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rangifer’s diary: pt. cxxviii

glub.

There comes a time in every deer’s life when they’ve abstained from market participation out of unmitigated repulsion long enough, & have thus accumulated entirely too many shiny things. For my part, this happens every year or two.

Thankfully — for the market’s sake — I’m not very efficient at turning gameplay time into socially-accepted forms of wealth. Nevertheless, I will be vomiting most of my hoard onto the unsuspecting FM very nearly all at once. In the first instalment of this particular spending spree (burst? spate? effusion??), I bought glub:

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[trade window]

M21ALI:

Yellow Marker (+7)

• Req lev: 20
• Category: glove
• Weapon attack: 16
• Weapon def.: 4
• Number of upgrades available: 0

rusa: 710⁢ Prestigious Coins

---

[chat]

M21ALI: \o

rusa: hihi

M21ALI: hello :D

rusa: tysm!

Wau! Sickstean! That’s a lotta weapon-juice.

Of course, this glub replaces my old glub, which is… exactly the same, but with two (2) fewer weapon-juices. It really looks identical, which is a littol underwhelming, but that’s okay. I’ll get heaps of use out of it, & tarandus’s damage-range will probably increase by like +5% somehow.

So anyway, gubi old glub…

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[trade window]

UriGeiler: 153⁢ Prestigious Coins + 101M⁢ meso

rusa: 14⁢ WAtk Yellow Marker

---

[chat]

rusa: tysm!

UriGeiler: ty for doing business :D

I have a feeling that, in future instalments, I will be spending money less responsibly. 🙃

ˈɢ̆u.z̠ɐ

But okay, whatever, boringgg…! It’s time forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrusa!!! 😤😤😤

Although Ephenia is more annoying than she is anything else, I really need those AVOIDs & maxMPs, so I’ve been duoing plenty of Ephenia alongside Gock (Harlez, VigiI, Murhata)!:

Other than that, though, I’ve been…

Let’s be real. I’m a PB mule. PB is pretty fun (& delicious), though, so there are worse things to be. In fact, PB is extra fun when it gets a littol 🌶️⁠spicy⁠🌶️…

Classic. By the time Muninn was slain, so were we:

Thankfully, we were able to pull it together & finish the run with us using the “right bird [= Muninn] last” strategy for stage 5:

As you can see, the seduced folks are being politely walksedded, rather than roodly jumpwalksedded, which is basically how this strategy works. By trying to limit how much Muninn is aggro’d, & especially by keeping him at 100%⁢ HP, we’re merely politely terrorised (like death threats betwixt friends…), rather than immediately upsetting the balance of the entire universe all at once.

Then, once Muninn is the last one standing, we can piss him off without worrying that the other statues will participate in thoroughly killifying (slayificating?) our helplessly-seduced bodies.

Of course, this all represented quite a setback. Even with strategic extra appolling, we were cuttin’ it a littol clothes:

But, with the strategic extra appos, & the slightly-less-strategic last-minute appos, we clear’d in time:

In another run, I tried improving upon my statues DPM, & ended up with ≈1.35M! Good enough to show it off here, by my standards!

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[system message]: rusa — Lv.186 Dark Knight — Total Damage: 36,519,847
Damage Per Hour: 81,155,160 — Damage Per Minute: 1,352,586

And finally, I leave thee with only this imagery burnt into thy mind’s eye…:

33⁤½

I promised more Vickylocky content, & I’m now here to deliver.

Thanx to the Maplemas event, I was afforded a convenient excuse to do what I do best on d34r: FoGging.

Yeah, yeah, hell y34h. The reader is certainly tired of FoGging by now, but I’ve been at it for hours — days — months! — years!! — & I’m still chuggin’. A little.

My goodness, can you imagine the look on Skeleton Daddy’s immobile skull face when he finds out that I’m level muvverfuccin’ 103‽ 😱

And what about d33r?? Don’t worry — still hoarding Scrolls of Secrets…

I almost had a chance of finishing Ola Ola in 1^st(!!) place when I stumbled into the correct penultimate portal very early on, alongside only one other player. Problem with that is, the final stage has a lot of portals. Like, a lot. So I just finished in like 29^th place or whatever, like I normally do:

Lame! Better LUK next time, I guess…

And, speaking of finishing in 29^th place, I did some Physical Fitnessing, too:

Okay, back to FoG. But this time, with fellow Vicloc dagger-user xXCrookXx (Lvl1Crook, Level1Crook, Macer)!:

So many EXPs.

