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rangifer’s diary: pt. cxxi

The Greatest Hits™ of rangifer’s diary

It’s been a while, & I’ve written a lot of stuff in this here diary. And although all of it is related to MapleStory, it nevertheless spans quite a breadth of topics. So how do I expect anyone to read that shit? Good luck actually finding anything, much less what you actually wanna read!!

Forget everything you know about rangifer’s diary! Now introducing…

rangifer’s diary: The greatest hits

Wow! Pretty cool. It’s even organised by category! Tell your friends!

Plus, since this greatest hits compilation includes some old or old-ish stuff, I went back & spruced up quite a bit of it. I spent a lot of time on those essays, so I may as well be proud of them, or something… r—right…? Or maybe I’m just clinically insane enough to do something like that. Any news?

New etymologies…?

Although I did very (very…) much updating in general, check out these two in particular, if you wanna see the really substantial new editions:

date	title(s) & hyperlink(s)	pt.	description
2021-06-27	*El Nath	liii	Whence El Nath? Is it Spanish? Arabic?? What does it mean??? How do I pronounce it????
2022-10-06	Youkai?; Footnotes for “Hime”: #1; #2; #3	xcii	Etymologies of Kappa, *Hadong; yōkai; Hime; Black Crow, Tengu, utengu.

Behold: The claw archer!

Ever seen a claw archer?

Given that capreolina is a woodswoman (read: pure STR & thus LUKless), dealing over 2.5k damage with a claw might strike the reader as suspect. But no tricks are being played here! Nothing stronger than a crisp Cider, & no aces up my sleeve.

Well, I say “no tricks”, but I’m neglecting to mention One Weird Trick™: Mortal Blow works with a claw & stars.

I know, right‽‽ I never would’ve guessed, particularly considering that no other archer skills seem to work (excepting trivial cases): Critical Shot, Double Shot, Booster, Soul Arrow, PKB, …, & unfortunately even The Eye of Amazon (😢) are all worthless with a claw equipped.

Indeed, the main reason I even put a claw on capre in the first place was to test EoA; after all, even functional EoA alone would be enough to justify claw archer as a build in its own right.

With this in mind, try rewatching the above video a few times. Here are some notable things that we can glean from it:

• The Mortal Blow animation triggers normally, under the same conditions & with the same animation.
• The weapon animation is the same as for a star-throwing basic-attack, as is to be expected.
• Moreover, we can catch a glimpse of the MTK that I’m throwing, confirming that this consumes ammunition in the same way that an ordinary Mortal Blow (or successful basic-attack) would.
• The reach is very short — namely, claw-punching distance — although this is obscured by the fact that the target (an Orange Mushroom) is moving away from me fairly swiftly at the time that the attack connects.

I can also confirm that the damage calculation works just as advertised, namely 250% of the damage of a (star-throwing) basic-attack, assuming max-level Mortal Blow. Note, however, that max-level Mortal Blow only triggers 70% of the time, with the other 30% resulting in ordinary claw-punches.

The only part that I cannot totally confirm (yet — only because I’ve not tried to test it) is that the instakill mechanic operates as advertised. Given that claw Mortal Blow clearly operates like (cross)bow Mortal Blow in every other respect, I can only assume that the instakill mechanic works like it would with a (cross)bow as well.

Really, though?

I think anyone can agree that this discovery (at least, a discovery for me) is pretty heckin’ cool. But it also suggests the question: is claw archer actually a reasonable idea?

Perhaps we can break this down into four (overlapping) lines of inquiry.

What “archer stuff” can I still use?

This question defines itself more-or-less in opposition to the besinner. Some features of the archer are basically generally useful:

• Mortal Blow (duh).
• Sharp Eyes.
• Hamstring/Blind (BM/MM only, resp.).
• Maple Warrior.
• Concentrate (BM only).
• Puppet.
• Thrust.
• Focus (albeit not that useful in MapleLegends, which has Archer Elixirs).
• Better maxHP situation when compared to the besinner.
• BoA.
• Hero’s Will.

Some other skills still work, but have greatly diminished damage as a result of the claw archer’s presumed pure-LUK build:

• Silver Hawk/Golden Eagle (ranger/sniper only, resp.). These 3^rd-job summons deal damage that scales with DEX & STR; but they also stun, & so are still useful.
• Phœnix/Frostprey (BM/MM only, resp.). These 4^th-job summons have the same sort of damage scaling, but only Frostprey has additional utility (viz. freezing), whereas Phœnix is purely for damage.

