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rangifer’s diary: pt. cxxxiii

barrol binch

Hail, & be ye welcome’d to the cheap knockoff version of Questin’ Wif tara™. In this episode, I’ll be a friendly barrol who helps other people do their quests.

First up is gish priest Ananda (Battlesage, Warsage, Permanovice, Aniket, illadvised, Dreamscapes, Paean), who was doing some Loooody Clocktower questing:

Ghosthunter Bob wanted Free Spirits & collected spirits, so we teamed up with coarse hair Lvl1Crook (xXCrookXx, Level1Crook, Macer) to absolutely assail the Forgotten Path of Time⟨1⟩:

To collect spirits, however, you need a jar to put them in. Fermentation takes a long time, though, so it’s easier to just steal spirits from Spirit Vikings. It’s fair because Vikings are pirates, I’m a pirate, & so we just steal each other’s stuff — as a littol prank amongst friends. Don’t worry about it.

Anyway, the Vikings sail the seas of the Warped Path of Time⟨4⟩, so we’re gonna need to go down the tower. Like way down, where the snails live:

Anyway, once we found a Spirit Viking, Lvl1Crook & Ananda politely looked onward as I boarded its ship & took all its stuff:

Bish, bash, bosh. Well, not “bish” quite yet — Ananda needs a few more levels for that.

In the meantime, I was abducted by a smol crew of dedicated ’bot-slayers: Gock (Harlez, VigiI, Murhata) & OneMoreGame (ATTC, gameHS). Together, we embarked upon a mission to disembark the barque to end all barques: Nibelung (you know, the one with the poëm).

Now that the 1337^[1] was sung & the fat lady played her part, we went from 1337 to fat 1007:

Waow! A chare~! ✨

Anyway, back to the quest-helper thing. I helped shadow her ChiPoof & marked man marksman Assless clear a wee littol 2nas, again alongside Harlez.

For the preliminary stage (the one where fake dad protects robot son, &c.), I was sacrificed to fake dad; curst to roam the Earth as a perma-dispel’d barrol binch whom’st can only deal 0-damage lines:

In fairness, it’s not an immense loss of DPM. Plus, my barrol binch powers are useful for pushing robot son back into place:

Nice.

Once real dad spawned, it was on FR fr. But I was still on barrol binch duty as per usual, so it looked a lot like this:

And just like that, 2nas was questificated. For good! So there!! 😤

Anyway, this wasn’t for a quest or anything, but I can’t resist a good ol’ Ravulatus w/ þe crue. Alongside self-proclaimed Sword “DEXy sexy” Furbs (Furbs, CowSmiley, Yoshis, Fabiennes, SwordFurb, PoultryWoman) & Lvl “1” Crook, of course:

I also did some trio Quorb Leighziz wif Harlez & Hardflip/360Flip (the latter of whom I previously met @ Pinque Beane):

As you can see, I had to be much more careful about not bumping the Roiel Garred too far to the left of the escalator, so that it’d remain in bonking range for 360Flip. Otherwise very smoooove runz~!

Plus I did more duos w/ Harlez, but now with extra Gock! Waow~!

And, speaking of duoing, I did a duo Tsiau with renowned STRmabeginner Taima (Boymoder, Yunchang, Tacgnol):

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

tarandus: my cleave is soo bnad [sīc]

Taima: >_<

My cleaving abilities are… indeed bnad. So bnad, in fact, that whenever my ST was up, I just didn’t bother doing anything other than spam Demo. That’s the ticcet.

It went fine, but, you know. For the second 巢 run, we got some extra help. Namely, we were joint by fellow STRmabeginner Furbs:

Okay, nice. But how about Efeaniyer? See if you can spot her in this image:

Me neither.

Then we did the whole Chaophenia thing over again, but this time with Lvl1Crook:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Taima: you’re a pirate, use your own si

tarandus: yeah wtf

Lvl1Crook: :(

It… was a little faster.

We also did some Papuvana, with bishletish AppleBasket (LawdHeComin, pleLeg, OrangeFungus, Mushers)! Kewl!

And how about some mfing Zaqqūm‽‽

Wow, kewl! We have an I/L archmage~!

