1. Hello!

    First of all, welcome to MapleLegends! You are currently viewing the forums as a guest, so you can only view the first post of every topic. We highly recommend registering so you can be part of our community.

    By registering to our forums you can introduce yourself and make your first friends, talk in the shoutbox, contribute, and much more!

    This process only takes a few minutes and you can always decide to lurk even after!

    - MapleLegends Administration-
  2. Experiencing disconnecting after inserting your login info? Make sure you are on the latest MapleLegends version. The current latest version is found by clicking here.
    Dismiss Notice

Odd Jobs Community Thread

Discussion in 'Community' started by deer, Jan 7, 2021.

  1. Voxtagrams
    Offline

    Voxtagrams Headless Horseman

    885
    381
    376
    Jun 13, 2020
    2:26 AM
    • Agree Agree x 1
  2. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxiv

    R>1 pog ranged for jr. balrog run

    In the diary entry before this one, we took a look at wood(wo)men and compared bow-users (rangers, because the focus is on third job) to crossbow-users (snipers) when it comes to ranged DPS — although wood(wo)men are, of course, also adept at melee, like their STR mage and permabeginner cousins. And in a much older diary entry (pt. iv), we even took a look at how STRmits stack up in terms of ranged DPS. In this entry, I want to take a look at (and compare) two seemingly unrelated odd jobs who are proficient in ranged DPS as well: the permarogue and the permarcher. Permarchers are actually not mutually exclusive with wood(wo)men, because any pure-STR permarcher is simultaneously a permarcher and a wood(wo)man; and likewise, permarogues are not mutually exclusive with STRlords, either, because a LUKless permarogue is simultaneously a permarogue and a STRlord. But here, we only consider “standard” (if an odd job can be called such a thing), non-hybridised, versions of these odd jobs.

    The permanent-first-job nature of permarogue and permarcher has some interesting tradeoffs for each one. In particular, while they both suffer from a lack of booster, permarogues suffer somewhat less, because they can sometimes use speed 3 weapons, like the maple claws; these weapons would only have their speed category lowered by 1 due to booster (because the lowest possible speed category is 2), as opposed to the usual lowering by 2. On the other hand, there aren’t any bows nor crossbows that have as low of a speed category as 3 (nor even as low as 4). But in our models, the permarogue is using a Red Craven, which is speed 4 anyways. The more distinct advantage for the permarogue is that, while obviously neither of these jobs have mastery, that doesn’t make much of a difference for the permarogue (because L7 ignores claw mastery, and effectively always has 55.555…% mastery), while the permarcher suffers from the lack of extra damage and lack of damage stability. However, the permarcher has its own distinct advantage: permarchers have crits, while permarogues do not!

    One caveat that should be noted here is that permarogues and permarchers are exceedingly fragile. They fare a tad bit better than permabeginners, but because they never take second job advancement, they are already-squishy classes who retain even more of their squishiness than usual.

    With that said, let’s take a look at our models. As usual, they are all roughly level 100, and have pretty good gear:

    The model permarogue
    • 490 LUK (25 of which is from gear)
    • 140 DEX (80 of which is from gear)
    • 118 WATK (58 from claw + 20 from Cider + 3 from cape + 10 from gloves + 27 from stars)
    The model permarcher
    • 530 DEX (80 of which is from gear)
    • 100 STR (25 of which is from gear)
    • 148 WATK (110 from crossbow + 20 from Cider + 3 from cape + 10 from gloves + 5 from quarrels)
    Comparing ranged DPS
    As usual, we assume that all player characters and monsters have the same level. And as in the previous diary entry, we will use 600 WDEF to reasonably represent a low- or mid-level boss monster. The permarogue is using L7, and the permarcher is using Double Shot:
    • STRmit (SM) DPS: 13807.5
    • Permarogue DPS: 7658.0
    • Wood(wo)man (bow) DPS: 6725.3
    • Wood(wo)man (xbow) DPS: 6690.6
    • Permarcher DPS: 5614.0
    Just to give an idea of how permarogue vs. permarcher goes down with much lower WDEF, the DPS for permarogues and permarchers is 9033.0 and 6979.5, respectively, given 0 WDEF. This does narrow the gap somewhat — permarogues being a factor of 1.2942 better in this case, instead of a factor of 1.3641 — but permarogues still look significantly better here.

    IMPORTANT REMINDERS BEFORE ANYONE GOES AROUND TOUTING THESE NUMERIC FIGURES: Keep in mind (and I cannot stress this enough) that this is a purely one-dimensional — and somewhat shoddy — analysis using dummy models, and that jobs cannot be reduced to raw ranged DPS numbers. The odd jobs that are listed above differ wildly in their playstyles and range of abilities. Furthermore, this only considers characters that are roughly level 100.

    Failing another Toy of 101

    You might remember the Toys of 101 that I boomed in pt. xx of this diary. I mustered up enough Power Crystal Ores to pay SiriusPlaque for another Toy; this time, with 96 WATK, 2 STR, 2 DEX, and 6(!) slots.

    I failed not one, but two 30%s on this bad boy. It survived both, so I am now the ashamed owner of a 96 WATK, 2 STR, 2 DEX, and 4 slot Toy of 101. Oh well.

    capre does a lil more card-huntin’

    I didn’t have much time to card-hunt this time around, but every bit of card-hunting that my woodwoman capreolina does goes that much further towards her being… not squishy as hell. The goal (which capre is very close to now) is to complete the “good” chunk of Victoria Island, which is most of it, excluding the Excavation Site region of Perion and the deeper regions of Sleepywood (although I did do Cold Eyes because I was already 3/5 or 4/5). This is in line with Nimbus’s “Card Hunting Guide: Get your Tier 10 Ring ASAP”, which ranks Victoria Island very highly, excepting the above-mentioned regions. From there, I will probably move to Orbis Tower — which is listed as the first “S-tier” region — at least until I can get the T2 ring.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Once capre gets her T2 ring, I’m not entirely sure where to go from there. I may continue with her, since she needs rings the most desperately, or may switch back to card-hunting on my STR priest cervid to catch her up. Or, for that matter, it may make sense for me to get at least T1 on other characters, like my I/L magelet cervine (who could really use that INT), my swashbuckler hydropotina (quite squishy, similarly to capre), …

    All-odd-jobbed EPQ~

    Ally (i.e. member of the Suboptimal alliance) and permabeginner Dizz was looking to EPQ, and both me and Noam had characters in level range: my DEX spearwoman rusa, and Noam’s besinner, Slimusaurus. It’s possible to EPQ as a party of 3, so off we went!! Here we are, fighting the big bad rock man (BBRM):

    [​IMG]

    We did two EPQs, and in the last one, Dizz and Slimusaurus had an unfortunate encounter with death (thankfully, they still got the EXP), so I had to arduously solo BBRM~! Whew.

