Celestalia's Challenge - A Maple Journal

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PART LXV. The Battle of White Hat Run

Spoiler: PART LXV. The Battle of White Hat Run

"You know...you and I aren't so different. We're wearing the same colors...we're both pretty pale. And we're both holding bows.

Well, one of you is holding a bow. A bow I need.

Anyway, good luck out there."

Welcome back to yet another edition of Celestalia's Challenge! In our seventeenth weekend of operation, we're well on our way towards landing our fourth weapon, the elusive Battle Bow. Rules are: Uh...don't die? And make sure Soul Arrow is active...that's it.

Let's get going!

Our first equip drops fairly quickly. In a map full of Jr. Wraiths, it could be any sort of high-level Equip! So of course this one had to be...

A Pink Qi Pao.


The next drop was arguably even worse.

The Lemon is literally a better drop.

Shortly after, we run out of Bentos. Not great, but we have a lot of regular potions anyway.

Oh here we go!


The Red Pierre Shoes! We can't wear them yet, but once we're done with Fire Boar we can put them on immediately. Pretty cool! Stats are STR +3 (Max), MP +6 (Max), WDef 19 (Min).

A few minutes later, we get some much-needed assistance in the form of:


Which puts our max damage (with the DEX equip build, anyway) just a bit short of 300. We also put two points into Bow Booster (now 100s) and one into Soul Arrow to keep it ahead of BB in duration (now 120s).

Celestalia decided to retreat for the moment and go back into Kerning to get a snack.

Back in the action, our next equip was a Dark Crusader Chainmail (Level 35), but Celestalia "Lightning Fingers" Vereina snapped it up before she even knew what it was, so no picture.

Next guy was another Level 35, the Orihalcon Arbion (Thief glove).

It's so pretty, but almost no one knows it exists because it requires 70 DEX.

A few platforms down, we get this weird B-shaped thing with red spikes.


I know she's happy, but we gained only one point of weapon attack out of that.

Good thing we've got another bow to snag! We'll handle that in the next installment. Stay tuned!

 

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PART LXVI. Where We Talk About Toys

Spoiler: PART LXVI. Where We Talk About Toys

On the boat to Orbis, Celestalia takes the opportunity to test-fire her new bow.


Since the width of the limbs is much greater than the Hunter's Bow, the Battle Bow has a lot more springyness to it. That makes it pretty fun to shoot, as long as you have enough arm strength to draw it properly. I think there's a toy bow that's based on it, actually.

So to my knowledge there are three toy stores on the Maple Mainline. One is in Henesys, a block or two away from the Bowman Instructional School. One is I believe in Kerning City. The third, naturally, is in Ludibrium. Well, the third I guess is Ludibrium. But tomato-tomahto.

If you'd ask Sirbeg, he'd probably tell you that Orbis Tower 20th is a fourth.


But anyway. The toy store in Henesys is the larger of the two on Victoria Island. Henesys is somewhat famous as being the game capital of the world, and there's an entire quarter of town where players from across the Maple World gather for tournaments, particularly in Omok. Celestalia does not know how to play Omok, but she does have some experience in chess. It's been a few years since her last match though. About the store, it does sell a lot of board game supplies, but toy weapons are also very popular. That stands to reason in a world where adventurers and monsters reign.

Celestalia never owned a toy bow even if she wanted one. The Vereina family thought themselves above such frivolous things. Well, I'm sure she could get one now, but shooting and getting mesos for it is just so much more fun, isn't it?

Here was our first drop of note, although not necessarily of significance...or relevance.


But shortly thereafter we got an actual equip, the Fusion Mace.


Jr. Sentinel drops nearly as many weapons as it does clothing (5-6). What I don't understand though...so one is the Silver Snowboard. It's 9 levels higher than Celestalia's Gold Surfboard, but has the same Weapon Attack...and fires slower...and has no added Jump.

After picking up a second Fusion Mace, Celestalia fell asleep on the Relaxer awhile before continuing for a bit longer.

The final equip of the night is this Orihalcon Master Sergeant Kilt.


At 25%, Celestalia exits the tower and returns to the inn where she stayed last time.

Short post? Oh good, I can talk about toys some more.

Toy arrows come in a variety of different shapes and sizes. In our world, bows are bundled with arrows specifically designed to be used with that bow. Refill packs are virtually nonexistent, you basically just need to buy an entire second or third set to get more. In the Maple World, things are a bit different, because most toy bows and arrows are either carved one at a time or, if they are mass-manufactured, are done by separate entities. Basically they follow the model of the real arrow system - every real bow can field the same arrow. There is one factory, I believe in Ludibrium, which handles production of almost all toy arrows. Granted, they are divided into a few categories, but so is the real system. Every toy bow manufacturer makes sure their bows can roll with at least one kind of Ludibrium arrow.

The toy store in Henesys maintains a decent stock of every category of Ludibrium arrow, usually a few hundred each. This way, anyone who loses a few arrows can just up and buy more. They're fairly cheap too, the most common variety can be purchased at a rate of 1 meso per 3 arrows. Sturdier ones exist though which are a bit more expensive, but still a bit cheaper than the real thing.

Artisan arrows made in Victoria Island feature a variety of arrowheads, but most are simply carved from mushroom caps. In Ludibrium, soft rubber cups are usually the choice; most rubber is sourced from Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore which recycles rubber from Truckers, Montrecers, and Petrifighters. Despite being relatively low yield, Petri generates the vast majority of the rubber due to how popular of a grinding/leeching spot it is.

As far as fletching is concerned, Ludibrium makes all of its fletching out of the same material as the shaft, but the way the fletchings are cut make it seem relatively natural. They can be somewhat flimsy if bounced off of obstacles too much, so care is usually taken to make sure the shooting area is large enough to allow for inaccuracies. Victorian arrows typically use smaller feathers that aren't stout enough for use in real arrows, so they end up being more accurate than Ludibrium ones.

So the big question is, can toy bow and arrows defeat a Snail? Well, I really don't know if anyone's tried it, but under optimal conditions and with the right pair, I'd say you'd have a decent chance. You'd have to aim for the eyes though, no toy arrow is going to get through any snail shell. But if the effectiveness of Three Snails is any indication...

Alright, that's enough ranting from me for now. In the next installment, Celestalia continues in her quest for the Ryden! Stay tuned.

Cheers man! Too bad I'm really bad at animation, and art in general.

 

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SPECIAL VIII. Lost in the Clouds

Spoiler: SPECIAL VIII. Lost in the Clouds

Celestalia went missing.

Early in the afternoon on a shining Saturday in Orbis, the young Huntress left the inn to stroll around the neighborhood for an hour or so. At least, that's what she claimed. She was in good spirits, having just claimed a new weapon and finally being in possession of a genuine plan forward. So there was nothing to suggest that she wasn't going to chase after the Jr. Sentinels again that evening.

Yet, she never showed up. Wherever her afternoon stroll took her, she did not return.

And she stayed missing, because no one bothered to look for her. She'd already paid the inn for two weeks' stay in advance, so whether she was there or not wasn't of significance. Very few others were willing to bother with the runaway from Henesys.

It wasn't until dusk on Tuesday that Edel, who was out collecting stray Nependeath leaves, finally spotted Celestalia...sleeping on a cloud. The Huntress had a slight smile on her face as she lay, undisturbed in a peaceful slumber.

As far as anyone knew, she had been on that exact cloud since Saturday. How she hadn't been killed by Pixies up to that point will probably never be answered.

Edel picked up Celestalia and carried her back to the Potion Shop, where she would continue monitoring just to make sure that nothing had actually happened to her.

The Huntress, though, did nothing except continue to rest, her eyes almost locked shut. She was still smiling.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with her," exclaimed the fairy.

"Has anyone?" asked Kriel.

Truer words hadn't been spoken in a long time.

 

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PART LXVII. The Rydenathon

Spoiler: PART LXVII. The Rydenathon

After a very long cloud-induced rest, Celestalia finally woke up Thursday evening very pumped and ready to go out and do what she was supposed to do the Saturday prior: Get the Ryden.

With only having two posts last weekend I guess this is a good time to make a small change to the layout of the journal. We would have had to do this sooner or later anyway once equips and the number of 'events' in general decreased, and that's not to say that ML isn't exciting, but we will be on long grinds in the future and there just isn't enough material to fill an entire post unless I put a lot of filler, and as far as I know most of you aren't here for long paragraphs of my personal headcanon.

