Various Adventures - September 16th Using her recently acquired skill points, Enchantrella completed her Pharmacy/Alchemy skills, and managed to get the first level of Advanced Mining too - so it seemed logical to send her out to the ordinary Juno mine at lunchtime. It looks as if they have, just about, solved the crash-when-gathering bug in that part of the world now, thankfully, and it certainly seemed as if she was mining stones more quickly now. Zenderfly logged in with a change of plan while I was setting up - as she was to be busy with a family gathering in the evening, our Tomb of Theos slog was to be brought forward to the afternoon, which was fine with me. At the appointed hour, two o'clock, Keerella duly reported for duty - but I wasn't Recalled into the Tomb, instead I found myself close to one of the abandoned structures out in the Dratan desert, close to the various kinds of Wafes. It didn't take long to work out why, as Grand Devilroad Kamira was close by! Zen passed a level 12 magical defence mineral to me, checked I had got an Item Drop Booster, and urged me to use it - I double-clicked on the mineral, an "IDB", and a Lucky Scroll as well, and joined in the battle. Zen was bravely taking most of the attack damage herself, leaving me to use Freeze Arrow and Terra Spear, and before long the group of Death Goddesses spawned...we kept our focus on Kamira of course, and she died, followed by the Death Goddesses. It's strange, why does level 70 Kamira spawn level 35 monsters, while the level 50 Grand Red Dragon in Merac spawns a group of level 51 Cerebrii? As we are both level 70 at the moment we are the ideal level for good drops from Kamira, and my share of the loot included 5 Moonstones of the traditional kind, 5 ToolAids, a Medal of Honor, and a Crystal of Experience (Greater). I didn't notice what Zen got, but I'd assume a few Lucky Scrolls were in the mix. We also got two rare accessories - the one I picked up was an "Origin of Land" (6 physical fortitude, 12 physical defence, and 100 health - SirDarth uses two of them), worth 6 or 7 million, while Zen's inventory received a "Crest of Rainbow" (6 to physical fortitude again, but 12 each for the other three attributes), which tends to sell for around 35 million or so. So, as we were sharing drops equally, when Zen sells that I should get a useful cash bonus. After that we did go to the Tomb - Zen Recalled me in, and as the starting area was already busy, she ran on ahead, and Recalled me down to our usual deep-down spot. As she only had access to one computer we didn't have Itura with us, and neither of us had any archers or healers or other useful Tomb fighters on our Friends Lists, but by using plenty of potions we managed to fight the Screaming Zombies and Infected Grey Mummies at just about our usual pace. However, it was not to be a marathon session, or even a three-hour one as originally envisaged; after about an hour a friend needed Zenderfly's assistance, or probably Damor's, and we had to leave. Still, 625 pet points and 11.86% experience made it a useful little session; there weren't any spectacular drops down there, but a bit of gold is always useful. Actually, Karella probably got better drops. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to getting her up to the top of level 25, so that SirDarth could freeze her experience there, and, to give her drake a bit of experience too, for a change the good old level 26 Treants out by Velpist Temple in Juno got a visit. There were some weapon drops of the appropriate level for Karella - and there were two Hands of the Guard, meaning two Item Drop Boosters, two Skill Point Boosters, and four ToolAids. Karella got the 19.02% experience she needed, and was frozen on 99.90% of level 25; her level 24 drake got 486 pet points, and she got 33 skill points too, before it was time for the usual food break. After the break, it was a good chance for SirDarth to go out to the Blood Frenzies in Merac, team up with Kaerella, Recall her there, and just stand and watch as Kae ran about collecting every Blood Frenzy in the area, before killing them. There was a break when it was announced that GameSage AlexandriA was holding a "scavenger hunt" at the arena in Randol on Cariae-1. I took the storage character I've got the quest items on, and went there - I did manage to give her the Salamander Skins and Salamander tails she required for one part of it, and got five pieces of Cake and five Watermelon Slices, which was I suppose worth the half hour taken, as they seem to sell at rather high prices Following that, Kae and Darth continued until closing time - well, almost closing time, the internet connection booted them both out a little early, just as Kae was bringing in the latest group of a few dozen Blood Frenzies. I did manage to log Kae back in after a few minutes, and found to my relief that she had just about managed to survive, on 324 health out of 1328. She was up 3.01% experience on the day, with 31 more skill points - not a huge amount, but Darth will have got the same number of skill points as well for very little effort on his part. Zen was just logging in then, so the family festivities must have ended, but a bit too late for a further joint trip out to be practical. Temple and Tomb - September 17th Zenderfly seems to think Keerella should concentrate on Intelligence, with Dexterity only at the 17 needed for the skill Fear - as opposed to the 49 I have at the moment, following the Wet Paint Wiki's guide to stat points. Extra Magical Attack, Resistance and Hit Rate are more useful, for a wizard, than extra Physical Evasion and Hit Rate, she tells me. So, definitely just more Intelligence in future, with the possibility of an expensive change from Dexterity to Intelligence of those 32 stat points at some stage. Enchantrella worked at mining in Juno at a fairly good speed over lunch and for a while afterwards - I was busy getting the www.Kaerella.com website fully up to date, particularly the Screenshot Gallery pages - the seventh of these has now been started, with the screenies I took in the Forgotten Temple two days ago. Finally SirDarth came onto the main computer, and headed for Prokion Temple, and its usual Orc Sergeant, and Orc Axeman, room - that's the one that leads off Gallery Page 4, not the "big back room" shown in the latest screenie on Page 7! Karella was Recalled to join him, safely close to the wall, and then Darth set about the orcs in his usual forthright manner. It wasn't too long before Karella had enough points for the second and final level of the rogue skill Free Walk, increasing her movement speed, but she is far from "maxxed out" as yet, so if she is going to get anywhere, she'll need to stay at level 25 in the Temple for quite a while yet. Zenderfly appeared later, though, and a trip to the Tomb of Theos was on her mind - she has actually been there a time or two without Kee recently, so that she is now a few percentage points ahead. I had to swap the three "Pierce of Wind" accessories across from Kae, and when I arrived in the Tomb, Zen had already managed to recruit two archers - SimplyM (level 64) again, and Shoshanna (level 65), so that made things rather luxurious, and even when a second Screaming Zombie would attack Zen, and a third spawned right beside me, there was plenty of healing to go around. SimplyM did have to leave for a while, but returned later - as often happens on a Wednesday I had to depart early, but Zen and at least one archer may well have continued for a while. 1665 pet points were added for me - rather more for Zen I expect, as she doesn't get distracted from the regular hit rate by Terra Spear, and wands are faster than staffs anyway. I gained 30.12% experience, so that Kee is now approaching 65% of the way through level 70. I think just about everyone else got a Heaven Stone - about all I got was a Bee, a single-point item I don't want in my insect collection box. The next "landmark level" will be level 73, really, although level 72 will allow me to get the passive skill Secret Study level 7, increasing my Magical Attack by six - at level 73 I'll be able to use a new staff. Unless I just keep going with my previous one, the way Zen holds on to her old armour, of course. Zen has promised to look out for good 5-seal evasion armour for me, which she reckons I will need against some future foes. Apparently the reason that Zen was able to take me to Kamira yesterday was because Krokignon had alerted her - he must have had some computer problem, however, and didn't manage to stay around long enough to be involved in the final stages, such as the actual battle. Krok is one of the very few high-level players not to be in a guild, he just doesn't seem to want to get involved that way. In Norcaine, Vecc (also the knight Galandorius) was online in the afternoon - he's at university now, but has managed to get his internet access sorted out after a few days gap. Sheele reported that he's got a level 17 titan now, with a +10 event weapon. His level 60-ish rogue has been busy farming skill points, getting through lots of the Platinum Super Skill Pills that were on (very) special offer last week. As I commented, it's always good to have rich friends! DarkPulse101 may not be around as much as she'd like, as there seems to be a lot more homework this term, but there's no hurry. Oh, and Zen was wondering if I'd managed to research the latest price of Moonstones, as she has about a hundred of them to sell now. I've not done any selling with MistressDomina for a while now, just that minor bit of private enterprise by SirDarth in Egeha, so I'm not too sure, but regular Moonstones, which are now the middle of five grades, seem to be on offer from various merchants at about ten times the price they were before the new system came in - around 350,000 gold. Moonstone Boxes, which is how the stones are dropped, ought to be roughly the same, as they can reveal higher or lower grades when opened. Of course by the nature of things, when browsing merchants one only sees the items that haven't yet sold out, so whether the things sell quickly at that sort of price or not, I don't know. The new possible rewards offered by the Moon Statue in Randol are certainly getting more attention than the old ones did. Back to the Tomb - September 18th While SirDarth and Enchantrella did manage some mining and harvesting at times, I wasn't able to start playing until six in the evening, as I'd expected, and Zenderfly was ready for a new trip to the Tomb - though she warned once more that I'd be wanted for an hour from nine to ten to help level Damor, who needs to be level 85, rather than 83, to make use of the weekend's possible upgrade probability event. I couldn't see how I'd be of much assistance, but she's the expert. The Tomb party was just Zen, the level 74 rogue Defective, and me, as Keerella of course, with as usual Zen doing the tanking. We went on for not far short of three hours, just staying at the starting area and concentrating on Screaming Zombies. There wasn't a great deal of drama, the only time Zen's health got dangerously low was when she was too busy chatting, but she must have got through a lot of pots - I got through a few as well, occasionally the zombie would head for me, or one would spawn close by and attack me or my drake. A lot of mana pots were needed too. For most of the time, as we were in Cariae-6, we had the place to ourselves - one or two people ran past to head for the depths, but it was only towards the end that a few other people turned up and began luring zombies for themselves. As it happens, one of them was Masre, who I see is actually a rogue rather than, as I'd thought, a knight. Zen, remembering the Skinwalker-luring incidents, was thinking seriously about going into PvP mode and indulging in a spot of PK'ing, but Defective was using an Iris, so we wanted to make sure she got the full benefit before Zen did anything, and Masre was on her best behaviour, just luring the occasional zombie past us to deal with further back. Zen reached level 71 safely - and right at the end I reached that level too. Just in time, as only a couple of zombies later a bad case of lag turned into a disconnection for me. We had all been having little lag episodes, but this time was in fact different - when I went upstairs, to where I'd left Darth mining on the upstairs computer, expecting to be able to type in a guild message to explain what was going on, I found that the machine had just rebooted itself, something it does very occasionally - well it is over six years old! By the time I was reconnected, the Tomb Raid was over, and Zen was preparing to get Damor's party going. I'd already sent a one-hour Recall card to Damor, for which Zen has promised me 750,000 gold, so when I got Recalled down to the Tomb again, I found Escadalia (level 86 rogue now) and Chelseathehealer (level 88, er, healer) already there - while Defective was soloing a few zombies outside the party, so I was able to apologise for my sudden disappearance. Zen got Recalled to the team... and then remembered that it was actually Damor who was wanted, so left and was replaced by Damor. At level 71, partying with Damor (83 wizard) or Esca would be okay, but Chelseathehealer is too high for me, so I was starting to wonder just what I was needed for - if I was just to stay back in safety and offer Recall to those not taking part of the kill-experience, that would have been fine with me, but in the end Damor realised that there wasn't really any great point in me being involved in the party, and told me that I could leave. That gave me just time to give Elvastar's level 22 rogue Ahtema a very brief outing - mainly by taking SirDarth to just outside Prokion Temple and Recalling her there, so that she could add it to her memory scroll. If Elva is going to develop her when he gets a good enough connection, Ahtema will need to do some serious sp-farming there...a transfer from CraftersOfIris to Norcaine and a freeze on her experience will be needed. I took her inside, and the Ghouls and Mummies went down easily enough, so she added a few percent and one armour drop which, if converted into a smelting stone, she might find useful. I logged back in as Kee to get the final statistics for the day, and by then Damor had reached level 85, she reported - and before the hour was up she'd got to level 86, even, thanks to the nice kindly Anubis Spear Man level 106 boss monsters, and their 18,918,740 experience each. Three levels, using 50 experience boosters, and I think a mana stealer too - Damor has done so much power levelling for other people, it's nice that she was the recipient of it for a change. Though even without Chelsea, I really don't know what practical help I could have been down there, Damor is a rather more powerful wizard than I am, still... Anyway, our Tomb adventure had got me 1666 pet points, getting Kee's drake to a third of the way through its level, plus about half a million in cash from the drops, and 35.75% experience, enough to get me to level 71, which at least meant I could add 4 to my Intelligence rating - my magical attack has now increased by six, which can't be bad. Tomorrow will be another short-time day, though I must be sure to get on Last Chaos for the EU "happy hour" from four to six, which offers double experience and 50% extra skill exp. I think the idea is to do another Tomb Raid then, just for the experience side, and forget about any possible extra skill points. And there's the forum sign-up for "upgrade love" to remember too... Tombing With Damor - September 19th The EU "Happy Hour" started promptly at 4:00pm UK time, or indeed five o'clock for most of the European Union - as I was busy enrolling SirDarth for the "Upgrade Love" event, I was slightly late logging on for it, and then had a "send error report?" crash when Zenderfly Recalled me to the Tomb of Theos for the first time - so it was about ten past by the time I joined in the action. It's handy that, after a crash like that, when one logs back in one is still in the party, which saved a little time. At level 71, Zen and I are still just within reach of Damor, at level 86, for partying, so, since she was at home with access to two computers, the idea was for Damor to tank, me to provide the usual Terra Spear back-up, and Zen just to hug the wall - which suited me fine, it was just as good as having a healer as the third party member, and probably faster. We stayed at the entry hall, and for much of the time, in Cariae-1, we had it to ourselves, but eventually other people did arrive. The "Happy Hour" was double experience, but also 50% extra skill exp, so as you don't get much of the latter in the Tomb unless you too are level 100-ish, some people may well have been elsewhere working on their skill points. I noticed that I didn't just get the "1 skill experience", though, usually it was more like 30 - a long way from the 1100 one might get from a creature of one's own level, but it started to add up, and I did indeed increase my skill points by 1 over the course of the two hours. Damor died once, I think too many Screaming Zombies on her at the same time - I didn't see it happen, not a health bar reaching zero or a figure in the terrible slumped kneeling position a dead mage adopts, and thought when she ran back that she must have had a disconnection. Zen died once too, although she was a little way back and against the wall - she couldn't be too far back or she'd be outside the compass ring and not get her share of the experience. People were luring individual zombies back that way, to fight one-on-one, and somebody must have lured their zombie too near to her. Generally, though, things went pretty smoothly, though as more people came in, Damor had to slow down. There was a red-named rogue she was a little wary of I think, generally she'd let her health drop a fair way, but when that rogue was around she made sure to keep it high. But the rogue was friendly enough, asking about the event, and we soon relaxed. The "Happy Hour" ended promptly too, an unfortunate habit in recent weeks, we're used to half an hour or so of overtime. That seemed to be all the time Damor had, and indeed a couple of hours down there is a pretty intense session. Damor traded the maximum-evasion level 73 mage gloves to me for the 50 million agreed, less 750,000 I'd completely forgotten about and 3 million for a new Resurrection Scroll for Zen. I must check if I need to "plus" them, or with that high an evasion doesn't one bother? Damor says she'll have a similarly good shirt for me too, for 35 million. It's lucky MistressDomina did all that selling of items a week or two back, so that I can afford such things. I was just below the 50% mark then, so decided to try a zombie or two for myself solo, using Sloth, Freeze Arrow and Terra Spear, plus health pots, and it wasn't easy by any means, if I'd attracted two at once I'd definitely have been in trouble, and I think I was a bit close to disaster with the third one, if it had hit me right at the end it might have killed me. So, no more of that until I have better armour I think! Still, it did get me up to 50.18%experience - Zen was still logged in for the first two, so should have got a slight bonus boost too. Making it to just over half a level seemed a good place to stop. Damor mentioned that she was unlikely to be around tomorrow, there's a birthday she's involved with, so it looks as if I made the right choice in registering SirDarth for the "Upgrade Love" event - he can either partner Kaerella or Karella, or indeed Enchantrella, in Cariae-4 while waiting for the GMs to get around to his name. I'll just need to transfer Kae's next staff, currently at +10, across to him before 8:00pm tomorrow. Previously, the "Upgrade Love" gift of +1 to a weapon or piece of armour that's already +8 to +10 has been done by the GM generating a new weapon, and destroying the old one, but now, with Chaos Smelts available, they just need to use one of those on the existing weapon - so we keep our bloodseals, which is good - though it no longer replaces a weapon on which an Extreme Stone has been used with one that hasn't had that, which in some circumstances is a shame. The GMs go through a list of people who have registered on the forum at a couple of times, taking them alphabetically, so maybe as I don't want to stay up late tomorrow I should have had CuddlesMcGraw rather than SirDarth registered, but playing her for an hour or two wouldn't have been very productive. Zenderfly mentioned that her appearance when the Damor-levelling party was forming last night wasn't due to absent-mindedness, actually, just transferring items across from her to another player. And before our party today, Damor had spent an hour levelling a new character belonging to Chelseathehealer by about a dozen levels, which was a nice way of thanking her for her aid last night. SirDarth had been doing some mining earlier, while Enchantrella was involved in herb-gathering. I took a break after the Tomb mission to get some other non-LC work done, but was back at eight, and Darth went off to the Temple and its big back room, Recalled Karella to join him, and killed enough Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants for them to get 67 skill points each. It was just about when I'd planned to log out that Darth got a "fatal error" for a change, a shortage of memory apparently - so a good slog came to a slightly abrupt end. No risk of Darth being killed there, he can stand around with a big group of orcs all attacking him and not lose any health, but with any luck he has enough points for a level or two more of "Special" skills now. GM Greywulf is a (Generous) Noob - September 20th My time was slightly limited today, but SirDarth and Karella got online soon after three for almost an hour in Prokion Temple - the 44 skill points gained meant that Darth was able to maximise another "Special" skill, so is now an ace herb-farmer as well as miner, which means he won't need to pay 30 gold per leaf out at Serel Farm any more. Karella did leave briefly when Damor needed help transferring items between Zen and Damor, but as