rangifer’s diary: pt. lxxxviii

…Freezers…

…And, of course, Poopers. Actually, the game itself seems to disagree on what these aquatic creatures are called, between Pooper’s DNA Sample and Poopa. Apparently, this confused me so much that I simply confused Poopers with Poison Poopers…:

I… I hesitate to admit exactly how long I was farming Poison Poopers before I realised that the reason my quest item wasn’t dropping had more to do with the monster species that I was farming than with my luck…

Yeah, okay, I killed like half a dozen Poopers and it dropped. Go figure. 🙄

I hiked the El Nath Mountains in search of members of the Alpha Platoon, a military platoon who — whilst they were on a mysterious mission — suffered an aeroboat (not to be confused with airboat, which is just a watercraft; aeroboats are literally magical flying boat-like vessels, e.g. the boat that flies between Ellinia & Orbis) failure that left their members scattered across the El Nath mountain range, in unknown conditions. Thankfully, it seems that all or most of their platoon parachuted their way to a safe landing, but it was up to me to find them.

On my way to find Sergeant Bravo, I narrowly escaped the wrath of the Snow Witch:

While I was in the Cloud Park looking for Corporal Easy, I took the opportunity to kill some pixies to get started on The Chaos Behind Alfonse Green and the Nependeath Juice:

And, finally, for my hard work, I was rewarded by Master Sergeant Fox with a Shoe JUMP 60%!:

I found out that the Dolphin Taxi Coupons from Kenta’s Research are automatically used any time that you use the Dolphin taxi service to warp to The Sharp Unknown, which is a feature that I use a lot:

The funny part about the coupons is that you get exactly ten from completing the quest, but they are untradeable and cannot be replenished — the quest isn’t repeatable, and there’s no way to buy more coupons. Furthermore, without any coupons, this taxi service costs 1k mesos, so getting ten coupons from the quest completion is actually just… 10k mesos’ worth of coupons. Thanx, Nekksyn.

After using one of my ✨sacred✨ Dolphin Taxi Coupons to head to The Sharp Unknown, I was now at KFT, where I could start quests like Brotherly Love, which is basically just “walk back & forth across the KFT map a couple times”. Plus, there was Kong Ji’s Request, which required me to farm Artemisia from around the village:

Plus, I briefly headed back to the eastern regions of Aqua Road in search of Slippery Oil from Cicos for “The Kids That Became the Sun and the Moon”. The Kids That Became the Sun and the Moon tells a kind of origin myth of how the Sun and the Moon came to be. Well… not quite, actually. In the story itself, the Sun already exists, but whatever. This story is the story of Haenim [해님] and his sister; his sister is not named in-game, but her name is presumably Dalnim* [달님]. 해님 literally means “Mr. Sun”; thus, 달님 “Ms. Moon”. One day, their mother went to the market, as she does every day, to sell rice cakes — but she never came back. Instead, a few days later, a tiger came to their house, dressed in their mother’s clothing, asking to be let inside. Fortunately for Haenim, he noticed that the hand reaching for the door was not that of his mother, but was the furry paw of a tiger. Terrified of the tiger, Haenim & Dalnim tried to stall the tiger for as long as possible, by asking them endless questions before letting them inside. Eventually, the tiger realised that they were being stalled. But, by this point, so many hours had passed that the tiger grew fatigued and left — but not before giving up on their disguise, and promising to come back later to eat Haenim & Dalnim for dinner! Mortally terrified, Haenim & Dalnim understandably had troubles with their own attempts to sleep, but eventually passed out. While asleep, Haenim & Dalnim were visited in their dreams by a deity that provided them with a plan to save their own lives. But for the plan to work, they would need a lot of Tough Rope and some Slippery Oil.

Whilst hunting for oil, tara hit level 41 :]

And for the rope, I would have to kill Hodoris, which proved to be somewhat difficult due to being nine levels below them (Hodoris are level 50), and due to their not-insignificant AVOID of 28…

In any case, I did eventually collect the 20 Tough Ropes and the Slippery Oil that Haenim & Dalnim needed for their escape. With the rope, the siblings climbed all the way into the sky, and with the oil, they left the rope behind them slick, so that the tiger could not follow them. Having escaped all the way into the sky, Haenim & Dalnim became the Sun & the Moon, respectively.

I also killed some Moon Bunnies, hunting for the Swallow’s Lost Seed for The Lost Seed quest. This quest leads into one of two followup quests: Opening Nolbu’s Gourd or Opening Hongbu’s Gourd. These quests are mutually exclusive, but I always do Nolbu’s quest because he is closer to the Swallow, and the quest rewards aren’t meaningfully different :P

If you plant the seed on Nolbu’s roof, this bulb pops out:

It has 10k HP, and once you defeat it, out comes a scroll:

Apparently, this scroll is a legal document indicating that the possessor of the scroll has the legal right to all of Nolbu’s belongings. I hardly see how legally overbearing gourd papers are remotely enforceable, but it was at least enough to scare Nolbu into giving me some Brown Double Boots…

I headed to the second floor of the Helios Tower to hunt Retzes for Mr. Shim’s Request:

I noticed that these rice-filled gunny sacks were called “State-held Rice”, and I began to vaguely wonder what Necksawn were trying to represent here. Obviously, Korean Folk Town is intended to represent rural Korea — at least, some fairytale version of it from an ambiguous time period. So I wondered about the significance of this item’s name, and of its description, which is as follows:

A sack full of state-held rice. These sacks feature stamps of approval from the government.

Looking at the name and description from the KMS version, the item’s name is 정부미 ⟨jeongbumi⟩* “government rice”†, and the description is as follows:

정부미가 들어 있는 쌀포대이다. 쌀포대에는 정부에서 품질을 증명한다는 도장이 찍혀 있다.

⟨Jeongbumiga deureo inneun ssalpodaeida. Ssalpodaeeneun jeongbueseo pumjireul jeungmyeonghandaneun dojangi jjikyeo itda.⟩

It’s a rice sack containing government rice. The rice sack is stamped with a seal indicating that the government certifies its quality.

Searching the WWW for 정부미, the Korean Wikipedia has an article on the subject: 정부미 (대한민국). I don’t know Korean, so I can’t read it, but I used a machine translation to write an English version below:

Okay, well, I guess that makes sense. Well, it would make more sense if the point of the quest was to help feed someone(s). But here is a snippet of the actual quest dialogue:

Mr. Shim: Yes. I also went to the market a while ago, and I heard of this new item called the ‘Reading Glasses’. The merchant told me this item is for everyone who has grown old and whose eye sight is slowly declining, struggling to see what’s right in front. I mean, this item is just perfect for me! After finding out the price, though, I was devastated.

