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rangifer’s diary: pt. cxxx

How does one say “Leafre”?

By special request, in this entry, we’ll be asking how to pronounce the name of the town of halflings & dragons: Leafre.

⟨-⁠re⟩

In this case, any confusion primarily stems from the final two letters in the English-language-localised form of the word: ⟨-⁠re⟩. In English vocabulary, wordfinal ⟨-⁠re⟩ that doesn’t form part of a larger vowel multigraph — which is the case here because it’s immediately preceded by ⟨f⟩, which is unambiguously a consonant — can represent any of the following (words with multiple phonemically-distinct pronunciations are daggered & have audio provided):

• /⁠-⁠ə(ɹ)⁠/, as in mediocre, acre, litre, meagre, theatre, cadre^†, livre^†, ochre, macabre^†, &c..
• /⁠-⁠ɹə⁠/, as in œuvre, cadre^†, livre^†, cause célèbre^†, chèvre, macabre^†, &c..
• /⁠-⁠ɹi⁠(ː)⁠/,^[1] as in pre, re^†, cadre^†, &c..
• /⁠-⁠ɹeɪ̯⁠/, as in émigré, cabre, compadre, re^†, cadre^†, cause célèbre^†, &c..
• /⁠-⁠∅⁠/, as in hors-d’œuvre, macabre^†, cause célèbre^†, &c..

Five (5) distinct pronunciations! Incredible! Or should I say… incroyable? Even by English-language standards — you know, English being poorly-pronounced French, & all that — the above list overrepresents borrowings from langues d’oïl (including Anglo-Norman, &c.). The other words are not too far off, either: we have pre and re directly from Latin, and compadre from Castilian, thus making all of the above words Latinate.

The Oïl influence mostly explains the variety of pronunciations: whereas these languages often allow /⁠r⁠/ (typically [ʁ] in modern Standard French, but [χ] prepausally or in contact with a voiceless consonant) at the end of a complex coda, English generally does not. English’s most common coping mechanism is using /⁠ə⁠/ as an epenthetic vowel, leading to the first two items in the above list. The fourth item (/⁠-⁠ɹeɪ̯⁠/) is, non-Oïl cases notwithstanding, due to French ⟨-⁠ré⟩ or confusion with it — written English often strips ⟨e, è, é, ê, ë⟩ all down to ⟨e⟩. The fifth & final item (/⁠-⁠∅⁠/) is from straightforward cluster reduction.

This only leaves the third case (/⁠-⁠ɹi⁠(ː)⁠/^[1]), which (barring any apparent confusion) encompasses words that came directly from Latin — or potentially even Ancient Greek, for that matter — without passing through a langue d’oïl. Oh… and the other /⁠-⁠ɹeɪ̯⁠/ realisations can be from non-Oïl Latinate sources, too.

Korean

But Leafre was not made in France. It was (unlike some other regions of the Maple World) made in Korea, where they speak Korean.

리프레 ⟨Ripeure⟩ /⁠ɾi.pʰɯ.ɾe̞⁠/.

So there you have it. Now you really know how to pronounce Leafre…!

Not satisfied? Well, you probably shouldn’t be, because this Korean invention is consciously foreign-sounding. Given the frequency with which MapleStory (& to a lesser degree, the Korean language in general) imports English or otherwise European words, we can see how 리프레 may have been arrived at, & how the folks at Neccs0nn™^® America subsequently reverse-engineered it as ⟨Leafre⟩:

• Korean /⁠ɾ⁠/ has [l] as one of its (many) allophones, making it equally suitable for English /⁠ɹ⁠/ or /⁠l⁠/.^[2]
• As discussed in a previous entry, Korean has no equivalent of English /⁠f⁠/; /⁠pʰ⁠/ is thus the closest approximation. However, /⁠pʰ⁠/ primarily contrasts with /⁠p⁠/ (there is no such thing as */⁠b⁠/), so /⁠pʰ⁠/ is also used as the equivalent of English /⁠p⁠/. (Conversely, in English, [pʰ, p] are allophones of /⁠p⁠/.)
• Much like English used /⁠ə⁠/ above as an epenthetic vowel, Korean uses /⁠ɯ⁠/.
• Korean /⁠e̞⁠/ contrasts with /⁠i⁠/. It typically no longer contrasts with /⁠ɛ⁠/ (excepting maybe some conservative older speakers).
• Like the /⁠e̞, ɛ⁠/ merger, the loss of vowel length contrasts in Korean is now basically complete.

This implies that Korean /⁠ɾi.pʰ⁠-⁠/ can easily be equivalent to English /⁠liːf⁠/ leaf. It also explains why the /⁠-⁠ɯ⁠-⁠/ in 리프레 is not, & presumably should not, be represented in ⟨Leafre⟩.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at the five realisations in the section above:

• /⁠-⁠ə(ɹ)⁠/: Even putting aside that this only makes sense for rhotic accents of English, it fails to explain why the original ends in /⁠-⁠e̞⁠/ instead of */⁠-⁠ɯ⁠/ (레 instead of *르). Indeed, the LETTER vowel is borrowed as /⁠ʌ̹⁠/ (ㅓ) in actual English → Korean loans like sensor → 센서, goalkeeper → 골키퍼, centimetre → 센티미터, elevator → 엘리베이터, &c..
• /⁠-⁠ɹə⁠/: Again, Korean /⁠-⁠e̞⁠/ seems too tense for this case. Indeed, looking at relevant English → Korean loans, we either see /⁠ʌ̹⁠/ again, or else /⁠ɐ⁠/ (ㅏ): comma → 콤마, banana → 바나나, canvas → 캔버스, position → 포지션 (= /⁠-⁠jʌ̹n⁠/), &c..
• /⁠-⁠ɹi⁠(ː)⁠/: The HAPPY vowel could make sense — albeit only in the absence of HAPPY-tensing. But unsurprisingly, given the loss of vowel length contrasts in Korean, HAPPY vowels simply get Korean /⁠i⁠/ (ㅣ): baby → 베이비, lobby → 로비, &c.. Even KIT gets this same vowel in Korean: minimap → 미니맵 (this example borrows both KIT and HAPPY as one & the same /⁠i⁠/).
• /⁠-⁠ɹeɪ̯⁠/: This one is perhaps the most plausible, but has some issues as well. The tenseness of the Korean /⁠-⁠e̞⁠/ is fully explained, but the lack of an additional *-이 syllable at the end (hypothetically yielding *리프레이) is not. The English FACE vowel is often (but certainly not in all dialects) a diphthong conventionally transcribed as /⁠eɪ̯⁠/. As a result, English → Korean loans of FACE tend to become /⁠e̞.i⁠/ (note the hiatus; Korean has no equivalent diphthong): replay → 리플레이, save → 세이브, &c..
• /⁠-⁠∅⁠/: No.

Given that /⁠e̞, ɛ⁠/ have merged in modern Korean, however, we might consider yet a sixth option: */⁠-⁠ɹɛ⁠/ — & indeed, English DRESS does generally become Korean /⁠e̞⁠/ when loaned. Yet I’ve asterisked this one because DRESS is ordinarily a checked vowel in English, meaning that it cannot occur in an open syllable. There are exceptions, but these are usually interjections (meh, bleh) or consciously foreign words (se “ancient Chinese zither” ← 瑟). Nonetheless, given that it’s reasonable to treat Leafre as a consciously foreign word, it’s still possible.

Still, when faced^[3] with wordfinal DRESS, Anglophones tend to “correct” it to the nearest free (= unchecked) vowel: FACE. Moreover, early Romanisations of the name of this region rendered it as ⟨Riprey⟩, suggesting the FACE vowel by analogy with prey.

Conclusions

So, take your pick: DRESS, or FACE. And if you wanna be contrarian, try pronouncing the last consonant as /⁠l⁠/ instead of /⁠ɹ⁠/. Y—you’re welcome. 🙂

Footnotes for “How does one say ‘Leafre’?”

1. [↑] The possibility of HAPPY-tensing being present or absent doesn’t create any meaningful distinctions for the purpose of this list.
2. [↑] For many English speakers, [ɾ] is an allophone of /⁠t, d⁠/. But this is unlikely to produce any confusion here.
3. [↑] I’m not apologising for this pun. This footnote is just here to point it out.

Mainland

So, you know, I did some APQing on everyone’s favourite overgrown spearwoman: d34r. APQ randoms are — typically, at least — tolerable, if perhaps excessively horny. But we’ll give them a pass, I guess… It is the land of love, after all…

This includes some ✨⁠special⁠✨ runs wherein I was joined by none other than permabeginner extraordinaire Taima (Yunchang, Toiletta)!

Transcription of the above image

[mapwide announcement]: You have failed at solving this. Consequently, a number of intimidating monsters have been summoned. [×4]

StewY: we have 1 hour

Taima: lmao

StewY: we’ll get it eventually

Fishizzle: lmaooo

KurumiChan: we can lpq [stage 8] it

[mapwide announcement]: You have failed at solving this. Consequently, a number of intimidating monsters have been summoned.

d34r: GMS [method] lets go

Don’t worry — we did, in fact, clear this stage eventually. Which brings us to stage 4…:

…Then we duo’d Grog (ezpz)…:

…And then I met my doppelgänger (izzyx3)!:

Transcription of the above image

d34r: o hi

izzyx3: amazing

d34r: hahaha

Taima: twins

izzyx3: you are my body double

d34r: LOL
this char used to look more like that
but i been playing this char a long time now
its like idk

izzyx3: ive been playing on and off 4 years
about

d34r: yeah something like that
we’re twins basically

[system message]: ‘izzyloveshb’ have [sīc] raised ‘d34r’’s level of fame.
You have raised ‘izzyx3’’s level of fame.

Feels good to be reünited with my long-lost twin! I didn’t expect her to be a level 161 bishop, either! I guess she knows something I don’t, because I’ve never heard of this whole “bishop” thing…

Speaking of not knowing what a bishop is, I have continued, as per usual, to get physically ever fitter on my level 73 clericlet d33r:

The grind is real. So real, in fact, that I have accumulated a whopping stack of 25 Scrolls of Secrets!:

Simply incredible. Now all I have to do is farm all those damned Charms…

Love is in the air

But APQ is not the only source of love in this month’s air. It is (was…) February, & you know what that means: Valentine’s! They don’t last for long, but there are few things more special in the Maple World than surprising someone with a Love Letter:

Transcription of the above image

[trade window between Danger & rusa]

Love Letter

Available until 2025/3/2 at 23:59

Specially made by Danger

A letter sent to you by an admirer. You can feel how much love was put into it… maybe you should open it…

---

[trade window chat]

rusa: o

Danger: :)

rusa: omg ty!!!

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

cervid: <333

Taima: omg :D
you’re da best deer!
<3

cervid: :D

[Missing screenshot: A love letter for Harlez (Gock, VigiI, Murhata)!]

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Danger: hi

rusa: (:<

Danger: <3

🧡🖤🧡

Plus, I got to attend an mfing wedding‽ ’Twas the occasion for Battlesage (renowned F/P gish) to marry… himself. As Ananda, up & coming gishop!:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Ananda: im gay

Battlesage: im gay

tarandus: excellent!!!!!!!!