    Scrolling a LUK robe~

    My baby besinner, hashishi, has been in need of just a smol LUK robe so that she can, uhm, flex on everyone in KPQ(?)

    The story here started out similarly to the saga of rusa’s sad STR robe, with me booming a number of robes (with the power of just a single 70%, you can boom anything!) to start with. But I didn’t sink in quite as much money (thank god), and once I finally didn’t boom a robe, the result was much more impressive!:

    [​IMG]

    Looks like hashishi is going to be out-damaging the “real” sins in KPQ — at least, the ones with a sufficient quantity of INT…

    Kid Mannequins. Kid Mannequins. Kid Mannequins.

    Now that I failed another Toy of 101, I guess it is time… to farm moar Power Crystal Ores:

    [​IMG]

    I actually decided to try farming at Kid Mannequins because GM buffs were announced, and there weren’t any HHs in my favourite spot. Kid Mannequins give quite good EXP (technically I can get a bit more by going to Male Mannequins, but I’m not usually that much of a potion-hogging masochist), in addition to dropping said ores. In fact, I was already really close to hitting level 101 on capreolina, so after a while of Kid Mannequin grinding, I leveled up!! capre is now level 101~! No more PPQ available to capre… what a terrible loss (</sarcasm>). Oh, and now I can finally see eye to eye with that headless guy. Heh.

    [​IMG]

    And I did switch over to my I/L magelet cervine to try out the same thing, but with Ice Strike:

    [​IMG]

    Noam’s Crimson Arcglaive; grinding Fancy Amps with Noam and Kelsey

    Noam (OmokTeacher, Slime, Slimu) has been crafting Crimson Arcglaives, trying to get a really solid one to finally best his legendary Blood Snowboard (which is perfect, as it started with the maximum WATK, 83, and then had seven 30%s succeed on it). For those unaware, the Crimson Arcglaive is extremely difficult to obtain, as it can only be crafted, and the crafting ingredients are hard to come by, to put it lightly. However, Noam managed to craft and scroll a really nice one!!:

    [​IMG]

    …Although it is, unfortunately, still definitively worse than his Blood Snowboard, at least for someone who can’t make use of the MATK, like a permabeginner. However, he offered to let me borrow it until he got to level 100 (as the Arcglaive is a level 100 weapon)! <3

    Here I am with Noam (OmokTeacher) and Kelsey (Taima; also Tacgnol, Boymoder, Yotsubachan), as we grind at Fancy Amps together, with me wielding Noam’s Arcglaive ^^:

    [​IMG]

    This Arcglaive is such a nice weapon! It does incredible damage, while also giving the nice +5 SPEED, and importantly, the MATK that makes my Heals so much more effective! No need to pop CZPs/Wizard Elixirs alongside my usual Ciders when I have this bad boy equipped. 88 MATK blows those things out of the water, and I can easily heal myself to full HP in a single Heal, regardless of my current HP!

    We ground at Fancy Amps until Taima and OmokTeacher ran out of Barb Elixirs; I ended up getting some 19.5ish percent EXP from that grinding session! Very solid stuff :O
     
    • Like Like x 6
    • Great Work Great Work x 3
  3. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxv

    R>1 pog ranged for snowman run

    Oh, you thought I was done with this series? No, no, no, we cannot stop until all ranged odd-jobbers have been covered!

    In the diary entry before this one, we took a look at permarogues and permarchers, comparing odd jobs based solely on idealised single-target ranged DPS numbers at roughly level 100. Before that, we looked at wood(wo)men and compared bow-users (rangers, because the focus is on third job) to crossbow-users (snipers) when it comes to ranged DPS — although wood(wo)men are, of course, also adept at melee, like their STR mage and permabeginner cousins. And in a much older diary entry (pt. iv), we even took a look at how STRmits stack up in terms of ranged DPS. In this entry, I want to take a look at (and compare) two more odd jobs who are proficient in ranged DPS as well: the permapirate and the swashbuckler.

    Permapirates and swashbucklers can look somewhat similar; they are both pirates, and both switch between melee and ranged combat. Actually, two other closely related pirate odd jobs, the DEX brawler and bullet bucc, are worth mentioning here. These DEX-focussed buccaneers are more than capable of using guns, but for our purposes here, we don’t care about the differences between permapirates, DEX brawlers, and bullet buccs. Our focus is very narrow: just raw ranged DPS. Only DEX bucc is really at a disadvantage in this case, because they can’t put AP into STR in order to equip higher-level guns.

    A quirk of permapirates is that, like permarogues, they are proficient in both melee (Somersault Kick, Flash Fist) and ranged (Double Shot) combat; yet, the permarogue has the same primary stat for both modes of combat (LUK), while the permapirate is pulled between two primary stats, STR (for melee) and DEX (for ranged). Here, we will assume that the permapirate specialises in gun-using, and thus favours DEX over STR. Swashbucklers, on the other hand, have no choice; they are pure STR by definition, and so their ranged damage is largely built on their STR (and to a lesser extent, whatever DEX they may have). This comparison may be somewhat unfair to swashbucklers, if only because third job doesn’t improve their raw ranged DPS all that much. Burst Fire is a bit underwhelming — it’s actually a downgrade at essentially any skill level below 11, and it maxes out at level 20 — but they do at least have their Octopus by their side to help them out a bit. We’ll take the Octopus into account here, but will separate it out into a no-Octopus swashbuckler and yes-Octopus swashbuckler, if only to see how much difference the lil guy makes.

    With that said, let’s take a look at our models. As usual, they are all roughly level 100, and have pretty good gear:

    The model permapirate
    • 530 DEX (80 of which is from gear)
    • 100 STR (25 of which is from gear)
    • 137 WATK (86 from gun + 20 from Cider + 3 from cape + 10 from gloves + 18 from bullets)
    The model swashbuckler
    • 530 STR (25 of which is from gear)
    • 105 DEX (85 of which is from gear; 85 because the Maple Canon Shooter has an average of 5 more DEX than the Concerto)
    • 123 WATK (72 from gun + 20 from Cider + 3 from cape + 10 from gloves + 18 from bullets)
    Comparing ranged DPS
    As usual, we assume that all player characters and monsters have the same level. And as in the previous diary entry, we will use 600 WDEF to reasonably represent a low- or mid-level boss monster. The permapirate is using Double Shot, and the swashbuckler is using Burst Fire.

