rangifer’s diary: pt. cxxv
Making a good fist of it
I’m making good on the promise, pledged by the title, that this is Rangifer tarandus’s diary. So there will be only punching. Think of it as a form of asceticism, but instead of being a nun or a monk who pledges themself to spiritual rigour, I’m pledging myself to punching every single bad guy right in their dumb stupid faces. Sound good?
Let’s begin with Ephenia, where I duoed with coarse air Gock (Harlez, VigiI, Murhata). Ephenia’s hair is impeccable as always, but I’m afraid we still have to murk her:
You might’ve noticed that there are not one, nor two, but three of my characters in the above screenshot. I gotta get alces & cervid Ephenia’s Rings somehow! Leave me alone!!
We also did plenty of Crecselling with Gock/Harlez on dual attacking duty, me on Speed Infusion & being orange duty, & some randoms on being randoms duty:
We revisited my old grinding prison spot — Encounter with the Buddha — to fight ourselves a Black Crow 👺:
And as always, we saw plenty of J’s, including this one where she dual-attacked:
But you’re only allowed to see two J’s per diem, so we had to go looking for area bosses sometimes. This is what, on occasion, drives Mapollers to intentionally seek out The Big Goldfish™. You know. Cancel Carp. Cave Tuna. The Grumpy Guppy. Peanus:
Naturally, we regretted this decision, because Peanus is a “no fun allowed” boss for a lot of parties. But it does give some EXP, I s’pose…
Whoa! Now I’m actually in level range for D’una! Anyway…
Gock wanted to try single-attacking Yāosēng, so we recruited the help of one BlackManta, master of the bow:
It didn’t go so well! I didn’t have any way to control the clones other than desperately spamming CSB/BSB, which, in addition to lowering my overall DPM to roughly ≈0, doesn’t actually goddamn work. So I sorta just attacked the main body normally a lot of the time? It probably looked like I was griefing, but I really did try to control the clones to no avail.
Realistically, our best shot would be to have me doing actually zero DPM to the main body, & instead attacking all clones on the right-hand side of the map, thus giving both Gock, & importantly BlackManta (who lacks the Homing Beacon skill), unobstructed line-of-sight on the main body at more-or-less all times. At that point, they’re genuinely just duoing the thing, but it would still almost certainly be better DPM than whatever the bloody hell we were doing in the above screenshot.
Thankfully, BlackManta was understanding about it, & we parted ways after exchanging fames.
And, speaking of J-seeing not going so well…
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tarandus: but also bad luck coz i had >8k hp at [the] time
It wasn’t even a pet autopot failure! My black kitty faithfully speedran simultaneously injecting me full of startlingly green fluid & forcefeeding me an entire Grilled Cheese sandwich, but that was only enough to get me to ≈8 060 HP or so. People often cite Yāosēng’s rare roundhouse kick attack as hitting for “8k”, but as usual, the devil is in the details. This is now a PSA! Learn how damage calculation works!! Or don’t — but, you know, don’t pretend like you did.
Anyway, that’s enough PSAs for one diary entry. Let’s sell some AFK Zhelms instead:
Yes, that is in fact cervib poking her head out the side of the map. I don’t really like muling and/or multiclienting in Actually Fun Bosses™,[1] but finding one bishop is already a smol miracle, so we definitely ain’t finding another unless her name starts with cerv- and ends with -id.
It seemed to be going fine — at least, cervip’s autopot hadn’t randomly slain her yet. But then Gock succumbed to the pervasive & irresistible temptation to touch tree:
Gock did not have enough maxHP to tank a touch-attack, even at 100% HP, so we thought she might be toast. Some scuffage ensued:
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LootSeeker: gock max hp?
Gock: not enough
LootSeeker: damn
Gock: im 1k short
iKai: gock
leave [your party]
LootSeeker: shyt
iKai: add gock [to your party]
cerv
SweatyBoy: rip in piece
tarandus: i cant inv
Gock: nobody is ressing me
iKai: sge iu [sīc]
tarandus: kk
[iKai dies]
LootSeeker: F
iKai: zzzzzz
typing
SweatyBoy: no all me srry
cervid: leave
iKai: wait
i leave
[system message]: tarandus has become the leader of the party.