Battlesage: those are our vows
thank you

tarandus: YEY

You might think that a marriage between one person is not as exciting as your more typical arrangements. But like any good Maple wedding, it was not without its two core components…:

Transcription of the above image

Taima: o no, i missed wedding! >.<

tarandus: awe
it was wild
there was dancing, chemical weaponry
the two components of any good wedding

Taima: omg…

Battlesage: hahaha
you missed out kels!

cerbip

Typically, the way I treat my STRshop cervib cervid — by all accounts my first, primary, & most mainest character — is one of abuse: “HS plz”, and the occasional Rez here & there…:

…But not today! It’s time for another episode of flecksing my superior STRength on the Zaqqūmists of 메이플래전드스!

Not half bad for Rage + Echo + MW20, no? Well, let’s see it. It’s time to whack some Zakky arms alongside my Meipeul wife & fellow STRong whacker Taima (Yunchang, Toiletta)!:

It usually takes a few minutes before people start to figure out what’s going on, but I did indeed get the inevitable “is our bishop using a spear‽” (no, I’m using a pole-arm for the sweet 93⁢ MAtk, duh) comment.

But believe you me, I ain’t slackin’. Bishopping for Zakky-wakky is tough work when you’re reacting to nigh on every single animation that this crumbly-bumbly Mayan statue performs. For each Seal, a well-timed (made even more difficult by networking latency) Dispel:

For each 1⧸1, a handful (apologies for my underpowered TMA) of Heals. For each magic-cancel, a well-timed Holy Shield for the next flaming stun-pillars I see:

For each weapon-cancel, a cloud of funny-gas:

And of course, dodging pillars & keeping buffs up (made more important by each of the three Zak bodies now giving its own EXP) all the way. Whew!

For all that hard work… a pittance of EXP! Oh, well. Maybe next time…? 👀

Unsinister

Y’all… we’re getting there. I am officially halfway to level 200…

A bit unlikely to be levelling up at Scarlion, but I’ll take it. Welcome back to ruser rusa.

I’ve agonised over it to some extent in past entries, but it bears repeating that ’Zerking at Pink Bean’s main body is, at best, delicate business. At a certain — & rather proximal — point, it’s no longer a matter of any IRL skill or dexterity, full stop. If you’re not monstercontroller (which, you know, you shouldn’t be — that’s the pinner’s job), then you’re almost entirely at the mercy of the pinner’s arbitrary movements & of any networking latency, server hiccups, &c.. Even on a good run, I can safely expect to have the bean unexpectedly shoved into me at least once.

Enter the art of the microzerk. Unless I’m feeling particularly brave and feeling particularly like my expedition can tolerate me just randomly focking dying at least once, it’s best to just keep enough HP to tank a touch-attack from the blasted legume.

And speaking of server hiccups, sometimes they let you actually see your damage lines:

Heh. Better than you expected? Worse? I’m not microzerking particularly hard at the above-pictured moment, but that’s for lack of control — not lack of trying. I’m not going to muck about with my HP at this exact juncture, especially considering the present state of my internet connexion to a random VPS in Québec.

So anyway, how about some Ephenia, where I can ’Zerk at like 3k⁢ HP?

Wau! So blest. But we can do one better.

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Gock: YO

rusa: omg

An Ephenia chair for Gock (Harlez)!! ✨

Also with Gock, I helpt do some NTPQ grind for the sake of her NT questline progress:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

rusa: why these mfers hab [sīc] so many hps

Gock: FR

Random sidebar about caps on character stats

I’ve long been accustomed to seeing a certain stat — viz. WAcc — in the quadruple-digits in my “Character Stats” window. As a result, I kinda tacitly assumed that there was no cap at 999⁢ WAcc — at the very least, not in MapleLegends.

But that’s not true! Sort of.

As demonstrated in the above image, my WAcc actually is stuck at 999 — at least, unbuffed. The +25⁢ WAcc from my HotB brings this — at least, nominally — to 999 + 25 = 1 024⁢ WAcc in total. I say “nominally” because this is just what’s displayed in my “Character Stats” window, so it’s technically possible that this is a visual bug masking an actually hard cap of 999 total WAcc tops.

And for what it’s worth, consulting þͤ olde formula compilation reveals that 999 is the classic value for this cap.

Ok, that’s enough of that for now

As noted above, love is in the air. And there’s nothing that pleLeggers love more than silli littol basquettes fild wif chocklit. For the particular basquette in question, I headed to the rather exotic training location of RoR1 to stab a handful o’ holes in some Qualm Monks with Taima!:

Nice.

Ready for something a tad bit less nice?

Why are we (excepting Harlez) attacking Ariel from the right-hand side? Why is right man (Rēx the Wise) taking damage?? Will we come to regret this???

In a word: yes.

Transcription of the text in the above image

crazyKiller: :O

SexyAss: o no

Qubsane: 4 bishops dead

SexyAss: all bish died

---

Harlez: can smoke

Valentie [dead]: ig i’m perma poisoned lmao

Government: 1⁢min

Oupsies! You see, the problem here is that both Ariel and right man are capable of dispelling everyone on the map (& their other abilities don’t really help matters). Because consistently seeing both of their animations at once isn’t really practical, the main way around this is to just not enable both of them to dispel: their dispels are only available when they’re below a certain HP threshold (90%, or something like that), so if you kill Ariel before beginning to fight right man in earnest, then you’re not gonna accidentally slay four of your bishops at the same time. But, you know, Ariel was weapon-cancelling a lot, & left birb (Huginn) wasn’t DRing much, so… this happened.