Depending on what your definition of “claw archer” is (or if perhaps you’re playing a build better described as “LUK archer” instead), you may permit yourself the use of (cross)bows:

• Ability to equip (cross)bows without being hindered by class requirements. Although stat requirements still exist, this unlocks all of the usual archer arsenal, albeit with presumably less-than-stellar damage. Still, non-damage factors (e.g. debuffs) are important, & Snipe’s (MM only) damage is unaffected by stats.

Whence the LUK archer?

AVOID is kind of a big deal for archers, because repositioning is traditionally what eats up most of their DPM. Thus the conventional archer dreams of allstat items to boost their LUK (more generally, their tAVOID). Similarly, the idle MapleLegendser dreams (still idly) of the perfect “Snipe mule”: pure LUK, pure AVOID, pure Snipe.

With the full force of an archer’s arsenal (regardless of whether that arsenal includes Snipe, doesn’t yet include it, or never will), we can no doubt conceive of a build worthy of the name LUK archer that nonetheless competently wields — at least sometimes — a bow or crossbow. This is in many ways analogous to the situation of a pure-LUK warrior who uses melee weaponry (which I have plenty of personal experience with, by the way).

Is the non-Snipe (cross)bow damage gonna be fantastic? No. But with plenty of skills, “minimaxed”^[1] gear, & buffs, the (“artificially inflated”, if you will) damage will likely be enough to make you say “Huh! Honestly not even that bad”.

The “third way” (if you will) here is along the lines of my “The STR–DEX–LUK continuum” essay in pt. cvi. You can refer to that essay for more detail — as this is straying too far from the “claw archer” per sē — but the basic idea is to “dabble” in LUK, whilst still committing nontrivial amounts of AP to other stats as well.

What’s my combat style?

I think that the idiomatic combat style of a “claw archer per sē” is arguably its biggest selling point. Once the claw archer gets far enough into 3^rd job to have a significant level of Mortal Blow, they go from “besinner with a funny hat” to “bastard of bastards”.

I mean, really: they attack “at range”, but not really very ranged due to the lack of KE; & they attack “in melee” to make use of Mortal Blow, but in a radically different way to that of a melee-weapon-user or even a claw-puncher. And all with the same weapon! The fuck‽

There’s also the rather strange quirk of Mortal Blow’s instakill mechanic, which will actually be relevant for this combat style in a way that it simply isn’t for… any other build in the game.

What’s it like to actually level up?

Perhaps it goes without saying that “besinner with a funny hat” is a tough job title to labour under. The misery of miseries for the claw archer is perhaps the simple fact that 2^nd job is just straight-up not even real for them. There are no 2^nd-job archer skills that are applicable to claw-wielders. Not even a single crappy one.

Naturally, 3^rd job is your payoff (& perhaps even 4^th job, in the distant future). Still, it maybe feels like “too little too late” to be getting Mortal Blow only just now. The combat style is just not one with a lot of “scaling” power, so level ≈80 is already pretty damn high-level.

In response to this predicament, you might consider using (cross)bows in addition to claws. Or maybe do a li’l leechy-weechy…? Or just bite the bullet. Claw archers rise the Fork up! 😤

Recognition

I think that all this discussion is enough to support the recognition (if nothing else) of claw archer as a job in its own right — & an odd one, at that. And whilst we’re at it, we might consider LUK archer as well. Who knows.

Will anyone actually play (has anyone actually played‽) a claw archer, or a closely-related job? I’m not sure. But if you were thinkin’ about it, or were just curious about the implications, then I hope that helped.

Footnotes for “Behold: The claw archer!”

1. [↑] Confusingly, the videogame sense of minimax (alternatively, minmax) appears to be semantically unrelated to the usual sense, excepting that both have something to do with “optimisation” in the most abstract sense.

Again again

What? Another serverwide multiweek MapleLegends event? That’s crazy.

The Dreary Knight’s Tabernacle

So anyway, it’s like Retro World^[1] but slightly different, right? The main difference is that you can pootpoot-scootscoot:

Not bad.