‘iKai’ has left the party.
‘Gock’ has left the party.
iKai: add
Gock: i left
LootSeeker: gock survive
SweatyBoy: wb
how many res’ you got god damn
Gock: infinite basically
Well, that was a bumpy ride. I think I Resurrected three people at once: Gock, iKai, & our buyer. And Gock survived!! Ah, the wonders of… pixels, frames, & dreadfully unclear game physics. The three pillars of our society.
Unfortunately, Gock’s remark about our Resurrection capacity being “basically infinite” proved to be a jinx upon us. We need to have at least one Resurrection left over at the time that Zak’s drops start landing on the ground, so that we can Resurrect the now safe (because there’s no Zakky) buyer, so that they can do what buyers do best: looting[2]. But at the same time, we’re forced to Resurrect every ≈9 minutes or so, because you can only be dead for 10 minutes before you just get ejected back to town. With the way we used my Resurrection above, that was placing a time limit upon us…
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Gock: we cant clear in time with all thes[e] mobs lured in front of our archer
Sturmwulf: skip
bird
pls
Gock: gg
LootSeeker: well fked
iKai: ah
Gock: does buyer have 3.1k [maxHP]
SweatyBoy: ya
LootSeeker: spam pots
iKai: xD
SweatyBoy: kk
I will say, LootSeeker was slightly, erm, griefing himself. The archer summons (Phœnix, in this case) do have a habit of aggroing Zak’s summons, & our archer was the only one seriously hindered by this, as Gock at least has Homing Beacon (& benefits from the iframes granted by the summons’ wee touch-attacks anyway).
Nevertheless, in the end, our buyer did survive. We may’ve scuft the run, but… that’s okay. SweatyBoy got some sweaty helms.
I also did some significantly less stressful Zaqqing alongside Gock/Harlez, WhosGracie, & misandrist (xRook, smeowk)!:
Nice. :3
And I’m not really in the market for Scar/Tar hats these days, but I won’t say no to just a littol bit o’ Scar-punchin’ (feat. Gock & OneMoreGame):
Naturally, the J’s continue to be seen regularly. For a very special episode of Seeing J’s With tara & Harlez™, we were joined by guest star AppleBasket (LawdHeComin, pleLeg, OrangeFungus, Mushers) the extra-LUKy bishop!:
Unfortunately, we forgor to fill AppleBasket in on the details of Yāosēng’s mouth-bloodeningly delicious roundhouse-kick special (“eight thousand whole damage’s worth of old man foot, delivered directly to your cakehole!”®), & he didn’t make it through the first run.
Of course, the old man’s leg only reaches so far, so if you give him some room, you won’t get your mouth bloodied that way. To be fair, I’m not exactly sure what the reach on that attack is, but it’s not something that you really get hit by unless you’re a melee attacker. Still, AppleBasket decided to play it very safe for round two:
Errancy
Bossin’ Wif tara™ is cool & all, but… wherem’st are the muffugging kwests?
Alright, alright. I hear ya. Prepare to be captivated by… resuming the ToT questline with Gock! Wow! Yes, that is the questline where you have to kill 999 of each species! Anything makes for great content… if you squint hard enough.
Last time, I did many of these quests with dagger sader (now dagger hero) inject (Tetrin, inbred, eject, inhale, vvvv, insist, DexBlade, Pitiful). But perhaps understandably, inject decided that slaying ten thousand monks or whatever was enough for one lifetime, & I can’t say I blame him. So now that Gock had caught up to my position within the questline, it was time to take on RtO1 together:
For those following along at home, these are the sad red monks. In particular, nine hundred & ninety-nine of them.
Then we moved on to RtO2, where there are the sad red monks with little white baby monks following them:
You’d never guess it, but RtO3 had in store for us another 999 monsters to kill. But this time, they’re not monx! They’re big empty suits of armour!! And the crowd goes wild!!!
That’s as exciting as I can make it, folks.
Let’s take a little detour through the next MapolLegen event: Hallowe’en . This event builds upon the previous year’s version, which means that the questline continues! It’s not quite related to the previous questline, but the basic vibe is the same: it takes place in the Haunted Mansion, the Masked Man is cursorily involved, it’s spoopy, & for some reason, there’s always a creepy little girl who hates her parents.