Anyway, how about some more Ephen—

What the fucc?!?!? Two Ephenia chares dropping at the same time??? Truly, blest. Looks like I’ve got one for rusa and one for cerbiv cervid…:

Transcription of the item in the above image

Queen of Fairies Throne

One of a kind Item, Untradeable

• Req lev: 0

Rest upon the majestic throne of the Fairy Queen, and recover 80⁢ HP and 70⁢ MP every 10⁢ seconds. Created by bibbie and Linny for MapleLegends only.

Hell ya.

We also got to do a pair of Ephenias as a trio with Taima!:

And finally, it’s time for me to hopefully remember to do more @dpm tests, because we’re on DK rev. 4 or 5 or whatever now (I genuinely cannot remember at this point). The tests, of course, will only be valid until the next revision (or two, or three revisions), but here’s my first swing at a PB statues @dpm:

Not a great test considering that I only had MW30 for a smol portion of it, & considering that there are also a few minutes of the main body in there. But 1.44M is pretty decent by my (Cider, mind you) standards. We’ll see. I’m workin’ on it.

The most notable change, especially in this case, is that the DK version of Achilles is now a 0.7 multiplier (instead of 0.85) at max level (= level 30). This has made my ’Zerking surprisingly more effective & sustainable in the Bean fight!

1⧸1 recurrence

But why would that be? Well, at least one reason is obvious: the Achilles multiplier (call it $A$) is smaller. Clearly, the closer $A$ is to 0, the easier it is to ’Zerk in general (in fact, this is still true even if we allow $A$ to be negative).

In the case of PB’s main body, however, we have a very particular situation. Not only do I have to maintain quite high HP in order to tank touch-attacks, but I’m getting hit almost entirely by 1⧸1s — and, for that matter, touch-attacks are similar to 1⧸1s in this case. This allows us to make a simple (read: simplified) purely-analytic model of how my HP evolves over time.

We can express my HP (call it $h$) as a recurrence relation: my HP after I’m attacked is a function solely of what my HP was immediately before the attack. This simplicity is enabled by exactly the property that makes 1⧸1 attacks mechanically unique.

We can sequence the changes in $h$ across time. My HP starts at $h_0$, my HP immediately after being attacked for the first time is $h_1$, & in general, my HP immediately after I’m attacked the first $t$ times is $h_t$.

Assuming that the failure-rate of my autoHP is negligible (for some value of “negligible”…), each attack that I receive is immediately accompanied by healing from a single HP potion, with the amount healed being $P$. Our bishops are quite good at Holy Shielding the Zombifies these days, so it’s not too much to ask for an additional assumption that I’m never Zombified.

Thus we have:

$$h_t=h_{t-1}-\left(h_{t-1}-1\right)\cdot A+P\text{.}$$

We’ll also be making an assumption of another kind, tacit in the above formulation: values may be arbitrary real numbers. For our purposes, this is a simplification; in reality, HP values are always integral, & so some rounding régime is required.

In any case, with just a littol bit of algebraïc manipulation, we end up with the following form of the above:

$$h_t=\left(1-A\right)\cdot h_{t-1}+\left(A+P\right)\text{.}$$

This form is important because it makes clear both that this function is linear in $h_{t-1}$, & what the relevant coëfficients are. We can now see directly that this is a nonhomogeneous first-order linear recurrence with constant coëfficients.

Wow, that is quite the mouthful. Fortunately, this is just a fancy way of saying that it’s pretty easy to work with. The only part that we don’t like is that it’s nonhomogeneous, meaning that the constant term is nonzero (in particular, it’s $\left(A+P\right)$). We can convert it to a homogeneous form, & doing so requires finding a special value that we care very much about: the steady state (call it $\mathrm{ℎ*}$). This is the input value of $h$ that causes all future outputs to be identical to itself.^[1]

Aside from allowing us to make this function homogeneous, the steady state has an in-game interpretation of great import: it’s the HP value that I can stably remain at indefinitely (so long as none of our assumptions are broken…), no matter how many hits I take. If the steady state doesn’t exist, or isn’t useful, then I’ll have to spend more time managing my ’Zerk than I spend actually attacking!

Finding the steady state is pretty easy: set all instances of $h$ in the above equation to $\mathrm{ℎ*}$, & do a bunch more algebraïc manipulation to solve for $\mathrm{ℎ*}$. This is what you get:

$$\mathrm{ℎ*}=\frac{P}{A}+1\text{.}$$

Pritti simpol, rite…? Maybe you already knew that this was coming. I have crumblybrain, so I had to actually do the maths to get here.

Anyway, being a ’Zerker & all that, my HP potion of choice is generally either Triangular Sushi(plum) (which, as discussed previously, is actually an onigiri 🤓) or Ginseng Root. These heal (assuming 30k⁢ maxHP) 6k⁢ HP & 12k⁢ HP, respectively. Assuming the larger of the two, & using the formula for $\mathrm{ℎ*}$ above, we can calculate the steady state for the old & new versions of Achilles:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\frac{\mathrm{12 000}}{0.85}+1& \approx & \mathrm{14 119}\text{.}\\ \frac{\mathrm{12 000}}{0.7}+1& \approx & \mathrm{17 144}\text{.}\end{array}$$

Clearly, a more powerful Achilles increases the steady state. But the overall effect is actually much stronger than that. With the more powerful Achilles, the damage with which a touch-attack threatens me is simultaneously decreased in the same proportion. Although using Ginseng Roots with the old Achilles does give a mathematical steady state, that state is way too low to be useful!

