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rangifer’s diary: pt. lxx

Taxonomising odd jobs, pt. iv: Microtaxonomy & encodings. §6

In the previous section (§5) of this part (pt. iv), I finally fleshed out a set of all odd jobs, i.e. the odd job universe (version 1.0.0). The universe was expressed using a particular RON schema, and I also presented those same data in the form of a giant table. For now, I want to wrap up this part (pt. iv) of the series by commenting on the data that I essentially dumped in the previous section, with only comments on the format of the data, and not on the data themselves. And then, I want to do a little speculation on what can be done next.

But first, an erratum or two…

Errata (odd job universe, version 1.1.0)

STRginner

Version 1.0.0:

---

[…]
    "STRginner": Job(
        […]
        weaponry: Weaponry(
            allowed: All,
            canonical: WepTypes([
                OneHandedSword, OneHandedMace, Dagger, TwoHandedSword, Polearm,
            ]),
        ),
        […]
    ),
[…]

---

Version 1.1.0:

---

[…]
    "STRginner": Job(
        […]
        weaponry: Weaponry(
            allowed: All,
            canonical: WepTypes([
                OneHandedSword,
                OneHandedMace,
                Dagger,
                TwoHandedSword,
                TwoHandedMace,
                Polearm,
            ]),
        ),
        […]
    ),
[…]

---

STRginners (and only STRginners) get access to the Sake Bottle, so we add two-handed BW to their list of canonical weapon types. I probably forgot about this because, you know, MapleLegends doesn’t have Sake Bottles.

LUKless sin

Version 1.0.0:

---

[…]
    "LUKless sin": Job(
        […]
        weaponry: Weaponry(
            allowed: All,
            canonical: WepTypes([
                OneHandedSword,
                OneHandedMace,
                Dagger,
                TwoHandedSword,
                Polearm,
                Claw,
            ]),
        ),
        […]
    ),
[…]

---

Version 1.1.0:

---

[…]
    "LUKless sin": Job(
        […]
        weaponry: Weaponry(
            allowed: All,
            canonical: WepTypes([
                OneHandedSword,
                OneHandedMace,
                TwoHandedSword,
                TwoHandedAxe,
                TwoHandedMace,
                Polearm,
                Claw,
            ]),
        ),
        […]
    ),
[…]

---

Daggers were included in the LUKless sin’s canonical weapons, probably because I copy-and-pasted the canonical weapons for STRginner and then added claws. Daggers should not be included, as a result of LUKless sins being LUKless and not getting any dagger skills (besides Double Stab).

And, I forgot two-handed axes and BWs, which should be included for the same reason that they’re included for woods(wo)men and brigands.

Comments on the odd job universe, version 1.1.0

General comments

• You may have noticed the inclusion of many classes that are pre-Big-Bang (pre-BB) but were added after version 62 of GMS (post-v62):

  • “Cygnus Knights”:
    • Noblesse.
    • Dawn warrior.
    • Blaze wizard.
    • Wind archer.
    • Night walker.
    • Thunder breaker.
  • Dual blade.
  • “Legends”:
    • Aran (beginner).
    • Aran.
    • Evan (beginner).
    • Evan.

  This is in line with what I said in §3 of this part:

  I came across a few adjustments that I wanted to make to the Oddjobs list (at the very least, for the purpose of this series):

  • More carefully include post-v62-but-pre-BB (“v62” as in version 62 of GMS; “pre-BB” as in pre-Big-Bang) classes, i.e. Cygnus Knights and Legends. The Oddjobs list (at the time of writing) does mention some of these, but only in the aliases and notes for a few jobs like STR beginner. GunDelHel’s list splits out some of the Cygnus-based and Legend-based odd jobs into their own jobs, but none of them are radically different enough from their pre-v63 counterparts to fall outside of their counterparts’ original definitions. That being said, in the interest of generality, I want to ensure that these later versions are incorporated explicitly into the odd jobs’ definitions.

• The “Evan (beginner)” (a.k.a. Evanginner) class is not actually used in any of the odd job definitions. This class has its own ID (2001), but isn’t actually materially different from an ordinary (explorer) beginner in any way other than being called an “Evan” in-game. Furthermore, perma-evanginners were only able to be created for a very short amount of time due to a bug in GMS’s implementation of Evan. I also couldn’t find any evidence of Evan equivalents of islanders nor of campers. If you know more about Evanginner-based jobs, please let me know.

• It should be noted that dual blades are explorers; they have a second-grade ID of 430 (compare to 400 for rogues, 410 for assassins, and 420 for bandits), and can only be created by initially advancing to rogue (as an ordinary explorer rogue would) and then advancing to dual blade for second-grade advancement. The main twist of this dual blade advancement is that it’s done at level 20, and not at level 30 as you would expect.

• You also may have noticed that some class names end in “1st”. This is because the names of Cygnus Knight classes do not distinguish between grades, from first grade onwards. “Noblesse” is zeroth grade (i.e. a Cygnus Knight beginner) for all Cygnus Knights, but there are no grade distinctions reflected in class names beyond that point. Nevertheless, each of the first grade classes (all five of them: dawn warrior, blaze wizard, etc.) is pretty clearly analogous to the corresponding first-grade explorer class, with the addition of those little summon skills (Soul, Flame, etc.).