This time, though, the creepy girl is different: not Sophilia (the -ia of wisdom), but Olivia (the -ia of… olives. Yum.).
Named not for her resemblance to an olive (a quite distant one), but for her love of olives (an ardent one), the task that Olivia bestowed upon me was to bring back to her more of the oily fruits for her snacking pleasure. Rather than searching out an olive tree, I beat up some Twisted Jesters & Dead Scarecrows instead:
I don’t know why I thought they would have olives, but it’s just what the quest told me to do. I will do literally anything if a quest tells me to. Anything. (Unless I don’t feel like it.)
Disappointed by my lack of olive-procuring prowess, Olivia told me that her father would definitely know where to get more olives. When I was perplext as to why she’d ask me to get them if that were true, Olivia sombrely told me that her father was somewhere inside the Haunted Mansion, but that she didn’t know how to get in there.
For better or worse, I do know how to get into the Mansion, so I took a look around for this “Joe” guy:
But Joe insisted that he was not the father of this strange olive-obsessed child — he was just an average Joe, inexperienced in the way of the olive:
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Joe: Is that what she told you? No, absolutely not! Far from it, actually!! That girl has been haunting me for what feels like forever!!!
tarandus: Olivia?
Joe explained that he found Olivia on the shelf of an antiques shoppe, which at least explains why she looks more like a doll than a real, human child. Wait — why are the creepy little girls always dolls in these quests? Seriously, does anyone know if that’s, like, an established trope, or mytheme, or something??
Anyway, it’s common knowledge that creepy little girl dolls are always super evil — & presumably have cooties, to boot — so it’s time to commit dollicide. But first, I have to beat up some Rotting Skeletons to collect miniature headstones…:
…For some reason. You know, magic & ghosts & stuff. Haven’t you been paying attention?
Unfortunately for yr grrl tarandus, however, the next part of the quest requires using a goofy-looking one-handed sword:
Transcription of the chatlog in the above image
tarandus: naurrr i have to use a weapon
game sux
Gock: i knew youd be disappointed
i didnt know how to break it to you
tarandus: x_x
Gock: 😔
hahaha
I mean, I think I can pull off the look, but I definitely feel super gross holding a weapon. Eughh. 🤢
Ah, but there’s one other… slight detail. We have to do Butler PQ once for each entry into the Olivia boss fight! Butler PQ is basically the same as in previous years, except that now the final stage (before the bonus) doesn’t require you to visit your assigned NPCs in any particular order. There’s still the very-fun-&-totally-not-tedious bonus stage taking up half of the time spent, though. 😊
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Butler:
Ghosts captured: 31
Thank you for getting rid of the party crashers for us. Here’s a little present for you, our small sign of appreciation for your hard work.
- 1 total Olivia Boss fight entries
- 1 total Raffle entries
- +10 Green Malady’s Candy
Wow, raffo entries! Thanks, I hate it!
So let’s kill Olivia? Or, we’ll give it a try, first.
So basically, most of it is just basic-attacking her with the little sword thing. Having fun yet?
If you get hit by a falling piano that you can only sometimes dodge, you get leftjump seduced:
It’s not dangerous, but it’s a bit of fun. Good workout for my legs.
Most of the time, I’m just hoping that Olivia randomly chooses to banish me — just to break up the monotony, if nothing else. When you get banisht, you either have to light the fireplace or light up the chandelier, depending on what text you get in your chatlog (corresponding to which map you’re banisht to). Here, I need to light the fireplace:
Those wooden box reactors drop porpl firewood, which you drop on the upside-down fireplace in the top-right of the map.
Lighting the chandelier is quite a bit easier, as you just have to toss four or so basic-attacks at the chandelier that you spawn right next to:
Transcription of the chatlog in the above image
[system message]: Olivia banishes you to an eerie room. The chandelier is strangely unlit…
The spectral chandelier repels Olivia’s powerful wrath.
