SKU BEATS THE GAME

[ENTRY #5.5: INTERLUDE]

 

[ENTRY #6: YEAH OK WE'RE DOING THIS NOW]

~ A HUMBLE ANALYSIS OF ELLIN PQ ~​

​

As soon as I started gathering data for the LPQ analysis, I knew I was doomed to do the same for all of the wonderful PQs on MapleLegends. But before we go and torture ourselves with the unholy trinity of party quests, we get to run one that's probably considered to be second-best to KPQ for its effort-to-reward ratio: the simple, fast, and easy Ellin PQ.

REQUIREMENTS
Three members of any kind. You're going to need at least one strong player who can hit the boss for decent damage. Your team should also have at least one competent mobber to speed up Stages 1 & 4. Furthermore, either a Brawler or some type of Bowman with Power Knockback will drastically hasten the waiting game that is Stage 2.
Unlike KPQ, there's no downside to cramming your party with as many players as possible. Always try to stay at 5 members if you can help it. Oh, and don't be pathetic at jump quests or you're going to embarrass yourself.


My initial EPQ experience was... bad. Very bad. On multiple occassions I had to wait an agonizingly long amount of time before anybody even showed up to the lobby. My first 20 runs were mediocre at best, painfully slow at worst. A couple reasons for this:
1) Since he only possess 38 base LUK, Skuu's ilbis were hitting the PQ's beefy mobs with all the force of a damp sock, and 2) I wasn't lucky enough to get recruited into a strong party in those first 20 runs. Just look at the data:


Funny story, at one point our party was comprised of myself, two Clerics, and a legendary Brawler by the name of DietCokeOnly (DON'T call him "Coke" -- he only responds to "Diet Coke"!!). We had no feasible way of killing the boss. The solution? I pumped up our zero-calorie friend with every single Unripe Onyx Apple and Heartstopper I could dig up from storage. That gave him just enough power for us to clear the boss in a reasonable time. What a champ!



So after completing the first 20, I took a break to reach level 50 and grab my Z-helm, as well as a couple extra upgrades:

This Z-helm was NOT easy to get. As Nightz777 would tell you, I had to go through an incredible journey of TWO FAILED AFK ZRUNS - one in which the Bishop somehow forgot to ress and/or lagged out so we got sent back to Nath, and another in which some major Time Leap fuckery happened and THE MFERS TOLD ME I NEEDED TO SURVIVE THE LAST 5 MINUTES OF THE FIGHT ON MY OWN!! lmao. I HAVE 1.6K HP!! Shoutout to Sleepywood guild btw.
Anyways, the helm is poo but the important part is that I have it on my head. In total, these upgrades net us +28 LUK and +5 att. A Cider-boosted Skuu now hits with the maximum power of: a full DEX sin who doesn't know that att potions or weapon scrolls exist in the game.
Strong!

With that, I was feeling confident about the next 20 runs:


And my confidence was NOT misplaced. Almost all of these runs were spicy, with an average time of 8 minutes and 21 seconds. Not only was Skuu strong enough to properly contribute, but I had a kickass party for pretty much the entire time. We ended up hammering out 20 runs in about half the time it took for the first 20, which I'm very happy about.
Because the two datasets were recorded under wildly different conditions, I decided to separate them just to illustrate how good EPQ can be under the right circumstances. Take a look:


Much, much better.

Now for the burning question: how does it hold up compared to everyday grinding? Well, EPQ is pretty much meso-negative, so I didn't bother charting the value of whatever middling 60% scrolls the boss happened to drop. Regardless, we've already demonstrated with LPQ that the mere existence of gacha drops from grinding is sufficient to condemn PQs to utter irrelevance from a moneymaking standpoint.
So the only factor that really matters here is experience. If you gain more exp grinding than you can get out of an hour of average EPQ runs, then EPQ has failed to serve its purpose.

I went over to Teddies again and carried out another little 20 minute analysis. At this point, I (thankfully) have enough damage to one-shot them. Keep in mind that this is me, an unaplogetic level 53 INTLord, grinding an easy map with level 30 mobs. Any character my level with some actual power is gonna be able to grind way better.

So here are the Teddy figures, compared to my overall EPQ average (ALL runs #1-40).

!VS!
EPQ bros... I don't feel so good......

B-b-but my Glittering Altaire Earring!!
Alright, admittedly the earring is pretty good. It can easily provide 10-14 stats depending on your cla-

yeah nevermind.

But was it fun??
Eh. If you have a good party it can be pretty fun to blast through runs, but that's true for pretty much any maple content. The card is pretty easy to get, i guess...

THE END! You guys probably know what's coming next. I know too.
And I'm not so happy about it.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

!

​

 

[ENTRY #7: THE PLOT THICKENS]

​

We last left off with young INTlord Skuu having just completed his colourful analyses of LPQ & EPQ. However, let's take a step away from him for now and focus on some...

SIDEQUESTING​

1. THE GRAND CHAIR HUNT
​

I don't sit on chairs very often in this game. When I do, it's usually just a single chair because it's the only one I've bound to a key. Recently, though, I've become enamoured with the idea of owning all my favorite chairs. So let's make a quest of it.

I don't care to collect every single chair because some of them (a lot of them) are underwhelming or just plain ugly. Despite this, there are still quite a few chairs I want to own that are kinda rare *cough* pretty expensive *cough* EXTREMELY RARE AND EXPENSIVE. We're talking >500m a piece. Thankfully, I've got nothing better to spend my mesos on right now.

From this point forward, ~80-90% of the mesos I make are going directly to CHAIRS. I'd like to show you my current collection, but I'm waiting to make a few more acquisitions before doing so. Stay tuned.