But with the newfound power of pootpoot-scootscooting comes a new version of the Dumbfounded Knave’s Torment, or whatever it’s called^[2]. I tried speedrunning with the best of ’em — like I did last time — but it didn’t go so great:

Transcription of the above image

tarandus: sorry i shouldnt have joined lol

OmokTeacher: no

SecretIy: i need to take off weapon nx cover for this :x

SpiderMan: nono its fine

OmokTeacher: usually
we all fail at level 1
deer
we’re just pro now for some reason idk

I appreciate the encouragement, but this new version of the Damnable Kid’s Truth is really rough.

Much of it hinges on the use of pootpoot, like these sections where you have to walk to the edge of each platform in succession, pooting to the next one without jumping:

And hey, I managed to make it all the way to floor 10 with the speedrunning crew!:

Better than I expected, to be honest!

There are also some new obstacles, like these little explodey orangish-yellow balls that are actually from the little time trial that you do to get the +15⁢ SPEED pendant or whatever:

I had mostly given up on the Dull Knife’s Treachery. This new version was so difficult that I suspected that no amount of getting my arse carried (like last time) would suffice.

Apparently, lots of folks agreed — not the least of which being Kimmy herself — & so the old version of DKT was basically restored, alongside this new one: journey mode & hard mode, respectively. Only hard-mode runs could count as speedruns, & naturally, they also gave more rewards (basically, more raffos).

So I did a little journey-mode alongside Makeup (“Mil”) & Milfers (“Lesley”; MiIf, Dakota, GiIf):

During which, we learnt the true nature of nauring:

Transcription of the above image

tarandus: les did u get sent out

Milfers: NAUR i was getting watr [sīc] rq
OMW OMW

tarandus: ohh ok

Makeup: aussie? owo

Milfers: YAUR

Makeup: WOOOO
where from

Milfers: JK
LOL

Makeup: o
LOL

Milfers: SRY

tarandus: LMAO

Milfers: IM FROM CALI

Makeup: yall love saying
NAURRR

(Makeup actually is Aussie, hence the sense of betrayal…)

The use of naur as a fanciful spelling of no indicating an Australian accent is something of a meme. If you’re interested in the actual science here, then you should check out Dr. Geoff Lindsey’s My favourite vowel: Oh NAUR explained! (2023-09-01) on YouTube™^®. He has like, centuries & volumes more knowledge of English phonology than I do, & he wrote English After RP (2019), which is kinda the contemporary reference work for English dialects, so you know. Not just some random YouTuber.

The TL;DW is that when immediately followed by another vowel (in hiatus), Australian GOAT ends with a [w] glide, similar to the same vowel in American or English English. But when not in hiatus with a following vowel, Australian GOAT’s glide is more like [ɥ] (similar to the glide in French nuit /⁠nɥi⁠/ “night”), with the body of the tongue moving forward (rather than back), but still with appreciable rounding. Lindsey then demonstrates, via the use of a 3D phono-acoustic visualisation, that this [ɥ] glide can be intensified — that is, made audibly yet further away from [w], & particularly from [j] — by r-colouring it, thus making it sound “even more Australian”, so to speak. The use of this r-coloured GOAT (which might be transcribed [ʌɹ̈], [ʌɚ̯], or something like that) is relatively new, and is initiated & led by — like most other linguistic innovations — young girls & women.

So anyway, journey mode was like last year’s version (but ever-so-slightly easier), so I did manage to clear that a few times:

But I was challenged to do some hard-mode DKT by Lvl1Crook (xXCrookXx, Level1Crook, Macer)! So we duoed a bunch of runs.

Here’s a screenie of my first real experience with floor 11 that didn’t involve just instantly dying:

Why are there so many springy thingies? Some questions can never be answered…

Floor 13 had even more fuckery about it:

One of the themes of the top half of hard-mode DKT is having two (or more?) separate pathways, each of which has to be traversed to get to a crucial flippy-switch. This encourages splitting up, so that said pathways can be completed in parallel, & without making the same people risk their lives along multiple routes.

Eventually, after much pain & tears (mostly my tears), we made it to floor 15:

Pretty cool. Unfortunately, it just gets worse. I mean, what am I even supposed to do here? Did I go the right way?:

We weren’t going to be able to duo this. But Lvl1Crook figured that if we recruited more suckers randoms from channel 1 to tank most of the damage for us, then we might’ve been able to achieve floor-20ification on hard mode.