In fact, given the (re)discussion above, even using Elixirs would be too underpowered with the old Achilles. Honsters are the next step up, yielding a technically usable, but disappointingly high, steady state of 21 177. (And that’s ignoring that I would have to add yet another potion into my arsenal, switch over to it specifically for the PB main body fight, &c.…)

By contrast, the new steady state with Ginseng Roots is nice & snug — not to mention actually useful for DPM!

Stability

But, just to be sure, how do we know that the steady state will be reached — or rather, closely approximated — in practice? Good question!

You might know that recurrence relations in general (including, for example, nonlinear ones) don’t have to be stable at all. You might find a steady state, but as soon as you “perturb” that state by increasing or decreasing it ever so slightly, things start going wacky all over the place (to use the relevant highly-technical terminology).

To assess the stability, we need to actually produce the abovementioned homogeneous form. This is done by working in terms of the difference between my HP value & the steady state (call it $\mathrm{\delta }$): $\mathrm{\delta }\stackrel{\scriptscriptstyle\mathrm{def}}{=}h-\mathrm{ℎ*}$. Then our recurrence relation becomes simply:

$${\mathrm{\delta }}_t=\left(1-A\right)\cdot {\mathrm{\delta }}_{t-1}\text{.}$$

Great fantastic.

Now that we’ve obtained this tidy form, getting a solution is ezpz:

$${\mathrm{\delta }}_t={\mathrm{\delta }}_0\cdot {\left(1-A\right)}^t\text{.}$$

We no longer have to appeal to reasoning specific to recurrence relations. It’s clear that the above formula for ${\mathrm{\delta }}_t$ converges to 0 when $0<A<2$. Neato!

Footnotes for “Unsinister”

1. [↑] The reader might recognise this as a kind of fixpoint. The reason for calling it a steady state in the context of recurrence relations is that, in general, a recurrence relation may take any constant number (called its order) of past outputs as its inputs. If this order isn’t 1, then the steady state isn’t a fixpoint sēnsū strictō. But in our case, the distinction is immaterial.

Sinister

Raaaa… it me. alces. Don’t worry, this isn’t gonna be like last time — I will be waning poëtic! But there will nonetheless be no shortage of adventure! Starting with more friccin’ bald monk grinding wif Gock (Harlez, VigiI, Murhata)…!:

Wow, level 134~! I feel like I’m nighing something… Hmm.

Well, in any case, I’m always good entertainment for the passersby — it’s not often that one sees a nightlord training at 7 F!

Transcription of the above image

Palms: what on gods green earth am i witnessing
<

Gock: glory

alces: LOL

Palms: pro gamer

Gock: her [damage] range is solid too

Palms: i saw the dagger and the FJ
and i was like
?????????

Gock: shes totally kitted out

alces: :P

Gock: all natural too

Palms: gains

Gock: aye

All natural indeed! I haven’t used a nondagger weapon since level four!!

Speaking of level four, it seems I’ve levelled up some 131 times since then…:

Whoa, 135~!! I knew there was something special coming. That’s the Zakrexarglion^[1] level!!!

And hey — sure, my maxHP is pretty bad (even with my T10 ring), but Kreckselle in particular sounds doäble. I can’t typically tank its touch-attacks, but I can when provided with HB, & I can probably avoid the need by staying on the left eye’s left side anyway. If I need to reposition, I can just cheat by using Dark Sight!

Okay, okay. But before we get to that… It is first time to take out another, only slightly smoller beast haunting the urbs of Singapore — alongside Taima (Yunchang, Toiletta, Boymoder)!:

Whew! That’ll teach ’im.

And I was indeed blest with a pair of my very first daggerlord-based Qurecsol runs!! Hosted by Gock!! Here are some @dpm tests that I performed during them:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

[system message]: alces — Lv.135 Night Lord — Total Damage: 5,204,375
Damage Per Hour: 52,043,700 — Damage Per Minute: 867,395

This one ain’t so flattering, since it’s on the left eye, which weapon-cancels a lot. As you can see, I did the tests with just MW20, Echo, & MMF (+37⁢ WAtk & +77⁢ AVOID).

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! Since this one’s on the right-hand eye, it’s basically just dummy DPM but with 570⁢ WDef instead of 20. That said, even considering the MMF, 1.17M⁢ DPM ain’t half bad for someone attacking exclusively with a 1^st-grade skill!

And with that, I became the Savior of Ulu City:

Awesome!!! Huge thanx to Gock & the folks whom’st ran w/ me, including being considerate enough to get me HB for my first time! 🖤

And what’s more, I did a littol heckin’ 5–6 F w/ DEXadin extraordinaire SwordFurbs (Furbs, Yoshis, Fabiennes), & hit level 136‽:

(:<

Footnotes for “Sinister”

1. [↑] /⁠ˌzæ.kɹɛkˈsɑ(ɹ).gli.ən⁠/, naturally. Of course of course of course ocorsakorss…

Ambidexter

Alright, alright. I think that’s enough weaponry for one diary entry — don’t you? For better or worse, however, I only grow yet stronger when I lay down my arms! My blades were merely holding me back!! 😤

So anyway, on tarandus, I helpt F/P archgish Battlesage (Ananda, Permanovice, Aniket, Paean, illadvised, Dreamscapes) with pt. II of the Ellin Forest questline! You know what that means: Chow Chao time!

Of course, Chao has a reasonably tight timer at just ten minutes total, so we had to be quick with it. But Ephenia would prove to be significantly more challenging in this respect. Yes, her timer is 15 minutes, but she also takes half damage from all sources (even physical ones) & has much in the way of vexatious witchery.