So, what I will probably end up doing is making one entry per day, so two per weekend unless I get an extra day. But let's see what we find in this first post first before I really commit to that.

Tonight, Celestalia will be embarking on a marathon grind to obtain the Ryden. No stopping until it drops. And it will drop, since we have a whopping six hours to get it. Gua-ran-teed.

So how is our heroine doing?


Yeah, Edel did eventually bring her back to the inn. But props for caring for her for a day.

As for our inventory, we're sitting on 97 Blue Potions and 73 Desert Mist (which is 243 Blue Potions altogether). I am definitely willing to pop over to Ariant and farm more Desert Mist should we need to. The mob throughput is a lot more important than managing our resources...for the most part. I'm not going to use Arrow Blow as it's unnecessary with Jr. Sentinel only having 600 HP.

What I will do though is put on the Lady Blue and the Dark Savata. We can't use the Bennis Chainpants as in Orbis we need to show at least one Level 30 equip at all times. That problem will go away once we get the Ryden, of course. Combined, the added DEX puts us at exactly 300 max damage! Very nice.

On to the battle!

Well it's a good thing I consolidated the number of posts...because nothing happened over the first few passes through the map. It was on I think our fourth pass that we got our first piece of LUK Crystal Ore...and our first card. The initial set of cards was achieved in even less of a timespan. Was this not a good time to come?

"I'm not stopping, just taking a break to F3 at how bad the drops are..."

Finally, at around 02:15 ST (about half an hour after we started) we got an equip, the Double Tail Knuckler.


It's only Level 20, but it's a decent sign.

A few passes later, we picked up another set of Subi stars. What that accomplishes...I dunno.

What Celestalia was getting really good luck with was Blue Potions. Even though we started with under 100, Jr. Sentinels were dropping enough so that the number...didn't really drop that much. An hour in, we were sitting at around 90. That's ultra nice, hopefully that will keep up.

We were also profiting on Orange Potions pretty easily, but again, it helps when you stop every so often to write stuff.

Of course after writing the above blurb, Celestalia did not pick up a single Blue Potion for the next ten minutes plus. So nevermind what I just said.

But then we got this:


That is the Black Steal, Level 30 Female Thief Top. So now we're on level with what we need, which is another great sign.

Celestalia takes a quick break just to catch her breath while I messed around on Discord.

Upon getting back into the action, Celestalia encounters a Dark Knight dressed as broccoli. Or should that be 'broccolee'...


Celestalia likes broccoli, so they traded Fame! He also got a Gachapon ticket, and we have yet to land one. But I guess he wasn't too confident in it being a good ticket. Well, good luck anyway!

Next equip was...a briefcase.

What's inside? Wait, what do you mean it doesn't open?!

Here's another new drop, the top half of the Orihalcon Master Sergeant set. If only Kalotora was so lucky! Instead he got the Ryden.


But, at 03:38 server time, just under two hours in...SO DO WE!!!


The marathon is over already then?! Okay, so RNG says stay with two posts per day I guess! And to reinforce its point...


MAX WEAPON ATTACK.

So in total...we gain +1 DEX and eleven points of Weapon Attack. That puts our damage range, with all DEX-boosting equips, at 221 ~ 388. THREE EIGHTY EIGHT. Our max damage increased by nearly a hundred points...in one drop...

And we used a net total of 17 Blue Potions.

As a trade-off, we do see reduced bow speed. The Battle Bow was actually in the Fast bracket, which I failed to notice for the entire duration we used it. That does make sense though since it is so springy.

In the next installment, Celestalia returns to Fire Boar again for a show of force. Stay tuned!

 

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PART LXVIII. Celestalia's Wild Ryde

Spoiler: PART LXVIII. Celestalia's Wild Ryde

Celestalia disembarked at Ellinia Station with very high hopes. Out of the three wearable equips we have available to us, Fire Boar holds two - and getting both will actually put our shoes at Level 40 by way of the Red Pierre Shoes we picked up at Jr. Wraith a few posts ago. So really we get three shoes for the price of two...whatever price that is.

So let's find out!

Oh, before we get into this: Forget everything you thought you knew about Celestalia's top hit. We're going to break 1000 at the Burnt Land. Which...actually would be an OHKO. That's real nice. Let's hope we get a few!

The first top hit we get...which wasn't even a critical...is 908. Yeah, if there were any doubts as to the power of a max Weapon Attack Ryden, they are already dispelled. Just saying.

Okay, forget 1000. Try 1100.


Actually that might end up being 1200...our very next hit was 1197.



Oh, there you go.

Okay this is AWESOME. It's like Celestalia finally got the break she needed.

Not even a minute later, we increase the top hit even further to 1290! How much higher...seriously!

Well, we have enough damage now that we could theoretically contend for the middle of the map. But Celestalia is still losing her lane there. What is slightly better for our mob throughput is actually going around the map, like so:


If Celestalia follows this route exactly (i.e. never doubles back or looks behind her) we can just carve through the Fire Boars and even if we get hit from behind a few times, it's still a lot better for our health than just sticking to the middle. The only place where we can potentially get hung up, and where doubling back is permissible, is at the bottom left next to the stairs, since Fire Boars can block the perch. But once that clears you're good to go.

What you might be thinking is "Why not go the other way so you don't have to climb the center rope every time?" While that is a good point, going this way allows us to more-or-less safely dock Celestalia at the far-right platform to recharge her health, since any Fire Boars that might have come through that platform would already have been cleared or jumped down. That said we could always just use the stairs above too, or even the platforms in the middle. But I like to stay in the action.

We get our first three equips in very rapid succession. They are: a Crystal Wand, a Green Hwarang Shirt, and the Heckler.


Being eight levels higher, the Heckler just beats out our Ryden by 3 WAtt points. Although tempting, Celestalia knows she must not be seen firing a crossbow.

A few passes later, we nudge our top hit to 1292.

Next up, we get some Shoes! But they're not red. Aw.


These are Toy Soldier Shoes, which are strangely enough for Magician. A very obscure equip because only two monsters drop them, Fire Boar and Propelly which is found deep in Eos Tower, and barely anyone uses them because they require 38 LUK and don't give great bonuses.

Our next drop was a Pirate hat from Dark Axe Stump, followed by a second Toy Soldier Shoes.

The Magician equips kept coming. Next off the line, the Blue Lutia.

Which really looks more like some kind of armor plate, maybe a shoulder guard or something...or a kneepad?

Oh look, even more throwing stars!


The Wolbi Throwing Stars are one step up from Subi (+2 Weapon Attack). So at least they mean something. Don't think they're used too often though. Just hard to find overall.

A long time later, we pick up a third Toy Soldier Shoes!

We also manage to pass 7 million mesos! We've already made several hundred thousand and there's quite a few equips to go through after we're done. Which will be soon, since Celestalia has somehow made it all the way to 90%+ by 06:30 ST.

Our next equip was a Silver Guardian, followed soon thereafter by a Brown Pollard (Level 30 Pirate Overall).

I was looking a bit earlier at the drop table and I reckon we've picked up one of everything except for our two boots and the Gold Sylvia, which is a Thief Glove. So given our luck with clothing you'd reckon Fire Boar would drop the Gold Sylvia first.

You would be absolutely right.

The more things twang, the more they stay the same.

Eventually...


That pushes our max damage to 395, plus we get longer Bow Booster and Soul Arrow (120s and 150s respectively). We finish having been worn down to 21 Desert Mist, although we did pick up 32 Blue Potions after our initial stock ran out.

Celestalia was satisfied with her work for the night and left to offload all the various equips and miscellaneous things she picked up. Aside from clearing a ton of space across all our inventory windows, we pass 7.5 million.

Well, with the lack of mana potions, going back to Fire Boar tomorrow probably won't work for very long. Maybe a diversion is in order? Somewhere where we can pick up a lot of Blue Potions...and possibly get something productive done on the side. I think I have just the place in mind.

In the next installment, Celestalia goes potion grinding...surprisingly enough, for the very first time in the campaign. Stay tuned.

 

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PART LXIX. An Archaeological Grind

Spoiler: PART LXIX. An Archaeological Grind

So I actually think the number of posts per day will be based off of whether something interesting happens or not. It will be between one or two posts, I guess. Like today we're going to Excavation Site II to grind Blue Potions and/or the Rocky Mask card set. Nothing really interesting will be happening today, so two posts is just not realistic.

Before we get into it, a quick view of our plan of action, which this time is quite linear in comparison to previous iterations.