Darth has Recall, getting her back to the Temple was pretty simple. Damor mentioned that the red-named rogue I mentioned yesterday was actually somebody she knew and trusted, and had helped with some power-levelling recently. She had just decided, after that one death, that keeping her health bar fairly long was rather a good idea... While I was doing other stuff in that vaguely-defined "real world" that we all also inhabit, Darth went off to do some mining in Juno. There was a 100% rebate offer on the "Lucky Rune Combo" to take advantage of as well, so 449 ap had to be spent (one per account) - with hopefully a full refund within a fortnight. In fact they usually round it up, so with any luck 450 ap will magically appear on my listing before too long. As Damor had suspected, since appropriate rune packages are in the Item Mall this week, an "upgrade probability event" was announced for today, starting when the rebate period ended, at six o'clock UK time, and scheduled to last for an hour. It started, as they usually do, at 150% of the usual chance of a successful upgrade, using a Heaven Stone, to a weapon or piece of armour; at half past six this rose to 175%. Damor managed to escape the family meal soon after that, and I was able to reassure her that the 200% period, usually a mere 5 minutes out of the hour, hadn't been sneaked in early, and that the 175% had started. She asked for my assistance, so Karella logged out, and Keerella logged in (still on the older upstairs computer), and joined Damor in the Cariae-5 version of the Norcaine Guild Hall, where in theory the lag would be reduced. Damor passed over two level 65 mage wands (one of them +2 already) and a level 65 staff, plus a large supply of Heaven Stones, and asked me to plus the staff and the unplussed wand up to +3, which I did without any problems - six plusses, six Heaven Stones. And we waited for the announcement that the 200% chance time had begun...and waited. When the clock reached 18:57 I commented that I hoped I hadn't missed an announcement earlier, and Damor assured me that I hadn't, at least ten other people she was in touch with were also waiting... And then it was seven o'clock, and they announced the end of the event! Damor, after checking that the weapons and Heaven Stones didn't put Kee over 100% for inventory weight, asked me to hold on to the items, in the hope there would be another event on the Sunday - though I cautioned her that I wouldn't be on until seven-ish then. Kee logged out, and Karella logged back in on c4...but just as she was spawning, a GM announcement came up that GM Greywulf was a noob, and had forgotten to announce the 200% time, and so there would now be a belated, announced 200% period! So I quickly switched back to Kee, went back to the c5 Norcaine Guild Hall, where Damor still was, and began the upgrading she wanted me to do for her. The lag got bad - text was slow to appear, often the pop-up window saying whether the upgrade attempt had worked or not took ages to come into view, Damor said she was unable to change the weapon she was holding for some minutes. The first wand didn't get beyond +5 before it was "ruined" and vanished, but I got Damor's staff safely to +10, and then, after checking with Damor, started on the other mage wand, the +2 one. I got it up to +8, and +9, just as the warning that there was only a minute left came up - and then there was a partial failure that set it back to +8. The next HS brought it to +9, and the one after took it to the +10 that Damor wanted, just in time. So, I transferred the two +10 weapons and the remaining 30 Heaven Stones back to Damor, who personally hadn't had as good luck...though she was trying for higher levels, and as I've mentioned before, above +10 things get scary. Anyway, after that I was able to switch back to Karella on c4, rejoin SirDarth's party, and get Recalled to Prokion Temple. Karella's task was just to stand safely by the wall while Darth did the fighting, and that's what he, or I, did. As the big room is right at the back of the upper floor, it didn't get crowded, though a couple of other people did come in briefly. With the number of Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen it is probably a pretty hard room, though easy enough for a level 33 knight. It was just about nine, while I was typing in an explanation for DarkPulse101 of what "NPC" stands for, when I was suddenly teleported to the hills at the edge of Juno, where GM Greywulf, a rogue in a santa hat, was waiting. She opened the trade window to see the weapon I wanted plussed, just to make sure it qualified for the event by being +8 to +10 I assume, and dropped a Chaos Smelting Stone, which I quickly picked up. I was just clicking on my mount, on my skill bar, so that I'd be able to use "pet return to village", when I got a disconnection.. So, should I use the Chaos Smelting Stone on Kae's next scepter - if you value it at about 35 million, there are cheaper ways to get a weapon from +10 to +11 if you wait for the next upgrade probability event. Maybe I should get it to +11 with a HS and a rune of protection, and then use the Chaos Smelt? It's nice to have the option, anyway. Oh, and Darth, before his teleportation, had got a further 65 skill points from the evening session, making 109 in all today. The Quiz Room Gets it Wrong - September 21st Not a very satisfactory time in Last Chaos today, for me... for a start it was well after seven in the evening before I could log in, as I was busy away from home all day, and that meant that I missed the "Sunday TeaTime" two-hour bonus, which was double skill exp - that would have been useful for SirDarth! I also missed a chance to get (again, one per account) a Heavenly Rune Combo (2 Runes of Protection I, 2 Heaven Stones) with a 100% rebate on the 499 ap it costs. Well, I logged in as Keerella initially, but finding that Zen didn't have any actual team-up fighting plans, I logged in as SirDarth, logged in as Karella too, made a party, teleported to Dratan, and was about to use a memory scroll to move to Prokion Temple when Damor stopped me, asking that I come to Cariae-1 to meet her. So I logged out as Karella upstairs and SirDarth downstairs, and logged in as Keerella as requested, and joined Damor - only to find that it was just some item exchange stuff that I thought we'd agreed to do just before the quiz. Damor had sold the Crest of Rainbow dropped by Kamira for us a few days ago for 28 million, and wanted to split the proceeds, taking into account that I still have the minor Order of Land one, which, unidentified, she valued at 6 million...a reliable identification, to activate the bonus stats, costs a million. She also had a blue, five-seal shirt piece of my next armour set, and green, five-seal boots, which she'd obtained for 35 and 5 million repectively, so she very kindly traded them across to me in exchange for 29 million, the other 11 being my "cut" from the CoR's sale. She hopes to get the pants and headpiece I need to complete a five-seal evasion set, which is very good of her, she is a much better shopper than I am, and immediately knows when armour and weapons are good value. Blue seal items (the "b" in "b5", with the number indicating the number of seal-enhancements) can cost around ten times as much as green seal ones, as they give another subtle little boost - I'd be happy to pay for the blue ones, but it depends what she is able to find. Well, after that Zen was a little tired and wasn't in line for any brief team-up, so I was able to change back to Darth and Karella, team them, take Darth to Dratan again - and this time use a memory scroll to get him to Prokion Temple, run all the way to that big upstairs back room, Recall Karella, and settle in for, well, I suppose it was about 50 minutes before it was time to prepare for the Quiz. Darth got 37 skill points, Karella maybe one less as she was the first to leave. Getting ready for the Quiz involves closing the game and restarting it, which lessens the possibility of the game acting up from lag etc, with characters becoming "unclicked" from the one they were clicked on to follow, and that we did; MistressDomina and Kee took off their armour, and clicked on to Zenderfly, who was I think on Zen's main computer - Damor was on a less reliable one, and disconnected only a minute or two before the Quiz began. I thought Zen actually knew most of the answers, rather than relying entirely on how many people in the room were moving to the "X" or the "O" side, but I guess she was letting the movement of the people just wash over her. We got up to the ten ToolAids without difficulty - we managed 13 correct answers in fact, before the question came up as to whether the armourer in Strayana is called Dolph or Dalph - the correct answer is simple enough to remember, as "Dolph" is a reasonable name to have, as in Dolph Lundgren, and "Dalph" isn't, but Zen, who we were all clicked on, moved with the crowd onto the "Dalph" side. I managed to protest by typing in just about the shortest possible message of dissent, "eek", on the guild channel (or would "nooo!" have been better?), but it was too late, and we all respawned in the marketplace. Typing had been my first priority - if I'd broken Kee away immediately I might have been able to get to the correct side, but I'd not have known the upcoming answers I'm sure, with few other people there to follow. Well, it was a bit of a surprise that Zen made such an error, particularly as she survived the Quiz last week when the same questions were asked - maybe she'd had a long day too. I signed out with a prediction, since modified, of what today's blog entry would be entitled, and a wish of good luck for those of us who were going to get involved in this weekend's second "upgrade probability event", running from eleven to midnight UK time - and an hour later for Zen of course. I think she has some more staffs to work on, I hope things go well and that the lag isn't too bad this time. The Tomb of Irises - September 22nd Well, SirDarth's mining at lunchtime got a few stones, as usual - though why there has to be a disconnection just a couple of minutes before food is ready most days is beyond me. Luckily it isn't far to run back from Randol to the mine, though it messes up one's ten-minute timings as one doesn't know how much time is left on a particular heap of ore. But Keerella was really busy today. I get confused with the different types of Iris, but the ones I'm familiar with are the "Platinum Blessed Iris" - I had bought a couple a while ago, which promised an extra 200% experience (i.e treble the experience) for an hour (usual cost 349ap), but MistressDomina has also got a supply that look the same, but their description just says they give an extra 100% (i.e. double) - they came from a "Top Spender" offer where one got a bunch of goodies free when recharging one's aeria points. There is also a regular Blessed Iris which lasts for three hours, but only gives the extra 100% (usual cost 329ap). Anyway, Damor, and Zenderfly, invited Kee to join them in the Tomb on Cariae-1 in the afternoon (well actually it was my turn to pay for admission, so they joined me), and Damor was talking about the possibility of using a three-hour one for Zen during the evening session. And then she asked "Wanna use an Iris" - so, after waiting long enough, I thought, and making sure that it was a suggestion aimed at me, I started one of my one-hour Platinum Blessed Irises. However, belatedly Damor said that she hadn't meant it as a suggestion for that moment, she had meant that she wanted to use one in the evening. Oops! But Damor very kindly went into full-speed action for the following hour - and what's more she logged Zen out so that I would have half the experience, just sharing it with Damor, to play with, rather than just one-third. It might have been safer if Zen had remained, but stayed out of range, so that if I'd had a disconnection she could have Recalled me back in, but luckily for that hour my connection stayed steady. I started off at halfway through level 71, so, with the help of the "PBI" I managed to reach level 72, and once the "treble time" had ended was able to beam back to Randol and get level seven of Secret Study, a handy passive skill which increases a mage's attack. An extra 6 to magical attack in exchange for 324 skill points seems a bit expensive, but it all helps. Shortly before four o'clock an archer called Storm95 appeared, and at once began to KS, or "kill steal", attacking the Screaming Zombie that we were dealing with. When Damor asked her not to KS, she replied that she needed the experience, which may be true, but it doesn't really excuse stealing other people's points. Not a good tactic on a PvP-enabled server like Cariae-1! Zenderfly activated Recall, and both Damor and I used it, moving to Zen and breaking aggro with the zombie - which now, naturally enough, turned its ire on its one remaining attacker, who had to run for it very quickly. So we killed that zombie, and continued - but she returned and KS'd us again, and this time it was three of four zombies that chased after her, but she still didn't get the hint - she did in fact at one stage ask to party with us, but I suspect that she wouldn't have been high enough level to share a party with Damor. Damor did finally go into PvP mode, with the ominous symbol appearing alongside her name... but I don't think she was quick enough with the Curse hex to do any great damage, and Storm95 left the Tomb. She didn't get much out of her admission fee. After the food break, I moved three of the other PBIs over from MistressDomina, and got Recalled into the Tomb again. Zen started a three-hour Blessed Iris (they are perhaps better value, as you get three bonus hours' worth of experience, rather than a PBI's two - and one isn't going to have an Iris active for every hour one's playing, that would get rather expensive), and I started the first of my three - with Damor telling me that the "extra 100%" description is a "known issue", and that they do, like other PBIs, in fact give the full extra 200%. I don't know what it is about using such boosts, but, as has happened a time or two before, I lost my connection, and, as they count down even if one isn't in-game, that was a rather frustrating ten minutes or so before I could finally get the connection to work again. It's well-known that using speed boosts, either legitimate or "hacks", increases the risk of a disconnection, maybe the same applies to experience boosts? Luckily the following two hours went more smoothly, though DarkPulse101 did report that the Grand Red Dragon was in sight among the Butchers on Cariae-3's Merac, so Damor left the Tomb to go off and team with her - or with him rather, as "DP" changed over, on Damor's advice, to his Captianjack knight. It seemed to take a little while to track the GRD down, but they did manage to kill it...apparently Cap didn't manage to land the killing blow, though, which would have greatly boosted their chance of some useful drops. Since both Zen and I had got an Iris running, I kept fighting the Screaming Zombies while Damor was away, being a bit more careful about my health and the size of pots I used - and I got through quite a few healing pots! Luckily Zen was able to assist me for most of the time; working on both computers at once with Zen fighting in the Tomb and Damor running through Merac can't have been easy, but it made all the difference. It wasn't as quick as when Damor was there, but we only had to split the experience two ways. To make up for her absence, when she returned, after the inevitable "send error report?" crash, Damor cracked open a Mana Stealer, which, by sucking the blue stuff out of the zombies, greatly increased her supply of mana, meaning she could use lots more skills - including Chaos Nova, which, though it temporarily increases the attack power of critters in range by 70%, does hit them all for 560% more damage than a normal strike. And it looks impressive in action too. So, Our kill rate increased, meaning we all got more experience. I must report that Damor did allow her health bar to get too low once, while thinking about Damor's and my future mage staffs - a use of the Recall I'd put up was too late to save her from dying, though with very few skill points carried, she lost only a little experience. One Anubis Spear Man, plus experience booster, should clear that away easily enough, and more. When my third one-hour Iris, and Zen's three-hour one, had expired, we called it a night. Since I'd had, except for that disconnection, eight bonus hours from my four PBIs, compared to Zen's three bonus hours (and missing afternoon hour), I've temporarily moved back ahead of her now - she still needs almost 30% to reach level 73, while I'm almost 40% into it - a total experience gain on the day of 189.28%, I make it! 3296 pet points has helped my drake to get past halfway through his level, too. At level 73 I could use a new staff, if I had one - but to be better than my current level 69 +15 one it would need to be +15 too, so I may stick with the current weapon a while yet, unless Damor can find anything. It's a shame that Collector Ryl can't transform weapons and armour from above level 69, but if he could it would mess up the seals on items, which are where the main interest lies. Once I reach level 75, I can start putting on the next armour set; well, gloves are a start, right...? Zen Takes the Lead - September 23rd Enchantrella did a little herb-gathering over the second half of my lunch break, mainly to check how the connection was, and then, since Zenderfly and Damor were both online, it seemed time to get in touch with them - the instruction from them was for me to register (for a party) on Cariae-1, so that was what Kee did, since I doubt if Enchie's level 27 skills would have been much use down in the Tomb of Theos. I was slightly later to start actively playing than sometimes as I had decided to telephone a local firm and order a new computer, so fingers crossed that I can get that next week. When I arrived, after as usual a last-minute application of horse buffs to get me off to a good start, the never-ending battle against the Screaming Zombies had already begun, with a level 77 archer friend of Damor's, Avarielle, also in the party, presumably saving Damor a small fortune in health potions. She didn't stay long, however, as somebody else needed her assistance. So, we settled into the usual routine. The Tomb entrance area was as quiet as before, for most of the time; we did share it for a little while with a level 74 rogue called nielsbm2 - when she first arrived Damor and she must have targetted the same zombie at the same time, causing Damor to go ":s", an emoticon of, well, a twisted lip indicating dislike I guess, followed by "or sry". The afternoon was not one of our longest stints down there; Zen did lose her connection once, and then had a "send error message" when she tried to teleport back in, so she missed out on a couple of minutes of experience there - I lost my connection once too, but got back fairly quickly, with nothing more irritating than the "account already logged in" message on my first relogging attempt, though Zen's Recall got me too far into the corridor's side wall, and I was stuck, so had to ask her to move away a little and use Recall again. Damor had suggested that using Transformation might have freed me, but it didn't seem to do anything. Zenderfly did reach level 73 right at the end of the session, which stopped just after four as she was getting rather hungry. Damor's pet horse was about to level up at the end too - with 190 pet points to go it was down to about 5 on the red health bar, and rather than have any herbs off me Damor was determined to get it levelled up without any help, as the health bar then returns to 100. So, a more than slight risk of the pet getting attacked by a zombie, but the horse did level up safely - it reached level 41, and Damor was able to sell it quickly for 50 million in gold. Tomorrow morning there will be new things in the Item Mall after the maintenance time, and Damor was asking me to log in then, as there may be things in the new Mall that she will want to get - rumour has it that the mysterious new fighting pets may be buyable, and armour for them too... After the food break Zen wasn't sure how the evening would go, so SirDarth and Karella went off to Prokion Temple - but after only 20 minutes Zen called to say that she'd got a party for the Tomb again, with some lower level people and a larger party so the experience gain wouldn't be as good. Still, any Tomb experience is useful, so I changed back to Kee, moved to Cariae-4, and joined in, to find the level 60 rogue Tempete and the level 63 archer Sweetlove teamed with Zen. The experience wasn't bad by any means - Tempete levelled up, as did the cleric ENVYXX who took over healing duties from Sweetlove fairly soon. And when she had to leave, well, there was a little gap again but then Sweetlove returned. I did manage to die once, in a healer-less gap when too many zombies got involved, so that's another resurrection scroll used. Damor loaned me her level 73 +15 Eres' Yolia staff briefly - an extra 166 to its magical attack, compared to my level 69 one! She needed it back later though, as Whoslady2, who at level 63 was using our party to solo-party in Egeha on the Bogles, reported the arrival of the Grand Gold Dragon, so Damor went off to help her kill it. Damor did die once, we could tell from the dialogue, but they killed the GGD and the Cursed Weavers it spawned. There was no special accessory among the drops, apparently the only good items were 5 Lucky Scrolls. I'd been warned to log out for a while to rest up before an intense hour of levelling action from 9 to 10, so as it was already 8:30, it was time to go, and work on this blog a bit. And wonder what Damor had planned, that I'd need to be keen and fresh for! In the event, it took until 10:30, as it took a little while to set up - with Escadalia and Chelseathehealer, I was helping Zenderfly to "power level" on the level 106 Anubis Spear Man boss