First published on 2025-01-14.

rangifer’s diary: pt. cxxvi

Pure digital

Let’s start wherem’st we left off, shall’ve’st’d we? I promise this won’t be exclusively tarandus-punches-the-big-bad-guys content, but… we are definitely going to have some of that (Bossin’ With tara™ fans rejoice!).

Before the conclusion of the Hallowe’en event, I finisht myself a Zombie Army Ring! And it’s perf!!:

tara’s Zombie Army Ring

Transcription of the item in the above image

Zombie Army Ring (+3)

Untradeable

Usable until 5-30-2025 at 23:59
Req lev: 25
Category: ring
STR: +4
DEX: +4
INT: +4
LUK: +4
HP: +250
MP: +250
Speed: +10
Jump: +10
Number of upgrades available: 0

Pretty cool. Can’t w8 for that to expire. 👍🏽

Time to use my newfound powers to defeat the most heavily-armoured boss in the game: Samu the Samurai. Alongside Gock (Harlez, Murhata, VigiI)!:

tara & Gock vs. Samu — 甲冑武者！ Prepare for defeat!!

I always noticed that there was something funny about Demo’s damage calculation; why do I seem to never hit “1”s with it? Turns out, the answer is simple: it ignores WDef. That comes in real handy here, because Kattyû Musya^[1] has a whopping 3.2k of the stuff! So basically, ⅔ of the time, I’m just dealing damage normally!

…What about the other ⅓ of the time, you ask? Look. We don’t talk about that. 🫥

Once we prevailed over the big scary red samurai zombie, it dropt… a Blue Seal Cushion.

Blue Seal Cushion… (Gock: score)

It looks cool, but it’s warrior-only & requires 290⁢ STR. 😢

We decided to sticc around in Zipangu, but time-travel six centuries or so into the future. To slay D’una! But for Real EXP™ this time!!

o no ): (R.I.P. Harlez)

Aur naur… Welp. I have rusa here to HB, IW^[2], & MW20 me, so it’s time to show this li’l punc who’s doin’ the dyin’ ’round here:

Get friccin’ rect, D’una! — Get friggin’ rect, Doonas. (And gimmie all your garbo whilst you’re at it. Thx.)

Yum! I love garbage. I’ve gotta get my calories somehow, you know!

I think it’s time for some more time-travelling, though. That didn’t seem like the most profitable place to be in Zipangu, & in any case, stardonuts, EunWoo, Jsoh, & misandrist (xRook) need our help! In the town of Syouwa!!^[1]

stardonuts, Harlez, EunWoo, tarandus, Jsoh, & misandrist preparing to take on The Boss

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Harlez: i havent properly run one of these yet since update

Jsoh: doesnt spawn the boss immediately

The long-time reader may recall that, back in pt. xciii, rusa fought The Boss — perhaps better known as BGA. But somewhat recently, that olde classick version of TB (yes, I’m gonna call it TB — sorry) was totally revampt!

TB is now supposed to be Real Content That People Actually Do™, instead of being way too gimmicky for people to run it regularly. So… you know. Let’s actually do it??

Entry is as usual: you need a Lady Boss’s Comb (dropt by Anego, as its name implies) to enter, one of which is then placed on the ground to start the fight. However, unlike þͤ olde version where you had a linear progression BGA → BGB → TB, you instead immediately get both Bodyguards at the very beginning. Combine this with the significant use of monster summons, & cleaving starts to look pretty good here:

BGA smonk

As evidenced by the above screenshot, we have two shadowers. It’s a bit difficult to pick out what’s going on, but the basic idea is fairly similar to The Stinky Floor Bosses For Cleave-y Types™ in CWKPQ’s final (non-bonus) stage: you try to keep everything as close to the right-hand boundary of the map as practically possible, & go H.A.M. on the cleaving. Whether this corralling constitutes “pinning” is up to you to decide, but I will say that the bosses of BGA/BGB/TB (including Anego, as we’ll see) are notoriously slippery!!

BGA is a clusterfrick — It’s a clusterfrick fr.

In fact, I found that, apart from my obvious role as SI & TL (= saffron inflorescences & thyme leaves — yum!) ~~mule~~ provider, my main job tended to be in the monster-wrangling department. Yeah, we also have two heroes (one for each shad, as in any good party!), but they’re a littol busy Brandishing their weapons — but not actually attacking with them, of course; nonviolent intimidation is the way! Plus, they don’t have Barrage, a skill that really does attempt to take monstercontroller six times per attack, & definitely isn’t a hoax designed to make specifically me feel like I’m doing something.

I think I did a pretty decent job of it, although I did sneak in a li’l cheeky @dpm 7 to get an idea of what was going on:

tara @dpm 7 in BGA w/ Rage, Echo, & MW30

That is MW30, by the way — & Candy (+30⁢ WAcc), too. My WAcc is pretty bad, & matters will only get worse once TB enters the picture! 1.8M DPM isn’t great, but considering how much time I spend corralling, & how much defence these goons have (3.6k & 3.1k, respectively), I guess it’s all right.

These things hit hard enough to give me a hard time; using Honsters meant that I was doing a quite a bit of manual potting. Unfortunately, they were also giving misandrist a hard time…

R.I.P. misandrist

No bishop means a couple of things. Clearly, we don’t have Resurrection anymore. But perhaps more importantly, we don’t have Holy Shield either, so the only thing separating us from completely rawdogging the undispellable debuffs is our Smokes. For now, those debuffs are mostly stuns.

In any case, after some HP threshold (50% of the Bodyguards combined?), TB is finally spawned. New TB is just as ugly as the old one, has just as ridiculous of WDef, & is just as difficult for me to hit — I’m gonna be sucking on some Maple Pops.

The Boss™

TB’s signature attack is still mostly to spam 1⧸1s, although I think he’s maybe slightly less aggressive with that now, so that he has the chance to do even more fucked up bullshit too. Great.

But here’s where it starts getting delicate. You see, not only are Male Bosses (which are basically harmless) spawned throughout the fight, but Female Bosses (read: Anego) begin to be spawned by, I think, TB himself. These Anego are a little different from the ones that you can meet in the Parlour in several ways, the greatest of which is that getting shot by her gun causes you to be seduced!^[3] Which is super dangerous!!

Our basic strategy was to make Harlez deal with the Anego, since she’s invincible anyway:

Harlez dealing with an Anego summon

Once the Anego is out of firing range of the rest of the party, Harlez spends some time soloing.

And honestly? It was way smoother than I expected. Don’t get me wrong — it was tough. But we never felt like we were getting bogged down, nor did we have any more than the one death. So, after not too long, The Boss popped like a piñata that’s filled with many other piñatas:^[4]

We successed it!

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Jsoh: not bad

[mapwide announcement]: [Loot] Harlez picked up Mysterious Coin Pouch 3

tarandus: wowers

[mapwide announcement]: [Loot] Harlez picked up Mysterious Coin Pouch 3

Jsoh: roll for lanterns

In particular, the piñatitas inside are MCP3s & Big Boss Flashlights — the latter of which are, in spite of the name, rather large paper lanterns.^[5] pCoins are neat & all, but I’m more interested in the ~~flashlights~~ tyoutin.

Flashlight exchange

Transcription of the above image

Konpei: What would you like to exchange with the flashlight?

That’s pretty neato!! I was tempted to take the PEs, but I simply enjoy using WAtk buffs on tara too much! Gimme those Red Ciders!!

Konpei: CHEERS!

Cheers!

Another healthful challenge

⚠️ I do this spoiler warning every time! Please play the original MapolLegen content before you read this section, unless you want spoilerz!! For spoiler-free reading, skip ahead to the next section.

So, remember your Beginner Pirate’s First Training Sessions? …“No”? Wait, what? Why are you reading this, then‽ Go make a pirate, you silly goose!!

Done? All right. Pretty fun, huh? Well, after the fourth training session must come a fifth:

Kyrin gives Beginner Pirate’s Fifth Training Session — A natural step up from the previous training session, which required killing ten Green Mushrooms.

I do love me some Deep Loodi, so I won’t complain. But where’s the story questline?

Wiz lets out a sigh of relief — Wow, I’m a librarian now! You think librarians do more DPM than buccaneers?

Much like literally any MapleStory quest ever of all time, this questline begins with a mysterious book of mysteries, found in a mysterious location & containing mysterious writing that noöne knows how to read.

Checking the first shelf that I see — Hmmm… I wonder which book it could be.

No, not just any book of mysteries. A mysterious book of mysteries!

Library Shelf: (I’ve put away all the books, but this one… It has the tag with ‘STORAGE’ written on it. Where could it go? Is there a storage here in the Library…?)

tara in the storage room

Ok, I found it.