    We also want to consider the swashbuckler’s use of Octopus, so we will calculate its DPS separately: 984.2.


    modelDPS
    STRmit (SM)13807.5
    Permarogue7658.0
    Wood(wo)man (bow)6725.3
    Wood(wo)man (xbow)6690.6
    Permapirate6669.1
    Swashbuckler (yes Octo)6598.6
    Swashbuckler (no Octo)5614.4
    Permarcher5614.0
    As you can see, without the Octopus, the swashbuckler is essentially tied for last with the permarcher. Taking into account the Octopus’s damage places the swashbuckler alongside the rest of the, if you will, middle bracket: swashbuckler (yes Octo), permapirate, wood(wo)man (xbow), and wood(wo)man (bow) are all roughly around the same DPS here. The swashbuckler (no Octo) and permarcher sit below this bracket, the permarogue sits above, and the STRmit (SM) completely obliterates everything else.

    IMPORTANT REMINDERS BEFORE ANYONE GOES AROUND TOUTING THESE NUMERIC FIGURES: Keep in mind (and I cannot stress this enough) that this is a purely one-dimensional — and somewhat shoddy — analysis using dummy models, and that jobs cannot be reduced to raw ranged DPS numbers. The odd jobs that are listed above differ wildly in their playstyles and range of abilities. Furthermore, this only considers characters that are roughly level 100.

    EPQ with Dizz

    My DEX spearwoman, rusa, did some dozen or so EPQs with ally (member of the Suboptimal alliance) and permabeginner Dizz. We were both in search of the Glittering Altaire Earrings, and because Dizz had already done quite a number of EPQs, he was just able to get his pair by the time we finished! Congrats! That’s a total of 50 EPQs… whew.

    Playing a DEX warrior and having ungodly quantities of WACC (second only to DEX brawlers, who gain a whopping 0.9 WACC, instead of 0.8 WACC, per point of DEX) is pretty fun. You can fight all kinds of silly stuff when you’re well under the appropriate level, and so I’ve been recording rusa soloing the PQ bosses that she’s fought so far. Here she is, soloing the Big Bad Rock Guy (BBRG/BBRM):

    [​IMG]

    rusa gets her Ellin Savior’s Ring

    Once everyone was done EPQing, I decided that it was a good time for rusa to get her Ellin Savior’s Ring. In honesty, this was the first time that I actually did the questline at an appropriate level (I usually procrastinate until roughly level 70), but rusa made quick work of it:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Ta-da!!! Ring acquired~

    [​IMG]

    rusa now has a bit over 5.1k(!) MAXHP with HB, making her my first-ever character that I’ll be using Honsters on! :O

    KPQing with Brains, the DEXdit

    Dizz decided to join Oddjobs with another odd-jobbed character of his own: Brains, the DEXdit. I’ve actually just added DEXdit (a.k.a. LUKless dit, unfortundit) to the list of odd jobs on the Oddjobs website, and one of their defining features (and one of the things that Brains is excited about) is their extremely stable damage. Being LUKless makes their minimum and maximum damages roughly equal, and with a skill like Savage Blow that has so many damage lines (6 at max level), they tend to deal just about the same damage on every attack. DEX is, for obvious reasons, the main stat of DEXdits (hence the name “DEXdit”), but they are really only constrained to be LUKless, so some STR may be added as well, in order to equip daggers like e.g. the Dragon Kanzir and some shields like e.g. the Dragon Khanjar. DEXdits who are truly pure DEX (4 base STR, in addition to 4 base LUK) are considered “pure DEXdits”, which is its own subspecies, if you will.

    When Brains hit level 21, I asked if he wanted to KPQ, to which he said yes. I could have KPQed on my besinner, hashishi, but I didn’t want to outlevel her DEXginner friend Gambolpuddy-chan, so I took my ordinary F/P mage MPQ-mule-to-be, potpan, instead:

    [​IMG]

    Brains was wearing some equipment borrowed from his permabeginner Dizz, including a WATK Stolen Fence, which nearly fooled our party members into thinking he was an ordinary bandit:

    [​IMG]

    And potpan hit level 31 in the first stage of one of our KPQs! Here she is, Fire Arrowing a Ligator to death:

    [​IMG]
     
    • Like Like x 7
  4. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxvi

    Dextrous arm, agile punch?

    In diary pt. v, I explored the math behind third job pugilists. In particular, the intent was to compare to a third job STRmit, as a kind of hypothetical “rangifer vs. Boymoder”. Here, I want to use a similar model, with similar assumptions, to compare this hypothetical pugilist to a hypothetical third job DEXaneer: all skills in question are maxed out, the monster target is the same level as the attacking player character, the monster target has 400 WDEF, attacks are uninterrupted, etc. Oh, and the DEXaneer needs some stats/gear (again, for consistency, based on a roughly level 100 DEXaneer):
    Oh, and what is so great about DEX brawlers, you ask? Well, a number of things:
    • Like so many other odd jobs who rely on secondary stats for damage, DEXaneers have much more stable damage than their ordinary STR-based counterparts.
    • DEXaneers have the highest WACC of any job in the game, for a few reasons:
      • They are pure DEX (duh). And more pure than, say, DEX warriors or DEX mages, because those jobs need other stats (STR and INT respectively) for job advancement.
      • Brawlers/marauders/buccaneers gain a whopping 0.9(!) WACC per point of DEX. This is significantly more than any other job; in second place are the warriors/magicians/beginners, who get 0.8 WACC per DEX.
      • Like many other jobs, brawlers can benefit from +20 WACC due to mastery from second job onwards, but in addition to that, brawlers also have the +20 WACC from Bullet Time!
      • The DEXaneer’s weapon of choice is the Maple Golden Claw, which grants a whopping 30(!) WACC on average, clean.
      • In third job, the DEXaneer benefits from Energy Charge, which, at max level, when active, grants a +20 WACC buff. This is more than you would get from consumables (barring rarer, unavailable-from-NPCs ones like Amorian Baskets), and is on par with Bless.
    • DEXaneers also have the highest AVOID of any job in the game… well, usually. In MapleLegends, DEXaneers were severely nerfed due to the preponderance of, uh, muling, present in MapleLegends. In more GMS-like servers, DEXaneers will get a whopping 1.5 AVOID per point of DEX!! That, combined with the AVOID from Bullet Time and even Energy Charge, can make DEXaneers into some real slippery bastards!
    • DEXaneer swag (duh).
    OK then, on to the numbers! I’ll be making use of my damage calculator for crunching these numbers:

    Energy Drain

    Energy Drain is the marauder’s main single-target DPS skill (at least, for pugilists, DEXaneers, and normal marauders). Entering all of the relevant data for this hypothetical Energy Drain (“Damage multi” should be 360%, since we assume Energy Drain to be maxed), we immediately notice something: the damage is much more stable than the pugilist’s. This is, of course, to be expected; pugilists tend to have perhaps the most unstable damage in the game (yes, even more unstable than that of the STRginner!), and DEXaneers are expected to have even more stable damage than their non-odd-jobbed counterparts. The damage range per-hit is 1882~2527 (compare this to the pugilist’s 1~4652), and the CV per-hit is 8.4% (compare this to the pugilist’s whopping 57.7%!).