monsters, who give almost 19 million experience each. With an hour-long times-three Iris, and individual experience boosters, Zen went up from not far into level 73 to more than halfway through level 78! Chels would attack the Spear Man first, we'd all join in - and Esca and I would both put a Recall up, so that when the Spear Man's health bar was below 10%, we'd all take a Recall, except Zen, who'd finish off the Spear Man and scoop all the experience, without us having to physically leave the area. There were a few times when someone didn't take a Recall fast enough, or it wasn't there in the first place, so I probably got about 3%, but it was fun...and I got a Glowworm for my bug collecting box, which, after I'd thrown out a lesser insect to make room for it, got me up to 88 points, enough for five moonstones, so I cashed the box in. That event may end today...it may possibly go on another week, but if so I can start a new box. Putting up the Recall wasn't entirely simple, especially so late at night by my standards - if Esca's "you've recieved" window popped up just as I was clicking the "do you want to?" window, things got complicated. But Zen was happy with the results, although she forgot to use a booster a few times. At this rate she'll soon overtake Damor... Anyway, I went up by 40.21% experience today, and added 2858 pet points - while Darth got 16 skill points, and Karella got 15, for their brief visit to Prokion Temple. Kee ought to at least reach level 74 tomorrow, though it's likely to be one of my "log out early" evenings. Unlike this one... Kaerella Steps Out - September 24th I switched the upstairs computer on as soon as I woke up, and got Last Chaos updating and running as soon as it woke up - it takes a bit longer to get active in the morning than I do, for sure! It was about ten past eight by the time that I materialised in Randol, and I wasted no time in opening the "Item Mall" window - but there was no sign of any new pets, or armour for them, this week. I expect that Zenderfly had already logged in, found that out, and logged out again, there was no reason to hang about. Strangely, the sale packs of 100 experience boosters at 1199ap had already sold out - but the "pocket lint" sale price packs, also of 100, at 899ap hadn't run out at that stage, there were 84 of them left. Or, after I bought one, 83. Needless to say, those remaining supplies didn't last much longer. One thing of interest is that a pack of 5 "Bonus Books of Melding" is on special offer, for melding a "vanity costume" like the new "wild west" ones to your ordinary armour for 30 days, giving it a new look, and an extra bonus of +1 to +3 per piece... instead of 125ap per book, you get all five that you'd need for 199ap. It makes the idea of giving a character a western look, and an armour boost, very tempting, though I've still not actually seen what the mage version looks like. More like a bikini than something suitable for horse-riding, apparently! While Damor was online in the afternoon, whatever she was doing didn't seem to be exciting her much - and her plans for Damor and Zenderfly didn't include any Tomb raiding that Keerella could get involved in. So, after setting up a "solo party" with SirDarth, who was faithfully mining in Juno, it was Kaerella who headed out to gain some skill exp - not to the Blood Frenzies this time, but down to the second level of Maargadum Jail. There was some idle conversation with Sheele and Damor, but, I don't know. maybe Damor wasn't concentrating, or maybe she was on Cariae-6 with its roleplaying ethos, but you'd never have thought that she knew that Kaerella and Keerella are both, well, me! Sheele picked up a level 85 armour drop in the Tomb, and within moments of my "gratz" response, I got the Hand that includes not just three Potions of Haste (value: 200g each), but a Heaven Stone (value: a bit more!); I was getting some reasonable drops, with three Moonstone boxes in fairly quick succession, and I commented that while the Tomb is great for experience, it's not a place to go to for its drops, which are pretty infrequent compared to farming Egeha's Bogles, and that in fact my level 42 character was getting better drops in the Jail. Damor's response seemed to be, how could I know that Tomb drops were poor? Anyway, I continued to get some useful Hands - the one with an Item Drop Booster and a Skill Exp Booster, a couple with a Large Attack Potion, and one with a Large Defence Potion...and I also got two pairs of level 37 boots. What surprised me, when I looked at the boots in my inventory, was that both the mage Chaos Boots and the rogue Nataya Shoes were already plussed - they were both +3. Perhaps one of the Two-Headed Canines in the room to the left as when goes into the second Jail level is a part-time secret boss or something? After the food break I went back to the Jail; my intention had been to freeze Kae's experience gain at the top of level 42, but I was chatting with Zenderfly at the time, and didn't notice my score until I actually levelled up. Still, it probably isn't a bad idea to keep going, even if rounding up Blood Frenzies is a bit less practical now. If Kae goes through the whole of level 42 in the Jail she ought to gain a useful stock of skill points. Zen was saying that she had helped Avarielle to power levelle, er, level in the morning, and was intending to have another go herself later: "I'm hoping for 82", she said. That would be happening after eight o'clock, as that was when she expected Chelseathehealer to log in, a vital member of the team, and as from that time I wouldn't be available, sigh, she was now short of one damage dealer. But she has plenty of friends on her list, I'm sure she found someone higher level than Kee to take over that duty. I was wondering if the party, apart from the beneficiary of the power levelling, does actually need two members, with Recall. The way we were playing last night I needed to be recalled by Esca, and Esca needed to be recalled by me, while Chels could be recalled by either of us... we'd all thus forfeit our claim to any experience from the soon-to-be kill, leaving it all for Zen. But Zen has Recall too, couldn't she just use it to recall us all, and then swiftly leave the party? Hmm, maybe that is a lot to do in the final stages of each kill! She'd set the recall up early in each fight of course, but I suppose she'd have to wait until all party members had teleported to her before clicking "leave party"...so not really practical I suppose. Well, Kaerella did level up for the first time in, well, ages - 9.73% was her experience gain, and 51 skill points, so slogging through the whole level ought to bring in another 500 or so skill points. At level 44 Kae will be able to learn the skill Dispel, which removes all harmful effects, such as Stun, Poison, or the Strayana Collywobbles, from a player. It only has the single level, thankfully, taking 250 skill points...which is one less point than Kae now has. More skill points will be required later, of course, so Kae's future is strictly skill point farming for quite a while. Sphinx Commanders - September 25th Barbarienne had a little sortie to Prokion Temple in the morning; what started as a solo party changed into a team-up, since one of the members, a knight, joined me in the early part of the ground floor there, and recruited a titan friend of his too. This would have been fine if they'd kept with the monsters of about our level, or even lured an occasional Orc Sergeant from the next room, but those orcs had different ideas, and a whole mob of them came down on us. I might have been okay if I'd managed to type in my "low on mana" warning the first time, but, wouldn't you know it, someone applied to join the party at that moment (by that stage I'd inherited party leadership from its founder), and by the time I'd finished typing it in properly, I was ever so slightly dead. We continued for a little while - I hope that my two companions were okay, but I got a disconnection, so they were left to it... and when I respawned in Randol I had about 150 health left. So, not the perfect session, but it got Barbarienne up to level 22, and the whole of her new set of armour...and it got her enough skill points to get the fifth level of Party Heal. If when I get the new computer, not an especially powerful "games beast" but one of the new range of moderately priced ones that can play current games, I can keep the older one running alongside it, it's possible that Barbarienne might find herself "doing an Itura", ie locked onto a higher-level character of mine and keeping her healed, but for that she'll need some more levels, and more skills. After the disconnection, I did private-message the only party member whose name I remembered, PhelanWard (at level 90 not himself in Prokion) asking him to pass on my apologies for the "dc", but unfortunately he'd had to leave the party too. Once the new skill had been acquired, Barbarienne then went off to use up an energy collector, and, after switching to the older computer, spent most of the afternoon busy collecting energy. Enchantrella tried a little herb farming downstairs, but after a couple of disconnections gave up on that. Once lunch was over, Kaerella headed back to Maargadum Jail - but Zenderfly logged on as she was on the way there, to say she was arranging a Tomb party for about ten minutes' time, so Kae's time with the Two Headed Canines, Beast Archers etc on level two of the Jail was a bit limited. Just as Zen passed the word that it was time for Kee, a canine dropped a Heaven Stone, so I'm glad she wasn't any quicker. It was Damor who opened trading with Kee - she had found me a green five-seal evasion-type circlet, and blue five-seal evasion pants, so that's Kee's next armour set sorted. The cost for the two items was 50 million, which seems pretty good to me. Damor also lent me her +15 level 73 staff again, and passed a similarly-uber witch's wand across, for me to pass on to Zenderfly. Green items aren't quite as good as blue ones, about 80% as evasive I'd say, so replacing the green boots and circlet with blue ones is still a temptation, at the right price. The initial idea was to go into the Tomb of Theos, but Zen, when she got to the doorkeeper there, found that the "poll" was at its worst - low power for us, and high power for the monsters. She showed me the very simple way to discover how conditions were inside, just open the dialogue with the doorkeeper, and click the appropriate option, rather than asking to be sent inside, and study the two bars shown. So instead, we went off to Egeha - as I was a level or two higher than on my last visit, I was able to collect a couple of new quests, and even complete a couple too, which gave a little under 1% experience each. We fought a few level 78 Little Scorpionmantises, which of course were just the right level for Zen now, and not too hard for me; we even fought a pair of Boucu Demons. But before long Zen checked on the Tomb conditions again, and found them much improved, so off we went. There seems a lot more to that place than the couple of locations we have usually gone to - Zen had a long run to get to the place she wanted to go, and used Recall on me a couple of times to "save her progress", which was lucky as she did get a disconnection at one point, leaving me safely tucked into a wall as level 108 Anubis Occulists wandered around close by. I did get a glimpse of a large, reptilian flapping wing a little later, which I assume belonged to the big level 110 Darkmind Terrain boss - Zen ran past it to get to a circular hall, and Recalled me in. The level 82 archer Avarielle joined us, and before long Escadalia, currently level 87, joined us too. The targets in that hall were the level 109 Sphinx Commanders, boss monsters with 22,089.028 experience each - and our aim was to "power level" Zen, as they hadn't done such a session last night after I logged off. As I was speculating, just having Zen use Recall was our strategy this time - she didn't even have to leave the party, with her Iris and using Experience Boosters, she was getting around 300 million experience a kill, so in the hour managed to level up not just to 81, but to 83, showing that these guys, though they are bigger and tougher, are better for power levelling than the Sphinx Spear Men. Taking Recall and being in the same party as Zen meant that we too got some experience, roughly what we'd have got from a Screaming Zombie, say about 2 million each, and we shared in the loot too. Including Egeha and its quests, I went up 10.16% before the food break. Well, it all helps! After the break, things were a bit bitty. Zen had gone to Egeha, in Cariae-1, thanks to Escadalia's Recall, and asked if I wanted to go there, so off I went - seeing that I was strolling around rather aimlessly, Zen kindly used Recall to get me to the Baby Apes, which are my level, though she cautioned me to return to town if their "Mother" attacked me, since she takes a long time to kill. I did kill a few of them, but then I got a disconnection, just as I was wondering if it was a good idea to add the location to my memorising scroll. It didn't take long to get back - but saying "reg'd" on the guild channel, after I'd registered myself as seeking a party, didn't get me very far, as Zen had also vanished. I called up Esca, though - she cautioned me she was in Lust Trum Tower itself, and I should be prepared to get out of there quickly, so I was ready to use a Scroll of Recall to get me into the safety of Egeha Village...just as well, it looked a bit above my level in there. I headed out of town again, and managed to find the large pond where the Apes were - though there were a few Assassinbugs between me and the water, so after killing a couple of the Males, and one of the boss-type Females, I headed a little way further along the road, where there was a quest to be completed - and a new quest given, which involved killing those bugs. Unfortunately after the first two I got some weird lag trouble, and finally had to log out. Not wanting to bother Esca again, or get taken inside Lust Trum, I decided that maybe it was time for a different character who'd not have so much trouble if a disconnection came along. Kee's total experience gain for the day was 11.02%, plus 773 pet points and 5 skill points in all. So, Kaerella hurried off to level two of Maargadum Jail again, in good old Cariae-3 - and got three more Heaven Stones, in the same place as before! I even let my drake, SirFrancis, out to assist, though he did get nibbled at a bit by the canines; 863 pet points moves him on a bit, anyway, while 3.37% experience meant 20 skill points. I managed to avoid any disconnections, and kept going until my usual logging off time, unlike Zen, who had got a bit bored, and logged out early. After all those levelling-ups, and fighting the Sphinx Commanders, almost anything else was an anticlimax I guess. Directly to Jail - September 26th It seemed such a long time since Leo had been in action, that this morning he got a Pan Flute out of storage, visited Lorraine, and headed to Dratan City to exchange it for a brand-new baby pony. I had originally been told that a pet levelling knight needed the armour buff that a pet gives - maybe ten levels of it - before he could safely be left to do his work, and normally it has been a pony that another of my characters has raised for at least a few levels that Leo has taken on, but this time Leo teleported straight to "Treant Central" and got right to work there with the level one pony. There was a disconnection after only a few minutes, which isn't surprising as it wasn't long after 11:30 in the morning, UK time, but after returning things settled down - and Leo, level 22 with +5 armour and shield, had absolutely no difficulty fighting four Treants at once without his pet having any levels of what they so quaintly call "Amor increase [horse]" to increase his resistance. As usual, Leo took the Animal Trainer's window with him, which usefully stays open when teleporting using a Scroll of Memorizing, or when the pet is temporarily unequipped, and so was able to add levels of the buff as the pony levelled up. Things went pretty smoothly, though it was necessary to check on progress every half hour, at least, as sometimes the Treant targetted will die, or even lose interest and wander off. After lunch, it was Kaerella who logged in, since she was wearing the three Pierce of Wind accessories - though when I looked at somebody close to me who was in merchant mode, and saw a pair of level 36 sorcerer pants +4 for only 130,000 gold, I swiftly changed to Darth and bought them, then went to Collector Ryl and, for a further 43,250 gold, changed them into the knight type. So Darth has upgraded from his old +3 Glorious Leggings to +4, for rather less than the cost of a lucky smelting stone...new bloodseals will need to be applied, of course, which adds an extra 3,000 to the budget. After that diversion, it was back to Kae, and a swift trip out to Maargadum Jail; the afternoon there was slightly shorter than I'd planned as I got a disconnection at around 3:10, and, with the Happy Hour coming up at 4:00, it was nearly time for an early break. So that was only 3.26% more experience, 713 pet points, and 19 skill points. Despite the early break I missed the first few minutes of the Happy Hour, which was a generous double experience and double skill exp - and when I did reach the Jail, I got disconnected just as I was about to dismount and go in. Hopefully the new computer, due soon, may cut down on that sort of thing, I suspect that the networking abilities of the six-year-old machine are starting to go just a little bit flakey. Still, once I was in there, Kae got to work on the Beast Archers, Dire Spike Canines, and Two Headed Canines down on level two, and the double rewards meant that things moved along a bit faster than usual - though, as usual recently, the event was abruptly cut off after exactly two hours, no generous over-running for us this time. Although Sheele had been on earlier, I was the only Norcaine member who was online for the Happy Hour; Zenderfly logged on shortly after, and asked if Damor could have that level 73 +15 wizard's staff back when convenient... I said fine, which server should we meet on, but she said "gemme a few", which I assumed meant "give me a few minutes", and logged out again. Apparently Damor, even though she is level 86, doesn't have a higher-level staff than that - I suppose that one or two "upgrade probability event" failures would account for the lack of anything better, if her luck had been different a level 77, 81 or 85 staff might well have reached +15. It was almost an hour later when Zen returned - I changed to Kee to pass the staff to her, though as it's Damor who uses it, I don't know why Zen should wish to carry it. She didn't stay around - at least, maybe Damor was on, but the guild channel was quite dead. Kaerella continued in the Jail; it wasn't long before my log-out time when Zeratus logged in, he has the same kind of problem that Kee has really, a difficult level to find appropriate monsters at, maybe we can Tomb-team some time. CloneDeep logged on too. Zeratus had been busy playing the Hungarian version of Tribal Wars, which apparently is one of those "defend a village" real time strategy games, a genre which has never appealed to me. I mentioned that the Hallowe'en event was probably going to start soon, and CD confirmed that it was a rather fun time. The lastest Aeria Newsletter has some details of what we are to expect. It was great to hear from Zer again, I hope he does come back to Last Chaos regularly. Well, Leo kept busy throughout the day, though he occasionally lost the Treant he'd been targetting; only once was that because he killed it, the others just vanished, but it's not far to get more if needed. With any luck his pony will reach level 10 before he logs out for the night, which is a good start. As for Kae, well in all today she went up by 18.53% in experience, 3059 pet points, and 108 skill points. The Jail monsters are still dropping plussed items - yesterday it was a +2 level 42 mage circlet, the unusually-named "Moon Ornament", and today I got a level 37 Spirit Bow +3 - and just one Heaven Stone, making 130 that I've got tucked away in storage. New Computer - September 27th Well, Leo went out in the morning and got the pony up by a level or two - but I got a phone call that my new computer was ready for collection, so had to sign out after lunch, and go off to pick it up. For those who know more about this sort of thing than I do, let me say that it's got an nVidia GeForce 9600GT 512Mb PCI-Express Graphics card, an Intel Core2Duo E8400 LGA775 Processor, 4GB of memory, and a rather good-looking LG Electronics L225WT 22" WideScreen TFT LCD Monitor. It has Logitech X-240 2.1 Channel Speakers with Subwoofer, too, though I've not yet managed to get any sound out of that part of things... Installing Last Chaos was a bit of a pain - the recent build of it I'd used to re-install on my downstairs computer installed, but the updating stopped at 15/27, however many times I tried, with dire comments about "Laghaim MFC", so at DarkPulse101's suggestion I downloaded a different copy of the client from a site called "onrpg" I think - a rather older build, as it had about 300 updates to install! However, the updates did all install, though they took a while. I'd logged on on the older, or now oldest, computer by then, which is how DP was able to advise me - SirDarth had headed out to Prokion Temple, so when Karella logged on on the new computer, I was able to Recall her to join him in the Orc Sergeants (and Axemen) room. Zenderfly logged on too, so we were able to discuss things while I fought - mainly how slow Kee is at fighting, Zen seemed to think that she'd have managed a good few more Sphinx Commanders in her most recent power-levelling hour if I'd ignored the drops and used Terra Spear more. Fair comment I guess, Kee isn't the fastest fighter, and I do tend to make a point of picking up even minor drops, using my drake of course. In that team, with a rogue and an