Krythan's Journal

Entry #152 - Check-In #15

Still grinding out coins! When we're not working, traveling, or making progress on house renovation project, we're grinding out coins. We have enough coins in-pocket to pull the trigger on our next purchase... but being able to do a straight coin-only purchase, without having to sell our current equip(s) and/or take on any debt while we sell our equip(s) for the upgrade would be a nice luxury.

The last two months have seen good progress on our goals, including reaching 30k on the NL, and running 18-man Pink Bean on both of our main characters... Both of which were our original goals when we set out to create this journal in November of 2023.

What's next? Continuing to invest in the Night Lord. That means grinding out coins, and experience. After that, we'll likely sink more coins into giving our SE some much needed love, and then put some more coins into mage gear to get our 5-6F setup to ~2.5-hit.

What are our long-term goals?

• Earn Experience from Bossing (3.8b of 5b)
• Upgrade Night Lord Equip(s) (3 of 4)

What are our 2025 real-life goals?

• Hike & Run 200 Miles (157 of 200)
• Bike 1,000 Miles (601 of 1,000)

 

Entry #153 - Flairgrave

What's the point of grinding if you don't occasionally buy yourself something nice...

What are our long-term goals?

• Upgrade Night Lord Equip(s) (4 of 4) - Accomplished!

 

I appreciate the advice!

We've had fun tracking claw prices over the past month or two. Originally, we'd been eyeing some of the 81 RC's that were listed around 2k coins. That would have been +5 attack from our previous 76 RC for a net cost of ~1.3k coins... which seemed like a good idea at the time. Especially since then we'd still have enough coins-in-pocket to immediately upgrade our cape from 10 to 12. After being advised to hold off for an 86 RC for the sake of re-sellability (thanks Subterlabor, Erazed, and others!), all of a sudden we were looking at 86/12 RC's for around 3.3k, and 86/14 RC's for ~3.8k. Then Rahul posted their 91/15 NT. .. compared to the 86/14 RC's were were looking at, it was only an another 750c for an additional +5 attack (or more like +4 when you normalize out the DEX requirement). It's a good thing you can always grind more coins, as there is always a next-best upgrade to be done!

 

Entry #154 - Summer Goblins

It's time for the Summer Event! We were expecting an event similar to last year's Summer Fishing Event, and were pleasantly surprised with a new theme, and new mechanics. Our expectation was that we'd repeat the strategy from last year - Carry alts through BPQ, get the Fishing Ring, and convert all the coins into Raffles. But, this year is looking like it has a slightly different approach, especially considering the new weekly cap of BPQ coins, and new chaos-like event equip(s) scrolling. Looking at the mechanics, the net gain from event equip(s) appears to be much stronger, but the expected meso return from this event appears to be much lower.

So far, based on what we've figured out, the strategy this year is to:

1. Create a party of (6) of your own characters, and carry them through BPQ.
2. Attackers run content to earn the rest of their 1,400 weekly goblin coins.
3. On main characters, use jellies for ring, and coins for chaos-like scrolling of event equip(s)
4. On secondary characters, use coins for trade-able event equip(s).
5. Use remaining coins for exp and/or pouches (aka raffles).
6. Make use of your 3 x 14/week event buffs (see below).

Still trying to figure out the best way to use excess goblin coins. The pouches (raffle) are rather expensive, but we're not sure the scroll rates yet. The exp bonus aren't bad either, especially on higher level characters. Another option is to buy flags and pops to sell on the FM. Time will tell which is the best approach.

Plus... there are a number of buffs that are quite powerful. Cloudette's buff gives a stacking +10 att. One-Eyed Goblin gives a stacking +15% exp, and Two-Eyes Goblin gives +15 STAT. Considering each of these can be used 14/week per character, for 30 minutes... use them liberally! I'm assuming that most players won't make full use of all 3 x 14 weekly buffs.

Based on what appears to be the strategy, here are our goals for the next three weeks:

What are our event goals?

• Get 20 Event Equip(s) (0 of 20)
• Use 200 Blessings (14 of 200)
• Earn 20,000 Goblin Coins (3,636 of 20,00)

 

Entry #155 - Goblin Coins

Some tips & tricks we've been figured out...