    The actual expected damage per-hit here is roughly 2204.1 (somewhat worse than the pugilist’s 2326.5). Fortunately for the DEXaneer, they can use booster to achieve one speed category better than the pugilist; the Maple Golden Claw is speed 5, minus 2 from booster bringing it to speed 3, whereas bare hands have speed 4. This assumes no Speed Infusion, because we are considering third job here (the pugilist is more favourable by fourth job, because SI does work on unarmed combatants), so the DPS ends up being ever-so-slightly more favourable for the DEX marauder, in the end: 4321.8 DPS (versus the pugilist’s 4308.3 DPS). Of course, this is basically a tie; the difference here can be easily bridged by minor adjustments in equipment. But, we can at least reasonably conclude that at this level (roughly 100), versus a roughly 400 WDEF monster, the DEXaneer is a bit worse in per-hit damage, but makes up for it with a bit faster attacking speed.

    It’s worth noting here, that any WATK or STR that the DEXaneer can get from their gear represents a large advantage for them over the pugilist. The WATK advantage is obvious; the pugilist’s only methods of increasing their WATK is from secondary equipment like capes (particularly when combined with Chaos Scrolls and some good luck), gloves, and even pendants (again, particularly when combined with a Chaos Scroll and some good luck). But DEXaneers have the modest advantage of using a weapon. They are still somewhat similar to the pugilist, in that they are very limited beyond a certain relatively early level; their best bet is the Maple Golden Claw. But the Maple Golden Claw is situated further on in the game, at level 64, rather than the pugilist’s capped WATK from level 31 onwards. And the Golden Claw can at least, in principle, be scrolled arbitrarily well. The pugilist patiently awaits the day that they can scroll their own fists!

    The disparity in STR is perhaps more stark: the effective PSM (primary stat multiplier) for the second/third/fourth job pugilist is (4.2 + 4.2 ⋅ 0.1 ⋅ 0.9) ÷ 2 = 2.289. The effective PSM for the second/third/fourth job DEXaneer is (4.8 + 4.8 ⋅ 0.6 ⋅ 0.9) ÷ 2 = 3.696. This means that the DEXaneer benefits roughly 3.696 ÷ 2.289 = 1.615 times more from each point of STR. But actually, this advantage is even greater, because the DEXaneer has so much more WATK. In any case, of course the DEXaneer has a hard time getting STR (as they have 4 base STR for life), but the point is that their equipment empowers them more than it does the pugilist (who suffers from lower WATK and a lower effective PSM).

    But what about Stun Mastery? You can check for yourself, but because Stun Mastery is only taken into account after WDEF, it doesn’t really change anything about the comparison of DEXaneer vs. pugilist.

    Energy Blast (+ Somersault Kick)?

    Again, skill bonuses are after WDEF, so we will skip this corresponding section from the original “STRlord vs. pugilist”.

    hydro ruins a helm, and gets a new one…

    My level 85 swashbuckler, hydropotina, has been using her zhelm since level 51 or so. As usual, I like to play it safe: I get/buy a helm, and then use 60% and/or 100% scrolls on it. Helmet for DEX 60% scrolls are a bit pricey, but are my only realistic option for squeezing utility out of my head equipment spot. hydro’s helm was looking pretty good at first, but after a bad run of 60%s failing (I am the consummate master of failing truly unfortunate quantities of 60%s in a row), I was stuck with a merely “(+3)” zhelm that had 2(!) slots remaining. Rather than waste even more money, it was time for a new helmet…

    I saw someone smegaing to sell AFK zhelms for a mere 10 million mesos, so I hopped on hydro to take advantage of the deal. When I got there, someone recognised me as a member of Oddjobs, and asked what was odd about my character. For those unfamiliar, swashbucklers (a.k.a. swashies, cowgirls/cowboys, STR sairs, or — in third job particularly — STRlaws) are essentially just pure STR (20 base DEX) gunslingers. In melee, they can fight with Somersault Kick, and at range, with Double Shot (and many others, like Burst Fire, Ice Splitter, etc.). Also, at range, they benefit from Recoil Shot, and regardless of whether they are in melee or at range, they can benefit from skills like Wings, Bullet Time, Octopus, etc. I actually have a work-in-progress guide to swashbucklers, if you’re really interested.

    I was asked if I wanted to pay a more usual rate (12M mesos) to be a solo buyer and loot any and all zhelms that drop. I hesitantly said yes, considering that I have typically, in the past, paid that much even on runs with 2 or 3 buyers (and thus much more slim chances for relooting). Plus, I’m a little tired of having to deal with kinda-crappy zhelms, anyways. In the end, I maybe could have said “no” and still managed to get the same outcome (for a somewhat lower price), but oh well :p

    [​IMG]

    It seems that now, both of my pirate characters (the other being rangifer, my pugilist) have purchased a zhelm from FatSloth! As it turned out though, only one zhelm dropped >.< …Oh well, at least that meant that I didn’t have to make any decisions, hehe. Fortunately, it was a pretty nice helm! And, I used both of the 60%s that I already had on-hand, and passed both!!:

    [​IMG]

    Here’s hoping the good luck continues…

    rusa is not strong

    rusa is my DEX spearwoman. She is not strong, or at least, not STRong, considering that she is stuck with 35 base STR for life (a pitiful STR, for a warrior). When using Crusher or Fury (I’m not third job yet, but, you know, eventually…), the PSM is a whopping 5.0 (assuming I’m using the “correct” weapon). That would put my effective PSM at (5.0 + 5.0 ⋅ 0.6 ⋅ 0.9) ÷ 2 = 3.85. This more or less equates to — as always, depending on the exact situation — something like 3.0~3.8 times more of a benefit to my damage per point of STR, than per point of DEX. This applies to ordinary spear(wo)men as well, but because I’m pure DEX, I really don’t need any more total WACC (“total” in the sense that we include WACC contributions from DEX and LUK, in addition to raw WACC) from my gear. So I’m very free to be greedy and squeeze as much STR as possible out of my gear.