Whilst Karen has a crack at decipherment, I’m sent off to do some completely unrelated fetch quests regarding the widely-played videogame craze known as Necki vs. Apple:

Ah, poor Marcel… I can relate. I don’t think I’ve ever beat a videogame! Except for Vicloc, which I did beat that one time…

Meanwhile, Geanie is as raffo-minded as you’d expect:

Raffo-minded Geanie

Transcription of the above image

Geanie: Nice! So, you may be aware that I really love it when game rewards are mysterious presents that need to be opened or unwrapped. But this game just gives the same, predictable rewards…

I want to add my own little mystery spin to it, and I already have an idea on how to do it.

Would you mind helping me collect some items for it?

Alright, Geanie. Sure. I s’pose it won’t be the first time I collect items for you…

And as always, Mason the Collector is… Mason the Collector:

But that’s it

Transcription of the above image

Mason the Collector: I knew that. Well, that’s no surprise; sure, the game is fun and great, but that’s it.

tarandus: ‘That’s it’? What else should it have?

Thanks to Gock’s assistance, I only had to farm half or so of the many tradeable Etc items necessary for this questline! Oh, & thanx to the fact that I’ve only half a dozen or so braincells remaining, of which one (1) is dedicated solely to hoarding MapleStory items, I somehow already had numerous of these otherwise-useless Etcs! Incredible.

Farming these things had me visiting my favourite Toy Factory map, Sky Terrace⟨3⟩!:

tara @ Sky Terrace⟨3⟩ — *The Map Where Shockwave Is A Good Skill*^®

Aside from the Clocktower, I also did a littol farming in the Ēṓs, like at the 59^th floor:

tara vs. Propelly

And speaking of the three Lūdi towers, they turned out to be extremely relevant to the actual story here. To check up on the conditions of the Ēṓs & Hḗlios, I did some photography:

With this old camera model, I must wait for the photo to develop, before taking a new one.

I admit to being in a kind of half-awake torporific stupor during most of this questline, so I’m a bit fuzzy on the details. The basic idea is that the king (or whatever) of Lūdibrium made the classic mistake of accepting divine assistance in exchange for a procrastinated but inevitable doom, on the hubristic assumption that the inevitable doom could actually be stoven off by extraordinary but mortal efforts.

Naturally, fate is not to be trifled with. In this case, that meant that the Ēṓs & Hḗlios — which together hold up the entirety of Lūdibrium — would slowly, but surely, crumble.

The mysterious book of mysteries written in a mysterious language, then, appeared to be some kind of blueprint for a device that could maintain Lūdi in spite of its forespelt fate. Not all pages of the manuscript seem to survive, however…

Hmm. I did always wonder what Rice the Medic seemed to be guarding behind those giant walls!

Welp. Looks like I’m gonna be collecting some blueprint pieces.

tara vs. MT-09 — Ki-*ai!* Take that, MT-09!! Gimme your… f—friccin’ blueprints, or whatever!!!

Predictably, some of the blueprint pieces were also scattered Hḗliosward, so I went blue paper hunting over in KFT:

tara choppa da tree — What the *fuck‽* Why do I have to use an axe for this? My hands are way better at chopping than a dumb littol axe…

Riddle fans rejoice, because this questline has riddles for sure forsurefrshrfrshr don’t worry don’tworrydwrrydwrry……

Sorry about that.

To get dyes to fund God of Mountains’s painting hobby, I was sent to a ✨⁠special map⁠✨ where I fought ✨⁠special king gobby-gobs⁠✨:

tara vs. the extra-special King Gobby Gobs — They take fixed damage! My damage is not that bad!!

Getting red powder & a card from a Red King Gobby

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

tarandus: ngl i dont understand the riddles but ok

Gock: i tried to solve alone and couldnt

There are ten possible colours in total (not including the five basic ones), so trying to figure out which one is meant by these broad & frequently contradictory descriptions is typically impossible, other than by trial-&-error, or peeping the answers online.^[6] I had to go with trial-&-error, as the info on the WWW was insufficient for the random case that I ended up with.

Dye Bag — It’s like crafting, where you put in two flavours of powder, & get out a new flavour. Yum! I’m legally required to say that, as delectable as these colourful powders look, you’re not supposed to snort the results! Please powder responsibly.

God of Mountains enjoyed the new powders enough to fork over the blueprint scraps that he’d been hoarding:

This one is for my haters whom’st thinc my fashion sense is too avant-garde 😤😤😤

It’s at this point that the questline starts to intersect with my fifth Beginner Pirate’s Training Session:

Karen explains the Dimensional Radar

Transcription of the above image

Karen: Instead, take this with you: it’s a special prototype of mine, the Dimensional Radar. I’ve been studying ways to put the energy of corrupted time flow to good use, and this Radar is one of my first tests.

It’s very simple to use: fighting monsters around the deepest levels of the Clocktower will charge it, and once it’s ready, you can fire it to scan the surrounding areas.

If the map you’re in has a piece of blueprint, each use will tell you how close you are to it. If you’re close enough, you will be able to pick it up.

So, basically: kill monsters anywhere in Deep Lūdi to gain charge, up to a maximum of 300 (or whatever). Then, each time you press the button, it uses a fixed amount of charge (25?), & you get another hint in your game of Topfschlagen. Generally, you have to check a bunch of maps before you find the one that has the blueprint piece, & then you have to check that map a bunch of times until you find the exact location.

tara vs. Buffies

I started out doing not so well. I spent a lot of charges finding the one weird part of the map where the completely invisible blueprint piece was supposed to be, which was a littol frustrating.

tara vs. (Master) Soul Teddies

Then, I started getting pretty luccy!

Klocks

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

tarandus: altho i prefer cloc

Gock: kloq

tarandus: ckloque

Gock: my EYES

In fact, I finisht the Blueprint even before my Beginner Pirate’s Training Session!

The Blueprint is complete.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

[system message]: I picked up a piece of Blueprint!

tarandus: got it 😤

[system message]: You have collected nine pieces of the Blueprint.
You add another piece to the blueprint.
You have collected ten pieces of the Blueprint. The Blueprint is complete.

Let’s tidy up that Training Sesh…

tara vs. GSVs

Whew. Alrighty. Time to talk to, like, a tree, or whatever?

Entering the tree at Moon Ridge

Astrum’s asteroid

Oh my lord. This is the friccin’ CNY event moon thingy! What is this old man doing here?

Well, he’s as grumpy as he looks, so I have to collect Grumpy Tachions for him:

tara finds a Corrupted Tachion

On the other side of the moon, Astralis is much less grumpy. In fact, it was her idea to have some mercy on the foolish mortals by giving them the blueprint in the first place:

tara meets Astralis on her asteroid

The rest of the questline mostly involves coming to terms with the Gray aliens for some reason, for which I must find whatserbucket:

tara finds whatserbucket — Oh, there she is.

Whatserbucket is a highly skilled spy working on behalf of the Omega Sector & Mesorangers, as you can tell by her incredible hiding spot in the above image. Her idea of coming to terms with the Grays is to politely ask me to beat up like four hundred of them, & then use their corpses to manufacture a disguise that will allow me to infiltrate their alien base or whatever.

tara beating up some Barnard Grays — “Four Shades of Gray”

Okay, I think that’s enough.

tara imbibes the Gray transformation potion — Salutations, fellow aliens! It is a good day on which to be doing alien things, is it not?

Like any good super-secret base, you have to do a lengthy YQ every time that you want to enter:

tara commences the alien yump quest

I know, it’s a little annoying — but that’s the price that we pay for security!

I also need the keys to get in, which are stored in these fashionably-futuristic barrols (the sci-fi version of leaving spare keys under the doormat):

I can’t yump this particular gap, so I’m gonna have to go around…

Sneaky footholds…

Sneaky FHs! The rope is obvious enough, but even with a guide^[6] at hand, I had some trouble going any further.

Breaking open one last alien barrol

Okay, phewf. I’ve all the keys, & now it’s time to just waltz in…

Alien Gray: Oh, you’re really going to challenge me…? — Never say “no” to a good challenge! Especially if you probably need to accept the challenge in order to continue your questline…!

I didn’t get to fight Alien Gray directly, but instead fought his King Rombot:

tarandus vs. King Rombot

The King Rombot looks pretty cool; but also, he sux at fighting.

Alien Gray: NO!!!

Man…

Transcription of the above image

Alien Gray: Man you have got to be kidding me! Why’d you have to go and break it like that?

tarandus: Are you being serious?

