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rangifer’s diary: pt. cxxxviii

There’s a spoopy STReleton inside every one of us

Welcome back to RevivalStory (RS) with The Main Gang™. We’re an organised crime racket, & lv1000boss (Macer, xXCrookXx, Lvl1Crook, Level1Crook) is our mafia boss — & a level one thousand(!) boss, at that. We run this place. No, really — nobody else plays this server, & majority rules. That’s how it works.

Anyway, last time, we left off after our grand heist of a pile of pink flowers. Stolen flowers are a hot commodity on the black market, so off we went.

Whilst we were at Lit Harber, we discovered that the Lith Harbor Weapon Store had yet to be split up into the Lith Harbor Armor Shop & Lith Harbor Weapon Shop (I guess Silver & Natasha are still on friendly terms), so the *“Weapon Shop” just… doesn’t have a portal:

At the appropriately-named Weapon Store, I bought two deadly weapons: a pink shirt & a piece of a fence.

Cool, right? I’m so used to picking up þͤ olde Red-Striped T-Shirt from Blue Snayle & Pigge that I never end up with this snazzy pink-&-white one!

And, speaking of Pigge, this one that we met along the way to Henesys was particularly munificent:

Last time, I was pessimistic about our ability to get any meaningful number of raffles during this Mapleversary event. But that was mostly because I was having implausibly poor luck (per usual), & not because prezzies are actually that rare…

In pursuit of arboreal somnolence

We continued onward to the southern forests of Ellin.

Oh, yeah! It’s Slime time!

Just kidding; we’re not actually going back to Slime Tree. We’re going to Grushroomb tree!

…Which still has quite a few Slimes.

For reasons still unknown to me, this was a particularly rough week or so between me & the RS server:

99 Grushies was easy enough, but to start the 999 quest, we had to make our way through the subterrene centre of the island, with all its damp forests, swampy lands, deep forests, & moist bogs:

Oops! That’s the Keming swamp. We’d better exit via the Perion side, where we know for sure there aren’t any damnable ’gators.

Turning a “new leaf”

You never know; maybe I was just getting bad @pong because I was in Ellinia, & the incredibly tall trees were blocking my reception or something. But here in Perion, vegetation is basically not real, so I’m sure it’ll be bette—

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[system message]: [Notice] Your ping to the server is: 4770⁢ ms

cervid: [Notice] Your ping to the server is: 4770⁢ ms

Shpongle: LOL
89⁢ms

lv1000boss: average day for deer

At this point, I did a little investligatoring. As it happens, RS uses the same VPS provider as MapleL5s: OVH^®. The main difference is that the MapleL5s server is located in Québec (« câlisse ! »), whereas RS’s is in Fr∗nce (« merde ! »). Given my unpopularity in Fr∗nce, I can see why they might be DDoSing me.

In any event, having emerged from Sleepywood into the Keming sewers, made a retreat back into Sleepywood, emerged into Perion, & then run all the way around to Keming again (we’ll call it the scenic route), we decided to hop on the next train to Nightlord City New Leaf City (NLC). Unfortunately, someone didn’t buy the NLC DLC…

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lv1000boss: how come i cant go to nlc from here

Shpongle: did u buy the NLC DLC?

lv1000boss: nope…

As punishment, it was time for lv1000boss to get his ass beat (not my words) by the Bubs @ L1A1:

Although a suitable punishment, our first Bub encounter was otherwise unproductive. In fact, it had… negative productivity. R.I.P. our pots.

Meeting Cortical in Perion

It’s time to give up the Bub & bumble onward to Perion, where we can finally do the level ten quest sometimes known as “Fixing Blackbull’s House”. We decided to get our Axe Stumps at Perion Street Corner — not the ideal map, but it’s home.

This was how I found out that Axe Stumps drop, of all things, Wizard Wands:

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cervid: game is tryna tell me smth…

lv1000boss: wtf your rich now

Shpongle: wow

cervid: i am!

lv1000boss: deer gates

Shpongle: deer Gates

cervid: hahaha

And where I mourned the loss of Shpongle at the cruel hands branches of the Ack Stumps:

Like the wooden stumps, the totally-not-suspicious wooden doors are similarly unforgiving:

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lv1000boss: time to go in this totally not suspicious door

cervid: oh dear

---

lv1000boss: nvm i want an adult

We also met up with a certain Cortical (GishGallop, Medulla, CokeZeroPill, Subcortical) here!!

After hacking apart a few more Stumps with my Leather Purse, I hit level 20 & replaced it with an Iron Mace!

Now I hit like a truck! If the truck were really, really tiny, & stuck onto the end of an iron shaft.

Thinking ourselves — Cortical the lumberjill included — prepared for some quality Sleepywood time (Sleepytimes?), we moved via the Deep Valleys of Perion. Almost immediately, we were surprised to find ourselves confronted by none other than the Old Tree itself!

Of course, we already knew that Mano had been backported from GMS v49 (2008-01-23), because he’s found in the expected location: Thicket Around the Beach III, a map that any new Victorian will end up passing through if they leave Lith (unless they use the 🤮taxi🤮). Stumpy, on the other hand, is typically found in a remote location: ERM V. For unknown reasons, RS decided to put Stumpy at Warning Street: Deep Valley I.^[1] So here we are…

Let the battol begin!!

As it happened, lv1000boss was the only one of us who could actually hit the thing at all:

Brave as he was, one (1) boss — level 1 000 or otherwise — is simply not enough to take down Thee Allmitey Ghoassed Chrea Of Legend…

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Cortical: guys im scared :(
HE HIT IT

cervid: LOL
GO MATT GO

Cortical: HOW ARE U DOING THAT
his pots </3
the money is not coming back

Shpongle: he sacrificed himself for us
we will all remember The Boss

lv1000boss: it healed

Cortical: nooo

lv1000boss: ya bastard
you win this round
we need to make a tactical retreat

Strictly speaking, we didn’t make a tactical retreat. We just kept running as fassed as we could towards Sleepy. Along the way, we were able to find some respite in an unexpected location:

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Shpongle: seefu~

cervid: my favourite safe spot

The eternal recurrence of slumber lumber

By the time we made it to the big tree at the height of The Dungeon, we were pretty beat up, so we stopt at the local sauna:

Once we were all sweated out, ’twas time for — you guest it: moar Swampy Land in a Deep Forest!

Once Cortical got their 99 Grushies, tho, it was time to get down to bsns. Back to the Grushroomb Tree! Chop chop!

On this day, we were blest with a momentous event: the dropping of a Pan Lid! Reverently holding it aloft with both hands, Shpongle declared: “Who wants it? I’m a cool & strong warrior, so I don’t need a stinky little pan lid”, or something like that (I can’t remember).

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[trade window between cervid & Shpongle]

---

Pan Lid

• Req lev : 10
• Category : shield
• Weapon def. : 10
• Number of upgrades available : 7

---

cervid: TYSM@@

Ohmygod. A Pan Lid… for me? 🥹

As a token of appreciation, when Shpongle ran out of HPs, I offered up my White Potions that are too potent for my frail mage body anyway:

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cervid: my maxhp is 292 lol

Shpongle: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

And, speaking of potions that are too potent for my frail mage body, I finally accumulated enough heckin’ prezzies to do a raffo!

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Maple Administrator: Boom! Ta-da~!!

Triangular Sushi(mushroom) ×19

I hope you like what you see! Thank you so much for helping us celebrate MapleStory’s birthday~!!

Much like with MapleL5s’s event raffos, the “filler” (read: almost sole) prizes are potions/food. In the case of RS, however, I’m not complaining — affording pots is kinda my № 1 concern most of the time. The problem really is that 19 isn’t that many pots — especially considering how long it took to collect ten prezzies — and the Sushis sell for fr∗cken 1⁢ meso each! 19 whole mesos’ worth of pots!! SMH.

The Rememberer, on the other hand, knows how to hook me up:

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The Rememberer: I can tell you’re noble enough to do this without expecting anything return [sīc], but this is just my way of saying thank you for helping us out. Please take it.

Reward:
50 Red Potions
+600⁢ EXP

Admittedly, 50 Red Potions isn’t much for 999 Grushroomb kills. But at least they’re useful as a mage, & sell for more than one mesor.

Azure interregnum

At any rate, now that we’d collectively committed mass Grushricide, ’twas time to turn our arms against the other grue fungus: Blushroombs. Tuct away in the easterly reaches of Henesys, a forest inside a forest: The Blushroomb Forest.

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lv1000boss: i died
lol

Shpongle: OOF

cervid: omg

Shpongle: just use ur mob[b]ing attacks, it makes it much easier

With a not insignificant amount of blood, sweat, & tears, we were eventually able to satisfy Pia’s grue-some & seemingly unquenchable thirst for the blued of mushroomb. Phewf!

But that wouldn’t be the last time we’d be threatened by a dastardly Blushroomb. On our way to The Dungeon once again, Shpongle bravely took on The Blushroomb Of Doomb™ in combat, mano a mano (no, not that kind of “Mano”):

Kerning citizenship test

After our brief visit to Speepywood, we tried heading back through the Kerning sewers — for real, this time.

