 14 just before I had to log out.

After some general shopping around, and a rather inconclusive conversation with Escadalia and Zenderfly about what team-ups we might have, it was time for SirDarth to have his experience gain "unfrozen" - a couple of message-carrying quests in Merac got him safely to level 32, and he was able to put on his Glorious Boots, and buy a Glorious Helm from the armourer there, to wear; even without any enhancements it gives more protection than the previous +3 one. Then it was off to Prokion Temple once more. Even at the new level the Orc Sergeants (level 29) still gave a generous 14227 experience and 3850 skill exp, with the Orc Axemen (level 27) giving 5776 & 2750, and the Orc Fighters (level 25) giving 1197 & 1650, when Darth was in a suitable solo party.

There was a slight panic when Darth equipped the expensive Holy Sword +12 that had been bought a few days ago - and discovered that, although its name didn't say so, it was actually a dual sword, not one that could be used by a Templar with a shield! Luckily Zenderfly was able to assure me that there was an NPC that would exchange weapons and armour for their other-type equivalents - no wonder sometimes people ask for a piece of armour of a certain level, "any type"! She didn't remember his name, but said he was near Randol's north gate... it was Collector Ryl, I discovered, and he exchanged the Holy Sword for a Holy Spiritual Sword, which luckily was still +12, even if it had lost its bloodseals. The cost was 153,000 gold, which considering how many millions an item like that is worth, seems downright reasonable. So, once Darth reaches his next level, he will have a suitably impressive weapon. Although the exchange removed the bloodseals, it didn't restore the ability to use an Extreme Stone - hardly surprising, people would exchange things all the time if Ryl did that!

Following the food break, Darth continued there. At 5:00 UK time the promised double pet points began on time, but the extra 50% on skill experience was a quarter of an hour late being switched on - and both were switched off promptly two hours later. Still, it meant that Darth got a good number of skill points, which mean that he now has the new Temple Knight skill Protection (increases physical defence of your party members for 5 minutes) up to its fifth level, as well as Upgrade Mana (permanently increases MP), while Weapon Break (decreases target's attack power) and Armor Break (decreases target's defence) have also been improved, though not yet maximised.

The Temple time ended badly, however - just a few points short of Darth's drake reaching level 34, which was going to be my cue to log out, I had a "send error message" crash - and, as I suspected, when I logged back in, the Orcs had killed my drake. So that was another 243,946 gold to unseal him. It was lucky that the drake hadn't levelled up, the extra level would have meant extra gold for the unsealing. I went out briefly to the Elder Drakes just to finish off the level, and used the technical point to give one level of Magical Defence, which moves Darth's magic defence from 97 to 99. Darth had picked up a couple of pairs of level 37 boots, so I converted them into smelting stones, but my luck remained bad, neither of them boosted my Glorious Boots up from +2. A little later though I found someone selling a +4 pair for 650,000, so I bought them. Now I just need to enhance the helm, or find an enhanced one.

Anyway, SirDarth ended up 36.5% into his new level - it does make a change not to be "frozen", though I guess that once he is level 33, and can use that new sword, a further bit of experience-freezing will be needed. Giving away that 1050 skill points to the guild has left him a bit short of skills in places, both Weapon Break and Mana Break at least ought to be maximised, while there is the new Templar skill Damage Link to learn too. I think I can safely say that if I had those 1050 points, I could easily spend them!

The Quiz event seems to have settled into a new slot at 9:30 now, though they did apologise for its lateness. The questions this time were all new - strangely, some of them were to do with Collector Ryl and the conversion prices he charges, but a lot were to do with the Monster Combo and the Chaos Balls. Luckily they left the doors open, so we could rush back in whenever we respawned back in the middle of town. I did actually get a "send error report" crash when running back to the quiz, but even with having to restart the game and log back in, I managed to get the 10 Moonstones, and the 5 Heaven Stones - and got the final two answers right, so that the 10 Heaven Stones arrived in my inventory too. As I'd taken off my armour, like most people, to lessen the risk of crashing in the quiz hall itself, I went over the 100% weight figure, but a temporary reduction in dexterity doesn't matter, it was just strange to get that message, I'd not thought I was carrying all that much stuff on Kee. A nice upbeat way to end the day, anyway, putting 15 Heaven Stones away in storage.

Temple Work - July 21st

Well, Leo's smart blue horse reached level 23 fairly early in the day. Having him busy out at the edge of the map does mean that exchanging things between accounts isn't generally possible in the normal meet-in-Randol way, but Keerella did ride out to him to pass over some quality stones, plus a good number of Moonstones, a couple of Large Attack Potions, and the +4 Glorious Boots... Leo took charge of those, while still fighting his pair of Treants, and then Kee logged out, and SirDarth came over to collect the items, except the stones. So Darth now has his +4 boots.

Leo actually started the day with three Treants, but the speed with which he hurts them does vary a lot - if I check every 20 minutes, roughly, sometimes the Treant he's hitting (before I change his target to the other one) is down to about 25% health, and sometimes the health bar is still full. I was a little late checking, once early on, and that third Treant had actually died. Luckily, it left not just some cash, but a ToolAid too. As Leo is only about 3% into level 22, a little extra experience doesn't matter.

SirDarth spent most of the afternoon in Prokion Temple - he started with just 6 skill points, and added 77, so that he was able to get the final two levels of Armour Break (18 + 65sp), not before time! The afternoon's work also added 19% experience, and a good few pet points too, though one has to keep an eye on his drake's health, and if it starts to tick down, quickly put the drake away until all the orcs are concentrating on Darth himself.

The evening session was roughly similar, and brought the day's experience gain up to 38.5% - Darth is now three-quarters of the way through the level. It also added 84 skill points, so the final level of Weapon Break is only 24 more points away.