And I tried. I really did. The quality of our parties varied wildly, but my ability to fuccing dye was the sole constant. The closest I got was making it to the home stretch of floor 19(!!), where I was immeasurably displeased to find that more dumb bullshit was added to this part that isn’t present in the journey version:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Lvl1Crook: u can dmg boost it if ur 2

rusa: im not lol

Needless to say, I ate sawblade & died. Honestly I almost just insta-logged out right then & there, because I was really just testing my own patience & the patience of those willing to run with me (read: Lvl1Crook) at that point.

But hey, at least I basically saw (if only fleetingly) all of hard-mode DKT (excepting the boss fight), right…? 🥲

Something else maybe

But surely, repeatedly eating sawblade & crying isn’t all there is to the event, right? R—right…?

Technically right. We still have Retro Reach Party Quest (RRPQ), which is the same as last year’s, but with more pootpoot-scootscooting. Fun, right? Until you do it for more than six minutes, that is, & your braincells begin to undergo apoptosis.

Those RRPQ clears can be used to enter Père Profiterole runs with a party of up to six:

Because it’s not a “world boss” or whatever anymore, there’s only you & your party. So you have to pay good attention if you want to clear within the time limit.

I think my eyeballs are drying up.

Transcription of the above image

Thank you, d33r. Please accept this gift as a small token of appreciation.

REWARD!!

• 1 Retro Coupon
• 1 random Retro Box

Oh, good. Rewards. Not that I’ve any use for them.

And if you don’t wanna semi-permanently immigrate to Retro World for the duration of the event, then you can, erm… Monsters drop coins, I guess?

But the droprate is bad. I mean, like, appallingly bad, especially considering that it consistently takes me ≈70⁢ s of pond-skipping to get 40(!) coins.

Ok? And?

Transcription of the above image

Taima: is there anything to do this event outside of retro world?

capreolina: low-level pqs
i think thats it

Taima: this is why i quit last retro event x_x

Indeed. That’s enough EventStory™ for now. After thoroughly refraining from any kind of “farming” this event, I spent what currency (i.e. raffle tickets & event coins) I did have, & got a Chaos Scroll somehow. So that’s nice, I s’pose.

Footnotes for “Again again”

1. [↑] See the “In which MapleLegends is swallowed up by an arcade cabinet” section of pt. cv & the “In which MapleLegends is digested within the rumen of the arcade cabinet… & spit back up” section of pt. cvi.
2. [↑] Deadly Kitten’s Test? I really cannot remember.

ᚼᚱᛅᛁᚿᛑᚤᚱᛁ

Aaaand we’re back to MapleStory. For another episode of tara Hoofs Every Boss Known To Maplekind Right In Their Stupid Pixel Faces™. Or whatever this series is called. I’m having memory troubles these days.

Anywho, I think a natural place to start is Rabananapapalatasing wif da krew (Lvl1Crook & Taima!!):

Over in the Ellin Forest, I somehow managed to pass an mfing Ephenia orb on my ring‽‽:

Transcription of the item in the above image

Ephenia’s Ring (+1)

One of a kind Item, Untradeable

• Req lev: 105
• Category: ring
• STR: +2
• DEX: +2
• INT: +2
• LUK: +2
• HP: +150
• MP: +150
• Accuracy: +4
• Avoidability: +4
• Number of upgrades available: 2

…And then proceeded to spend hours farming more Etcs so that I could, you know, fail four (4) more of them. Le sigh.

But hey, I hit level 167!!:

Plus, my Ephenia card set is friccing completed now?

Nice.

It has been many an Ephenia run by now, but we only just noticed that her summoned fairies don’t have touch attacks:

Transcription of the above image

tarandus: wot da

Lvl1Crook: what is this

tarandus: theyve no touch

Lvl1Crook: idk maybe we should @gm

I don’t think that @gming will be necessary.

Maybe this is common knowledge, but it’s worth noting that when a PC takes damage from an attack (or a map hazard, for that matter), the decision that a damage instance is to be taken, & the calculation of how much damage it deals — amongst various other things, including whether it “MISS”es — are all done by the client alone. The decision of whether a given monster has a touch attack is determined by reading a single bit-flag in the WZ (Mob.wz) data corresponding to that monster’s MoID. This implies that there are really only three ways for a monster to erroneously fail to produce touch attacks:

1. Whoever wrote the WZ data set the bit-flag to the opposite value that they intended.
2. The client is using illegitimate WZ data:
   1. The WZ data is outdated.
   2. The WZ data was corrupted.
   3. The user maliciously replaced the legitimate WZ data with their own.
3. The client is somehow misinterpreting the WZ data that it reads:
   1. The client has an honest bug in it.
   2. The user is running a custom client.