Now that I broke Alien Gray’s toy for no discernible reason, it’s time to finally do something useful for a change: repairing the Ēṓs.

tara repairing the Ēṓs

No… That’s not the right shape…

Hole: patcht

Hokay, there we go. No need to thank me! Jus doin’ my job.

The reward given directly by this story questline is yet another quick travel token that you can purchase from an NPC. This time, it takes you between Gray’s Prairie in the Omega Sector, & Moon Ridge in KFT:

Unfortunately, both of those maps (especially Gray’s Prairie) are a bit out of the way, & the NPC who sells the teleporter crystals is Karen, who isn’t particularly close to either location! Wow~!

In any case, I did finish my Training Sesh earlier, which unlox Dr. Kim’s arena! Let’s checc it out:

tara in Dr. Kim’s arena, fighting the Arena Pirates

At first, I was mildly disappointed & annoyed by the fact that the arena was just spawning a bunch of identical “Arena Pirates”, which don’t do anything special, & which take fixed damage. And it only gets worse: each new wave is the same as the last, but taking even less fixed damage!

Then, when the last wave came, I finally figured out the gag: the final wave takes a fixed damage of 1, thus implying that it might take an hour or more to power through all these Arena pirates…:

Dr. Kim: tarandus, that’s enough. It appears that these prototypes are too powerful, for your current skill level. Please talk to me again in a moment, I will finalize the data collection.

My “current skill level”! He’s making fun of me for not having Snatch maxt yet, huh…

And finally, there are the optionals. Booooring! Let’s grind out the minigame-based ones with Gock:

Grinding minigame-based optionals w/ Gock

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Gock: im bad at both [omok & match cards,] dont worry

tarandus: LOL

Gock: oops

tarandus: happens

Gock claimed to be bad at both minigames, but I was there to prove that there’s always someone even worse! Thanccfully, the relevant optional quest doesn’t require you to win the games…

And thassit! I went to Rosa to wrap up tier III, & she show’d me the full spread of possible maxHP gainz:

Rosa lays out the gainz

Transcription of the above image

Rosa: You are a level 170 Buccaneer, with 11098 Base Max HP. You have completed up to Challenges tier 3.

If you complete all your available Challenges:

Lv 100: +0⁢ HP
Lv 110: +0⁢ HP
Lv 120: +0⁢ HP
Lv 130: +0⁢ HP
Lv 140: +562⁢ HP
Lv 150: +980⁢ HP
Lv 160: +1130⁢ HP
Lv 170: +1280⁢ HP

You can gain up to 0 / 3952 HP.

Thank you, Rosa! Very cool! Can’t wait to get my fat +0⁢ maxHP!

I tried redeeming my maxHP reward two or three times, but naturally, got nothing. I thought I was once again totally stuck with my unwashed-&-no-challenges maxHP, until I was informed that it’s all in… an NX ring? For some reason…?:

Rosa’s Charm

Transcription of the item in the above image

Rosa’s Charm

Req lev: 100
Category: NX ring
HP: +3952

A special bracelet made for you by Rosa.

Gain more levels to improve its bonus stats.

Hokay! Thanx, Rosa. This is gonna help a lot!!

Marbol.

In the previous episode of Questin’ Wif tara™, I did some ToTing with Gock, but stopt just short of getting a marbol of lol xD so random, which is basically the end of the questline. (Except for the part where you have to kill da bean… But that’s a littol moar difficult.)

This time, we did find a Lyka!:

But Lyka’s seduction was no match for us just hitting it until it dyed. Here in MeipeulSeutori, we’re pretty good at that.

Pretty kewl! Cwessed: done. 😤😤😤 Not that I would ever PB or anything like that……

Back to our regularly-scheduled Bossin’ Wif tara™

So anyway, I hit level 171, right??:

tara hits level 171~! (tarandus: YETET) — feat. **Harlez** as a glowing green alien shapeshifter

As it happens, level 171 is a milestone level for at least one reason: that’s exactly five levels below 2nas! Let’s gosh darn freakin’ try it, I guess??

Like any 2nas fight, we begin with Dooniss Yoonitt (like any experienced professional 2nas-slayers, we exclusively refer to the Dunas Unit as Dunit), because 2nas (Dunit’s… dad…?) is invincible & very cranky right now.

tara & Harlez at the beginning of the Dunas 1 fight — Fighting the Dunit™.

The problem with cranky 2nas is that he really is very cranky, so we have to avoid hitting him at all costs. I’m used to doing that on rusa, so I had to learn how it works on tara. My arms are too short & I’m too vertically challenged to hit Dunit from the ground, so I mostly used the ramp thingy on the right-hand side whenever my ST was down.

With Dunit totalled, 2nas goes from “cranky” to “very cross indeed”, & the real battol beginz.

Like with any boss that has timed attacks that you’re s’posed to dodge, Demo is suddenly extremely difficult to use — which is saying something, as I’m generally tryna spam it any time I can, which would be two thirds of the time. Similar problems occur with Burger Moth’s 3^rd body & Zaqqūm’s flaming pillars: by the time that it’s even possible to react to an animation that I know extremely well, it might be just too late. The result is as much a test of my reaction time as it is a test of my ability to discern the first few frames of an animation from the very similar frames of other animations — including the generic idle animations.

Because of how Demo looks, people think that it just gives you a shit-tonne of iframes — & it kinda does! But the price that you pay is also getting a similar shit-tonne of mandatory stun-frames, during which you cannot do anything other than consume Use items. Because these stun-frames come long after you’ve already committed to them, it’s easy to get stuck face-tanking an attack that, in any other situation, would be telegraphed well in advance.

It was a bit chaotic, but we made it through most of 2nas’s big dumb HP bar before…

R.I.P. Harlez… (tarandus: D:)

I promise I’m not putting Harlez on blast here. This is just a good opportunity for me to remind all zero of my readers how stromnk as hell I am: I finisht the 2nas myself! 😤

On another day, I was recruited by shadower Kargo to trio Jacey with another shad by the name of Backstab. Backstab had never seen J’s before, so he didn’t realise that you have to do the J-seeing prequests first. Whilst we completed the prequests together, Kargo got the chance to see my wibbly-wobbly pugilist damage:

Surprised by my damage

Transcription of the above image

Kargo: surprised by your dmg deer

tarandus: ooo
how so LOL

Kargo: well how much att is you[r ]shield? lel

tarandus: 18

Kargo: thats like
a +4 60 garnier

tarandus: hahahah

Kargo: I feel like ive seen regular buccs with that damage lell

tarandus: :P

Kargo: practically all skills can be used right?
all actives

tarandus: yea almost
except booster doesnt work and ST half works

Kargo: whats your att speed weaponless?

Backstab: next

tarandus: 3 clean, 2 with si

It’s wobbly, but I do all right with it!

And with the prereqs all wrapt up, ’twas thyme to beat up this old martial artist:

Backstab, tarandus, & Kargo vs. Yāosēng

Unfortunately, Backstab didn’t make it through the first run alive. But we restarted with a renew’d vigour, & friccin’ clear’d that shyt ezpz!! 😤

Over in Japan, I did… another TB run???

BuccjuhNL, Harlez, & tara vs. The Boss™ — Yeah, *content* is an intransitive verb now.

…Yes! But this time, as a trio with Harlez & BuccjuhNL (xBowtjuhNL), where BuccjuhNL also brought his bishop PriestjuhNL — & I brought my very STRomnk bishop ~~cervip~~ cervid!

Cruisin’ for a bruisin’!

Now, I know what you’re thinking:

“Aren’t you bad at multiclienting?”
“You’re trioing with one shad? Are you just not gonna cleave at all? Won’t that cause you to get overwhelmed by summons?”

Uhrm… Yez……

Most of the time, cervib was jus kinda chilling on the left-hand side of the map, coming over occasionally to HSh us:

Oh dear — Oups! Hope I don’t friccen dye to sed!!

Thankfully, Ramon is much better at multiclienting than I am, & PriestjuhNL actually had Heals that do real healing, so noöne dyed. Phewf.

Oh, right. The summons. So, I forgor to mention this one slight detail where the summons heal! So we were actually fighting a shit-tonne of healing by the latter part of this run!! “Why did the HP bar stop going down…?”

With some unexpected extra appolling, we… technically did it!:

We technically did it…!

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

BuccjuhNL: lol
we did it

tarandus: hahaha

And I thought that that TB run was more than enough Maypolling four one day, so it wasn’t until a day or two later that I found myself once again embost. This time, I was running Zaccy w/ Gock & Reset! Reset is a guild (not an IGN), GM’d by IGN Calnot, who can be seen in the image below:

Lining up for Zakky (Calnot: click adobis)

She instructed everyone to sign up for the expedition, & to stay on the right-hand side of the map once signed. It kinda gave me primary school vibes, where you tell the kiddos to get all line’d up before you go anywhere with them. Or, to use another analogy, she was standing at the front of the line as a mama duck figure, with the duckling runners & looters trailing close behind. Cute.