Damor's young mage, Zenderfly, returned to Norcaine after her brief visit to Dominion, and had her experience frozen again for further battles on the ground floor of Prokion Temple at level 19 - she started later than Darth and finished earlier, but still managed 220 skill points without any boosters, but, well, she always is speedy! I gather the idea is for her to go Witch rather than Wizard this time, as indeed Enchantrella will go in due course. I was also chatting with a level 29 titan called JrFaldez who wanted to join Norcaine, but once again we ran into the "one week between leaving one guild and joining another" problem. He's on Darth's Friends list though. He went off to explore the Forgotten Temple after a while, and reports that it is a bit high level, which I must admit was my general impression, not that I've been there - as far as I can remember! Darkstorm44 was on briefly to say that he'd be packing tomorrow and departing for his three weeks in France on Wednesday, and if I saw him online during that period, it would be his (irl) friend Galandorius just keeping things active.

Damor, Itura and Zenderfly between them transferred 74 Item Drop Boosters and 106 ToolAids to Kaerella, who in turn later transferred most of them across to MistressDomino - not all the ToolAids yet, as they are too heavy. The idea is that MistressDomino attempts to sell them overnight, and gets to keep 10% commission. I was saying that the IDBs seem to have gone up in price lately, we shall see if they sell out at 180,000 each, or whether the price has to come down. Certainly the Large Defence Potions MistressDomino had on sale at her usual price of 19,500 went very quickly; let's hope she sells more items overnight.

That exchanging between Damor and Kae meant that Leo stopped his pet levelling a little early, but the horse was well into level 24 by then. It was rather nice for the last part of Darth's evening with the orcs not to have to remember to go up and check on them every twenty minutes.

So, although tomorrow is likely to be one of the days when I log out a couple of hours early, SirDarth may well get close to level 33, and being able to use that new +12 sword. Damor did mention that Collector Ryl was a very new addition to Randol, so it's not surprising I hadn't heard of him before. He will be very useful - Kee's old staff could be turned into Kae's next scepter, for example, and then a sword for Darth, a wand for Enchantrella...the possibilities are almost endless.

Short Time Working - July 22nd

MistressDomino did some profitable work overnight - well, most of the good stuff sold out before I went to bed actually, but by the time morning rolled around only one "Uncle Sam" style hat and almost all the pan flutes and drake eggs were left. So I owe Damor 12,297,600 gold by my calculations, which is fine with me as with the items of my own that sold, mainly Moonstones and Large Attack & Defence Potions, the total income was just over twenty million.

There was a fair bit of item moving-around to be done, including passing the last of the ToolAids over to MistressDomino for her next sales night, before Leo could be sent out to the Treants, but eventually he got there, and his rare blue horse reached level 25. The intention is to take him all the way to level 37, so Leo will keep busy for quite a while yet. He certainly played a lot longre today than I did - the horse should be reaching level 26 at around the time I post this!

A fair amount of shopping was done after lunch - generally window-shopping, I couldn't find a level 37 shield for SirDarth, and as far as I can see Collector Ryl can't help. No other profession has an equivalent item to a knight's shield which could be exchanged. To look at his text, you'd think he would convert a dual blade into a single sword and a shield, but that is not what happened when I switched my level 37 sword(s) over, and I hadn't expected it to.

Eventually Darth did head back to Prokion Temple for an hour before the early evening food break, and added just over 9% to his experience, and 36 skill points, so he was able to get the final level of Weapon Break. I would have started him on the first level of Damage Link with 9 of the remaining 12 points, but he needs to put the 4 stat points he'll get from reaching level 33 into Dexterity before he can start on that one. Oh well, plenty of other skills still need sorting out...

Another session in the early evening brought a further 12% experience, and 48 more skill points, so not a bad haul over the day. The guild channel was rather quiet, with only occasional visits from Itura, Galandorius presumably in merchant mode, and Sheele busy somewhere suitably challenging. Sheele did suggest that we ought to team up some time soon, with me playing Kee, and Itura as our healer. It will make a nice change to get back to Kee, especially if it doesn't involve Akane Giants for once. Darkstorm44 will have been preparing for his holiday, Zeratus is away this week...and Sheele mentioned a trip to an island very soon, so we are going to continue to be pretty quiet for a while. I did give Itura the good news about MistressDomino's overnight success, but I didn't have a chance to pass the cash over yet. It seemed as if she was having computer problems to a certain extent - I know the feeling...

Levelling Up - July 23rd

Leo got the horse up to level 27 safely, and well into the new level, despite a few Treants just vanishing - it wasn't that Leo killed them, he would have got experience and skill exp if he had, and he'd have got a share of such points if someone else had come up and "helped" him by killing the Treant. Sometimes they just "ping" back to their proper place, so Leo can only stand there until he is checked up upon.

I had a bit of luck after lunch - MistressDomino was looking around Randol, browsing the merchants in her usual Cariae-3 sub-server, when she came across a level 37 Celestial Shield +4 for 500,000 gold, just what SirDarth needed! So that was quickly transferred across, and off Darth went to Prokion Temple, to get that last 3.61% needed to reach level 33. As, following its transformation, his level 37 Holy Spiritual Sword +12 was "as new", I even remembered to take 5 bloodseal gems with me. He was able to equip the shield right away, an improvement of 16 over its predecessor (132 + 34, rather than 120 + 31, and 1 more from its seals), and when he levelled up, the sword too was equipped - and he began slicing through the Orc Sergeants rather more quickly, with his attack raised by 35%, from 274 to 372. They now give a bit less experience and skill exp, of course, at 11381 plus 3300 (level 27 Orc Axemen give 1283 + 2200, level 25 Orc Fighters give 1197 + 1100), but the speed of killing more than compensates for that, so it looks as if Darth will continue to visit Prokion Temple for a while yet.

The time in the Temple enabled SirDarth to add just over 15% experience, and 93 skill points, which added to the 60 he already had, meant he could afford level 5 of Improved Resist, increasing his magic evasion, which seems a useful skill to have. The 4 stat points gained by reaching level 33 (from now on, the levels alternate giving 3 and 4 stat points) were carefully added to his Dexterity, so now he can start on the Temple Knight skill Damage Link... when he gets some more skill points to spend, that is. I'm not convinced that taking it to level 5, so that he takes 50% of the damage received by the other party member he is linked with, is a good idea, the party's healer might find, say, 30% easier to deal with.

