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rangifer’s diary: pt. cxlvi: Welcome to Phœnix

Sooo… remember when I said?:

I have, per my contract, a mandated minimum of one (1) new character creation per diary entry. For each additional character, I get a bonus […]

Yeahhh…

Slightly more seriously, Rift (who will also be Rift here — don’t worry, the confusion is temporary) was frustrated with RS and wanted to give Phoenix a shot. I didn’t feel the same way, but I did feel bad for slightly misjudging Phoenix when I came across it in my surtch for not-MapleL5s which termin8’d at, naturally, our cherisht RS. Also Phoenix worx like an absolute charm on Lin Knucks.^[1] Also also I was going through a very bad time at that moment so I should take this opportunity to thank Rift for putting up with me completely randomly & wordlessly disappearing for hours at a time.

It me, heteroprox. I went extinct twelve million years ago but here I am. ✨

You may’ve noticed that the above screenshot looks a little… “neo-Maple”, as Taima says. For instance, even the dirt & grass are an insult to good taste different from the original artwork, almost like Necs0n^® hired new artists and tasct them with the job of desecrating the sacred work of Wizet. To understand how this profanation could’ve weezl’d its way into an MSPS, we need a brief explanation of what do h∗cc Phoenix even is.

Phoenix was releast on 2018-11-22 as a GMS v1–based progressive MSPS. That means they started out with v1 but planned to release upd8s pari passu with how they were releast in GMS. Phoenix took this progressive idea (a not terribly original one at the time) to a level of anal-retention that is to my knowledge unsurpast: every single pre-BB patch (pure bugfix patches notwithstanding) was emulated, to the extent possible, in the original order, and I think(?) on roughly the same schedule, too.

But what exactly is the “endgame” of such an MSPS? Phoenix’s answer is threefold:

• Big Bang was v93, so stop at v92.
• Avoid implementing certain classes:
  • No 4^th-grade classes.
  • No post-pirate classes (Cygnus, dualblade, Aran, Evan).
• Add elective restriction-based rulesets into the game itself.

Because its entire raison d’être is to precisely mimic the original, Phoenix can only “improve” itself — or rather, attempt to shield itself from the contradictions of the original — by suppression: Big Bang must be supprest (obviously), the 4^th grade must be supprest (never mind its value or the contradictions already in the 3^rd), and players can suppress their own game-mechanics and get ranked against other PCs for it.

Does that make sense? No? Good. Let’s cheque it out.

Surely no MSPS could screw up the inherently immaculate first few levels

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Yoona: seriously considering moving to Vic & changing my name to Jane

Mai: release me from hell

Bari: i’m too old for this shit

Depending on your persuasion you may or may not be disappointed to learn that Sera’s master lissed of restrixions doesn’t include “No downjump”.

Transcription of the above

Sera: You are no longer able to enable new restrictions.

Below you will be able to disable current restrictions but not enable new restrictions. Choose wisely.

• Four slots
• Hardcore
• Ironman
• AP Randomizer
• 0.5× Exp
• SP Randomizer
• Area Restricted

• I’m done here.

Honestly, as far as this kinda thing goes, it’s a pretty decent selexion: Four slots means only four inventory slots (presumably per inventory), Hardcore is permadeath, Ironman is ironman, AP Randomizer could just mean having roughly x⧸x⧸x⧸x base stats if it’s implemented in the most obvious way (which it might not be), 0.5× EXP is pain, etc..

One peculiar side-effect of adopting the post-“Big Bang”iest of pre-“Big Bang” versions is that there’s a lot more UI… stuff.

Transcription of the tooltips in the above image

Place the mouse cursor over the skill icon for details about a specific skill.

---

Click on the button to assign the SP and raise the skill level.

---

You may raise your skill levels by assigning the SP you have on the skills.