In contrast to the orderliness of the ducky train, the first run was rather chaotic:

amzoO: RIP ME

I’m not sure how many attackers we had, but amzoO wasn’t in the main party for some reason. R.I.P. 🪦

Not long after amzoO bit it, Harknesse & Kimspiration did too:

R.I.P. Harknesse & Kimspiration

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Harknesse: my pet thing is messed up

Calnot: o fuck

Yet more unfortunately, Harknesse & Kimspiration were both of our bishops! Ruh roh!! And then…

Transcription of the above image

Fosh: did kim also die?

[system message]: Due to the party leader disconnecting from the game, CapMeliodas has been assigned as the new leader.

tarandus: omg

amzoO: uh oh cal dc’d

…Calnot d/ced.

Wowza! That fell apart real quick!! Nevertheless, we still cleared this run! At least, those of us who still remained… And run № 2 was much smoother. 🙂

Now, you know me — I love a spicy run. The Reset folks were good sports about it, & it was a lot of fun running with them! Hopefully moar in the future~!

But first, a seventh-floor-of-the-Sutra-Depository-themed interlude (feat. Gock & Lvl1Crook — a trio, wow!):

Gock, Lvl1Crook, & tara trio 7 F

Nice. Moar Zac?

Doubled Zaqqūm drops…?

What kinda gawrsh darn’d funni bizniss is goin’ on here? We got two sets of drops at the same time?? Wow, two pounches, too…

Pls don’t ban me. I think it’s fair if we loot jus one of the two sets of drops…! Right?? Plox no ban…

I’m not hacking, I swear! All of my EXP gains are 100% natural, organic, pesticide-free, and I hit level 172 in a Zak w/ Gock & Lvl1Crook!!:

tara hits level 172 in Zak w/ Gock & Lvl1Crook!

My goodness gracious — so much EXP!

Let’s tone it down a bit by switching to a boss that doesn’t give good EXP unless you’re below level 30 or so: Snowman. No, not that Snowman — the Maplemas one!

Snowmanning w/ Dom, Kevin, & Jensen

I didn’t do quite as much Snowman spamming as I did in last year’s event; it was pretty much just this one sesh. But it was a lot of fun to do 20 runs or so with Qubicle (Qub*), Wily (Hampy, Danger), and misandrist (smeowk, xRook)! Just like last time, it’s basically an infinite money glitch (or a source of APRs, if you’re into that…), but I cannot honestly be fuct to deal with the raffos & the inventory management.

Speaking of meɪ̯pl̩lɛʤəndz event slop, I made… a nose?:

tara’s Rudolph’s Shiny Nose

Transcription of the above image

Rudolph’s Shiny Nose (+1)

Untradeable

Available until 2025/7/11 at 23:59
Req lev: 30
Category: face accessory
STR: +4
DEX: +3
LUK: +3
Weapon def.: 20
Magic def.: 21
Accuracy: +22
Number of upgrades available: 0

You get unlimited tries so long as you throw each one away & buy a new one (including a new scroll), but this is basically a “Chaos Scroll 100% simulator”. The best that you can get per main stat (STR, DEX, &c.) is thus 1 + 5 = 6, since the nose starts with +1 allstat & 1 slot. It’s not very good, & it’s just temporary equip garbo anyway, but maybe that’s something for the gambolling addicts out there.

Speaking of gambolling, I’ve been doing a littol bit of Ancient Fairy’s Wing & Shining Fairy’s Wing farming…

The scroll lights up, but the item winds up as if nothing happened. [×4]

Woohoo! Not sure what I expected. You know my luck…

My pleasure! — And it was a **Magical** Coin Pouch 1, too, which grants 1〜4 coins…

Then again, complaining is OP…:

tara hits (+2) on her Ephenia’s Ring!

Transcription of the item in the above image

Ephenia’s Ring (+2)

One of a kind Item, Untradeable

Req lev: 105
Category: ring
STR: +2
DEX: +2
INT: +2
LUK: +2
HP: +200
MP: +200
Accuracy: +7
Avoidability: +7
Number of upgrades available: 1

Cool! Just need 2 pass 1 moar…!

But… okay, so… like… What if we did some reawwy fun Zakky-wakkies… togethow…… 🥺

Yeah?? Hokay, let’s heqqin’ do it. Alongside Gock (Harlez, VigiI, Murhata), I finally got to do my first piece of MeipeulSeutori content wif shadower ameowIia, & met markswoman ReiAckerman there too!!:

We see you, Ameowlia — ameowIia natedashing across body

But there are only two options here: either natedash across body, or get lost in the Octos:

Lost in the octos

Transcription of the above image

fodet: WHERE AM I

tarandus: lost in the octos

ReiAckerman: they cute asf

ameowIia: IKR

tarandus: fr
i like to think thats why theyre drawn in front of everything else
it wasnt a minor programming oversight

ReiAckerman: LOLOL

tarandus: they [just] wanted to make sure we see the cute octos

ameowIia: HAH

tarandus: at all times

ReiAckerman: as we should ehehe

Later, I hit level 173 whilst BF-hunting alongside Lvl1Crook (xXCrookXx)!:

tara hits level 173~!

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

tarandus: gues wat

Lvl1Crook: CHICKEN BUTT

[system message]: ⟨Party⟩ tarandus has reached Lv.173.
⟨Guild⟩ tarandus has reached Lv.173.

tarandus: chikcen [sīc] patootie

Oh my lord! I promise I’m not hacking, for realsie serious!! I’m just not mentioning all my EXP sources here, lest this section be even looooonger…

One of the many things that I’m not detailing here is how much gaw dam time I spent grinding those dam Ellin fairies. Not only was I crafting Ephenia orbs, but I was jus rackin’ up those wings whilst doing the repeatable event quests! And eventually (eventually...), I got all 16 Gelt Chocolates!!:

tara’s stacc of 16 Gelt Chocolates — Yummy yum yummers! I can’t wait to eat these so that I can do as much damage as a normal bucc…!

Unfortunately, doing as much damage as a normal bucc does not necessarily make me any better at controlling Yāosēng’s clones. I tried duo J-seeing wif Gock, wherein we learnt the hard way how much of a Fake Cleave™ I am:

tara & Gock try duoing Jaycee…?

Maybe some day…!

Apple core

And finally, now that I was level 173, I was in level range for CBPQ^[7]! Harlez had this crazy idea to duo it wif me, which is kinda wild — that oversized washingmachine is no slouch!!

But Harlez convinced me that it was possible, with basically two catches:

I would have to multiclient rusa as a (in descending order of import) PC/HB/IW mule.
We would need to use at least a few appols.

Hokay. Well. I definitely have appols, so I guess we’ll see how well I can dual-client this peek you!

Duoing CBPQ w/ Harlez: stage 1 — Note the “**MISS**” — Royal Guard’s got an impressively nimble 60⁢ AVOID!

For stage 1, we have rusa on the right-hand side on aggro duty. Basically, she just keeps aggro on the two Imperial Guards that spawn at the ground-floor, taking their dum littol sheald hits like a champ. The hard part is when she has to put HB & IW back up on everyone! Then, Harlez basically solos the Royal Guard, because I cannot get monstercontroller to save my goddam life.

For real tho, I do fight basically the whole time. I tend to be at the littol broken elevator thingy on the left-hand side: it’s right next to the terminal that you have to punch to stun Royal Guard, & it’s also basically one ↑ away from exiting Royal Seduction range.

I definitely do manage the Royal’s position when I can, but one issue is that I often don’t have monstercontroller when I actually need it: Harlez stops attacking the Royal to attack the Chandellier [sīc], at which point she’s still holding onto the Royal’s monstercontroller for just long enough to prevent me from pushing/pulling the now-wandering Royal back into Chandellier range. Great! 😰

In any case, the good news is that stage 2 isn’t an issue. Now that I’m used to it, soloing the lasors (with Haste!) is actually pretty easy for me! ☺️

Then, of course, there’s stage 3:

Duoing CBPQ w/ Harlez: stage 3 (featuring Onyx Apple, Sniper Pill, Archer Elixir, Echo of Hero, Maple Warrior 20, & Hyper Body)

Now rusa is on HB, IW, and PC duty, meaning that I have to be 💨⁠quicc⁠💨 with PCing as soon as I see that stinccy animation (assuming it’s not a WDef up, instead…)! Plus, if she gets yeeted, then I have to get her back onto the main platform ASAP.