1. Dok and Kaebi - The ability to convert coins into exp is better than I'd initially expected. The amount of exp given appears to scale with level up to 135, before flattening out. This means that the most efficient use of Dok and Kaebi is for the levels that are more expensive to leech, most notably 110-135. There's also an argument that, even though the exp reward flattens out at 135+, your ability to generate coins increases around those levels, thus the effort-to-reward continues to be quite good through early to mid 4th job.

2. Expeditions - You don't need to be in the white-ing party to get Goblin Coins. We've been running Krex, and bringing our mules that are of eligible levels into the map. Example: In Krex, simply do 1 point of damage from each character to the boss, and the character will get the +40 coins. Works for any of the bosses that have large expedition sizes (Krex, Zak, Pap, etc).

3. Bauble (Chaos-like) - The Spectacles, Sandals, and Earrings are chaos-ish-able. For the Sandals, and Earrings, even if you don't get a good result on the first scroll, it often makes sense to hit them with a second one anyway, as you still have the potential of rolling +5 STAT, even if the item is at +0 STAT (unlike how traditional Chaos Scrolls work).

4. Bauble (Trade-able) - The Strawberry Icecream Bar, and Supreme Fishing King Flag are trade-able. So it makes sense to buy them on characters that don't need their coins, and trade them to your mains... allowing you to put your main characters's coins towards the other event equip(s) and exp rewards.

5. Buckwheat Jellies - The Fishing Ring is only 4 Jellies. This leaves the remaining "special currency" to be spent on AP Resets, and Teleport Cokes / Owls. This means once you get the event ring, these points become much less valuable and less worth worrying about.

6. One/Two-Eyed Goblin - Use your event buffs!! I can only imagine how many of the 3 x 14/week buffs go un-used. What I've been doing - get the buff, use it immediately, then get a second one for your inventory to use in 30 minutes. This gives you 1 hour of event buff, with only one visit to the Goblin Night Market.

What are our event goals?

• Get 20 Event Equip(s) (4 of 20)
• Use 200 Blessings (22 of 200)
• Earn 20,000 Goblin Coins (6,230 of 20,00)

 

Entry #156 - Event Equip(s)

This event provides some pretty respectable event equip(s). We haven't yet chaos'd the sandals, or earrings yet, but with just the Fishing Ring, 5/6 Goggles, and a Strawberry Icecream Bar (and of course the new NT claw), the Night Lord is up to 10.27m Dummy DPM:

Krythen (183 NL | 4218 ~ 7476 | Echo, MW20, SE, Cider): 10.27m



Now, just for fun, with Two-Eye Blessing, Full Moon Blessing and Onyx Apple, the Night Lord's at 15.89m. This isn't eligible for anything, but seeing 57k+ crits is fun.

Krythen (183 NL | 6607 ~ 1652 | Echo, MW20, SE, Onyx Apple, Two-Eye, Full Moon): 15.89m

 

Entry #157 - Event Week #1

One week down, two more to go. Coming into this event, we'd anticipated focusing on selling leech, and building our coin reserves back up. However, the current summer event isn't a "meso event". None of the activities really add any considerable amount of mesos or coins into the economy. As such, we're adjusting our plan to focus on exp. The boosted exp rates, along with the One-Eyed Goblin statue buff adds up nicely. Even the turn-ins for exp rewards are pretty good. On my level 135+ characters, we've so far submitted 46 exp turn-ins, returning an average of ~6,750,000 exp per 100 coins. Our plan is to do our weekly BPQs, and earn the rest of the coins from content... dragging along all our alts on bosses that allow it (Krex, Zak). From there, we'll acquire the minimum amount of event equip(s), and the rest of the event coins will go towards exp turn-ins.

What are our event goals?

• Get 20 Event Equip(s) (10 of 20)
• Use 200 Blessings (64 of 200)
• Earn 20,000 Goblin Coins (8,110 of 20,00)

 

Entry #158 - Event Week #2

For week #2 of the Summer Event, the focus has been exp. The party has been running a lot of NT content: Nib, Nameless, etc. All event points have been going to Dok and Kaebi exp turn-ins. Besides Fishing Ring, and Supreme Flag, most of our mages won't even be doing the event equip(s) - as they're all at the tma thresholds needed (for the time being). When not running content, the Archmages are trying to take advantage of the One-Eyed Statue exp buff to grind out some 5-6F. With event buffs and echo, we're able to grind out up to ~130m-150m exp/hr. at 5-6F. Lower in practice, as most of the time there is a full party of leechers.