The swamp hurts, the bogs are painful, the marsh vexatious, & the mirelands winceful. On the bright side, the FHs here are much more, shall we say, stimulating than their later counterparts, in their strict adherence to the rather unsteady woodly visuals. Plus, it’s got a pretty good view for a stinccy sewerage system.

But the hypogæa of Keming, itself a modest metro at first Blush(roomb), are vaster than one could reasonably expect. Abreast the peats runs the whole Underground, best known for its vast permanent construction sites where a sufficiently intrepid adventurer can find all manner of gold coins with Shumi’s name scrawled on in sharpie.

Echoes of dead EMUs can still be felt, but their car(-)cases have already entered the advanced stages of natural decomposition, catalysed not by microbes but by bored teenagers instinctively predisposed to throwing rocks at windows and tagging such words of wisdom as “HipHop”, & the immortal “SHow Ne TH Mesooo”.

And that’s all there is to it. Flawless technique. Shumi is imprest.

Shumi gave us each a different stack of 30 return scrolls; so we soon made that into ten per each:

Resourceful. 😊

Since we’re here in Krrrrrning anyway, we may as well do its pee queue.

We were fully expecting stage 1 to kick our li’l pixel booties. Nevertheless, the Ligators (PC) didn’t pose any real avoidability problem, so we just had to whittle them down one by one — or simply smite the sh∗rt out of ’em, in Shpongle’s case.

Then came time for the most feared (fearedest?) KPQ stage of them all: hug rope stage.

Don’t worry; we got the hang of it eventually.

Thankfully, we fare much better when it comes to counting cats in barrels.

The next stage, honestly, I don’t even know what’s going on. There are barrels. I understand this; I’ve played plenty of brawlers before. But what do the numbers mean? I’m not some kind of nerd who would spend time trying to figure out how tf barrel mathematics works. 🙄

Regardless, barrel mathematics was apparently enough to level up lv1000boss — now lv1001boss. New level, new fit.

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lv1000boss: I HAVE THIEF ARMOR NOW

Shpongle: WOA

cervid: MAKEOVER

Regrettably, as can be seen in the above image, 1 001 levels just ain’t quite enough for the fifth & final nonbonus stage here in the glorious Kerning City Party Quest. We were bested in battol, & forced to make yet another tactical retreat. 😔

When we arrived back above ground, we found ourselves amidst a shower of candied rain!

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lv1000boss [weather effect]: PAYING?? TO WIN???

cervid: LMAO

Shpongle: rofl

On behalf of Nella (no, not the other Nella), we embarct upon a campaign of Octolimination at the Construction Site up north:

When we arrived back down town, our arms superfluous with octopodean tentacles, we encountered a bathrobed individual by the name of Team. Not wanting to interrupt his open-air bathing sesh, we initially allowed him to pass by in silence.

Team, however, was on a mission. Although he had suspiciously more Maple Bandanas Red than your average level 21 roag rogue, he was no less keen on a couple rounds o’ KPQ. I invited him to Oddjobs (that’s the name of our party of gangsters, in case you weren’t already aware), at which point he proceeded to shower us with said Maple Bandanas Red:

Normally, we’re hesitant to accept gifts. But bandannas are an important symbol of gang membership, & in any case, we could always just unequip them whenever we weren’t KPQing as team Team.

To the surprise of approximately noöne, this inexplicably bathrobed, ’danna’d, & red-nosed stranger pretty much swaddled our littol babie pixels up and carried us right past the finish-line.

We ran it back, & this time around, somehow managed to clown around even harder. Having now run out of actual skills to spend SP on, it was finally time for me to demonstrate my true magicianship:

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cervid: IM A REAL MAGE NOW

Shpongle: i’m MISStified

And, as e.g. any Viclocker would know, hotdogs (perritos calientes, for those following along at home) are the superior form of healthful nutriments, making every heated battle less like a swordfight & more like a hotdog-eating contest. The question is: what happens if you lose said contest?

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cervid: rest in pieces

Shpongle [from beyond the grave]: sorry i couldnt eat hot dogs fast enough

On the bright side, sometimes receiving quark-based confectioneries from the local lottery is enough to lift you out of poverty:

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Shpongle: i got 26 cheesecake ahaha

cervid: @mapieadmln

lv1000boss: wow

cervid: not bad

Shpongle: gotta check their npc price
1650 [mesos] each… i am rich.

cervid: omg
YUGE
CEO of Shpongle Industries

With the newfound riches bestowed by curd fallen from heaven, the local pharmacy was much more willing to give up its delectable drogas.

明 Pharmacy

But what exactly is going on in the ol’ Kerning City Pharmacy? Specifically, I wanna know what they’re keeping in these drawers, but the text is so low-resolution that I can hardly read even half of it:

First, we should ask why the text is in Sinographs. Unfortunately, maplestory.io^[2] doesn’t have any KMS data prior to v284^[3] (2017-08-31, AFAICT), which is firmly post-BB. Nonetheless, even in KMS v284, the drawers pictured above haven’t been changed in any way. In fact, it seems that although this map exists in the KMS v284 data, it doesn’t exist in-game, because there appear to be no portals that lead to it (Kerning City is totally revamped in this version).

Notably, only one other Sinograph (in this context, a hanja) appears in the KMS version. Where in GMS the wooden sign above the counter reads ⟨pharmacy⟩,^[4] the same sign in KMS reads 明약국 “Ming [≘ Myeong] pharmacy”. Here, the Sinograph is used as a proper name.

Whilst we’re at it (digression within a digression! woo-hoo!), we may as well see what’s going on with everyone’s favourite: the “Misuse of potion is good for your physical strength.”^[5] sign.

original	지나친 포션의 남용은 오히려 체력에 좋습니다.
gloss	excessive potion-GEN abuse-TOP on.the.contrary physical.strength-LOC good
translation	Excessive abuse of potions is actually good for your stamina.
GMS	Misuse of potion is good for your physical strength.

Note that 포션 ⟨posyeon⟩ /⁠pʰo.sjʌ̹n⁠/ is a direct borrowing of English potion.

I don’t know whether GMS has a good excuse for coming up with “misuse” instead of “excessive abuse” (the latter, I think, expressing the original meaning much more clearly), but translating 체력 is a little more delicate. “Physical strength” is correct, but might give the English reader the narrow idea of strong muscles (that is, STR as a statistic), rather than the general sense of “vigour, energy”.

In any case, this pharmacy is clearly supposed to be Chinese. Consider, for comparison, another Kerning NPC: Mr. Pickall (a very competent localisation of the original 몽땅따). Mr. Pickall is portrayed as almost comically Chinese in a number of ways, not the least of which being his physical appearance; for instance, his hair is styled as a queue.^[6] Mr. Pickall, too, is adorned with Sinographs: 開 “(to) open (up), unlatch” 金 “gold; money”. MapleStory’s representation of Chinese NPCs is rather pointed: Mr. Pickall, Mr. Moneybags, & the various storage NPCs are all depicted not just as cartoonishly Chinese, but also as greedy & materialistic — always having something to do with gold.

Dr. Faymus (< 소문난 “famous, well-known, infamous”) is, by comparison, somewhat less overobvious. Nonetheless, he’s specifically illustrated as being turned around, so that we can clearly see his hair’s in a topknot (髻):

Prior to the Ming–Qing transition (think 1640s or so; note that this Ming is the same as the 明 on the sign in KMS), this was the standard style for men (that is, specifically adult males). The Qing imposed the queue hairstyle by law, & this practice ended with the end of the Qing & the beginning of the original Republic of China (1912).^[6][7] The topknot is therefore the almost exclusive hairstyle of Chinese men in historical depictions of anything prior to ca. 1644.

Traditional Korean medicine (TKM; to be contrasted with folk medicines of Korea) was, beginning in ca. 500 CE, essentially an importation of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Its adoption by the Joseon state led to it being widely accepted as an indigenous Korean body of practice.^[8] Western medicine was introduced in the 1880s by Christian missionaries from the U.S., which led to its popularity — at least among the very few who had access to it. The establishment of Western medicine was subsequently solidified under Japanese colonial rule (beginning in 1910), which purposively promoted medicine modelled after that of the German Empire (& later Weimar Republic, &c.).^[8]

I do not get Western medicine vibes from 明 Pharmacy. Given that TKM experienced something of a revival in popularity beginning in the 1980s,^[8] & that Dr. Faymus isn’t depicted as cartoonishly Chinese, it’s possible that the 明 Pharmacy is supposed to represent a post-1980 TKM. However, it seems more likely to me that 明 Pharmacy is intended as a somewhat sardonic caricature of TCM, up to & including the rather aggressive injunction to “excessively abuse” potions (corresponding to IRL herbal tonics).

Okay, let’s get back to those cabinets:

骨 “bone”	[?]骨 “[?] bone”	原肉 “raw meat”	*采 *“oak; vine, creeper; …”	[?]足 “[?] foot; leg”
[?][?]	[?]	[?]子 “[?] egg; seed”	[…]

Aaaand that’s about where I gave up. Unfortunately, the resolution is simply too low for these to be truly legible. If you recognise any of the text, let me know what you found!

Okay, we’re done with that.