PC: How much was it?

Mr. Shim: I don’t know why it’s so expensive… I mean, 300 State-held Rices? Our family has been struggling to put food on the table, so that price tag is definitely too overwhelming.

Maybe I’m reading this too literally, but this quest seems to portray the State-held Rices as a kind of currency, or at least as a typical medium of exchange, or token for barter. 정부미, stricto sensu, is illegal to trade commercially — not to say that that necessarily stops people, but, you know… that still makes things less plausible. Never mind the fact that Retzes are inexplicably a good source of State-held Rice??

Whatever. It seems likely that this quest’s premise was just a bit of sloppy (if you can call it that) work on Necksawn’s part, as usual. That being said, it’s worth noting some of the historical background here. Now, I’m not exactly qualified to give an “Economics of the Korean Peninsula 101” lecture, but here’s a bit of background that I was able to glean from the WWW.

Much like with the case of China, tracing back the history of the Korean Peninsula gets you a picture of multiple states and even multiple cultures, as exemplified by the Three Kingdoms era, the Northern and Southern States period, and the Later Three Kingdoms period. But by the early-to-mid 10th century, the Korean Peninsula came to be ruled by dynasties, including the five-century-long(!) Joseon dynastic kingdom, notable for beginning the establishment of the Korean culture & identity that persists into the present day, for inventing Hangul (created in 1443 by Sejong the Great), among many other things.

It’s hard to casually find details of Korean economies that are pre-capitalist, as Korea was not given much attention in this respect until the miracle on the Han River (in the aftermath of the Korean War of 1950–1953). And this economic period for South Korea (controlled by the Republic of Korea, or ROK) is certainly not called a “miracle” for no reason! However, as noted by ‡:

The term “miracle”, however, actually fails to do justice to the complexity of the story by implying that South Korea’s growth was somehow contrary to reason or extraneous to history. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Growth was stimulated and conditioned by a number of international, social, political, and cultural factors — all deeply grounded in Korean history.

One thing that might surprise the reader is that, for the first six(!) or so decades of the 20th century, the southern part of the Korean Peninsula was considered to be more “economically backwards” than its northern counterpart — leaving the south seemingly doomed to be the economic basket case of East Asia for the foreseeable future. During the Japanese rule/annexation of Korea, the northern regions became significantly more industrialised, leaving the southern parts to be the rice bowl.⸸

With the aftermath of the Korean War resulting in the seemingly permanent division between North and South, much recovery & reconstruction was necessary in the wake of, you know, Japanese occupation followed by three years of extremely deadly(!) internecine warfare. Note that, although I use the word “internecine” here — somewhat implying that it was a civil war — I really mean internecine in the sense of “mutually destructive”; the Korean War was very much a part of the Cold War. The PRC sent many reinforcements and troops to aid North Korea (and the USSR lent considerable assistance as well), and the United States did similar for South Korea, making it effectively a proxy war. Later, the rule of Park Chung-hee (1961–1979) saw the establishment of chaebols and many of the other economic staples of the South Korea that we know today. Eventually (1987), South Korea democratised and took on its modern form.

On the other hand, in the ≈8 years or so following the end of the Korean War, North Korea (now the DPRK) still had greater economic growth than South Korea, despite suffering greater losses as a result of the U.S.A. & UNC’s extremely aggressive bombings and scorched-earth policies.¶ Nevertheless, the effect of these wartime policies was deep-seated and long-lasting:

The American command dismissed British concerns that mass bombardment would turn world opinion against them, insisting that air attacks were accurate and civilian casualties limited. Russian accusations of indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets did not register with the Americans at all. But for the North Koreans, living in fear of B-29 attacks for nearly three years, including the possibility of atomic bombs, the American air war left a deep and lasting impression. The DPRK government never forgot the lesson of North Korea’s vulnerability to American air attack, and for half a century after the Armistice continued to strengthen anti-aircraft defences, build underground installations, and eventually develop nuclear weapons to ensure that North Korea would not find itself in such a position again. The long-term psychological effect of the war on the whole of North Korean society cannot be overestimated. The war against the United States, more than any other single factor, gave North Koreans a collective sense of anxiety and fear of outside threats that would continue long after the war’s end.¶

With this in mind, and with the political backing & alliance with the PRC and the USSR — both of which nominally adhered to some variation of Stalinism, thus encouraging state capitalism — it’s perhaps less than surprising that the DPRK continued to adhere to Juche [주체사상] (purportedly a variation on Stalinism), as a justification of something like an autarkic dictatorship, and all that (not to imply that the ROK didn’t also “enjoy” its fair share of dictatorship in the years after the Korean War… it did). You know the drill. As it turns out, this is not a recipe for worldwide economic success.

Okay, I’ve gone too far. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, states and their rices. One thing that I find striking about the history of Korea is that the kingdoms and peoples of the Korean Peninsula were, for most of Korean history, oriented much more towards their Chinese neighbours than their Japanese ones.‡ Korean folks often thought of Japan as just being generally culturally inferior, and they were understandably very upset by the Imjin War‡ (1592–1598; note that the Ming supported the Joseon in this war), which was started by Japan invading Korea — not once, but twice — with the hopes of conquering it. It wasn’t until Some Stuff Happened™※ during the 20th century that many Koreans (specifically elites, businessmen, professionals — i.e. the upper class☟) learned to speak Japanese☟, and South Korea’s socioeconomic development started to be modelled on Japan’s — with the aid of lots of foreign investment from Japan, of course!‡

If we instead look to the economic history of China…⁂ (emphasis mine)

At this time, as in much of the region’s history, peasants were not just farmers: they farmed but also produced handicraft items, in particular silk or cotton cloth. And the Ming state, as with earlier ruling dynasties, encouraged this dual production by requiring tax payments in grain, cloth and labor.

[…]

In fact, from the mid-13th until the 19th century, the urban population actually shrank relative to the rural population.

[…]

In the rural-urban continuum common to mainland East Asia, numerous villages would surround a market town (市 ⟨shì⟩). On market days, peasants, merchants and gentry would go to these towns which, by the Ming and Qing, had become linked to the global economy. Larger administrative and intermediate marketing towns (鎮 ⟨zhèn⟩) developed alongside Ming commercialization. A sharp rural-urban divide would emerge only in the 20th century, largely a result of socialist-era policies.

As production grew in the late-imperial period, so did rural surplus and regional and empire-wide trade. This developed into a Ming commercial revolution that brought increased inequality in rural landownership. With commercialization, the tax system became too complex to maintain, and the state shifted to tax payment in silver instead of in kind.