1. Go to Excavation Site II and grind up to 200 Blue Potions.
2. Go to Fire Boars and grind for the two boots until the Blue Potions run out;
3. Repeat the above two steps until either
3a. We get the Rocky Mask card set, in which case substitute a good Blue Potion map for Excavation Site II, or
3b. We get the boots, in which case substitute Jr. Wraith (Mithril Scaler) for Fire Boars.
4. Repeat the above steps + substitutions until all three equips have been obtained, then
5. Finish the Evil Eye card set and grind as necessary
6. Finish the Scarf Plead card set and grind for Desert Mist as necessary
7. Conquer Ariant North + hunt for equips if necessary
8. Come back to Victoria Island and work on some Lime-tier monsters + hunt for equips if necessary
9. See if we can unlock Orbis Park

Alright, so let's go.

I get the feeling that our time here is going to be fairly pleasant.

(A regular arrow)

In the first 15 minutes, we land four Blue Potions and one Rocky Mask card!


So the Blue Potion rate isn't great. But maybe we won't be here for that long! I do feel like we're going around the map a bit quicker, even if we aren't using Arrow Bomb all that much. Only when we need space to work.

I said earlier this map was fairly complex. It turns out that the top left, which is pretty bad due to the anti-snipe area at the top, can be mostly skipped if Celestalia pushes her way through these three Wooden Masks at the right of the picture on the ledge:


What we can do is use the rope above (outside of frame here) to jump to the leftmost crane, and then double back once that's been cleared to go to the top! With that, our route now looks like this:


Where the light green is now skipped. That will greatly increase our mob throughput now that the anti-snipe location isn't bothered with. Even better: There are zero Rocky Masks in either light green area.

Our first equip (I won't show very many of them as we've seen almost all of them previously) is another Green Loosecap, which I somehow misspelled as 'Loocecap' when saving the picture. >_<


A few minutes later we land an Ocean Mesana (Level 25 Magician Glove). Mano actually drops the best glove of this category and Aescalloss actually got one when he fought Mano way back in July. Did I mention he came to Excavation for a Wizard Robe?

Some passes later, we get a Blue Split Piece (Level 18 Male Magician Top) and the third Rocky Mask card. We then get another Glove DEX 60%, which again passed! Our Dark Savata now provides five points of DEX, an entire level's worth.

Our next equip is a Gold War Boots.

After quite a long time of nothing, we get a very interesting equip: a third Robin Hat!


But our Green one has more Weapon Defense (16 vs. 15). Also it doesn't even match the Jack Boots in hue, which is uh...a big pass from Celestalia.

We then get a White Split Pants, as Celestalia was growing very anxious waiting for that fourth card from Rocky Mask. It simply was not dropping, and by 05:00 server time we had only gained 24 Blue Potions over a course of nearly two hours.

Finally, at 05:11, we got card #4! So get this...take a look at the drop table!


I would like to iterate at this point that Rocky Mask is Level 24. They very easily could have made it drop the Battle Bow, or something reasonable around there. No, instead it's Green Marker and Ryden. Adding to the huge pile of stuff that drops the Ryden (Wild Boar, Fire Boar, Jr. Sentinel, Stirge, who am I missing...). Well, on the flip side, if the Red Viper is as easy to get we'll have no problem! And I know where to snag a Vaulter 2000...but I'm getting a bit ahead of the script. We need to finish the Rocky Mask set first.

For our last equip, we get a Black Lappy Boots. That was followed about two minutes later by the final card!


What a relief, a bad grind is finally out of the way. We're down to just two Orange-tier enemies on the island to finish, but we'll handle them a bit later. For now, we'll head to the Blue Mushroom Forest.

And guess what we can do!


The top platform! I mean why not, we're basically OHKOing everything. But we're getting more White Potions than Blue Potions. I wonder if there's possibly an even more efficient area...somewhere where I don't have to jump platforms all the time. How about...


Another very famous Hidden Street area, and for good reason. See the third platform down? It has Octopus, and two Blue Mushrooms that can't even go to the right side of the platform. Plus there is a sniping location, the barrier on the right-hand side.

Which doubles as the ideal Relaxer spot! Auburn family-tried and tested.

After only a few minutes, we got a Bento!


And the Blue Potions were also coming very fierce. The easiest topography in the game, combined with guaranteed OHKO on the Octopus, means we're practically raking them in in comparison to BMF. Even with picking up items (which I did not do during the test run in BMF), we're near max efficiency. Case in point: in only half an hour of grinding, which includes taking pictures and updating the journal, we got 20 Blue Potions. I reckon that's near one a minute if we didn't stop.

Celestalia was content with the results of her experimentation and left for Henesys, ready to tuck in for another week and come out swinging next Friday at Fire Boar. So we don't exactly have 200 Blue Potions...try 81...but if we do actually run out, at least we've got a decent spot to farm for more. But I think I'll try going to Ariant to farm once and see how that goes. Then, I'll choose where is better overall. Do note that at Ariant we get both Desert Mist and Blue Potions.

Well, that's all for this weekend. I hope you aren't too displeased with the relatively erratic posting schedule. See you next Friday!

Spoiler: The Ladies Blue

This actually reminds me of that scene in Maple Kombat with the two Bowmaster bodyguards. One of them was Athena Pierce's son, if I recall correctly. That would be a whale of a connection to make if Celestalia could find him! Second best thing is getting his bow, the White Nisrock, which is probably the last one we can get since Celestalia won't be able to HP wash enough for Horntail. At least, I don't think so. This campaign has had enough twists already, so who knows!

 

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PART LXX. Fire Boar Frenzy

Spoiler: PART LXX. Fire Boar Frenzy

Hey folks! Again, sorry I couldn't come on last weekend due to the update, but although she was fairly bored in that time, Celestalia is raring to have a go and get those two Boots we're looking for.

We are starting this session with a paltry 81 Blue Potions and 21 Desert Mist, so probably this won't end too well. Well, it's not like we're in serious trouble, but we'll be fighting fairly slowly once these run out, since we can only use regular arrow. I hope we'll even be able to use Bow Booster when we get there!

Upon getting down to the bottom right side, they were swarming all over the place! But a few explosive arrows made short work of the lot of them.

Blue Potion! Huzzah!

As compensation for our weekend off, we're getting 5% more XP from everything, which I originally wasn't too fond of, but I'm fairly okay with it now. We need a lot of damage and skills if we're going to get anywhere in this campaign.

That said, the Boars were running all over the place, and many of them were trying to spawn under us while we were shooting. Many of them succeeded. And I am very angry!

Our first equip of the weekend was another Silver Guardian.

Another Blue Potion! Huzzah!

We then got a set of Kumbis, before landing this guy!


The Red Silky Boots! We can't wear them, but they do have +2 DEX. Definitely will hold on to these for our max damage set.

So, just like that, we had one left. The Red Hunter Boots. I wonder where they could be...

Well we didn't get them that quickly. Our next two drops were a Heckler and yet another Toy Soldier Shoes! I think that's four sets now?

Here's a very interesting drop...


It's a Korean Fan! Unlike most of the rest of what these guys drop, quite a popular weapon as it requires no stats. This one was almost dead-on average (50 Weapon Attack, +6 Accuracy, +5 Avoidability). Celestalia could use this actually, but I like the reach of the Gold Surfboard myself. Not that we're ever really going to need a melee weapon ever again. I'm just holding on to that guy for the nostalgia at this point.

We then get a set of Wolbis. That's two stars tonight, now all we need are Snowballs and we've got the lot.

Huh, well lookie there!


Another Ryden, you say? That's cool, although there's absolutely no way it's better than +1 DEX and Max Weapon Attack.

Well, it wasn't, actually, only 43 points. It's worth 80k though!

We then get a second Gold Sylvia. After a moderate break, we get a third Gold Sylvia! Followed by a Green Burgler and a Brown Pollard.

Blue Potion management was fairly okay too, with us still being over 60 of them two hours in, the break notwithstanding. Well, that number actually degraded quite quickly after that. 20 minutes later we were down almost 20 from that spot.

Uh, so at this point I remembered that us tracking our top hit was a thing, and I noticed that we've been hitting a few 1300s. So I have no idea what the actual top hit is, but for now we'll put it at 1303.

The next equip was...a fifth Toy Soldier Shoes!!

Around this time Celestalia switched up her strategy a bit. She decided to just defend the middle of the map. That way we didn't have to keep running over Boars to get lanes established...most of the time, anyway.

A few minutes after that, something groundbreaking happened...we ran out of Orange Potions.