In the end, we almost entirely ignored her summons, I popt a single Strawberry Shortcake (+30⁢ WAtk for ten minutes) or something like that, & we finisht wif a littol over two minutes to spare:

Very cool & very questacious!^[1] ✨

And, speaking of clearing bosses to advance questlines, Harlez (Gock) & I helpt dark knight fartmane clear a 2nas. At first, fartmane was snagging fake 2nas (= invincible 2nas who jealously guards his robot son) with Spear Crusher, so I tried to explain how this first phase works:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

tarandus: we usually leave the dunas alone
i think

Harlez: he wont aggro
its awesome

tarandus: oh

I see! Well that’s very convenient indeed. Certainly far less of a pain in the arse than every other time we’v—

JK. He aggro’d. 🙃

…So anyway, eventually we slew 2nas’s only son, & it was time to get real:

You might notice that, in the above image, I’m Barraging, & yet I’m also barrol. Well, as it turns out, there’s this One Weird Trick™ (pls don’t ban me…) where you can macro Barrage → Oak Barrel, & it makes the Barrage animation take less time. It’s kind of a double-edged sword, because you can get stucc in your barrol for barious breasons (even the slightest amount of lag,^[2] fumbling the Ctrl ⎈ key, inputs getting eaten, &c.). But it does work. Usually…

It’s partly a DPM thing, for sure. But it’s worth noting that this technique is really scraping the bottom of the barrol in this respect, especially when you’re a weaponless binch. My Barrage just isn’t really doing that much of my DPM — especially considering that only my Demo ignores WDef — & this technique increases that already-smol portion of my DPM by like ≈+10% or so. What really makes it great is the simple fact that I’m unstunned earlier, allowing me to do other stuff (e.g. repositioning) more promptly. Plus, I’m slightly more pinnier, if I happen to be attempting pinnification.

Anyway, 2nas bit it. He’s dunzo. Time for… another Peeb run???

I still mostly just Peeb on rusa (see above), but I did get another run in on this char. As per usual, my main role is Doin’ The Freakin’ TL At The Right Time™ (patent pending), which, this go-’round, required some chillaxing on my part:

I also got some accidental chillax time when I simply laid down (read: was hopelessly seduced) & aloud the Bean to cleave me from my corporeal form:

Don’t worry. We still popt the Bean like a piñata. But, like, a piñata filled with sweets that noöne really wants. Liquorice, anyone…?

And speaking of piñatas, I popt plenty of smoller ones with Taima (Yunchang, Toiletta, Boymoder)! You know, your Rabanana-flavoured confectioneries…

…Your Purple-Lettuce-infused sweetmeats…

…And even some gespenstlich Barlongs (feat. Harlez)…?

Nice.

I also helpt out Gock just a li’l bit with some Iruvata-punchbagging (they have 280k⁢ HP a piece, thankyouverymuch):

Snek

Oh yeah, & there’s like, a CNY event or whatever. It’s the same as last year’s, of course, but this time with snek instead of draggin’. The JQ-farming is still an infinite money glitch, & in fact, this particular glitch has been doubled down on: instead of maybe getting a raffle ticket from each hard JQ clear, you’re now guaranteed three raffle tickets for three such clears. The twist is that those three clears must be of distinct JQs, so hopefully that added variety keeps the JQer slightly more sane as they farm billions of mesos’ worth of raffle prizes over the course of a few intense weeks.

Personally, I’m not entirely preöccupied with infinite money glitches. Nonetheless, I at least chect out the Snake Challenge — a sorta-custom JQ for this event. The rethemed visuals are easy on the eyes, but do very little to obscure the fact that the Snake Challenge is just three other JQs in a trenchcoat:

Transcription of the above image

[system message]: You have gained 5 Hong Bao. [13 total]
You completed the Dragon Challenge in [00:10:17.924].

Wow, I completed the… “Dragon Challenge”. C—cool. Let’s chec out some of the “hard” JQs?

Great. See ya next event.

[resumption]

Let’s get back to the punching, shall we?

Speaking of Gock, our J-seeing has come to include both Harlez and Gock! It’s like a trio but actually a duo! A two-&-a-halftet!

But how about a three-&-three-quarterstet, instead? Our Corb Lasing on this day included hero Jsoh…!

…Which meant that we had HS!! And so I took the opportunity to friccin’ level up!!!:

Later, over in Neo Tôkyô part I: the original: the old new Tôkyô: the first instalment^®, I did some fun Burger Mothing with shadow hers Harlez & ameowIia!!:

For better or worse, we weren’t far into round 2 before ameowIia’s keyboard decided to play a littol “pranque” (or, as they say in English, une petite farce):

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

ameowIia: my keyboard died

tarandus: ;o;

But that’s all right. There’s plenty of other NT1 content for us, like…

…Good ol’ Namie. You might wonder how we’re going to survive its notorious red claw attack that does like 19k damage or something ridiculous like that! Don’t worry, we have chocolate.

Transcription of the above image

ameowIia: this boss making me sleeby [sīc]

tarandus: hahaha real

ameowIia: omg
i dozed off

tarandus: lolol

Harlez: its easy to here
good thing[ ]theres only enough [Chocolate] basket to do one

tarandus: :P

ameowIia: hahaha
he’s so chonky

For real! NMM might only have one body, but that body’s got some serious thiccness at a whopping 430M⁢ HP!

How about we end on something a little lighter… like our old friend Yāosēng.