Inch rest tingly, the Training Camp (= Inside the Small Forest) is actually kinda nice? Certainly superior to the green appo suit Camp, at least for those campers who like to get some fresch air.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Rift: camper time
this is the map
i got to [level] 48 ub
in*

Yes, Rift actually had a level 48 camper in GMS! An incredible feat of unmatcht masochism. We also see that Rift is very familiar with these late–pre-BB versions, so as we go on, he’ll be generally much less shoct than I.

So, there’s “UI stuff”, and then there’s this:

That’s not UI stuff, that’s just taking my stats away from me. Granted, it stops mattering @ level 8〜11 or whatever, but I would like to freely enjoy all levels of suffering tyvm.

Here’s the real UI stuff.

Anywho, there’s nothing but NPC & Grean Snayl between the Camp & Amherst, at which point there are even more NPCs (+ boxes). In search of some h∗ckin’ action, we kept going through Amherst to… Entrance to Adventurer Training Center?

Earlier I mentioned that I slightly misjudged Phoenix a while back, and therefore skipt over it entirely. In particular, I didn’t realise they scrapt the 4^th grade (& post-pirate classes) entirely. Although lacking the 4^th grade doesn’t actually improve anything as such, it would seem to hint at, perhaps, a v92 server that had trimmed the excesses (soda’s beak) to at least make it playable, if still basically vanilla slop.^[3] But I think this is right about where I woulda jumpt ship if I had tour’d this server by my lonesome.

A dece Training Camp is dece, but at this point we’re just turning the entirety of Maple Island into little more than a bloated extension of said Camp: only one (1) map where you actually fite monsters; your stats don’t matter (and you’re not even allowed to know what they are anyway); nothing deals a meaningful amount of damage to you; how do I exit the nightmare dimension; & so on.

But maybe it gets better somehow. Let’s keep going along this completely flat, linear path we unwillingly accept as a substitute for the real Maple Island.

I’m sorry, but what the f∗c? At this point I’m not even gonna asc whether it’s possible to job-advance on Maple Island. I don’t wanna know.

Alright, let’s gtfo of the worst version of Maple Island I’ve ever witnest.

False

Here on Vicky the first thing I noticed is that partyquests are more tightly integrated into the UI.

Transcription of the right pane of the above

🟢 Moon Bunny’s Rice C..

Over Level 10

---

[…] full moon at Primrose Hill. Tory of Mushroom Park is looking for brave explorers that are willing to help Growlie get Moon Bunny’s Rice Cake.

If you wish to see the Moon Bunny, you’ll have to plant the Primrose Seed at a designated spot to bring out the full moon. Protect the Moon Bunny from wild monsters so the Moon Bunny can make 10 rice cakes.

• Time Limit : 10⁢ min
• Participants : 3〜6
• Rewards : A Rice Cake on Top of My [Head]

---

Find NPC

In earlier versions (even late-ish ones like v62), partyquests aren’t meaningfully “quests” in almost any way, at least if we mean quest in the Maple sense. Shoving PQs into the quest UI doesn’t suddenly make them quests, but I tentatively appreciate the attempt to bring the two closer together, and certainly appreciate the attempt to make people more aware of PQs.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

heteroprox: also the sky background
is really bad

Rift: its scuffed as hell
LOL

I don’t wanna h8 2 much on purely visual-aesthetic blemishes caused by increasing the client display’s resolution beyond þͤ olde 800×600, because I do enjoy these modifications and I’m aware that there’s no easy way to make them “flawless”. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Lith Harbour this scuft, that’s all I’m sayin’.

On a nigh-abandoned server such as this, we need some roughly instant, global way to find other players. RS could use some additional tools, but @online is a pretty good start. Phoenix goes a different route.