His quest to kill Butchers seemed to have expired, but a trip to Merac revealed a new quest, to kill ten Pilferers and ten Bandits, and that was done with ease... though why a quest aimed at levels 33 to 36 should give as an extra reward a pair of Steel Long Boots, which are only level 32 and thus liable to be worn only from level 27 until the end of level 31, who can say? It did give some experience too, not that that is very important as Darth will probably need to "freeze" his experience gain once he reaches 99% of his current level. A Doom Slayer did manage to hurt Darth slightly, about 100 health perhaps, before it went down, but Pilferers, Bandits, and Berserkers made no impression, even though not all Darth's armour is +4. A few Blood Frenzies couldn't hurt him either, despite being level 37, and one of them was kind enough to drop a Hand of the Warrior, including its always-welcome Heaven Stone.

Although she had had higher offers, Damor very kindly sold me her old level 60/62 +6 mage armour set for 35 million, and I took the opportunity to pass over her cash from the sale of those Item Drop Boosters and ToolAids too. She showed me her cash balance after that, she has 360 million, and was still hurrying about town, buying up any underpriced IDBs and skill or experience boosters she found, to sell later at a profit.

Since I was on Kee, it seemed like a good idea to go out and visit the Akane Giants, so that's what I did, teaming with Leo to make my own solo party. After a while Zenderfly came on, saying that she needed a solo party - but she needed it in a different sub-server, c4, as her favourite spot, presumably in Prokion Temple, had been taken in c3. Well, she does favours for me, so I logged out, changed to c4, recruited her to a new party, headed back to Dratan, beamed out to the Akane Giants, and continued my fight. And so it was that Kee too levelled up today, reaching level 52; the session out there wasn't too long, but added 3.5% experience, 451 pet points, and 32 skill points. She could wear a new circlet and boots for her current set, if she could find them.

Some more shopping didn't find me any level 57 boots or circlet for Kee, so I finished off with a little gentle Berserk Wolf bashing with FoxHunter. The new items in the Mall this week include a special offer on Lucky Smelting Stones - of course the US timezone people snapped up all the really cheap ones, at 79ap and 99ap, but there are 149ap ones left, a saving of 25% on the regular price. I did actually manage to get one of the last packs of 100 Experience Boosters at 899ap, they are sold out now with only packs at 1199ap available. The most significant special offers are the return of the "2fer" offers on Runes of Protection I (450ap) and II (599ap), "two runes for less than the price of one", which rather tend to make us suspect that there will be a period at the weekend some time when there will be an enhanced chance of successfully upgrading items using Heaven Stones. I don't think I could bear to try taking a weapon beyong +10 again, but maybe there is some armour that could benefit from going past +6. Hmm, a couple of parts of that mage armour set Damor sold me are actually +7, maybe I should boost the other bits too...?

Preparations - July 24th

Not a whole lot got done in the afternoon, I must admit, though Leo kept busy, and the rare blue horse is now well into level 29. MistressDomino did some shopping around in most of the sub-servers, managing to purchase a few cheap pan flutes, and even a marked-down Large Attack Potion. She found a merchant on Cariae-1 selling the Darkpeal Jacket she was missing for the full set - Damor says she paid 150,000 gold more than she should have, at 450,000, but it was +3, and it did seem to be the only one available today. She also found a level 57 helm - it was a knight's helmet actually, but that was near enough. 200,000 seemed reasonable, as they do seem rare, and Enchantrella doesn't have any manuals to make one.

As Leo was busy with the Treants, MistressDomino took the helmet out to him, and then logged off, so that Keerella could ride out to collect it. Back in town, Kee took it to Collector Ryl, who charged 87,000 gold to transform it into the Tenshain's Circlet she needed. It will need upgrading, but it may be worth waiting for the "upgrade probability event" we may well get this weekend before doing that, it could save a Heaven Stone or two.

Before Leo went out, though, some Quality Stones were acquired by SirDarth, using ToolAids, and traded across to Leo, as he was starting to run a bit low. Now that the horse is seven levels ahead of Leo, he eats his way through almost ten Quality Stones per hour, and that is only going to increase - on the final approach to level 37 he'll be twice as hungry as that.

It looks as if Kee's level 57 boots will have to be crafted by Enchantrella - she has plenty of copies of the level 57 boots manual, it's just a matter of getting the necessary ingredients together: 12 flawed wind crystals, 17 imperfect wind crystals, 25 poor quality tinctures, 20 cotton fabrics, and 15 good quality tinctures. That means processing a lot of epsilon and gamma energies, and yellow and green herb leaves. Enchantrella used some ToolAids to increase her stock of such things, but it's probably not enough yet. I discovered that she only had level 2 of the Yellow Herb Processing skill, with almost enough skill points for level 3, so I took her out to the Treants to get a few more, and then acquired the skill, so her chance of successfully processing those leaves is now increased to its maximum. Luckily, Zenderfly has temporarily invested some of her many hundreds of skill points in raw material processing, so should be able to help me with the others, with a better chance of success than the Master of Processing Materials.

Talking of Zenderfly, she contacted Enchantrella to ask me to change to Kee, as she had something to lend me - it was a Blood Shadow Staff +14, which she'd managed to buy earlier for 6,500,000 gold - well it had actually been +14 daggers, but she'd got Ryl to transform it. As she commented, someone hadn't counted their zeroes correctly, a level 57 +14 weapon ought to be something aproaching 65 million, rather than a tenth of that. I suspect that once Kee has finished with it, it may well get transformed again into a wand, for Zenderfly herself to use. I do already have a +10 staff, currently being used, with a 90% penalty, by FoxHunter, but being able to use a +14 one will be very nice.

SirDarth went out to Prokion Temple, but at around 8:30 UK time there was an announcement that certain old sale items from the Item Mall were going to be taken out of the database, to make room for new stuff - if they were in one's inventory there was no problem, but if they were still in the "records" section of the Item Mall they were liable to vanish. So I had to check the various account sections, and download a sale-price rune and a couple of platinum skill pills into appropriate inventories - they may not be precisely the items to be deleted, but one doesn't want to take chances. By then Darth had gone up by 10% on the experience side, and added 73 skill points, but it would have been useful if he'd been able to go on another half hour, or maybe a bit longer to get up to the 129 skill points another level five skill requires. I just hope nothing else vanishes, there's some valuable stuff there...