And so many Altar Pieces & Sabbath Candles, as well! You know what that means: another stacc of 16 Vicloc-friendly Gelt Chocs…

One day………

And, on a d34r-related note, I’ve been tryna APQ more. This is good for, you know, apples or whatever. The downside is that my brain is such a fine mist at this point that I can actually barely tolerate APQing — a PQ that I already know I enjoy — with 😱⁠randoms⁠😱. In any case, the randoms in question have industrialised APQ since the last time I APQ’d.

I know what you’re thinking: isn’t farming appos kinda the whole point of APQ? So, like, of course it’s already been industrialised…?

Well, yes. Sort of. But I’ve done a lot of APQing in my day, & I can confidently say that with the combination of the APQ renovations & a littol time, the way that people APQ has distinctly changed. For the most part, this means that there are now what we might call APQ trains: the same player leads (conducts?) a series of parties in the same channel (usually channel 1) that follow one immediately after another. At roughly the beginning of each run, the leader asks for “next IGNs”, so that they can start forming the next party in the train almost immediately.

The result is that it’s generally expected that a full party — in spite of being full — may have to wait quite a few minutes to start the PQ, because some or all of the party’s members are still in another run. The train cars pile up quickly, as evidenced by this time that I joined a “next next”:

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d34r [allchat]: j>apq

[system message]: You have joined the party.

BurningMoon [party chat]: this is next next
12mins ish

morny [allchat]: J>

d34r [party chat]: okey

This means that they’re most of the way through a run, already have a party assembled for the next run after that, & then this party will go after that run finishes. Choo, choo…!

So fistication

You already knew it was coming: it’s tara time, bb. Per usual, this episode will be mostly Bossin’ Wif tara™ — but we’re gonna mix in a little Questin’ Wif tara™, too. Sneaki…

For starters, I finally finisht me dam Ephenia’s Ring:

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Ephenia’s Ring (+3)

One of a kind Item, Untradeable

• Req lev: 105
• Category: ring
• STR: +2
• DEX: +2
• INT: +2
• LUK: +2
• HP: +250
• MP: +250
• Accuracy: +10
• Avoidability: +10
• Number of upgrades available: 0

---

[system message]: You have gained an item (Ephenia’s Soul Crystal)
The scroll lights up, and then its mysterious power is transferred to the item.

Phewf!! Feels good to be done!!! (On this character, at least…)

As gambler’s payment for my good Ephenia’s Soul Crystal fortune, I got literally (actually forreal srs!!) bilkt by Neo Tôkyô:

Now, Bergamot is a level 168 boss. One hundred & sixty-eight. Sure, I duo’d it with Harlez (Gock, VigiI, Murhata), but that just meant that it took nigh on forty minutes to kill only one of ’em. And you’re tellin’ me that it dropt… one (1) Scroll for One-Handed Sword for WAtk 60%? And that’s it‽‽ Well dip me in ASICs & call me a bitcoin, ’cause I jus got fucken scammed.

Worse yet, NT was feeling particularly scammy on that day, because I also got absolutely conned by Royal Guard:

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tarandus: :/

Harlez: not your fault
gg

tarandus: gg!
i was already scared of royal guard
but now im mortally terrified

Harlez: royal is so messy

For real, though, the animations are so broken. Send halp.

But you know where I never get scammed? …I’m not sure, actually. Well. The answer is definitely not Horntail, but let’s try it anyway — Diggy’s recruiting.

Unfortunately for our first run, sed target BLZY d/c’d partway into 2^nd prehead:

Well, you know what that means. We’ve to decide who’ll be sed target for main bo—

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Jeesooo: wait are you really? LMAO

BeeSea: thiccc
melly is actually good sed

Potsticker: i learned from city

BeeSea: we have done 6 man with melly sed before

For reference, Potsticker is a BM! But they weren’t lying — she’s a pretty good sed target.