[…]

Peasant household patriarchy was mainly concerned with the control of household labor, and the economic logic of these household production units aimed at satisfying household subsistence. As labor could not be laid off from the household, the tendency was to keep adding labor inputs until consumption was met, even as the marginal productivity of those inputs continued to drop. Under these conditions peasant rationality “was the rationality of survival, not of profit maximization.”❦⁂

(emphasis mine)

Now, we’re talking about the Ming and Qing dynasties here, which is like 1368–1912 CE; a huge date range! But also, certainly pre-capitalist, and hopefully representative enough of pre-industrial mainland East Asian economies for our purposes. The main takeaways here are:

• Subsistence farming.
• Paying taxes in kind (rather than with something that is a “true currency”).
• Agricultural (and other peasant product) surpluses that aren’t eaten up by the above-mentioned taxes can be taken to the nearest market (鎮) in exchange for other goods (e.g. eyeglasses).

What does all of this have to do with State-held Rice?? What does this have to do with Mr. Shim??? How much EXP am I going to get from this???? Well, another looser — but hopefully somewhat more sensical — interpretation is that these gunny sacks of government-approved rice could be used to pay taxes here in our fairytale rural Korean folk town. Thus, farming for rice of this kind, and then trading it for some other good (e.g. eyeglasses), would be a reasonable way for someone like Mr. Shim to get a pair of eyeglasses. The government may not accept a pair of eyeglasses as a tax payment, but a bunch of rice just might do the trick.

Anyways, three hundred State-held Rices was enough to push tara into the 42nd level!:

I then headed up the Helios Tower to Ludibrium, for some more Loodi quests. I talked to Olson the Toy Soldier for the Dollhouse quest, and he took me to Doll’s House, a very tall map full of (Green) Super Tricksters (Super Tricksters, not Super Trixters!) and plastic dollhouses:

My task is then to find the “real” dollhouse, and break it open to retrieve a Pendulum. Luckily for me, the real dollhouse is the one that you see at the top of the image above. The fake dollhouses look very similar to the real one, but the handles on top of the fake ones look more flat. You can see that the middle of the handle is embossed, and on the fake dollhouses, the embossed region has flat-looking sides instead of looking round all the way around.

For Cleaning Up the Inner Parts of Eos Tower, Marcel had me slaying Black Ratzes…

And slaying Trixters…

I collected some Worn-Out Goggles and some Propellers for The Lost Guard quest, which is just a repeatable quest that you can do for Eos Rock Scrolls:

Oh, right. And there’s that quest from Tigun the Advisor which has you donating a single Sapphire to him so that… he can donate it to a monarch…?

Our king is such a generous person that this donation will surely be used to help those in need. I can guarantee you that.

Sounds like bootlicking to me F3…

I also did another one of Tigun’s quests, hunting some Green Trixters for Spider’s Out at Eos Tower:

The sequel to the Dollhouse quest is A Delivery to a Lost Time, which had me killing Tick-Tocks in search of the All-purpose Clock Spring:

While I was there along the Path of Time, I hunted some Chronoses for the Maple History Book III, and for their Cogs for Rocky’s Parts, Assembling a Toy, Assembling the Alarm Clock — and later, Today’s Schedule:

While I was killing Chronoses, I was blessed with a 2(!) INT Mystic Shield!:

Continuing the A Delivery to a Lost Time questline, I did The Clocktower Headache, which had me punching wee lil Ticks in their tiny lil clockfaces:

I needed some ≈220 or so Cheap Batteries for The Clock Worker’s Batteries and Assembling a Toy (plus some Mechanical Hearts from Master Robos), so I went to the Toy Factory region of the Ludi clocktower to kick some shiny metal Robo butt:

While I was beating up toy robots, I hit level 43~!:

Also in the Toy Factory region, I went to see Mac the Mechanic for the Mac the Mechanic’s Maintenance Manual (nice alliteration 👍) quest, which sent me to a place called the “Secret Factory” o_o:

Breaking the boxes spawns special Toy Trojans, and defeating these Trojans yields the Maintenance Manual that Mac the Mechanic was missing:

Continuing Marcel’s quests, I did Cleaning Up the Outer Parts of Eos Tower by slaying some Propellies and Tweeters:

It was at this point that I was joined by assassin SuperLuck (Level1Crook, Lvl1Crook, xXCrookXx)! We farmed Mateons at Off-Limits:

And when I say that we “farmed Mateons”, I mean that we farmed a lot of Mateons. Like, a lot a lot. The “The Antidote” questline, from Rice the Medic, has you collect 1 500 (yes, 1.5k) Mateon’s Tentacles.

We were briefly joined in our efforts to slay All Of The Mateons™ by an I/L magician by the name of bluedreamy:

This questline is so damn long, and requires killing so many damn Mateons, that I levelled not once, but twice:

The level 45 one I unfortunately had to do myself, with a lot of Three Snailing and sweat and tears…

Now that I have collected 1.5k(!) Mateon’s Tentacles, it is time to receive THE ULTIMATE PRIZE from Rice the Medic:

Thx, Rice. ’Preciate it. 😐

Since I was now in the Omega Sector, I took the opportunity to do some Omega quests, including Dr. Kim’s Comments, which had me hunting for space burgers from Barnard Grays, and Eliminating Grays, which — as the name implies — was having me murder those same Grays. It was at this time that I found out that pride month is indeed celebrated in the Omega Sector:

🏳️‍🌈\👽/🏳️‍⚧️

I headed over to the Boswell Field II to kill some Plateons for Eliminating Plateon:

And then 200 moar Plateons, plus 150 Mecateon’s Laser Guns from Mecateons, for Eliminating Plateon and Mecateon:

For Trading with Alien Gray, I headed over to the Omega Sector’s Silo, where I started breaking random shit to find Secret Documents™:

This was enough to propel me to level 46~!:

While I was there in the Silo, I talked to Chury, who sent me on a mission to determine Where is Dogon’s HQ?