So for the first time in Celestalia's career, we go to White Potions, of which we had 566 to begin with. Celestalia drank two bottles initially, and was quite surprised at how good they were compared to the Orange ones. White Potions have a very smooth, silky finish with a highly-concentrated flavor. Definitely a high-quality refreshment! Good thing she has so many of them.

Remember what I said about the throwing stars earlier? Yeah, well...


We got the trifecta! Now what to do with them, that's another question. Maybe I'll just drop these all in Kerning. Why not?

We then increase our top hit to 1312...and then 1314. Again we probably hit somewhere in the 1320s at some point, I just didn't know to record it. Oh, we also get another Green Burgler. That was immediately followed by another Heckler too! So that's four equips we have two copies of this evening. Celestalia is going to be making serious cash tonight, that's for sure.

A few minutes later, we pick up a Green Able Skirt from Dark Axe Stump, when Celestalia realizes that her Etc. inventory was full. The reason? Well, I think mostly because we surpassed 100 Diamond Ore, plus we had some Adamantium from Caution Falling Down which we never sold. Seeing as we were down to 16 Blue Potions, Celestalia decided to call it a night. After selling all of our wares, we made a whopping 530,000 mesos putting us above 8.3 million. I feel like by the time we get to Level 50, Celestalia might be cracking eight digits. I'd love to see it, honestly.

At the end of the selloff, Celestalia puts herself in Kerning City. As promised, we did drop the three 'throwing stars' which were picked up by someone! And after that, we made another buddy who was waiting for KPQ with her Priest friend...who was actually there to give people Holy Symbol and Bless! How amazingly nice!

Well, Celestalia was a bit tired, and so headed to the local inn to prepare for a long Saturday grind at Caution Falling Down. If you want to skip tomorrow's entry, feel free, I doubt much of interest will be happening. Maybe I'll do a bit more backstory and things.

Anyway, that's it for now. See you soon!

 

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PART LXXI. Caution Falling Asleep

Spoiler: PART LXXI. Caution Falling Asleep

If you're still here, then well glad to have you! Or, if this is the first entry you've stumbled across, welcome to Celestalia's Challenge, the campaign where we can't buy Blue Potions and so posts like this must necessarily exist! Either way, we're going to try and have fun as best we can. I think.



So here we are back at the dull, gray skies of southern Kerning. Goal for tonight is to get back up to 100 Blue Potions (84 required for this). We'll see if we can maybe grind that out in three hours or so. I'll keep track of our progress with each hour.

START (02:25 server time)
Blue Potions: 16
XP: 76.90%
Bentos: 0

Ah yeah, and don't forget about these!


5 Blue Potions + a free heal.

And if we're going to get any equip from these guys, it ought to be this one.


Which is Level 35 and worth a significant amount more money than anything else we could get here. Well the Halfmoon Zamadar from Blue Mushroom might be close.

Once Celestalia integrated the upper platform into her route, it was very smooth sailing in terms of our mob throughput.

Well, we got one Level 35 equip, why not another?


At which point we were at the 1 hour mark. How did we do?
1 HOUR (03:25 server time)
Blue Potions: 57 (+41)
XP: 93.87% (+16.97%)
Bentos: 12 (+12)
Equips: Battle Shield (Level 35), Green Burgler (35), Wizard Staff (25), Iron Axe (15), Brown Corporal Pants x2 (15)

Wow, that's insanely nice! So basically, we've already smashed the 100 Blue Potion mark as we're sitting on the equivalent of 117. Level 48 is also not too far away...which will make this even more efficient. You will see!

Celestalia decided to take a moderate break at this point, fairly satisfied with how far she got. She picked up the action again about twenty minutes later.

At 04:00 server time, this happens:


Woohoo! Now we're even slightly more efficient. That's okay, the extra damage will really come in handy at Fire Boars. What will also be useful: Bow Booster and Soul Arrow both get time upgrades (140s / 180s). I could have evened them out at 150s, but if they were the exact same duration I might not catch it in time and waste arrows. Although we do have over 1100 Bronze Arrows in our inventory...

With the extra DEX, our max damage with the...uh...max damage set, is above 400.

Ten minutes later, we ran out of Etc. space and sold really quick.

Well since we've got a quick break, let me introduce you to Celestalia's family. So, the Vereina family has always been quite large; the estate has never had less than about six members to a generation. In Celestalia's case, she was the eighth of nine children. Her father, Emaliel, is of course the president of the family's agricultural company. Her mother, Ambrosia, is a well-respected lady of fashion in Henesys. I mentioned way in the beginning how Celestalia once almost stole a scrolled pair of Rose Earrings. Even those who aren't adventurers see significant value in earrings that are scrolled well, since the cosmetic effect is extraordinary on such items.

Celestalia's brothers and sisters in order are Zachar, Mallien, Hadrian, Preina, Kannath, Orion, Erenell, and Monika. I can't really explain all of them in that much detail, but almost all of them have some hand in the family business. Of those older than Celestalia, Preina is the only exception as she started an artisanal business in Showa Town. I don't recall what exactly she does, to be honest.

We took a lot of breaks over the next hour but here's how it turned out:
2 HOURS (04:45 server time)
Blue Potions: 80 (+23)
XP: 4.21% (+10.34%)
Bentos: 19 (+7)
Equips: Brown Pitz Bandana (25), Red Loosecap (20)

So basically, we have 175 Blue Potions. A nice round number I think, so I think we've got enough to do some more work at Fire Boars next Friday. Also, we somehow made nearly a quarter of a million mesos. The 80k Battle Shield really helped in that regard, let me tell you. I definitely think we'll be coming here again.

This weekend wasn't that great for Gachapon, only 3 Commons and 1 Rare. But they really did well for the Auburns anyway! So here's what's going on with them, I consulted with some friends on Discord and so we came up with a plan for getting Aescalloss his next Overall, the Dark Requiem. It involves leveling up Aescavon to the point where he can deal with the target mob, which is in maps with a Level 76 monster. To do that, we needed the Golden Crow, and Aescalloss ended up grinding that out at another mob and had a fairly easy time doing it.

So now we're putting all Gachapon tickets in at Ellinia, and Kalotora has been the one doing it since everyone else is off the island. Do you want to know what the third Common gave us? A Kage. Level 85 Staff. Yeah. Well, the Magic Attack is below average...but still, Aescalloss now has every staff he can get except for the Dark Ritual. Now, the question of whether he will actually get to these absurd levels remains unanswered...

That's it for this week. In the next installment, we'll try again for the elusive Red Hunter Boots and the right to wear our first Level 40 equip! See you Friday!

 

​

PART LXXII. Legend of the Red Huntress

Spoiler: PART LXXII. Legend of the Red Huntress

Were it not for the Red Shivermail Top which has survived through numerous equipment upgrades, this title would make little sense apart from the fact that we're hunting for the...okay, there is far too much 'hunt' in this post already. I mean okay, Celestalia is a Hunter. We're going for the Red Hunter Boots, which honestly is an insult to Crossbowmen. Not that Celestalia minds that any.

So a quick recap of the last post, Celestalia ended up with 80 Blue Potions and 19 Bentos, so we have a nice collection to play around with here. Even if we don't get the Red Hunter Boots today, we are going to pick up a decent amount of experience, and change as well.

Off we go!

The first equip came fairly quickly, another Blue Lutia.


Second one was a Green Hwarang Shirt.


At this point we were down 1 Bento and up a Blue Potion...funny how that happens.

Ah, and of course we have to have one of the pog wands. You know Fire Boars love their pog wands.


Then one of the Fire Boars drops this strange object...


What is a rose doing all the way out here in Perion? Well, I guess monsters all over the globe have been collecting these 'Pole Arms' (if it was actually trying to be a pole arm, it would have the thorns be at the head, not on the stem ). So now Celestalia has one. It's only Level 12 with 31 Weapon Attack. Since we can't trade with anyone, not sure what good it'll do though.

We then get a Brown Doroness Robe (from Dark Axe Stump) and another rose, before Celestalia finally remembers to change into her max damage outfit. And then we get a good top hit of 1333.

It took a while for the next equip, but Celestalia knew it immediately even before it dropped. She was very excited to learn that it was...

Another wand.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

BUT LITTLE DID THEY KNOW THE WAND WAS ACTUALLY A FADE ATTACK!!!!!!


LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. WE'RE DONE WITH FIRE BOAR!!

Okay anyway! So after coming back to Perion, Celestalia tries on each of the three new boots.