    As covered in pt. xxii of this diary, I scrolled myself a very average 12 STR robe after sinking in way too many goddamn mesos. The next part of gearing for STR, I’ve decided, is getting myself a pair of Glittering Altaire Earrings. These earrings are the only possible source of STR on earrings (+2 STR), other than the crappier Altaire Earrings that you upgrade into the glittering ones (+1 STR), and Element Pierce, which is level 110, only gives +1 STR (on average; +0~2 STR in general), and is very expensive.

    The requirement for Glittering Altaire Earrings is still rather steep, however: a whopping 50 EPQs. Now, I’m a PQ junkie myself, but EPQ isn’t really my favourite. I’d probably put it second-to-last on my PQ ranking, as I do at least prefer it to PPQ. So, because the first half of EPQ’s level range (EPQ is level 45~55) is a subinterval of LPQ’s level range (35~50), and the latter half is a subinterval of OPQ’s level range (51~70), I generally just skip EPQ altogether, and go straight from LPQ to OPQ. In this case, however, I want those damn earrings, even if they are regrettably untradeable!! D:

    However, even if rusa is not strong, she would certainly have her EPQ party members believing otherwise (I partly blame the abundance of, ahem, INT-based non-mages, for this):

    [​IMG]

    Taking a break from EPQ, for my own sanity

    After having done quite a few EPQs, I decided that it was time to take a break for my own mental health, so I went and transfered a bunch of shit between my characters. I have too much garbage, and too many characters — not to mention the fact that I have poopy-brain — so this took me a while >.<

    Once I was more-or-less settled, I decided to take a leisurely stroll over to ye olde Forgotten Path (FP) to check for any HHs. I did manage to find one:

    [​IMG]

    Any time I can find an HH here, I kill it, as my woodwoman, capreolina. The EXP is somewhat modest (5.5%-ish at my level, 101), but it “only” (“only” being relative to odd-jobbers of my level…) takes me 10 minutes or so to kill the guy, and there’s always some chance that he will drop a head, which is worth a bit of EXP and mesos. Plus, at FP, it costs me nearly zero mesos to kill the guy, because he rarely hits me at all (HH is incapable of jumping over that fat stair you can see pictured above). I, for some reason, enjoy the little mini-boss fights and little chunks of EXP more than grinding away at some random training map for however long I can withstand it…

    Unfortunately, this HH didn’t drop a head for me. I did, however, make more mesos than usual, as HH did decide to gift me a crisp 325k mesos.

    OK… more EPQing, I guess

    Aaaand it was back to EPQ for rusa! Chop chop!! This time, I got to PQ with my friend Yukko (a.k.a. Taima, Boymoder, Tacgnol, Gambolpuddy, Yotsubachan), the brawler~

    [​IMG]

    After doing a number of EPQs during this renewed EPQ spree, I had done a grand total of 23 EPQs that day alone. Whew. Just 13 more for the earrings… heh…

    Oh, and as I went to leave the EPQ lobby to go back to the Altaire Camp, I accidentally stumbled on a Mossy Snail card:

    [​IMG]

    ^^
     
    • Like Like x 3
    • Great Work Great Work x 1
  5. Amd12
    Offline

    Amd12 Blue Snail

    3
    0
    2
    Feb 20, 2021
    2:26 AM
    Hello :D
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  6. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    hi~

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxvii

    You know what time it is: Valentine’s event!!! This is my first time experiencing the Valentine’s event on MapleLegends.

    Mushroom Garden

    Ally Soblet was about to be done farming at Mushroom Garden around the time that I logged on, and they offered to give away their map. So, not entirely sure what I was going to be using the map for, I decided to accept the offer, since no one else was. Here’s my STR priest, cervid, farmin’ it up using her off-brand, dollar-store SR:

    [​IMG]

    Shortly after, a couple of other allies (of the Suboptimal alliance) came and joined me, including gogigagagigo (a permarcher), drainer (a permabeginner; a.k.a. xX17Xx, maebee), and Dizz (also a permabeginner; a.k.a. Brains):

    [​IMG]

    Later on, I swapped over to my I/L magelet, cervine, and drainer swapped over to her permarogue, xX17Xx:

    [​IMG]

    Farming elsewhere

    We also tried farming in some other locations, like at the Thicket Around the Beach II, as well as Right Around Lith Harbor. Because I was making so much use of Thunderbolt (normally, for damage, Ice Strike is my spell of choice, with Thunderbolt largely relegated to luring monsters), I decided to real quickly scroll myself a Pyogo Mushroom. I keep all of my staff/wand scrolls on cervine anyways, and because I normally rely on the elemental amplification from my Elemental Wand 3, a Pyogo would actually make me deal more damage with Thunderbolt than my usual elemental wand:

    [​IMG]

    And later, I tried farming for Red Valentine Roses at The Burnt Land III:

    [​IMG]

    By the end of this session, I had farmed enough roses (and also thanks to help from my allies!) to complete three sets, so that I could get a Ring of Passion on cervid, capreolina, and cervine! I still have more characters left to grind for, though…

    Trying out Voodoos with drainer

    We also decided that trying out Voodoos would be a good idea; they don’t hit very hard, give decent EXP, drop Heartstoppers, and also drop Blue Valentine Roses! Here I am, farming Voodoos with drainer:

    [​IMG]

    Healing a friend at CDs

    A friend of mine, Sopooroh (a.k.a. Justinorino), was farming at CDs and needed someone to Heal for his rawrs, so I came to help out for a bit. When it came to splitting amongst us the NX tickets dropped by the CDs, I insisted that I didn’t need the NX:

    [​IMG]

    capreolina tries out Romeo & Juliet’s quest

    Then, I wanted to try out Romeo & Juliet’s quest for some sweet chairs. So I took my wood(wo)man, capreolina, to Magatia. And I got quite a few monster cards along the way :O

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    And after not too long, I could finally sit in my victory chair:

    [​IMG]

    hydropotina also tries out Romeo & Juliet’s quest

    Since I already had my swashbuckler, hydropotina, in Magatia (for MPQ, as she is, still, in level range), I decided to do the same questline on her as well:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Oh, and I can’t forget to take care of Rurumo before it sends me back to town!:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Farming at The Burnt Land III with Taima

    And to end things here, I farmed some more at The Burnt Land III, this time with Taima (a.k.a. Boymoder, Tacgnol, Yotsubachan, Gambolpuddy):

    [​IMG]

    We managed to farm up not one, but two glass shoes, as well as a Red Valentine Rose and two or three Love Tickets~!