Transcription of the above

Rift: there isnt an easy way i saw
for this server
to see who is online

heteroprox: ah darn

Rift: but i did see people smegaing
but it wasnt smega
it was light blue?

heteroprox: ooh

Rift: dunno
ive seen some servers use the messenger
as a server wide chat

Kyanite [worldchat]: *touches you gently up and down*

heteroprox: ok

Rift: LOL

heteroprox: what

Grizzly [worldchat]: 123

Rift: what are those
see thats what i was talkin about
i think u can just talk to whoever is on

heteroprox: OH
there’s World chat

Rift: ahhhhh

heteroprox: press 8

Rift: oh!
i see in dropd[o]wn

Kyanite [worldchat]: wc sry was meant for my discord kitten

Rift: discord kitten
nice

[system message]: World Chat is only available to accounts with verified emails.

heteroprox: oh i dont have a verified email

[I check my email]

[system message]: You have received 1000⁢ Maple Points.
Email Verification processed.

heteroprox [worldchat]: its ok although admittedly that was a rude introduction to world chat

Rift: wow nice

heteroprox: that was fast

I won’t lie, getting virtually “touched up and down” 😨 gave me a start, partly on account of worldchat not looking clearly distinct from allchat. Otherwise it’s not a bad feature, especially for a server of this sighs.

As an almost immediate consequence of my single (1) worldchat message, a gilled invite was forwarded to me, whereupon I accepted entry into the prestigious gild noan as Café.

Transcription of the above

[system message]: You have entered the guild.

PewPew [guild chat]: welcome

Grizzly: WELCOME

heteroprox: oh hi

days: welcome

PewPew: new player?

heteroprox: thank you!
i just downloaded it yes hahah

PewPew: nice

days: nice

PewPew: hope u enjoy ur stay
ask if u need any help/advice

heteroprox: ok ty!

Naturally I took the First Flight to pirate (obviously, obviously). Since this was the first opportunity to control or even observe my own stats, no configuration was reasonable other than 4⧸20⧸4⧸4. So I had quite a bit of AP to spend:

I’m not sure exactly what Auto-assign I and Auto-assign II do. I assume one is STR-based & the other DEX-based but beyond that I choose to pretend I never saw them… 🫥

Upon exiting Kyrin’s lair I found that a rather peculiar sort of monster had spawn’d whilst I was chatting with my honoured sensei.

Presumably intended to be similar to “Auto-assign”, there are weird little SP allocation “hints”:

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

heteroprox: it wants me to spend my first sp on dash
questionable SP build ngl

Rift: LOL

Honestly I think the SP hints are just griefing. I don’t mind since I get some comic relief from the wacky nonsense it suggests, often completely changing its mind at a moment’s notice.

Somewhat ironically the yellow arrows actually caused me to get lossed. I wanted to follow them just to see where they’d take me, but as soon as I entered Mid Floor – Hallway, the yellow arrows disappeared and I felt pretty zdoobid. Eventually I pict the chrale up again, and it led me to On the Way to the Harbor where I met for the first time in my Maple career an NPC by the name of Power B. Fore.

Okay, well, clearly I must do what the yellow arrows command of me, so let’s go.

Basically it’s the most boring possible map of all time, feat. some Grushies & some Piggos.

After about 90⁢ seconds I never wanted to see this map ever again, so I went out wessed. By this point PewPew had enough time to hunt me down, FJing his nightlord hermit self directly to my location.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

heteroprox: hi
ooo
noo
its ok HAHA
pls

PewPew: nah ur good
early game is rough here

heteroprox: thats so much money LOL

PewPew: its a small portion of what i end up making in a day

I appreciate it, I do. Considering that’s some ≈1.2M⁢ mesos’ worth of stuff, I feel a bit like I just robbed a bank except the bank is just one man. 😵

Unfortunately, at this moment I had a severe allergic reaction to the massive donation and fr∗∗king dyed.

🪦

Brigandry

Now that I was fully deceased, I had only two (2) options: never play Phoenix ever again, or make another character. Clearly the former makes the most cents @ this r8, but Rift wanted to keep playing and was gonna remake Rift anyway (I think he also made a Dizz to play whenever I was mysteriously incapacitated) so I think I have an idea. 💡

I happen to recall that BBB’s entry on the bandit class claims that Steal is a multi-target attack (4 targets @ max level). This is certainly not true in GMS v62 nor any earlier version, but if BBB really is “Before ‘Big Bang’” then it should be true in v92 and therefore Phoenix.