Speaking of finding, we found a wild RevivalStorier! And not just any Revivalist, but inhabitant of the front page (#4 at the time of this writing, but getting very close to #3 (she hit #3 whilst I was writing this — grats!)) Paipo the drag-o’-night!

Cool! Great look, too (grean…). Unfortunately, it seems that in RS, NX equips occlude coöccupying non-NX equips even within the “item list” of the “character info” window. Drat! I wanted to know what a level 160 (now 161) DK would be wearing.

Anywho, we might not’ve been level 16X, but we still thought ourselves sufficiently improved to challenge good ol’ Stumpers to a rematch. Sniper Potions in hand, we slew the mythical crispy tree:

As you can see, Stumpy drops a whole lot of crispy nothingness. This will be a recurring theme.

Continuing this path all the way to Sleepy once again, we took on the 99 Hushie & 99 Zushie quests — the sworn duty of any good Victorian. 🫡

The Straits of Pigge

We took a quick detour to Henesys on the way back to Keming City, so that we could do “Camila’s Gem”.

The problem with “Camila’s Gem” is that there’s no guarantee of actually getting its unique & one-time reward.

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[system message]: You have gained experience (+5500)

lv1000boss: i got CAKES

cervid: yeyy piggy straited!

Uh-oh. If Shpongle doesn’t get a Piggy Straited, then…

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Shpongle: *sad cake noises*

lv1000boss: NOOOOOOO

cervid: omg naurrrrrrrrrrrrr

lv1000boss: this game sucks man

cervid: x_x

Shpongle: i want a refund

lv1000boss: i guess i have to make another char or be weak sad and pathetic for li[fe]

I think MapleL5s definitely has the right idea here by making the Piggy Straited a guarantee. Come to think of it, probably the best design is to simply allow each character who completes the quest decide whether they’d rather a 🐷⁠📕 or a stacc of 💯⁠🎂. But it’s 2 l8 now. Our lv1000boss will just have to be stuqq with a 🐵⁠🔧…

5×5

We were actually invited to KPQ again by Team, but by the time we hooft it to Curning Sitty, he’d mysteriously vanisht. Poof! Jus like that. O 🐋. I guess we’ll try Beëlzebubblings again, instead…:

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Shpongle: the KPQ basic[-]attacker uniform

Not only is that just the right level for my Igg Pillustraited, but I can also don the Blamboo Hat I got from KPQ! I even managed to pass a 60% for WDef on it!! Huge. 💪🏽💪🏽

There’s just one slight problem: I look basic as h∗ck. Don’t get me wrong — my equips are actually quite good (for my level, at least). But let’s be real: I’m gonna be sporting this Blamboo & this Pea Ghillie’s Traded until roughly the moment of my departure from this mortal plane.^[9] I need a makeover sooner or l8r — & let’s make it sooner, because I’ve yet to really dig into what RS offers in the way of fassion.

As it happens, the answer is… not a whole lot, but it’s passable. RS makes absolutely zero (0) attempt to stop the player from concealing all their non-NX equipment with NX covers. On the other hand, the diversity of said NX covers, hairs, & especially faces is — unsurprisingly, given RS’s ethos — limited to those of USD-paying customers of specifically GMS (read: Necks0n America™^®) in the era prior to 2007〜2008 or so. It’s also limited to some degree by the sheer technological backwardness of the game client itself.

At any rate, this is what I came up with for cerbip cervid:

Wuddayathinq? Spoopy? Kinda cute? Kinda æsthetically confused? It’s my first time using a lifesaver lightsaber & my first time being a literal skeleton, so we’ll see how it goez. I think I like it, doe.

Anyway, now that we were done with our Bub-related questings, it was time to get srs about Ant Tunnel. It was time to lock in. Those 999 Hushies & 999 Zushies ain’t gonna re-lay themselves to rest. Whilst we were here, Shpongle also hit the big 25 & got her own big makeover:

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Shpongle: i am a new Shpongle

cervid: COOL

Oh, no. She’s too powerful… It’s the Sky Shark & the Sky Shark Skirt! Nyoooom!!

This is certainly not my first time completing these 999s, so I’m very used to migrating between ATIII (for Zushies) & ATIV (for Hushies) as necessary. We started by partying in ATIV, until my tidal migration instincts kicked in…

Due to RS’s quirks, we often wound up with this awkward superspawn area up in the top-right:

Once we finisht our 999s, we found out that they have quite strict cooldowns in their capacity as repeatable quests:

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Shpongle: must wait to retake the quest

lv1000boss: yea its a 1⁢ day cooldown

Shpongle: yeah i mean
i’m sure getting that pessimal 4.6k combined exp from both quests
would break the server and implement the Big Bang update

cervid: thats true

lv1000boss: thats what happened in ml

Shpongle: it’s a slippery sloap

cervid: slippery soap

Shpongle: that’s why i throw any server with downjump into the trash

cervid: i’m gonna start saying slippery soap, thats such a good eggcorn

Day-O…

In fact, lv1000boss is correct: these quests have “one-day” cooldowns. But it seems — upon very cursory inspection — that “day” here is understood in terms of calendar days, rather than durational days (the latter being any duration of 24⁢ h, regardless of its starting-point). Moreover, I think(‽) the reset date is chosen as the soonest “midnight”^[10] that causes the duration of the cooldown to be at least 24⁢ h (or perhaps some other suitable minimum?), such that the actual cooldown is typically significantly more than 24⁢ h.

The gang saves Kerning City, for real this time

Well, that means we gotta find sumn else to do. Hmmm… I wonder…… if mayhap……… we could do our first full KPQ as The Gang™…………

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

cervid: WEW

lv1000boss: omg finally

Shpongle: NICE

“WEW” indeed. We did it!! But it was a hard-won victory. Many, many “1”-damage lines were had… And now, King Slime trembles before us! The merest mention of “Oddjobs” is sufficient to activate his fight-or-flight response!! If slimes even have such a thing!!! 😤😤😤

Footnotes for “There’s a spoopy STReleton inside every one of us”

1. [↑] For what it’s worth: no, there’s no Dyle in RS. Whereas both Mano & Stumpy show up in the droptables, Dyle does not. This is presumably because Dyle wasn’t added to Mob.wz until v56 (2008-06-20), with the release of Ariant. RS does have Casey, tho!
2. [↑] See: maplestory.wiki, browse-old.maplestory.io, &c..
3. [↑] Presumably corresponding to KMS v1.2.284.
4. [↑] The pharmacy does still have a name in GMS, however: the sign outside reads ⟨Famous pharmacy⟩.
5. [↑] I’ve changed the blue text to cyan, for readability.
6. [↑] See this Language Log post, which contains commentary from professional Qing historians on the imposition of the queue hairstyle, & its dissolution with that of the Qing.
7. [↑] The Republic of China in this sense mustn’t be confused with the current (as of this writing…) Republic of China (= Taiwan). The latter is technically a successor of the former; but then, so is the PRC. This is totally not a politically sensitive topic, & you should feel free to bring it up out of nowhere during your next family reunion.
8. [↑] Gil Soo Han; 1997; “The Rise of Western Medicine and Revival of Traditional Medicine in Korea: A Brief History”; Korean Studies, vol. 21, pp. 96〜121; University of Hawaiʻi Press; doi:10.1353/ks.1997.0000.
9. [↑] This is in no small part due to RS’s risibly villainous droprates. This will become a recurring theme.
10. [↑] Midnight as in 00:00:00 server time. To the embarrassment of anyone trying to vote for RS on GTop100, server time appears to be local time for the server, which means that it changes with DST & also never coïncides with UTC+00:00. [sad trombone sting]

Life’s a beach

And now! Welcome!! To the motherfreaking adventures of the most ironical deer in all the land: unicolor!!! [raucous cheering]

Thank you, thank you… No, you’re too kind — please. I’m just LUKy to be here. Thank you…

Today will be a moist day, folks! And I’m not talking about the weather. It’s time for me to take a trip to the most humid, most swelteriest region of The Dungeon: Damp Forest! Passing through the Damp Tree-Forest, I caught sight of this nifty littol haus:

Famp Dorest is, near as I can tell, the best map in RS to farm either Octos or Neckis. We saw lass time that I already did a bunch of Octo farming over at Quirning Citty, so I’m really here for the bright-green sneighx. In fact, I’mma need 150 of their skins, so we’re gonna be here a while. I gotta wait for them to shed their skins… pick up the skins… wait for the next round of ecdysis……

Unfortunately for me, however, the Moist Forest is rather unforgiving. Since I live my life perpetually teetering on the brink of destitution, I soon realised that I would, in fact, not be making it to 150 skins.

At least that’s enough to complete “Dr. Faymus’ Request”. Worx for now.

Only slightly less punishing is collecting 100 Wild Boar Teefies & 20 Broken Mirror Glasses from the Wiled Boards of The Lanned of While Bore Too:

a pile of flowers

By now, my potion purse can barely keep up. But there is a certain level 25 cwessed that I can do whilst quaffing nary a single potion…

The Forest of Patience ⟨Step 1⟩ might seem like it doesn’t try that hard to test the player’s “patience”. My issue with it has mostly been that I can’t make the g∗sh d∗rned jumps, but I’ve gotten better @ it thease daze. Now I just do dumb stuff like this:

The Forest of Patience ⟨Step 2⟩ has at least a few more trix up its sleeve. Like, for instance, Pain Grids™ (patent pending):

Or, most notably, monke. So, so many monke.