Although option (1.) is certainly plausible, it’s not usually up to the relatively naïve player to decide what the developer “meant” to do, in this narrow sense.

Option (2a.) would be plausible if the bit-flag had been flipped in between versions of the game, & there were no automated verification of WZ data being up-to-date. But MapleLegends does a check at game-launch time for exactly this. Option (2b.) is also basically implausible, not only because corruption by cosmic ray (or whatever) is (hopefully) rare, but also because of the aforementioned automatic integrity check. Option (2c.) is more plausible given that the integrity check is not difficult for an attacker to bypass, but I think it’s unlikely that Lvl1Crook & I are both — entirely unwittingly — running the same rather useless hack.

Option (3a.) is technically plausible, but would represent a pretty severe & weirdly-specific bug that doesn’t strike me as likely. Option (3b.) could be a similar case of us being unwitting hackers, or of us getting phished into downloading an unofficial client; both pretty far-fetched, in this case.

The vastly more likely option is, of course: (4.) it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Without the interminable stream of fairies constantly touch-attacking us, we don’t get nearly-free iframes with which to evade Ephenia’s attacks. Simple as.

Speaking of implausible scenarios in MapleStory, here’s a screenshot that I’m using to show off my implausibly wide damage range with Onyx Apple, Echo of Hero, & MW30:

If only I still had a Gelt Chocolate left…

What were we doing, again? Oh, right. Bɒssing.

I did some Gregzelling with Lvl1Crook, alongside… randoms.

If I just keep Demoing really fast, I’ll be invisible to them. It’s like I’m not even there. 🫥

But I can only keep it going for so long. My usual fallback is to try to look cute enough that they won’t notice the guild tag beneath my feet. For better or worse, however, The Blue tara Era™ is over. All my shiet expired. 😢

Fear not! For I had a backup plan for my backup plan this entire time. I’ve got a plan C for my plan B. Welcome to The Purple tara Era™:

Whaddayathinc? I think it’ll work.

And with my new purple outfit, I had the distinct pleasure of doing some Zaqqūm alongside xRook (misandrist, smeowk), PriestjuhNL (xBowtjuhNL, BuccjuhNL), Kapcom, and Gock & Harlez!:

Wait, what? Aren’t Gock & Harlez the same person?

Transcription of the above image

[whisper from Harlez]: i am drenched in sweat

[to Harlez]: omg

[system message]: Your skill has been sealed up, making you unable to use it. [×4]

[to Harlez]: understandable

[from Harlez]: this is so much fun

[to Harlez]: hahaha

Sheesh! Dual-client attacking is no joke! Godspeed!

Also with Harlez, I did some Yāosēnging, where I learnt the virtues of standing upon cabinets:

That way, my Demo connects with the slippery old man even when he yump!

Unfortunately, my woodswoman capreolina — who was cosplaying as an SE mule for the benefit of making JC die more fasterer — experienced the true power of 武林妖僧…

Transcription of the above image

tarandus: i
HE DID HTE [sīc] KILL MOVE
i will stop trying
hahaha

Harlez: i didnt realize he always could

tarandus: he rubber banded
when i csbd
and just kicked capre in the face

When everyone effectively spawns in at the same time, negotiating monstercontroller is a bit hairy. I Corkscrew Blow JC to the right, JC rubber-bands his moustachio’d ass right on back to the left, & is in prime position to roundhouse kick my girl capreolina right in the cabeça. Or I should say, right into the afterlife. Ouf.

Although he’s definitely capable of more powerful blows than JC, our old friend Megapod is arguably less intimidating by comparison. So I took on the Phantom Forest alongside Lvl1Crook & DEXadin SwordFurbs (Yoshis, Furbs, Fabiennes, SwordFurb):

And finally, I got to do some very fun Krecsulls alongside Harlez & Taima (& Ghoulian). 🙂

Oh, wait — one more thing. I randomly got a really nice clean Zhelm, & so I tried scrolling it (with the assistance of scroll_strategist, of course). You’ll never believe it, but… it actually went well‽‽ What!