As it happened, this radical change to an iconic yet paradoxically underappreciated skill — which also increased its per-target damage to 130% and made it stun for 4⁢ s — was the product of the skill rebalance patch in GMS v86 (2010-06-16; Golden Temple, numerous new quests).

The result is clear: there’s no reason to play Phoenix unless you’re playing a brigand.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Rift: she could have talked slightly over normal volume
no letter reqd
should have paper airplaned it

It seams that Please Bring This Letter To Lucas has lost its entire purpose, but that won’t stop me from snagging a 🆒 Brown Skullcap from it.

Speaking of vestiges, I found one (1) littol edge tile @ the Adventurer Chraining Scenter from the daze of oalled.

With heteroprox, I never came across these things @ Lith ’cos we took the taxi anyway:

Now that’s what I call an eyesore! Fortunately these statues are just here to give new players a thoughtful, well-written tutorial to the five non-0^th-grade archetypes, and not to do anything silly like acting as a glorified taxi. Right?

Transcription of the above

Thief Statue: In order to make the job advancement, you must visit the Dark Lord at the Fusion Jazz Bar in Kerning City.Would you like to be transported there now?-The transportation service cost reduction cannot be used once you make the job advancement.- [sic]

• Yes
• No

We’re here for the new experiences, so I’ll just assent.

The Thieves’ Hideout features Kradia, a hermit & the only level 200 in the entire server. Strangely enough noöne else is even vaguely close to 200. Wow.

After about three seconds of wandering around the exit to the Thieves’ Hideout, I wound up in the Kerning City Back Alley.

Not interested in the Fream Arkette myself but what’s this portal over here on the right?

Allll righty then. This must be dualblade stuff ’coz none of it worx. I can’t even talk to Taeha the potion(?) merchant.

Okay, fine. I’ll follow the yelloe arroes again, Power B. Fore, Thief Training Center, yadda yadda etc..

At least it’s better than the pirate one, although the spaughns get pretty thin when you’re not willing to sacrifice yourself to the swarm of Octos at the far bottom layer.

I met Rift here just outside the Training Centre…

…But it turns out you can’t go in as a party. Sorry, no stinccy warriors aloud.

I also found a bryllyantly krymson koyn here @ Curning City Construction Cite (≝ C⁴, as we used to call it backe in my daie).

In any event, Hallowe’en or otherwise, I oughta shed my Maple Island n00b gear. I might be a brigand, but that ain’t stoppin’ me from wearing the low-level teeph stuph.

Power B. Fore gave me a new 0^th-grade skill:

Transcription of the above

Stump’s Weakness

[Master Level : 1]
Inflicts 150% damage on Stumps.

---

• [Current Level 1]

Power B. Fore also has specific Double Stab & Lucky Seven quests for me. For instance:

Transcription of the above

🟢 Using Double Stab

---

Power B. Fore is teaching you how to use a new skill. Use Double Stab to eliminate some Stumps.

Stump 0 / 30 (Use Double Stab)

---

Quest Summary

Use Double Stab to eliminate 30 Stumps.

---

Quest Helper Forfeit

At least the L7 one is theoretically doäble at some point in the far nonexistent future? Except probably not even then since I think there’s a maximum level limit…

Anyway that’s enough Power B. Fore fore now. Let’s just go to CFD.

For better or worse, however, blue-to-blue transmutation was insufficient to spare the life of Rift, found on the scene having died of clear Octopus wounds.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above

Rift: exp here is good tho
no pot use
oop

euprox: ‘no pot use’ famous lassed words

Victoria Island, or at least what’s left of it

On the way to Perry On, I stumbold acrost an unexpected subway station @ the Construcschon Cyte Norf of Krrrning Sitty.

Not entirely abandoned, thanx to the permanent residence of Mr. Lim here, documented by BBB but only as part of “Mr. Lim and the Subway”, a contentless & limited-time level 25〜30 quest.