Well, I found it. The Entrance to Dogon’s HQ is tucked away in Kulan Field V, and I made my way to Dogon’s HQ proper:

As is well-known, the best way to secure your super-secret HQ from intruders is to make it float in the sky, and then require anyone who wants to get up there to teleport around a bunch of little grassy platforms until they make their way up. Effectively, the HQ is protected by a password consisting of a string of eight trits, which is — in and of itself — 𝗅𝗈𝗀₂⁡(3⁸) ≈ 12.68 bits of information (more specifically, entropy). This is somewhat comparable to (albeit less than) the amount of entropy in a (randomly & uniformly selected) four-decimal-digit PIN, which would be 𝗅𝗈𝗀₂⁡(10⁴) ≈ 13.29 bits. Compare this to a MapleLegends account password: I think(?) that MapleLegends passwords allow all — and only — printable ASCII characters, which means that each character has 7e₁₆ − 20₁₆ + 1 = 95 possibilities. Assuming that every password is of maximum length (which is 12, for MapleLegends passwords), and assuming that passwords are selected uniformly, this is 𝗅𝗈𝗀₂⁡(95¹²) ≈ 78.84 bits of entropy in a single password, which makes 12.68 bits look super weaksauce. And that’s saying something, considering that 78.84 bits is not really amazing for a password (I would usually shoot for ≥96 bits◊); but, you know, we do the best with what Necksawn’s old game client allows us, I guess. Good enough.

If you didn’t know the password to Dogon’s HQ (which can be found on Hidden Street, but we’ll ignore that for now), though, brute-forcing it is not even as difficult as you might fear, given the bare “12.68 bits of entropy” figure. On average, brute-forcing such a string of eight trits would take (3⁸ + 1) ÷ 2 = 3 281 attempts, which seems like kinda a lot, since we gotta actually move our PC around and stuff! But the actual way that brute-forcing works is not by guessing an entire string at a time. Instead, we guess the first trit, and immediately know whether or not it’s correct; then, if it is correct, we can guess the next trit; and so on. Getting a trit incorrect means starting over from the first one, which does slow things down a bit, but overall this is a rather swift process. In fact, it’s not all that difficult to calculate the expected number of trit-attempts (a trit-attempt involves using a single portal; it may or may not be a guess, because you may or may not already know the value of that trit) necessary to brute-force the password of Dogon’s HQ, given no information to start with…

It’s obvious that we expect to take two “guesses” to go beyond a given trit: we could get it right the first time (one guess), or we could get it right the second time, or we could get it right on our third and final try; the midpoint of 1 and 3 is (1 + 3) ÷ 2 = 2. If we already know the first (𝑛 − 1) trits, then it would seem that guessing the 𝑛^th trit takes, on average, 2⁢𝑛 trit-attempts; this is because each guess requires 𝑛 trit-attempts, as you have to re-input the first (𝑛 − 1) already-known trits before making your actual guess. But actually, we don’t even need 2⁢𝑛 trit-attempts! Once we’ve successfully guessed the value of an unknown trit, we are immediately allowed to guess the value of the next trit by only expending a single trit-attempt. This gives us a head-start of (𝑛 − 1) trit-attempts, meaning that we actually only need 2⁢𝑛 − (𝑛 − 1) = 𝑛 + 1 trit-attempts, on average, to go beyond the 𝑛^th trit.

We want to go beyond the 8^th trit, as this exactly represents successfully entering the password. Note that we don’t just want to know the password, we want to enter it; it’s possible to incorrectly guess the final trit twice, and thus know the entire password without having entered it yet. To calculate the expected number of trit-attempts required to get to this point, we have to perform a summation⧆ of the expected number of trit-attempts required for going beyond each of the 8 trits: ∑(𝑛 + 1), for 𝑛 ≔ 1 up to 𝑛 ≔ 8. This summation looks a lot like a triangular number, except that we are skipping 1; we have ∑𝑛, for 𝑛 ≔ 2 up to 𝑛 ≔ 9. Because we aren’t starting at 1, this is sometimes called a trapezoidal number, which can be expressed as the difference between two triangular numbers. In particular, if 𝑇_𝑛 is the 𝑛^th triangular number, then:

𝑖 + (𝑖 + 1) + ⋯ + (𝑗 − 1) + 𝑗 = 𝑇_𝑗 − 𝑇_𝑖−1.

In our particular case, 𝑖 = 2 and 𝑗 = 9, so we have:

𝑇₉ − 𝑇₁ = ½ ⋅ 9⁢(9 + 1) − ½ ⋅ 1⁢(1 + 1) = 45 − 1 = 44.

Or, you know, you can open up a Python REPL and enter sum(range(2, 10)), and get the same result. Whatever works.

As you can see, 44 is a lot more optimistic than the expected 3 281 full-password attempts that would be required if this were a conventional password input. An expectation of 44 “attempts” — if we pretend like these are the “attempts” of a conventional password input, which they aren’t — equates to ✨effectively✨ 𝗅𝗈𝗀₂⁡(44 ⋅ 2 − 1) ≈ 6.44 bits of “““entropy”””. Sad. Whoever this “Dogon” guy is needs a visit from a cybersecurity expert or something…

Needless to say, I cracked the password, and stole Dogon’s precious secrets:

Both Eliminating Chief Gray and Chief Gray’s Sign would have me beating up the elderly Roswell aliens of the population, so I went to find myself some mustachioed Chief Grays…:

And, lo & behold, the Chief Gray’s Signs and Notes that I sought:

Now that I had killed a bunch of Chief Grays, I was tasked with The History of Zeta Leticulan (see also: ζ Reticuli, ζ Reticuli in fiction), which had me collecting these weirdly giant cell-looking thingies from the Grays of the Kulan Field:

Gross. I’ll take four of them.

For The Effort to Make-Up, Yellow Mesoranger had me slaying 120 of the Ultra Grays, for which I headed to KFV:

The Revolutionary Plan for Constructing Defensive Walls is, unusually, a timed quest. From the moment that you accept the quest, you have 30 minutes to turn it in, after which the quest is failed and must be restarted if you want to complete it. What is particularly strange about this timed quest is that it asks for only one thing, and that one thing is a handful of completely ordinary ETC items. Yellow Toy Blocks are not quest items; they are frequently dropped by ordinary Block Golems as their usual leftover ETC drop. Thus, it’s very likely that the PC will simply instantly finish the quest, having already gathered ≥20 Yellow Toy Blocks beforehand. I decided to do it the apparently intended way, though:

And… yeah. I could have done it easily, even if the time limit were only 10 minutes. No biggie.

For General Maestro’s quests, I had to kill some Drumming Bunnies for their Dull Crystals. The first quest in the questline, The Ore of Dark Crystal, simply asks for 20 of them:

As I was already quite far up the Eos Tower in search of Drumming Bunnies, I headed back to Ludibrium. In the Toy Factory region, I talked to Assistant Cheng for The Missing Mechanical Parts quest. This quest is perhaps better known as simply “the Ludi JQ”:

😞 Oh boy… Unfortunately, I am not known for my JQ prowess. But, I tried it anyways:

As it turns out, this JQ is, regrettably, beyond my skill level. Rather than spending days trying to do it anyways, I decided to move on to more interesting and less infuriating bits of the Toy Factory…

For Assembling the Alarm Clock, I needed a pair of Special Batteries, which are quest items that can only be obtained from Master Robos:

For my efforts, I was awarded 50 Fat Sausages. Yummy.