Transcription of the item in the above image

Zakum Helmet (+8)

One of a kind Item, Untradeable

• Req lev: 50
• Category: hat
• STR: +16
• DEX: +34
• INT: +16
• LUK: +16
• Weapon def.: 157
• Magic def.: 149
• Accuracy: +22
• Avoidability: +22
• Number of upgrades available: 0

Okay, that is pretty nice. I think I’ll keep it on my noggin. 💜

H34r me! d34r me!!

It’s a little lonely on Victoria Island these days, but ya grrl d34r is still h3r3.

Heck, I even did a handful o’ good ol’ APQs with mysterious outlander Harlez (Gock, VigiI)!:

And I’ll admit, I did briefly succumb to the temptation of the Paternal Pastry & his precious puffs…

And that’s all I got for ya. d34r cl34r, over & out. ❤️

ˈäl.keːs

And how about just a little stabby-stab alces action? I went ahead & grinded out the next part of the Ellin Forest II questline, which meant stabbing lots of Ancient Fairies…:

And plenty of Shining Fairies, as well:

But the next part is defeating whatserface (Ifinia? Efeenyer? I hardly know ’er!), which I definitely can’t do on my own. So I will have to get my little moose butt^[1] carried, & just hope that I don’t randomly die to sed.

And whoms’t knows? Mayhap there be an extra-special dose of alces in the future…

Footnotes for /ˈäl.keːs/

1. [↑] You laugh, but Alces alces is the single largest species of deer in the world, so this is more like antiphrasis. 😇

cervib

Speaking of doing Ellin part II, I did some questing on my STRong bishop cervib cervid, alongside my Maple wife Taima!!

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Taima: we have to… attack the piggies? x_x

cervid: yes ):

Taima: my beautiful piggies… :(
why can’t they just be gross deers? [sīc]

Oh. ☹️ I see how it is… 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

…Sniff… 🤧 I’m f—fine. I guess she just left out the part of her wedding vows where she’d’ve said that she thought I was gross. Understandable, really…

Where were we? Oh, right. The Violent Primitive Piggies…

Transcription of the above image

Taima: curious… the boars drop dilk.

cervid: …

Taima: are they secretly dears? [sīc]
perhaps the slaughter is warranted

cervid: x_x

😓 I—I’m sure this is enough to substantiate legal grounds for divorce… I just… Maybe she’s confused, or it’s a phase, or something…

I’m only kidding. I’m a STRonmq bishop, impervious to bullying!!! I just need a witty comeback, like… erm. Like, pigs are… S— they stink. Stinky piggos. Yeah, that’ll show ’er. 😤

…Oh, right. This is the part where we have to fight big piggo. I’ll just, erm. I’ll be over here…

B—be careful over there! Don’t get gored!! Haha. Don’t make me use my Res! It’s got a half-hour cooldown, you know!!

Ahem.

…Oh, good. Time for the, erm. The other half of the questline. Let’s get those fairies…!

Oh boi!! Level one hundred & thirty-three!!! 😤😤😤 Got dayum I am so fking strong… 💪🏽💪🏽 SHEESH! 😅

Weal & woe, friend & foe, Suboptimal & Zakky

And would you believe it but that Suboptimal Zaks again? It’s a lot of fun, but don’t get too excited just yet — trust me…

I banded together with Lvl1Crook, Taima, Jonathan (daggerknight, Tiffany, Mommy, Edward), SwordFurbs, & AppleBasket (LawdHeComin, pleLeg, Snel, OrangeFungus, Mushers) on my punchy shield-kicker tarandus, to do a rather unlikely Zaqqūm run…!

And the unlikelies kept piling up, like when we tried Resurrecting Taima after she accidentally touched body, & it… worked?

Transcription of the above image

Taima: a

tarandus: awe

Lvl1Crook: rip

AppleBasket: o no
sec

SwordFurbs: ono

Jonathan: :o

tarandus: we have no smoke

AppleBasket: becom redy [sīc]
say wen

Taima: r

SwordFurbs: gamer

Taima: ty

tarandus: nice!!

Lvl1Crook: wow miracle

AppleBasket: power of odds

Very nice! But is it the “power of odds” in the luck sense, or the sense of odd-jobbers…? I guess we’ll never know…

Unfortunately, not all unlikely things are unbad. An unzero amount of them are ungood. Like when the DDoSers come back for more.

Did I mention that almost the entire event was plagued by the server being less-than-usable because some random loser threw a high-tech temper tantrum? You’ll be displeased to learn that this is the least unlikely part of the whole ordeal.