For the first majority of the fight, we’ve still got Imperials spawning on the main platform, so Harlez is typically on BoTstep duty. I’m trying to bypass the washingmachine’s chunmkqy WDef (which is often buffed!) with my Demo, if possible. My cleave is, as previously discussed, fake. I mean, I get some DStrikes in there when my ST isn’t up…

However, another big part of tara’s job is taking care of the Mavericks V that she can reach — to the best of her abilities. Those familiar with Korb Lays^® will know that the Mavericks V are the things really threatening your life, & the things being the most annoying (even moreso than the Imperials). They’re the ones that go “YEET!”, amongst a farrago of other heinous nonsense. Typically:

Assuming ST is up, Demo whenever the Mav’s HP is unknown or not low, or if the Mav just can’t be reacht with something else.
Barrage, if Demo isn’t available or cannot reach the Mav. For instance, if the Mav is too close to Core Blaze, then Demo would just hit Core instead. Barrage can also sometimes hit Mavs that are flying really low.
ED or DStrike, if I know that the Mav is very low HP & just needs to be finisht off.

This is partly where the appolling comes in: if I’m just on Cider, then I’m suddenly much less effective at taking care of Mavs! For starters at least, we did three appos each — that is, six appos total per run. This was perhaps slightly overkill, but the point is that it workt! We duo’d the friccing Coar Bleyz!! F5555555555

And oh yes, the EXP is pretty dam good. 😊

Honestly, with ruza proteccing me, I ain’t even scared of the big dumb porpol washingmachine! I am, however, very much afraid of the Royal Guard…:

Get djinckst, nerd

Transcription of the above image

Harlez: let me get a little more apple for if you dc

tarandus: more like if i dye

Harlez: that shouldnt be possible

tarandus: HEH
ur actively working a jincks upon me

Harlez: :D

tarandus: looool

[tarandus dead in stage 1]

Oup! Well, I basically dyed to a glitch: Royal Guard likes to do the wrong animations all the time, so it’s pretty easy to get seduced with absolutely no warning whatsoever. In this case, it was kinda half my fault, because I Hero’s Will’d the first invisible sed, but then got stuck in my Barrage animation for the second one.

I’m now plenty wary of Royal Guard’s tricksy shenanigans, so hopefully I don’t die… that much…! In the future……!

Stay tuned~ 💜

Footnotes for “Pure digital”

[↑] Nihonsiki >>>>>>
[↑] fro,m this day forth i ſhan;t countenance anyone whoſoeuer might refere to thee ſkill of a ſpeareman as ‘iron will’ for its true name were ‘ironic william’ & ſo it ſhall be call’d
[↑] I mean, I get it. Who wouldn’t be instantly smitten by getting filled with lead by a middle-aged woman?
[↑] Note that none of the individual bosses drop anything. There is an invisible boss monster called Bodyguards A B Boss (MoID 9400116) that cannot be interacted with, but that holds the actual droptable. This is presumably used to achieve the effect that drops are not dispensed until BGA, BGB, & TB are all slain.

[↑] The original name of this item is presumably the JMS name 大親分の提灯, which can be glossed like so:

original	大	親分	の	提灯
kana	だい	おやぶん	の	ちょうちん
Romanised^[1]	dai	oyabun	no	tyoutin
phonemes	dä.i	o̞.jä.bɯ̟ᵝn	no̞	tjo̞ː.tin
pronunciation	dä.i	o̞.jä.bɯ̟̃ᵝn	no̞	t̠͡ɕo̞ː.t̠͡ɕĩŋ
gloss	big	boss	-⁠GEN	collapsible_cylindric_paper_lantern
translation	big boss’s tyoutin

Note that tyoutin refers to a particular style of lantern specific to Japan.

However, the KMS name is 대보스의 손전등, translating tyoutin as simply 손(son)전(jeon)등(deung) “electric torch, flashlight” = 손 “hand” + 전(電)등(燈) “light; lamp”. This KMS translation was then presumably translated into English for GMS & MapleSEA.

The KMS translation strikes me as odd, considering that they specify it as an electric flashlight, rather than using something like 등(燈)롱(籠) ⟨deungnong⟩ “lantern”. Even if the localiser didn’t understand 提灯, surely they could’ve at least looked at the item!

[↑] I used cereal box’s HP Challenges — Storyline Quest Guide as a reference.
[↑] Yes, korb lays is a partique west, & no, do not @ me.

New d34r jus dropt

Don’t you worry. I haven’t forgotten my Viccyloccers! In fact, I even did a littol bit of the Hallowe’en event on my dagger spearwoman d34r! That’s how I bought myself this new outfit:

New d34r fit

Not bad, right‽ The only slight issue is that the face is actually a face accessory! So my F2 emote strikes fear into the hearts of mortals!! The other emotes are okay, though, I guess…

Moar Viccy content to come…… (:<

ursa

Mmmkay how about a littol Bossin’ Wif rusa™? I hope you enjoyed rusa as a PC mule as much as I did, because most of the time, she’s just a Pb PB mule.

Not that being a PB mule is so bad! It’s a lot of fun (& stress 😅) to run PB, although I did have to take a break for a while there… For my first time bacc on The Peebs Grind™, I joined Milk Farm (hosted by xBowtjuhNL, & Pikaqiu) for a good ol’ fashion’d right-birb-first run:

Fuccing up the right birb — Fuccing up the right[-hand] birb (Muninn^[1]), hanging on by the strength of our Hoaly Shealds, Thyme Leeps, & Onicks Appos.

Every party size — in the general sense of party, including expeditions of any size — is a different experience, & the only one that I don’t like is 1! Running something with 29 other individual people is obviously less intimate than a smoller party, but it’s a wondrous thing to be able to organise so many people to come together for the sake of Mapolling it up really hard for an hour & a half or so! Getting to feel like part of a party, which is in turn just one party in a larger expedition (thus actually using the expedition mechanic for its intended purpose!), is the feeling that I imagine keeps people coming back each week. Oh, and… probably the drops, too. I’m jus hear for da vibez, doe. 😌

Of course, one slight consequence of thirty people fliccing the same bean at the same time is that you cannot see literally focking anything. Ever:

Thirty bean-flickers doing what they do best!

That’s a particularly crisp screenshot, too! Imagine if I instead took a screenshot whilst Minibeans were being slain!!

I also managed to not dye in this first run — phewf! There was, however, a very close call: whilst my Will was on cooldown, I got seduced & then 1⧸1’d, followed by the bean deciding to turn leftward (not “supposed to” happen, but what can you do?) & to cast genesis directly on my helpless puppet body. The only thing that saved me was my AVOID! 😅😅😅

In another run, the powers that be were apparently frowning upon us, as we suffer’d quite a few d/cs. And maybe they were specifically targeting me personally, because my party was soon down to just half of its original size!:

Three remain… (rusa, RacheI, & Legendz)

For those of you following along at home, that’s me, RacheI the BM, & Legendz the NL. No bishop for us…! Yet somehow, we had zero deaths in our party for the entire run.

But wait — I have some non-PB rusa content, too! I hope you like it:

rusa & Lvl1Crook using portable GM boofs @ 7 F — rusa & **Lvl1Crook** (**xXCrookXx**) using portable GM boofs @ 7 F.

Wowee! I forgor how much rusa absolutely ⚡⁠shredz⁠⚡ at 7 F!

So, anyway, I did some more peebing.

And, in yet another run, I managed to survive sed & 1⧸1 only thanx to my bishop Hardflip (who buddied me jus before the run). He managed to get a Heal — itself made possible by having shielded the Zombify^[2] — off on my leftjumping self jus barely in time before he got stun’d by the bean’s genesis! It happened so quickly that it took a second or two for me to even realise how I survived the friccin’ genesis!! TY!!!

― 🧡.

Footnotes for “ursa”

[↑] See: footnote № 11 to « La dragonne sombre ».
[↑] Recall that Zombify is undispellable, & causes the Heal skill’s effect to be reversed.

inermis, jxhnny, Milfers, & Tetrin; or, frome here to ioyaunce & back in an after-noone

In the previous episode, my babie swashie inermis greeted the Mapol Whirled alongside her sister from another mister, ~~トイレの花(はな)子(こ)さん~~ Toiletta (Taima, Yunchang). It is with profound regret that I must inform the reader that Toiletta, in a tragic accident, fell into the khazi in the Thieves’ Hideout, & has yet to be seen since. Legend has it that if you knock thrice at the door to the Hideout’s lavatory & ask “Toiletta, are you there?”, she may make herself known — typically, with a faintly-whisper’d poop joke.