I’m tryna improve at hitting HT more betterer. One thing that I’m learning is that, sometimes, I need to stop for a moment & do a littol cleave. I know, it looks cringe to be hitting wings, but I’m not very useful if I don’t even have stance from my bubbol. Like, even if I have bubbol, the stance only worx 90% of the time, which — if we’re being real — is already bad enough to be more like 80% of the time. (85% on a good day, 49% on International Stance Fail Day.)

Anyway, I indulged in a wee bit of @dpm 30 with HT buff (+ Echo + MW20 + SE):

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[system message]: tarandus — Lv.173 Buccaneer — Total Damage: 61,231,577
Damage Per Hour: 122,463,120 — Damage Per Minute: 2,041,052

Well, cresting the 2M mark is promising. I must say, however, that this is one place where rusa’s DPM really shines. With tara being uncleavy — at least until level 207, or whenever it is that buccs actually max their attacking skills — she just can’t quite make up for the lack of Crusher-like action. You know what they say: two heads are better than one.

I had the pleasure of doing some Zakky-wakky with Gock, ameowIia, Mekhane (Sunken), notnotgroovy (groovyfeet), & DadsLemons, during which I learnt that a bowman’s AVOID only works to avoid Holy Symbol:

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Mekhane: hs again please
missed me
<3
missed again lmao

notnotgroovy: LOL

Mekhane: ty

ameowIia: 3^rd time’s the charm

tarandus: too much avoidability

ameowIia: LOL

DadsLemons: B+ Bishop

Mekhane: cmon now
bowman avoid is cope
lol

Oh, & I also friccin’ level’d up?!?:

😤

Speaking of levelling up, I saw some excellent J’s alongside Gock, ameowIia, & Lvl1Crook (xXCrookXx, Level1Crook, Macer)!:

Now, this is one stact party, so we finisht with plenty of time to spare. You know what that means: exotic hoeing location!

Looking good.

It was nearly reset, so doing third & fourth rounds was looking pretty good. Unfortunately, Gock had to go. Nevertheless, we decided that, given how quic as fric we were already, losing one Mapler was probably not enough to put us in time trouble:

’Twas now time for ameowIia to CWKPQ with her guild (Reset). Buuut… since they needed a pirate sign anyway (& SI certainly won’t hurt the DK, I s’pose), she invited me to come along too! Whoa… tara’s first CWKPQ as an actual runner‽‽

The first thing that I noticed was the new CWKPQ signup GUI:

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warrior	mage	archer	thief	pirate
✅			✅	✅

Jack: What would you like to do?

• Join the Expedition Squad
• Leave the Expedition Squad
• Check members

buff logs are currently enabled.

Wau… priddy fansi.

But some things never change. Like the Pirate “““Mastery””” Room:

Whilst waiting for Mekhane to finish 💪🏽⁠soloing⁠💪🏽 the archer room, we came together to form The Towers Of Confexion™:

Dark knight BlueCrawfish also had some questions for me…:

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BlueCrawfish: howd u get in oddjobs

tarandus: oh im a pugilist (:

BlueCrawfish: what kind of shenanigans are u up too [sīc]

tarandus: hahaha

Mekhane: lol

tarandus: i dont use a weapon

BlueCrawfish: wat

tarandus: jus fists & feet!

BlueCrawfish: so no mastery or nothin
just raw doggin bucc

And now, of course, the main & only real event: boss-mashing. First we start with The Littol Shitty Guys™:

Okay, easily done. Let’s get to the borsing. I’ll be on cleave duty, as the reader probably anticipated:

You can see in the above image that I’m facing, apparently, “the wrong way” (= leftward), & cleaving with Snatch. Now, my Snatch isn’t maxt, so my basic idea (with all three cleave bosses alive) was this:^[1]

• When in ST: DStrike → Snatch.
• When in EC: DStrike → EB.
• When in neither: spam some combination of DStrike & SSK until EC is up.

Of course, since my Snatch is unmaxt, I really ended up with DStrike → EB even when in ST, assuming that EC is up — contrary to what you see in the image above. But in any case, I figured it out eventually.

The reason why I’m facing “the wrong way” is because Snatch pulls targets (that I have monstercontroller of) towards me, so I was afraid that Snatching in the other direction might pull the bosses away from the wall — not good. However, this was yet another detail that I figured out as the run went on: facing leftward was unnecessary, because Snatch doesn’t actually pull targets to be that close to me, so as long as I was reasonably close to the wall — as I should be anyway — it wasn’t a big deal.