But you know how it is. If it’s a Zaccoum, & I’m there, it’s instantly curst.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

icefriend: oh no

tarandus: IT BEGINS

Taima [from beyond the grave]: dropping like flies

Welp. We lost our permabeginner & our bishop — but we can still clear, right…?

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Korosan: this is
RIGGED

tarandus: zak just loves archmages

Korosan: YOURE
so right
LOL
punishing all the gatekeepers

tarandus: AM h8rs get pouches filled with coal instead of pcoins

Korosan: ^^^^^

Nothin’ but weapon-cancels! Luckily icefriend carried the shiet out of us. Phewf!

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

tarandus: YEY

[system message]: [Royal Guard Card] has been successfully recorded on the Monster Book. — (5/5)

I also did a special pair of Palpable Lanterns with STRmit Boymoder! Heq yea!:

I also did some moar freakin’ Peebing on this char, if you can 🐝⁠🍃 it. I took a screenshot of myself doing my TL during stage 5, & I gotta say, it’s completely 100% inscrutable. Upon close inspection, I can see nary a single pixel of myself nor of my skill animations, so I won’t even bother. Just picture, in your mind’s eye, me fulfilling the highest calling of the barrol binch.

Instead, here’s a @dpm 26 test that I did on statues with just Cider, MW20, SE, & Echo:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

[system message]: tarandus — Lv.177 Buccaneer — Total Damage: 51,681,317
Damage Per Hour: 119,264,520 — Damage Per Minute: 1,987,742

All right all right alright priddygood… But how ’bout them body DPMs tho?

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

[system message]: Damage Per Hour: 41,240,160 — Damage Per Minute: 687,336

The statues DPM was only modestly higher than the kind of numbers that I put up with rusa, since I’m pretty decent at statues on rusa by now — aside from the whole “not being able to cleave” thing. The main body, however, is a whole different beast, & we can see here that tara’s DPM exceeds rusa’s by nearly a factor of three. Sheesh.

On another Peanut Butter run, I snapped this shot of me Barraging Muninn:

The only way to get within Barrage reach is to stand up on one of the platforms on the right-hand side. Holy Shield has a pretty generous reach, but I dunno if it’s that generous, & I really don’t wanna miss it. 😅 So I gotta time this one out a littol.

Anywho, back over in Neo Tôkyô (The Sequel), I did some more duo Seeby Pea Cues w/ Harlez/Gock. We tried a new strategy, wherein I duo the fat alien washing machine with Harlez as normal, until the Imperials on the top platform are all gone. Then it’s flytrap time:

The idea is that Harlez can stand at the bottom in a specific place where the Maverick Vs will auto-aggro fairly consistently when they spawn. Once enough Mavs are aggro’d @ Harlez, we’re golden: no more can spawn, and Gock & I have ✨⁠unimpeded access⁠✨ to maximal washing machine DPM.

Unfortunately, at least one time, it didn’t work out quite so cleanly…:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Gock: why lure busted shit

tarandus: :x

Don’t worry, we still finisht… with like 6⁢ minutes left. 😅

Over once again at the Tempol of Thyme, I did something very special: I actually Appold with everyone else (normally I get assigned 0⁢ appo on the roster LOLOL)! Check out my @dpm 27 on statues w/ 2⁢ Appol + Cider!:

Transcription of the above image

[system message]: tarandus — Lv.177 Buccaneer — Total Damage: 79,948,176
Damage Per Hour: 177,662,580 — Damage Per Minute: 2,961,043

An extra mil DPM, wowie~

And finally, how about some heckin’… gosh darned… friccin’ Bigfeeting?? With Gock & Ananda Gishop (yay namechange! I liked Ananda too tho…)?!?:

(: 💜

Footnotes for “barrol binch”

1. [↑] High German Lied “song” /⁠liːt⁠/ (as in Nibelungenlied) is pronounced more-or-less equivalently to English leet ⟨1337⟩ /⁠liːt⁠/ < élite (by aphesis).

oranj hoe

And how about some wooza rusa‽ The orange one with the DEX, in case you forgort!!

Let’s start with something simple, shall we? Like doing some heccin’ Chaophenia with Taima (Boymoder), Lvl1Crook (Macer), & SwordFurbs (Furbs)??