archer as well as Zen and Kee, Kee isn't the target-chooser, she's the heavy artillery at the back, so once Escadalia or Avarielle had attracted our next victim, I had to lock on to the correct target - and the way things work, the earliest hit, or Sloth maybe, does a lot of damage, so the Commander tends to be down to 70% by the time I can attack. There are a limited number of times I can use Terra Spear before there's a danger, say at 25%, that another use of it will take the Commander's health down too low, before we can take Recall... and I don't know about other people, but I need to move the "take recall" window that pops up down from the middle... Still, I'll try to do better next time; I think Zen was saying actually that the next time it would be my turn to be power-levelled, which seems logical as otherwise there would be a risk of her getting more than 15 levels ahead of me, which would slightly mess up the party if it happened maybe 40 minutes into Zen's hour. Quite rightly Zen was saying that I ought to supply other people's pots for such an endeavour - well I don't know if she means a supply of medium mana potions from Strayana, but I'd be happy enough to hand round mana stealers or stuff like that if people wanted them, while using the experience boosters and Iris myself. A few new levels would be really nice, indeed, and well worth using a few Mall items for. Talking about the Item Mall, it seems that there will be some astonishing bargains next week, after server maintenance - and also a special deal for first-time buyers too. I must investigate. Well, rather limited playing time today, it takes surprisingly long to put the bits of a new computer together, get connected, etc - and the website construction tool didn't seem to want to work with Vista, so it's just lucky that I could still get this old machine connected to the internet as well. SirDarth and Karella did, at least, add around 47 skill points each! Full Screen Fighting - September 28th It's rather handy to have two computers next to one another. I'm still struggling to master the intricacies of the new machine, but at least I found the button to turn the sound on. Hitting the keyboard's "F Lock" button solved a little issue with the F1 to F12 keys not working... now if I could only make the Last Chaos window a little smaller, so that I could do the other things as well that I'm used to doing, that would be another step forward. At the moment the 1152 by 864 LC window fills up the whole 1680 by 1050 pixels screen, I had to change to tool bar to allow other windows to go on top of it to be able to see the icons and text typing line... Leo meanwhile has been hard at work levelling up his pony, from 11 onwards - looking across from typing the first draft of this on the new computer, I can see him hard at work, though I got too busy playing this afternoon to keep track, and he did waste some time just standing there without a target. I don't know what happened to that third Treant, if I'd killed him I'd have got some experience and skill exp, but there is no entry for that. Kaerella started the afternoon by heading for Maargadum Jail, but had only just started killing the Two Headed Canines and their friends when Damor came online with a message - there was a power-levelling group just starting in the Tomb, and would I like to join? So, I changed servers, and switched to Kee, and took the Recall, joining KillOnSyte (level 92 rogue), the archer Avarielle, for whose benefit we were labouring, and a fine assortment of wizards - ShAdy (level 90), Damor (level 86), and ArtemisiA, also level 86 and a member of the Castle-owning "Coalition" guild. Which made me, at level 73, very much the junior member, but with the Recalls and the Combat party set-up, it didn't apparently matter that I was more than 15 levels below our top member. I tried to use Terra Spear a bit more, and be a bit less obvious when I sent Greedo to pick up the cash, and the hour went pretty well - I think Avarielle did die once, and there was one occasion when I got my health knocked down to around 50%, but generally the Sphinx Commander room seems less liable to lead to accidents, once someone has got there, than the Anubis Spear Man room, where the Sphinx Fighters can sometimes get a bit aggressive.. I did actually go up by 0.32% in experience, most kills gave us a small reward and maybe there was a time or two when Recall wasn't given in time. No skill exp of course, but 507 pet points got earned. Avarielle seemed happy with the results of the hour, I assume she went up four or five levels. Soon after that it was time for a slightly early food break - early because the Sunday "Happy Hour" was due to start at five, with 50% extra experience and 100% extra skill exp. I got back very nearly in time for the start, I might have made it if a new guildie hadn't wanted to be frozen on level 17, which meant I had to quickly switch to SirDarth to make him donate 100% of his experience to the guild. Kae was at the Jail pretty quickly, though - Damor did offer to give Kee a lift to Egeha, but that wouldn't have been for a team-up, so it seemed to me that Kae was as deserving of the skill exp boost...and as Kae was already on the job, she ought to continue. I was chatting with an old name from Kae's friends list, Rikie, who'd been away from LC for a while, talking about how the newly boosted orcs in Prokion Temple gave excellent skill exp now, so at level 33 a freeze would be a good idea as that was really the last level at which Orc Sergeants gave good amounts of it... and then Rikie reported the arrival of the Grand Red Dragon. I passed the news along to the guild channel, and Damor responded with "brt", for "be right there", a message I passed to Rikie, who gave me the coordinates, which I passed on. I was assuming the two of them would team up, but in fact Rikie died and logged out, and Damor sent Itura, as she is a more appropriate level for the GRD. I was continuing in the Jail, not realising that the coordinates Rikie had given were almost directly outside - but Itura asked me to team up, and go out and join her, and within seconds of appearing outside, I was on the scene - and able to apply Horse Buffs, and use Greater Heal on Itu at what seemed to me a rather useful moment. A nearby titan had nearly spoiled things by giving Itu a buff, not realising that outside influences like that can mess up the drops - following Itura's instructions I attacked the GRD too, and then used "pet return to village" while mounted to make sure that Itu delivered the final blow. And it worked beautifully, as well as the usual minor drops like Lucky Scrolls, a Medal of Honour, Tool Aids and Moonstones, she was able to pick up an "Eyes of Spirit" accessory, which she reckons is worth about 100 to 120 million. Damor will start a forum thread to see what price she can get offered for the "EoS", and then, for my part in things, sell it to me at half that price. Long range physical hit rate 168, close range evasion 78, and +44 to both health and mana make it a very useful item for a bow-wielding rogue or archer, so Karella is liable to have the use of it... though there is always the possibility that Kae might convert from cleric to archer at some stage and be glad of it too! Kae went back in to the Jail after that, and continued fighting the canines; the event ended promptly, without a minute of overtime at seven, though Kae continued a little longer. In the end, Kae had gone up by 7.91%, 1087 pet points, and 60 skill points, and got one more Heaven Stone too. After that there was a meeting between Kee and Damor, with a few items to transfer between her characters and talk about Kee's future strategy - Itura passed over the "EoS" too, which I'll need to identify before Karella can use it - I think MistressDomina has a couple of golden magnifying glasses still. It looks as if Kee will have one hour of power-levelling, hopefully taking her to level 78, probably just with Damor and Avarielle. Then, Kee will be able to wear her new evasion-based armour...and might be able to find a level 77 staff, perhaps. I think Damor said that Kee will be doing a lot of fighting of Weavers... I was trying to persuade her that, even if Zen wouldn't get a great deal of use out of a 30-day Recall card, it was still better to buy an Egeha package for 599ap, rather than three 3-hour cards for a total of 147ap, as the 5 resurrection scrolls alone in the package are worth 495ap, plus there are other useful things, such as attack, defence, and healing potions. Damor may buy a package or two from me, or from Escadalia, depending on who gives her the best deal. There was a spare hour before the Sunday Evening Quiz - and after making sure to remind Damor that it was "Dolph" not "Dalph", I switched to Karella, and headed for Prokion Temple. Unlike SirDarth, she does have to use a few health potions, but she probably gains skill points a bit faster, and added 57 in well under an hour. The only annoying bit was when I'd filled my inventory, and a Heaven Stone dropped - by the time I'd finished fighting the current orc, and dropped a partly-used energy collector to make room, a passing knight had stolen it, sigh.... And then it was time to get ready for the Quiz; we had agreed to meet in Cariae-5, so Kee joined Zenderfly, Damor, and Itura there; I brought MistressDomina with me. Things went fairly smoothly, with most of us clicked on to Damor as our "guiding spirit"; it seemed appropriate that the fifteenth question, the one which awards 10 Moonstones if you get it right, asked how many types of Moonstone there are now - five, two better and two worse than the regular ones. Unfortunately MistressDomina had been clicked onto Kee, and wasn't quite fast enough on about question three, she was still on the dividing carpet, rather than the bare "X" or "O" sides, when the countdown ended, and respawned back in town. So I ended with 15 Heaven Stones rather than double that number. Well, that just meant a little longer for Leo to go back to his pet levelling - the pony reached level 16 earlier and became officially a horse, large and well-muscled rather than a plump little pony, and by the end of the evening had reached level 17. The early days of pet levelling are the easiest of course, once the horse is a higher level than Leo it starts to get through the stones that stave off its hunger at what becomes an alarming rate. A Pair of Plus Fours - September 29th After I finished transferring various bits of loot across to MistressDomina, Leo was able to go out to the western hills of Juno and start on the pet training again - and he did a good job of it, with a little supervision. He was also able to team up in a solo party when needed, which is handier than trying to join an existing party and finding someone else too close or something. With still bits of file transfer and general configuration to be done on my shiny new computer, I was a little later than usual in getting Kaerella out to Maargadum Jail, though it does now seem a much friendlier place than I used to find it when Kae was ten levels lower. The ground floor may be crowded, with a lot of aggressive canines, but the next floor down, ah well that's another storey. So, Kaerella was able to slog away on the Two Headed Canines and their friends all afternoon, gaining 6.37% experience, 1237 pet points, and, more importantly, 36 skill points. The guild channel was quiet, and I only saw two or three other players down there. The evening session was more of the same, mainly - as Damor wasn't around, the option of playing Kee didn't really arise, and it's good to get Kaerella up to a slightly more useful level, particularly if I can get her some more skill points along the way. However, the evening was rather marred by a brief visit from Damor, which consisted mainly of "GRRRRRR" on the guild channel, apparently aimed at me. She also said I owed her 65 million, which I took to mean that someone had offered twice that on the Last Chaos forums for the "Eyes of Spirit" Itura had got recently, with a little bit of help from Kae...but checking the forum thread, where Damor's name is Test45, there is still only the one offer visible, of 95 million. She asked me how much I'd charge her for a strange cover for a mage staff, and a bonus book of melding, both Mall items - I'd got as far as saying that the former was 99ap, and the latter was 125ap for one, but that there was a sale offer this week of five for 199ap, when Damor just said "never mind" (or "nvm"), and that was just about the last thing she did say. I asked if there was a problem, but while she said "yes", she didn't say any more. So, what it was all about I don't know; Kee is rather waiting for her hour of power-levelling now, unless Damor advises me to take a trip or two to Egeha, and that, as I understand it, rather relies on me getting a lift from her anyway. So I'm passing the time grinding away on Kaerella, which seems a relatively useful way to spend the time... though my rogue Karella may want to try out using that Eyes of Spirit tomorrow now that I've used a golden magnifying glass to unlock its stats. There weren't many drops in the Jail, but I did get two Hands of the Guard, the ones with an Item Drop Booster and a Skill Point Booster, plus a couple of ToolAids, in them, six Moonstone Boxes - and one weapon and one piece of armour, both of which surprised me by being +4... I thought ready-plussed items tended not to go above +3, but I'm now the owner of a mage's Allunin Skirt +4, and a titan's Hercules Great Sword +4 - both level 41 items. Kae has previously picked up a Moon Ornament +2, and Chaos Boots, Nataya Shoes, and a Spirit Bow, all +3, down there, but this was the first time things had reached +4, which is rather more useful - you can't get an item that far using regular smelting stones or Heaven Stones without a risk of it breaking. I solo-teamed with DarkPulse101 for a while; she was talking earlier to another mage in Prokion Temple who turned out to be another newer character of the healer Stanislav, who used to be in Norcaine a while back. DP is looking forward rather anxiously to the "power level" that Damor has promised her, I hope that goes well, when the time is right. Anyway, Kaerella added a total of 15.63% experience today, so it won't be long before she is, at least, halfway through level 43. 2935 pet points means that her drake SirFrancis is getting towards the top end of level 39 - only 1965 more points to go. Oh, and the reason for the slog, an extra 88 skill points, which has to mean that it has been a productive day. Leo kept on with the pet training, and the horse is well into level 20 now. When he gets to get above Leo's own level of 22, and starts to devour quality stones rather quickly, I think I'll experiment with passing him over to SirDarth, at level 33, and see if he can do some less stone-expensive levelling on level 34 Berserkers, or maybe level 36 Gnolls. Return To Egeha - September 30th Leo went out pet training, and did his usual good job - it wasn't too long before the horse reached level 21, and then it was only early afternoon when he reached level 22. Treants are strange, sometimes they'll die in about twenty minutes, if I don't change Leo's targetting to another one, and sometimes they'll last for hours. And sometimes they'll just vanish... MistressDomina has a fairly short session selling items in Cariae-1 over lunch, quickly selling out of Large Attack Potions and Candy, but not selling much else, and then it was time for Karella to take delivery of her new Eyes of Spirit accessory, following which Kaerella put the Pierce of Wind trio back into storage - and Keerella took them out, and put them on. I had a vague idea as Kee of going back to the Forgotten Temple, as the critters there are about her level, but decided it would be good to head for Egeha, particularly if that stopped Damor going "GRRRR" at me. I contacted Escadalia, in case she was there, but she was just about to set up as a merchant in Cariae-1 herself. So, for the first time, I actually spent the 800,000 gold necessary to teleport to Egeha in the regular way. I headed out past the Bogles and Dark Bogles in the direction of a new quest-giver shown on the map - Scout Terry. He had a rather strange quest to kill 20 level 76 Azers, for 11,897,876 experience and 206,000 gold - they were very close to him, so there was no problem in killing them, other than their habits of ganging up and using a pretty strong magic attack - but not only did the few I killed before I got to him to take the quest count, he actually gave me my reward before I reached the 20, though the "18/20" style countdown continued afterwards. He then gave me a quest to kill 7 level 78 Little Scorpionmantises, with the caution not to let them surround me, and that gave 12,066,171 experience, plus 225,080 gold - but then he got a little confused, giving me a quest for 20 more of the things - though checking the details in the "Q" Quest window shows that what he actually wants is for me to kill 5 of their big brothers, the (non-Little) Scorpionmantises, which, as they are level 80 boss monsters, and tend to have a few of the Little ones around them, I think I'll leave for a while. After that I went after the Assassinbugs, as requested on a previous visit by Beldam Juriel. The Male ones at level 70 were the ones I needed to kill 20 of, but they tend to be pretty close to the level 72 Female ones, which are, again, boss monsters, and take a while to kill - so with both types protective and aggressive, it would have been a bit too easy to end up with rather too many bugs at once. I seemed to be having to kill almost as many Females as males to get then heads I needed, but at last I was able to head back to the Beldam, killing some more along the way, to get my 12,429,915 experience, and 95,000 gold. She gave me a new quest to get items from Koyemsi, which, luckily, I happen to know have been renamed as Apes! Just as I'd finished talking to her Krokignon passed by, followed by some assorted Assassinbugs, so I was able to say the traditional "Hi Krok" before returning to town. I saw him there later, after he had shaken off his pursuers. By that time I'd definitely moved into profit on the day's adventures, thanks to the cash drops and cash rewards - and there was another quest reward, for some monster killing, waiting back in Egeha Aaron, courtesy of Patriarch Zikil - 8,430,370 experience and 188,000 gold. I'd picked up three "work documents", as high-level manuals are called, plus level 71 rogue Quickbirdrun pants, which Grocer Wein paid 291,564 gold for, and a level 69 sorcerer scythe, which Wein would pay 381,276 for, but maybe I ought to hold on to that in case Damor needs such things to work on next time there's an upgrade probability event. I made a trip out towards the only remaining quest-giver shown on the map, Assistant of Archaeologist Rouin, who is quite close to Lust Trum Tower itself - but when I got there he was surrounded by level 84 Boucu Demons and level 82 boss Skin Walkers, plus close by some level 88 Cursed Weavers - an aggressive and inter-protective bunch! So I think whatever quest that is will need to wait a while longer, I think. A "pet return to village" seemed the best idea. I was solo-partying with Leo (or LeopardKnight, to give him his formal name), and listed the party on the "parties seeking members" roster as Egeha trips - 100k", following Zenderfly's example, and did have two customers - FURIA2, an Egeha regular who hopes to make use of the service again, and a titan called Geiseric, who I think was about level 48. FURIA2 helped him a bit, I was too busy at that point as a guildie was wanting to move some stuff between accounts...it would have been a bit easier if he'd said that was what he wanted to do, I thought it was a bit strange to want to give level 15 and level 6 characters a trip to Egeha... Damor came online during my food break, so my reply to the "Are you in Egeha, Kee?" question was probably a little slow. Damor must have been afk too, as her response didn't come until until a few minutes later, asking for a lift. And she didn't stay around long enough for me to come back to check, and reply, but logged out. Luckily she returned a little later, when I was back at the keyboard, and I was able to to Recall her to Egeha, and also pay her the 65 million for the half-price Eyes of Spirit - she had had a private message via the forum offering 130 million, and Avarielle had agreed that it was about the current going rate. A bit more valuable now than an SoS, then. It was good to have a fairly busy guild chat channel this evening, with ClonedDeep, DarkPulse101, and Damor all active; Damor may have been a little less than a sparkling conversationalist yesterday because she bought a level 85, 5 seal green mage staff, +14, for 250 million, and by adding two Heaven Stones turned it into a +12 - well it could have been worse, but a loss in value like that is enough to ruin anyone's day. We seem to have agreed in principle that I'll sell her occasional Mall items at around 3 million gold to 100 aeria points; Escadalia lets her have things a bit cheaper than that, but Damor doesn't want to over-exploit her generosity. Anyway, I wandered around exploring parts of Egeha, and killing the various Hadeis, Male and Female Assassinbugs, Baby Apes, Azers, and Little Scorpionmantises I came across... and Dark Bogles too, come to that, as they tend to attack you if you don't attack them first. In all today Kee went up 8.74% in experience - and that got her to level 74! 1346 pet points, and 26 skill points, prove that I had a busy day. Leaving aside the 65 million I paid Damor, despite paying to get to Egeha I ended the day up 2.5 million, roughly, and with a number of items not yet sold. Oh, and one Hadeis did kindly drop a Heaven Stone. As for Leo, by signing off time his horse was just past halfway through level 23, so good progress there, too. Maybe SirDarth will take a turn at trying to train up that pet, it would be interesting to see how well he can do that sort of thing. |
Keerella's Blog - stardate September 2008 (2) |