As I went over to the ranged(?) bosses to refresh my MW & SE, I encounter’d an unexpected GM Qub!:^[2]

It may’ve taken me a sec to really optimise what skills I was using, but in spite of that, I think that I did near about the best cleaving that I could do! I must emphasise that, above all, I was trying absolutely way too hard. Like, my arse was positively clencht the entire time. I was, at least, recognised for my efforts when BlueCrawfish went to trade me back the Onyx Appo that I had lent him:

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tarandus: tqtq!

BlueCrawfish: ur a pro bucc
idc what they say

tarandus: hahaha[ ]ty

Overall, not a bad first experience for tara! I can’t say I particularly enjoy CWKPQ, but there you go. I did it. 😤

Hokay, how ’bout some Corps Blays Peek You duos with Harlez…? I finally captured a halfway-decent screenshot of what it looks like when I snag a Maverick V with one of my attacks (Demo, in this case):

And would you look at that! It finally dropt a friccin’ chare for Harlez!!:

Anyone for some Samu?:

That was just a warmup! Let’s do some more J-seeing, but this time as a wacky trio w/ Lvl1Crook & DEXadin SwordFurbs (SwordFurb, Yoshis, Furbs)‽:

Wowie! Pretty neato!! We did clear both times, with roughly one minute left on the clock…

…Which is pretty good, & gave us enough time to kill two or three of the clones afterwards. Unfortunately, to make it happen, one or two appos had to be sacrificed in the name of the timer. I still slightly regret not recalling, at the time, that Charged Blow has a 90% chance of stunning six targets for 4⁢ s, which would likely have solved the clones-run-wild problem that we were very much having. O, whale. 🐳

Okey doke. Time to put my 👖⁠big girl pants⁠👖 on for this one, ’cause it’s time for more TB! And this time, I signed up on Disk Oared™^®!! AAA​AAA​AAA​AAA​AAA​AAA​AAA​AAA!!!

😮‍💨

Hokay. I can do this. I signed up alongside Harlez, the run was hosted by F/P archmage Squarish, & we were also joined by EunWoo (EunWooo, HOT6). That’s two shadow hers! That’s a lotta smonk.

It also means that I’m on “““pinning””” duty — sorta… — because I’m the only one with monster-moving attacks. In a way, that’s good, because then my damage doesn’t matter quite so much for my purpose…:

But it also means that my one attack that actually does damage — namely Demo, because it ignores WDef — is almost nonexistent in this context. Demo does technically stun for one (1) second, but bosses are immune to stun anyway, so it’s really just damage. I tried to squeeze in one or two Demos during the moments when Squarish was cleaving (great use of Big Bang!), but to limited success:

But for the most part, this was really just a full-body workout. My eyes were staring so hard at the pixels that I’m pretty sure they caught fire,^[3] & my front legs were so tense the entire time that I was sore the next day.

That being said, you know… we won.

Really colourful drops, right? I was excited to see these fun items all drop at once: VSS, Zhu-Ge-Liang Wand, YAC, Raccoon Mask, top maxHP 30%, & a Big Boss Flashlight!^[4] But actually, it’s not a very good drop — economically speaking — for all the trouble of killing BGA, BGB, & TB (which can be done at most once daily anyway). What can you do.

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deer: i was staring at the pixels so hard

Harley: 1s [= 1-damage lines] happened and the host was barely phased [= fazed]

deer: LMAOO
omg
yeah i…

Harley: it was your powerful pin energy that tamped the doubt

deer: HAHAHA

Right, so, because I was limited to non-Demo attacks, there were indeed a lot of “1” damage lines. 😣 Squarish did note it, albeit only in the middle of the run:

Is our bucc underlevelled?

An interesting question, actually! BGA, BGB, & TB are all level 175. I’m level 174, which means that I am strictly underlevelled; in particular, I suffer various penalties that the game imposes on PCs when this strict inequality is satisfied. However, on the other hand, we normally consider a PC in MapleLegends to be “underlevelled” only when their level is strictly less than $n-5$, where $n$ is the level of the monster — but this is really just for EXP purposes.

Still, for the specific purpose of my outgoing damage, this only means that my raw damage range is subject to multiplication by 0.99 before WDef &c. are applied. The primary source of the “1”s is my pp pupu garbo damage. :D

Anywho, I got my first friccin’ Royal Card?:

Pretty low droprate, honestly!