Yes, I am still working on my Ephenia’s Ring! If the phuqqing Soul Crystals had at least an 8% pass rate, I might eventually finish!! AAAAAAAAA—

Sorry. Let’s think of something less stressful instead, like… erm… doing Pink Bean? No, that’s even worse.

In fact, my last experience at PB on rusa was rather harrowing. Nothing very serious happened to the run in general, but I was privately suffering some of the worst personalised^[1] lag that I’ve ever witnessed without actually d/cing. I did indeed make it all the way through the run, & I’m really not sure how I died only once. It might’ve been the part where I would fearfully spam HP pots every time I hit another big lag spike — so, virtually the entire main body fight. I ended up smaccing the legume a grand total of, honestly, probably less than a few dozen times throughout the whole run.

Very early on in the main body fight, when the lag was still somewhat new & I thought that I could fight through it, I managed this screenshot:

This is with the new version of Achilles (see: “1⧸1 recurrence”), so the damage numbers are better this time! Nifty~!

Anywho. How about some more Efeeny-ers, but with additional beginnerage this time — feat. Furbs & Gock (Harlez, VigiI, Murhata)?:

That’s what I’m talkin’ about. And why stop there? There are other bosses of similar level out there, hostile as they may be… Like our old friend Cancel Carp:

This was a touchy one. Although I easily deal enough damage to one-shot the Bloody Booms, I had to be really careful with the HB, because without it, Furbs pops like a bubble. Thankfully, I have more experience with the orange guppy than I care to admit,^[2] so reacting to the dispel animation was no problem for me.

We can do better than that, tho. What if we went to FP^[3] & fought Decapitated Caballero & Largepaw at the same time…?

Now that’s what I call cleaving!!

Footnotes for “oranj hoe”

1. [↑] This would exclude The Great DDoSening Of 2024™.
2. [↑] Excepting the part where most of it is documented within this diary.
3. [↑] Not to be confused with F/P, FP, nor 𝆑𝆏.

scythe hag

Ok ok ok ok but. What if I told you that cerbiv cervip cervid was bacc‽ Like, I might level up or something iderfk‽‽

But that would be crazy. Being so STRong is tuff, u no? As the saying goes: with great power comes great despondability. 😔

Then again, maybe with a little help from my friends, I could make it to level infinity or whatever (= 135) eventually (= never)! 🙂

That’s right. I’m putting on my grinding goggles & my farming garments, ’cause it’s time to eat Brexfast.^[1] I joined STRmit Boymoder (Taima) at Dragon Forest III to farm for some Shadow Stars level 20 masterybooks or whatever:

Wait, what? I thought we were here for the delicious treacle — the primrose ambrosia for which every mortal pixel aches — known only as EXP?

We are! I think Brextons’ EXP value got buft or something, so now… that’s what we do. Brexfast. For three meals per diem.

Transcription of the above image

[system message]: cervid — Lv.133 Bishop — Total EXP: 967,857 (1.63%)
EXP Per Hour: 4,839,240 — EXP Per Minute: 80,654

But that’s not all. I also dined with fellow STR bonkaholics Taima & Furbs (SwordFurbs, CowSmiley)!:

Yummers!

And, on another day’s Brexfast & brunch, this happened…

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

[system message]: [Brexton Card] has been successfully recorded on the Monster Book. — (5/5)
Quest Arrived! Double-click the icon located on top of the Character.

cervid: omfg

Oh, geez…

Transcription of the item in the above image

Monster Book Ring ⟨Tier 2⟩

One of a kind Item, Untradeable

• Category: ring
• STR: +2
• DEX: +2
• INT: +2
• LUK: +2
• HP: +100
• MP: +50

Collected 60 Monster Book Card Sets! The power of the Amethyst jewel is now inside the ring.

Look. If you’ve been reading this diary for a really long time (unlikely, given that you’d surely be fed up by now), then you possibly remember that cervid was the first character that I ever card-hunted on.^[2] I know — it seems a little wacky in retrospect!