Unbloggishly, here we read from the top down - so the month continues here at the top! |
Various Adventures - September 16th Using her recently acquired skill points, Enchantrella completed her Pharmacy/Alchemy skills, and managed to get the first level of Advanced Mining too - so it seemed logical to send her out to the ordinary Juno mine at lunchtime. It looks as if they have, just about, solved the crash-when-gathering bug in that part of the world now, thankfully, and it certainly seemed as if she was mining stones more quickly now. Zenderfly logged in with a change of plan while I was setting up - as she was to be busy with a family gathering in the evening, our Tomb of Theos slog was to be brought forward to the afternoon, which was fine with me. At the appointed hour, two o'clock, Keerella duly reported for duty - but I wasn't Recalled into the Tomb, instead I found myself close to one of the abandoned structures out in the Dratan desert, close to the various kinds of Wafes. It didn't take long to work out why, as Grand Devilroad Kamira was close by! Zen passed a level 12 magical defence mineral to me, checked I had got an Item Drop Booster, and urged me to use it - I double-clicked on the mineral, an "IDB", and a Lucky Scroll as well, and joined in the battle. Zen was bravely taking most of the attack damage herself, leaving me to use Freeze Arrow and Terra Spear, and before long the group of Death Goddesses spawned...we kept our focus on Kamira of course, and she died, followed by the Death Goddesses. It's strange, why does level 70 Kamira spawn level 35 monsters, while the level 50 Grand Red Dragon in Merac spawns a group of level 51 Cerebrii? As we are both level 70 at the moment we are the ideal level for good drops from Kamira, and my share of the loot included 5 Moonstones of the traditional kind, 5 ToolAids, a Medal of Honor, and a Crystal of Experience (Greater). I didn't notice what Zen got, but I'd assume a few Lucky Scrolls were in the mix. We also got two rare accessories - the one I picked up was an "Origin of Land" (6 physical fortitude, 12 physical defence, and 100 health - SirDarth uses two of them), worth 6 or 7 million, while Zen's inventory received a "Crest of Rainbow" (6 to physical fortitude again, but 12 each for the other three attributes), which tends to sell for around 35 million or so. So, as we were sharing drops equally, when Zen sells that I should get a useful cash bonus. After that we did go to the Tomb - Zen Recalled me in, and as the starting area was already busy, she ran on ahead, and Recalled me down to our usual deep-down spot. As she only had access to one computer we didn't have Itura with us, and neither of us had any archers or healers or other useful Tomb fighters on our Friends Lists, but by using plenty of potions we managed to fight the Screaming Zombies and Infected Grey Mummies at just about our usual pace. However, it was not to be a marathon session, or even a three-hour one as originally envisaged; after about an hour a friend needed Zenderfly's assistance, or probably Damor's, and we had to leave. Still, 625 pet points and 11.86% experience made it a useful little session; there weren't any spectacular drops down there, but a bit of gold is always useful. Actually, Karella probably got better drops. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to getting her up to the top of level 25, so that SirDarth could freeze her experience there, and, to give her drake a bit of experience too, for a change the good old level 26 Treants out by Velpist Temple in Juno got a visit. There were some weapon drops of the appropriate level for Karella - and there were two Hands of the Guard, meaning two Item Drop Boosters, two Skill Point Boosters, and four ToolAids. Karella got the 19.02% experience she needed, and was frozen on 99.90% of level 25; her level 24 drake got 486 pet points, and she got 33 skill points too, before it was time for the usual food break. After the break, it was a good chance for SirDarth to go out to the Blood Frenzies in Merac, team up with Kaerella, Recall her there, and just stand and watch as Kae ran about collecting every Blood Frenzy in the area, before killing them. There was a break when it was announced that GameSage AlexandriA was holding a "scavenger hunt" at the arena in Randol on Cariae-1. I took the storage character I've got the quest items on, and went there - I did manage to give her the Salamander Skins and Salamander tails she required for one part of it, and got five pieces of Cake and five Watermelon Slices, which was I suppose worth the half hour taken, as they seem to sell at rather high prices Following that, Kae and Darth continued until closing time - well, almost closing time, the internet connection booted them both out a little early, just as Kae was bringing in the latest group of a few dozen Blood Frenzies. I did manage to log Kae back in after a few minutes, and found to my relief that she had just about managed to survive, on 324 health out of 1328. She was up 3.01% experience on the day, with 31 more skill points - not a huge amount, but Darth will have got the same number of skill points as well for very little effort on his part. Zen was just logging in then, so the family festivities must have ended, but a bit too late for a further joint trip out to be practical. Temple and Tomb - September 17th Zenderfly seems to think Keerella should concentrate on Intelligence, with Dexterity only at the 17 needed for the skill Fear - as opposed to the 49 I have at the moment, following the Wet Paint Wiki's guide to stat points. Extra Magical Attack, Resistance and Hit Rate are more useful, for a wizard, than extra Physical Evasion and Hit Rate, she tells me. So, definitely just more Intelligence in future, with the possibility of an expensive change from Dexterity to Intelligence of those 32 stat points at some stage. Enchantrella worked at mining in Juno at a fairly good speed over lunch and for a while afterwards - I was busy getting the www.Kaerella.com website fully up to date, particularly the Screenshot Gallery pages - the seventh of these has now been started, with the screenies I took in the Forgotten Temple two days ago. Finally SirDarth came onto the main computer, and headed for Prokion Temple, and its usual Orc Sergeant, and Orc Axeman, room - that's the one that leads off Gallery Page 4, not the "big back room" shown in the latest screenie on Page 7! Karella was Recalled to join him, safely close to the wall, and then Darth set about the orcs in his usual forthright manner. It wasn't too long before Karella had enough points for the second and final level of the rogue skill Free Walk, increasing her movement speed, but she is far from "maxxed out" as yet, so if she is going to get anywhere, she'll need to stay at level 25 in the Temple for quite a while yet. Zenderfly appeared later, though, and a trip to the Tomb of Theos was on her mind - she has actually been there a time or two without Kee recently, so that she is now a few percentage points ahead. I had to swap the three "Pierce of Wind" accessories across from Kae, and when I arrived in the Tomb, Zen had already managed to recruit two archers - SimplyM (level 64) again, and Shoshanna (level 65), so that made things rather luxurious, and even when a second Screaming Zombie would attack Zen, and a third spawned right beside me, there was plenty of healing to go around. SimplyM did have to leave for a while, but returned later - as often happens on a Wednesday I had to depart early, but Zen and at least one archer may well have continued for a while. 1665 pet points were added for me - rather more for Zen I expect, as she doesn't get distracted from the regular hit rate by Terra Spear, and wands are faster than staffs anyway. I gained 30.12% experience, so that Kee is now approaching 65% of the way through level 70. I think just about everyone else got a Heaven Stone - about all I got was a Bee, a single-point item I don't want in my insect collection box. The next "landmark level" will be level 73, really, although level 72 will allow me to get the passive skill Secret Study level 7, increasing my Magical Attack by six - at level 73 I'll be able to use a new staff. Unless I just keep going with my previous one, the way Zen holds on to her old armour, of course. Zen has promised to look out for good 5-seal evasion armour for me, which she reckons I will need against some future foes. Apparently the reason that Zen was able to take me to Kamira yesterday was because Krokignon had alerted her - he must have had some computer problem, however, and didn't manage to stay around long enough to be involved in the final stages, such as the actual battle. Krok is one of the very few high-level players not to be in a guild, he just doesn't seem to want to get involved that way. In Norcaine, Vecc (also the knight Galandorius) was online in the afternoon - he's at university now, but has managed to get his internet access sorted out after a few days gap. Sheele reported that he's got a level 17 titan now, with a +10 event weapon. His level 60-ish rogue has been busy farming skill points, getting through lots of the Platinum Super Skill Pills that were on (very) special offer last week. As I commented, it's always good to have rich friends! DarkPulse101 may not be around as much as she'd like, as there seems to be a lot more homework this term, but there's no hurry. Oh, and Zen was wondering if I'd managed to research the latest price of Moonstones, as she has about a hundred of them to sell now. I've not done any selling with MistressDomina for a while now, just that minor bit of private enterprise by SirDarth in Egeha, so I'm not too sure, but regular Moonstones, which are now the middle of five grades, seem to be on offer from various merchants at about ten times the price they were before the new system came in - around 350,000 gold. Moonstone Boxes, which is how the stones are dropped, ought to be roughly the same, as they can reveal higher or lower grades when opened. Of course by the nature of things, when browsing merchants one only sees the items that haven't yet sold out, so whether the things sell quickly at that sort of price or not, I don't know. The new possible rewards offered by the Moon Statue in Randol are certainly getting more attention than the old ones did. Back to the Tomb - September 18th While SirDarth and Enchantrella did manage some mining and harvesting at times, I wasn't able to start playing until six in the evening, as I'd expected, and Zenderfly was ready for a new trip to the Tomb - though she warned once more that I'd be wanted for an hour from nine to ten to help level Damor, who needs to be level 85, rather than 83, to make use of the weekend's possible upgrade probability event. I couldn't see how I'd be of much assistance, but she's the expert. The Tomb party was just Zen, the level 74 rogue Defective, and me, as Keerella of course, with as usual Zen doing the tanking. We went on for not far short of three hours, just staying at the starting area and concentrating on Screaming Zombies. There wasn't a great deal of drama, the only time Zen's health got dangerously low was when she was too busy chatting, but she must have got through a lot of pots - I got through a few as well, occasionally the zombie would head for me, or one would spawn close by and attack me or my drake. A lot of mana pots were needed too. For most of the time, as we were in Cariae-6, we had the place to ourselves - one or two people ran past to head for the depths, but it was only towards the end that a few other people turned up and began luring zombies for themselves. As it happens, one of them was Masre, who I see is actually a rogue rather than, as I'd thought, a knight. Zen, remembering the Skinwalker-luring incidents, was thinking seriously about going into PvP mode and indulging in a spot of PK'ing, but Defective was using an Iris, so we wanted to make sure she got the full benefit before Zen did anything, and Masre was on her best behaviour, just luring the occasional zombie past us to deal with further back. Zen reached level 71 safely - and right at the end I reached that level too. Just in time, as only a couple of zombies later a bad case of lag turned into a disconnection for me. We had all been having little lag episodes, but this time was in fact different - when I went upstairs, to where I'd left Darth mining on the upstairs computer, expecting to be able to type in a guild message to explain what was going on, I found that the machine had just rebooted itself, something it does very occasionally - well it is over six years old! By the time I was reconnected, the Tomb Raid was over, and Zen was preparing to get Damor's party going. I'd already sent a one-hour Recall card to Damor, for which Zen has promised me 750,000 gold, so when I got Recalled down to the Tomb again, I found Escadalia (level 86 rogue now) and Chelseathehealer (level 88, er, healer) already there - while Defective was soloing a few zombies outside the party, so I was able to apologise for my sudden disappearance. Zen got Recalled to the team... and then remembered that it was actually Damor who was wanted, so left and was replaced by Damor. At level 71, partying with Damor (83 wizard) or Esca would be okay, but Chelseathehealer is too high for me, so I was starting to wonder just what I was needed for - if I was just to stay back in safety and offer Recall to those not taking part of the kill-experience, that would have been fine with me, but in the end Damor realised that there wasn't really any great point in me being involved in the party, and told me that I could leave. That gave me just time to give Elvastar's level 22 rogue Ahtema a very brief outing - mainly by taking SirDarth to just outside Prokion Temple and Recalling her there, so that she could add it to her memory scroll. If Elva is going to develop her when he gets a good enough connection, Ahtema will need to do some serious sp-farming there...a transfer from CraftersOfIris to Norcaine and a freeze on her experience will be needed. I took her inside, and the Ghouls and Mummies went down easily enough, so she added a few percent and one armour drop which, if converted into a smelting stone, she might find useful. I logged back in as Kee to get the final statistics for the day, and by then Damor had reached level 85, she reported - and before the hour was up she'd got to level 86, even, thanks to the nice kindly Anubis Spear Man level 106 boss monsters, and their 18,918,740 experience each. Three levels, using 50 experience boosters, and I think a mana stealer too - Damor has done so much power levelling for other people, it's nice that she was the recipient of it for a change. Though even without Chelsea, I really don't know what practical help I could have been down there, Damor is a rather more powerful wizard than I am, still... Anyway, our Tomb adventure had got me 1666 pet points, getting Kee's drake to a third of the way through its level, plus about half a million in cash from the drops, and 35.75% experience, enough to get me to level 71, which at least meant I could add 4 to my Intelligence rating - my magical attack has now increased by six, which can't be bad. Tomorrow will be another short-time day, though I must be sure to get on Last Chaos for the EU "happy hour" from four to six, which offers double experience and 50% extra skill exp. I think the idea is to do another Tomb Raid then, just for the experience side, and forget about any possible extra skill points. And there's the forum sign-up for "upgrade love" to remember too... Tombing With Damor - September 19th The EU "Happy Hour" started promptly at 4:00pm UK time, or indeed five o'clock for most of the European Union - as I was busy enrolling SirDarth for the "Upgrade Love" event, I was slightly late logging on for it, and then had a "send error report?" crash when Zenderfly Recalled me to the Tomb of Theos for the first time - so it was about ten past by the time I joined in the action. It's handy that, after a crash like that, when one logs back in one is still in the party, which saved a little time. At level 71, Zen and I are still just within reach of Damor, at level 86, for partying, so, since she was at home with access to two computers, the idea was for Damor to tank, me to provide the usual Terra Spear back-up, and Zen just to hug the wall - which suited me fine, it was just as good as having a healer as the third party member, and probably faster. We stayed at the entry hall, and for much of the time, in Cariae-1, we had it to ourselves, but eventually other people did arrive. The "Happy Hour" was double experience, but also 50% extra skill exp, so as you don't get much of the latter in the Tomb unless you too are level 100-ish, some people may well have been elsewhere working on their skill points. I noticed that I didn't just get the "1 skill experience", though, usually it was more like 30 - a long way from the 1100 one might get from a creature of one's own level, but it started to add up, and I did indeed increase my skill points by 1 over the course of the two hours. Damor died once, I think too many Screaming Zombies on her at the same time - I didn't see it happen, not a health bar reaching zero or a figure in the terrible slumped kneeling position a dead mage adopts, and thought when she ran back that she must have had a disconnection. Zen died once too, although she was a little way back and against the wall - she couldn't be too far back or she'd be outside the compass ring and not get her share of the experience. People were luring individual zombies back that way, to fight one-on-one, and somebody must have lured their zombie too near to her. Generally, though, things went pretty smoothly, though as more people came in, Damor had to slow down. There was a red-named rogue she was a little wary of I think, generally she'd let her health drop a fair way, but when that rogue was around she made sure to keep it high. But the rogue was friendly enough, asking about the event, and we soon relaxed. The "Happy Hour" ended promptly too, an unfortunate habit in recent weeks, we're used to half an hour or so of overtime. That seemed to be all the time Damor had, and indeed a couple of hours down there is a pretty intense session. Damor traded the maximum-evasion level 73 mage gloves to me for the 50 million agreed, less 750,000 I'd completely forgotten about and 3 million for a new Resurrection Scroll for Zen. I must check if I need to "plus" them, or with that high an evasion doesn't one bother? Damor says she'll have a similarly good shirt for me too, for 35 million. It's lucky MistressDomina did all that selling of items a week or two back, so that I can afford such things. I was just below the 50% mark then, so decided to try a zombie or two for myself solo, using Sloth, Freeze Arrow and Terra Spear, plus health pots, and it wasn't easy by any means, if I'd attracted two at once I'd definitely have been in trouble, and I think I was a bit close to disaster with the third one, if it had hit me right at the end it might have killed me. So, no more of that until I have better armour I think! Still, it did get me up to 50.18%experience - Zen was still logged in for the first two, so should have got a slight bonus boost too. Making it to just over half a level seemed a good place to stop. Damor mentioned that she was unlikely to be around tomorrow, there's a birthday she's involved with, so it looks as if I made the right choice in registering SirDarth for the "Upgrade Love" event - he can either partner Kaerella or Karella, or indeed Enchantrella, in Cariae-4 while waiting for the GMs to get around to his name. I'll just need to transfer Kae's next staff, currently at +10, across to him before 8:00pm tomorrow. Previously, the "Upgrade Love" gift of +1 to a weapon or piece of armour that's already +8 to +10 has been done by the GM generating a new weapon, and destroying the old one, but now, with Chaos Smelts available, they just need to use one of those on the existing weapon - so we keep our bloodseals, which is good - though it no longer replaces a weapon on which an Extreme Stone has been used with one that hasn't had that, which in some circumstances is a shame. The GMs go through a list of people who have registered on the forum at a couple of times, taking them alphabetically, so maybe as I don't want to stay up late tomorrow I should have had CuddlesMcGraw rather than SirDarth registered, but playing her for an hour or two wouldn't have been very productive. Zenderfly mentioned that her appearance when the Damor-levelling party was forming last night wasn't due to absent-mindedness, actually, just transferring items across from her to another player. And before our party today, Damor had spent an hour levelling a new character belonging to Chelseathehealer by about a dozen levels, which was a nice way of thanking her for her aid last night. SirDarth had been doing some mining earlier, while Enchantrella was involved in herb-gathering. I took a break after the Tomb mission to get some other non-LC work done, but was back at eight, and Darth went off to the Temple and its big back room, Recalled Karella to join him, and killed enough Orc Axemen and Orc Sergeants for them to get 67 skill points each. It was just about when I'd planned to log out that Darth got a "fatal error" for a change, a shortage of memory apparently - so a good slog came to a slightly abrupt end. No risk of Darth being killed there, he can stand around with a big group of orcs all attacking him and not lose any health, but with any luck he has enough points for a level or two more of "Special" skills now. GM Greywulf is a (Generous) Noob - September 20th My time was slightly limited today, but SirDarth and Karella got online soon after three for almost an hour in Prokion Temple - the 44 skill points gained meant that Darth was able to maximise another "Special" skill, so is now an ace herb-farmer as well as miner, which means he won't need to pay 30 gold per leaf out at Serel Farm any more. Karella did leave briefly when