That second line of text is also operative: “repelling Olivia’s powerful wrath” means instantly slaying all of her summons, which is very useful indeed. The summons do not fly, are fairly slow, have painfully smol hitboxes, & like to spam superknockback:
This is a recipe for being seriously annoying, because the summons spawn directly at Olivia’s location, thus generally making it quite difficult to connect with their hitboxes at all — especially if you’re a bit unlucky. When we choose what to kill, the summons have clear priority over the main body, because they heal the main body, & their superknockbacks will fucc your DPM up real good.
Thus emerges a winning strategy: when someone gets banisht to light the chandelier, they hold off on doing the lighting until someone indicates in party chat that Olivia has just spawned a wave of summons. Then the chandelier is quickly lit, thus taking care of the summons problem.
With a party of six people who know what they’re doing, slaying Olivia is really quite easy, and the real barriers are the tedium of slapping Olivia a thousand times per run, & the tedium of regularly swapping over to Butler PQ to rack up those Olivia bossfight entries.
So we’re not going to be doing much of that. Instead, one successful Olivia kill is enough to complete the questline, & I even get an exclusive chair as a reward. You guest it — it’s a cube chair! Of the jack-o’-lantern variety. Not bad!
And I think that’s enough Hallowe’en for one or two years, don’t you? Let’s get back to the ToT questing, where RtO4 has in store for us a 999-pack of floating armour (but the dark kind, this time):
Wowzers! We’re almost done wif the ToT questline?? We couldn’t find any live Lykas this time, but I’m sure we will neck’st time…
Repetition
And that’s all the Questin’ Wif tara™ content that I have for now. Boooo……
That means it’s time to scrape up some more EXP the prescribed way: popping bosses one by one. For example, one issue that we seem to encounter alarmingly frequently is MapleStory’s jumpiest old man jumping right onto the cabinet where we attack from!:
Transcription of the chatlog in the above image
tarandus: oml get down from there old man
ull hurt yurself [sīc]
Harlez: no fall
steals his lifealert
tarandus: LOL
I worry that if he falls & dies, I’ll get less EXP, because then I won’t’ve killed him!
In other news, I disht my last dish with the 🍔🦋:
Naturally, this is pretty solid EXP. That said, the price that I must pay is not only my dish, but also clenching my arse the entire time — if I fail to dodge even one (1) of those lazors, my dish is gone!
Honestly on the other side of the arse-clenching spectrum, we have Figboot Bigfoot:
I used to be plenty afeard of this here forest creature; but at this point, I’ve slain like… hundreds of the damn’d things. It could kill me, I guess? But not really. And in my estimation, that’s not really fair to Bigfoot itself, nor to its habitat: BF’s entire niche is being the mythic creature that puts the fear of the Phantom Forest into the hearts of Maplers! Maybe you’ll run into one, maybe you won’t, & if you do, you may or may not escape with your life!! And the mystery & apprehension are doubled by the dizzying labyrinthine structure of the forest itself! I should be very afeard indeed!!!
But I’m not. I guess I’m jus 2 stronmk! 💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽😤
Speaking of being stronmk, I think I jus friccing… levelled up??
Oh helllll ya. I’m level 17X now!! That’s how MapolLedgen players write “level 170”, because ⟨X⟩ (naturally cool letter 😎) looks cooler than ⟨0⟩ (boring oval, ew 🤮).
Am I a Big Girl™ now? No? Okay, I’ll keep trying. CU nxtime. 💜
Footnotes for “Making a good fist of it”
- [↑] Quite frankly, I don’t like doing either of these things at all, but we all make sacrifices for the sake of… I don’t know… getting ≥1.5× more EXP? Is—is that right? 😥
- [↑] Note that I say “best” here — not “well”. Some buyers are… not even good at looting, let’s say. But really, that’s the beauty of working with customers: you never know who you’re gonna get, so you just put on a smile, hope they pay you at the end, & then laugh (and/or cry) about it later.
(…cnvpstdf…)
cnvpstdf
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Gock: cant get over how intimidating cervip is
tarandus: LOL
Gock: its hard
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Gock: nono
i was just thinking about touching my brain
as people do
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Gock: ive had so many injuries from mapling
tarandus: not me
hoeing doesnt give RSIs