Oh, and we can’t forget Nemi’s quests, can we? These quests are actually quite low level (28), but I forgot to go out to the Ludibrium Village to find her. Nemi’s First Ingredient had me killing Ratz for their Savory Cheeses:

One of the Nemi quests, Nemi’s Lunchbox Delivery, had me delivering lunch to Nemi’s father, Manager Karl, who — as his title implies — occupies a managerial position at the Toy Factory. This seemingly innocuous delivery quest leads to another quest by the name of Just Another Day At Work:

We had 10 Roly-Poly workers working at the factory. Those guys are hard workers, but right now, they have been sent abroad to fix Eos Tower. I’m sure they’re working on the tower even as we speak.

I’m just curious as to whether they work hard even without me watching over them. That is why… can you visit those guys and take a picture of each and every one of them through the camera that I’m giving you? It will be nice to have you visit them in order.

Equipped with Manager Karl’s Camera, my task was then to photograph each & every one of the Roly-Poly NPCs (yes, all ten of them), in order, so that… their manager will know that they’re working hard? It’s not at all clear to me that this will have the simple effect that Karl apparently wants. Even if I were somehow able to take surprise candid photographs of the Roly-Proleys✤, a single photograph is just not a lot of information in this context; a single snapshot seems fairly likely to be misleading, or at least to be less than useful.

But I suppose that’s kind of beside the point, isn’t it? Karl notes that, ordinarily, the Roly-Proleys would be working at the Toy Factory, allowing Karl the benefit of “watching over them”. The Roly-Proley’s work environment is conditioned on this level of discipline (note that « discipline » in the context of said book is translated from the French surveiller “to monitor; to survey; to [keep] watch [over]”, cognate with the English surveil), and so Karl intends to produce — or rather, instil — this kind of discipline to the extent possible, given his technological limitations and his inability to personally visit his workers. The content, per se, of the photographs that I take is immaterial; it suffices for Karl to merely see that I have brought the ten photographs back to him, to know that I’ve done what he requested. The effect on the Roly-Proleys need only be social-psychological…

Now, in the year 2022, workplace surveillance (also referred to in English as employee monitoring) is not only extremely common, but also enjoys much more advanced technological penetration. Techniques that may already have been familiar even to turn-of-the-millennium workers include routine drug testing, email snooping/surveillance, and CCTV.➿ Other common techniques now include keylogging, webcam snooping, and “algorithmic surveillance” systems that aggregate huge quantities of detail about employee behaviour & performance, and shove them through machine learning software to generate predictions of future job performance and identify places where more efficiency can be squeezed out (the tendency here is generally to labour intensification, which is not to be confused with labour productivity; the result is — again, generally — an increase in absolute surplus-value☛). Even bioinformative devices such as Alphabet’s fitbit™➿, or RFID microchip implants✍, are now used for workplace surveillance. From 2020 onwards, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen a clear increase in remote work (WFH) prevalence, and along with that, a clear increase in computational employee monitoring:❄

The surveillance of employees working remotely during the pandemic has intensified, with the accelerated deployment of keystroke, webcam, desktop and email monitoring in mainland Europe, the UK, and the US, according to her report based on an analysis of 398 articles.

[…]

The study from the Joint Research Councils warns that excessive monitoring has negative psycho-social consequences including increased labour resistance, stress and turnover propensity, along with decreased job satisfaction and organisational commitment.❄

In cases where employment is more gig-like (i.e. “independent contractor”, gig work, temp work, “crowdwork”, etc.) — and thus, workers have sparse, if any, legal protection — the computerisation of workplace surveillance can even extend to automated wage deductions and/or dismissal.〽❄

All of this would seem to make Manager Karl’s Camera look quaint — almost cute. The cheery dialogue, toy block aesthetic, and seemingly harmless workplace photography surreptitiously conceal a kind of « discipline » that underlies, dans l’horreur, the everyday reality of workers since at least as far back as the early 20th century. “Just Another Day At Work”, indeed.

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, I also had some more blocky golems to dismantle, for another Marcel quest by the name of Eos Tower Threatened!, plus a Just Another Day At Work follow-up quest called Fixing Eos Tower:

Oh, and one last quest for our guy Marcel: Peace at Eos Tower, which simply asks to kill a single Rombot:

Somewhat amusingly, Marcel has this to say about Rombot:

The monster you’re facing is the leader of the Block Golems, Rombot. Astonishingly powerful, it is considered incomparable to other Golems. I strongly suggest you take on it with your party or guild.

Describing Rombot as “[a]stonishingly powerful” and suggesting that the player should take on the Rombot alongside their guild might seem laughable; Rombot has a measly 11k HP, mediocre WDEF/MDEF, a level of 47 (somewhat high, given that the quest is level 40, but really not very impressive in general), and not-so-fearsome WATK/MATK. I doubt that one could take an amount of damage from a single Rombot attack in excess of ≈300 or so, although maybe its magical attacks are stronger than its base 185 MATK would imply. With all of that being said, this is Ludibrium that we’re talking about. It’s likely that, given the state of the game at the time that this quest was designed, Rombot really was astonishingly powerful! It also suggests that area bosses (read: bosses that spawn in ordinary maps, like non-boss monsters — albeit usually on a timer) were not originally intended to be cute little treasure chests that anyone can quickly pop open, the subjects of “camping” behaviours by players as a result of their winner-take-all timer mechanism prizing the player’s ability to simply “have time”, nothing better to do, and a way to (secretly!) keep track of respawn times, above all else. Rombot, like many other early area bosses (e.g. Mushmom, Jr. Balrog, etc.), was supposed to live up to the name: it was a boss.

Now that I was near the bottom of the Eos Tower, I returned to the Omega Sector and turned in the first General Maestro quest, which elevated me to the level of 47:

If you thought that my Mateon-slaying days were over already, think again. Korin’s Memory (again, another low-level quest that I forgot to do because it’s in the Ludi Village) would have me killing even moar Mateons, this time in search of the lost memories of our amnesiac friend Korin. Korin’s story appears at first like a typical MIB encounter: ten months(!) of missing memories, being interrogated by mysterious men in black suits, and all that jazz. Although, at first, it seems suspiciously like the MIB may have been wholly or partly responsible for Korin’s distressing amnesia — after all, part of the “MIB” trope is that MIB are government agents who are tasked with covering up the existence of UFOs, extraterrestrial life, etc. — Agent Marco seems cooperative, and correctly identifies Mateons as those possessing the missing pieces of Korin’s memory:

With five of these pieces, Marco is able to reconstruct Korin’s Memory (which just so happens to look exactly like an Aquamarine…), and returning the gem to Korin restores her rather traumatic alien abduction memories.