Having displayed sufficient perseverance in the face of adversity (read: a faceful of plantain peels), I took home my prize: a pile of flowers.

Questical entelécheia

When I did arrive at Lint Harbour, Jane was happy to see the Wild Boar Tusx & the Hushie Caps that I’d hunted for her. For my part, I was, admittedly, less happy to see my reward…:

Transcription of the above image

Jane: Wait! I must have forgotten… You have done all these for me… I will give you something that I have kept for long time. [sīc] This might help you.

Reward:
Scroll for Two-handed Sword for ATT ×1
2500⁢ EXP

But the scroll is not the whole deal! The 2.5k⁢ EXPs were enough to level me up to 26!!

Huge. Now I can walk 3% faster to Kerning City, which means 3% less time before I get to put on my very first cape! Old Raggedy Cape!!

AVOID is basically my main stat, so +10 is… I mean, how did I even survive before I got this thing? Does anyone know? Gah. If only there were somewhere where, I dunno, I somehow recorded everything I’ve done… Hah! Just kidding; I’m not that crazy. That would be way too much work, obviously.

Anyway, it was time to finally finish the saga of Maya & The Weird Medicine That She Couldn’t Get Prior Authorisation For.

Transcription of the above image

Maya: Thank you so much … this may cure my longtime sickness afterall … here’s something I don’t really need … hopefully it’ll help you through your journey … here are some mesos also as a sign of my appreciation …

Reward:
+5,000⁢ mesos
+2,000⁢ exp
+Brown Bamboo Hat

Don’t mention it, Maya. I just hope you get well soon.

Wandering in search of a place to stay

On the way to Perion, I made my first stop at RS’s Big Peach Pig Beach to do sum Piggy herdin’:

Huh‽ Why are there so many Pigge up here‽‽ This is Read & Blew Snayle territory, ya silly geese pigs!

I thought that perhaps I was mistaken, & this was the original version of Pig Beach: Just Pigs, Ribbin’ Pigs, & one pesky Iron Hog. But as far as I can tell, this is just a customisation that RS came up with. This idiosyncrasy will be, at least directly, a good thing for unicolor, since this will in no way be her last experience grinding at this here peach…

At this point, however, I thought that level 26 was too high to still be training for EXP on level 7(!) & 10 monsters. So I did a little bit of browsing.

As it happens, RS added SGQ (or… some version of it) at some point,^[1] meaning that the Excavation Site is available to all wanderers of Vicky Island! So I chect it out, ’cos… the Excavation Site is kewl. That’s my entire logic.

It was at this ✨⁠brand new⁠✨ level 27 that I began saving my SP for Power Strike:

In this version, Power Strike’s cost suddenly bumps up from level 10 to 11, so it makes sense to just keep it at level 10 — where its damage∶cost ratio is maximised — before eventually maxing its level all at once (in my case, at PC level 30).

I wasn’t here at the Excavation Site I for very long, however. Thinking a bit about where I should train now that I’d nothing else to do, I made some preliminary investigations:

Table of a few mEXP∶HP ratios, plus WAtk² as a crude (ignoring WDef &c.) indicator of touch-attack potency. Should be sortable (click the headers).

species	WAtk2	mEXP∶HP
Bubbling	6 400	108.3
Pig	[2]2 704	200.0
Ribbon Pig	4 900	166.7
Green Mushroom	6 724	104.0
Wild Boar	8 100	76.4
Octopus	6 724	120.0
Jr. Necki	10 000	133.3
Ghost Stump	8 100	100.0
Wooden Mask	7 225	84.0
Horned Mushroom	8 100	116.7
Zombie Mushroom	9 025	84.0
Evil Eye	10 000	69.4

This doesn’t mean much, because EXP∶HP is a nigh worthless metric. Nonetheless, we can see where this is going: Pigs & Ribbon Pigs have the highest ratios & the lowest WAtks. On the other hand, two all-star training spots get the worst ratios: Wild Boars & Evil Eyes. Both Octopus & Jr. Necki have impressive ratios, which makes Damp Forest look pretty appealing — provided you’re willing to abuse @re (or similar) to navigate upward.

RS regrettably lacks any equivalent of @epm (or @dpm, for that matter). Nonetheless, @epm can be approximated with a little extra effort: note your exact EXP value, train for the duration of your favourite virtual hourglass, note your EXP again, subtract, & divide by the number of hours that the hourglass measured. Very crudely, I got something like this:

map	EPH
The Land of Wild Boar II	41 832
Excavation Site I	29 412
The Pig Beach	21 300

Great. I love useless numbers.

Acquiescence to the almighty power of the suid

Why “useless”? Well, all this talk of EXP is a sort of beating around the bush: I can’t sustain a positive MPH unless I use few or no potions. It turns out that the 4.9k⁢ WAtk² of Ribbon Pigs is just barely low enough that I can take hits from them all William Nilliam without having to use any potions — I can just stand still for a bit every once in a reasonably long while.

21.3k⁢ EPH doesn’t seem so bad. I mean, it’s kinda bad, but it’s okay. There’s just one problem: I won’t be getting 21.3k⁢ EPH. That test was performed with potions (to facilitate comparison), whereas the struggle that follows will be enacted only by so many basic-attacks (& what few Slash Blasts I can get from my extraordinarily slow MP regeneration).

I’ll be here until level 30. We’re just going to assume that I can graduate at that level, & never have to come back. 🙂

Maybe I’m not the most efficient grinder, but I was here for like… definitely more than a week. Just imagine an inspirational montage where I basic-attack a Pig with my Pig Ghillie Straited, then I basic-attack a Ribbon Pig with the same weapon, then I— You get the idea. Two weeks of that.

But wait! There’s more! I managed to raffol something kinda interesting:

Transcription of the above image

Maple Administrator: Boom! Ta-da~!!

Purple Work Gloves ×1

I hope you like what you see! Thank you so much for helping us celebrate MapleStory’s birthday~!!

Unfortunately, the PWG has a measly 2⁢ WDef, so I won’t be wearing it. As much as having LUK on a glub is priddy naiz, it’s gonna be woarier gluvz for me all the weigh.

There is one other major activity I partook in that didn’t involve pigbopping: area-boss hunting. Mano respawns every 60⁢ min, & he’s largely uncontested on account of my being the only player online.

AFKing around until I can beat up Old Man(o) Snayle isn’t great EPH, but it does generate some mesor. As far as I know, Mano doesn’t drop any equipment. But… he does drop Sunrise Dew:

In fact, the above image is a fairly representative drop. Although Mano only drops a Dew about 50% of the time, he makes up for it by occasionally dropping a Subi as well — that’s 251⁢ mesos^[3] right there.

But what about Stumpers? Surely it must be even better, right?

Naturally, Stumpy puts up much more of a fight, so the potion cost is nontrivial. Worse still, whilst Mano is fairly close to 🍑, getting to Stumpy requires going all the way to Keming, & then all the way to Perion. I made this trek (both ways!) several times, but it was never really worth it. In fact, this is the best Stumpy drop I’ve ever seen:

A Sap of Ancient Tree is nothing to snea’s @, considering I’ll want at least ten for questificational purposes.^[4] However, Stumpy only has a 10% chance of dropping it, & doesn’t have any significant chance of dropping anything else of value (although it technically can drop equips).

Plus, one time, I waulkt all the d∗rn way to Perion just to find out that the Stumpers had been taken by a fellow Lronman!

It seems that this is the only purpose of the “Guild” field in the “Character Info” window: Ironman. Guilds otherwise don’t real. (Also notice that his job is listed as “Wizard”, leaving it entirely ambiguous as to whether he’s F/P or I/L.)

It is a bit unfortunate that I didn’t think to make myself iron(wo)man at (roughly speaking) character creation. I assumed that I’d somehow — in spite of being the only active player on the server (aside from Zaronys the ironman, apparently) — end up wanting to party with others or whatever; since MapleStory is, it is rumoured, an MMOG. O, 🐳. No gilled 4 me!

But L. Ron Men are aloud to have fun, too. …Sometimes. For instance, what could be more fun than the Game Zone™?

Anyway, this is a good chance to cash in my garbo — including these usefully-priced Maple Special Bentos:

And would you look at that! I hit the 100k⁢ meso mark for the first time!!

Plus, with a few of the scrolls I’ve racked up, I’ve managed two nifty upgrades. A Pig dropt a Cape for LUK 100%, & now my ORC is even ORCkier!:

Transcription of the item in the above image

Old Raggedy Cape (+1)

• Req lev : 25
• Category : cape
• LUK : +1
• Avoidability : +10
• Number of upgrades available : 4

The really big upgrade, though, came when I got (again from a Pig) a Scroll for Shoes for DEX. This rather misleadingly-named scroll is actually a scroll for shoes for AVOID 10%. I debated the idea of saving it for a higher-level shoe, but… Whitebottoms are amazing anyway. Plus, it’s just gonna boom regardless, right…?