Good news, though, is that the "Top Spender" key has arrived by email, so that when I log in to the special page, while logged out from the game itself and with plenty of room in my inventory, I should get an assortment of relatively useful pills and potions, absolutely free... except for having to spend 50 dollars on aeria points in the first place to qualify, that is.

A Disturbance In The Force... - July 25th

There was a "Midnight Madness" raffle last night, and it managed to get up to its third, top tier - which meant we got a full hour of double skill exp, starting at 10:30am UK time. I'd taken Kee out to the Akane Giants ready, and managed to give them a good thumping - until, twenty minutes into the hour, Zenderfly asked for her experience gain to be "unfrozen". And only SirDarth can do that, as guild master, sigh.

So, I had to switch across; the game did actually crash as I attempted to log out, but luckily I was clear enough of the Giants for my faithful drake not to get killed. I must try to remember to at least unequip my pet when logging out from the Dratan desert! I logged in as Darth, and set Zenderfly's experience gain back to normal - and then, rather than switch again and waste yet more of the precious double skill exp, Darth headed for Prokion Temple, and the Orc Sergeants.

Once Zenderfly had moved up a level, she came across from c4's Temple to c3 to team up, and once she'd reached level 21, changed from soloing in a downstairs room to being part of an actual fighting team. With Darth's Divine Shield and Protection buffs, we were able to head back upstairs to the Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants - with Zenderfly so many levels below Darth, the skill exp was pretty good, with Darth getting about 80% as much of it per kill as when soloing, with hopefully a rather quicker kill rate for the team. We continued until lunch time, with Zen reaching level 22. If there aren't too many exams, Zenderfly is going to level up pretty quickly as we continue; she already has enough skill points for all the way to level 32, and just levelling normally in Prokion Temple until then should add plenty more points. Darth's intention has been to freeze again at the end of level 33; Zen may wish to do that too. Darth's morning session added almost 14% experience, and 91 skill points. Almost nothing on the pet points front, though, as his drake was safely tucked away. All the orcs except the sergeants are blue-named now, so don't give pet experience, but that doesn't stop them trying to eat the drake.

There was a disconnection at 11:30 uk time, which effected a lot of people, including Darth, Zen and Sheele - Randol was very busy with reconnecting people when I logged back on! I've mentioned before that 11:30 is quite often a disconnecting time, as that's 3:30am for the Last Chaos people they may think it is a quiet moment to change settings, or something. By the time Darth got back to Prokion Temple, the bonus hour was over. Leo just managed to survive, when I checked up on him all was ominously quiet...and then suddenly the Treant health bar went down very suddenly as it "caught up", and all was well. His horse reached level 30 late last night, and the pet points have been clicking up nicely. It's still a long way to level 37 though.

After an hour off, the team-up in Prokion Temple continued, though first Zenderfly wanted me to leave Prokion Temple, where Darth had been sitting quietly in the lobby, and meet Itura in Dratan City so that she could transfer some mage armour across to Zen. After I'd got the various pieces in my inventory, I went back to the Temple, and Zen soon joined me, and took the armour. We probably only did about 90 minutes before Zen decided that, as she'd got up very early for her exam and hadn't had a very good night, she ought to have a brief nap, but would be back in time for the Friday TeaTime "happy hour". As my inventory was pretty full by then, it sounded like a good idea. I'd put on another 28% experience and 130 skill points, so once I was back in Randol was able to get the fifth, final level of Divine Soul (129sp, increases magical defence), levels two to five of Devotion (increases attack by 70 and attack speed +20%, but decreases physical defence by 40, for five minutes) - and the first level (9sp) of Damage Link, allowing me to take 10% (per level) of the damage received by whoever I'm linked to.

Trying out that first level of Damage Link on Zenderfly worked quite well, in that I could handle the damage I received via her easily, but she wasn't too happy with the idea, and also as a buff it only lasts half the usual buff time. The visual effects were cool though! We continued our fighting versus the Orcs after our break - the "TeaTime" bonus (double experience, 50% extra skill exp) didn't actually start until 90 minutes late at 6:30pm, but it certainly helped us along. I "froze" Darth's experience at 97.94%, and by the end of the session had got another 272 skill points, allowing me to spend 97 points on all 5 levels of Quick Recovery (quicker health and mana regain, when seated). I'll decide what to do with the others later. I make that 493 skill points today for Darth - when you team with Zen, you're going places!

After another break Zenderfly went off to join Sheele at the Pyramid of Theos, changing to Itura and, indeed, to Damor...as it's the start of the weekend she has access to multiple computers again. And they invited me to change to Keerella and join them. I mean, who can resist an invitation to fight level 100 Screaming Zombies...?

It was scary stuff; once early on Itura, our healer, was going to change computers between battles, but logged herself off slightly early - I assured her afterwards that Sheele and I had followed the traditional tactic of running around in circles flapping our arms and shouting, which never fails, but as it happened the Screaming Zombie didn't land any killing blows in the final stages of the fight. The passageway opening onto the zombie room is reasonably wide, but at least two other groups turned up soon after us, and things got a bit hectic, with a couple of unattached people there too. Kee had added 25 skill points earlier, so was carrying 311 unused skill points, which is a bit risky, but Itu is a good reliable healer, and we all stayed healthy, though she did have to briefly join one of the competing teams to resurrect the notorious recruiter/poacher Sherieblair. We continued until Sheele levelled up, which seemed a good time to call it a night. Sheele is off on a week's holiday now.

All that excitement made me forget that Leo was still faithfully pet training, but luckily he was on one of the "hard case" Treants one sometimes finds, which was lasting indefinitely, so although his blue pet horse was down to 29 on the starvation bar, all was going well. In fact, the horse ended the day about halfway through level 31, which is pretty good going. Kee didn't get any skill exp from the Screaming Zombies of course, at their level, but, including about 3% experience from the Akane Giants, who provided the day's 25 skill points for her, she went up a very satisfactory 63%, so is well on the way to level 53, at which point she will be able to use that loaned level 57+14 staff...