I also did some Retrieving the Robotic Parts at Dr. Kim’s behest:

And, continuing General Maestro’s questline, Where’s the Power of Origin? had me looking for Gray’s Document, hopefully a hint that may help to reveal the power source — or rather, former power source, as the crystals are now dull and lifeless — of the Dull Crystals that I collected earlier:

Dr. Kim also had me doin’ some good ol’ fashioned alien slayin’, but this time, slaying the fearsome MT-09s, which can only be found at the somewhat oddly-named “Defeat Monsters”:

These things are actually pretty tuff, but I only had to kill five of them, so it wasn’t an incredible chore.

To cap off General Maestro’s questline, I was tasked with Terminating the Dark Force, which had me killing even more Drumming Bunnies for their Dull Crystals, but also for their Dark Crystal Ores! But that’s not all — another Roly-Proley questline, including both The Drumming Bunny and Eliminating the Drumming Bunny, would have me collecting not 50, not 100, but 1 100 Toy Drums!! It’s those Mateon Tentacles all over again…

So, needless to say, I was at the Drummer Bunny’s Lair minidungeon for quite a while… I did a little @epm test while I was there, and also ended up with some neato equipment drops like Panlids (both of which are perfect clean!) and an Aluminium Baseball Bat:

After personally seeing to the utter destruction of countless pink bunnies and their marching bass drums, I did eventually get the approximately ≈7.3 gazillion ETC items that I sought…

I was motivated to revisit the Ludi JQ by Slime (OmokTeacher, DamagePer, Thinks, JumpQuest), known JQ master who graciously offered to help me out with completing this terrible quest. At first, we found out that once you complete the quest, you can no longer gain entry into the JQ, so he had to relog to another character by the IGN of DamagePer. Unfortunately for both of us, however, it turns out that this JQ map is instanced on a per-PC basis. We even tried entering as a party…:

…But to no avail. Game indeed sux. There is at least some excuse for this behaviour: the JQ is completed by having all ten Machine Parts in one’s inventory, but only ten are dropped throughout the JQ, and the Machine Parts are untradeable (and destroyed upon leaving the JQ map). So, if more than one PC were allowed into the JQ map at once, then the JQ would instantly be failed for all PCs as soon as two (or more) PCs each had >0 Machine Parts in their inventories. Of course, in our case, this was fine; DamagePer wouldn’t be looting any Machine Parts, so it would work out normally. Unfortunately, however, we had no way to explain this to the game…

Anywho, turning in my 1.1k Toy Drums brought me up to level 48:

And, I did another Roly-Proley quest by the name of Roly-Poly 6’s Tool, which had me killing Bloctopuses in search of a missing Screwdriver:

And, while I was in the habit of slaying bloctos, I did yet another Roly-Proley quest called Helping Fix Eos Tower, which had me killing King Bloctopuses on the 22nd floor:

After so long in Lūdus Lake, I took a trip back to þᵉ olde Victoria Island, to do some questing with vicloc I/L gish VigiI (Harlez)! We both needed Curse Eye Tails for quests like Strange Dish and Mr. Wetbottom’s Secret Book, plus upwards of 1k Curse Eye kills for the POLLUTED! ⧼2 – Curse Eye⧽ questline, so we headed to Tree Dungeon, Forest Up North IX to grind some green monocular reptilian bozos:

After the slaying of countless bipedal lizards, I turned in my Curse Eye quests, and hit level 49~!:

While I was at Victoria Island, I tried to tie up some loose ends with my quests, including getting the one Maple History Book that I forgot: Maple History Book II (ironically, the easiest one to get…):

And, I went to Pet-Walking Road to obtain Follow the Lead, which I may want to use quite soon:

Plus some other stuff, e.g. giving 100 Cogs to Betty.

By way of Nautilus Harbour, I went to Aqua Road to do Hughes’ New Research, which meant farming some Pooper Eggs:

I went on up to Orbis and started wandering around in search of those wooden crates that are inexplicably scattered around the town, trying to find Empty Potion Bottles for To the New World:

As I was wandering around Orbis, I was reminded of the signs that you can see scattered around Orbis, as well as around the Ellinia Station (whose flights lead to Orbis).

Orbis appears to be modelled on… Greece(?), albeit from an ambiguous time period, attempting to evoke “Ancient Greece” whilst remaining cartoonish and fantasy-like:

• Numerous stylised references are made to ancient Greek architectural orders.
• Rectilinear meanders [Μαίανδρος, the Ancient Greek term for the Büyük Menderes River], which are characteristic of Greek art from the early Geometric Period onwards, can easily be found in the art of Orbis. See, for example, in the “tara vs. Dark Nependeaths” image below.
• There are lots of references to the ancient Greek myth of Icarus [Ἴκαρος], particularly through the use of feathered wings. The wings also presumably represent one of the main tropes of Orbis, viz. that it is a magically flying city. (Of course, Icarus also shows up in Kerning City.)
• OPQ (Orbis Party Quest) is, of course, based around Minerva the Goddess (basically everything in OPQ has “Goddess” somewhere in its name). Although Minerva is part of Roman mythology, she is a straightforward adaptation of Athena [Ἀθηνᾶ] (also known by the epithet Pallas Athena [Παλλάς Ἀθηνᾶ]), easily one of the most important figures of Ancient Greek mythology.
• OPQ, and several other places in Orbis e.g. Statue (known for bestowing the Echo of Hero upon PCs who achieve the 200th level), feature sculptures in a Hellenistic or even Ancient Greek style.
• And, of course, there’s Greek letters strewn all over the place.

