It was quite an interesting day in Telara today – we didn’t realise we were so close to the end of the Shimmersand zone… We actually finished it off this morning, with a rather spectacular Grande Denouement… a quest Rift to put an end to the main villain of the zone, and close his Rift. It almost got derailed – all the way through the area, and the next zone we went into, the place was pretty much deserted – there didn’t seem to be any other players, anywhere – until we got to this Rift. There were three or four other players there, who didn’t have the “Draw out and kill Hazeed” quest – but decided to “help” us anyway, and managed to kill Hazeed before we managed to get a shot in, causing us to fail the quest and have to start over. They managed to muck us up twice, actually, until himself pointedly asked them to leave – I’m choosing to believe that they were just trying to be helpful, though I do have a niggling feeling that they were just stuffing us around. Anyway, when we started the quest (which we’d already done several times in the past, so we should have known better!) we made a major mistake… When you’re closing Rifts, mobs come out in Stages, or waves… as you clear out each wave of mobs, a fancy banner (for want of a better word) pops up in the middle of the screen, saying “Stage Completed” – then there’s a lull of a couple of seconds before the next wave arrives. Normally, at our level, these waves are just ordinary mobs – nothing too fancy or special about them. Except in “special” Rifts, like the end of a zone, or something… like this one, where they’re all Elites. Elites – extra hard to kill, remember? Well, we didn’t remember, did we… and we managed to “pull”, or call them all towards us, all at once. Julian got killed – I managed to cast Feign Death (playing possum!) just in time – which was where that “helpful” band of players stepped in and killed everything in sight. Bingo! Fail quest #1! We tried again – this time we stayed well back and tackled the mobs one by one. Worked much more betterer that time! 🙂 The second wave came, and we repeated our pattern, only this time the “helpful” players kept mowing down our mobs, and by the time Big Bad Boss Hazeed made his appearance. they killed him for us, almost before we were even aware that he’d appeared! We were not amused! Fail quest #2. We politely asked them to leave… they did, and we started all over again, and this time managed to finish everything off nicely. We returned to the quest giver to hand it in and get our big reward – and another quest, or a “breadcrumb” quest to another zone. Nope! We got our reward, but nothing else. We had no quests left. There wasn’t anything in our quest list that we’d turned off, so as not to see it listed on our screens, either! What to do? Shimmersand is supposed to be for levels 45 to 50, and we were level 46 – but there were no more quests! Over lunch, I realised what we’d done wrong. We’d been questing in Droughtlands, the area before Shimmersand, but we were finding that the quests there were all Green, and too ridiculously easy, so we decided, off our own bat, and with no breadcrumb quest to get us there, to simply pack up and go to Shimmersand, for quests that might be a bit more of a challenge. By the time we’d finished Shimmersand, we were level 46 – the level at which we were supposed to have been when we started the zone! In other words, we were questing a level above ourselves. It was a bit of a problem! Well, there’s another zone in Telara for levels 45 to 50, it’s called Stillmore, and I hate it! I always go out of my way to avoid it, but this time… I couldn’t. We were still too “young” to go to Ember Isle – you can’t (officially) get to Ember Isle until you’re level 50 (and nobody goes there anymore, anyway, except for the scenery), and we couldn’t just run around killing things to level ourselves up to 50, it would have taken a year! So… Stillmore, it had to be. Don’t ask me why I hate Stillmore so much – I just do! Anyway, we’re not doing too badly there – the quests are Yellow to us now (they were Orange and Red in Shimmersand, but we leveled up to 47 in Stillmore) and starting to get horribly easy again… But we’ll persevere until we get to level 50, and then we’ll skedaddle… 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Well, as I predicted, I went up. Only one point, to 97.5kg, but still, it was up… and even though I was expecting it, disappointing. Oh, and I have a confession to make. We were so busy wondering what we were going to do, with no quests to carry on with, and I was so busy trying to work out why we had no more quests to do, that I completely forgot my pre-lunch Stair Walk! And I didn’t remember it until it was time for my evening Stair Walk! Julian suggested that I do what I did when I forgot it once before, and do it on my way down to the Den after we’d finished watching TV for the evening – but I didn’t want to do that – I did something different instead. Instead of going down two floors and back up two floors, I decided to double my evening Stair Walk instead. I went down four floors, and back up four floors. Himself was agin’it, but I thought I’d be able to cope with it, and I did! And we noticed something odd about the stairs, too! 🙂 It’s 8 steps down to the mid-landing, and another 8 down to the next floor. Then another 8 steps to the mid-landing, and another 8 down to the floor after that. Repeat that for the next floor. But the one after, my fourth floor down (I guess that would make it the first floor of the building?) was only 7 steps down to the mid-landing, and 9 steps down to the floor! Then I turned around and came back up again. And I made it all the way, too, and I don’t think I went much slower than I normally do, either – nor was I very puffed when I finished – as I said to himself, I get more puffed out racing back to the apartment from the fire escape door than I do climbing the stairs! Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m now fit enough to increase my daily Stair Walks from the usual two floors down, two floors up – not to the four that I did today, not quite yet, anyway – but to three floors down, three floors up. It’ll be good for me (I must be getting fitter, surely! I’ve never walked so much in the past five or six years!) and I hope it helps keep my weight going down, too…

So, that’s about it from me tonight – stay tuned this time tomorrow night for more news and gossip from chez nous. Will I really increase my three daily Stair Walks to three floors? Will my weight have gone back down, or will it be up – or even worse – the same!? Who knows? But you will, this time tomorrow… So until then, please continue to bee good, stop reading the back of the book first, and above all… please stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