From left to right: Red Hunter Boots (Level 30), Red Silky Boots (Level 35), Red Pierre Shoes (Level 40)

We'll hold on to all three for now, but we're definitely using the Red Silky Boots (+2 DEX) for the next part.

Meanwhile, our Brown Jack Boots went to a Bowman who very conveniently was wearing every other Level 25 equip! He gives us a Fame in exchange

She has a good poker face, but secretly, Celestalia wants that hat. It's like the Bowman Job Instructor all over again.

We also give him the Red Hunter Boots we just picked up, since we don't need them now.


I mean it's 2 extra Weapon Defense. Could come in handy during the 2nd Job Advancement!

Now, time for the second main event!


The Mithril Scaler. And you know what's crazy? We are heading into this down only five Bentos and four Blue Potions! It's almost like we got the Red Hunter Boots for free.

The last time we were at Jr. Wraith, we only had the Hunter's Bow. So we should see a dramatic improvement to mob throughput...in theory. In practice, I'm not seeing too much of a difference honestly. But we do get a fast first equip! It was even a Level 35 Glove! But Jr. Wraith it turns out drops quite a few of those, and in this case it was the Magician's version, the Dark Noel.


Aescalloss got his from here and it's fairly well-scrolled. He didn't upgrade until Level 60.

Here's a good trivia question, what equip drops at both Burnt Land I and Subway 1-2? It's Brown Doroness Robe - we get a second one here.

Next equip was...an axe...


Well the first mystery was not in fact how it's considered an 'axe', but how to actually pronounce it. The 'Niam'.

Meanwhile, we land a new top hit of 1346 on Stirge (blocked the shot X-P) and get a White Doros Robe, the Male version. We get a second copy a few minutes later, followed by a Dark Engrit (Level 30 Warrior Female Overall). Like the White Doros Robe, we also get a second copy of this!

At about 04:20 server time, Celestalia reaches 9 million mesos! She thought that a good time to take a break, because her fingers were quite tired too. She didn't really feel like going back into the map though, so Celestalia just went back to the usual inn spot for the night.

I'd say that was a fairly productive three hours. We finished Fire Boar and got almost half a level. The question is, does Celestalia think she can get more done elsewhere? There will definitely be more places to get Bracers in the future, after all. Find out her decision for tomorrow night's action in the next installment of Celestalia's Challenge!

 

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PART LXXIII. Annoyances

Spoiler: PART LXXIII. Annoyances

Instead of grinding endlessly against Jr. Wraith, Celestalia decided to take a step down and focus on mopping up some other monsters that, so far, had remained fully or partially unconquered. Although admittedly, most of these monsters would be stronger than Jr. Wraith...

Putting it in more modest terms: We have two Orange-tier mobs left on Victoria Island, these being Evil Eye (2) and Fierry (0). The first obvious step is to finish Evil Eye and finally see what these buggers actually drop. Maybe it will be something useful, who knows! Not that we can farm them efficiently until Jr. Boogie is conquered. Deep Ant Tunnel I is just a brick wall. Possibly to end all brick walls. Oh well. (I will probably regret those words in the future.)


Celestalia's lethality to lesser mobs is quite significant at this stage. Max Weapon Attack Ryden will do that to you.

We were getting a fairly decent supply of equips in the first section. Our first drop from Evil Eye was...


Green Avelin?

Okay hang on. Now Blue Jean Shorts from Horny Mushroom is bad. But this is an insult. Just...why? What's the purpose?

Possibly more insulting...one hour in, we had yet to see anything cardboard-related apart from the Match Card thing (which Evil Eye was dropping in spades, mind you) and Horny Mushroom cards. We did however get a Pole Arm ATT 10%...for the lulz, Celestalia decided to put it on her Gold Surfboard.

It did not work.

After that somewhat-entertaining diversion, it was back to the grind. Our first equip after the scroll fail was an interesting one.


The Blue Pilfer (Level 40) is the highest drop available from Horny Mushroom. So these guys are cooperating! Maybe a Blue Pole-Feather Hat is in our future? Time will tell.

Well, after some more maneuvering, Celestalia was getting increasingly annoyed with the fact that she was getting absolutely nothing, and left just before 05:00 server time.

Fortunately we had a few areas to try out next. Specifically, Celestalia was flipping through her Monster Book and noticed this:


Our next earrings are available! Better yet, it's at the best map for Jr. Boogie that we have access to. Maybe it would be worth spending a bit of time at Land of Wild Boar just to see if we can advance a bit?


What's nice about being here is we can have nearly constant Warrior Potion, since Wild Boar drops so many of them. This allows us to hit absurdly high numbers with Arrow Blow, above 1500 even. This won't count for the Top Hit though.

We got two of these shoes early.


The Iron Chain Boots (Level 30 Thief Shoes), which Kaloichi actually failed to obtain when he was here, but he did get a Mithril Guards claw! So that's pretty good.

Well it's pretty good if you use DEX...most don't...

Celestalia decided to get to 80% and stop for the evening. Not achieving things makes her quite tired very quickly. But we did learn a few things, particularly that Land of Wild Boar is a great hunting spot overall. We've got good OHKO chance with Warrior Potion active (and this is a supreme grinding spot for them), and even Jr. Boogies aren't that difficult to take down. We just about break even on Blue Potions as well.

At the end of the equip sell, we land a bit short of 9.5 million. Eight digits is fast approaching, meaning...well, absolutely nothing. But no one's going to scoff at Celestalia for being dirt poor, at least. There are plenty of other reasons to scoff at Celestalia, if not doing so threatens your relations with the Vereina family.

So now we have to address the game plan moving forward. I don't want to entirely abandon Evil Eye just because they're not giving us cards. At the same time, I want to be in a position where we can possibly get access to the Caves of Evil Eye rather quickly. Perhaps the best course of action is to flip between each of these areas. For example, we can go to Deep Ant Tunnel I on Friday, then do Land of Wild Boar on Saturday. Or maybe we can work in a new monster to take down...well, I think Celestalia has quite a bit to think about for this coming week.

I do understand that we haven't really spent as much time as usual with Celestalia. While that's undoubtedly hurting our rate of progress, it's hard to soldier on when your options are severely limited and/or all poor. We'll make it through this, just as we made it through every obstacle since the campaign began.

Hopefully next weekend will be a bit more productive. Level 49 will be obtained on Friday most likely, which will give us a much-needed boost of morale. And then? Well, I dunno. But stay tuned and find out! See you then.

 

​

PART LXXIV. The Holy Smegaphone

Spoiler: PART LXXIV. The Holy Smegaphone

Evening folks. So as I mentioned in the previous post, we are going to spend the next couple weekends bouncing around some areas. We're kind of doing two things here. Besides doing cleanup, we're basically biding our time until we're powerful enough to finish Ariant South, and eventually take on Sentinel. It's probably going to be a while, honestly.

So first up is Evil Eye...again. We'll be marathoning this area, possibly deep into the night. Depends on whether they want to give us cards this time or not.

As if it wasn't already a bad enough sign that we're here in the first place, the first equip takes over 20 minutes to drop. An Ocean Mesana (Level 25 Magician Glove).


Celestalia is still wondering whether they drop the Green Bennis Chainmail or not. Well, I can at least tell you that Evil Eye does in fact drop a chainmail...


A Level 35 one at that. But I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad sign.

Right after that, we pick up another light 3x Overall in the White Chaos Robe. Then, we get a new top hit of 1347 on Evil Eye.

Another very good equip was just around the corner.


The Red Arten is another Magician glove, but 15 levels higher than the previous.

After some more lesser equips, we were at the hour mark already, and no cards had been picked up (of course). As a last resort, Celestalia remembered a trick she learned from the Auburns, and made a public announcement complaining that she wasn't getting anything.


Unbelievably, it worked.


And just like that, we were down to just two left. Better yet, we were less than 5% away from another combat upgrade.

Also, this is apparently considered a 'Red' Martial Arts Pants.


There are other equips named Purple (Celestalia had the opportunity to get one already even), not sure why they didn't choose that here.

The magic of the Smega kept working...and kept working...how? Nothing much, we just got LITERALLY TWO CARDS IN A ROW!!

ERROR 501: Face_Sweetness.exe failed to execute.

And here you are, the full set.


However. HOWEVER, folks. We're not exactly done with Evil Eye just yet.


Not only do we have the Green Bennis Chainmail to get...we can also get our next Earrings as well. The Cat's Eye is basically identical to the Sapphire Earrings, so which one we get matters not at all. This pattern will continue for...most of the chart I think!