In fact this is for Monster Survival PQ, releast in v81 (2010-01-20) for levels 25〜30 & party sizes 1〜4. The basic idea seems to be that you have to kill waves of mobs that come at you, and the more killier you are, the better your rank (A, B, C, etc.) and therefore the more EXP you get. v81 also introduced Nett’s Pyramid which is the same thing but for level 40+ and it’s in Nihal instead.^[4]

It appears Monster Survival did not survive long. It was probably obliterated by “Big Bang” (only a dozen versions later!) or something like that, whereas something called Nett’s Pyramid (albeit vastly revampt) appears to still be playable in GMS to this day. It seems unlikely that Phoenix were able to implement Monster Survival properly, but maybe they’re Maple coding wizards. In any case we never got around to testing it.

Here’s the only screenshot I could find:

Glad to know of its existence, and to know that MSPSes have no real reason to implement it.

Anyway let’s fr∗cc up some Stumps over @ Perion Streat Corna (now entirely devoid of Ack’s Dumps by this point roflmao), shall we?

Transcription of the quest helper text thingy in the middle of the screen

Stump 17 / 200
Stump 26 / 80
Stump 17 / 80
Stump 11 / 50

Like Fan’t Asia, Phoenix has the Designated Monster Effect thingy when you complete a Monster Book card set:

At Perion proper, we met Tia. She’s not inclined to prolixity, it seems.

Heading east towards Ellin, we encountered a peculiar NPC by the name of Perion Warning Post.

Transcription of the above image

Perion Warning Post: East Rocky Mountain I Warning Sign

Monster : Red Snail, Stump.
Special note : A three-way path where East Rocky Mountain, Rock [sic] Road, and the Eastern Perion junction meet.

I shouldn’t be so harsh. Some of the Warning Posts provide enriching information.

Transcription of the above

Perion Warning Post: Rocky Road I Warning Sign

Monster : Stump, Dark Stump.
Special note : Nothing

---

euprox: Special note : Nothing

Rift: lmfao
note: this place sux

In Ellinia proper I encounturd my mortal nemesis face to face: the Dimensional Mirror.

On the way to Slyme Chree we also encounter’d a talking tree who doesn’t like talking.

That’s fine. I prefer trees who level me up to 15.

Along the rode to Hynysys, we happen’d upon a Strange Pig. I know it was strange because the nametag told me so.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Rift: theres some strange variations of a few mobs
omush, zmush, hmush

euprox: i know grush have a dejected version

Rift: for some new quests and cygnus knight questline uses em

euprox: ahh i see

Rift: it sucks when ur doing 999s

euprox: so now the whole island is polluted

Rift: and u kill like 3 and they dont count

euprox: incredible

For a better soarse of Piggoes, we went to The Rain-Vorezd Eased of ’Enezyz (whose Ribbon Pigs have charmingly been replaced by Orshroombs 🤢) to enter a redesigned portal into a not-so-redesigned Mini Dungeon: Henesys Pig Farm.

Whilst we were gleefully laying waste to all manner of suids, I wondered what kind of worrier Riffed mite B.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

euprox: wait so whats ur billed

Rift: ive just been going regular lol

euprox: ooo k

Rift: i couldnt decide

euprox: im going the armed jogger route

Rift also shewed me that The Hill Leased of Henesys leads to a 🆕 map cauld Nefarious Hill.

It’s allll Cynical Orshroombs, which are like normal Orshroombs but more Greek.

Indeed, the real glory of these l8 pre-BB versions is that you can try out exotic odd jobs like STR Evan. Unless it’s Phoenix and there are no exotic classes, of course.

Heading wessed thru Heneses, I was visually assaulted by one of 7-Eleven^®’s virtual henchmen: Barry.

I also noticed a really strange gap between the portal to HHGI and… the entire rest of Henesys proper.

Unfortunately, going through that portal did me no good at all. Look what they did to my baby…

It seems certain Blushroombs feel similarly, for the ones I encountered at the Heneses Dəngeən Entrence were openly weeping.