Now that I’ve had time to grieve, ’tis time to move on. The call to adventure spurs me onward, & as any season’d Mapoller knows, the call to adventure is loudest right around the beginning of the holiday season. The season of exactly which “holiday” is not always relevant, but in this case, the occasion was Maplemas. It’s time to leave the vampire ~~bat~~ deer cave.

inermis’s first card: an Orange Mushroom card — inermis’s first monster card is none other than that of the emblem of Mapol itself: the Oranj Muschrewm.

As can be seen in the above image, my eyes are watering due to the intense burning sensation as the light of day pierces my vampire skin like so many Razors. I’ll get used to it… eventually.

Like any other deer, I am positively rubbish at skiing. I tried it once, & my entire body was sore for the next three days. That being said, the implements make for great weapons to kick with:

Quest Complete! Beginner Pirate’s Training…

I’ve nothing against Pigs, but Kyrin told me to do it. And I do anything that Kyrin says!!

On the way back to report my suidcide^[1] to Kyrin (I hope she’ll be proud of me??), I crost paths with a fellow adventurer also wielding an oversized weapon (a giant frozen mackerel), parsimoniously beclad in little more than a bathtowel & a socc:

Tetrin & inermis — Meeting **Tetrin** (**eject**, **inject**, **inhale**) in the mid floor hallway.

I felt like I’d heard the name Tetrin before… And his partner in crime, too: Milfers (MiIf, Dakota)… Such familiar names! I must have partied with them in a past life, but then… partied too hard, & blact out. It’s hard to resist when Ciders are only 10k a pop.

The important part is that we’re all fashionable here. The green appol badge comes for free, signifying that we’re all sweet & crisp to eat, yet unexpectedly tart:

Milfers, Tetrin, & inermis are all fitted up — Milfers the dagger worrier, Tetrin the unlucky assassin (all his assassination attempts fail as the result of mysterious flukes!), & myself, a disciple of the “*yeet haw*”.

All three of us felt the call to adventure, & so we banded together. We weren’t born yesterday (we were born the day before that), so we know perfectly well that Vicky Island is a vast land full of places to explore. In particular, the boundless depths of Sleepywood beckon’d most commandingly!

inermis & Milfers begin Sleepy JQing — Milfers & inermis begin the climb up The Deep Forest of Patience ⟨Step 1⟩.

John of Lith Harbour wanted some Pink Violas, so Milfers & myself were determined to climb the treacherous, yet painstakingly precise, staircases of Sleepywood to get to the only place where Pink Violas grow. I guess they’re magical seedless flowers or something, so we can’t replant them anywhere else. I don’t know? I’m not a ~~bottomest~~ botanist. What’s a “cutting”?

In many ways, I relate to the Pink Viola: I’m also pink, never see the light of day, & to get to me, you have to make your way into the bowels of the forest. We also share the common characteristic of not being any fun at parties.

inermis & Milfers in The Deep Forest of Patience ⟨Step 2⟩ — ⟨Step 2⟩…

Pink Violas might be endemic to this forest, but so are the red & green puffballs. I was a bit startled to see them float about of their own accord, but they’re actually quite friendly! The only problem is that they’re completely blind (eye-free!), so they tended to accidentally bludgeon us pretty often. They’re very soft, so it doesn’t hurt at all, but it tickles so much that we fell down nearly every time! Luckily, vampires always land on their feet, & Milfers’s impressively vertical ponytail exerts a firm righting force upon her.

Eventually, we made it to the top! Wowee!!:

Crossing the finish line

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

inermis: nice hahaha

Milfers: HEART ATTACK

Over in Lith Harbour, Tetrin was doing what luck-free assassins do best: planning assassinations on snails. I love a good assassination attempt, so I join’d in on the fun:

Tetrin & inermis vs. Mano

To test my developing sunshine resistance, I took a trip to the most sun-exposed region of the island: Perion. On a job from the local natural historian, a spiritually-possest tree generously presented me with my first opportunity to develop a crippling gambling addiction:

inermis’s first Gachapon Ticket!

Cool!

I met up with Tetrin in a slimy tree in Ellinia, where we slew many a Slime, thus making the tree’s sticky situation even worse:

Slime tree moment — Who’s going to clean up all this slime? Ew. Oh… my lord, it’s in between my toes. I’m gonna barf. 🤢

We came across another like-minded adventurer by the name of jxhnny (Jonathan, Edward, daggerknight, Gumby, Johnny, Kimberly) who wanted to join our party, but was a little fresher-faced than any of our current trio. We agreed to exchange Orange Mushroom numbers so that we could join Orange Mushroom group chat (colloquially known as OMG chat) & send each other orange-themed instant messages.

Being fresh Mapol citizens, we were still learning how to read & write the local language:

What’s the point of saying “level 2XX”? — ⟨0⟩? ⟨X⟩? What is this, noughts & crosses?

I headed back to Perion to help Winston with his fossil excavation efforts:

inermis “Searching for Fossils” @ East Rocky Mountain III — Ordinarily, I don’t think of fossil dig-up as the process of extracting the bones out of still-moving creatures, but I guess science is just fascinating like that.

I gave all of my worldly possessions to a strange man in the local bazaar in exchange for a punkin on a speer that glows purply:

inermis’s Punkin Speer — As a vampire, I’m naturally attracted to any Hallowe’en-themed item.

And with that, I was ready to meet Tetrin & Milfers in the Ant Tunnels:

Tetrin, Milfers, & inermis Ant Tunnelling (Milfers: 200?) — My skin feels much better down here.

We enjoyed the tunnel lyfe, so we decided to spelunk in a very different kind of tunnel: the sewers of Kerning.

Milfers, inermis, & Tetrin begin their first KPQ run — Inside of every Ligator is a bright orange coupon with clearly-markt instructions: the coupon goes “◂ in” the gator. Isn’t nature beautiful?

As it turns out, if you keep going, you just end up in Sleepywood! So that’s where all the waste goes… Maybe we’ll find Toiletta in here!

Most of the sewage goes toward feeding a certain “King Slime”. But we wanted his royal subjects to have a fairer share of the slop, so we bullied the king a littol bit:

inermis, Tetrin, & Milfers vs. King Slime

That’ll show ’im.

jxhnny needed some assistance with his own slimetreeventures, so we headed back to Ellinia real quick to catch him up to speed:

Back in the slime tree, to help jxhnny

Tetrin & jxhnny also needed some Pink Violas, so we did some Sleepywood hopping, all together this time:

The whole gang finishing ⟨Step 1⟩ together this time

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Tetrin: thats neat

Milfers: lol

inermis: hahaha

The whole gang in ⟨Step 2⟩

Somehow, I was significantly worse at it the second time around! Beginner’s luck…?

We soon learnt that jxhnny was a child of the forest, skill’d in the ways of both bow & blade:

The baby woodsman meleeing things

Transcription of the above image

Milfers: ah sorry jon no wonder u[] lvl a lil slow
i forgot abt ur class
LOL

Tetrin: homeschooled class

jxhnny: LOL

Milfers: bruh

inermis: LMAOAO

jxhnny: i should use my bow
i just happened to like meleeing things with my str

Tetrin: ya its very fun

inermis: yea enjoy it
becoz bow is so strong lol
at later levels

Now that jxhnny was experienced enough to be allowed to sewer-spelunk, we were headed back to Kerning. I tried using the brand-new high-speed rail that leads directly to the sewers (as any good rail does), but was thwarted by bureaucracy!!:

SCROLL TIME

Transcription of the above image

Milfers: SCROLL TIME

inermis: wait how do i use the scol [sīc]

Milfers: WAIT OMG this scroll TP is so mfing OP

inermis: scrol

Milfers: its [double] click in use tab :D

inermis: oh did i have to talk to rosa

Milfers: YES
OMG

inermis: im big dumb c:

Milfers: AWH LOL
its ok it just tp’s u to kerning

inermis: hahah
ya im determined to use it
brt

Tetrin: for FREEE haha later losers

Milfers: LOL

Tetrin: have fun walkin

Milfers: awh deer

inermis: cry

Milfers: issok omg

Tetrin: sheesh i bet them hooves hurtin

I had to call an Uber™^®…

With jxhnny now joining the crew in bullying King Slime, we were doing a wee bit more damage than expected! And the king… popt!!:

jxhnny joins in on the King Slime action, thus “mur-king” the king. Anarchy reigns in the Kerning–Sleepy sewers!!

I adopted a vampire deer as a pet. Is that weird…?:

inermis’s Winter Deer pet: Delicious! Tree branches are just the best! — For the record, no, I do *not* eat tree branches. The leaves & froots are where it’s at.