Transcription of the item in the above image

Blue Whitebottom Boots (+1)

• Req lev : 26
• Category : shoes
• Weapon def. : 13
• Accuracy : +3
• Avoidability : +5
• Speed : +4
• Number of upgrades available : 4

Hoali sh∗rt!! Now that is what I call some B00TZ. These bad bois are never comin’ off my hooves.

XXX

All right, that’s all I got for ya. Let’s wrap this thing up.

Yeah, b∗nch! My mfing level starts with an mfing ⟨3⟩ now!! I’m basically epic!!!

Junk accumulation at the time of hitting level 30.
EPK ≝ expected Pig kills. ERK ≝ expected Ribbon Pig kills.

thing	#	EPK	ERK
meso	560 264
Omok Piece : Pig	100	?
Pig’s Head	57	5 700
Leather	142	9 467
Stiff Feather	86	[5]	2 150
Topaz Ore	20	6 667
Gold Ore	6	6 000
Mithril Ore	17		5 667
Amethyst Ore	12		6 000
Cape LUK 100%	1	33 333
Shoe AVOID 10%	1	33 333
Shield WDef 10%	2		66 667
Red Potion	804	contaminated

Wow! Just barely 100 omok pieces. Now I simply need another 100 of some other kind of omok piece…! 😅 The publicly-available droptables don’t specify, but we can estimate from this that the omok piece droprate for Pigs is something like ≈1⁄50 or so.

In any case, that’s roughly ≈12k Pig Beach kills. Oh, and I have over half a million mesos now. 😁

More importantly, I’m level 30. You know what that means: it’s 🌇 🦈 time.

What’s that? The Sky Shark set is level 25? Yeah, well, it just so happens that I only meet the STR requirement at level 30+. So it’s level 30 for me.

On the other hand, Sitting Bull already STR-checked me like twenty thousand years ago, so he has no choice but to pretend to be imprest by my progress since then:

It’s time for me to meet up with the one & only Warrior Job Instructor so that I can take the final warrior job advancement. 🙂 I’m sure he’s around here somewhere…

Ah! There you are.

Bring it on!!

Now, I know for a facked that I cannot hit Lupins — at least, certainly not consistently. But this is no mere Lupin. ’Tis a Lupin 2 — the sequel! And like all sequels, it’s worse than the original (10⁢ AVOID < 20, level 35 < 37). Remember MapleStory 2? Me neither.

Several litres of Red Potion jooce later (I really gotta pee), I’d proved that I was a hero:

After a lengthy negotiation, I used this proof to convince Sitting Bull to promote me to the rank of polearmwoman:

At long last, I’m allowed to use polearms! I guess it’s time to keep using my Pig Illustrated & not put any SP into any skills that might help me deal more damage.

Excellent. Speaking of weaponry, let’s take a peek at my level 30 gear:

type	name	+	slots	WDef	MDef	WAtk	STR	LUK	AVOID	SPEED	WAcc
helm	Bronze Viking Helm	1	6	21
earring	Lightening Earrings		5		10
tunic	Sky Shark		5	30						7
bottom	Sky Shark Skirt		7	24						5
mantle	Old Raggedy Cape	1	4					1	10
gauntlet	Venon		5	7
boot	Blue Whitebottom Boots	1	4	13					5	4	3
small mace	Pig Illustrated	1	6			44	1				10
ægis	Steel Shield		5	15
total				110	10	44	1	1	15	16	13

And finally, now that my damage output & HP/MP expenditure haven’t changed in any way, it’s time for level 30 quests — starting with Syumi’s:

Ahh… the polearmwoman life is EZ. 🍹 [schlrrrrbp] I haven’t fought anything yet, but I’m sure it’ll be just fine… Catch u l8r. 🧡

Footnotes for “Life’s a beach”

1. [↑] SGQ was added to GMS in v34 (2007-02-06), two versions after the addition of Amoria. The Ghost Stump can be found in the WZ data at least as early as (possibly earlier than) v28, however.

2. [↑] I just so happened to notice that in GMS v56 (2008-06-20), the WAtk of Pigs was reduced rather drastically 52 → 37. This coïncided with the release of Ariant, but more importantly, also coïncided with Mai being put in The Field East of Amherst, a revamp of the latter, the addition of Mai’s full “Training” questline, & the addition of the maps Hunting Ground Middle of the Forest I (mostly Slimes) & Hunting Ground Middle of the Forest II (mostly Pigs) connecting to The Field East of Amherst.

   The WAtk of Stumps was reduced 40 → 30, of Slimes 42 → 32, of Orange Mushrooms 52 → 42, & of Red Snails 35 → 27. The WAtks of Snails, Blue Snails, & Shrooms were unaffected. I assume there were also other large changes on Maple Island.

   It’s interesting to think how this major change was more-or-less slipped under the radar by the concurrent addition of a new region of the world (the Nihal Desert). For instance, What Came When in GMS (which I use frequently as a reference) describes v56 as simply “Ariant; Window[ed] Mode; Events Ended”. Moreover, although this set of changes was evidently intended to tweak the “tutorial UX”, it also significantly affected Victoria Island (& Amoria, if you consider it to be disjoint).

3. [↑] They cost 500⁢ mesos new, so that’s 500∕2 + 1 = 251. The extra 1 is because it drops with 1 star remaining, rather than 0.

4. [↑] The upper limit would seem to be 60 = 10 for “Jane’s Final Challenge” + 20 for “Sophia’s Snack” + 30 for “Elma’s Nependeath Juice”. However, I don’t think “Sophia’s Snack” exists in RS, & RS’s quest list agrees. “Elma’s Nependeath Juice” is a much greater concern since it does exist, & I really want that Bone Helm. However, RS’s quest list contradicts itself about whether this quest requires any Saps of Ancient Tree. Moreover, I’m actually not so sure that I want the Bone Helm anymore:

   	v12	v22
   req job	warrior	[none]
   req STR	150	0
   WDef	42	28
   STR	1	0
   SPEED	0	8
   JUMP	0	5

   You think RS backported the stats from later versions…? ’Cos if not, it’s just another warrior helm.

5. [↑] Pigs don’t drop Stiff Feathers in RS. Old School MapleStory Library is the only source I can find that claims that Stiff Feathers are absent from the Pig droptable; even Hidden Street as of 2005-06-11 disagrees.

Trellbent on arachnicide

Gaymers!! Y’all ready‽ …You know what? Don’t answer that. You’re not ready for this. Let’s just do it.

Transcription of the chat in the above image

Kokeshi: time for basically normal mage grinding
except weaker

pudu: hahahah

Welcome back to The Ludic Adventures Of pudu (that’s me) & Kokeshi (Shpongle, Taima). We’re still aspiring minifigs^® — if you dunno what that means, read the lassed episode, or czech out da roolz or smth.

We’re still haunting The Big Peach for now.

A pair of Amethyst Earrings is great; but where we’re going, we won’t need earrings. You see, originally, the basic idea was to miserygrind our way to level 30 — so that we wouldn’t pollute our PCs with non-Lūdus-Lake quest completions &c. — and then move to Lūdi & lock in (thus ascending to the true rank of minifig).^[1] But then, entirely serendipitously, a YouTuber^® by the name of Togain uploaded a new video detailing his experiment with locking into the Ēṓs Tower at level ten:

[📺 YouTube™] Togain — What happens when you enter EOS Tower at level 10? (2025-06-27)

In this video, Togain is playing Artale, which is a MapleStory Worlds™^® “server” thingy — basically, it’s like an MSPS, but jankier^[2] & ultimately controlled by Necksaughn™. Sounds great, right? It is, however, still pre-BB, so in spite of its many gameplay dissimilarities to MapleL5s, it’s still vaguely comparable.

Naturally, it takes only a moment of reflexion upon our rule #0 to yearn for the Togain experience:

0. Because your PC is (perhaps regrettably) not born in Lūdibrium, […]

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Kokeshi: want to try going to Twixters today?

pudu: oh sure!!

To Lūdi

We are, however, nowhere near Lūdibrium at the moment. It’s time for a lengthy migration.

Transcription of the chat in the above image

[…]

---

[arriving at Órbis]

Kokeshi: Not Ludi

pudu: yike

---

[on the ship from Órbis to Lūdibrium]

Kokeshi: simmering veggies (onion, garlic) in EVOO

And here we are.

Transcription of the text in the above image

omne lūdum et nūllum labōrem^[3]

Welcome to Lūdibrium!

Population: Eight thousand toys & counting

Since we hope to become citizens of Lūdi ourselves, we need to learn the local language. Kokeshi had been studying hard, so she had a leg up on reading the signs around town:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

pudu: can you read this sign
sorry im illiterate so you have to read everything to me

Kokeshi: PiRbRiP

pudu: ohhhh
that makes a lot of cents now

Kokeshi: ya

I quickly got to know Misky, who runs the local pharmacy:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

pudu: misky my love
always hard at work staring at the conveyor belts
just in case they stop conveying for any reason

Kokeshi: she is checking for defects

pudu: yeah imagine paying 190 whole mesos for a blue potion
and it has a crack in it and leaks all in ur inventory
now ur entire inventory is blue
and you have to remake ur character to get rid of the stain

Kokeshi: damg

pudu: terrible

Kokeshi: real and true

Soon enough, I was starting to get the hang of the local tongue (Lūdibrish? Lūdibrianese?):

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

pudu: 2AP:ZDIOW
im learning.