And once we arrived at the edge of Schweepywould — the Schwampy Land in a Deep Forescht — I learnt that actually going deep into the Anne Tunnels was now totally optional for the purpose of finding Evilise.

Not for nothing

Anyway let’s go back to Lit Arbour so we can gays into its beautiful skies.

In Feanicks, Mano is not merely the troll guarding the knoll along the weigh to Lint Harbour, but he speaks, too!

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

Mano: xxx!
x xxx x x x…xx xx’x xx…
xx xx!
x xx xxx x xxx xx xxx xx…

Since Mano was our first reason to ever cc, he was also our first opportunity to be properly welcomed to Canada, namesake of MapleStory. 🇨🇦🍁

Transcription of the above

[system message]: You have entered a channel located in Canada.

Rift: o dancana

The mane benefit of travelling to Liph Arber was of course visiting the Litty Harbs Armoury to buy some sicc upgrades from Natasha.

Transcription of the chat in the above image

Natasha: Let’s see…I’m ready to start doing some business.

---

Rift: swag

euprox: ahaha

We also visited the Lift Arbour Info Shoppe, which is… something that exists.

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Rift: aran bldg

euprox: oh tru

And speaking of Aran stuff, the smol snow-covered island that serves as the Aran equivalent of Maple Island is totally accessible in Phoenix, as it lacks an MI-style one-way boundary. Since there’s no Aran, its quests mysteriously don’t exist at all, so the island is fittingly named Rien.^[5]

We show duh pat Snow-covered Field 3, home to Murumurus.

Then down to Feeled Two of Murupias.

The monsters are about MI level, so 3〜7 or so. I believe Rien is included mostly for the Monster Book card-hunting content.

Next was naturally Snoke-othered Feald I, home to Murupas i.e. the first Rien fauna to evolve lipp.

Being known mostly for its snow & ice — not to mention any visual similarities between Murus & Jr. Yetis — it’s no surprise that Rien has some affinities with The Nath (النَّطْح).

In Rien proper, Puno’s shoppe sells some weapons, but they’re all polearms!

The vending of level 25(!) weaponry would be our first hint that Rien was a litto more than just a niveous MI that you can go back to. The other hint was the elaborate interiors not just of Lilin’s Home…

…But also of the three-storey’d Rien Library.

Rien is clearly East Asia–coded: although there’s nary a Sinograph to be seen, the scroll pictured above is some undeniably Tangy sh∗rt, plus there are the lamps & some other architectural details. Moreover, everything is bamboo, and bamboo has this kind of significance mostly in Southeast Asia & East Asia.

If Rien has a language, however, I don’t think it’s CJKV: it’s written to seem foreign in CMS, TMS, JMS, & KMS. Japanese is tempting but Pusla is clearly phonotactically invalid and in any case we can’t explain the apparent(!) ⟨r⟩–⟨l⟩ distinction in Rien vs. Lilin. But I also don’t think it’s Finnish nor any other European language: we have clear reduplication in Murumuru and Puri Puri, and we’ve Murukun instead of the strong grade *Murukkun.

Analytical overview of “Rienic” 🤪🤓

Rienic consonants

	labial	coronal	dorsal
nasal	m	n
plosive	p~ɸ	(t)[6]	k
fricative		s	x
approximant		(j)
tap		ɾ
lateral		(l)

/x/ is written ⟨h⟩.

Rienic monophthongs

	front	back
high	i	u
mid	e	o
low	a, (aː)[7]

The diphthong /i̯u/ occurs in Ryuho. Possible other diphthongs are /i̯a/ in Murupia and /i̯e/ in Rien(a). Or all of the above may be analysed as /CjV/ or (particularly in the latter two cases) /Ci.V/.

Syllable structure (C₁)V(C₂), with the diphthong stuff above in mind. C₂ is presumably quite restricted and we really only see /n, s/ or dubiously */t/ also. *Tru is worrisome since it could represent a real tautosyllabic cluster.