Aufhebend

Okay, but, what if… I twied… maybe doing a widdle bit of Aufheben…? 🥺👉👈

Well… come to think of it, there might be some problems. I’m kind of a fking Auf n00b. Like, I did a bunch of runs on rusa, but that was basically three centuries ago. I’ve watched Linny’s video like eight times now… but also I’ve never run as a boucanier.

Oh, & I don’t have enough maxHP. (No, not even with all HP Challenges, hypothetically all ten Monster Book Ring tiers, three pet equips scrold for maxHP, maxt-out event equips, &c..) So I will need HB too!

But I was fortunate enough to get my own taste of buccanaufing in “training wheels” runs organised & hosted by Harlez~!

First things first, though. Shadower Ciso needs those Caw Blays clears before he can join in on the training-wheels action:

Okok, nice. Fully assembled, we were not one, but two DKs strong — Erazed & clapp — two shads, myself (clearly purple, but otherwise of questionable employment), & bishop AINTNOWAY:

The preclone’s easy enough — just a wee warmup:

As soon as the preclone’s dead & the pink lady makes her entrance, though, it is on. Like, even more onner than you could possibly think that it is. Holy moly. Stuns, seds, global dispels, DRs (for 15k a pop!), touch-attacks for up to 19k+ damage, geneses that sear the flesh of the quick, & one halfway-unmovable binch.

Unfortunately for clapp, being a DK & being new to Aufheben (or really, new to anything, honestly) is not a winning combination.

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

clapp: LOL

tarandus: oop

We eventually aborted attempt № 1, once it became clear that clapp wouldn’t make it, & then Erazed bit the dust as well.

Attempt № 2 was not much of an improvement overall, & we still didn’t make it to the first wave of clones.^[3] Auf pulled a nasty little trick on us, thus instantly slaying myself & Ciso — & I think one or two others soon joined us in the afterlife. It was at this moment that I realised just how vulnerable I was: as soon as a dispel goes off, I am almost already dead as a doornail, only patiently awaiting Auf to hammer me into my coffin.

Overall, the problem (specifically from my perspective) is in something like three interrelated parts:

• Putting aside subjective reasons (I’m a goofball, Harlez is supportive of me in my goofballventures, &c.), I’m here to pin — or at least, to give it my best shot. To do that, though, two conditions must obtain: I must be close enough to Auf to touch the hem of her garment, & I must have monstercontroller status.
• In the event, or in preparation therefor, that I and/or the DK are in any way incapacitated — stunned, seduced, too far across the map, dead… — I must give Auf ever wider berth, & presumably in many cases cannot do so, on account of my incapacity.
• What in tarnation is going on‽ I certainly don’t know. I can just barely keep track of my HP bar & my position on the screen, much less anything else.

These things are, generally, mutually incompatible. I cannot be wary of Auf’s touch-attacks whilst simultaneously kissing her ring & hoping that I at least have monstercontroller. Moreover, the more that I defend myself, the more that I lose the already-slippery monstercontroller that I don’t seem to have half of the time anyway.

An unfortunate corollary is that, notwithstanding how little DPM I might do anyway, most of that hypothetical DPM — which, mind you, is from Demo, my only attack that ignores WDef & also my only attack that effectively stuns me for well over two(!) full seconds at a time — is dissipated into the void. Heck!

Anyway. We were gonna try again another day, but no DKs showed up, so we Cord instead…:

Aufgehoben

Not quite as “exciting” as Aufheben, but how about some quality Chocolate Basket time with Taima at RoR2?:

Or, mayhap, a Big Bad Boss™ that I can actually handle…? I did a pair of Hornt Ales with the drunk Diggy crew:

Horntail’s secret weapon is 소주, & as a result, I had some difficulties procuring Holy Symbolism. I was gonna try hard getting a good @dpm 30 or whatever during round 2’s main body, but it was so badly scuft by my party’s general confusion that I didn’t even bother screenshooting it. Still, a fun pair of runs. DPM is for losers.

As Fate would have it, I crost paths with AINTNOWAY again — this time at زَقُّوم w/ Gock.

Transcription of the above image

AINTNOWAY: ???
what the fk happened

Gock: you hit y

tarandus: oop

AINTNOWAY: ???????????/

SmashCleaver: lfg
lmao

AINTNOWAY: HUH
BRO

SmashCleaver: you NPC chat and y?

Amon was the real villain this whole time. 😤

Speaking of which, I had the great pleasure of doing some Zax with Gock & Taima!! (And shadower Hanq, & bishop Nonomiya.)

Smoove runs, too!

On another day, we had yet another go at bossbossing, including Palpable Lattice…:

…Chow^[4]…:

…Yāosē—

Transcription of the above image

Taima: i am at 7F

tarandus: someone hasnt done quest

Taima: err
it has a quest?

Harlez: i forgot there was preq

tarandus: ooo

Harlez: you get it at [level] 120

tarandus: OH

Harlez: shall we

Taima: beginners can’t do that questline then

tarandus: wait
this is no-beginners
i forgot

Taima: it’s that Shaolin questline

Harlez: thats so ass

tarandus: omfg

Taima: ok

tarandus: totally slipt my mind
f4

Harlez: you wrote about this i remember now too

Taima: it’s ok, i had to learn somehow

😑

Actually, the Yāosēng prequestline isn’t just “no beginners allowed”; it’s “no sub-4^th-grade classes allowed”. Unlike nigh on every other quest in the damned game, the minimum-level requirement here — which should be 120 — is replaced with a more complicated class requirement. Why? Well, if we didn’t make the game objectively worse in subtle & frustratingly unnecessary ways, then it wouldn’t be Mushroom Game™, would it…?