  Nevertheless, although we do the same for legends as well (AranBeginner → Aran1st → Aran; EvanBeginner → Evan1st → Evan), the situation there is somewhat different. We consider first-grade Arans to effectively be second grade or higher. The reason is that, although Aran class grades seem to correspond nicely to their explorer counterparts (0^th, 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, and finally 4^th), Arans already have all of the following at first grade:

  • A multi-target attack that hits up to 12(!) monsters at once,
  • A Flash-Jump-like skill,
  • Polearm Booster,
  • & a WATK/WDEF/MDEF buff.

  Although this leaves them masteryless until second grade (like their explorer counterparts), I think it’s fair to say that this should at least disqualify them from being “permawarriors” per se. That’s not to say that perma-1^st Aran can’t be an odd job — rather, it’s just that if they can be considered odd, it’s not because they are permawarriors specifically.

  On the other hand, perma-1^st Evans play more like stripped-down permamagicians, as a result of Evan grades being less spread out (they go all the way up to 10^th(!) grade). They only get Magic Claw (although it’s called “Magic Missile” for them, the spell is otherwise identical), and a passive +20 MATK. Perhaps most interesting is that perma-1^st Evans never get Magic Guard!

  And, when it comes to dual blades, there is no such thing as “DualBlade1st”. A “first-grade dual blade” is the same class as a “first-grade assassin” or “first-grade bandit” — namely, rogue (ID 400).

Comments on specific odd jobs

Not all of the entries are covered below; the others should be self-explanatory.