Full reduplication is presumably productive.

Wordlist:

• Aran
• Lilin
• Maha
• Muru
• Murukun
• Murumuru
• Murupa
• Murupia
• Puni > GMS Pucci
• Puno
• Puri Puri
• Puro
• Pusla (푸슬라)
• Rien
• Riena
• Ryuho > GMS Ryko

Dubious words (probably just English):

• Nainhāt(ə) > GMS Neinheart ≟ English nine + heart
• T(ə)ru (트루) > GMS Tru ≟ English true

Could be Japonic but not Japanese, or could be Austronesian. But my best guess is that this is modelled on Ainu, locating Rien’s IRL analogue somewhere on the island of Hokkaido. (This would make the ⟨r⟩ vs. ⟨l⟩ spurious, by the way.)

Anywho. We only have one more thing to see here in Hokkaido Rien: the Murukuns of Dangerous Forest — presumably named for the O.G., making Murukuns the Rienic analogue of Orshroombs.

We had flaschbax to RS’s Dangerous Forest and decided it was bessed to leave the thicc ones alone…

Last gasp

Okay let’s goe bacc to Vicky.

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

euprox: cant even get stuck in the ticket booth anymore
its babyprooft

Naturally enuff we need Grush kills for various questicals so let’s grynd some Grusch Chree.

I was really running out of steam by now, so my brane was shutting down. The Grushroombs were merciful enough to shut it down for me, permanently, by sleighing me and thereby liberating me from this mortal coil.

For better or worse, dying in Phoenix permabans your account and perma-IP-bans you. For good measure my CPU caught fire and all the game data were removed from my storage and then overwritten multiple times with random noise. Just to be sure, I was also personally sanctioned by the Parliament of Canada & Charlie III himbself so I can no longer legally engage in commerce with entities located &/or incorporated in Canada. Darn.

Footnotes for “Welcome to Phœnix”

1. [↑] RS also attains basically the same distinction. Phoenix however seems to have achieved perfection, for to my memory I did absolutely nothing to get it to work. It just ran.

2. [↑] All of heteroprox’s screenshots will have the default libre font for NPC nametags & stuff like that. Then I remembered to run winetricks -q allfonts so euprox’s screenies will have the more familiar font. Apologies for running allfonts if you actually like the default font for some reason. It’s okay, I don’t judge.

3. [↑] No ill will towards vanilla 🫘. I use vanilla extract all the time. Jummers. 😋

4. [↑] See: https://forsakenguild.ucoz.com/news/maplestory_ver_81_update_notes/2010-01-19-252 (archived).

5. [↑] French rien /ʁjɛ̃/ “nothing”.

6. [↑] Only in the dubious words ?T(ə)ru, ?Nainhāt(ə). But it would complete the coronal series.

7. [↑] Only in ?Nainhāt(ə), presumably from English START.

8. [↑] For what it’s worth, the order is beginner < warrior < mage < archer < thief < pirate. Whether this is left to right, right to left, or whatever is of course immaterial.

9. [↑]

   Note to self: KC FM portal (excruciatingly minor detail)

   KC wants an FM portal: more FM portals means less justification for sloppy shortcuts — e.g. an FM button (cf. MapleL5s), TP rocks, etc. — to connect PCs together (not necessarily for market purposes!), and KC is ironically the most thematically likely Vic locale to have one. Unfortunately this particular destiny of KC’s was abortive pre-Nehcks0nisation™ so we’re left with that pictured above.

   It’s salvageable. I get the idea that it doesn’t need its own map, and this “Back Alley” is a product of dualblade that just so happened to be a convenient place in which to sneak an FM portal. The artwork used for the FM portal above can be moved out into actual KC, but it regrettably bears the mark of neo-Maple art direction. The only other option short of a time-machine is repurposing existing KC assets from Wizet into makeshift FM portal accoutrements with the assistance of a pixel artist who knows what they’re doing.