Having “deposed” the King Slime, we were moving up in the world. Or down — I can’t tell. In any case, some random guy named Byron wrote me a recommendation letter. But it seems that he’d never actually met Kyrin — which is what people mean when they say “I’ve known Kyrin for a long time” — & just assumed that she was a man:

Byron’s recommendation — He even misspells *Nautilus* as *⟨Notilus⟩ on the letter. You can’t make this shit up.^[2]

Kyrin laughed & threw the letter into a bin full of identical-looking letters. But she said that I was shaping up well (yes!!), & so challenged me to prove my worthiness of a pirate promotion (I assume that’s what pirates call it):

inermis vs. OctoPirates in the 2nd-job pirate advancement test — The plastic octopodes are completely impervious to anything other than bullets, so I just had to shoot them until the blue candies came out. Before you ask: no, they don’t taste like blueberries — more like laundry detergent. Yum!

Kyrin seemed disconcerted by the fact that I holstered my pistol & took out a punkin spear as soon as the test was over, but nonetheless bestowed upon me the rank of “gunslinger”. That means I can throw guns at my enemies now!

Speaking of enemies, there were still plenty in the Kerning–Sleepy sewers. Now that I talkt to Rosa or whatever, I could finally use the high-speed rail:

Party quest teleport GUI

Transcription of the above image

Party quest teleport

Choose the party quest you wish to teleport to.

[grid of party quest icons]

Target: Kerning Party Quest

All libraried up! (inermis: hecc yea)

Some of us were outgrowing the Kerning sewers rather quickly. If we let that happen, then we’d be too big to fit in the entrance grates! So as to not leave jxhnny behind, we engaged in ritual suicide pacts:

ded inermis — Ritual suicide: the hot new weight-loss programme that’s taking the Maple World by storm!

But eventually, progress was inevitable:

inermis & Milfers hit level 31~!

We weren’t quite done with the Kerning underground, though. The high-speed rail system that took us here had to lay its tracks somewhere, & you know what that means: incredibly hazardous abandoned construction sites! My favourite hangout spot.

jxhnny, Milfers, & inermis in the B1 JQ — The line 3 construction site: B1 ⟨area 1⟩. Like any good construction site, there are dangerously high-powered lasers blasting light in unpredictable directions at all times.

Recovering Shumi’s coin. (Milfers: YAY) — Shumi’s lost coin: unlost!

We were getting pretty good at laser-dodging, so we decided to try another construction site where we could unlose even more money:

The gang @ the B2 JQ — Impatience is key.
― **Noam**, known speedrunner

Still, we felt as if we hadn’t yet sufficiently punisht ourselves. So we headed back to Sleepywood:

It’s okay — I’m sure she’ll get it this time! I think knowing that the real stairs are visually distinguisht from the fakes should help a good bit.

Still on ⟨Step 3⟩…

Transcription of the above image

Milfers: this is it
lemme wait for jon

inermis: U CAN DO EET@@

Tetrin: i bee leaf

inermis: 🐝 🍃

Tetrin: i bee leave
wow

inermis: ;o;

Tetrin: u literally floundered

Milfers: fnoisdnfoiewn
KUMBAYA

inermis: hahah

You’ll be relieved to know that Milfers did make it… the next time! Unfortunately, the fact of there being yet another stage was a littol too brutal. 😣

So… I think that’s enough of that. Everyone else thought so too, & so we hopt aboard the nearest airship to another continent! Sneaking onto the ship from Ellinia to Órbis was easy enough, but Tetrin was feeling even braver than the rest of us:

Milfers, jxhnny, Tetrin, & inermis on the ship from Ellinia to Órbis

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

inermis: :x

Tetrin: lol

Mid-flight, Milfers & myself lookt up in trepidation as the airship was attact by an enemy airship full of huge Balrogs!:

The ship is attact by an enemy ship of Crimson Balrogs!! (inermis: ogm [sīc])

Tetrin was still undaunted. He knew he had the ability to hide in plain sight. So there was no way the ’Rogs would even see him… right…?^[3]

R.I.P. Tetrin… — Famous last words: “they’re here”.

Fearing for our own lives, Milfers & I weren’t out there for much longer before we scurried back into the cargo bay whence we came.

are u good? — Tetrin: confirm’d not a coward. R.I.P.

Clearly, Órbis was bad lucc. The good news is that it’s also something of a travel hub. After looking through some travel brochures, we decided on the less-than-vampire-friendly Nihal Desert as our destination.

On the ship from Órbis to Ariant

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Milfers: we got swag so quick

Tetrin: looks good

We soon found our hands full. A strange dancer lady wanted us to steal some jingle-bells off of the necks of some sneks:

inermis vs. Bellamoas — Collecting jingle-bells, just in time to jingle all the way. Hoe, hoe, hoe. Do snakes *have* necks?

A Strange Guy who was pretending to be part of a gang instructed us to commit mass cacticide, so…

Quest Complete!: A Request from a Member of the Sand Bandits?!

I’m starting to get a distinct sense of déjà-vu. From the sewers of Kerning to the xeric plains of Ariant! Where have I read that before?

So anyway, I shot this Adın guy in the face. I feel a bit badly about it in retrospect, considering that he was chained to a giant spiky metal ball, which made him rather defenceless:

inermis vs. Ardin

The krew came across a wee littol lad in the desert with nothing but a rose in his possession. Rather than ask where his parents were or something, we agreed to help him beat up mere cats for their astronomic apparatûs:

inermis SSKing some Meercats — I hate to do it to ’em, but you know how it is. Where do you think telescopes come from, anyway? Humans just don’t have that kind of advanced manufacturing technology.

It’s always noontide in Ariant, so to make the day turn to night, we headed along the path of gloaming (formally Sunset Road) toward Magatia:

inermis, Tetrin, & jxhnny vs. Sand Rats & Scorpions @ Sahel 2 — I don’t have a good excuse for why we were beating up the Sand Rats & Scorpions here, but you know those alchemists… Always LF>moar reägents……

The alchemists must be onto something, because their horticultural… “products” (can they still be called “plants” at this point?) are too strong for the alchemists to do the harvesting themselves. That’s where we come in:

Tetrin & inermis in Zenumist Lab – Unit 103

If you’ve never beheld the Nihal Desert yourself, then you might think that it’s just one big sandy expanse. But there are some tuct-away corners like The Desert of Serenity, where the hairy dwarves huddle together in the softened light filtered through the phœnix palms & the brush:

jxhnny, inermis, & Tetrin vs. Dark Sand Dwarves @ The Desert of Serenity

And now that we were all collectively tired of inhaling sand, ’twas thyme for a change of scenery. On the other side of the continent of Ossyria, held aloft the Lūdus Lake by more lightweight yellow plastic blocks than you can count on one hand or a million, we did some Ēṓs tourism.

But there are some things that they don’t tell you in the travel brochures. The hundred floors of the Ēṓs are a hundred & so many more, if you do what we did & muscle your way past the stiff guardage.

Milfers & inermis vs. the eyeballs of LPQ stage 4 — Seeing in the dark.

So many more for real; there’s no sky or we’re in it, my bare hooves buoy’d only by Kyrin’s Wings:

inermis using Wings to speedrun stage 5 — My two greatest weaknesses: small colourful objects that look edible (or at least suckable), & colourful boxes that look like they might contain small colourful objects that I can also put in my mouth.

There is such a thing as hubris. With enough of the tower beneath us, we were alarmed to find ourselves held hostage!

Milfers, inermis, Tetrin, jxhnny, & Alexaaaaa @ LPQ stage 8 — Just look at the positively debaucht smile on this sicko’s spheroidal face.

The blue latex balloon made no attempt to assault us. Its perversion was far more depraved than that. Instead, we were made to stand on number’d boxes, moving from box to box, one by one, as the balloon painstakingly enumerated each & every combination, each one exciting the balloon more than the last. 😱

We took the first & slightest opportunity to make our escape, swearing to never take that route up the tower ever again!

On the other side of the lake, we took a break along the relatively peaceful mountainside of the Korean Folk Town.

Tetrin, jxhnny, & inermis completing “The Lost Seed” — These rabbits are seed-pilferers! Any one of them could be the thief!!

I did say “relatively”. We were still attact by a pack of tigers:

Taking on the Hodori

Nimble as they were, I still mist the mark sometimes — even when using my gun!:

inermis sometimes misses, even w/ her gun

But the tigers were no match for our sheer willingness to continue fighting at length. Indefatigability wins every time!

The local wind-up toys are such notorious rice-thieves that sometimes, reclaiming the rice is a better use of time than farming it in the first place:

“Mr. Shim’s Request”

And, near the centre of town, we met with another like-minded adventurer: Murhata (Harlez, Gock, VigiI), woman of the fist (another of Kyrin’s disciples)! She agreed to help us with our toughest task yet: finding a hoe.