Damor needed help transferring items between Zen and Damor, but as Darth has Recall, getting her back to the Temple was pretty simple. Damor mentioned that the red-named rogue I mentioned yesterday was actually somebody she knew and trusted, and had helped with some power-levelling recently. She had just decided, after that one death, that keeping her health bar fairly long was rather a good idea... While I was doing other stuff in that vaguely-defined "real world" that we all also inhabit, Darth went off to do some mining in Juno. There was a 100% rebate offer on the "Lucky Rune Combo" to take advantage of as well, so 449 ap had to be spent (one per account) - with hopefully a full refund within a fortnight. In fact they usually round it up, so with any luck 450 ap will magically appear on my listing before too long. As Damor had suspected, since appropriate rune packages are in the Item Mall this week, an "upgrade probability event" was announced for today, starting when the rebate period ended, at six o'clock UK time, and scheduled to last for an hour. It started, as they usually do, at 150% of the usual chance of a successful upgrade, using a Heaven Stone, to a weapon or piece of armour; at half past six this rose to 175%. Damor managed to escape the family meal soon after that, and I was able to reassure her that the 200% period, usually a mere 5 minutes out of the hour, hadn't been sneaked in early, and that the 175% had started. She asked for my assistance, so Karella logged out, and Keerella logged in (still on the older upstairs computer), and joined Damor in the Cariae-5 version of the Norcaine Guild Hall, where in theory the lag would be reduced. Damor passed over two level 65 mage wands (one of them +2 already) and a level 65 staff, plus a large supply of Heaven Stones, and asked me to plus the staff and the unplussed wand up to +3, which I did without any problems - six plusses, six Heaven Stones. And we waited for the announcement that the 200% chance time had begun...and waited. When the clock reached 18:57 I commented that I hoped I hadn't missed an announcement earlier, and Damor assured me that I hadn't, at least ten other people she was in touch with were also waiting... And then it was seven o'clock, and they announced the end of the event! Damor, after checking that the weapons and Heaven Stones didn't put Kee over 100% for inventory weight, asked me to hold on to the items, in the hope there would be another event on the Sunday - though I cautioned her that I wouldn't be on until seven-ish then. Kee logged out, and Karella logged back in on c4...but just as she was spawning, a GM announcement came up that GM Greywulf was a noob, and had forgotten to announce the 200% time, and so there would now be a belated, announced 200% period! So I quickly switched back to Kee, went back to the c5 Norcaine Guild Hall, where Damor still was, and began the upgrading she wanted me to do for her. The lag got bad - text was slow to appear, often the pop-up window saying whether the upgrade attempt had worked or not took ages to come into view, Damor said she was unable to change the weapon she was holding for some minutes. The first wand didn't get beyond +5 before it was "ruined" and vanished, but I got Damor's staff safely to +10, and then, after checking with Damor, started on the other mage wand, the +2 one. I got it up to +8, and +9, just as the warning that there was only a minute left came up - and then there was a partial failure that set it back to +8. The next HS brought it to +9, and the one after took it to the +10 that Damor wanted, just in time. So, I transferred the two +10 weapons and the remaining 30 Heaven Stones back to Damor, who personally hadn't had as good luck...though she was trying for higher levels, and as I've mentioned before, above +10 things get scary. Anyway, after that I was able to switch back to Karella on c4, rejoin SirDarth's party, and get Recalled to Prokion Temple. Karella's task was just to stand safely by the wall while Darth did the fighting, and that's what he, or I, did. As the big room is right at the back of the upper floor, it didn't get crowded, though a couple of other people did come in briefly. With the number of Orc Sergeants and Orc Axemen it is probably a pretty hard room, though easy enough for a level 33 knight. It was just about nine, while I was typing in an explanation for DarkPulse101 of what "NPC" stands for, when I was suddenly teleported to the hills at the edge of Juno, where GM Greywulf, a rogue in a santa hat, was waiting. She opened the trade window to see the weapon I wanted plussed, just to make sure it qualified for the event by being +8 to +10 I assume, and dropped a Chaos Smelting Stone, which I quickly picked up. I was just clicking on my mount, on my skill bar, so that I'd be able to use "pet return to village", when I got a disconnection.. So, should I use the Chaos Smelting Stone on Kae's next scepter - if you value it at about 35 million, there are cheaper ways to get a weapon from +10 to +11 if you wait for the next upgrade probability event. Maybe I should get it to +11 with a HS and a rune of protection, and then use the Chaos Smelt? It's nice to have the option, anyway. Oh, and Darth, before his teleportation, had got a further 65 skill points from the evening session, making 109 in all today. The Quiz Room Gets it Wrong - September 21st Not a very satisfactory time in Last Chaos today, for me... for a start it was well after seven in the evening before I could log in, as I was busy away from home all day, and that meant that I missed the "Sunday TeaTime" two-hour bonus, which was double skill exp - that would have been useful for SirDarth! I also missed a chance to get (again, one per account) a Heavenly Rune Combo (2 Runes of Protection I, 2 Heaven Stones) with a 100% rebate on the 499 ap it costs. Well, I logged in as Keerella initially, but finding that Zen didn't have any actual team-up fighting plans, I logged in as SirDarth, logged in as Karella too, made a party, teleported to Dratan, and was about to use a memory scroll to move to Prokion Temple when Damor stopped me, asking that I come to Cariae-1 to meet her. So I logged out as Karella upstairs and SirDarth downstairs, and logged in as Keerella as requested, and joined Damor - only to find that it was just some item exchange stuff that I thought we'd agreed to do just before the quiz. Damor had sold the Crest of Rainbow dropped by Kamira for us a few days ago for 28 million, and wanted to split the proceeds, taking into account that I still have the minor Order of Land one, which, unidentified, she valued at 6 million...a reliable identification, to activate the bonus stats, costs a million. She also had a blue, five-seal shirt piece of my next armour set, and green, five-seal boots, which she'd obtained for 35 and 5 million repectively, so she very kindly traded them across to me in exchange for 29 million, the other 11 being my "cut" from the CoR's sale. She hopes to get the pants and headpiece I need to complete a five-seal evasion set, which is very good of her, she is a much better shopper than I am, and immediately knows when armour and weapons are good value. Blue seal items (the "b" in "b5", with the number indicating the number of seal-enhancements) can cost around ten times as much as green seal ones, as they give another subtle little boost - I'd be happy to pay for the blue ones, but it depends what she is able to find. Well, after that Zen was a little tired and wasn't in line for any brief team-up, so I was able to change back to Darth and Karella, team them, take Darth to Dratan again - and this time use a memory scroll to get him to Prokion Temple, run all the way to that big upstairs back room, Recall Karella, and settle in for, well, I suppose it was about 50 minutes before it was time to prepare for the Quiz. Darth got 37 skill points, Karella maybe one less as she was the first to leave. Getting ready for the Quiz involves closing the game and restarting it, which lessens the possibility of the game acting up from lag etc, with characters becoming "unclicked" from the one they were clicked on to follow, and that we did; MistressDomina and Kee took off their armour, and clicked on to Zenderfly, who was I think on Zen's main computer - Damor was on a less reliable one, and disconnected only a minute or two before the Quiz began. I thought Zen actually knew most of the answers, rather than relying entirely on how many people in the room were moving to the "X" or the "O" side, but I guess she was letting the movement of the people just wash over her. We got up to the ten ToolAids without difficulty - we managed 13 correct answers in fact, before the question came up as to whether the armourer in Strayana is called Dolph or Dalph - the correct answer is simple enough to remember, as "Dolph" is a reasonable name to have, as in Dolph Lundgren, and "Dalph" isn't, but Zen, who we were all clicked on, moved with the crowd onto the "Dalph" side. I managed to protest by typing in just about the shortest possible message of dissent, "eek", on the guild channel (or would "nooo!" have been better?), but it was too late, and we all respawned in the marketplace. Typing had been my first priority - if I'd broken Kee away immediately I might have been able to get to the correct side, but I'd not have known the upcoming answers I'm sure, with few other people there to follow. Well, it was a bit of a surprise that Zen made such an error, particularly as she survived the Quiz last week when the same questions were asked - maybe she'd had a long day too. I signed out with a prediction, since modified, of what today's blog entry would be entitled, and a wish of good luck for those of us who were going to get involved in this weekend's second "upgrade probability event", running from eleven to midnight UK time - and an hour later for Zen of course. I think she has some more staffs to work on, I hope things go well and that the lag isn't too bad this time. The Tomb of Irises - September 22nd Well, SirDarth's mining at lunchtime got a few stones, as usual - though why there has to be a disconnection just a couple of minutes before food is ready most days is beyond me. Luckily it isn't far to run back from Randol to the mine, though it messes up one's ten-minute timings as one doesn't know how much time is left on a particular heap of ore. But Keerella was really busy today. I get confused with the different types of Iris, but the ones I'm familiar with are the "Platinum Blessed Iris" - I had bought a couple a while ago, which promised an extra 200% experience (i.e treble the experience) for an hour (usual cost 349ap), but MistressDomina has also got a supply that look the same, but their description just says they give an extra 100% (i.e. double) - they came from a "Top Spender" offer where one got a bunch of goodies free when recharging one's aeria points. There is also a regular Blessed Iris which lasts for three hours, but only gives the extra 100% (usual cost 329ap). Anyway, Damor, and Zenderfly, invited Kee to join them in the Tomb on Cariae-1 in the afternoon (well actually it was my turn to pay for admission, so they joined me), and Damor was talking about the possibility of using a three-hour one for Zen during the evening session. And then she asked "Wanna use an Iris" - so, after waiting long enough, I thought, and making sure that it was a suggestion aimed at me, I started one of my one-hour Platinum Blessed Irises. However, belatedly Damor said that she hadn't meant it as a suggestion for that moment, she had meant that she wanted to use one in the evening. Oops! But Damor very kindly went into full-speed action for the following hour - and what's more she logged Zen out so that I would have half the experience, just sharing it with Damor, to play with, rather than just one-third. It might have been safer if Zen had remained, but stayed out of range, so that if I'd had a disconnection she could have Recalled me back in, but luckily for that hour my connection stayed steady. I started off at halfway through level 71, so, with the help of the "PBI" I managed to reach level 72, and once the "treble time" had ended was able to beam back to Randol and get level seven of Secret Study, a handy passive skill which increases a mage's attack. An extra 6 to magical attack in exchange for 324 skill points seems a bit expensive, but it all helps. Shortly before four o'clock an archer called Storm95 appeared, and at once began to KS, or "kill steal", attacking the Screaming Zombie that we were dealing with. When Damor asked her not to KS, she replied that she needed the experience, which may be true, but it doesn't really excuse stealing other people's points. Not a good tactic on a PvP-enabled server like Cariae-1! Zenderfly activated Recall, and both Damor and I used it, moving to Zen and breaking aggro with the zombie - which now, naturally enough, turned its ire on its one remaining attacker, who had to run for it very quickly. So we killed that zombie, and continued - but she returned and KS'd us again, and this time it was three of four zombies that chased after her, but she still didn't get the hint - she did in fact at one stage ask to party with us, but I suspect that she wouldn't have been high enough level to share a party with Damor. Damor did finally go into PvP mode, with the ominous symbol appearing alongside her name... but I don't think she was quick enough with the Curse hex to do any great damage, and Storm95 left the Tomb. She didn't get much out of her admission fee. After the food break, I moved three of the other PBIs over from MistressDomina, and got Recalled into the Tomb again. Zen started a three-hour Blessed Iris (they are perhaps better value, as you get three bonus hours' worth of experience, rather than a PBI's two - and one isn't going to have an Iris active for every hour one's playing, that would get rather expensive), and I started the first of my three - with Damor telling me that the "extra 100%" description is a "known issue", and that they do, like other PBIs, in fact give the full extra 200%. I don't know what it is about using such boosts, but, as has happened a time or two before, I lost my connection, and, as they count down even if one isn't in-game, that was a rather frustrating ten minutes or so before I could finally get the connection to work again. It's well-known that using speed boosts, either legitimate or "hacks", increases the risk of a disconnection, maybe the same applies to experience boosts? Luckily the following two hours went more smoothly, though DarkPulse101 did report that the Grand Red Dragon was in sight among the Butchers on Cariae-3's Merac, so Damor left the Tomb to go off and team with her - or with him rather, as "DP" changed over, on Damor's advice, to his Captianjack knight. It seemed to take a little while to track the GRD down, but they did manage to kill it...apparently Cap didn't manage to land the killing blow, though, which would have greatly boosted their chance of some useful drops. Since both Zen and I had got an Iris running, I kept fighting the Screaming Zombies while Damor was away, being a bit more careful about my health and the size of pots I used - and I got through quite a few healing pots! Luckily Zen was able to assist me for most of the time; working on both computers at once with Zen fighting in the Tomb and Damor running through Merac can't have been easy, but it made all the difference. It wasn't as quick as when Damor was there, but we only had to split the experience two ways. To make up for her absence, when she returned, after the inevitable "send error report?" crash, Damor cracked open a Mana Stealer, which, by sucking the blue stuff out of the zombies, greatly increased her supply of mana, meaning she could use lots more skills - including Chaos Nova, which, though it temporarily increases the attack power of critters in range by 70%, does hit them all for 560% more damage than a normal strike. And it looks impressive in action too. So, Our kill rate increased, meaning we all got more experience. I must report that Damor did allow her health bar to get too low once, while thinking about Damor's and my future mage staffs - a use of the Recall I'd put up was too late to save her from dying, though with very few skill points carried, she lost only a little experience. One Anubis Spear Man, plus experience booster, should clear that away easily enough, and more. When my third one-hour Iris, and Zen's three-hour one, had expired, we called it a night. Since I'd had, except for that disconnection, eight bonus hours from my four PBIs, compared to Zen's three bonus hours (and missing afternoon hour), I've temporarily moved back ahead of her now - she still needs almost 30% to reach level 73, while I'm almost 40% into it - a total experience gain on the day of 189.28%, I make it! 3296 pet points has helped my drake to get past halfway through his level, too. At level 73 I could use a new staff, if I had one - but to be better than my current level 69 +15 one it would need to be +15 too, so I may stick with the current weapon a while yet, unless Damor can find anything. It's a shame that Collector Ryl can't transform weapons and armour from above level 69, but if he could it would mess up the seals on items, which are where the main interest lies. Once I reach level 75, I can start putting on the next armour set; well, gloves are a start, right...? Zen Takes the Lead - September 23rd Enchantrella did a little herb-gathering over the second half of my lunch break, mainly to check how the connection was, and then, since Zenderfly and Damor were both online, it seemed time to get in touch with them - the instruction from them was for me to register (for a party) on Cariae-1, so that was what Kee did, since I doubt if Enchie's level 27 skills would have been much use down in the Tomb of Theos. I was slightly later to start actively playing than sometimes as I had decided to telephone a local firm and order a new computer, so fingers crossed that I can get that next week. When I arrived, after as usual a last-minute application of horse buffs to get me off to a good start, the never-ending battle against the Screaming Zombies had already begun, with a level 77 archer friend of Damor's, Avarielle, also in the party, presumably saving Damor a small fortune in health potions. She didn't stay long, however, as somebody else needed her assistance. So, we settled into the usual routine. The Tomb entrance area was as quiet as before, for most of the time; we did share it for a little while with a level 74 rogue called nielsbm2 - when she first arrived Damor and she must have targetted the same zombie at the same time, causing Damor to go ":s", an emoticon of, well, a twisted lip indicating dislike I guess, followed by "or sry". The afternoon was not one of our longest stints down there; Zen did lose her connection once, and then had a "send error message" when she tried to teleport back in, so she missed out on a couple of minutes of experience there - I lost my connection once too, but got back fairly quickly, with nothing more irritating than the "account already logged in" message on my first relogging attempt, though Zen's Recall got me too far into the corridor's side wall, and I was stuck, so had to ask her to move away a little and use Recall again. Damor had suggested that using Transformation might have freed me, but it didn't seem to do anything. Zenderfly did reach level 73 right at the end of the session, which stopped just after four as she was getting rather hungry. Damor's pet horse was about to level up at the end too - with 190 pet points to go it was down to about 5 on the red health bar, and rather than have any herbs off me Damor was determined to get it levelled up without any help, as the health bar then returns to 100. So, a more than slight risk of the pet getting attacked by a zombie, but the horse did level up safely - it reached level 41, and Damor was able to sell it quickly for 50 million in gold. Tomorrow morning there will be new things in the Item Mall after the maintenance time, and Damor was asking me to log in then, as there may be things in the new Mall that she will want to get - rumour has it that the mysterious new fighting pets may be buyable, and armour for them too... After the food break Zen wasn't sure how the evening would go, so SirDarth and Karella went off to Prokion Temple - but after only 20 minutes Zen called to say that she'd got a party for the Tomb again, with some lower level people and a larger party so the experience gain wouldn't be as good. Still, any Tomb experience is useful, so I changed back to Kee, moved to Cariae-4, and joined in, to find the level 60 rogue Tempete and the level 63 archer Sweetlove teamed with Zen. The experience wasn't bad by any means - Tempete levelled up, as did the cleric ENVYXX who took over healing duties from Sweetlove fairly soon. And when she had to leave, well, there was a little gap again but then Sweetlove returned. I did manage to die once, in a healer-less gap when too many zombies got involved, so that's another resurrection scroll used. Damor loaned me her level 73 +15 Eres' Yolia staff briefly - an extra 166 to its magical attack, compared to my level 69 one! She needed it back later though, as Whoslady2, who at level 63 was using our party to solo-party in Egeha on the Bogles, reported the arrival of the Grand Gold Dragon, so Damor went off to help her kill it. Damor did die once, we could tell from the dialogue, but they killed the GGD and the Cursed Weavers it spawned. There was no special accessory among the drops, apparently the only good items were 5 Lucky Scrolls. I'd been warned to log out for a while to rest up before an intense hour of levelling action from 9 to 10, so as it was already 8:30, it was time to go, and work on this blog a bit. And wonder what Damor had planned, that I'd need to be keen and fresh for! In the event, it took until 10:30, as it took a little while to set up - with Escadalia and Chelseathehealer, I was helping Zenderfly to "power level" on