I mentioned the “To the New World” quest; this quest is, as its name implies, intended to be the “linking” (if you will) quest between Victoria Island and Ossyria, in much the same way that MapleStory Basic Knowledge links newly Lith Harbour’d players to Japan. This quest would have been an important part of the addition of Orbis/Ossyria to MapleStory (as you may remember, Ossyria originally did not exist in MapleStory), and it begins by asking the PC to transport Tears of Kelvelos from Ellinia to Kriel the Fairy (who resides in the Orbis Department Store). I wondered if there is, perhaps, some significance to the name « Kelvelos » — the name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, at least not to me. After a few fruitless WWW searches, I came across a doctoral thesis on the subject of elementary education during the Hellenistic & Roman Greek periods♆, which contains the following passage (the original is in Italian):

Un altro suono problematico era, com’è noto, il rho, che tendeva ad essere confuso con il lambda, e il labdacismo o lallazione (τραυλότης in greco) costituiva un frequente difetto di pronuncia: Demostene, Alcibiade e Aristotele erano tra i personaggi noti per aver avuto questo difetto di pronuncia, spesso attribuito a una non accurata educazione in età scolare. Un cospicuo numero di vocaboli nei nostri elenchi contengono lambda e rho separati da poche lettere, come ad es. Βέλλερος, Ἡρακλῆς, Λέανδρος, Πάτροκλος, Πολύκτωρ, Ῥωμύλος, Φέρεκλος, Φάληρος, Χαρικλῆς, Χρέμυλος. Α proposito di quest’ultimo termine, l’errore ortografico Χλεμυλος, come anche Κελβελος al precedente foglio, dimostra che nel IV sec. d.C. questo problema di pronuncia continuava ad essere comune.♆

Another problematic sound was, as is well-known, the rho, which tended to be confused with the lambda, and the lambdacism or lallation (τραυλότης ⟨traulótēs⟩⚵ in [Ancient] Greek) constituted a frequent defect of pronunciation: Demosthenes [Δημοσθένης], Alcibiades [Ἀλκιβιάδης], and Aristotle [Ἀριστοτέλης] were among the well-known figures known to have had this defect of pronunciation, often attributed to careless school-age education. A large number of words in our lists contain lambda and rho separated by a few letters, e.g. Βέλλερος ⟨Bélleros⟩, Ἡρακλῆς ⟨Hēraklēs⟩, Λέανδρος ⟨Léandros⟩, Πάτροκλος ⟨Pátroklos⟩, Πολύκτωρ ⟨Polýktōr⟩, Ῥωμύλος ⟨Rhōmýlos⟩, Φέρεκλος ⟨Phéreklos⟩, Φάληρος ⟨Phálēros⟩, Χαρικλῆς ⟨Chariklēs⟩, Χρέμυλος ⟨Chrémylos⟩. The purpose of listing this latter term, and its erroneous spelling Χλεμυλος ⟨Chlemylos⟩, as well as [the erroneous spelling] Κελβελος ⟨Kelbelos⟩ on the previous page, is to show that in the 4th century A.D., this pronunciation issue continued to be common.

(emphasis mine)

The erroneous spelling « Κελβελος » ⟨Kelbelos⟩, as mentioned in the quotation above, is a misspelling of Κέρβερος ⟨Kérberos⟩, commonly referred to in English as “Cerberus” (or as the “hound of Hades”). Modern Greek would romanise this as ⟨Kérveros⟩, and pronounce it as /ˈke̞ɾve̞ɾo̞s̠/. Although this is already considerably different from how Cerberus is pronounced in English — /ˈsɝbəɹəs/ — Necksawn took the liberty of deviating even further (apparently forgetting what order the ‘r’s and ‘b’s occur in…), getting us (Jr.) Cerebes, which is probably(??) pronounced /ˈsɛɹəbiːz/? /ˈsɛɹəbɛs/?? /ˈsɛɹəbəs/, I guess…? I don’t know, my brain hurts.

Anyways, the Tears of Kelvelos are, apparently, the tears of the hound of Hades, as spoken by someone with a lallation…

Don’t get it twisted, though. There’s definitely some Ancient Roman shit going on here, too. Orbis itself is totally Latin in origin (meaning “circle, ring; circular motion; disc; the Earth, the world, the globe”), and has nothing to do with Greek. Neither ορμπις ⟨ormpis⟩ nor ορβις ⟨orvis⟩ mean anything. That brings us to the signage that I was talking about:

Wat.

« ορβισ στατιον », you say? I’m going to ignore the fact that it should be « ορβις στατιον », because whatever. In any case, that’s ⟨orvis station⟩, but… English is certainly misleading us here. That’s actually /o̞ɾvis̠ ˈs̠tɐtio̞n/, which is a big ol’ “wat?” as far as I’m concerned. For reference, the English station is pronounced /ˈsteɪʃən/. That’s /ʃ/, not /ti/!! Wizet PLZ!!!

Ok, obviously you’re just supposed to pronounce it in English, and this is just a (shitty) transliteration of English text into the Standard Modern Greek alphabet — barely more than a simple substitution cipher. In this particular case, we have:

Okay, this one legitimately confuses me. Is that really « ςΙΧΤΟΡΙΑ »?? Not only is ‘ς’ the only lowercase letter in the bunch, but ‘ς’ only occurs word-finally? Hello?? Okay, I don’t know how else to read it, so…

If we’re generous and assume that the plaintext was supposed to be « VICTORIA » (I donno what else it would be):

All better.

Doing pretty well here. “Henesys” is tough when you realise that Modern Greek has no such thing as /h/, but I think that they made a reasonable choice. On the other hand, the “Kerning”(?) one is questionable at best. I’m really not sure what’s going on there; I guess they got tired and gave up. I would maybe do something like…

…What was I doing again? Oh right, Orbis.

I needed to collect some items from Nependeaths and Dark Nependeaths for To the New World, as well as for The Chaos [χάος] Behind Alfonse Green and the Nependeath Juice, so I headed to a ✨hidden street✨ by the name of Disposed Flower Garden to do some flower vanquishing:

Fighting these is honestly kinda annoying because they can’t move, and are planted just far enough away from one another that it’s impossible for me to hit more than one of them at the same time. 🙄 Luckily, these flowers only have 2.1k or 2.7k HP, so it’s not incredibly painful.

If you thought that I was done talking about Greek, though, I must inform you — for better or for worse — that you would be wrong. “Nependeath” is, ultimately, from the Ancient Greek νηπενθές ⟨nēpenthés⟩, which is from νη- ⟨nē-⟩ “not, no; negation of; without” + πένθος ⟨pénthos⟩ “grief, sorrow, misery”. Plus, you know, the English word death (which is Germanic in origin, from *dauþuz). Νηπενθές is mentioned by Homer [Ὅμηρος] in the classic Odyssey [Ὀδύσσεια]; I’ve reproduced four versions of the relevant passage (from book IV) here:

ἔνθ᾽ αὖτ᾽ ἄλλ᾽ ἐνόησ᾽ Ἑλένη Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα:
αὐτίκ᾽ ἄρ᾽ εἰς οἶνον βάλε φάρμακον, ἔνθεν ἔπινον,
νηπενθές τ᾽ ἄχολόν τε, κακῶν ἐπίληθον ἁπάντων.