And how about some Yāosē—

Whaddaheccin’ holy moley gosh darn tootin’ level one hundred & seventy-five‽‽‽ WOWEEE​EEE​EEE​EEE~

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[system message]: ⟨Guild⟩ tarandus has reached Lv.175.

Harlez: no way

tarandus: YAY

Harlez: already

UltraLuxe [alliance chat]: gz

tarandus: :DDD

tarandus [alliance chat]: TQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ

Harlez: thats wild

GoGoSnuggles [alliance chat]: gz!

Harlez: congrats

tarandus: hehehe
TYYYYYYYYYYYY

Harlez: damn

tarandus [alliance chat]: TY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Harlez: here you open pouch

[mapwide announcement]: [Loot] tarandus picked up Mysterious Coin Pouch 1
[Mysterious Coin Pouch 1] tarandus obtained 1 Prestigious Coins. [sīc]

[system message]: You have gained an item (Prestigious Coin)

tarandus: hahaha

And, for no particular reason (don’t ask), I was farming a few Kunoichi & Chunin, when this mysterious litebolb appear…

Wow! Tier 4 Monster Book Ring! And I still haven’t properly done any card-hunting on this character yet…

Transcription of the item in the above image

Monster Book Ring ⟨Tier 4⟩

One of a kind Item, Untradeable

• Category: ring
• STR: +4
• DEX: +4
• INT: +4
• LUK: +4
• HP: +250
• MP: +125

Collected 120 Monster Book Card Sets! The power of the Emerald jewel is now inside the ring.

So anyway, geez. Level 175, eh? As much as I joke about it, I guess tara really is a Big Girl™ now. I’m in level range for any game-content in all of pleLeg!! I am pretty stinccy tho, so IDK if I’ll ever……

Oh, dear. How did this happen?

Well, I had only just levelled to 175, when BuccjuhNL (xBowtjuhNL, PriestjuhNL) just so happened to have a bucc on his Saturday PB run who probably wasn’t going to make it. So that’s where I come in, I guess… 😅

On rather short notice, I speed-read a littol bucc guide to PB & filled my inventory to the brim with PEs! AAA​AAA​AAA​AAA LET’S DO ITTT​TTT​TTT​TTT!!!

I’ve got my PEs double-bound & my auto-HP threshold at 95%! There’s no way I can die this early, right? …Except I did!! Literally I’m not even sure how I did it!!! It was jus the left man (Solomon the Wise), & my HP suddenly went to 0… I must’ve accidentally jumpt, thus instantly dying to touch damage… or something……

Anyway, it’s fine, right? I forgor to buy more Safety Charms, but I still have one (1) left! So I jus have to dye again not more than once…! Easy, right…?

And my time to shine approaches. You see, my role as boucanier is ✨⁠special⁠✨ — that’s why I’m here!: in addition to providing SI as usual, my TL is of great strategic import. To do “right birb (Muninn) first”, we need at least four Time-Leapers: two for each of stages 4 & 5.

I was first up in the TL order, so around the tail end of stage 3 — whilst we were fighting right man (Rēx the Wise) — I carefully brought my EC meter up to 90%〜95%, & then entered Chill Mode™. To ensure smooth execution, a bucc who’s scheduled to TL next stage is supposed to sit around ≈90%⁢ energy between this time & the time when they TL;^[5] so that means a significant amount of just kinda standing there & twiddling my thumbs.

I then got my first chance to be bounced between parties at this stage: as soon as the first HSh lands on me, I leave my party, quickly top up my EC to 100% if I haven’t already, accept the invite from the lead bishop, wait for the magic words “TL whenever” in VC, pop my TL at the centre of the map, wait for the party to be disbanded & to receive an invite from my main party leader, throw down another /pa, & breathe a sigh of relief as I can now attack normally… 😮‍💨

Having my TL on cooldown makes it impossible for me to somehow(‽) accidentally use my TL, & similarly impossible for anyone to expect me to TL all the bishops. Life is gr8.