the level 106 Anubis Spear Man boss monsters, who give almost 19 million experience each. With an hour-long times-three Iris, and individual experience boosters, Zen went up from not far into level 73 to more than halfway through level 78! Chels would attack the Spear Man first, we'd all join in - and Esca and I would both put a Recall up, so that when the Spear Man's health bar was below 10%, we'd all take a Recall, except Zen, who'd finish off the Spear Man and scoop all the experience, without us having to physically leave the area. There were a few times when someone didn't take a Recall fast enough, or it wasn't there in the first place, so I probably got about 3%, but it was fun...and I got a Glowworm for my bug collecting box, which, after I'd thrown out a lesser insect to make room for it, got me up to 88 points, enough for five moonstones, so I cashed the box in. That event may end today...it may possibly go on another week, but if so I can start a new box. Putting up the Recall wasn't entirely simple, especially so late at night by my standards - if Esca's "you've recieved" window popped up just as I was clicking the "do you want to?" window, things got complicated. But Zen was happy with the results, although she forgot to use a booster a few times. At this rate she'll soon overtake Damor... Anyway, I went up by 40.21% experience today, and added 2858 pet points - while Darth got 16 skill points, and Karella got 15, for their brief visit to Prokion Temple. Kee ought to at least reach level 74 tomorrow, though it's likely to be one of my "log out early" evenings. Unlike this one... Kaerella Steps Out - September 24th I switched the upstairs computer on as soon as I woke up, and got Last Chaos updating and running as soon as it woke up - it takes a bit longer to get active in the morning than I do, for sure! It was about ten past eight by the time that I materialised in Randol, and I wasted no time in opening the "Item Mall" window - but there was no sign of any new pets, or armour for them, this week. I expect that Zenderfly had already logged in, found that out, and logged out again, there was no reason to hang about. Strangely, the sale packs of 100 experience boosters at 1199ap had already sold out - but the "pocket lint" sale price packs, also of 100, at 899ap hadn't run out at that stage, there were 84 of them left. Or, after I bought one, 83. Needless to say, those remaining supplies didn't last much longer. One thing of interest is that a pack of 5 "Bonus Books of Melding" is on special offer, for melding a "vanity costume" like the new "wild west" ones to your ordinary armour for 30 days, giving it a new look, and an extra bonus of +1 to +3 per piece... instead of 125ap per book, you get all five that you'd need for 199ap. It makes the idea of giving a character a western look, and an armour boost, very tempting, though I've still not actually seen what the mage version looks like. More like a bikini than something suitable for horse-riding, apparently! While Damor was online in the afternoon, whatever she was doing didn't seem to be exciting her much - and her plans for Damor and Zenderfly didn't include any Tomb raiding that Keerella could get involved in. So, after setting up a "solo party" with SirDarth, who was faithfully mining in Juno, it was Kaerella who headed out to gain some skill exp - not to the Blood Frenzies this time, but down to the second level of Maargadum Jail. There was some idle conversation with Sheele and Damor, but, I don't know. maybe Damor wasn't concentrating, or maybe she was on Cariae-6 with its roleplaying ethos, but you'd never have thought that she knew that Kaerella and Keerella are both, well, me! Sheele picked up a level 85 armour drop in the Tomb, and within moments of my "gratz" response, I got the Hand that includes not just three Potions of Haste (value: 200g each), but a Heaven Stone (value: a bit more!); I was getting some reasonable drops, with three Moonstone boxes in fairly quick succession, and I commented that while the Tomb is great for experience, it's not a place to go to for its drops, which are pretty infrequent compared to farming Egeha's Bogles, and that in fact my level 42 character was getting better drops in the Jail. Damor's response seemed to be, how could I know that Tomb drops were poor? Anyway, I continued to get some useful Hands - the one with an Item Drop Booster and a Skill Exp Booster, a couple with a Large Attack Potion, and one with a Large Defence Potion...and I also got two pairs of level 37 boots. What surprised me, when I looked at the boots in my inventory, was that both the mage Chaos Boots and the rogue Nataya Shoes were already plussed - they were both +3. Perhaps one of the Two-Headed Canines in the room to the left as when goes into the second Jail level is a part-time secret boss or something? After the food break I went back to the Jail; my intention had been to freeze Kae's experience gain at the top of level 42, but I was chatting with Zenderfly at the time, and didn't notice my score until I actually levelled up. Still, it probably isn't a bad idea to keep going, even if rounding up Blood Frenzies is a bit less practical now. If Kae goes through the whole of level 42 in the Jail she ought to gain a useful stock of skill points. Zen was saying that she had helped Avarielle to power levelle, er, level in the morning, and was intending to have another go herself later: "I'm hoping for 82", she said. That would be happening after eight o'clock, as that was when she expected Chelseathehealer to log in, a vital member of the team, and as from that time I wouldn't be available, sigh, she was now short of one damage dealer. But she has plenty of friends on her list, I'm sure she found someone higher level than Kee to take over that duty. I was wondering if the party, apart from the beneficiary of the power levelling, does actually need two members, with Recall. The way we were playing last night I needed to be recalled by Esca, and Esca needed to be recalled by me, while Chels could be recalled by either of us... we'd all thus forfeit our claim to any experience from the soon-to-be kill, leaving it all for Zen. But Zen has Recall too, couldn't she just use it to recall us all, and then swiftly leave the party? Hmm, maybe that is a lot to do in the final stages of each kill! She'd set the recall up early in each fight of course, but I suppose she'd have to wait until all party members had teleported to her before clicking "leave party"...so not really practical I suppose. Well, Kaerella did level up for the first time in, well, ages - 9.73% was her experience gain, and 51 skill points, so slogging through the whole level ought to bring in another 500 or so skill points. At level 44 Kae will be able to learn the skill Dispel, which removes all harmful effects, such as Stun, Poison, or the Strayana Collywobbles, from a player. It only has the single level, thankfully, taking 250 skill points...which is one less point than Kae now has. More skill points will be required later, of course, so Kae's future is strictly skill point farming for quite a while. Sphinx Commanders - September 25th Barbarienne had a little sortie to Prokion Temple in the morning; what started as a solo party changed into a team-up, since one of the members, a knight, joined me in the early part of the ground floor there, and recruited a titan friend of his too. This would have been fine if they'd kept with the monsters of about our level, or even lured an occasional Orc Sergeant from the next room, but those orcs had different ideas, and a whole mob of them came down on us. I might have been okay if I'd managed to type in my "low on mana" warning the first time, but, wouldn't you know it, someone applied to join the party at that moment (by that stage I'd inherited party leadership from its founder), and by the time I'd finished typing it in properly, I was ever so slightly dead. We continued for a little while - I hope that my two companions were okay, but I got a disconnection, so they were left to it... and when I respawned in Randol I had about 150 health left. So, not the perfect session, but it got Barbarienne up to level 22, and the whole of her new set of armour...and it got her enough skill points to get the fifth level of Party Heal. If when I get the new computer, not an especially powerful "games beast" but one of the new range of moderately priced ones that can play current games, I can keep the older one running alongside it, it's possible that Barbarienne might find herself "doing an Itura", ie locked onto a higher-level character of mine and keeping her healed, but for that she'll need some more levels, and more skills. After the disconnection, I did private-message the only party member whose name I remembered, PhelanWard (at level 90 not himself in Prokion) asking him to pass on my apologies for the "dc", but unfortunately he'd had to leave the party too. Once the new skill had been acquired, Barbarienne then went off to use up an energy collector, and, after switching to the older computer, spent most of the afternoon busy collecting energy. Enchantrella tried a little herb farming downstairs, but after a couple of disconnections gave up on that. Once lunch was over, Kaerella headed back to Maargadum Jail - but Zenderfly logged on as she was on the way there, to say she was arranging a Tomb party for about ten minutes' time, so Kae's time with the Two Headed Canines, Beast Archers etc on level two of the Jail was a bit limited. Just as Zen passed the word that it was time for Kee, a canine dropped a Heaven Stone, so I'm glad she wasn't any quicker. It was Damor who opened trading with Kee - she had found me a green five-seal evasion-type circlet, and blue five-seal evasion pants, so that's Kee's next armour set sorted. The cost for the two items was 50 million, which seems pretty good to me. Damor also lent me her +15 level 73 staff again, and passed a similarly-uber witch's wand across, for me to pass on to Zenderfly. Green items aren't quite as good as blue ones, about 80% as evasive I'd say, so replacing the green boots and circlet with blue ones is still a temptation, at the right price. The initial idea was to go into the Tomb of Theos, but Zen, when she got to the doorkeeper there, found that the "poll" was at its worst - low power for us, and high power for the monsters. She showed me the very simple way to discover how conditions were inside, just open the dialogue with the doorkeeper, and click the appropriate option, rather than asking to be sent inside, and study the two bars shown. So instead, we went off to Egeha - as I was a level or two higher than on my last visit, I was able to collect a couple of new quests, and even complete a couple too, which gave a little under 1% experience each. We fought a few level 78 Little Scorpionmantises, which of course were just the right level for Zen now, and not too hard for me; we even fought a pair of Boucu Demons. But before long Zen checked on the Tomb conditions again, and found them much improved, so off we went. There seems a lot more to that place than the couple of locations we have usually gone to - Zen had a long run to get to the place she wanted to go, and used Recall on me a couple of times to "save her progress", which was lucky as she did get a disconnection at one point, leaving me safely tucked into a wall as level 108 Anubis Occulists wandered around close by. I did get a glimpse of a large, reptilian flapping wing a little later, which I assume belonged to the big level 110 Darkmind Terrain boss - Zen ran past it to get to a circular hall, and Recalled me in. The level 82 archer Avarielle joined us, and before long Escadalia, currently level 87, joined us too. The targets in that hall were the level 109 Sphinx Commanders, boss monsters with 22,089.028 experience each - and our aim was to "power level" Zen, as they hadn't done such a session last night after I logged off. As I was speculating, just having Zen use Recall was our strategy this time - she didn't even have to leave the party, with her Iris and using Experience Boosters, she was getting around 300 million experience a kill, so in the hour managed to level up not just to 81, but to 83, showing that these guys, though they are bigger and tougher, are better for power levelling than the Sphinx Spear Men. Taking Recall and being in the same party as Zen meant that we too got some experience, roughly what we'd have got from a Screaming Zombie, say about 2 million each, and we shared in the loot too. Including Egeha and its quests, I went up 10.16% before the food break. Well, it all helps! After the break, things were a bit bitty. Zen had gone to Egeha, in Cariae-1, thanks to Escadalia's Recall, and asked if I wanted to go there, so off I went - seeing that I was strolling around rather aimlessly, Zen kindly used Recall to get me to the Baby Apes, which are my level, though she cautioned me to return to town if their "Mother" attacked me, since she takes a long time to kill. I did kill a few of them, but then I got a disconnection, just as I was wondering if it was a good idea to add the location to my memorising scroll. It didn't take long to get back - but saying "reg'd" on the guild channel, after I'd registered myself as seeking a party, didn't get me very far, as Zen had also vanished. I called up Esca, though - she cautioned me she was in Lust Trum Tower itself, and I should be prepared to get out of there quickly, so I was ready to use a Scroll of Recall to get me into the safety of Egeha Village...just as well, it looked a bit above my level in there. I headed out of town again, and managed to find the large pond where the Apes were - though there were a few Assassinbugs between me and the water, so after killing a couple of the Males, and one of the boss-type Females, I headed a little way further along the road, where there was a quest to be completed - and a new quest given, which involved killing those bugs. Unfortunately after the first two I got some weird lag trouble, and finally had to log out. Not wanting to bother Esca again, or get taken inside Lust Trum, I decided that maybe it was time for a different character who'd not have so much trouble if a disconnection came along. Kee's total experience gain for the day was 11.02%, plus 773 pet points and 5 skill points in all. So, Kaerella hurried off to level two of Maargadum Jail again, in good old Cariae-3 - and got three more Heaven Stones, in the same place as before! I even let my drake, SirFrancis, out to assist, though he did get nibbled at a bit by the canines; 863 pet points moves him on a bit, anyway, while 3.37% experience meant 20 skill points. I managed to avoid any disconnections, and kept going until my usual logging off time, unlike Zen, who had got a bit bored, and logged out early. After all those levelling-ups, and fighting the Sphinx Commanders, almost anything else was an anticlimax I guess. Directly to Jail - September 26th It seemed such a long time since Leo had been in action, that this morning he got a Pan Flute out of storage, visited Lorraine, and headed to Dratan City to exchange it for a brand-new baby pony. I had originally been told that a pet levelling knight needed the armour buff that a pet gives - maybe ten levels of it - before he could safely be left to do his work, and normally it has been a pony that another of my characters has raised for at least a few levels that Leo has taken on, but this time Leo teleported straight to "Treant Central" and got right to work there with the level one pony. There was a disconnection after only a few minutes, which isn't surprising as it wasn't long after 11:30 in the morning, UK time, but after returning things settled down - and Leo, level 22 with +5 armour and shield, had absolutely no difficulty fighting four Treants at once without his pet having any levels of what they so quaintly call "Amor increase [horse]" to increase his resistance. As usual, Leo took the Animal Trainer's window with him, which usefully stays open when teleporting using a Scroll of Memorizing, or when the pet is temporarily unequipped, and so was able to add levels of the buff as the pony levelled up. Things went pretty smoothly, though it was necessary to check on progress every half hour, at least, as sometimes the Treant targetted will die, or even lose interest and wander off. After lunch, it was Kaerella who logged in, since she was wearing the three Pierce of Wind accessories - though when I looked at somebody close to me who was in merchant mode, and saw a pair of level 36 sorcerer pants +4 for only 130,000 gold, I swiftly changed to Darth and bought them, then went to Collector Ryl and, for a further 43,250 gold, changed them into the knight type. So Darth has upgraded from his old +3 Glorious Leggings to +4, for rather less than the cost of a lucky smelting stone...new bloodseals will need to be applied, of course, which adds an extra 3,000 to the budget. After that diversion, it was back to Kae, and a swift trip out to Maargadum Jail; the afternoon there was slightly shorter than I'd planned as I got a disconnection at around 3:10, and, with the Happy Hour coming up at 4:00, it was nearly time for an early break. So that was only 3.26% more experience, 713 pet points, and 19 skill points. Despite the early break I missed the first few minutes of the Happy Hour, which was a generous double experience and double skill exp - and when I did reach the Jail, I got disconnected just as I was about to dismount and go in. Hopefully the new computer, due soon, may cut down on that sort of thing, I suspect that the networking abilities of the six-year-old machine are starting to go just a little bit flakey. Still, once I was in there, Kae got to work on the Beast Archers, Dire Spike Canines, and Two Headed Canines down on level two, and the double rewards meant that things moved along a bit faster than usual - though, as usual recently, the event was abruptly cut off after exactly two hours, no generous over-running for us this time. Although Sheele had been on earlier, I was the only Norcaine member who was online for the Happy Hour; Zenderfly logged on shortly after, and asked if Damor could have that level 73 +15 wizard's staff back when convenient... I said fine, which server should we meet on, but she said "gemme a few", which I assumed meant "give me a few minutes", and logged out again. Apparently Damor, even though she is level 86, doesn't have a higher-level staff than that - I suppose that one or two "upgrade probability event" failures would account for the lack of anything better, if her luck had been different a level 77, 81 or 85 staff might well have reached +15. It was almost an hour later when Zen returned - I changed to Kee to pass the staff to her, though as it's Damor who uses it, I don't know why Zen should wish to carry it. She didn't stay around - at least, maybe Damor was on, but the guild channel was quite dead. Kaerella continued in the Jail; it wasn't long before my log-out time when Zeratus logged in, he has the same kind of problem that Kee has really, a difficult level to find appropriate monsters at, maybe we can Tomb-team some time. CloneDeep logged on too. Zeratus had been busy playing the Hungarian version of Tribal Wars, which apparently is one of those "defend a village" real time strategy games, a genre which has never appealed to me. I mentioned that the Hallowe'en event was probably going to start soon, and CD confirmed that it was a rather fun time. The lastest Aeria Newsletter has some details of what we are to expect. It was great to hear from Zer again, I hope he does come back to Last Chaos regularly. Well, Leo kept busy throughout the day, though he occasionally lost the Treant he'd been targetting; only once was that because he killed it, the others just vanished, but it's not far to get more if needed. With any luck his pony will reach level 10 before he logs out for the night, which is a good start. As for Kae, well in all today she went up by 18.53% in experience, 3059 pet points, and 108 skill points. The Jail monsters are still dropping plussed items - yesterday it was a +2 level 42 mage circlet, the unusually-named "Moon Ornament", and today I got a level 37 Spirit Bow +3 - and just one Heaven Stone, making 130 that I've got tucked away in storage. New Computer - September 27th Well, Leo went out in the morning and got the pony up by a level or two - but I got a phone call that my new computer was ready for collection, so had to sign out after lunch, and go off to pick it up. For those who know more about this sort of thing than I do, let me say that it's got an nVidia GeForce 9600GT 512Mb PCI-Express Graphics card, an Intel Core2Duo E8400 LGA775 Processor, 4GB of memory, and a rather good-looking LG Electronics L225WT 22" WideScreen TFT LCD Monitor. It has Logitech X-240 2.1 Channel Speakers with Subwoofer, too, though I've not yet managed to get any sound out of that part of things... Installing Last Chaos was a bit of a pain - the recent build of it I'd used to re-install on my downstairs computer installed, but the updating stopped at 15/27, however many times I tried, with dire comments about "Laghaim MFC", so at DarkPulse101's suggestion I downloaded a different copy of the client from a site called "onrpg" I think - a rather older build, as it had about 300 updates to install! However, the updates did all install, though they took a while. I'd logged on on the older, or now oldest, computer by then, which is how DP was able to advise me - SirDarth had headed out to Prokion Temple, so when Karella logged on on the new computer, I was able to Recall her to join him in the Orc Sergeants (and Axemen) room. Zenderfly logged on too, so we were able to discuss things while I fought - mainly how slow Kee is at fighting, Zen seemed to think that she'd have managed a good few more Sphinx Commanders in her most recent power-levelling hour if I'd ignored the drops and used Terra Spear more. Fair comment I guess, Kee isn't the fastest fighter, and I do tend to make a point of picking up even minor drops, using my drake of