⟨énth aũt áll enóēs Helénē Diòs ekgegauĩa:
autík ár eis oĩnon bále phármakon, énthen épinon,
nēpenthés t ácholón te, kakō͂n epílēthon hapántōn⟩

Then Jove’s daughter Helen bethought her of another matter.
She drugged the wine with an herb
that banishes all care, sorrow, and ill humour.

But Jove-born Helen otherwise, meantime,
employ’d, into the wine of which they drank
a drug infused, antidote to the pains of grief and anger, a most potent charm for ills of ev’ry name.

(emphasis mine)

The first version is the original, the second version is a romanised version of the first, the third version is an English translation due to Samuel Butler (1900), and the fourth version is an English translation due to William Cowper (1791).

It should be noted that Homer depicts this drug as being somewhat exotic; it was given to Helen by an Egyptian woman, and Homer notes that this particular people of Egypt are all physicians, sons & daughters of Paieon [Παιήων], the physician of the gods. English speakers will notice the term φάρμακον ⟨phármakon⟩, which does indeed mean what it sounds like: “drug”. Apparently, in the 19th century, it was widely believed that νηπενθές referred to C. sativa, a.k.a. the 420 plant. So basically, Helen was out here putting weed in everyone’s wine so that they could get cross-faded. 🤘🏽

In 1737, Carl Linnaeus referenced this passage by naming a genus of carnivorous plants “Nepenthes”. Kind of a weird name to call a bunch of carnivorous plants, but Linnaeus explains:

If this is not Helen’s Nepenthes, it certainly will be for all botanists. What botanist would not be filled with admiration if, after a long journey, he should find this wonderful plant. In his astonishment past ills would be forgotten when beholding this admirable work of the Creator!

As you can see, Carl was really excited about carnivorous plants.

Nepenthes are found mostly across Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. They can also be found in the southern Chinese provinces/regions of Hǎinán [海南], Guǎngxī [广西], and Guǎngdōng [广东] (and Hong Kong [香港] — not sure about Macau [澳門]), as well as Śrī Laṅkā [ශ්‍රී ලංකාව], the Australian state of Queensland, New Caledonia, Seychelles, and even the eastern regions of Madagascar [Madagasikara].

Also, you can find them in Orbis:

(Not pictured: me. But you can see my three pets, and my obnoxiously large Hurricane animation.)

As always, Zakum (particularly the arms stage) is a great place to get confused reactions from my fellow Maplers:

For reasons that are still not entirely clear to me, I ended up being the host of a pair of Zak runs:

This was definitely my first time hosting Zak, and probably my first time hosting any boss, tbh… I can’t say that I really enjoy it; it kinda just makes the whole experience more nervewracking. But hey, I guess someone’s gotta do it. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Along the way, I went out into the icy fields of El Nath to level myself up to level 138 :P

I figured that I gotta at least try Krecksell at some point, so I headed to Singapore and started killing Berserkies & Veetrons:

Unfortunately, this also meant coming up against my old nemesis: the treacherous French cars known only as Montrecers…:

Thankfully, I had the assistance of Harlez (VigiI), which made it a lot faster, and thus meant less time being stun-locked by these godforsaken ramshackle automobiles.

At Ulu Estate II, we collected some Slygie Tails:

For these Krecks prequests, I also had to farm at Petris (Ulu City Centre). As usual, I was mostly just trying not to die. I can’t go wasting even more Safety Charms on this blasted map…

These fellas are real chunky. Who knew that massive slabs of concrete would take so many hits to destroy?

Speaking of chunky, we wrapped up the Krex prequests by heading to Destroyed Park II to kill some Dukus (a.k.a. baby krexies!):

Very shortly afterwards, I found myself in the middle of my first-ever Krex run on this character, alongside Harlez, paladin ItzLeo, fellow bowmaster Flai, and corsair Alik:

Oops. As it turns out, not only do Krex’s magical attacks two-shot me from full HP, but binding Ginger Ales to both my auto HP and auto MP and then cranking up my auto HP threshold to 75% isn’t enough to stop constant autopot failures! Fun!!

Krex is kind of a big dumb tree, so unless you’re very squishy like me, it’s unlikely that you die while fighting Krex, assuming that you have some idea of what you’re doing (pro tip: don’t touch the eyes!). With that being said, on another day, Krex decided to prove me wrong on this particular point, by killing two of my party members:

As a result, the second eye of this run ended up being almost entirely duo’d by me and nightlord Johannes. It was pretty brutal, but by the end of it, we found ourselves rewarded:

Wait, what? I’m level 139 now‽ But I even checked my EXP to make sure I wouldn’t lev— Oh, right. Dead party members take no EXP. Well, I may have levelled without literally any of my INT gear, but at least the pouch had eight pCoins in it!

Speaking of miscalculating my EXP, I thought that I wasn’t going to level up from the arms stage of this Zak run…

Ok, well, at least I had like half of my INT pyjamas on this time. Better than nothing, I guess. And hey: level 140~!! :D

One of the great joys of not wearing a zhelm (besides the fact that you don’t smacc yr cranium into solid rock every time that you get hit) is that you can loot a zhelm to sell at an NPC shop for 500k mesos, just about every time you do a Zak run! Unless you have a buyer, but then you get even more money anyways. This one in particular, I had to take a screenshot of before I NPC’d it:

It feels kinda bad to NPC such a thing of beauty, but my head is rock-free forevermore, tyvm!

Horntail has 11.5% HP left (yes, I counted the pixels), and there’s still two heads alive? Hello?? Someone help???

In more tragic news, I did one HT run that was particularly unfortunate for our poor bishops. First, idoybh2 died not too long after Pebbytan had already used her Resurrection, so we had no way to bring him back :/

And then, at the least likely moment, when the only body part left alive was the right arm, Pebbytan died as well D:

;o; It just happens sometimes. Certainly not the first time that I’ve seen HT “just kill” someone with full HP who is in a relatively safe spot — I’ve even been victim to it once myself.

In another run, I tried my hand at a full @dpm 45 test!:

For this test, I had MW20, Echo◑, The Breath of Nine Spirit◑, Rage◑, SE◑, and SI. I even posted to the “HT DPM45 Flex Thread” :P

(◑Partial buff; I only had this buff for some of the duration of the @dpm 45 test.)

I even got the chance to sell an AFK Horntail Necklace service to a bowmaster by the name of CutiePewPew:

Before I was actually in the business of running HT myself, I always thought it was rather implausible to sell a truly AFK service for something like HT. As it turns out, anything is possible if you have enough buccaneers LMFAO

While doing some more HT, I had a chat with Celo (CelosPunch, CeloRox) about DEX DKs and Pink Bean :P

Hmm, mayhaps there will be some Pink Bean flicking in my future… 🤔