An Ironmans Journe

Hi, Im IronPsalm and after reaching lv 180 on my main I decided to stop playing for a couple of years because the meso-focussed gameplay loop does not fit my appetite.

So after swearing off maplestory for a couple of years I got the itch to play again but this time I wanted to play without even the concept of an economy. This is where my Ironman begins.

The rules I follow on this character are as follows:

1. No trading any other player including via the fm.
2. No partying up with other players (so no Party quest's either).
3. Gacha is allowed since the tickets are mob drops and not farmable via voting.
4. No benefitting from Echo (unless I become lv 200 which will never happen on this account).
5. GM buffs are seen as a random world event and are allowed to benefit from.
6. Bosses have to be killed completely solo, however to get in to a boss room (for example zakum) a temporary party is allowed after which the other characters have to leave or afk in the boss room.

So after a bit of delibiration I decided to play as a bowmaster. Reasons are:

1. A bowmaster is not reliant on other characters buffs that much (has se and doesnt need si).
2. Bowmaster Mastery books are mob drops for the most part.
3. High single target damage as a ranged dps and I prefer ranged playstyle over melee.

The only other possible considiration besides bowmaster was corsair, but corsair is seen as just harder to pull off for a multitude of reasons (less scroll availability, harder 3rd job training and harder 4th job mechanics in bossfights) so Bowmaster it is.

So lets show the progress this first week of playing:

First off starting as an archer

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Getting some early money on the account via a lucky gacha pull, Ill skip a lot of levels since we all know what early game is like just go around Victoria Island doing quests

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Some quest rewards as upgrades

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And finally lv 30 and Job advancement, now the tutorial is over and this is where the real fun begins

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....... But first some more questing for experience

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Most nihal desert quests completed to get to lv 36

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After all the ludibrium quests available to me lv 43 with getting over 1m meso for the first time after selling all useless equips
A problem that came up is that the strongest bows available to me in shops are a lv 35 fast bow and a lv 40 bow with normal speed. If I want to keep my dps decent to keep training ill need a stronger bow soon. This is where the maplelegends library comes in handy and a really strong fast lv 54 bow called the cao cao bow seemingly drops from the centipide boss that you can fight after a jump quest at the end of a small questline. The centipide bosses that spawn in the wild dont drop equips but only cards, the boss after the questline seems to only drop equips but no cards. (Im not sure on this but that is what the library and my around 15 kills seem to imply.)

My second ever quest version centipide boss kill:

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Only 1 attack of max, this bow will be usefull untill lv 80. I got 3 60% scrolls and can buy 4 100% scrolls lets see what happens.

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84 attack 2 out of 3 60%'s landed not bad.
Also for the perceptive people out there yes I also grinded out the elin ring, grinding 75 kargo eyes on a hunter is a pain let me tell you that. So many cold eyes and melee whacks with the bow

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next buying 10 100% dex overall scrolls to have a decent overall to use, this also gives me 121% speed which is decent for outrunning mobs to be able to shoot them.

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Now some interesting cacha pulls:

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A face equip and a 10% scroll for face almost back to back, I think the game is telling me something.

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Or not

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hmm a chaos scroll now what to do with that???
Also cao cao bow goes brrr at windraiders so lv's up also go brrr

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A couple days of training at windraiders got me to lv 70 with almost 300 windraider badges. You can trade in 50 badges after a questline for a 8 item raffle. I do not know if all 8 items are of equal chance to obtain, but 1 item is a lv 80 bow. So lets hope I get a decent lv 80 bow with these badges.

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But first 3rd Job advancement and that has been 1 week of playing Ironman on IronPsalm

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I am not sure if people are intrested in this format of showcasing my playstyle, let me know about any in game tips for my account or if I have to format this any differently. I think I will only update after I get about 20 screenshots worth of content, but let me know if there is any intrest in it. The endgame goal of this account is killing zakum solo of course and getting a zak helm, but I have been doing a lot of thinking and I think going even beyond that is possible on maplelegends but ill keep silent about that for now. Lets first see how far im able to get.