• Camper:
  • As you can see by the inclusion of noblesses and Aranginners, this definition includes roadies and snowlanders (respectively) as well.
• STRlander:
  • As you can see from the class set being {beginner}, only explorers can be islanders, as Maple Island is the only geographical region of its kind.
  • Like all STATlanders, STRlanders are pure in their respective STAT (STR, in this case). Islanders are, naturally enough, difficult to categorise, as their builds are naturally more flexible than those of outlanders. So, although we define a STRlander as “𝑷𝒖𝒓𝒆⁡(STR)”, this constraint should be taken more impressionistically than it is for outlander builds that use the same predicate. For islander builds that are truly mixed, we have the “hybridlander”.
  • Although one-handed swords and polearms are obviously canonical weapon types for non-magelander melee islanders (one-handed swords being a common weapon type for islander-friendly event-only weapons like Maplemas Lights, The Stars and Stripes, Lifeguard Saver, Maple Sword, etc., and polearms including our old friend the Gold Surfboard, as well as Valentine Roses (e.g. White), etc.), the others here might require some justification. The existence of the Razor and, particularly, the Fruit Knife on-island is, in my opinion, enough to justify the inclusion of daggers. The Wooden Club and Leather Purse justify the inclusion of one-handed BWs, and while we’re at it, I added one-handed axes as well, so that all starter weapons (Sword, Hand Axe, and Wooden Club) are represented. Although representing starter weapons might seem a little weird, I think it’s justified, even if the only justification is being general enough to reflect any & all pre-BB versions of the game — even ones that have more or less limited availability of islander weapons.
• DEXlander:
  • See the comments on STRlander.
• Magelander:
  • It might seem a bit strange that we allow magelanders to use staves, but remember that the “allowed” things are merely spiritual — even those who cannot de facto use the thing may still be allowed to use it. In this case, staves don’t generally exist in any form on Maple Island; but we like to group wands and staves together, so that any job capable of using one may use the other. A magelander (hypothetically) using a staff still maintains the “mage” in “magelander”.
• LUKlander:
  • See the comments on STRlander.
• Hybridlander:
  • Hybridlanders have, somewhat ironically, perhaps the most verbose stat constraints of all odd jobs in our universe. But the idea is simple: out of {STR, DEX, LUK}, the hybridlander picks at least two. This is what makes them “hybrid”. This definition thus includes (but is not limited to) so-called “perfectlanders”.
  • Hybridlanders don’t have wands as part of their canonical weapons. Instead, we consider wands to be the exclusive domain of magelanders; adding wands to the canonical weapon set here would result in complicating the primary/secondary stats of hybridlander even further.
• STRginner:
  • Notice that the stat constraint for STRginner is 𝑭𝒖𝒍⁡(STR), and not 𝑷𝒖𝒓𝒆⁡(STR). While 𝑷𝒖𝒓𝒆⁡(STR) might be expected by analogy to STRlander, the situation for outland beginners is different. Because outlanders care so much about expected damage, STR is quite a bit… well… STRonger than DEX. For the STRginner, DEX is still useful; it adds more to their WACC than any other stat (certainly more than STR, which gives no WACC whatsoever), and contributes to their damage as well. But besides the need for WACC to hit their targets, the STRginner is trying to pour as much AP into STR as possible. This means that STRginners may have varying levels of base DEX, depending on their needs. Nevertheless, what unites STRginners is being STR-based, even if not necessarily being pure STR. Instead, we define DEXginners as being 𝑷𝒖𝒓𝒆⁡(DEX) so that they can be totally distinguished from STRginners.
• DEXginner:
  • See the comments on STRginner.
• Wandginner:
  • See the comments on magelander.
• LUKginner:
  • Because LUKginners are given a weapon constraint (they can only use claws), and because outlanders care so much more about expected damage, we don’t need to characterise the LUKginner’s stat constraint as “𝑷𝒖𝒓𝒆⁡(LUK)” (as we did for LUKlanders), and instead opt for the looser “𝑭𝒖𝒍⁡(LUK)”.
• Permawarrior:
  • As mentioned above, we consider first-grade Cygnus Knights to be essentially equivalent to their explorer counterparts, so perma-1^st dawn warriors are included here. And, also as mentioned above, we do not consider first-grade Arans to be essentially equivalent to their explorer counterparts, so they are excluded here.
  • The canonical weapons should look pretty straightforward here, with two minor exceptions:
    • Daggers are considered canonical weapons for permawarriors. Although this may seem unusual (as they are not canonical for non-odd warriors), the reality is that, ceteris paribus, daggers and one-handed swords are (for non-rogues) identical. The only reason that this isn’t true for ordinary warriors is that ordinary warriors get access to weapon-type-specific skills, e.g. booster and mastery skills. Obviously, permawarriors never get any such skills, so daggers and one-handed swords are equivalent to them.
    • Spears are not considered canonical weapons for permawarriors. The reasoning here is that spears are not canonical weapons for ordinary warriors either, with the exception of 3^rd-grade-or-higher spear(wo)men (i.e. dragon knights and dark knights). In the absence of DK skills, spears simply have an unusually low average PSM (primary stat multiplier) when using attacks that animate like basic-attacks (e.g. Power Strike and Slash Blast), thus making them undesirable for permawarriors.
• HP warrior:
  • Defining blood warriors and blood dits in this format proves to be difficult. I decided to take two different routes for these two different jobs, on the basis that blood dits don’t get their “killer skill(s)” until third grade, whereas HP warriors already have them by second. So, for HP warriors, I’ve de-emphasised traditional warrior fighting methods (i.e. melee), considering them to only be “secondary”. So, their ability to melee is not reflected in their primary/secondary stats, and not reflected in their canonical weapons either. Having all weapons as canonical is meant to imply that they don’t use their weapons to fight, so what weapon they have equipped is incidental (they might choose, for example, weapons that look cooler, or that grant MAXHP).
• Wand warrior:
  • See the comments on magelander.
• DEX warrior:
  • See the comments on permawarrior.
• LUK warrior:
  • See the comments on permawarrior.
• Permamagician:
  • As mentioned above, first-grade blaze wizards and Evans are considered to be close enough to magicians (or restricted versions thereof) to qualify for being permamagicians.
• STR mage:
  • Analogously to STRginners, STR mages have the 𝑭𝒖𝒍⁡(STR) stat constraint. Because of this, we also need to specify 𝑳𝒆𝒔𝒔⁡(INT) and 𝑳𝒆𝒔𝒔⁡(LUK) in order to distinguish them from gish(let)s.
• DEX mage:
  • Analogously to DEXginners, DEX mages have the 𝑷𝒖𝒓𝒆⁡(DEX) stat constraint. Because of this, we don’t need to specify 𝑳𝒆𝒔𝒔⁡(INT) and 𝑳𝒆𝒔𝒔⁡(LUK) to distinguish them from gish(let)s — these constraints are implied by 𝑷𝒖𝒓𝒆⁡(DEX).
• Magelet:
  • You’ll notice that claws are included as a canonical weapon type for magelets. This is a result of magelets being defined by their class and stat constraints alone. With no weapon constraints, they can use claws just as well as LUKginners can. A magelet that only uses claws is a subjob of magelet called a “claw magelet”, or sometimes just “claw mage”.
• Gish:
  • For the physical-attacking side of gishes, we only constrain them to be 𝑭𝒖𝒍 of STR or DEX (or both), by analogy with STR mages or DEX mages (or both).
  • Gishes, unlike STR mages and DEX mages, have wands and staves as part of their canonical weaponry. This reflects their (half-)proficiency with magical damage-dealing spells.
• Gishlet:
  • See the comments on gish.
• Woods(wo)man:
  • The woods(wo)man’s canonical weapons include two-handed axes and BWs, as a result of classic woods(wo)man weapons like the Metal Axe, Wooden Mallet, and Monkey Wrench.
• Blood dit:
  • See the comments on HP warrior. Unlike the HP warrior, we do emphasise the role of daggers in the blood dit’s functionality. This is, again, a result of blood dits getting their “killer skill(s)” so much later than blood warriors do.
• Brigand:
  • See the comments on woods(wo)man.
  • The allowed weapons for brigands are just “all weapons that aren’t daggers”.
• LUKless sin:
  • See the comments on woods(wo)man.
  • Daggers are not canonical for LUKless sins, as a result of being LUKless and not getting any dagger skills (besides Double Stab).
• Dagger sin:
  • We consider night walkers to be closely analogous to assassins/hermits, so they can be dagger sins too.
• Claw-puncher:
  • Although technically any class can be a claw-puncher (in the presence of claws without class requirements, i.e. Magical Mitten), claw-punchers are specifically the rogue version of this concept, which we consider to be conceptually primitive (especially when claws without class requirements are unavailable). Other claw-punching odd jobs can be classified as subjobs of other odd jobs.
• DEX brawler:
  • We consider thunder breakers to be closely analogous to brawlers/marauders, so they can be DEX brawlers too.
  • Guns are considered canonical weapons for DEX brawlers, as they are pure DEX and have access to the Double Shot skill.
• LUK bucc:
  • See the comments on DEX brawler.
• Swashbuckler:
  • Besides guns, the only canonical weapons for swashbucklers are those that play nicely with SSK.
• Pugilist:
  • It should be noted that our definition of pugilist here includes all pirates who restrict themselves from ever using weapons, not just brawlers and closely related classes.
• Armed brawler:
  • The allowed weaponry for armed brawlers is just “any melee weapon that isn’t a knuckler”. Somewhat counterintuitively, this includes wands and staves. But the canonical weaponry only includes those weapons that play nice with SSK.
• Pistol-whipper:
  • See the comments on pugilist.
• Bombadier:

  • One unfortunate side-effect of how we define jobs here is that bombadier requires us to list quite a few skills.