And just for fun, here's 172m exp/hr. if burning Ssiws Cheese...



Tada! Another character for Core.



What are our event goals?

• Get 20 Event Equip(s) (11 of 20)
• Use 200 Blessings (134 of 200)
• Earn 20,000 Goblin Coins (16,793 of 20,000)

 

Entry #159 - Event Week #3

Just wrapped up week #3 of the Summer Event. The focus was gaining exp on our attackers. Dok and Kaebi's turn-in for exp ended up being quite good. Over a sample size of 112 exp turn-ins, our characters got an average of 5.9m exp per 100 Goblin coins.

Originally, the plan was to scroll event equip(s) such as the sandals, and earrings on each of the mules, we scrapped that plan after realizing the exp turn-ins were better than expected. The attackers got the glasses, and the mages got the fishing flags. Mages that still benefited from more tma got sandals as well.

And that wraps up week #3 of the Summer Event. Ended up doing a lot more bossing than usual, which was a fun change of pace.

What are our event goals?

• Get 20 Event Equip(s) (11 of 20) - Cancelled!
• Use 200 Blessings (262 of 200) - Accomplished!
• Earn 20,000 Goblin Coins (23,977of 20,000) - Accomplished!

 

Entry #160 - Post-Event

With our last Full Moon Blessings we did 9.69m statue, and 3.45m body in our 18-man Pink Bean. There's still a few areas we can practice and optimize, but 10/3.5 seems possible with our current setup.





Meanwhile, during the event we'd been running a lot of NT - especially as a trio-attacker setup. NL+SE+IL, and an HS mule, was our go-to combo for Nib, and Nameless. With that, all added up, we're closing in our bossing experience goal:

What are our long-term goals?

• Earn Experience from Bossing (4.8b of 5b) - Updated!

 

Entry #161 - One Ninety

Level 190 on the Bishop! ~1,500 tma and 9.5k HP.



We are back to selling leech. Combining 5-6F and ulu2, we've collected around ~500m in the past week or so.

Our next upgrade is putting mw20 on a second Bishop, such that we'll have multiple channels of leech with mw20. After that, we'll upgrade the BM's bow for a few more points of attack, and put some meso into the I/L's equip(s) - as we've been running those character in more and more content recently.

After that we should be on-track to upgrade the NL's cape as the next large purchase.

The I/L has been gaining a level every other day at 5-6F. That's pushes us to 175, which gives us technically another character for Pink Bean, but there's a fair amount of investment there before it really becomes a character we'll use in Pink Bean. Maybe someday, we'll see.

 

Entry #162 - 1,586 Gacha

The last time we reported on Gacha, we reported data on 1,592 Gacha Tickets we had done in one run. In hindsight, it wasn't a great idea to do that many tickets all at once, as the inventory management coming off that run took a disproportionate amount of time - as each characters' inventory was completely full - making it tricky to swap around and sort items.

Originally, we'd sorted scrolls based on the class that was most likely to use that scroll. For example: 1 storage mule had mage scrolls, 1 storage mule had warrior scrolls, etc. That solution worked for a while, but we were spending too much time just organizing inventory.

So, we adopted a much simpler system for scroll sorting. Make a dedicated mule character for each of 10%, 30%, 60%, and 70% scrolls. With max inventory space you can store all the scrolls you need across these 4 characters. Plus, you can take all your scrolls from a gacha run and sort them rapidly on sight alone.

Though, we've also since limited our gacha runs to only a few hundred tickets at a time. Based on this data, combining the results from quite a few smaller runs, were reporting on the results for another 1,586 tickets worth of data:

• 2 White Scrolls
• 3 Chaos Scrolls
• 15 Elemental Wands 5-8
  
• 0 Brown Work Gloves
• 3 Glove for Attack 30%
• 2 Pink Adventurer Capes
• 2 Pink Gaia Capes
• 1 Purple Adv. Cape
• 1 Purple Gaia Cape

These batches results in a 317:1 rate for Chaos or White Scrolls, updating our running avg. to a rate of ~431:1.