Production Failed - July 26th

Once again, our friends at Aeria Games forgot to turn off the US "TeaTime" event yesterday, so we were gifted with double experience and 50% extra skill exp until just after 4:00pm UK time...not that I made much use of the extra experience, as SirDarth is "frozen" at his current level at the moment, but the extra skill points were very welcome. If it had gone on much longer I might have switched to Keerella and gone out to the Akane Giants, but Darth took all my attention during the afternoon. Zenderfly and I did try teaming early on, but she found that she got less experience that way, so I moved upstairs in Prokion Temple. She continued to make massive progress, and had actually reached level 30, I think, by the time she logged out at the end of the afternoon. A family BBQ was liable to take up most of her evening, though she resolved to take her laptop along and hoped to find a wifi network to log in on, for the upgrade event.

Leo was out pet levelling too, and did some good work, though level 32 for his horse is going to take until tomorrow. He had some visitors out there, trading items across. Zenderfly kindly agreed to make the 17 Imperfect Wind Crystals needed - she was in a bit of a hurry by then, so I have no idea who came out ahead after I traded her 27 Gamma Energies and 10,000 gold for them, with her also throwing in an energy collector and 79 extra Gamma Manuals. The only trouble came when, after assembling all the other ingredients and taking Enchantrella into the Crafters Of Iris guild hall, I found she'd actually made Imperfect Water Crystals instead. Luckily FoxHunter had the spare 235 skill points required, and is now my official Gamma Energy processor, though taking a level 5 character out to Leo for the exchange had to be done slightly carefully, as the Elder Werewolves along the way do tend to move about a bit. So, Enchantrella finally got the 89 ingredients together, clicked the button to manufacture the level 57 boots - and got the "Production Failed" notice, which meant all the ingredients were lost. And there was no time to assemble all the Green Herb Leafs, Yellow Herb Leafs, Epsilon Energies, and Gamma Energies needed, buy the production scrolls, make the five types of ingredient, transfer them all to Enchantrella, and try again before the "upgrade probability event" was over.

Starting half an hour before the event, the Aeria people ran a 50% rebate, one per account, on the "2fer" packages of Runes of Protection II, which was something, but as usual with these events I ended up feeling disgruntled and out of pocket. True, I did get better than the usual 50% success rate with upgrading Kee's recently-bought level 57 circlet, and the level 70/72 outfit that MistressDomino wears which presumably Kee will need eventually, up to +3 using Heaven Stones, though there were still a couple of failures, but I made four attempts to upgrade Kaerella's current scepter from +10, using Heaven Stones of course and two packs of the "2fers", and they all failed, three of them not upgrading and the other a full failure which with the rune applied meant it was sent back to +10 - where it was anyway! Damor borrowed back that +14 level 57 mage staff she was lending me, wanting to try upgrading it, I kept my fingers crossed that she'd have better luck than me - and she did, she showed me four or five +15 weapons she'd managed to finish off, and traded the now +15 Blood Shadow Staff back to me. My current level 53 one, the Darkwhite Staff +12 (including cover) gives 234 + 293 magic attack, Damor's level 57 one gives 262 + 460, and +50 to magical attack power too, which is going to make any Kee & Itu team-ups in Egeha a lot more practical. There is quite an attack boost between +14 and +15 for a weapon, because it is quite a risk - you can't insure the item against breaking, or use an extreme stone, that final step is an "all or nothing" gamble, a weapon already worth perhaps 70 million can just crumble to dust in your hands.

Browsing around trying to find level 57 boots, I noticed how high the prices for Heaven Stones had got - 1.2 million was about the cheapest I saw, 2 million or more was what some people were hoping for, and very possibly getting, I just hope the people trying for twice that didn't get too many customers.

Well, Darth got quite a few skill points today, 227 I think - and out of his total, 366 were spent on learning Epsilon Energy processing and Green Leaf processing, which in effect puts the skill points aside for (with the use of a special skill reset card) future use at a level when sp farming isn't as easy as it is now. And meanwhile it is handy to be able to process such things, one gets a much better success rate, assuming one has the top (third) level of the skill, than the "Master" of Processing Materials.

And after Darth's, Enchantrella's, and FoxHunter's trips out to Leo, so as not to interrupt his pet levelling, of course he had a "send error report?" moment, so needed to be respawned back in town, sigh. It was just one of those days - though all that extra skill experience earlier kind of makes up for it, I guess. And on a few of the attempts to make a production material, a bonus helping of "Magical Defence Powder" or "Magical Attack Powder" mysteriously appeared in my inventories - useful for making the defence and attack minerals apparently, if one has the necessary skills. Who says you don't get something for nothing?

Apparently there will be more "upgrade madness" tomorrow, so maybe I'll go through the lengthy rigmarole of assembling all those materials again, and make a second attempt to make those darn boots. One good thing is that I do have Kee's next two sets of armour after this complete and ready to wear, and the one after that, currently borrowed by MistressDomino, at least at +3 now, so no more problems like that for her for a good long time!

Here We Go Again... - July 27th

Great news - my dear webspace provider is supposed to notify me when anyone signs the Guest Book at www.Kaerella.com, but this time they didn't, so it was up to Damor this morning to tell me to check there - boy did I have my fingers crossed when I dashed over to the site, but it was indeed a message from Elvastar, sent last Monday: "Hi Kae, been a long time... Anyway, I'm still trying to read your blog, even though I find it impossible to play anymore. Hopefully the situation will change in the not so distant future. So enjoy for both of us! (been very sick since I last went online for a whole month, luckily not anything deadly - miss you guys very much!)" I am just so
relieved to hear from him...I am looking forward to lots more Kae 'n' Elva team-ups before too long, while Jacqui now would be well placed to team with Darth, or maybe Enchantrella when she achieves witchiness.