  • Two of the skills listed (MW and Hero’s Will) use the skill IDs of their hero (i.e. fourth-grade fighter) versions. This is in line with the following sentence, from §4 of this part:

    Furthermore, we collapse multiple skills that only really differ in what class and/or weapon type they are available to, into a single skill with a single ID.

    The hero versions just so happen to have the lowest (i.e. lowest numerical value) IDs.

• Summoner:
  • See the comments on bombadier.
  • Notice that the only difference between our definitions of summoner and bombadier is that the summoner can only use a strict subset of the skills that bombadiers can use. This is a result of us allowing bombadiers to freely use summons (even Octopus), on the basis that these are not “attacking skills” per se.
• Begunner:
  • See the comments on pugilist.
  • As pointed out in §5, Some([]) is our way of representing that a job cannot use any first-grade-or-higher skills.

Looking ahead

This essentially concludes pt. iv of this series. In pt. v (and beyond), we have some things to look forward to — particularly, actually getting some taxonomies fleshed out! Hopefully!! Even more particularly, here are some things that I have floating around in the back of my mind:

• We can try imposing a weak ordering onto this universe that we’ve enumerated, as discussed in §4 and §5 of pt. iii. Or, rather, we might end up with more than one ordering to “try on for size”, considering that determining an ordering is tricky business and, ultimately, just depends on what you want to get out of it.

  From here, it would then be possible to construct, by hand, (a) rooted forest(s) of our odd jobs that satisfy the condition laid out in §§4–5 of pt. iii:

  […] ∀𝑖 ∈ ℐ ∀(𝑜, 𝑝) ∈ 𝑂_𝑖² [𝑜 ≤_𝑖 𝑝 → 𝑜 ≲ 𝑝].

• We can try to come up with encodings of our odd jobs, based on their definitions from this part (pt. iv) of the series, so that the clustering-oriented techniques discussed in pt. iii of this series can be applied. Again, as mentioned in pt. iii, such an encoding is ideally a metric space, or even better, a vector space. But it remains to be seen if we can reasonably satisfy these kinds of constraints without throwing away too much information, and without warping the information into an encoding that misrepresents which aspects of each job are relevant. I already have a few things in mind here, but it’s a long way from anything actually usable.

• Another kind of classification that could reasonably be considered a “taxonomy” — but that was not discussed in pt. iii of this series — is closely related to the notion of a hypergraph. You may remember that, in §5 of pt. iii of this series, I talked a bit about the basics of graph theory in order to introduce trees. Hypergraphs are like graphs where we don’t restrict each edge to be a set of cardinality exactly 2. Instead, we just require that each edge is nonempty. This makes a hypergraph basically just a set 𝑆, combined with a collection of (nonempty) subsets of 𝑆. We can impose a hypergraph onto our universe of odd jobs (with each odd job in the universe being a vertex) by grouping odd jobs into relevant categories. Because we aren’t trying to impose any restrictions on this hypergraph (other than that it’s nonempty and simple^[1]), these categories can be of varying sizes, and can freely overlap with one another. Some hyperedges that might be included:

  • “Jobbed beginners”: {STR mage, DEX mage, woods(wo)man, brigand, LUKless sin}.
  • “Mixed attackers”: {gish, gishlet}.
  • “Perma-firsts”: {permawarrior, permamagician, permarcher, permarogue, permapirate}.
  • “Islanders”: {STRlander, DEXlander, magelander, LUKlander, hybridlander}.
  • ⋮

  As I said, this is already a kind of taxonomy itself, which means that such a hypergraph already offers an answer to the question that motivates this entire series: “what (w/sh)ould a taxonomy of odd jobs look like?”. Furthermore, hypergraphs offer some of their own benefits:

  • A hypergraph matching generalises the notion of a “matching” in a graph. In our case, we can think of a hypergraph matching as a kind of practical generalisation of a partition of a set (indeed, a hypergraph matching that is a partition of the vertex set is called a “perfect” matching), in which we don’t necessarily have to include every element of the vertex set.
  • Assuming that every vertex in our hypergraph has a nonzero degree, the notion of set cover provides another kind of practical generalisation of a partition of a set, but going in the other direction: instead of not necessarily including every element of the set, we don’t necessarily require that the “partitions” are pairwise disjoint. The set cover problem, then, asks what is the smallest collection of hyperedges whose union equals the universe. A set cover that solves this problem can, for some purposes, be a practical substitute for an actual partition (if it isn’t already a partition itself).
  • If our hypergraph ends up being disconnected, then its connected components give us a natural partition of the universe, where we interpret two vertices being in different components as the two vertices being “unrelated” in our taxonomy.
  • Our hypergraph would naturally induce a line graph, which, because we’re working with hypergraphs, is just the same thing as an intersection graph.
  • Hypergraphs come with their own handy-dandy visualisation method (much like clustering comes with dendrograms): Euler diagrams (it should be noted that Venn diagrams are a special kind of Euler diagram). Also, rainbow boxes!
  • The edges of our hypergraph can also be used as a tool to produce some distances between odd jobs (e.g. Hamming distance between the bit vectors that represent which hyperedges the job is, and is not, incident to), as well as to generally inform the encodings that we give our odd jobs before trying to feed them into (a) clustering algorithm(s).