2. A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES: PROJECT SKURADIOUS

​

Meet Skuradious, my dollar store imitation of the most poggers Fire/Poison Mage ever to grace MapleLegends. Long story short, I've got a secret upcoming project that's going to require an F/P archmage to get off the ground. Decided to start on him sooner than later.


Grinding an F/P mage kinda sucks for the first 50-60 levels. And by "kinda sucks" I mean your best option, from LEVEL 21 to 50, is GENINS. Or Teddies if you can one shot them - the exp is basically the same.


Mid to late 5X is where things start to get a lot more tolerable, if you've got the right setup.
Step 1. Run around the map painting mobs green
Step 2. Let them suffer within an inch of their life
Step 3. Return to your diseased buddies and give them a little tap. Boom, free exp.

I'd never even tried poison training before, but it was quite fun. It started off around ~1.5m eph (w/ HS) at level 50, and slowly grew all the way to ~2.2m+ eph by level 58. Special shoutout to Nightz777 for lending me his CRACKED int gear for the later levels -- poison damage is constant, but magical accuracy is based on level, INT, and LUK. So to hit em, you need a lot of stats. Thanks Nightz!

So... why stop grinding at level 58? The answer: FEET LEECH.

My feetclerics generate a surprising amount of exp at GS2. Alone, they get above 1.8m eph. But if there's somebody in the party to HS, not only does the cleric get 1.5x the exp, but the partymate will get at least 550k eph.

Normally, this would be laughable. However, consider that almost no extra effort goes into obtaining this exp. At the cost of one HS cast every 2 minutes and a tiny bit of extra client upkeep, your leecher is going to be getting SOME experience. Not a lot, to be sure, but multiply that out over hours upon hours of farming and it starts to really add up:



FEET LEECH.

3. GACHATHON​

So, clearly, my clerics have been hard at work. Funny story, I've actually picked up the habit of running feetclerics while STUDYING (for very dry material). It's an interesting combination, in that it provides enough challenge to keep even the most boring subjects surprisingly engaging! You might say...it keeps me on my toes.

OK, but 100% serious no jokes it's actually been some of the best studying I've gotten done in months. FEET META IS REAL GUYS.

Point is, let's check out some gacha runs:

11/25/2021: 279 ticket run, 0CS 0WS


12/03/2021: ~240 ticket run, 1CS 1WS


12/10/2021: 378 ticket run, 2CS 1WS




1 in 180 for CS/WS. Not a bad average.

4. NECROMANCY​

Ladies and gentlemen. The writers tried their very hardest to kill him off, but the man just cannot die...

.

.

.


Skucci has returned from the grave, and this time he's brought with him a friend.

Now, Skucci failed his quest. He let himself down, he let his people down, and he let the maple world down. For his failure, he has been sentenced to 300 hours grueling labor at Shaolin 7F. Maybe there he will be able to repent and redeem himself.

Accompanying Skucci on his labor will be Skusku, his ancient relative returned from the land of the dead. He, too, failed his quest long ago, and has been sentenced to 300 hours' spiritual cleansing at Shaolin 7F. His task will be: to stand perfectly still in Dark Sight and uh... meditate? Yeah, meditate.

Spoiler: Skucci gang

Believe it or not, Skucci is actually just as strong as before despite selling his 129 att dagger and replacing it with a cheap 124 att. The new 8 att cape makes up for the loss!

Should they make it through this trial, they'll come out stronger than ever before. Good luck, boys!


STATS COMING SOON!

5. SUMMARY​

The Grand Chair Hunt: ONGOING
The Repentance Arc - Skucci's 7F Redemption: ONGOING
Skuradious Rising: Soon™
Skuu's Party Questing PQ Quest: Soon™
?????: Soon™
???????: Soon™
Not getting CSWS weekly: NEVER

 

[ENTRY #8: PREPARATIONS]

Happy holidays, maplers! Hope you're enjoying the season. Personally I'm having a listen-through of all the Harry Potter audiobooks (narrated by Jim Dale). They're excellent. I'm on the Deathly Hallows already, and I just can't wait to suffer another post-Potter depression after finishing the series.

Gacha Gang

12/16/2021 - 319 tickets: 2WS, 1CS
disappointing right? i mean, not even 5 white scrolls this time?????
rest assured, i'm literally working on the next gacha run AS I TYPE THIS POST.


7F Gang [Sneak Preview]
For your benefit, I've prepared a small diagram detailing my setup for the promised 7F saga:


Because 7F is a dead simple map to grind at (as opposed to something like CWK badge farming), I really only need one hand to operate my shad. My left hand, along with both feet, can each control a GS cleric. This brings our total device count to 4, and our total client count to 7:

• 3 clerics over 3 laptops
• 1 Skucci (shad) + 1 Skusku (AFK MU NL) @ Shaolin 7F
• 1 FM HS mule to buff them
• 1 GS2 leecher to take advantage of free exp - currently Skuradious the journeyman F/P
  • We could technically add more of these, but things would get messy.

Great, right? Now let's check out some preliminary data for this 300 hour grind:


Note: this chart is for 7F only and doesn't include any information about my clerics
This data is provided courtesy of a simple spreadsheet I created that generates aggregate figures based on information entered at the beginning and end of a grind session. I'd like to release a more fully-featured template version to the public, but as it stands I'm a total amateur at Sheets/Excel and will need to spend some more time in the lab beforehand.

Note that I haven't bothered recording data about Skusku's leech EPH. As a general rule of thumb, it's around half of what Skucci gets - so, about 20m per hour.

3 hours is about the longest I can grind in one sitting, and that's with taking short fitness breaks every 20 minutes. I wanna finish this thing in decent time, so let's try for... 15 hours a week?

Chair Gang?
Soon™