Hoes are naturally-occurring tools, but are only grown by Blins, which are, like, big blue fireballs. Or angry rox with feet & a horn. Does that make sense? And sometimes Brooms come out. Are you still following?

Anyway, Blins operate on some kind of uncertainty principle: sometimes they go so fast that you can’t hit them, but when they slow down to a stop, they’re suddenly everywhere at once. Pretty annoying, right? That’s why we needed drugs: the Blins operate on psychedelic principles, & the only way to fight fire is with more fire (that’s how the saying goes!).

Fortunately for everyone involved, I’m an experienced drug-dealer. Like any good dealer, I give a sweet discount for first-time buyers! The first ten Maple Pops are on me! Just come back to me if you ever want more drogas. ☺️

Now that everyone was tripping balls, it was a good time to all run out into the forest together at night & start firing our weapons everywhere:

Murhata, inermis, Tetrin, & jxhnny vs. Blins

And what can I say? Results are results:

inermis finds a hoe — “There are two hoes in this image.” Hahahahahaha *very funny!!!*

Soon enough, Tetrin & I were entering our WHIP GANG era:

And Milfers was entering a new era as well: her Sylvanian era. With the encouragement of Sylvanian & Murhata, the krew collectively decided to revisit the Ēṓs. I know, I know — ’twas horrible last time. But we had a plan: if we take a different route, we could probably avoid any rubbery inflatable sadists.

This time around, we hit some wind-up mousies until the yellow papers came out:

LPQ stage 1 w/ Sylvanian & Murhata

And we faced some still stiffer competition, in the form of the giant LEGO^® robots known only as Rombads:

Stage 7 — Yes, that’s actually what they’re call’d.

But these were nothing when compared to our final challenge. At the tip of the Ēṓs’s spire of spires, the 169^th floor (or whatever, I wasn’t counting), we faced a horrible beast: part whale, part shark, part funny hat, & part nipple (two nipples, to be precise).

Sylvanian, Tetrin, Murhata, inermis, & jxhnny vs. Alishar

It walkt upon legs not substantial enough to carry a beast one tenth of its size, & yet strode menacingly, its eyes flooding us with bluish light! It played so many nefarious tricks upon us as it danced, the keys on its utility belt mocking us by jingling all the way!!

But jxhnny, Sylvanian, Murhata, Tetrin, & I emerged victorious!!! No need to thank us! All in a day’s work, really.

In a way, we had beaten the story of Maple: we saw the many lands it had to offer, met toe-to-toe with friend & foe, fought for ourselves & each other in manifold ways, lived, died, & vanquisht the biggest, baddest, most benippled villain in all the land. And that’s what I live for.

Footnotes for “inermis, jxhnny, Milfers, & Tetrin; or, frome here to ioyaunce & back in an after-noone”

[↑] The English word pig most commonly refers to a member of the family Suidae. In more formal or zoologic contexts, a member of Suidae is simply a suid /⁠ˈsuː.ɪd⁠/. This word is a distant doublet of both swine “pig” and sow “female pig” via PIE. Both components of suid + -⁠cide = *suidcide are Latinate.
[↑] Believe it or not, this was my first time ever doing this well-hidden quest!

[↑] This is probably just a fieldLimit thing. I know for a fact that this map excludes Transformation & ST via something like fieldLimit, so a similar stipulation likely applies to Dark Sight. The fact that Dark Sight appeared to be working up until it didn’t is presumably either Dark-Sight-specific (the Dark Sight buff per sē is “allowed”, but its effect is not), or a quirky result of his having cast the Dark Sight prior to the map change from Before Takeoff to During the Ride: To Orbis — or both.

After doing some in-game testing, I can confirm that none of the maps involved preclude casting Dark Sight whatsoever. However, I can also confirm that Dark Sight doesn’t protect against touch-attacks (& thus presumably protects against nothing at all) when on the During the Ride street:

alces is “MISS”’d by a Crimson Balrog whilst Dark-Sighted During the Ride

In other words: both casting Dark Sight, and the Dark Sight buff per sē are “allowed”, but the buff’s touch-attack-ignoring effect is not.

There is, however, a double standard here. Oak Barrel is treated similarly to Dark Sight insofar as it can be cast freely, but unlike Dark Sight, it works normally:

tarandus ignores a touch-attack from a Crimson Balrog by being in her Oak Barrel

Although this is plainly a double standard, it’s perhaps to be expected: Dark Sight existed in the earliest versions of the game, whereas Oak Barrel was added much later — indeed, even later than the flight from Ellinia to Órbis. The two are treated differently simply due to the forgetfulness of the developers! IIRC, in the CNY event 2024, MapleLegends ran into this exact issue: they had to disable the JQ(s) until they could figure out a way to stop people from Oak Barrelling through them!

I can also confirm that the Crimson Balrogs are indeed not auto-aggro, & will fly around completely aimlessly without attacking (other than possibly touch-attacks) until specifically provoked.

(Super) Transformation cannot be cast whilst on the ship, regardless of whether or not it’s During the Ride. However, they can be cast at Ellinia Station, so that it’s possible to be (Super) Transform’d During the Ride:

tarandus Super Transform’d During the Ride, with 4:56 left on the ride timer

Nonetheless, the ship can only be boarded within the interval $[t - 5, t - 1]$ , where $t$ is the departure time in minutes. Because the absolute earliest time that a ’Rog can spawn is $t + 1$ (when 4:00 is on the ride timer), this puts a bare minimum of $2 + ε$ (where $ε$ may be arbitrarily close to zero, but is nonetheless positive) minutes between the time at which the transformation is cast & the time at which a ’Rog spawns. Both Transformation & ST last for exactly two minutes.

Which exact programmatic values are the ones that cause the behaviours described above is unclear, but presumably has to do with fieldLimit, fieldType, or both.

Vanilla GMS v62 (**not** MapleLegends) values for selected maps
street	map	MaID	fieldLimit		fieldType
street	map	MaID	binary	interpretation	fieldType
Victoria Road	Ellinia Station	101000300	0		2
Victoria Road	Before Takeoff ⟨To Orbis⟩	101000301	1100000000001111100	summon, door, migrate, notes, rock, downjump, summon NPC
During the Ride	To Orbis	200090010	1100010000001111010	movement, door, migrate, notes, rock, wedding invite, downjump, summon NPC	2
Orbis	Orbis Tower ⟨20^th Floor⟩	200080200	0

Some notes on the above table:

fieldLimit values are given in binary because they’re just bitfields. When a bit is set (that is, it’s 1), the associated thing is disallowed.
The things disallowed are listed under “interpretation”. Some notes on them:
- door is Mystic Door.
- migrate basically includes anything that allows the player to intentionally leave the map without using a portal or NPC: changing channels, going into the Cash Shop or using the MTS button, using a return scroll, &c..
- I’m not entirely sure what notes is, but it might mean sending/receiving Cash Notes.
- rock means a teleport rock of any kind.
- wedding invite feels like it should be subsumed by migrate, but most likely it instead refers to receiving an invitation in the first place.
- summon NPC is a mystery to me.
fieldType is not defined at all on most maps, & when it is defined, it’s not a bitfield like fieldLimit. Instead, it’s just a number corresponding to one entry in a list of fieldTypes. This is even more poorly documented on the WWW than fieldLimit is, but knowing what one fieldType does doesn’t really tell you anything about what another one does anyway. For example, a fieldType of 82 force-equips the green apple suit, & is used for the neo-Training Camp maps.

Apart from the During the Ride: To Orbis & To Ellinia maps, fieldType = 2 is only used for maps like Ellinia Station, Ludibrium: Station⟨Orbis⟩, & like half a dozen other similar maps. This suggests that its function is to allow ship arrivals & departures. You know how you can see the animation when the ship arrives or leaves? How would that even work? It’s not a reactor, right…? These kinds of special-sauce map mechanics are made possible by fieldType. In the case of During the Ride, fieldType = 2 is necessary to give the ’Rog ship effect when invaded mid-flight. This explains why no other “in-flight” maps have this value of fieldType: no other flights can be invaded by enemy ships.

My best guess is simply that Dark Sight is treated specially when movement is fieldLimited. Because this fieldLimit flag is a natural choice for JQ maps, the possibility of using Dark Sight to avoid being knockbacked by a JQ critter (e.g. an infamous Super Jr. Necki) has to be negated by making touch-attacks work even on Dark-Sighted PCs — in spite of Dark Sight not being a “movement skill” sēnsū strictō.