Footnotes for “Looking ahead”

1. [↑] A hypergraph is called “simple” iff it has no loops and has no repeated edges. Loops in hypergraphs are analogous to loops in graphs, viz. a hypergraph loop is an edge of cardinality exactly 1. And repeated edges in hypergraphs are analogous to multi-edges in graphs, viz. multiple edges that are the same set.

A little light LPQing

I hopped onto my DEX brawler LPQ mule sorts to do some LPQs with Flow neophyte trishaa, fellow LPQ mule Sangatsu (Lvl1Crook, xXCrookXx, Level1Crook), and DEX page attackattack (xX17Xx, partyrock, breakcore, drainer, strainer, maebee)! We were able to do some all-Suboptimal (again, ignoring that some of the characters we’re playing here are not actually in the alliance…) runs thanks to attackattack also bringing along her gunslinger, partyrock. Here we are, embattled with glowy-eyed whale guy:

And, these LPQs made great stage 8 JMS method practice for trishaa. Once mastered, the JMS method is the mark of a true LPQer!

panolia @ Magatia

I did an MPQ or two on my permarogue panolia, alongside chief dit asdsaou and outlaw bigolebarry:

Afterwards, I remembered that I wanted to try “Keeny’s Research on Frankenroid”, a quest that acts as the culmination of the Keeny’s Research questline, but is not available to characters who are outside of the MPQ level range (71〜85). I’d never done it before, so I went ahead and did the earlier, more familiar quests in the questline. First up was “Keeny’s Research on Roid”:

Followed by “Keeny’s Research on Neo Huroid!”:

Followed by “Keeny’s Research on D.Roid!!”, during which I was fortunate enough to stumble across a D. Roy:

Again lucky for me, this D. Roy dropped not only the Broken Mechanical Heart that I needed for my quest, but also a Magic Stone of Trust that panolia will need later when she does the main Magatia questline! And, turning in the heart, I got a pair of Mechanical Gloves in exchange:

They look less like mechanical gloves, and more like the black cat paws from the Cash Shop to me, but whatever.

Keeny’s Research on Frankenroid is basically an MPQ check; it just requires that you’ve successfully (meaning also saving Romeo/Juliet) defeated Angy Fanky. In exchange, you get… an overall DEX 10% scroll. Could be worse, I suppose…

Wild animals in the forest

My woodsmaster, capreolina, now has a diverse assemblage of creatures following her at all times, as befits a forester.

For contrast, here we have capreolina followed by merely two koalas, helping Permanovice (Dreamscapes, Battlesage) & kookiechan kill a Papulatus, alongside two DKs, FearNoPain & Orsaris:

As a result of being HB’d the entire time, I didn’t have to worry about the second body touching me and, as a result, yeeting my lifeless body to the grave. But, I wanted to have this reassurance even in the absence of HB. So, now that capre has no more ring tiers to attain, it was time to shape up with some pet equips instead. To exploit the rather bizarre mechanic of getting stat increases from your pet’s equipment, I would need more than just one pet — after all, just one pet can only equip one equipment item at best. Instead, I need three HP-holders — I mean, pets. So for that, I need to acquire the special-sauce skill by completing the Pet-Walking Road JQ:

Very nice. But in order to actually have three pets that I could put out at once, I thought I’d try reviving some Nerdy Koalas. You see, I’m a bit new to the whole “pet” thing, relatively speaking. I started playing MapleStory some time in 2005, and it wasn’t until recently (around when my pure STR priest cervid was level 100〜109 or so) that I actually tried using pets. As ridiculous as it may sound, yes, I had been looting and potting manually for all these years. I just thought it was part of the game, okay?? It’s not like Nekksyn would ever let me use pets without absconding with my money, and I mentally transferred this state of affairs to private servers as well, when I started playing those.

In any case, I found out the hard way that pets “expire” after 90 days, and I didn’t know how to revive them. Nor did I care to find out — at this point, I’m already about to Do A Thing™, so I need that pet right now. Thus, I adapted to simply re-buying the pet (as the Cash Shop is generally accessible from almost any map) any time the life of a pet dried up.

Is that pet abuse? Maybe… But I decided to rectify my lack of pet knowledge on this day, and revive some of the Nerdy Koala dolls that I had shamefully sitting in my Cash Shop inventory:

That’s not one, not two, but four koalas! Three of them are bright pink, and one is seated on my back. I actually bought pet equips for all three of these pets. I had never looked at pet equips, and now that I looked at them for the first time, I realised that most pet equips are specific to a particular pet species. So, I searched for “koala” and found the baby koala equip, which is a bright yellow baby koala that sits on top of the Nerdy Koala pet.