Stage 5 is a tad bit interesting insofar as Ariel is only sorta-kinda-mostly hittable for buccs. With the birbs, we at least have recourse to the outer (that is, on the side further from the map’s centre) platforms adjacent to the birb, which are kinda like standing on a stool so that our tiny littol bucc arms can punch the birb’s feets. With Ariel, we’ve no such fortune. On the bright side, it’s not terrible if either ST or EC are up, as Demo smax Ariel quite nicely, & ED is a halfway-decent substitute for being able to Barrage:

Otherwise, though, you’re stucc alternating between DStrike & CSB. Ouch.

In any case, with the statues done, it’s time for like 50⁢ minutes of pain Bean. …Aaaand within the first 10⁢ seconds, I already dyed! What the fruck!!

I admit that the first death was my fault (or some kind of weird fluke; who knows…?), but I promise that this one was not! I didn’t have HB, so just one (1) Big Bang^[6] was enough to instantaneously send me from 100%⁢ HP all the way to headstone land! 🪦 Of course, if the Bean is properly pinned, then I can’t get hit by BB. But also, I really kinda needed HB all along (for what it’s worth, it would’ve spared me my first death as well, assuming that that wasn’t a weird fluke). Anyway, the reader will be relieved to learn that this second death was my last; I got to be in a party with a DK for the rest of the run. 😅

Perhaps the most important new (for me) aspect of fighting the Bean was that I can’t use any of my monster-moving attacks: Barrage, Snatch, CSB, & BSB are all b&! I’m not the pinner, so I can’t be interfering with the pin. (Granted, this is technically true for me on rusa as well, but ruling out Rush & MM doesn’t hurt nearly as much.) If both my ST & EC are down, that largely reduces me to DStrike; if I’m sufficiently brave & know my pixel position relative to the Bean’s (unlikely!!), then I can use a 1^st-grade attack (SSK or FF, both of which have extremely poor horizontal reach) in between DStrikes.

Other than that, I’m still feeling my way around the Bean fight. I’m not kidding when I complain every single time that I cannot see jack shit. There are only so many pixels, they’re all completely unrelated colours, & they keep changing once every ≈30⁢ ms or so. Please help. 😭

One thing that I noticed is that there seems to be a very short grace period after Demo, during which the bucc cannot get seduced by the falling G-clefs. This is a really nice feature that made it possible for me to actually survive, in spite of frequently stunning myself for over two seconds at a time (read: using Demo). Neat!

This run actually turned out to be quite fast, so I got less than 50⁢ minutes of Pain Bean. Fantastic. But the Bean had one last tricc up its sleeve:

Go, Valtarius! Kill it with your AotB & active Zerk!! F55555

So, anyway. We won. And for whatsoever it might be worth, I was told to loot the card!:

And would you look at that! This was technically Questin’ Wif tara™ content the whole time!:

Unfortunately, that’s all the “technically Questin’ Wif tara™ content” for this episode. Not long after that PB, I was invited by BuccjuhNL once again — but this time, to Zaqqūm alongside Gock, bishop Ogden, dock night redding (sullivan), & bough master Alexa!:

Very fun.

And how about some more duo CBPQs? We’ve been working on reducing appo expenditure whilst still, you know, actually clearing in time:

Or, how about… another CWKPQ, for some reason? This time, I was recruited by Harlez.

In the wacky world of CWKPQ, mages aren’t real, & even if they were, they would be despicable & detestable to the utmost degree. However, to do the PQ at all, you need a mage sign, & you need that mage to do the mage room^[7] as well. Worse still, one of the bosses has a rather burdensome “DEF Up” skill that’s intended to be Dispel’d. But we’ll get back to that.

What I’m getting at is that I was expected to multiclient a bishop, since I do have one. You know, cerbip cervid the extraordinarily STRong bishop. Yell heah. Sure, last time we tried this, I embarrassed myself & everyone else by wasting our CWKPQ entry on me not being able to trigger the mage sigils for lack of magey skills; but since then, I’ve used an SPR to give myself level 1 Magic Claw, so we’re probably fine this time! However, that does mean that it’s my first time doing the mage room.

The first challenge was getting to the mage room in the first place. Yes, I have max-level Teleport, but I’ll be fuct if I can tell where any of the goddamn’d FHs are on this accursèd rocc statue. Once I stumbled my way in, I was confronted with… this:

You know, maybe it’s the oldest trick in the book at this point: LPQ did it, OPQ did it, SGQ did it, & MPQ did it. So why not CWKPQ, I guess?: it’s a Teleport check.