Kokeshi: language

Ultimately, however, we were here for the Ēṓs Tower. Having barely set foot in the Tower, we were already confronted by so many muroids:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

pudu: eep
i hate rats!!!!

Kokeshi: i bet these are called Mouze

pudu: oh true

First encounter with Trell

But we must go deeper.

That’s right: we’re here for the Trixters. In spite of their vaguely ominous name, they’re actually the least scary of all the Lūdic critters: they’re only level 23(!), their defences are reasonably low, & importantly, they couldn’t h∗ckin’ move sideways if their li’l plastic lives depended on it.

Clearly, this was our destiny, because our first Trickster^[4] kill already yielded a shiny equipment item!

But to get to the 트릭스터 sweet-spot, we needed to descend a score of floors… Which means flying in the LAF’s (= Lūdibrium Air Force, homophonous with laugh) airspace:

’Tis but a flesh wound. Off to the 73^rd floor!

One of the many, shall we say, virtues of the 黃蜘蛛^[6] is that they have a pretty decent droprate for Warrior Pills:

For us, though, this is The Grind™. Above all — & especially at this pre-lock stage — we need EXPs. Upon ascending to the respectable level of 23, Kokeshi underwent metamorphosis by way of Brown Doroness Robe & Ice Wand:

Transcription of the chat in the above image

Kokeshi: i have evolved

pudu: nice fit!!

Kokeshi: :3

Eventually, of course, the supplies graciously provided to us by Misky proved their finity. Rather than head all the way back to town, we decided to pay a visit to the grocer who was closer: Gumball Machine.

Bọ Xít Vàng^[7] don’t put up much of a fight, so I strongly prioritised MP pots for maximal Stab-Stab action:

After no brief time at Trell, Kokeshi was quite familiarised with the nifty drops that Twixtoes have to offer:

Both of these lack job & stat requirements! And the Red Starry Bandana that you see above is not to be confused with the Red Starry Bandana, which just so happens to have the exact same name & also be dropped by Trixters & also lack any job/stat requirements & also look almost identical. The one that you see above is the ✨special✨ level 30 (≠ 25) black (≠ dark blue) one that can only(!) be obtained from Trixters, and gives nifty +3 SPEED & JUMP boosts.^[8] Wowie.

The saga of Korin

After doing even moar penitence at Trell, we were finally high enough in level to do our final remaining pre-lock mission. We ascended the Tower back to Lūdibrium Village, visited Korin, & went right back down — to recover the girl’s lost memories.

And when I say “back down”, I really mean all the way down…

We stopt for a bit at the 3^rd floor, ’cuz we were gonna need the Ēṓs Rock Scrolls from Roly-Poly 10 soon enuff anyway:

All right, here we are! Welcome to the glorious forests of Omega — for the first & last time.

Upon speaking with Agent Macro, we learnt that Pieces of Memery only drop from Mateo. In search of Mateo, we ventured Off-Limits by telling the guards that we really had to go peep, & that we would be right back after “marking our territory” in alien territory.

Finding Mateon (rhymes with pee on) was therefore no problem at all. Beating him up & stealing his memes, on the other hand, proved more than a little challenging…

Eventually, with great strife, we managed to squeeze a modest, not to say small, Pees of Memory out of a Mateon:

However, that’s only 10% of the job done, & we’ve already used 90% of our resources (& 90% of our patience). So, since we’re not loct in yet… it’s totally legal to just turbocharge the h∗ck out of myself with my other (nonlocked 🤮) characters!

Amazingly, giving myself Diaper Body^[9] turned out to be a mistake, because I swiftly proceeded to neglect its timer’s lapse…

Anyway, we eventually extracted nine further memeries from the Mateons — although they were sure to hold out on that precious 10^th meme.

Why did we embark upon this mission — evidently too high-level for us — in the first place? Well, after bringing the requisite pieces of memory to Agent Marco, he combined them into one big Korin’s Memory (apparently nothing other than an Aquamarine). All that remains is to give the Aquamarine back to Korin — in Lūdi — & thus collect our rewards. Therefore, if we could just smuggle this one (1) innocent littol quest item into our Lūdilock, then we could licitly accept the quest’s rewards as true minifigs.

Fortunately, someone — whomever it might be 👀 — put these two smol exceptions to rule #2, either one of which alone would be sufficient to allow Korin’s Memory to be imported through the locking process:

• Exception: You may bring with you any items that are marked as “Quest Item” (formally: items that have info/quest = 1).
• Exception: You may bring any untradeable Etc items with you.

Locking in & becoming fully-fledged minifigs

However, this means that we can’t just complete the quest willy-nilly. We gotta lock in first!!

Cool! A Scroll for Helmet for WDef 60%! Actually pretty nice — at least, once I can find a damb hat. Plus, the EXP was (just barely) enough to get me to level 27~!

Mind you, the absolute mess that we made of Korin’s home in the above image is not for nothing: we’re now officially cold, naked, & afraid! You can’t tell on account of my cosmetic gear (we’re keepin’ it PG), but I am fully in my birthday suit now, wielding nothing but a Stinger (= level 22 dagger) with which to fend off the elements.

We do, however, get to keep a whopping thirty thousand (30 000) mesors:

Transcription of the above image

Kokeshi: lets see how many pots 30k⁢ mesoes gets us

pudu: yea haha
the answer: not very many
destitution

---

[75 White Potions & 37 Blue Potions, leaving 170⁢ mesos remaining]

Welcome to the minifig lyfe.

Evidently thinking ourselves to be pretty fr∗ggin’ kewl now that we were Lūdilockers frfr, we decided to shop around for training locations. Not only is Terrace Hall (less ceremoniously yclept Teddies) the closest to where we bought our meagre rations, but it (the Brown Teddy) also had the appeal of being virtually tied for second-weakest species in all of LEGOLAND^® Lūdi.

The above image gives an idea of the closest thing that a melee attacker — & ā fortiōrī myself, with the puniest reach of them all — has to a typical “safe spot” here. There are two smol platforms (one on the right, & the left one not pictured above) which I can hit from here, but, as evidenced above, Theodores can yump up from below, making the spot not so “safe” after all. Worse, the two smol platforms don’t really replenish their own spawns, ’cos they’re jus too smol.

As a result, I pretty much danced around the floor, stabbing & dodging wherever I c—

Whoa! A Golden Pride!! I’m basically rich n—

I… did not have a Safety Charm. F7. I really did press the White Pot button in time, though — multiple times, in fact. Up till now, I’ve just been dying through sheer negligence. But apparently that was insufficient to satisfy K∗mmy’s interminable lust for the pixel-blood of Maplers, so she had to resort to chicanery.

Hoping to propitiate the MapleL5s gods, Kokeshi sacrificed herself too:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

pudu: OMG NAURR

Kokeshi: ah!

pudu: rest in lego pieces

Denial

It was by now patent that, in spite of my incredible Golden Pride luck, waging protracted war against Theodore was simply unsustainable. Already, I was beginning to doubt the sanity of our ruleset.

But we trudged onward. Perhaps Drummer Bunnies could promise more? To the 89^th floor!

We were desperately hoping that Drummer Bnuuy’s Lair would have a safe spot or two. Drummer Bunnies actually have an extremely important droptable, largely because they’re the sole source of shields that aren’t warrior-only or mage-only: Pan Lids. Being a dagger-wielding thief, I could really use some of those. Moreover, they drop some good common weapons: Aluminum Baseball Bat, Golden Snowboard, & Red Whip. Perhaps most importantly for me at this stage, they also drop the Blue Steal & its corresponding trousers. In addition to the common weapons, Kokeshi also benefits from any Black Lutia (level 30 mage glub) or Fairy Wand (level 38) drops.

Anger

Naturally, we were disappointed to find that the Drummer Bnuuy’s Lair does not, in fact, have anything resembling a safe spot.

I think you know where this is going.

Depression

We’re back. Oh, we are so back — but not in a good way.

Last thing I remember, I was
Near the hundredth floor.
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before.
“Relax”, said the Trixter;
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave.”

Acceptance

Transcription of the above image

pudu: im feeling oddly comforted by these spiders rn
i didnt want to go back to trell
but
now i have stockholm syndrome cos ive seen what its like outside of
trell

See! It’s… not so bad. Right?

Transcription of the above image

Kokeshi: watching you basic att them down there
hurts

pudu: LMAOO
im in pain

Kokeshi: i can feel your suffering
and am amazed

The bright side is that, although probably(?) not as economically favourable as Artale, MapleL5s is certainly far less stingy than RS is with drops:

Funny Time Maker

Maybe you’ve heard, & can recall, the “background” music that plays here — it’s called “Funny Time Maker”. It’s the same music that you’d hear as, for example, LPQ waiting roomb music.