    <3
     
    • Like Like x 3
    • Friendly Friendly x 1
  7. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxviii

    Valentine’s Event, part II: Electric Boogaloo~

    Rose/card-hunting with Taima

    When I logged on, my permabeginner friend Taima (a.k.a. Boymoder, Tacgnol, Yotsubachan, Gambolpuddy) was farming MDTs for their cards, and a chance at getting Yellow Valentine Roses. Oh, and the EXP is decent as well (but not really worth it, in general). So I decided to join her:

    [​IMG]

    These bastards have 40k(!) HP and 750 WDEF, so it takes us a while to chew through each one. So despite this map being (very) large, we never actually moved from this one pair of platforms! Taima was able to finish her MDT card set, yay!! Although neither of us ever saw any Yellow Valentine Roses drop from these guys. Probably not the best place to farm for equips, with all of that HP, tbh…

    So, to really find some yellow roses, we headed over to a practice field to farm from the Straw Target Dummies there. Here I am with Taima, playing my I/L magelet, cervine:

    [​IMG]

    And we both completed our Straw Target Dummy cards from start to finish!:

    [​IMG]

    Once we had finished our card sets and gotten a rose or two, we headed to a lab in Magatia in order to farm Iron Mutae:

    [​IMG]

    I went ahead and finished my Rurumo card set on my swashbuckler, hydropotina, while Taima took a trip back to Victoria Island to finish up the event quests. And I completed an Iron Mutae card set as well ^^:

    [​IMG]

    …And was excited to get a White Valentine Rose from these metalline critters:

    [​IMG]

    Taima hits level 105!!

    And while we were farming Iron Mutaes, Taima hit level 105!! Congrats!!!!

    [​IMG]

    So stronk :')

    A lil more rose/card-hunting with Taima

    We both came back to Iron Mutaes later, me playing my pugilist rangifer, and Taima now on her STRmit, Boymoder. Here I am, memewaving Rurumo to death, for the laffs:

    [​IMG]

    Although Boymoder is only level 76 in this image (STRmits take a while to really mature), her Avenger is still fearsome :O

    [​IMG]

    Oh, and we got a few more Iron Mutae cards, heh.

    [​IMG]

    rang finishes the chair quest

    While we were farming at Iron Mutaes, I took the time to complete Romeo & Juliet’s quest on rangifer. I got a bit unlucky with the Love Ticket drop chances — either that, or I’m just terribly inefficient at killing these on rangifer — but I did complete the quest from front to back:

    [​IMG]

    Time to really make use of those baskets~

    The daily quest of this event rewards a Chocolate Basket. The basket is basically just portable GM buffs (including HB, HS, GM Bless, and Haste), but it is untradeable and OoaK (one of a kind), so you can’t actually do the quest the next day until you somehow consume the basket. So it was time for me to really try to squeeze every bit of use out of my baskets — and, for that matter, out of the bonus event EXP. After using the basket on my wood(wo)man, capreolina, I did a quick and dirty EPM (experience per minute) test at Kid Mannequins, solo:

    [​IMG]

    4.1M EPH, wowza. That is more solo EPH than I’ve ever recorded before!! But after my test, I decided it would be a good idea to check for any CD maps. I found a map that was occupied just by a shadower by the name of Ichiroh, and asked if he maybe wanted to party up. Ichiroh kindly accepted, and I did a similar EPM test here, as well:

    [​IMG]

    7.7M~7.8M EPH. Holy shit. Using up capre’s basket was enough to get her from level 101 & 37.61% EXP to level 102 & 3.41% EXP!! Yayyy~

    Once my basket ran out, I came back as my I/L magelet, cervine, to use another basket:

    [​IMG]

    Another EPM test revealed similar numbers O_O

    [​IMG]

    And that was enough to level cervine up as well! Now level 96!!

    Thanks for the party, Ichiroh!

    [​IMG]
     
    • Like Like x 2
  8. Voxtagrams
    Offline

    Voxtagrams Headless Horseman

    885
    381
    376
    Jun 13, 2020
    2:26 AM
    Yay! Grats Pigma! I mean Taima.. heh.. s-sorry, it said Pigma.. farming-mdts-with-taima.png
    tenor-1.gif
    Fat Nuggets likes to dance

    Yay! more card farming and congrats on the chairs! :D
    I still need to do mine too.. OnionCheer
     
    • Like Like x 1
    • Friendly Friendly x 1
  9. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxix

    rusa rawr

    rusa is my DEX spear(wo)man, who you may recognise from previous diary entries. As of this writing, she’s level 55, and the V-day event is putting a damper on her progress, as I focus on doing way too much grinding on my other characters. But, I’ve been concerned for rusa’s third-job future. Whatever will I spend my skill points on? Dragon Fury: Polearm? Spear Crusher?

    Or perhaps… rawr. After all, it’s common knowledge that rawring at CDs is extremely effective; at max level, rawr has enough range to hit two of the platforms simultaneously! The issue is that each rawr consumes HP, and a lot of it. Even at max level (the HP consumption decreases with skill level), rawr drains the dragon knight for 30% of their MAXHP. So rawring as a method of training doesn’t really function without a priest to Heal the dragon knight. The issue is, then, a question of how effective my rawr could really be. If, as a STRless dragon knight, my rawr is just too pitiful, it’s likely not worth investing in (at least, not until later on), because who would want to continuously heal me as I roar myself to pieces? Maybe if I cut a deal, like letting the priest take all of the loot, or have a priest ally (likely a STR priest, in that case) who is willing to train with me, it could work. But we need to know in more detail what we’re dealing with, in order to decide whether or not to focus on rawr as an attacking skill.

    I’m going to attempt to project the damage that I would deal, at three different levels, using a mixture of gear I already own (this is most of the gear), and some gear that I don’t (but plan on getting anyways):

    The gear
    Total: +16 WATK, +47 STR, +58 DEX

    The buff

    We’re assuming that I’m using Cider (+20 WATK).

    The weapons

    The weapons outline the three levels that we’re doing calculations for: level 81 is the earliest that rawr can be maxed out, level 85 is the first level that allows using the Sky Ski, and level 95 is the first level that allows using the Purple Surfboard.
    The base stats
    The three DEX values are for levels 81, 85, and 95, respectively.
    • STR: 35
    • DEX: 387/407/457
    The target
    We’re going to be pessimistic and only compare against the stronger of the two CDs: Greatest Oldies. The weaker of the two, Latest Hits Compilation, is actually thrice as abundant (because exactly three spawn when a Greatest Oldies is slain), and has less WDEF (300 < 400).
    • Level: 76
    • WDEF: 400
    • HP: 8500
    The level won’t be an issue here, because the lowest level for rusa that we consider is 81 ≥ 76.