Leo did actually get his rare blue horse up to level 33 last night - I allowed him to stay up past his regular bedtime until a quarter to midnight to accomplish that! One other thing from yesterday I didn't mention was Zenderfly's encounter with a Death Knight of Iris in Prokion Temple. I would have been quite willing to believe that there was some obscure room I'd never explored there that did house a boss monster, but apparently someone had just used one of the "Summon Death Knight" scrolls that can be purchased from the Item Mall, to give the other people in the temple a nasty shock, and perhaps a death they weren't expecting. Zen managed to avoid being killed - SirDarth was carrying over 300 unused skill points at the time, so, after the last time I let my curiosity get the better of me (Kee, with Itu in Maargadum Jail), getting the heck out of there seemed the best policy.

There was another "Midnight Madness" raffle last night, so I was rather hoping, once I read about it on the web page, to be able to take Kee out to the Akane Giants for an hour of double experience in the morning...but the announcement appeared that the raffle hadn't even managed to sell enough packages to reach tier one (half an hour of 50% extra experience). I guess the American players had spent all their cash on Heaven Stones and Runes of Protection earlier...

I used my "Top Spender" code, and everything went smoothly, except for a small error message on the website under the confirmatory "Thank You" - so SirDarth received 15 Platinum Blessed Iris (double experience gain for an hour each), 20 Damage Boosters ("twice damage to hunt to next monster"), 15 MP Steal Potions and 15 HP Steal Potions ("steals MP/HP from target when character attacks monster or another during effect"), 10 Berserker Potions ("+10% chance to do double damage on each attack for 1 hour"), and a "Reset Stat Points & All Skills" card. So Darth's inventory is a bit full at the moment.

Well, I went to all the trouble of collecting the 89 ingredients for Kee's level 57 boots again, which took about an hour all told - and again, "Production Failed", so no new boots for her I'm afraid...it is meant in theory to be around a 75% success rate, I thought, but we just seem out of luck on that item.

After that, it was, finally, Keerella's turn to go out and fight the Akane Giants. Before my food break I gained less than 3% experience and 29 skill points, but later, from just after 5:00pm for about four hours, I slogged away and added a further 15%, and 130 more skill points, thanks in part to the "happy hour" teatime event, which was double experience and 50% skill exp. For a change, it started promptly at five, so I missed the first few minutes, and ended precisely two hours later. It must have been someone different at the switch! Still, a little over 18% experience gain was pretty good going, and 159 skill points ought to be useful. I need to get to the next level soon, a couple more slogs should do it - then, with that staff of Damor's, I'll be a lot more lethal, and ready for some high-powered team-ups with Itura and, probably, Zeratus. Sheele too when our rogue's holiday is over...

The quiz started at 9:30 uk time, and had some of the same questions as last time, concentrating on Collector Ryl, Monster Combos, etc. The charge on my mouse was running low, so to avoid trouble I clicked onto Zenderfly, and watched the show. We did pretty well, in that we got the ToolAids, the Moonstones, and the first five Heaven Stones, but question twenty defeated us, as it did most people. People were rushing back to try and re-enter, as the announcement came up that there would be two more questions - whether people who got back in managed to get more prizes or not I don't know, as when I managed to click on the Domain Merchant to get let back in, I got a "send error report?" crash.

Still, 5 HS is pretty good; it's nice to get some back into storage as I exchanged 25, and three level 41 swords for smelts, to Damor for a mage "event weapon" earlier, plussed to the maximum, and with no extreme stone used, which apparently gives it a health boost. I was strictly warned not to try adding an extreme stone, as trying to go beyond +15 would be sure to break it. It's a pretty powerful weapon now, and should keep Enchantrella happy for a while. Presumably I can later get Ryl to transform it into any other type of event weapon, for my rogue Karella perhaps. I suspect that Damor gave me a pretty generous deal on that, though it depends to a certain extent how highly you value Heaven Stones...with these "upgrade probability events", prices for them have been getting a bit silly, so 25 stones today might well be more valuable than 50 of them a week or so back. Today's such event was due to start shortly after the quiz finished, but I logged out to avoid temptation.

Oddments - July 28th

Leo went out pet levelling as usual, with the rare pale blue horse now making progress through level 34; the supply of quality stones was dwindling alarmingly quickly, so SirDarth withdrew some ToolAids from storage, bought a few pickaxes - and headed out into the eastern Dratan desert, having read in the forums that it's only the Juno farming areas that are hit by the "send error report" crash bug. To get a good supply of stones quickly, most of the pickaxes received the ToolAid "boost", but it was great to be able to do some regular mining on the ore veins there as well, and get an assortment of quality, imperfect, and flawed stones into Darth's inventory over the lunch break. Darth has added the location to his scroll - it was easy enough to reach on a mount, though a lower level character would have to be very careful with the monster types along the way.

Zenderfly got in touch to ask to be re-enrolled in Norcaine, I don't know why she'd left overnight; she reported that she'd had no luck with last night's upgrade event, everything she had tried had broken. She also mentioned that "event weapons" like that mage one can't in fact be transformed, Collector Ryl can only change items from about level 26 to level 69. I promised to head for Prokion Temple once I'd finished the afk mining, though when I did get there she had logged out. I had been tentatively planning to play Keerella in the afternoon, but since Darth was there, he got to fighting the Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen upstairs. Zenderfly did arrive after a while, and rejoined the guild, but lost her connection a few minutes later. She got back - but at about a quarter to three, after Darth had been there about an hour, we both got disconnected, along with Leo. As Darth wasn't being hurt and didn't have his drake active, I didn't lose anything, but Zen got killed, and lost around 60 skill points, since she was carrying a large number of unallocated ones. At least her pet survived, which is something. It was lucky I wasn't playing as Kee, she could have been killed too if she'd been fighting the Akane Giants at the time. As it was, Darth had doubled his unused skill point total, increasing it by 44.

Zen asked to borrow a 35/37 mage armour set, so I found the one Kee had used, which was being carried by a young mage called Memree, and traded it across...and Zen kindly transferred her old costume as a gift. I'm sure Zen will have finished with that "Chaos" set long before Enchantrella needs it. I didn't have a suitable weapon to loan, of course, I only have staffs, and as Zen is now a practicing, nose-twitching witch, she needs to use a wand.