“Funny Time Maker” has something of a marching band vibe to it — you know, think J. P. Sousa or something. This vibe emanates from basically two things: the instrumentation — snare, pitched bass-drum, hand-held cymbals, xylophones, & proper wind instruments (H–S 42) — & the very crisply rhythmic, square, & essentially single-melody-driven texture that makes use of a somewhat syrupy diatonic language.^[10]

This prevailing vibe is mildly diluted by the use of composite chordophones (H–S 32): a violin-family section & a harp. The result is a quite lush orchestration, & I think that the specific intent was to evoke theme park music — like that of LEGOLAND^®, for instance!

It’s a great piece of music. Nonetheless, I think that one would have to be, shall we say, quite “dedicated” to have the BGM on for one’s entire time at Trell. Trell is already bad enough, even without the assistance of a single piece of music — itself not even managing to surpass the two-minute mark — repeating ad nauseam.

…But what if “Funny Time Maker” were, mayhap, a little easier listening? A lighter sort of music? Perhaps even “remixed” (if we can call it that) by the experts over at the Jazz Fusion Bar in Kerning City? Maybe then the fine inhabitants of Trell could listen to it limitlessly…

Whither Lūdilock?

Anyway. As you can see, we clearly doom’d ourselves slightly by locking in at level 26〜27 instead of 30 (& ideally at ≈90%⁢ EXP or whatever). But we’ll get to 30 eventually, & when we get there, we’ll have more resources available to us than the freshly-loct LEGOman would have.

Then again, this has also led me to seriously reconsider da roolz. In retrospect, I really have no clue how I came up with the 30k⁢ meso starting allowance — which, to be fair, I came up with at the request of Zhiloone long before I thought I (or really anyone else) would actually play the ruleset. On the one hand, less allowance potentially makes the beginning overly difficult to the point of… well, indefinite d∗ngnation to Trell. On the other, more allowance potentially removes the crucially important difficulty at the beginning (= ䷂). Moreover, it potentially places a greater burden upon the nascent LEGOlocker to accumulate enough excess meso-value (admittedly including most of their inventory’s sell-to-NPC price) so that they can start their minifig journey on the same footing as anyone else.^[11]

Another quirk to note is that nonweapon equipment purchasable in Lūdi (viz. from Miru) is typically not wearable at the time of locking, because it’s level >30 — but there are two significant exceptions: Red Triangular Shield & Red Cross Shield, both of which are warrior-only shields. Warriors can therefore have something of an incomplete-nudity advantage at lock-time if their allowance is large enough & they choose to spend it on a shield.

With that in mind, the MapleR4s LEGOman challenge upon which our version is based evades this problem entirely by not giving a meso allowance at all; instead, the fresh LEGOman gets 300 White Pills & 150 Mana Elixir Pills. In meso terms, at Misky’s prices, this amounts to 189k⁢ mesos. If we swap the pills with their liquid equivalents, this instead amounts to 179.55k⁢ mesos. This is almost exactly sixfold(!) the allowance currently given by our ruleset.

I dislike the MapleR4s version, because I prefer the player to have total freedom in their ability to spend — & save! — their allowance. Upping this allowance to MapleR4s’s 180k⁢ mesos would allow for immediately purchasing the 25⁢ WDef shield (for 100k), but not the 30⁢ WDef shield (200k). I don’t think this to be a huge problem. If there is a huge problem, it’s that nonwarrior-nonmage jobs (most notably nonodd dits, but also some odd jobs) evidently have a shield disadvantage in general, even at “endgame”.^[12]

And the real problem is that any increase (or decrease) in the allowance is a constant effect (in the mathematical sense). If we wanna give melee jobs (including e.g. a gish, who must certainly want to exercise what makes a gish a gish) a fighting chance, then we have to account for the reality of touch-damage. It’s always possible to bootstrap: HP & MP regenerate naturally, the PC presumably has The Relaxer, & she can probably (excepting some odd-jobbed cases in which equipment is generally less wearable) fight some monsters that drop useful equipment. But how long will this bootstrapping from negative MPH to nonnegative MPH take? The player has no recourse to less expensive training methods (as they would on Vicky Island, Maple Island, &c.): to basic-attack is gratis, but getting sufficiently close to an enemy to do so is generally not.

Thus, we have: “spend 90% of your time in The Relaxer” vs. “enjoy an indefinite stay in Trell”.

I’ve my doubts that MapleR4s is really so different from MapleL5s that transposing its LEGOman ruleset onto MapleL5s would cause an excessive spike in the rules’ hostility toward fresh PCs. Therefore, although either of the following could conceivably be implemented to reduce said hostility…:

• Allow more equipment — aside from just the weapon — to be imported through the locking process. The main problem here is that, once an item is imported, it’s in there for good. Or bad. One would therefore presumably want to restrict the provenance of such equipment even more strictly, to prevent things like e.g. Bathrobes from leaking into Lūdilock.
• Increase the level limit for locking from 30 to, for instance, 35.

…I think that just upping the allowance is probably fine — at least, for now. Maybe treble it to 90k? Double that to 180k? Who knows. Between that, & starting the lock at the top of level 30 (instead of the top of 26), the struggle would hopefully be the right kind of manageable. And again, I’m very open to other interpretations & research — I’m just glad that we’re testing this ruleset before anyone else becomes interested in playing it!^[13]

#TrellLyfe

But Stockholm syndrome is real, & I love Trell now. I have my eye trained on the prize: transcending nudity & making Lūdibrium my playground! Until then, Trell lyfe is the lyfe for me.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Kokeshi: trell 4 LIFE
*lifts shirt sleeve revealing gigantic trell tattoo*

pudu: LMAO

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Footnotes for “Trellbent on arachnicide”

1. [↑] There is one minor complication, even with this original plan — but we’ll get to that later.

2. [↑] The extra superjankiness is, as I understand it(…?), largely ironed out of the ordained Chosen One™ of the Korean (i.e. original) MapleStory Worlds™: Mapleland. The extent of the collaboration between Necks0n Korea™ & the lead developer of Mapleland (the latter being a widely-respected dev in the Korean MSPS community) isn’t clear to me; I’m basically just reporting English-language hearsay.

   To indulge a bit further in speculation, it would seem that Artale (or any Worlds™ server that might’ve come to occupy its position) is the bastard child of an accidental temporal gap. There’s decent reason to believe that the (as of this writing) upcoming official “old-school” GMS server (developed & operated by Necksawn America™) is built on substantially the same technology as Worlds™. This places it in an analogous position to Mapleland, with the exception that Necksawn America™ has no widely-respected MSPS devs available to them, because the MSPS scene outside of Korea is modestly more pathetic than some crabs in a bucket.

   Releasing Worlds™ earlier than the official “old-school” GMS, then, was presumably a simple practical decision: the Korean version had already been fully operational for a while, & releasing the two separately allows for two separate cash-ins. Worlds™ was, therefore, essentially dumpt unceremoniously onto the heads of GMS’s target demographics, who then had to collectively scramble to put together the available tools to make things like e.g. Artale. The result is that Artale & al. were always destined to be superjank, & any “old-school Maple” of its kind was also destined to be trampled by the announcement (& ideally, release…) of the official version.

3. [↑] “All play and no work”.

   Latin lūdus “play, game, sport; fun, diversion; primary school” > lūdum (accusative case), lūdibrium “mockery, derision, farce; laughing-stock; toy, trivial game”.

4. [↑] This is, by the way, the original spelling in GMS.

5. [↑] “Lūdibrium’s Newspaper”.

6. [↑] “Yellow spider”. This is the TMS name. The CMS name is, perhaps confusingly, 绿(lǜ)蜘(zhī)蛛(zhū) “green spider”, contrasted with the seemingly greener (albeit striped with red) 红(hóng)蜘(zhī)蛛(zhū) “red spider”.

7. [↑] “Yellow Stinkbug”. “Yellow Spider” would be Nhện Vàng.

8. [↑] MapleL5s inherited this rather confusing arrangement from XiuzSource (which might’ve, in turn, inherited it from an earlier OdinMS repack). In XiuzSource, Trixters drop both of these ’dannas at a droprate of 2 400 each. This number doesn’t mean anything on its own; nonetheless, it seems (I’d love to be proved wrong on this one) that — assuming vanilla XiuzSource, 1× serverwide droprate, &c. — this amounts to an effective droprate of 1⁄500 (for each Red Starry Bandana individually).

   In retail MapleStory, the special one (level 30, black, has SPEED & JUMP) was an event item (as suggested by its IID of 1002454), & never dropped from any monsters.

   The top comment (from AzureTime) on this Reddit™^® post (2023-06-22; archived) reads:

   The Jump Start coupon was a voucher that lets you make a level 50 Dual Blade.

   The free character came with a black variant of the red starry bandana. You still had to pay nx for the 2nd/3rd job mastery books, which sucked.

   However, the “Maple BigWigs” event and its associated Jump Start Character Coupon date to GMS v114 (2012-07-26), making this firmly post-BB.

   The special ’danna first shows up in the GMS data in either v31 or v32 (2006-11-07 or 2006-12-06). According to What Came When in GMS, this would coïncide with either a Thanksgiving event, or the release of Amoria alongside a Maplemas & New Year’s event.