At this point, I had seven koalas following me at all times, three of which were bright pink, three of which were bright yellow, and the other of which was seated on my back. Although capre has been using the Nerdy Koala pet (primarily to match the koala on my back) since she started using pets for the first time, I realised now that six koala pets was too much. The colours are just awful, which is why I don’t have a screenshot of that here, to spare your eyes. So, in the end, I swapped out two of the Nerdy Koalas for other pets:

As you can see, all three have their pet equips on: the Brown Kitty with their aviation gear on, and the Monkey with a little red bow on their head! And still, a Nerdy Koala with the bright yellow baby koala on top. This is an improvement, but I might just boom the koala equip (I already passed two 30%s on it…) and switch to another pet… x)

In any case, I passed two 30%s on all three of these pet equips. Two of them still have five slots left(!), and the other has four slots left. So, this is a pretty good start (if only I could get my hands on some 60%s…), and that means that capre now has enough MAXHP (without HB) to take hits from Ravana!:

Cool! :D You can see capre fighting Rav here, alongside Bipp (Celim, Copo, Sommer, Fino, Cassandro) and Snel (LawdHeComin) of Flow — and my pure STR bishop cervid. I tried bringing along cervid for the HS, simply disconnecting her client before the boss died, so that she didn’t leech any EXP. It worked quite well, although for some reason I feel a bit dirty doing it…

But, anyways, I decided that being followed around at all times by three koalas, a monkey, and a cat, wasn’t enough for me. So I went to the Aquarium to protect a certain hoggo:

I proceeded to force my Vicloc dagger spearwoman d34r to pay for the Pheromone Perfume (a significant sum of 20M mesos), and headed to The Area of Wild Hog to catch a wild hog of my own:

And my mount cover of choice: the owl!!

Very nice! :D Oh, and how could I forget? In addition to the three koalas, the monkey, the cat, and the owl, I also have my lovely Phoenix:

Fuck ’em up, birdy!!! And by “them”, I of course mean the Black Bear Swordsmen that I was fighting — along with many other Mt. Song Town monsters — in an attempt to check out some of the quests that this region had in store. While I was there, the game decided to tease me by giving me a few cards:

(Above is a Male Thief card.)

(Above is an Eagle Swordsman card.)

I completed three or four quests here, including “The Door to Bai Shan”, which was the most difficult, and gave perhaps the best reward: 150k base EXP (450k EXP after multipliers) — not too shabby — and a fame.

cervine @ CDs

You already know who it is: my I/L magelet cervine. You already know where it is: Star Avenue South Section. And you already know what it is: cryopreserving optical discs!!

I managed to catch some GM buffs (and Echo of Hero), and used them to sadgrind for 60 minutes:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

[system message]: cervine — Lv.111 Ice/Lightning Mage — Total EXP: 298,540 (1.62%)
EXP Per Hour: 4,478,100 — EXP Per Minute: 74,635

Nearly 4.5M EPH! Not bad at all!! However, significantly higher EPH is attainable with the aid of not just HS, but also, you know, actually partying:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

cervine: huh, thats weird

[system message]: ⟨Party⟩ cervine has reached Lv.112.
⟨Guild⟩ cervine has reached Lv.112.

Level1Crook: cool

Niceee~ One step closer to I/L archmagelet, haha!

Helping Permanovice with the main Taipei 101 questline

Speaking of Taipei 101, I went to Taipei 101 as my darksterity knight rusa to help Permanovice (Battlesage, Dreamscapes) complete the main Taipei 101 questline (Dreamy Park Concert, followed by “The Missing Sheet Music”). As some readers may already know, this quest essentially entails collecting the ETCs from most of the species of monster found in Taipei 101 (with the exception of CDs, which are strangely not part of the questline at all). In particular, this means:

• collecting 200 Blue Perfumes from (Transformed) Blue Perfumes,
• collecting 200 Pink Perfumes from (Transformed) Pink Perfumes,
• collecting 200 Yellow Perfumes from (Transformed) Yellow Perfumes,
• collecting 150 Cheap Speakers from Cheap Amps,
• collecting 150 Fancy Amplifier Cables from Fancy Amps,
• collecting 100 Kid Mannequin’s Bunny Suits from Kid Mannequins,
• collecting 100 Female Mannequin’s Wigs from Female Mannequins,
• & collecting 100 Male Mannequin’s Fedoras from Male Mannequins.

Whew. That’s a lot of ETCs. And unfortunately for our prospective quester, CDs — the only species not represented here — are the only popular training spot in all of Taipei 101^[1], and there are no Taipei 101 monsters that drop cards, either. So you won’t have any luck trying to buy these ETCs on the FM. And that truly is unfortunate, as the perfumes in particular are a supreme pain in the arse to collect ETCs from. Collecting 600 perfumes is a frankly ridiculous chore — unless, of course, you can rawr:

So, I collected with Permanovice (and, as you can see above, also Level1Crook at times) 1 200 perfumes, 600 mannequin ETCs, and 150 Cheap Speakers. Why so many perfumes and mannequin ETCs? Well, we gathered up enough ETCs for both of us to complete the quest. And Permanovice already had the amplifier ETCs, and I had a bunch of Fancy Amplifier Cables on my undead daggermit alces, so we didn’t collect quite as many of those. Anyways, I completed Dreamy Park Concert, and all I got was this lousy Red Umbrella:

Ouf. But Permanovice was kind enough to buy two Spirit of Rock’s Music Scores, one for each of us, so we both completed the entire questline. Which makes us both proud owners of the super sweet Electric Guitar Necklace…

Footnotes for “Helping Permanovice with the main Taipei 101 questline”

1. [↑] This is not entirely true; Kid Mannequins used to be popular when they had full-map-range auto-aggro behaviour (which was a long time ago). And nowadays, Fancy Amps are a popular spot for single-target-only attackers, with Cheap Amps being (as their names imply) a cheaper alternative. Of course, these are level >70 training spots, so the only characters who are still single-target-only by this point are odd-jobbers…

Hangin’ out at the Training Zone

As I was online and playing rusa, OmokTeacher (Slime, Thinks, Slimu) logged on to say hi and see what’s up. He got into a conversation with Permanovice in buddy chat, and we went to HQ^[1] to chat there. We were comparing the various “pogginners” (pog + beginner) of MapleLegends, such as OmokTeacher and Permanovice themselves, as well as Taima (Tacgnol, Boymoder, Hanyou, Numidium, Gambolpuddy), Gumby, Cortical (GishGallop, Medulla, BowerStrike, xXcorticalXx, SussyBaka, CokeZeroPill), LoneW0lf1600 (LoneWolf1600), Outside, etc. And, naturally, this resulted in OmokTeacher and Permanovice wanting to test their DPH on the spot… So, to the Training Zone we went…

I took along my pure STR bishop cervid so that I could participate side-by-side with these STRginners. In the end, of course, the results are not exactly fair (as my various magician/cleric/priest/bishop skills have given me the EXP advantage…), but we compared anyways, with the focus being on OmokTeacher’s and Permanovice’s numbers. As usual, these tests were just with typical self-buffs and Ciders:

Transcription of the above image

OmokTeacher: seeing some chunky near 6k[’]s from u deer x_x

[system message]: cervid — Lv.124 Bishop — Total Damage: 446,956
Damage Per Hour: 13,408,680 — Damage Per Minute: 223,478

cervid: yea haha occasionally

OmokTeacher: whachu got?
Wait
lemme guess

cervid: i almost attacked the whole time so i think that was an ok measurement

OmokTeacher: 13.1m

cervid: close!

OmokTeacher: 12.8m?

cervid: 13.4m

OmokTeacher: omg
h00ge

cervid: hahah

OmokTeacher: i got 10.6m

cervid: ooo

OmokTeacher: Redz?

Permanovice initially clocked 10.5M DPH, and so OmokTeacher (with 10.6M DPH) thought that he had won the contest. But Permanovice realised that he was using some DEX gear, so after switching to a STR robe, he instead clocked a whopping 11.4M DPH! Also, both OmokTeacher and I have our Crimson Arcglaives exposed in the screenshot above, but Permanovice has an NX weapon cover equipped, so for anyone who’s wondering, Permanovice is holding a Fan and a Stolen Fence.

Footnotes for “Hangin’ out at the Training Zone”

1. [↑] We have a joint alliance headquarters between the Suboptimal alliance and the GangGang guild at FM 7-7 (channel 7, room 7). You should check it out and BUY MY SHIT @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Card-hunting (and a little questing along the way): Because apparently, I have nothing better to do

Now that my woodsmaster capreolina got the T10 ring, I have been wandering around, a lost deer, trying to figure out what to do now.

I was invited to do some card-hunting with INTslinger Lvl1Crook (Level1Crook, xXCrookXx) and page vvvv (of Tunas). So, after some futzing about with my characters, I decided to bring my I/L magelet cervine to help these two hunt some Wild Boar cards:

They were having a lot of trouble getting the Wild Boards to cough up some cards, but cervine fixed that right up:

Once we all had our respective 5⧸5 Wild Boar cards, we headed to The Swamp of Despair III to hunt some Ligators:

I suggested that we go one map to the right, as The Swamp of Despair III is basically just Ligators (with the occasional Jr. Necki sliding around the bottom), whereas Dangerous Croko I has both Ligators and Crocos. Then, once we get 5⧸5 Croco, we could go back to The Swamp of Despair III to finish up Ligator sets as necessary. But the main motivation for staying in The Swamp of Despair III was that Lvl1Crook was too smart. And too many smarticle particles made him not so good at shooty-shooting, so the Crocos were a bit too much of a challenge. But, just to see how bad it really was, we went there anyways to test it out. Plus, I needed at least 50 Croco Skins for the Dyle questline:

Later, once Lvl1Crook and vvvv had left, I continued on card-hunting in Victoria Island, because… why not, I guess. So I headed to the Ant Tunnel for some Zombie Mushrooms…:

…And some Horny Mushrooms^[1]…:

…And some oversized Zombie Mushrooms…:

…And some Evil Eyes (a particularly easy set):

I hit up my favourite tree dungeon for the Curse Eye set:

And then, I headed to Florina Beach for some of the card sets there, as well as for the Defeat King Clang! questline:

I was fortunate enough to stumble across a Casey and complete my quest:

And I finished up the Lorang set, thus finishing all three main sets on Florina Beach:

I went to Ellinia to do the Defeat Faust questline, and while I was there in The Forest of Evil I, I went ahead and did the Malady set:

I also got a start on my Zombie Lupin set, which I later finished at Monkey Swamp III:

I did the Iron Hog set between Pig Park and Pig Park II:

And moved on to Perion to get the Perion Drake sets: Copper Drakes…

…And those gosh darned Red Drakes:

It was at this point that I finally found a Faust:

Cool! I finished the questline and got a card! Anyways, back to Perion for those Iron Boars…

And I headed to the top floor of the Nautilus to ask Muirhat about his questline that follows “The Half-written Letter”. After taking down some Stone Golems, I headed to TfoG for some Dark Stone Golems and some Mixed Golems:

And then, again, back to Perion for some Excavation Site monsters. Like Officer Skeles…:

…And Skeleton Soldiers…:

…And everyone’s favourite: Commander Skeletons! These lovely lads are strong against ice, so I had to take out the ol’ Thunderbolt:

Not very swift at killing them, but good enough for the quest at least…

And, finally, to Deep Sleepywood for the last critters of the questline. Again with the resistance to ice, we have Ice Drakes:

Terrible. You’re not allowed to be ice ­— I’m ice!! Stop being so icy, so that my ice ices you better!!!

And just your ordinary, average Drakes:

And last but not least, the Tauromacis and Taurospears. As usual, only the Taurospears are willing to part with their cards:

I also did Mr. Wetbottom’s Secret Book, and got myself another snazzy Sauna Robe:

And I finished up my Mixed Golem set and my Shade set…

…Just in time to get a snazzy T2 ring!:

And, for want of something else to do, I headed to the Orbis Tower for more monsters to card-hunt:

None of these card sets pose any threat to our intrepid card-hunter cervine, who is armed with not one, but two multi-target magic spells.

Of course, there is the Ice Sentinel, formidable as it is with its rimy exterior.

But, to balance it out, we have the Ice Sentinel’s evil, but tender, twin: the Fire Sentinel.

Warm and fuzzy as it appears, the Leatty is nevertheless cold at heart as well.

But, like the Ice Sentinel, the Leatty has a tender evil twin, more reddish in hue.

And we can’t forget our miniature spheniscid friends, the Jr. Pepes. Adapted to harsh Antarctic winters, they too would shrug at my Ice Strikes.

And I would have ventured further, to the Jr. Pepe’s aquatic cousins (also adapted to harsh winters…), but they also share habitat with some of our Upper Aqua Road friends, so they can be saved for later.

Having gotten the Shade set for cervine, I stumbled across one and decided to get the set for my daggermit alces and my darksterity knight rusa. Shade is a spooky guy, and it’s spooky season, but there’s no spooky event, so that meant it was time to say goodbye to last year’s spooky event cosmetics… which I had been using on alces…

Transcription of the above image

[system message]: [Hallowkitty’s Witch Hat] has passed its expiration date and will be removed from your inventory.
[Silence Bandaid] has passed its expiration date and will be removed from your inventory.

F4

But, no matter — I did finish both of these sets:

And got the stray Wraith card here and there:

I did a bit of browsing for cards as rusa, too. I accidentally stumbled on a Jr. Booger card or two:

As I was headed to The Cave of Evil Eye for the Evil Eye set:

I also said hi to the reanimated mother of all mushrooms, but did not finish her set:

Later, I got bored and browsed for cards on my pure STR bishop cervid. cervid had partially done the Orbis Tower, but never actually finished. So I went back for the Dark Leatties…:

…And the Jr. Pepes:

And I headed back to Victoria Island for some of the quests there, including more of those pesky area boss quests. To that end, I beat up some flying old ladies:

And I hung around The Swamp of Despair III and Dangerous Croko I for a while, not even for quests. I just wanted some cards. But these silly crocodilian fellows refused to give up their precious rectangles, so I had to make do with the surfboards that they kept giving me:

Oh, well. Better luck next time!

Footnotes for “Card-hunting (and a little questing along the way): Because apparently, I have nothing better to do”

1. [↑] Any readers who play(ed) MapleLegends are already familiar with the in-game “[MapleTip]” that reads something like:

   “Horny Mushroom” is actually called Horned Mushroom.

   If I made a joke about how silly this MapleTip was, it would not be the first — many have pointed out the humour. Reading the MapleTip literally, it’s plainly false: Horny Mushrooms are not only named as such in String.wz, but that is de facto what they are actually called by Anglophone players of the game.

   But, presumably, the MapleTip is just very poorly worded. Perhaps the MapleTip’s author meant to say that Horny Mushroom was merely a poor translation of the original Korean name for the monster, and that Wizet presumably meant to translate it as Horned Mushroom, or similar. This is very plausible, even obvious — horny is occasionally used in English in the sense of “horned” (i.e. having horns). But the original sense in English is neither this “horned” sense (for which horned is, by far, the more popular of the two terms), nor the usual sense in contemporary English of “sexually aroused”. Horny was in English as early as the late 1300s, meaning “made of horn”, and by the 1690s it had evolved a slightly more abstract sense of “bony, callous; as if made of horn”. It wasn’t until the latter half of the 1800s that the “sexually aroused” sense emerged. And, if you were wondering, the “sexually aroused” sense is from the horn in horn + -y as a euphemism for an erect penis. Later, it was generalised to the sexual excitement of anyone, regardless of whether or not they have a penis.