Darth transferred hundreds of stones across to Leo, along with a defence/evasion magical earring to replace an old accessory which, since it included Physical Prowess, had actually boosted Leo's attack slightly, not a good thing when one wants the Treants to last as long as possible, so hadn't been in use recently. Leo then headed back out to Treant Central, and returned to the pet levelling.

After the tea break, it was time for Keerella finally to head for the Akane Giants - but after about an hour, with only 1.33% experience, 13 skill points, and 134 pet points added, Zenderfly came on, and invited me to change to my level 27 crafter-mage Enchantrella, and join her in Prokion Temple, an invitation it would have been hard to resist. After all, Kee's need to get to level 53 ties in with Itura's plans for two or three person Boucu Demon, or Screaming Zombie, hunting, and as Itura, Zenderfly and Damor are the same person, teaming with one of them can't be said to be upsetting another of them's plans. If you see what I mean...

As Darth had found, again with Enchantrella, teaming with someone a few levels lower than you can boost the experience that you get, so Zen's invitation was to our mutual benefit - Enchantrella couldn't really survive long in the upper storey's Orc Sergeant rooms solo, and, since Zen had made sure that Enchie has got an abnormally powerful weapon, even without any useful attacking spells she more than held her own, through she got through small healing potions at an alarming rate. I was just approaching levelling up to level 28 when Zen suggested that I ought to "freeze" my experience, which was a sensible idea both from my point of view and hers - so Leo had to log out briefly while Enchie transferred the Guild Master position in Crafters of Iris to Barbarienne, Barbie kicked her from the guild, Darth signed in, Enchie applied to join Norcaine, and Darth accepted the application and applied the experience "freeze". All complicated stuff!

After that, Enchantrella was able to return to Prokion Temple and continue the team-up. Plenty of Orcs got zapped, until Zen was just asking if I'd got enough skill points for level 4 of Scud (increases attack speed for 5 minutes) and level 5 of Secret Study (permanently increases magical attack power), when she suffered yet another disconnection. Luckily the various Orcs all decided to attack me when she stopped moving, so she and her newly-grown horse (so level 16 now) were safe until they disappeared. With all the Orcs after me I had to beat a hasty retreat back to the lobby - I found that I was in fact 5 skill points short of being able to get both those skills, so continued a bit longer.

Unfortunately another member of the "solo party", a healer called Trast, was in range of the room I could most easily solo - I assumed that she was fighting, but after I got the points I needed I explored in that direction, and she was standing against the wall, afk, which usually does leave the Orcs baffled...so she got some free sp and a little loot. Enchantrella ended up gaining 119 skill points in all, which with the 8 she had already were enough to get those two skills, so I headed back to Dratan City, and acquired them. Plenty more skill points need to be got if Enchie is to be, like Zen, eventually a fully-functioning witch.

And Leo got the horse to level 35 late in the evening, so another three days ought to finish that particular task...

Back to the Temple - July 29th

Since the blue horse gives Leo his full 30-level armour buff now, it seemed like a good idea to send him to Merac to check out the possibilities for pet training there. Butchers may be 6 levels ahead of him and red-named, but they are unable to hurt him and do lose health over time, albeit more slowly than a Treant does. It seems that, if the Butcher Leo is fighting gets a bit low on health and Leo goes off and fetches a fresh one to fight, the injured party soon loses interest and wanders off.

Berserkers are level 34, so 12 levels ahead of Leo - and again, a single one didn't seem to make any progress in denting Leo's health bar. The only problem is that, with them so far ahead level-wise, Leo did tend to miss quite often, which rather slows down the pet point gain. I did get disconnection problems out there for some reason; once I noticed that, while when I logged out, disconnected, the horse's starvation bar was at 100 and the pet points stood at 2012, but when I logged back in, the bar was down to 79 and the pet points had moved on to 2232...which shows how much activity can happen after one has "left"...

At lunchtime SirDarth went out to the mine in Dratan desert again, for a few more stones; as he'd only picked up two ToolAids yesterday, I just bought him two Pickaxes, with the plan being to get a fair bit of "random" use out of at least one of them before applying the boost. The session ended slightly prematurely, before I had a chance to use the second boost, but still added 21 quality stones (plus a boosted 27), 30 imperfect ones, and 44 flawed ones. The tea break was a chance to finish the job there...even without counting the 54 guality stones from the use of the ToolAids, we got 41 quality stones, plus 56 imperfects and 87 flawed ones.

The afternoon was a chance for Keerella to go and visit her old chums the Akane Giants once more, and get 5.5% experience, plus 53 skill points, and 564 pet points. Sheryblair (to get the spelling right this time, though the "s" is actually lower case) of the RoyalGangsters was there too, I noticed, but I assumed that "srry u gota leave" on the open channel wasn't aimed at me.

After the break for food, and Darth's second mining stint, it was time for Enchantrella to head for Prokion Temple. Solo, I stay on the ground floor - heading away from the teleporter I turn right at the end, and go along the corridor to its first room, before the larger area with the stairs up, and can pretty much handle the Orc Fighters and their friends there. After a while Zenderfly logged in - she'd had a four-hour exam until 5:30, which along with the trip through a furnace-like Dresden made her very glad to get home, with all the exams finished now. She joined me, and we went upstairs to the main Orc Sergeant (and Orc Axeman) room, where we did pretty well, though as usual I used quite a few small healing potions.

Unfortunately Zen did suffer two disconnections while we were teamed, though reappeared amazingly quickly I thought, and didn't die in-game or have her pet killed - not something I can take any credit for, the first time I didn't even notice until the orcs pressed me a lot harder than before, and the second time I was up behind a statue, afk while I checked on Leo. Tuesday is my "early finish" night, so I had to log out at 8:00pm UK time, but by then I'd added 181 skill points to the 5 I'd carried forward - 129 of them will be spent on my fifth level of Scud, to increase my attack speed. Enchie still has plenty more skill point farming to do before she can be "unfrozen" from donating all her regular-type experience to Norcaine, while Zen is heading onwards and upwards, getting enough skill points to be able to take a bit of "power levelling" before too long apparently. Talking of which, she did say that Kee needn't give reaching level 53 with the Akane Giants any sort of priority, as it would be pretty quick to "power level" her up the last 10%.