I was actually debating going back to Wild Boar to farm Jr. Boogie, but since we can do that here anyway (albeit less efficiently) and we have an Earrings...I see no reason to do so. Well...let's continue I guess!

First order of business is...actually, to use our reserve row of inventory slots, because our Equip section is getting fairly full. We get another one at Level 50 anyway, which isn't that far afield. We're almost guaranteed to spend that on Etc.

Speaking of, our second order of business...


With that we increase our maximum damage to 414, and we are granted another 30 seconds of Bow Booster, which will benefit us by not using as much MP over time.

The Battle of the Deep Ant Tunnel is about to begin. We'll pick that up in the next installment. Stay tuned!

 

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PART LXXV. The Battle of the Deep Ant Tunnel

Spoiler: PART LXXV. The Battle of the Deep Ant Tunnel

It was perhaps one of the most obvious drops we could have guessed. Evil Eye and Green Bennis Chainmail...seeing as they've given us myriad Chainpants over the sessions. Although, I was wrong on that once before...I can forgive Shroom because it's so low-level, but could I forgive Evil Eye for the same transgression, if it did end up happening? Well, after what transpired in the last post, probably. But hey.

Needless to say, we'll be coming back here tomorrow (if we still have enough Blue Potions XD).

Here we go!

Our first strike of the engagement was another White Crusader Chainmail.


We also got an Iron Burgernet Helm from Zombie Mushroom.

After that, we reached two hours, and so Celestalia decided to take a snack break. She also brought a book down to read, it's about chess strategy. I mentioned a while ago that Celestalia has some chess experience, but since you can play it online now, she's been thinking about getting in some matches at the Internet Cafe in Kerning City.

Coming out of the break, we land a second Red Arten.


We would have had to leave to sell by this point, so definitely a good move to get those extra Equip slots in.

That was followed by a second Burgernet and a Brown Sneak. Very generous these Zombie guys are today. But then Horny Mushroom gives us the respective Pants...and an Eagle Crow. If this is a competition on who gives more equips, Celestalia is very happy to oblige. Unfortunately, our inventory was full at this point, which means we have to walk all the way back down here.

Thankfully we have a somewhat-renewable source of Nearest Town scrolls now, so the trip up won't be an issue.

After selling everything, we were just 30,000 shy of 10 million. We'll pass that mark during the next part of the engagement, no doubt. And to make sure we do, Celestalia puts a few stacks of Etc. items in the storage since there were a bunch of unused spaces.

At Henesys, we meet up with some friends, and on the way to the cab we're stopped by someone who seemed to know us...even though neither he nor his companion had any idea we have a journal going! After exchanging pleasantries we direct them this way and head for Perion.

Eventually Celestalia is going to get tired of trekking through Deep Valley and go get Iron Hog so we can just wump through the Henesys entrance. But we're just not powerful enough yet to make that efficient. Maybe in 5 more levels...and a bow upgrade or two...and Arrow Bomb 30.

Oh, one more thing before we get back into it...if you're wondering about the Blue Potion situation...yeah, don't worry about it. We're actually up by 5 or so.

The first equip we land in the second engagement is from Evil Eye, the White Wizard Robe.

These guys really like their white overalls.

A while later, we pick up a third Burgernet.

Just after 05:00 server time, we passed 10 million mesos! To celebrate the occasion, Evil Eye gifts us a Cutlus.


Our next equip is another weapon, and one we haven't had before! The Level 30 Mithril Maul.


Then we get another weapon! This one was slightly more familiar to Celestalia:


This Hunter's Bow was 100%...average. The exact stats you'd get if you bought it at Henesys (35 Att, +1 DEX). So yeah.

About 8 minutes later, Celestalia was fighting a Jr. Boogie who afflicted her with darkness. Suddenly, she heard something...chain-like hitting the floor. She couldn't quite make out what it was, but stumbled over to pick it up anyway.


After the curse lifted, she looked down upon this beauty!


Celestalia is finally starting to look like a true Huntress. Now if only we could do something about that hat...

Maybe we can yet. The next stop, at least as far as our heroine is concerned, is Ariant. She has no qualms against fighting Jr. Wraith, but we finished this session up +18 on Blue Potions, and there's no point in giving that up for a glove that we could honestly find a better version of elsewhere. Our priority should be upgrading lower-level equipment anyway.

So once again it was across the main to Orbis, where she will overnight en route to the Nihal Desert.

For some reason, she's still hanging on to that skirt pillow she made underneath Ariant Palace.

Before heading for the inn, Celestalia exchanges some stat potions to land another 13 Nearest Town scrolls, putting her at exactly 50.

Well! Today was by far the most productive day we've had in a while. Tomorrow just might be even better, depending on whether Scarf Plead wants to cooperate, of course. Will they do so? Find out in the next installment! Stay tuned.

 

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PART LXXVI. Let's Conquest! Nihal Desert Edition

Spoiler: PART LXXVI. Let's Conquest! Nihal Desert Edition

I did a few calculations after signing off yesterday and I think Scarf Plead will not be nearly as terrible as it was last time. The proof is really in the stat difference...take a look.

PART LXII:
Level: 45
Base DEX: 192
DEX from equips: +7 (Note that Celestalia wasn't in her max damage set at the time, which would have put her at roughly +13)
Weapon Attack: 38
Top Hit: 905

Today:
Level: 49 (+4)
Base DEX: 208 (+16)
DEX from equips: +17 (+10)
Weapon Attack: 50 (+12)
Top hit: 1347 (+442)

Oh, and don't forget that we're also able to use Warrior Potions, since Ear Plug Plead drops them. Should I also mention that the Bronze Scaler may end up dropping...I had forgotten that EPP provides them. I think we'll be fine...what say you?



Well, card #2 still took a while...but not as long as the first card did.


Problem is a Brawler kept messing around with dudes in the map. So we changed channels, because Celestalia can't be bothered to figure out which drops are hers or not.

After that, we picked up...one of the best scrolls we could possibly get our hands on: Bow ATT 60%! Celestalia wasted no time in slipping that onto the Ryden.


Alright, nevermind. Turns out the Ryden was too powerful already.

Our first equip drop was a Bronze Football Helmet. No photo unfortunately because it landed in the portal.

A few minutes later, we get card #3! What did I tell you!

Another eventless 15 minutes passes, before we land card #4.

Ohohohohoho, and LOOKIE HERE!!


Beautiful, absolutely beautiful, mwah. Green Huntress Armor = Tons and tons and tons of prestige. All we need is a decent map.

I'll definitely take a Circle-Winded Staff though.


The fifth card arrived less than 20 minutes later! With that, we finish Ariant South and we're only an hour into this thing!


We also unlock this map's Hidden Street, Frilled Field, where we can hunt for the Green Huntress Armor whenever we like. But I think we have enough time to instead do some more conquest! Since we completed Ariant South, we can now access the Ariant North region, which has an entirely different assortment of mobs for us to hunt.

Celestalia returns to town, offloads her Etc. items, and exits out the north gate. She finds:


The Meercat is the latest mob in the Orange tier we've fought (other than Sentinel >_>), but they're quite easy and in small enough numbers that we can just plonk away with regular arrow in most instances and we're fine. We also have, again, a resting platform (which is also a sniping location).

Celestalia finds the first card without really trying that hard.


Our first equip was just behind! It's...THE BROWN HAWKEYE?!!


Awesome. Well, sadly Celestalia doesn't get to wear the super-awesome Level 25 Hunter when she gets it, but now we are set to ramp up our Hat level to incredible heights!

As for the Hawkeye itself, well, it's 22 Weapon Defense with no other modifiers. I guess it's okay. It's at least marginally better than our Robin Hat, but still far inferior to the Lady Blue + Rudolph combo.

We got the second card after a bit of heavy fighting, along with a Norman Grip (Level 25 Knuckle). Card #3 trailed only by a few minutes.

And here's another weapon, the Cass!


I love the small weaponry which seem always to be ultra-valuable.

Someone came into the map asking for telescopes in exchange for some...uh, questionable material. She leaves the map before ever actually doing anything though. We did get card #4 out of that though! As you might expect, we've already exhausted Meercat's drop table with the Brown Hawkeye.

We finish the card set a few minutes before 05:00, about two and a half hours into the session.


Which means we now move to:


The two mobs you see on screen are both required conquests, Kiyo and Sand Dwarf. Kiyo isn't going to be a problem at all:


But Sand Dwarf does not spawn in huge numbers. I don't think their card rate is that terrible, but we will probably not be able to advance past this tonight. They are slightly fragile though, as we extract a new Top of 1365.