The most difficult part is actually on the rightmost side, after having just obtained the Staff of First Magic. Now I have to get back into the FH jungle of Teleportation hell, & it’s actually like a real JQ now? But mostly because of the aforementioned auto-aggro fly guys:

But okay. I got the Staff, & I G’dTFO. Time to put the Staff back where it belongs (again):

I’m not really sure what’s considered to be “hosting” CWKPQ. I certainly didn’t recruit anyone (nor did I know anyone there, apart from Harlez), but other than that, I was on leadership duties… technically. I was the expedition leader & the party leader, which meant that I got to make good use of my Crimsonwood Keystone, & also to once again embarrass myself with my lack of understanding of how to start the PQ (pro tip: try cc’ing if you can’t start signs, & be sure to talk to Jack as soon as you get inside).

However, that also meant that I got to see some of the NPC dialogue for the first time. In the last & only real stage in the entire PQ, the Battle Statue had this to say to me:

Transcription of the above image

Battle Statue: Fools! You continue to fight for Masteria?

• Yes!
• No

This just summons the littol shitty guys, who were swiftly dispatcht.

Transcription of the above image

Battle Statue: Will you defy us, the Twisted Masters, once more?

• Yes!
• No

Okay, so now the PQ actually begins. This PQ is a lot of “first”s for me, so here’s another: I’m not cleaving this time.

Huh‽ What do I even do, then‽‽ Well, our BM SweatLord (Sweatz) helpt us out by offering to tease apart Margana (mage boss) from Heron (pirate boss):^[10]

Okay, great. Time for me to start, erm, attacking…

Regrettably, I did A Wrong Thing™, & so was immediately yell’d @. But eventually, I sorta figured out what I was s’posed to do. Gock (multi-attacking as Harlez) told me how to do the DPing on cervip, which kinda looks like this:

You can see how it’s pretty obvious when Margana casts her DEF buff (or whatever it is), because our numbers get reduced by a factor of like 100. When that happens, I have to Dispel on cervid, obviously. But typically, Margana likes batting me about, so staying on that platform to the bottom-left of Margana is tuff fr. I spent a lotta time juggling the clients, moving cervib back up, &c.; in our second run, I was also on mobile-SI duty, so I had to walk all the way to the right-hand side & back (rougher than it sounds, especially considering the stuns) every three minutes or so.

Then, sometimes there’s just a random pillar outta fucken nowhere:

We got ’em, tho. Time to help the cleavers (including Harlez) finish up:

Although we already won by vanquishing the Twisted Masters, the Battle Statue was still there to allow the game to verbalise my inner monologue as NPC dialogue:

Naturally, I didn’t realise that merely talking to the Battle Statue at all is sufficient to begin the bonus stage timer, so I bungled that too. Great.

So anyway, are you still here? If so, welcome to this part of the diary entry, wherein I try — & consistently fail — to verbalise the bad things that happen in my dumb brane. I try not to allow MoopolSeutorey to significantly affect my mental, but here we are. What did you expect? I’m not only clearly obsessed with this pixel game, but also even more clearly bonkers (a mere six brain­cells remain!).

I don’t like multiclienting (see: the previous entry), I’m not particularly good at it (see: later on in this ridiculous sentence), I’m very tired (these days it is something of an accomplishment to be out of bed for more than two hours at a time), I am increasingly embarrassed by fuqqing things up one after another (& I didn’t even mention the part where I was supposed to strategically kick & reïnvite PCs from the party by extreme pixel-staring at five overlapping boss HP bars that hopelessly flicker one to another at random), my tolerance for randoms — especially when those randoms are yelling @ me — is of dubious existence at this point, & only just before this CWKPQ had I a conversation that tested my level (read: extremely high) of MapleStory-gayming self-doubt to quite a fine point.

Does that make any sense?

Yeah, maybe I have lasting trauma about being expected by those superior in the power dynamic to have moment-to-moment skills that I don’t have in situations where I need to have them. “What are you, stupid? ” …Yes! I am!! I’m kind of a dumb binch!!! What kind of question is that, anyway?? Fuck you!