    The results

    Level 81
    • Range (avg): 1503~2134 (1818.7)
    • DPS: 1377.8
    Level 85
    • Range (avg): 1711~2377 (2043.6)
    • DPS: 1548.2
    Level 95
    • Range (avg): 1896~2550 (2222.9)
    • DPS: 1807.2
    To rawr, or not to rawr?

    Keeping in mind that this is just the pessimistic case (Greatest Oldies only), we might consider level 86 as the crucial level here; rusa would fully graduate MPQ at this level, and we would be expecting to do roughly 2050 damage per-rawr-per-Greatest-Oldies. Greatest Oldies have 8500 MAXHP, so that’s some 8500 ÷ 2050 ≈ 4.1 hits to kill them, on average. As I kind of expected, this is fairly impressive for an odd job like a STRless warrior, but is likely not going to cut it for those with more ordinary expectations.

    Our main point of comparison is Dragon Fury: Polearm, so let’s check that out with the same assumptions, at level 81:
    • Range (avg): 1730~2525 (2127.5)
    • DPS: 2954.9
    Now, that’s a lot more impressive, but keep in mind that there is no new weapon to use at level 85 (unlike with rawr, where rusa can switch to Sky Skis), that there is a much smaller reach (no massive AoE), and that Fury only hits up to 6 monsters at once. However, Fury is much more versatile (it basically just works anywhere), and doesn’t demand that a priest be surgically attached to the dragon knight’s side. So Fury is probably the way to go here, less exciting as it may be.

    That being said, even if I do go Fury, I will likely put at least one SP into rawr, if only to be able to mist train with Tacgnol, if she ever needs someone with high accuracy to finish off monsters that are far too high level…

    [​IMG]

    Farming cards & farming the event, all at once

    If I can, I like to:
    • Farm cards
    • Farm roses
    • Farm event ETC items
    • Farm Love Tickets
    …all at the same time! One good spot for this is at The Burnt Land V, or, if I don’t need any more Lupin cards, The Burnt Land III:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Victory! Oh, and I finished all three card sets of the monsters that spawn at The Burnt Land V!!

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Oh, and another good spot is at the Alcadno Lab, Area B-3:

    [​IMG]

    hashishi and Gambolpuddy, the dynamic KPQ duo

    My besinner, hashishi, and her DEXginner friend, Gambolpuddy (a.k.a. Taima, Tacgnol, Boymoder, Yotsubachan), make an excellent duo! They are both non-standard permabeginners, as they are both STRless!:

    [​IMG]

    Here they are, in their first-ever KPQ:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Our party was a bit of a strugglebus, as we were joined by a new magician by the name of xXHabibXx, and a new archer by the name of Maise, so I somehow ended up being the main DPS of the party! We also had some struggles with staying alive:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Lucky, neither hashishi nor Gambolpuddy have any accuracy issues, as they are pure LUK, and pure DEX, respectively. So with bit of extra effort and time, we were able to pull through these KPQs.

    Grinding CDs with Gumby and ayunah

    GM buffs were given out not too long after I logged on, and ally and permabeginner Gumby was hoping to use the GM buffs to grind at Taipei 101. I suggested heading to CDs, so we headed there as a duo, with me playing my wood(wo)man, capreolina. After a little bit, a priest by the name of ayunah, who already knew Gumby from PPQ, showed up and formed a trio with us:

    [​IMG]

    We were there for quite a while (a little over two hours), and got a lot of EXP; enough for Gumby to be over 97% of the way ot level 103(!), and enough for capre to be about 90% of the way to that same level!!

    More farming cards & farming the event

    I went back onto my STR priest, cervid, and headed to Golem’s Temple I for some more farming:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Rose farming with Tacgnol

    Tacgnol, Gambolpuddy/Taima’s F/P gishlet, came online, and she wanted to do some event farming. I was prepared to do the same with my I/L magelet, cervine, so by our elements combined, we formed a fierce Chunin-farming duo!:

    [​IMG]

    Not pictured above are cervine and Tacgnol, for their appearances being obscured by the flurry of third-job mage spells…

    Oddly enough, despite the fact that the map we were in was actually an exact 50/50 split of Chunins and Kunoichis, we both ended up with 5/5 Kunoichi cards (with 1 or 2 cards left to spare), but only 2/5 Chunin cards each!:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    And after quite a while of killing these slippery ninjas, we finally found one (1) rose:

    [​IMG]

    We gave up on Chunins and decided to move to STDs, with me now playing cervid:

    [​IMG]

    I was able to get to 4/5 STD cards pretty quickly, but once the final card proved to be somewhat elusive, I resorted to verbally intimidating the straw dummies. And it worked, almost immediately!:

    [​IMG]

    OmokTeacher scrolls another Arcglaive

    Ally and permabeginner extraordinaire OmokTeacher (a.k.a. Slime, Slimu) hasd been trying to beat his completely perfect (118 WATK!!!!!) Blood Snowboard by scrolling Crimson Arcglaives. For those not familiar, Crimson Arcglaives are extraordinarily difficult to craft, but OmokTeacher managed to muster yet another 400 Crimson Woods. And with Baby Typhons being fixed (so that they are now killable), he was able to farm up the Typhon Feathers necessary to complete the next Crimson Arcglaive. Much to everyone’s excitement, the Arcglaive came out with the maximum possible WATK (107)!!! So we all gathered in what is a nearly religious experience for odd-jobbers, scrolling an Arcglaive:

    [​IMG]

    Aaaand it boomed on the first slot. :(

    Oh well, we’ll get ‘em next time.

    Some more KPQ with hashishi & Gambolpuddy

    hashishi and Gambolpuddy went out for another few KPQs, including one with a swordsman by the name of Thrusting, who left our party after one PQ that he described as “miserable”, because he couldn’t contribute in combat the entire time:

    [​IMG]

    A little more CD grinding, with peelings

    And for just a last little grinding sesh, I headed to CDs and found a dragon knight by the name of peelings who was grinding there. I asked if I could join their party, and they kindly obliged. I’m not sure whether or not to consider what peelings was doing to be “solo” grinding or not:

    [​IMG]

    In any case, peelings was very quick about rebuffing HS and HB on me, and was very nice. And I got enough EXP to bring capre to level 103!!! Yayyy~

    <3
     
    • Like Like x 3
    • Great Work Great Work x 2
  10. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxx

    cervid solos the Spirit of Rock!!

    I used a V-day basket to solo the Spirit of Rock on my STR priest, cervid! The Spirit of Rock is a real tough boss, and tough to even find one, as well…

    You can watch the full struggle — I mean, fight — on the Oddjobs YouTube channel!