We then get the second Kiyo card, as Celestalia was fighting through some wrist pain. This has been a heavy weekend for sure.

First equip of the map was another Dark Crusader Chainmail, you guys have seen enough of these over the last few sessions. But it was a great sign anyway! What other Level 35 stuff does Kiyo have in store?

Well the third card was right behind! So we might get to find out soon enough. And we will indeed, as the fourth card popped up only a few minutes later!

On the drop table was another thing we've seen before.


Awesome! So now we don't have to go back to Jr. Wraith. More good news: We'll be at this map for a considerable length of time. I'd love to be able to pick this up while we're looking for Sand Dwarf cards.

Final equip of the night was this shiny Red Pilfer which was just shown above.


Actually, the Dark Crusader Chainmail we got earlier was in fact shining blue! Stats on this guy: STR +3 (Min), HP +6 (Max), WDef 66 (Max), MDef 21 (1 off from Max). Great stuff!

So Kiyo's card set got polished off fairly quickly.


We'll be back later to hunt for the Mithril Scaler and get started on Sand Dwarf. For now, Celestalia had seen enough, and decided to go back to Orbis and stay the week in their slightly-fancy inn.

Alright. So, what to start with next weekend? We've definitely got some options. I want to say let's go to Frilled Field and pick up the Green Huntress Armor. That, plus getting to Level 50, might be enough prestige to grant us access to Orbis Park, where we will almost certainly get a path to the next two bows. Of course, the enemies in there are slightly stronger than what we've been fighting recently...not by much though! We can guarantee entrance to Orbis Park either by picking up one more card set (we're at 39 right now) or getting the Mithril Scaler, so it's definitely in our interests to keep grinding at North Desert Road 2 for a bit.

Therefore, we will be sticking with Ariant for our next weekend outing here on Celestalia's Challenge, and it's sure to be another good one! I think the campaign is finally starting to open up. Within a short time, Celestalia will be getting access to a wide spectrum of locations and tons of opportunities to land great upgrades!

Stay tuned for more ultra exciting action! See you on Friday!

I need to buy Celestalia a pair of ultra pog sunglasses. Next weekend maybe

 

​

PART LXXVII. The Battle of Frilled Field

Spoiler: PART LXXVII. The Battle of Frilled Field

Greetings! As you can likely tell from the title, we are going to be fighting the...somewhat-generous Scarf Plead? Well, they haven't really been that bad...the cards were okay, and the early Green Huntress Pants was legendary, to say the least. So let's see if we can get a quick finish to Ariant South and maybe, just maybe, get ourselves into Orbis Park.

First things first though, Celestalia had to get her pair of ultra-pog sunglasses.

Book 'em Kimmo!

Let's fight!


So this map is pretty nice. There are tons of these guys, which are divided into three long, straight platforms. Still, there are so many to a platform that Arrow Bomb is essentially mandatory to hold down a lane. I don't think we have any snipe locations, but we can at least take a break from time to time. (We could always just step outside in any case.) They also have a bad habit of spawning right under you. One thing I will always, always credit Scarf Plead for...whether it comes to cards, or equips, they will always fight to the last reptile. I've had great battles with them on my other characters, especially Sirbeg, who was at it for maybe an hour plus before he finally got their card set. Well, it helps when you actually have skills, which he does not.

Our first equip took a while, but it was a Level 30 Top!


The wrong one, of course. But I like the colors. Red and Gold are great together, just ask every movie ever set in Ancient Rome.

We also discover that someone named 'HugePog' decided to become a Bowman. The amount of pog in archery is truly off the hook now. But will it lead to greatness? Let's see.

And the trolling by Scarf Plead begins in earnest.


It's bad enough their discipline is off the charts. We get juggled constantly, particularly on the top platform. This, on the other hand, is even more insulting than the Evil Eye Green Avelin.

Some indiscernible number of minutes later...


Well, after almost two hours of intermittent fighting, they did finally drop something else.


Golden Hook, Level 25 Gun. I guess they like gold? Well who doesn't. Even the thing we're looking for has some gold in it.

Ah, turns out that the side platforms can in fact be sniped from.

Targeting her least favorite platform too.

Since we might be here a while, and because she was getting bored, Celestalia decided to take a jaunt around the world map, and maybe stop to sell some things along the way. Then, we can start fresh at Level 50, ready to take on...well, the world I guess.

Because we have some time, here's a refresher on what we had at Level 40:


Honestly...I'm kind of stunned how far we've actually come since then. Our highest level equip was 20, of which we had just three. Today, our lowest is 20, and we have a Level 30 piece in our inventory waiting for the 25 to drop. You will also notice that...we had no stat bonuses. At all. (Well, we got the Rudolph Hat/Lady Blue at 40, so...does that count? Not sure.)

On the boat back to Orbis from selling stuff and general galavanting, Celestalia decides to remove her sunglasses as her eyes were getting very sweaty.

Anyway, she eventually makes it back to Frilled Field and finally finishes off the level.


...Oh dear. Looks like it happened again.


I can't say it looks terrible! Well, it will be quite a while before the next 'upgrade' as it were.

Okay, now we can finally talk about our stats. Since we have two different loadouts, I'll discuss both.

Here is our standard, or what I'll call the 'Prestige' build. This is just the maximum Level equips.


You can tell what a difference just a few bows makes - our max damage has over doubled! And everything has upgraded significantly. Well, except for the Robin Hat. But we do technically have a better one. Eh.

And here is the 'Combat' build, which focuses max damage:


Anyway, you can see why I'm itching to get into Orbis Park. But we've got some more work to do in the meantime, so let's get back into it.

In this second part of the engagement, Celestalia is getting in a few practice swings using the new skill she just picked up:


Power Knockback wasn't ever going to be terribly useful to start, but by leveling it up a bit earlier we can save ourselves much frustration later on, when we're going up against far more trolly enemies.

First equip of the level:


Which was obtained after roughly 547 KOs. (They give 100 XP each, so it's easy to track )

As we approached 700, we got...#4.

*Blank stare of disbelief*

Not to be outdone, a second Circle-Winded Staff appears.


By that time Celestalia was pretty tired, so called it at a bit above 15%. Without much other fanfare (and there really wasn't much to go around in this post...sorry), she heads back to Orbis.

Frilled Field is a lot of fun to be in even if the Pleads keep hounding us for hit after hit at times. I'm not sure which map I want to focus on tomorrow. Either one could represent solid progress, if RNG happens to be in our favor of course.

Find out which grind Celestalia will hop on to in the next installment! Stay tuned.

 

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PART LXXVIII. Zumogi

Spoiler: PART LXXVIII. Zumogi

Thanks to Mirrors for making this campaign a bit more special. Your hair guide is tremendous.

Alright, so Celestalia took just a few too many breaks yesterday. Not this time. She's heading back to Scarf Plead with a vengeance. Blue Potion count be cast into oblivion! (Incidentally, we finished +10 on those yesterday >.>)

Our goal for today is to have a solid 4-hour grind. Well, as solid as we can be while still providing a quality post for you folks. We are starting just after 02:00 server time.

I mean, I'd like it to be a quality post. But at 30 minutes in, we were up 10% and absolutely nothing of interest happened. No equips, no other happenstances. We were however up +14 in Blue Potions!! That's incredible.

Finally, at 02:37, we got our first equip. Want to take a guess which one it was?

It could have been, you know, a Forked Dagger. Maybe another Huntress Pants? Or the Huntress Armor even!

Instead...


This is the fifth one of these in two sessions.

You know what it is? The Stealer matches their scarves. That's why they're dropping so friggin' many of them! And you don't wear scarves on your legs. Which is why we don't have the matching pants.

Next interesting drop was at 02:49.


Mokbi stars! You can upgrade these guys to Tobis by welding on some little spikes on the diagonals. Why doing that adds +4 Weapon Attack is anyone's guess.

Oh, there's the pants!


We also got another Mokbi right after that.

At 03:07, we land a second pants! At this point we had moved up a bit under 20%. Our Blue Potion advantage was up to +22.

We went dry on equips again until 03:31, when we got a third Pants. Our lifetime equips from Scarf Plead now looks like this:

Red Gold Stealer: 5
Red Gold Stealer Pants: 3
Circle-Winded Staff: 2
Green Huntress Pants: 1
Golden Hook: 1
Red Matty: 1

Judging by how the campaign has been so far, our next equip will be...I'm going to guess Red Engrit. Green Huntress Armor is almost certainly going to be dead last, like Red Shivermail was.