In any case, we lost Jonathan, SwordFurbs, & AppleBasket to a particular nasty sequence of lag spikes…

Chaos Zakum indeed. In an attempt to finish up the run, Taima & I popped Onyx Apples, & Lvl1Crook even popped a Gelt Chocolate! Naturally, the Fates sensed the sinking of tooth into melty Gelty, & so punisht Lvl1Crook for his indulgence with a swift d/c…

O—okay, I guess we’re duoing this now. Hopefully it doesn’t get any worse!

Clearly, I spoke too soon. Uhrm. I’m not sure how, but it’s just me now.

Well, I don’t think anyone’s down for round two, so I guess I have time to continue in the suffering & the disorienting lurching of internet connexions…

Luckily, I have a taste for the Onyx Apples (sweet, crunchy, sour, salty, and spicy — it’s like licking a live wire!), & so eventually — after a whole lot of getting bumped about by a constant haze of Zaqqūm summons — I crumbled the crumbly statue with my own four hooves (as powered by my crumbly brain)!:

And why not, right? I don’t have any braincells left (I’m running on fumes — scientists still don’t understand how I’m even alive anymore!), so it’s not like I’ve anything to lose.

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[system message]: The Zakum Shrine will close in 5 minutes.
You have gained 35 Retro Points. [2358 total, 221/1000 gained this week]

tarandus: he ded [sīc]
3 helms if anyone wants…

Taima: yah ill loot
big experience at least?

tarandus: im scrounging the floor for a pouch
im convinced it dropped one and i just didnt see it
theres no way zak would do that to me right
cry

Taima: X_X

tarandus: i got 13.8m exp when it died
so like 3.8% lol
im only mildly traumatised

Absolute arboreal mastery

Despite what you may’ve seen above, I am not an SE mule — although I do play one on TV. And television seems to be my primary line of work these days…

But fuck that. I became a woodsmaster to do forest husbandry^[1] & shit, & that is exactly what I’ll do. It’s time to chop down some evil trees from the depths of hell (alongside the Dream alliance!):

Alright, alright, that’s a start. But how about cutting down even larger trees — Crecksul, mayhap…? With Gock & Harlez!

Wowowowow level one hundred & fifty‽‽‽ That’s gotta be a new record. In fact, that might even be the highest possible level. Who knows?

What I do know is that my ashbound birbfriend is most definitely the highest possible level:

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Phœnix

[Master Level : 30]

Temporarily summons the Phœnix, who is a fire-based ally. Attacks up to 4 monsters.

---

[Current Level 30]

MP −100, For 200 seconds, attack 550%

[Required]

Silver Hawk
Level : 15

Me & my birdy are getting the fuck outta here. 🐦‍🔥🏹🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲

Footnotes for “Absolute arboreal mastery”

1. [↑] This phrase is not in common use, but the meaning should be more-or-less clear to anyone familiar with the various meanings of husbandry.

   I always thought that husbandry sounded kinda weirdly gendered, on account of husband being gendered & all, but it seems that my misgivings are slightly misplaced. Although husbandry & husband are indeed etymologically related, they’re more like doublets than they are like descendants of one another. Both words are basically from Old Norse húsbóndi /⁠ˈhuːsˌboːn.di⁠/ “master of the house” = hús “house” + bóndi “[lit.] dweller; farmer; householder, husband”. Bóndi is also the source of English bond in the “vassal, serf, peasant” sense.

   Husbandry, then, involves a slightly more literal interpretation of the Old Norse term, & is an ungendered term (except perhaps by association).

(…cnvpstdf…)

cnvpstdf

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capreolina: ngl i [as d00r] look like an applebasket clone
with my nx [equipment] off

AppleBasket: excellent

capreolina: LOL

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Lvl1Crook: ill believe that when i see bananas turn into bread

tarandus: earlier you said that made me a witch

Lvl1Crook: ngl if this was the 1700s u would have been burned at the stake by now

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misandrist: :)
clear for deer

tarandus: <3

misandrist: <# [sīc]
harlez too
but
deer rhymes

tarandus: hahah

misandrist: and u get it harley
deer>>>>>
freia too

tarandus: LOL

misandrist: ure my bestie tho harlrez [sīc] dw
just tryna woo the[ ]other
s

Harlez: yeah okay