I may not have been playing after that, but I was able to keep an occasional eye on Leo, who managed to get our rare blue horse, grown from the rare blue pan flute, up to level 36, and into his final level. He now needs to have 8 starvation points per 5 minutes replenished, so tomorrow I will have to keep a close eye on how things go.

The Pet is Levelled - July 30th

Since while going through level 36 Leo's current horse was eating rather a lot of stones, it was the ideal time to use a couple of "pet potions" that I had in stock. A one-hour potion that tripled the levelling speed added 3186, 2124 extra, while a three-hour potion doubling the levelling speed added 6432, 3216 extra, so that the rare blue horse reached level 37 by mid-afternoon, and Leo was able then to take a well-earned rest. The next thing will be to transfer the horse to Kaerella, in exchange for her regular-coloured one, which will probably go in turn to SirDarth, whose current mount isn't level 37.

Anyway, it is a relief to get that task sorted out. Darth did some more afk mining at the mine in Dratan desert at lunchtime, and was able to "top up" Leo's supplies of quality stones etc after that. Enchantrella then quickly moved over her supply of the lower level item-making manuals, from level 26 to level 42, to a new mainly-storage character, making a lot more room in her inventory - and then, after getting Scud and Amplification maximised, it was time for her too to head for Dratan, and join Zenderfly in Prokion Temple.

So, more Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen were dealt with, in our usual efficient manner; there isn't really anything exciting to report about the afternoon session, except that 193 skill points were gained before we broke for food, enough for Enchie to get the final two levels of Mage Armour - which despite its name doesn't increase one's defence, it just permanently increases the amount of mana regenerated per second. I had to check upstairs regularly on Leo's progress - for a change one time I looked he had actually gained a couple of extra Treants at his spot halfway up the hill...the reason for this became clear when I saw the corpse of Pettrainer227 just by me. As far as I could tell he was wearing the level 15-17 "Templar" set, which would explain his demise, he was a bit low level to take on Treants...

Well, the evening was more of the same, while SirDarth did a little bit of afk mining in Dratan. Zenderfly did get a disconnection or two, and finally vanished with an "omg", never to be seen again, though when I checked on Darth later, he'd had a message from her to say that her internet connection had gone bad. So I took a rest, the heat had perhaps got to me a bit, then did a bit more skill exp farming on the ground floor, including a short team-up with a knight called Dunkin.

The mysterious new item in the Mall this week was the Chaos Smelting Stone, which, as we'd been warned, was signalled as "sold out", but was still available if you actually attempted to buy it... it adds +1 to your item, up to +12, and they are asking 1049 aeria points for it. Which considering that in theory it would on average be the equivalent of two Runes of Protection II and two Heaven Stones, is not unreasonable, though it would be rather nicer if they did a 50% rebate or a "2fer" on it. There are a few other items that may be worth getting, so that MistressDomino can sell stuff out of packages, we'll have to have a browse there. While the upstairs computer got the update straight away, downstairs, where Leo was doing most of his pet levelling this morning, I still had the old version of the Mall until I closed the game down after lunch and restarted it.

A friend has passed on one of his accounts to Zeratus, with a level 53, or thereabouts, rogue called Ronic as its star, so we now have a new guild member, enrolled by Kee who appeared specially in Randol for the purpose, and noticed Ronic's red name before Zer did. So, it looks as if Zer/Ronic will start off by trying to kill Baal solo, which is one way to reduce a character's evil rating. As Zer commented, that raises the average level of the guild's members a bit...

More Temple Fighting - July 31st

Although I was too busy to actually play Last Chaos until the evening, I did send SirDarth out to the Dratan desert to do some mining, and also a little later despatched my rogue Karella to the herb patch west of Randol to gather some assorted herbage. I thought that patch, unlike the one north of town, was immune to the "farming crash" bug, but Karella did still get one "send error report" crash there. SirDarth was okay out in the desert, though. Nobody else seems to be using that mine, which is strange, it isn't as if there are a huge number of other ones around to choose from.

Anyway, when I was able to log on and actually play, it was a matter of taking Enchantrella, still "frozen" on level 27, to Prokion Temple to team with Zenderfly, and head together for the upper floor and a suitable room with lots of Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen. I was lucky enough, over the hours, to get three Heaven Stones - Zenderfly had got at least four today, but that included fighting in Merac earlier in the day. Towards the end of our time fighting, Zen reached level 35, which will probably be the last level at which she does any serious fighting in Prokion Temple - the amount of skill exp an Orc Sergeant gives does drop as one levels up, though teaming with a lower-level character like Enchantrella helps, particularly if that character has a good enough weapon to be able to do a fair share of the orc-killing. So it won't be long before Enchantrella is left behind...

Plenty of skill points were gained, so that I was able to get the fifth level of Energy Bolt at last (43 sp), plus the fifth level of Anti Magic (151 sp), levels 2 to 4 of the passive skill Fast Spell Casting (69 sp between them - level five will need 151 more), levels 2 to 4 of Sloth (40 sp, 86 more needed for level 5, reduces target's attack speed), the first level of Haste (81sp, as is level two - increases spell cast speed of the targeted ally, such as a healer!), and the first three levels of Flame Storm (44 sp - level four, costing 86 sp, is unlocked when I reach level 30)...277 sp gained in all this evening, so my total now is a bit lower than it was at the start of play, but well invested.

Just as I was getting ready to log out, I noticed that someone had dropped a Medal of Honour near Storekeeper Bianca in Randol. It's strange, that's not the first time I've picked one up, I've also bought one for 50 gold once. The usual merchant selling price is 10,000 gold, though you see them at ten times that price sometimes. Not that they are very useful as special drops, but a guild master may in some instances need one, so there goes another space in my inventory. I must create another "mule" character or two!