A while later, Celestalia finds a scroll! She was excited until she picked it up, and realized it was a Pet Equip Speed 60%. So it went right back on the ground.

And you can make that 3 on the tally for Circle-Winded Staff.


Minimum Magic Attack on this guy. I think that's also what Aescalloss got on his. The Petal Staff was a very welcome upgrade.

A bit later, a newly-minted Assassin comes in to the map on questing duty! He helps us out a bit to find this blasted armor.


He only stayed for a few minutes, then left to turn in the quest. He was out for a while, which reminds me, I'm not sure we have a rule dealing with instances when party members are outside of the map. I'll make one here: If Celestalia is the only member of her party on the map, she can continue to retrieve items until at least one member returns. Well in this instance, he did not return. But after chatting with him we end up buddying! Another faithful companion to add to the roster

Celestalia continued until she reached about 65%, half a level from where we started. We end the session with +28 on our Blue Potions.

Heading back to Ariant, we meet a Warrior who seemed to be lost. We help guide him back to Victoria Island, where Celestalia was also heading to empty her inventory and spend the week at the Henesys Weapon Store.

That was it for Celestalia, but let's check in with Aescalloss and his quest for the Dark Requiem! Celestalia's last two weekends add up to a total of 12 Regular Gachapon tickets, and 1 Rare. Let's see what we get:

Common

• Pole Arm for Accuracy 30%
  
• Blood Dagger (Level 100 Dagger)
  
• Shoes for Avoidability 70%
  
• Overall for STR 10%
  
• Dried Squid (7)
  
• Super Megaphone
  
• Wand for MAtt 30% (YES)
  
• Blood Nightfox (Level 70 Thief Hat) <- Brilliant find for Kaloichi!
  
• 2H Axe ATT 10%
  
• Cape for LUK 30%
  
• Purple Ciara (Level 100 Magician Glove)
  
• 2H Axe ATT 60%

Rare

• Wand MAtt 70%

Overall, not bad. I like the equips particularly, not to mention the 5 million meso scroll the Auburn family has picked up. You might know that Aescalloss uses staves. So someone is going to profit heavily

We spent the entire weekend at Scarf Plead, and I reckon we're going to continue on Friday at Scarf Plead. If all goes well, we'll even get 51 there. The only thing that's hurting is our stock of White Potions. Worst comes to worst, we just grind at Blue Mushroom for a while until that recovers, but we've got a while yet before it really becomes an issue.

Well, that's it for this session. There will be a Midweek post this time, so be on the lookout. Otherwise, so long and have a great week!

Spoiler: The Multilingual Sunglasses Crew

This fellow's native language appeared to be Spanish. Anyway, we basically hopped around the cabin for 5 minutes. That's it. By the way, I'm very slowly working on a Japanese translation of the first entry. I think maybe my own style of writing is making it a bit more difficult. Ah well.

 

​

SPECIAL IX. The Flight of Erenell

Spoiler: SPECIAL IX. The Flight of Erenell

The seventh child, and just a year older than Celestalia, Erenell Vereina was never truly destined for greatness. It would be safe to say that he and Celestalia shared such a fate, whatever that happened to be. And similar to Celestalia, his childhood was altogether unremarkable.

While the 'upperclassmen' as it were received near-royal treatment from the rest of the family, Erenell and Celestalia were quite literally stuck in the middle. Over time, the two developed quite a kinship together, always going on their own adventures while the rest of the family conducted business. The episode with Celestalia and the Rose Earrings, for example. Had Erenell never shown her where the location of the secret vault was, she may never have held them in her palm.

Once their younger sister, Monika, got old enough, she often joined them on these adventures too. But she was not old enough to properly go out on campaign when Celestalia fled...and Erenell wasn't ready to consider that sort of life against the wishes of the estate. That is, until very recently.

Shortly after Celestalia got access to Orbis, Erenell visited her at the inn. She was very shocked to see him, thinking that the entire family was united against her. Perhaps, she was wrong, Erenell explained. How wrong she was though remained to be determined. Much of that rested on what Erenell wanted for himself.

Celestalia tried to convince him to adventure anew. When she asked what his preferred job class would be, Erenell expressed a desire to bring down the law with leaded fury. In other words, he would seek to become a Gunslinger.

Right before Celestalia headed out to Frilled Field last Saturday, Erenell visited her a second time with incredible news.

"You see, Celestalia...I've been in talks with the captain of the Nautilus, Kyrin."

"You have?!" she exclaimed.

"Indeed I have. And now she's going to bring me on as a...business manager, per se. She thinks I have a certain talent with diplomacy, one that she can put to good use."

"Does anyone else know about this?"

"As far as I know, no," Erenell answered, "but if that changes, then Kyrin has reserved the right for me to become a true Pirate whenever I want to head to Maple Island."

"Erenell..."

"Hnn?"

"Thanks. But...you didn't have to ruin the good thing you had just for me."

"I don't know what you're talking about, frankly. I've wanted to do something like this for a while. I just...don't think I had the courage until you did what you did."

Celestalia's eyes lit up in awe.

"So I really should be thanking you."

"Well..." Celestalia had no real reply.

"Oh, one more thing. Kyrin asked me to tell you this."

"Huh?"

"She says we both can take up residence in the bedroom of the Nautilus whenever we need to. So you don't have to sleep on straw anymore in that dusty store back home."

"...Th-that's incredible. Thank you, brother."

"I mean she said you were there once before."

"That's true..."

"So what do you think?"

"Well...I guess...I'm kind of going to miss that hay bale."

"Won't we all."



"...Wait, what?"

Erenell chuckled a bit to himself as he let Celestalia exit the room on her way back to the platform.

 

​

PART LXXIX. Early Huntress Gets the Armor

Spoiler: PART LXXIX. Early Huntress Gets the Armor

Celestalia had one last look at the old homestead before grabbing her Ryden and setting back out for Ariant and Frilled Field. As she left, she thanked the men who had granted her incredible hospitality over the last five and a half months. Thanks to the persuasive acumen of her brother Erenell, the Nautilus' sleeping quarters now offers Celestalia its glorious actual mattresses. Those seem to be quite rare in Victoria Island, for whatever reason. Maybe because Soft Feathers are fairly uncommon outside of Ossyria...

What was more remarkable though was that Celestalia departed Henesys extraordinarily early, at least for her - 23:30 server time! Though, it would take nearly half an hour to get from there to Scarf Plead. That said, the Huntress was more than ready to grind the necessary hours for the coveted Green Huntress Armor.

Today, Celestalia was curious to see how many Pleads she would be fighting, so marked down her starting experience at 464921.

Our first equip came very early - only about twenty Pleads in:


The Level 27 Forked Dagger. Now all we need is the Red Engrit and we've got everything, except for, you know, what we're actually here for.

We soon after get a second one.

Celestalia stopped after this to take an early snack break.

It took about 30 minutes after we got going again to land the third equip, a Golden Hook. Three weapons, no actual armor so far!


Meanwhile, word was quickly getting around the world markets that a new vein of magical dust, used in the enchanting of White and Chaos Scrolls, was discovered deep in the mountains of El Nath and had already made its way to the production line. The numbers of these elusive items were steadily increasing, and for many entrepreneurs profits were set to rapidly decrease. Celestalia curiously monitored the Smega broadcasts to keep up with the news. These market fluctuations have a way of affecting just about everything, even down to her own family - which at first glance would seem to have nothing to do with the situation.

Speaking of profits, by 01:30 Celestalia was hovering in the +14~+16 range for Blue Potions. We really plateaued there a while, not sure why.

But finally we got something even slightly useful to drop! For a moment Celestalia's eyes lit up when she saw the color. Except...


Well, let's check the stats anyway. Our current pants is just 19 Weapon Defense. This one...is one less WDef...but +2 DEX. I think we'll hang on to that. Still though, the Bennis Chainpants is slightly superior, thanks to that 10% we landed on it a while back.

Since we were getting only one equip every half hour, here's another one. It's just a Red Matty.


Strangely enough the next equip only took ten minutes. Here it is:


And we only had to defeat...uhh...2,078 Scarf Pleads to do it!

For finally winning the battle Celestalia obtains 4 Weapon Defense (and we can probably just use the Huntress Pants from now on - our net is -1 and -10 HP, but the prestige boost is well worth it). And...more importantly...Orbis Park! We'll handle that in the next installment, and there is no time to waste. Stay tuned!