9. [↑] I do apologise for the peep jokes. I promise there’ll be no more — my bladder’s empty.

10. [↑] Indeed, the sections that I transcribed turned out to be entirely restricted to F major — a particularly friendly key for marching band music!

11. [↑] This last point might seem overly cautious in the context of MapleStory implementations like MapleL5s & MapleR4s (the latter being home to the original LEGOman challenge 2020-01-03), where meso-value is relatively easy to come by, especially by level 30+. Nonetheless, we’d still like to account for at least four things:

    • That we expect some players to be coming at this challenge effectively ironman from level 1 onwards, either for reasons of purity (e.g. Kokeshi & pudu’s original intent) or because they come to the server (MapleL5s in our case) for the arealocks/metallics exclusively.
    • That any new aspiring minifig (veteran & newb alike) will naturally want to get to the meat of it — viz. level 30 — as quickly as possible, because prelock is prelude. If this results in a pre-lock ineconomy, then so be it.
    • That the player is not being challenged on their ability to thrive outside of LEGOman, but rather within it.
    • That we might hope for the ruleset to be reasonably portable between various MapleStories (so long as they’re pre-BB & have Lūdi, of course).

12. [↑] This cannot really be “solved” (i.e. it’s a fact of the Lūdi lyfe). For example, it’s insufficient to allow an equipped shield to be an exception to rule #2 in the same way that an equipped weapon is (with all its stipulations), because shield scrolls are a significant element of Lūdilock.

13. [↑] Such optimism!

---

(…cnvpstdf…)

cnvpstdf

Transcription of the above image

Kokeshi: i would rather die from drugs than cyanide

pudu: same
i dont have a choice tho
im already dead so
my f8 is seals [≈ my fate is sealed]
arf arf

Kokeshi: arf, arf
deer used to say that
when she was alive

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Shpongle: only Oddjobs allowed

Cortical: I CANT SIT

Shpongle: i dont make the rules

cervid: ig ur not a real odd job

Shpongle: take it up with @mapleadmin

lv1000boss: yeah sorry cort we only let you in cuz we felt bad
but this is the oddjobs seat

Shpongle: do you even own the Queasy emote?

Cortical: hey guys
im starting an oddjobs seat :D
if ur an oddjob come sit here!

lv1000boss: do you hear something

cervid: i think it was teh wind

Shpongle: only distant bleating

lv1000boss: i think i vaguely hear the sound of someone not losing thier lunch

cervid: strange

Cortical: I HAVE THE POWER OF GOD AND ANIME ON MY SIDE

Shpongle: no Queasy and no Gomushin… hmm…

Cortical: DONT MAKE ME TOKIHANATSU [unleash] IT ON U
guys the teacher said u had to let me be friends with u

Transcription of the above image

lv1000boss: i think we did a lot today

cervid: yuhh

Shpongle: deer could have tried harder
shes not even using magic

cervid: i haven’t figured out how the magic thing works :/
Heinz dident teach me shiet

lv1000boss: what kind of nerd cant use magic

cervid: IDK
my fiairy isn’t cooperating

Shpongle: Heinz the ketchup wizard

cervid: i have yet to exercise absolute mastery over all 57 varieties

Transcription of the above image

cervid: plunger is just a knockoff fusion mace

Shpongle: i doubt you could unclog a toilet with a Fusion Mace, though
Plunger > Fusion Mace

cervid: ok but does plunger combine the powers of rock music and jazz

Shpongle: perhaps not…

cervid: thats what i thought

Shpongle: but the Jazz Fusion bar does require both
fusion and plunger

Transcription of the above image

[automated Super Megaphone]: [Zooey] (ch 01): got a Maple Bandana Red via Maple Admin using Red Presents! Congrats!

cervid: grats to Zooey

Shpongle: [Zooey]

cervid: sorry
grats to [Zooey]

Transcription of the above image

Shpongle: ya im gonna flop down to sleep soon
take off my cowboy hat and cowboy boots
say the Pledge of Allegiance
fire off the ol rifle a couple times

lv1000boss: murica

Cortical: shoot a firework

Shpongle: eat some Jello, maybe put on a Band-Aid just for fun

lv1000boss: tip a cow

cervid: stand on a scale to get ur body weight in pounds

Cortical: bob for some apples in the bath

Shpongle: then i’ll go tip money in a restaurant
then take a nice sleep in the bed of my Chevy

Cortical: at the levee

Shpongle: of course

cervid: how sweet

---

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Credits

• “Sad Trombone” is due to Joe Lamb (CC BY 3.0 Unported).
• “Funny Time Maker” is due to one or more anonymous individuals employed by Wizet between the years 2001 & 2003.

---

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(An interview with the author)

Interviewer: Have you seen a counsellor, psychologist, psychiatrist, or other mental health professional before?

deer: Yuh.

I: Are you currently under the influence of alcohol or non-prescribed drugs?

d: Probably not.

I: Pardon?

d: Did you lace the cracker you gave me?

I: No.

d: Good. That would be rather rude.

I: …Right, then. Do you believe yourself to be a danger to yourself or others?

d: I’m ferocious.

I: It’s a yes or no question.

d: Nert.

I: Okay. Do you know why you’re here?

d: …

I: …

d: I forget.

I: I’m just going to ask you some questions, if that’s okay. About what you’ve been doing.

d: I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t even involved!

I: You’re not in trouble.

d: Kay.

I: It says here that you’ve been playing “odd-jobbed characters” and “area-locks”.

d: Mmm.

I: And these two are the same sort of thing?

d: Nope.

I: My understanding is that they’re both self-imposed… laws? With punishments for breaking the laws.

d: All jobs, odd or not, are self-imposed in exactly the same way. Your job is defined by how and what you choose for your character. And there are no punishments. That wouldn’t make any sense.

I: Then how are the laws enforced?

d: Surveiller et punir ! Comment pourrait-il être autrement ? [To discipline and punish! How could it be otherwise?] [laughs]

I: Mkay. Erm… So it is a form of self-punishment?

d: Nooo…

I: You don’t feel some sort of masochism.

d: I do not.

I: Have you ever engaged in intentional self-harm?

d: No! Please.

I: Sorry. So they’re not “laws” in the usual sense?

d: No, not in the bourgeois sense. More in the egoïc sense.

I: Mkay. So both an odd job and an area-lock are tied to a given character?

d: In the barest possible sense, yes. But we don’t usually think of a character’s location as part of its job — especially since characters can, you know, move. Plus, an area-lock is, at least sometimes — usually, really — tied to the whole group who decide to do the lock together. So it’s not really part of the character in that case. Same with an ironman; they’re only ironman ’cause they don’t have a group and stuff. On the other hand, the character’s job is private, isolated. It’s an individual thing — des Einzigen!

I: Okay, the literary references are a little heavy-handed. This is, like, a spontaneous interview format. Don’t make it weird.

d: Right, sorry.

I: [clears throat] So you only play crippled characters?

d: [sneezes]

I: Bless you.

d: Thank you. I feel blest.

I: Okay.

d: What was the question, again?

I: You only play crippled characters, then?

d: My characters are not crippled! They’re just like that.

I: But you made them like that on purpose.

d: That’s exactly the point. And calling them “crippled” implies that they can’t fend for themselves, or something. I do just fine.

I: But they’re weaker than normal characters.

d: No.

I: …Yes.

d: I wrote a whole essay about this. In which, mind you, I prove — prove!! — that odd jobs are for everyone. Even people who think they don’t like them or don’t wanna be weak.

I: You… write essays about this?

d: Yer.

I: Oh dear.

d: Yes?

I: No, I meant—

d: [laughs]

I: …So, are all your characters odd or area-locked?

d: Nurt.

I: Why? It sure seems like they are.

d: “Normal” characters just don’t occupy that much space — at least, a lot of the time.

I: Space?

d: Well, some games are funner than others, or maybe you just want to try them. But all those games, together, make up a space; like a game space. Subspaces are subgames, or something like that.

I: That’s “space” in the mathematical sense?

d: I’m hungry.

I: …Do you want another deer cracker?

d: Yez please.

I: [brief sigh] Okay.

d: [with mouth full] Thambk youb. I […unintelligible…]

I: …

d: [swallows] Needs peanut butter.

I: We don’t have peanut butter.

d: That’s a shame.

I: You were saying something about spaces?

d: Yeah, so, there are just a lot of ways that you wanna play the game, and only some of them are considered “normal”. And then you’re optimising, as it were, for enjoyment.

I: You’re just playing for fun, then.

d: It is a videogame.

I: Okay. So there isn’t anything special about odd jobs or other ways of playing a game?

d: Not for anyone in particular, no.

I: For how long have you been doing these things?

d: …I want a lawyer.

I: It’s— You don’t have to answer the question.

d: …

I: I’ll give you another deer cracker if yo—

d: Pretty much as long as I’ve played videogame. [sic] Like, I guess playing an Über in Toontown. I was very small. In real life, I mean.

I: Has this had any impact on your wellbeing?

d: What? No. I’m normal.

I: Sure.

d: Okay…

I: …

d: I’m bored of writing this.

I: All right. Bye.

d: Bye.

[audio recording ends]