CWKPQ fuccing sux anyway! It’s literally the boringest “PQ” in the goddamn pleLeg. My 5⁢ WAtk MoN is fine! So there!! 😾

Ahem. Sorry. >.< Can we do something more chillerer?

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

tarandus: fml

Harlez: GDI

Footnotes for “So fistication”

1. [↑] For a more comprehensive reference that assumes all skills to be maxed, see: “Theoretical breakdown of bucc cleave strategies”.

2. [↑] Qub is not a valid IGN (it’s 1⁢ character too short), but you know what I mean! GMs have hidden nametags for some reason!!

3. [↑] Which thing did the combusting is up to you to decide.

4. [↑] See here for why this item is called a “Flashlight”.

5. [↑] The experienced marauder is aware that their energy slowly depletes over time, so that, in the absence of attacks to gain it back, their energy naturally creeps towards 0%. Thankfully, the rate of decay is slow enough that, at most, typically only a few extra attacks during right birb are necessary to make up for it.

   In particular, in MapleLegends at the time of this writing,^[9] the nominal energy gain of level 40 EC is 231 (note that a full EC is 10 000⁢ energy, so that 1%⁢ energy ≝ 100⁢ energy). Because we’re attacking boss monsters here, this is multiplied by 1.5 to yield 346⁢ energy (assuming truncation) per hit. MapleLegends uses the O.G.^[9] decay régime of 200⁢ energy each 10⁢ s (that is, with a “tick rate” of 0.1⁢ Hz). The realistic worst case for how long the bucc has to hold their nearly-full EC is something like two minutes, during which 2 ⋅ 60 ⋅ (200 ∕ 10) = 2 400 energy is decayed. This is equivalent to 2 400 ∕ 346 ≈ 7⁢ attacks in this context.

6. [↑] Not to be confused with Big Bang (the 4^th-grade mage skill), nor with Big Bang (the landmark retail MapleStory update)…

7. [↑] Based on browsing the MapleLegends Library, it seems that there are actually three distinct Mage Mastery Rooms: MaIDs 610030520, 610030521, & 610030522. Each has a different layout, so I assume that the one you get is randomly selected for each run. Still, I seem to’ve gotten the same one both times, either by dumb luck, or the map not actually being random (with only MaID 610030522 being used).

8. [↑] Necksawn™^® America was & is headquartered in California.

9. [↑] To my knowledge, XiuzSource (a common OdinMS-based GMS-v62-compatible server source under the GNU AGPL v3, upon which MapleLegends & many other servers are based) does not implement the energy decay feature of EC. However, the feature is documented by the old Southperry.net post (which is reproduced here, amongst other places):

   Energy Charge:
   10000 units = 1 fully charged meter
   Charge rate: Skill % * 100 units per monster per hit. In other words, at maximum level, it charges 192 units per monster per hit.
   Energy Charge decay: 200 units / 10 seconds while inactive

   All sources (code or otherwise) that I know of agree that 100%⁢ energy ≝ 10 000⁢ energy. The above quotation documents a version of EC that charges 192⁢ energy∕hit at max level, which is only ≈83.1% of MapleLegends’s figure. BBB documents nothing of relevance.

   In the GMS v62 data, Skill.wz/511.img/skill/5110001/level/40/damage = 200, but this actually corresponds to the damage dealt to monsters that touch the EC’d marauder (200% damage, i.e. a little more than Somersault Kick’s 190%). The x value is 192 (& remains 192 until post-BB), corresponding to the claim in the above quotation (MapleLegends does not document their having changed this value, but it is documented as 192 in KurayamiLove’s The Buccaneer Bible, originally posted 2017-04-01, last edited 2019-05-28).

   The 1.5× energy multiplier for boss-monster hits was added to MapleLegends for Hallowe’en 2020, & is almost certainly an innovation; it’s unindicated in old GMS game data (v62 & v92), & not implemented by XiuzSource.

10. [↑] Also known as Master Gawyllacs (an ananym of scallywag).

(…cnvpstdf…)

cnvpstdf

Transcription of the above image

[trade window]

Prestigious Coin

Specially made by Nightzy

A rare coin of great worth that symbolizes triumph over powerful foes.

---

[chat]

capreolina: hi

Lvl1Crook: sup

capreolina: LOL
why is this coin tagged

Lvl1Crook: im still getting the other 9 coins
bruh idk
nightzcoin