Mushroom game Toad’s tool game

So anyway, what if I did a different boss instead? Like, I don’t know, the only level ≥180 boss that tara has yet to grace the presence of‽

Castle Tode?? Constable Froge??? Crapaud du château ???? ガマ領主？？？？？

Castellan. Toad.

I was invited to a littol impromptu toadeating party by BuccjuhNL (xBowtjuhNL, PriestjuhNL)! So, as it turned out, my Ninja Castle JQing for the event was just warmup for the real thing!!

But at the end, instead of getting a 紅包, I wound up in the land of three doors. No, not those Three Doors. These ones:

We were joined by two shadowers: Myssiz & Harlez!

The first body is just a guy standing there, having a pencil moustache & shit. He hits pretty hard (as witness the 13 124-damage line in the above image), but nothing I can’t handle.

However, this is a two-way street: I hit pretty hard too (if u skwint a littol…), but nothing that the Castellan can’t handle too:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Harlez: 4.2k wdef
yay barrage

tarandus: hahaha

Yep! 4 200 solid WDefs on this bad boi. The good news is that my Demo ignores all that, so my overall DPM actually wasn’t so bad (by my standards):

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

[system message]: tarandus — Lv.176 Buccaneer — Total Damage: 22,851,278
Damage Per Hour: 137,107,620 — Damage Per Minute: 2,285,127

2.29M DPM with a Strawb’ Shortcake (+30⁢ WAtk)! That’s probably the DPM of like five rusas in this blasted boss!!

But then… there is the second body. He still has the pencil ’stache, but is now the titular giant purple Toad of legend. This actually makes the WDef slightly worse (4.2k becomes 4.3k), but the real problem for me is his spiny bufonid body. If I touch those spines, it will be the last thing I ever do!!

I tried to just be really careful, & it seems to have workt. I didn’t even die once! I promise!!

He also summons widdle blu toadlings, which are cute (& wear funny littol hats):

But actually, it did occur to me that these tiny bastards are the only thing really threatening to kill me. If one of them manages to knock me rightward at an inopportune moment, I might have no choice but to tank a touch-attack (because I might be stunned by my attack animation).

In any case, good lord is there a lot of HP on this damnable froge. Eventually, though, we whittled him down to nothin’ but frogbones:

Nice!! Those are pretty bad drops by Toad standards, I think, but I’ll take it. I even got some of the Etc items for the relevant Ninja Castle questline (in case I wanna do that on some other char…)!

Great success!! Especially compared to the last time I tried a level 180 boss for the first time. (:

Oh, & it gives some EXP, which was almost enough to put me over the 100% mark…

Henmk yaaa!!! 😤😤😤

💜

Footnotes for “Ambidexter”

1. [↑] Not to be confused with crustaceous.

2. [↑] Indeed, in the specific sense of networking latency (but also including server hiccups, I guess). Transformations (including Oak Barrel) are a type of buff, & you what that means…!

3. [↑] I.e. clone-wave 1, where clone-wave 0 is the preclone, & clone-wave 3 is the final clone-wave. Depending on how you count, this is either three or four clone-waves in total.

4. [↑] The spelling ⟨chow⟩ for /⁠t͡ʃaʊ̯⁠/ “food” is presumably by analogy with brow, cow, endow, &c.. But its etymon is 炒 “[to] stir-fry” — presumably with the Hoisanese reading ⟨cau²⟩ /⁠t͡sʰau̯⁠/, although many reflexes of the Middle Sinitic (Baxter–Sagart ⟨tsrhæw^X⟩) have similar vowels anyway.

   The English vowel is represented by the lexical set MOUTH, & in modern spelling by not just ⟨ow⟩, but also the similar digraph ⟨ou⟩ (plough, thou, &c.), & ⟨ao⟩ in consciously foreign words like ciao, Dao, &c.. In most cases, this vowel is the regular result of OE ū /⁠uː⁠/, so that we don’t need to consult a dictionary to reconstruct that ModE mouth /⁠maʊ̯θ⁠/ is probably a reflex of OE mūþ /⁠muːθ⁠/ (& indeed, it is). (Scots is somewhat more conservative in this case, instead having mooth /⁠muθ⁠/.)

   The shift to ⟨ow, ou⟩ spellings during the ME period was perhaps influenced by French, and/or simply reflected the phonetic spelling of a transitional vowel quality. Given that chow (originally chow-chow) entered English from a Sinitic source during the ModE period, the expected spelling would be *⟨chao⟩, but we got ⟨chow⟩ instead — presumably due to being filtered through Chinese Pidgin English. The good news is that we have Chao now, although he’s not as tasty.

(…cnvpstdf…)

cnvpstdf

Transcription of the above image

Ananda: sorry im a gamer

alces: my sincerest condolences

Transcription of the above image

inbred: it makes me giggle

inermis: lmao

inbred: THIS game dont make me giggle
i make me giggle in this game
stinky game

inermis: :X
why u playing stinccy game :x

inbred: girl

inermis: LOLL

Milfers: this game would b way more fun if we can player kill

inbred: she tells me what 2 do

Milfers: and KS

inermis: hahaha

Transcription of the above image

Battlesage: where tf
are mpq runs
how has this
been a constant
for 3+ years

Transcription of the above image

[sold-out stacks of Grilled Cheeses]

xWrathx: MORE CHEEEE DANNY WTF
CHEEE WE DYIN OUT HERE

Transcription of the above image

ItsukiChan: this party looks delicious
we got porkchop
and for desert [sīc], custard

PorkCh0p: haha

ItsukiChan: and for 2^nd desert
dear

d34r: o_o