course. In that team, with a rogue and an archer as well as Zen and Kee, Kee isn't the target-chooser, she's the heavy artillery at the back, so once Escadalia or Avarielle had attracted our next victim, I had to lock on to the correct target - and the way things work, the earliest hit, or Sloth maybe, does a lot of damage, so the Commander tends to be down to 70% by the time I can attack. There are a limited number of times I can use Terra Spear before there's a danger, say at 25%, that another use of it will take the Commander's health down too low, before we can take Recall... and I don't know about other people, but I need to move the "take recall" window that pops up down from the middle... Still, I'll try to do better next time; I think Zen was saying actually that the next time it would be my turn to be power-levelled, which seems logical as otherwise there would be a risk of her getting more than 15 levels ahead of me, which would slightly mess up the party if it happened maybe 40 minutes into Zen's hour. Quite rightly Zen was saying that I ought to supply other people's pots for such an endeavour - well I don't know if she means a supply of medium mana potions from Strayana, but I'd be happy enough to hand round mana stealers or stuff like that if people wanted them, while using the experience boosters and Iris myself. A few new levels would be really nice, indeed, and well worth using a few Mall items for. Talking about the Item Mall, it seems that there will be some astonishing bargains next week, after server maintenance - and also a special deal for first-time buyers too. I must investigate. Well, rather limited playing time today, it takes surprisingly long to put the bits of a new computer together, get connected, etc - and the website construction tool didn't seem to want to work with Vista, so it's just lucky that I could still get this old machine connected to the internet as well. SirDarth and Karella did, at least, add around 47 skill points each! Full Screen Fighting - September 28th It's rather handy to have two computers next to one another. I'm still struggling to master the intricacies of the new machine, but at least I found the button to turn the sound on. Hitting the keyboard's "F Lock" button solved a little issue with the F1 to F12 keys not working... now if I could only make the Last Chaos window a little smaller, so that I could do the other things as well that I'm used to doing, that would be another step forward. At the moment the 1152 by 864 LC window fills up the whole 1680 by 1050 pixels screen, I had to change to tool bar to allow other windows to go on top of it to be able to see the icons and text typing line... Leo meanwhile has been hard at work levelling up his pony, from 11 onwards - looking across from typing the first draft of this on the new computer, I can see him hard at work, though I got too busy playing this afternoon to keep track, and he did waste some time just standing there without a target. I don't know what happened to that third Treant, if I'd killed him I'd have got some experience and skill exp, but there is no entry for that. Kaerella started the afternoon by heading for Maargadum Jail, but had only just started killing the Two Headed Canines and their friends when Damor came online with a message - there was a power-levelling group just starting in the Tomb, and would I like to join? So, I changed servers, and switched to Kee, and took the Recall, joining KillOnSyte (level 92 rogue), the archer Avarielle, for whose benefit we were labouring, and a fine assortment of wizards - ShAdy (level 90), Damor (level 86), and ArtemisiA, also level 86 and a member of the Castle-owning "Coalition" guild. Which made me, at level 73, very much the junior member, but with the Recalls and the Combat party set-up, it didn't apparently matter that I was more than 15 levels below our top member. I tried to use Terra Spear a bit more, and be a bit less obvious when I sent Greedo to pick up the cash, and the hour went pretty well - I think Avarielle did die once, and there was one occasion when I got my health knocked down to around 50%, but generally the Sphinx Commander room seems less liable to lead to accidents, once someone has got there, than the Anubis Spear Man room, where the Sphinx Fighters can sometimes get a bit aggressive.. I did actually go up by 0.32% in experience, most kills gave us a small reward and maybe there was a time or two when Recall wasn't given in time. No skill exp of course, but 507 pet points got earned. Avarielle seemed happy with the results of the hour, I assume she went up four or five levels. Soon after that it was time for a slightly early food break - early because the Sunday "Happy Hour" was due to start at five, with 50% extra experience and 100% extra skill exp. I got back very nearly in time for the start, I might have made it if a new guildie hadn't wanted to be frozen on level 17, which meant I had to quickly switch to SirDarth to make him donate 100% of his experience to the guild. Kae was at the Jail pretty quickly, though - Damor did offer to give Kee a lift to Egeha, but that wouldn't have been for a team-up, so it seemed to me that Kae was as deserving of the skill exp boost...and as Kae was already on the job, she ought to continue. I was chatting with an old name from Kae's friends list, Rikie, who'd been away from LC for a while, talking about how the newly boosted orcs in Prokion Temple gave excellent skill exp now, so at level 33 a freeze would be a good idea as that was really the last level at which Orc Sergeants gave good amounts of it... and then Rikie reported the arrival of the Grand Red Dragon. I passed the news along to the guild channel, and Damor responded with "brt", for "be right there", a message I passed to Rikie, who gave me the coordinates, which I passed on. I was assuming the two of them would team up, but in fact Rikie died and logged out, and Damor sent Itura, as she is a more appropriate level for the GRD. I was continuing in the Jail, not realising that the coordinates Rikie had given were almost directly outside - but Itura asked me to team up, and go out and join her, and within seconds of appearing outside, I was on the scene - and able to apply Horse Buffs, and use Greater Heal on Itu at what seemed to me a rather useful moment. A nearby titan had nearly spoiled things by giving Itu a buff, not realising that outside influences like that can mess up the drops - following Itura's instructions I attacked the GRD too, and then used "pet return to village" while mounted to make sure that Itu delivered the final blow. And it worked beautifully, as well as the usual minor drops like Lucky Scrolls, a Medal of Honour, Tool Aids and Moonstones, she was able to pick up an "Eyes of Spirit" accessory, which she reckons is worth about 100 to 120 million. Damor will start a forum thread to see what price she can get offered for the "EoS", and then, for my part in things, sell it to me at half that price. Long range physical hit rate 168, close range evasion 78, and +44 to both health and mana make it a very useful item for a bow-wielding rogue or archer, so Karella is liable to have the use of it... though there is always the possibility that Kae might convert from cleric to archer at some stage and be glad of it too! Kae went back in to the Jail after that, and continued fighting the canines; the event ended promptly, without a minute of overtime at seven, though Kae continued a little longer. In the end, Kae had gone up by 7.91%, 1087 pet points, and 60 skill points, and got one more Heaven Stone too. After that there was a meeting between Kee and Damor, with a few items to transfer between her characters and talk about Kee's future strategy - Itura passed over the "EoS" too, which I'll need to identify before Karella can use it - I think MistressDomina has a couple of golden magnifying glasses still. It looks as if Kee will have one hour of power-levelling, hopefully taking her to level 78, probably just with Damor and Avarielle. Then, Kee will be able to wear her new evasion-based armour...and might be able to find a level 77 staff, perhaps. I think Damor said that Kee will be doing a lot of fighting of Weavers... I was trying to persuade her that, even if Zen wouldn't get a great deal of use out of a 30-day Recall card, it was still better to buy an Egeha package for 599ap, rather than three 3-hour cards for a total of 147ap, as the 5 resurrection scrolls alone in the package are worth 495ap, plus there are other useful things, such as attack, defence, and healing potions. Damor may buy a package or two from me, or from Escadalia, depending on who gives her the best deal. There was a spare hour before the Sunday Evening Quiz - and after making sure to remind Damor that it was "Dolph" not "Dalph", I switched to Karella, and headed for Prokion Temple. Unlike SirDarth, she does have to use a few health potions, but she probably gains skill points a bit faster, and added 57 in well under an hour. The only annoying bit was when I'd filled my inventory, and a Heaven Stone dropped - by the time I'd finished fighting the current orc, and dropped a partly-used energy collector to make room, a passing knight had stolen it, sigh.... And then it was time to get ready for the Quiz; we had agreed to meet in Cariae-5, so Kee joined Zenderfly, Damor, and Itura there; I brought MistressDomina with me. Things went fairly smoothly, with most of us clicked on to Damor as our "guiding spirit"; it seemed appropriate that the fifteenth question, the one which awards 10 Moonstones if you get it right, asked how many types of Moonstone there are now - five, two better and two worse than the regular ones. Unfortunately MistressDomina had been clicked onto Kee, and wasn't quite fast enough on about question three, she was still on the dividing carpet, rather than the bare "X" or "O" sides, when the countdown ended, and respawned back in town. So I ended with 15 Heaven Stones rather than double that number. Well, that just meant a little longer for Leo to go back to his pet levelling - the pony reached level 16 earlier and became officially a horse, large and well-muscled rather than a plump little pony, and by the end of the evening had reached level 17. The early days of pet levelling are the easiest of course, once the horse is a higher level than Leo it starts to get through the stones that stave off its hunger at what becomes an alarming rate. A Pair of Plus Fours - September 29th After I finished transferring various bits of loot across to MistressDomina, Leo was able to go out to the western hills of Juno and start on the pet training again - and he did a good job of it, with a little supervision. He was also able to team up in a solo party when needed, which is handier than trying to join an existing party and finding someone else too close or something. With still bits of file transfer and general configuration to be done on my shiny new computer, I was a little later than usual in getting Kaerella out to Maargadum Jail, though it does now seem a much friendlier place than I used to find it when Kae was ten levels lower. The ground floor may be crowded, with a lot of aggressive canines, but the next floor down, ah well that's another storey. So, Kaerella was able to slog away on the Two Headed Canines and their friends all afternoon, gaining 6.37% experience, 1237 pet points, and, more importantly, 36 skill points. The guild channel was quiet, and I only saw two or three other players down there. The evening session was more of the same, mainly - as Damor wasn't around, the option of playing Kee didn't really arise, and it's good to get Kaerella up to a slightly more useful level, particularly if I can get her some more skill points along the way. However, the evening was rather marred by a brief visit from Damor, which consisted mainly of "GRRRRRR" on the guild channel, apparently aimed at me. She also said I owed her 65 million, which I took to mean that someone had offered twice that on the Last Chaos forums for the "Eyes of Spirit" Itura had got recently, with a little bit of help from Kae...but checking the forum thread, where Damor's name is Test45, there is still only the one offer visible, of 95 million. She asked me how much I'd charge her for a strange cover for a mage staff, and a bonus book of melding, both Mall items - I'd got as far as saying that the former was 99ap, and the latter was 125ap for one, but that there was a sale offer this week of five for 199ap, when Damor just said "never mind" (or "nvm"), and that was just about the last thing she did say. I asked if there was a problem, but while she said "yes", she didn't say any more. So, what it was all about I don't know; Kee is rather waiting for her hour of power-levelling now, unless Damor advises me to take a trip or two to Egeha, and that, as I understand it, rather relies on me getting a lift from her anyway. So I'm passing the time grinding away on Kaerella, which seems a relatively useful way to spend the time... though my rogue Karella may want to try out using that Eyes of Spirit tomorrow now that I've used a golden magnifying glass to unlock its stats. There weren't many drops in the Jail, but I did get two Hands of the Guard, the ones with an Item Drop Booster and a Skill Point Booster, plus a couple of ToolAids, in them, six Moonstone Boxes - and one weapon and one piece of armour, both of which surprised me by being +4... I thought ready-plussed items tended not to go above +3, but I'm now the owner of a mage's Allunin Skirt +4, and a titan's Hercules Great Sword +4 - both level 41 items. Kae has previously picked up a Moon Ornament +2, and Chaos Boots, Nataya Shoes, and a Spirit Bow, all +3, down there, but this was the first time things had reached +4, which is rather more useful - you can't get an item that far using regular smelting stones or Heaven Stones without a risk of it breaking. I solo-teamed with DarkPulse101 for a while; she was talking earlier to another mage in Prokion Temple who turned out to be another newer character of the healer Stanislav, who used to be in Norcaine a while back. DP is looking forward rather anxiously to the "power level" that Damor has promised her, I hope that goes well, when the time is right. Anyway, Kaerella added a total of 15.63% experience today, so it won't be long before she is, at least, halfway through level 43. 2935 pet points means that her drake SirFrancis is getting towards the top end of level 39 - only 1965 more points to go. Oh, and the reason for the slog, an extra 88 skill points, which has to mean that it has been a productive day. Leo kept on with the pet training, and the horse is well into level 20 now. When he gets to get above Leo's own level of 22, and starts to devour quality stones rather quickly, I think I'll experiment with passing him over to SirDarth, at level 33, and see if he can do some less stone-expensive levelling on level 34 Berserkers, or maybe level 36 Gnolls. Return To Egeha - September 30th Leo went out pet training, and did his usual good job - it wasn't too long before the horse reached level 21, and then it was only early afternoon when he reached level 22. Treants are strange, sometimes they'll die in about twenty minutes, if I don't change Leo's targetting to another one, and sometimes they'll last for hours. And sometimes they'll just vanish... MistressDomina has a fairly short session selling items in Cariae-1 over lunch, quickly selling out of Large Attack Potions and Candy, but not selling much else, and then it was time for Karella to take delivery of her new Eyes of Spirit accessory, following which Kaerella put the Pierce of Wind trio back into storage - and Keerella took them out, and put them on. I had a vague idea as Kee of going back to the Forgotten Temple, as the critters there are about her level, but decided it would be good to head for Egeha, particularly if that stopped Damor going "GRRRR" at me. I contacted Escadalia, in case she was there, but she was just about to set up as a merchant in Cariae-1 herself. So, for the first time, I actually spent the 800,000 gold necessary to teleport to Egeha in the regular way. I headed out past the Bogles and Dark Bogles in the direction of a new quest-giver shown on the map - Scout Terry. He had a rather strange quest to kill 20 level 76 Azers, for 11,897,876 experience and 206,000 gold - they were very close to him, so there was no problem in killing them, other than their habits of ganging up and using a pretty strong magic attack - but not only did the few I killed before I got to him to take the quest count, he actually gave me my reward before I reached the 20, though the "18/20" style countdown continued afterwards. He then gave me a quest to kill 7 level 78 Little Scorpionmantises, with the caution not to let them surround me, and that gave 12,066,171 experience, plus 225,080 gold - but then he got a little confused, giving me a quest for 20 more of the things - though checking the details in the "Q" Quest window shows that what he actually wants is for me to kill 5 of their big brothers, the (non-Little) Scorpionmantises, which, as they are level 80 boss monsters, and tend to have a few of the Little ones around them, I think I'll leave for a while. After that I went after the Assassinbugs, as requested on a previous visit by Beldam Juriel. The Male ones at level 70 were the ones I needed to kill 20 of, but they tend to be pretty close to the level 72 Female ones, which are, again, boss monsters, and take a while to kill - so with both types protective and aggressive, it would have been a bit too easy to end up with rather too many bugs at once. I seemed to be having to kill almost as many Females as males to get then heads I needed, but at last I was able to head back to the Beldam, killing some more along the way, to get my 12,429,915 experience, and 95,000 gold. She gave me a new quest to get items from Koyemsi, which, luckily, I happen to know have been renamed as Apes! Just as I'd finished talking to her Krokignon passed by, followed by some assorted Assassinbugs, so I was able to say the traditional "Hi Krok" before returning to town. I saw him there later, after he had shaken off his pursuers. By that time I'd definitely moved into profit on the day's adventures, thanks to the cash drops and cash rewards - and there was another quest reward, for some monster killing, waiting back in Egeha Aaron, courtesy of Patriarch Zikil - 8,430,370 experience and 188,000 gold. I'd picked up three "work documents", as high-level manuals are called, plus level 71 rogue Quickbirdrun pants, which Grocer Wein paid 291,564 gold for, and a level 69 sorcerer scythe, which Wein would pay 381,276 for, but maybe I ought to hold on to that in case Damor needs such things to work on next time there's an upgrade probability event. I made a trip out towards the only remaining quest-giver shown on the map, Assistant of Archaeologist Rouin, who is quite close to Lust Trum Tower itself - but when I got there he was surrounded by level 84 Boucu Demons and level 82 boss Skin Walkers, plus close by some level 88 Cursed Weavers - an aggressive and inter-protective bunch! So I think whatever quest that is will need to wait a while longer, I think. A "pet return to village" seemed the best idea. I was solo-partying with Leo (or LeopardKnight, to give him his formal name), and listed the party on the "parties seeking members" roster as Egeha trips - 100k", following Zenderfly's example, and did have two customers - FURIA2, an Egeha regular who hopes to make use of the service again, and a titan called Geiseric, who I think was about level 48. FURIA2 helped him a bit, I was too busy at that point as a guildie was wanting to move some stuff between accounts...it would have been a bit easier if he'd said that was what he wanted to do, I thought it was a bit strange to want to give level 15 and level 6 characters a trip to Egeha... Damor came online during my food break, so my reply to the "Are you in Egeha, Kee?" question was probably a little slow. Damor must have been afk too, as her response didn't come until until a few minutes later, asking for a lift. And she didn't stay around long enough for me to come back to check, and reply, but logged out. Luckily she returned a little later, when I was back at the keyboard, and I was able to to Recall her to Egeha, and also pay her the 65 million for the half-price Eyes of Spirit - she had had a private message via the forum offering 130 million, and Avarielle had agreed that it was about the current going rate. A bit more valuable now than an SoS, then. It was good to have a fairly busy guild chat channel this evening, with ClonedDeep, DarkPulse101, and Damor all active; Damor may have been a little less than a sparkling conversationalist yesterday because she bought a level 85, 5 seal green mage staff, +14, for 250 million, and by adding two Heaven Stones turned it into a +12 - well it could have been worse, but a loss in value like that is enough to ruin anyone's day. We seem to have agreed in principle that I'll sell her occasional Mall items at around 3 million gold to 100 aeria points; Escadalia lets her have things a bit cheaper than that, but Damor doesn't want to over-exploit her generosity. Anyway, I wandered around exploring parts of Egeha, and killing the various Hadeis, Male and Female Assassinbugs, Baby Apes, Azers, and Little Scorpionmantises I came across... and Dark Bogles too, come to that, as they tend to attack you if you don't attack them first. In all today Kee went up 8.74% in experience - and that got her to level 74! 1346 pet points, and 26 skill points, prove that I had a busy day. Leaving aside the 65 million I paid Damor, despite paying to get to Egeha I ended the day up 2.5 million, roughly, and with a number of items not yet sold. Oh, and one Hadeis did kindly drop a Heaven Stone. As for Leo, by signing off time his horse was just past halfway through level 23, so good progress there, too. Maybe SirDarth will take a turn at trying to train up that pet, it would be interesting to see how well he can do that sort of thing. |