But back then (& possibly still at the time of this writing), the droprate for mages was pretty bad, which isn’t a good sign when you’re also stuck with exclusively basic-attacking anyway. Eventually, in the process of card-hunting for a very long time at Dangerous Croko I, I accidentally pressed my Genesis button (I still had level 1 Gen at the time…) once. That single Gen targeted probably nearly 15 monsters (largely Crocos), & “MISS”ed the majority of them. But at least one or two that didn’t avoid the Gen were thus slain, & of those, one dropped the card that I had been hunting for hours.

Does that make sense? Can you see how that might be a littol bit discouraging — disrespectful, almost…?

Anyway. I’m over it, & glad to finally have largely — but not entirely, as seen here! — card-leeched my way from T1 to T2. Huzzah. With some luck, in the future, I might even level my ass up & scoot my boots over to Zaqqūm, but for real stakes EXPs this time. Stay chewnd…? 🖤

Footnotes for “scythe hag”

1. [↑] I was gonna make a Brexit joke here somewhere, but maybe it’s still “too soon”…
2. [↑] And indeed, this is literally true as written, because MapleLegends was the first MapleStory implementation that I ever played that implemented Monster Book &c..

the flying one

Let’s see what alces is up to, shall we?

Fun fun! alces wrecks some Brex too! I clocked something like ≈11.5M⁢ EPH with Boymoder (Taima). That’s quite a bit more than what I was getting on cervip! By like, well over a factor of two!! But even still, 7 F is better at that rate, particularly as a duo. Oh, the difference it makes when you’re surprisingly decent at mobbing…

Also with Boymoder, I took an underwater dive to Deep Sea Gorge I for a special purpose: underwater science. No, not marine biology. Just science that happens to be underwater because that’s the easiest way to find weapon-cancels & magic-cancels against which to test Shadow Meso.

Boymoder helped me out a lot, & I may or may not’ve committed alces-based crimes to do some testing myself (but you can’t prove it, & even if you did, it was for science!). I’m happy to’ve unloct the secrets of SM now, which you can read about in “Appendix E: Shadow Meso” of pt. cxxxi of this diary.

On land, wooded by phantom trees & floored by moribund grass, I met face-to-face with my old friend Headless Horseman — alongside the mighty glaive of Gishop (Battlesage, Warsage, Permanovice, Aniket, illadvised, Dreamscapes, Paean)!

My meetings with HH are brief these days! What can I say? 💪🏽💪🏽

🖤

(…cnvpstdf…)

cnvpstdf

Transcription of the above image

Lvl1Crook: lets go cwkpq
jk lol

rusa: ew

Taima: i would if i was epic enough

rusa: honestly cwkpq is boring content
for nerds who like getting rich

Lvl1Crook: ur rich though deer

rusa: ok but im not a nerd? so

Lvl1Crook: and your a nerd

rusa: .,..

Transcription of the above image

Boymoder: you could have a good career as a Clown job

hashishi: thanx i guess
i am pretty good at being a clown

Transcription of the above image

[whisper to hhgregg]: does your name stand for His Highness Greg the Great?

[from hhgregg]: it’s hhgregg like the store

[to hhgregg]: i see! your advertising campaign has been successful on this day

Transcription of the above image

[Sta]tues

	IGN	Job	Lvl	Apple	Party Invite
Party 4 HB ☐ MW30 ☑	Soblet	Shad	200	2	/partyinvite Soblet
	Soblet	Shad	200	2	/partyinvite Soblet
	Soblet	Shad	200	2	/partyinvite Soblet
	Soblet	Shad	200	2	/partyinvite Soblet
	Soblet	Shad	200	2	/partyinvite Soblet
	Soblet	Shad	200	2	/partyinvite Soblet
Party 5	iiiiiiiiiiii	Pally	200	2	/partyinvite iiiiiiiiiiii
	Wolf	Shad	189	2	/partyinvite Wolf

Transcription of the above image

[whisper from Cortical]: it appears my oven is like
3× hotter than the knob says lmfao
i could probably make a woodfired pizza with this shit atp

[to Cortical]: LMAO

[from Cortical]: 75⁢C = 175⁢C, 150⁢C = 300⁢C
it goes up to 250⁢C on the knob which i can only imagine is the
pyrolytic cleaning function that burns my house down

[to Cortical]: hahahaha
the good news is you can do glass firing