 

Entry #163 - Dual Channel Leech

Once the summer event ended, we got back to selling leech as our primary focus. Our go-to combination has been 3-hit 5-6F leech paired with ulu2 leech. Pending buyer availability as well as available channels, it wasn't uncommon to add on a channel of Cornians or Nintos, or swap out the ulu2 channel for ulu1 - especially during off-hours. Using this setup, we could consistently produce just about 100c per evening. When booting up, if we could find/coordinate 7 buyers (most often, filling out parties with someone buying for multiple characters at the same time) we knew it was going to be a good day.

 

Entry #164 - RL #7

Between September and October, we made an effort to log our miles before it starts getting cold here in the Northeast. Last year, we were falling short of our targets which lead to some cold-AF bike rides... an experience I wish to avoid this time around. Combining a few day trips, including a 7-hour Mt. Washington, and quite a few days biking, we can finally check off our miles goals for the year

In October and November we took a bit of a Maple break. It's healthy to do so every now and then, and it was a chance to log some hours in other games. I was a huge fan of Bad Company and Battlefield 4 back in the day, so when Battlefield 6 came out, it was an opportunity to log hours playing with RL friends. While the game holds true to the Battlefield experience, but doesn't quite capture the same magic from previous entries. Well worth it to grab it on a sale, but maybe not worth the $70 ticket price.

What are our 2025 real-life goals?

• Hike & Run 200 Miles (244 of 200) - Accomplished!
• Bike 1,000 Miles (1,045 of 1,000) - Accomplished!

 

Entry #165 - Halloween

This year's Halloween event was... fine. The quest's instructions are often unclear, and not all that much fun. Fortunately, on characters that had already done the quest, we could simply buy the mask with pumpkin coins. We skipped Olivia PQ, and spent this event taking advantage of the event's exp bonus. A few billion mesos worth of 5-6F and ulu2 leech profit later, we also had enough pumpkin coins to grab the Zombie Rings on each of our mages. We made a small pile of coins from turning in all the Raffles, but otherwise didn't engage with the event's content. With the help of a few more zak/krex runs, we finished the Zombie Ring on each character - which wrapped up our participation in this year's Halloween event.

 

Entry #166 - Fancy Amplifiers

Just updated the Leech Guide with a new recommendation for Levels 69-71. Shout out to FluffyTom for sharing their numbers at Fancy Amplifiers. With a few volunteers, we re-tested all the numbers for Windraiders, CDs, and Fancy Amplifiers - and in fact, at Level 69, and Level 70, Fancy Amplifiers are about +25% more exp/hr. than early CDs. It's not until Level 71, where you get full exp at CDs, that it pulls ahead - and even then, the simplicity of the Fancy Amps rotation still holds merit. (Yes, technically you can get a higher exp/hr. at Windraiders, but exceptional Windraiders sellers are few and far between!)

Here's the summary of our @eph tests from last night:

• Windraiders - Levels 65-71, 2.3m-3m exp/hr.
• Fancy Amplifiers - Levels 69-71, 3.0m-3.5m exp/hr.
• CDs (Partial) - Levels 67-71, 2.3m-3m exp/hr.
• CDs (Full) - Levels 71-75, 3.5m-4m exp/hr.

This is particularity excited to me, as it was the missing map to unlock the ability to multi-mage this entire string of levels. I now know there are viable maps to duo-mage from Level 53 straight through until level 125.

 

Entry #167 - Shifter

The Halloween 2025 Patch updated the Night Lord's Shadow Shifter skill. It retained the Active effect from the prior patch, while re-introducing the passive component. To me, this was a huge deal - as, the passive component to Shadow Shifter was a large part of what gave Night Lord's their iconic look & feel.

However, it does appear that the stated 20% avoid chance may be greater in practice. So, until that's changed, we've been making sure to enjoy playing our Night Lord. That means more content than we usually do: Mainly NT, but also selling Zakum Helms, and joining the guild for whatever content is being run. And I must say, with the increased avoid, it's been very enjoyable to play the Night Lord. We've enjoyed this character more recently than we have in a long time...

And with that, tada!

We just accomplished the last long-term goal that we were actively tracking...

What are our long-term goals?

• Earn Experience from Bossing (6.3b of 5b) - Accomplished!