    [​IMG]

    Gambolpuddy and hashishi are back, for great KPQ!

    I logged on, and Kelsey (Gambolpuddy; also Taima, Tacgnol, Boymoder, Yotsubachan) was already raring to KPQ! So off I was to hop onto my besinner, hashishi, to PQ with her DEXginner Gambolpuddy:

    [​IMG]

    Our first party was us two, plus two pirates who were new to the server:

    [​IMG]

    Later on, a fellow claw-wielding KPQer by the name of Gwisin managed to be rather impressed (or unimpressed…?) with my damage. I think she was confusing the damage number from each of my basic attacks with one of the two lines of a Lucky Seven:

    [​IMG]

    …Little did she know, I was more DEXless than she even imagined!

    Here I am, having a staredown with Gambolpuddy — although, I look more confused than fierce, at least in comparison to Gambolpuddy:

    [​IMG]

    Shortly after having a staredown, we found out that, bizarrely, the F6 facial expression shows on top of the Smiling Mask:

    [​IMG]

    In any case, we KPQed for quite a while. hashishi leveled up to 30!:

    [​IMG]

    And we fully graduated KPQ (level 31):

    [​IMG]

    The Red Flowery Tube you see me wielding above was dropped on the ground next to the Mushroom Shrine gachapon. The 11 SPEED really helps me get around, even if I can’t exactly do damage with the thing, having 4 base STR and 4 base DEX. One’s trash is another’s treasure~!

    capreolina grinds CDs solo, and with Gumby

    In another episode of basket-using, I was grinding alone at CDs for a bit on my wood(wo)man capreolina. CDs are my go-to place because I know they’re overpowered, based on others’ treatment of the map and the people who I see training there, and tbh I don’t know where else to goooo~

    With the HS from the basket, and me simply soloing a map full of CDs, I managed to reach an alarmingly high EPH of 5.5M!! :O

    [​IMG]

    About a quarter of the way through my basket, I was joined by ally and permabeginner Gumby. I got enough experience on capre to hit level 104!!:

    [​IMG]

    cervine wraps up the chair quests

    I needed to do only a little bit more to finish Romeo & Juliet’s quest on my I/L magelet cervine. This now puts me at five total completions of the questline, haha:

    [​IMG]

    So many chairs~

    capre grinds Fancy Amps with Taima

    Taima (Kelsey’s ultra-str0nk permabeginner) and I chomped some baskets and decided to grind together at Fancy Amps. We had a blast:

    [​IMG]

    And Taima reported that her @epm recording read 2.59M EPH!! Quite a bit better than my usual duo with her, on my STR priest cervid, partly owing to the bonus event EXP, and partly owing to capre’s flurry of projectiles tearing the Fancy Amps to shreds.

    Finishing two more rose sets~

    To this point, I had managed to hunt two Red Valentine Roses, six(!) white ones, and a yellow one. I wanted to use these to complete at least two more rose sets, so when OmokTeacher (Slime, Slimu) remarked in alliance chat that he had way too many blue roses from grinding at Voodoos, I offered to trade two of my white roses for two of his blue ones. He insisted that the blue roses were truly worthless to him, and kindly gave me two for free!! Thank you~~

    Similarly (and even more to my surprise), when I then sent out a smega offering to trade my white roses for a yellow one, Thanato kindly offered to donate me a yellow rose! When I met up with her in the FM to trade, I asked if she was also Satania, who I had met before with Tacgnol when we went to rose farm at Chunins (see the previous diary entry). She assured me that she was not Satania, but that I was not the first person to tell her that she looked like Satania. In any case, thanks so much Thanato for the rose!! Time for two more cute rings~
     
    • Like Like x 3
    • Great Work Great Work x 1
  11. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxxi

    This is a special entry of rangifer’s diary! I’ve drawn a lil picture in Krita, which is a new program to me. I’m not much of an illustrator, and tbh I’ve only ever sketched stuff out in Inkscape (basically, an abuse of Inkscape lol). So my art style is kinda basic and geometrical. With the power of some very basic Krita stuff that took me a lil while to figure out, I managed to add some shading, so it doesn’t look quite so flat!

    I’m licencing the image under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, or any later version of the same licence :)

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    ❤️
     
    • Like Like x 4
    • Great Work Great Work x 1
  12. Voxtagrams
    Offline

    Voxtagrams Headless Horseman

    885
    381
    376
    Jun 13, 2020
    2:26 AM
    :O THOSE EYES<3
    Screen Shot 2021-03-01 at 2.24.26 AM.png

    White Lens ftw :D
     
    • Friendly Friendly x 1
  13. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxxii

    Voodoos with cervid

    I needed somewhere to do the daily V-day event quest on my STR priest, cervid, so I headed over to Voodoos to hopefully farm some Blue Valentine Roses and Heartstoppers in addition to the event ETC items. I farmed there for 60 minutes, and I did manage to scrounge up one or two blue roses:

    [​IMG]

    And about 7 Heartstoppers as well, which will make great fodder for alliance boss runs:

    [​IMG]

    Oh, and the EXP isn’t awful, either:

    [​IMG]

    cervine is lonely at CDs

    Next, I wanted to use a basket on my I/L magelet, cervine, and get some EXPs~~

    My usual strategy is roaming around the various CDs channels and asking if anyone wants to party together. Sometimes this achieves good results, and I can duo (or even trio) a CDs map for the duration of my basket, and sometimes it’s just mostly leechers… This time, it was mostly just leechers, so I ground for about 60 minutes all by my lonesome:

    [​IMG]

    Once the basket was finished, I went to try to scrounge up some more event ETC items. Along the way, I found some cards:

    [​IMG]

    (I completed the Orange Mushroom set with the above card lol)

    [​IMG]

    rusa graduates EPQ!!

    For the duration of the event so far, my DEX spear(wo)man rusa has been languishing, unable to escape EPQ and level up (to level 56) without first completing 13 more EPQs. So I set out to fix that. And Yukko (a.k.a. Taima, Gambolpuddy, Tacgnol, Boymoder, Yotsubachan) came to join me!:

    [​IMG]

    Here we are, fighting the Big Bad Rock Man (BBRM):

    [​IMG]

    After Yukko had to leave, I was determined to finish the remaining EPQs. So after an hour or so, we recuperated a party and I was able to finish all 50(!) EPQs and hit level 56 at the same time!! Earringssss~~~~~~!:

    [​IMG]

    I soon set out to scroll these damned things and finally get it all over with. And with average luck (3 ÷ 5 = 60%), I am very content with my EPQ-torture consolation prize!:

    [​IMG]

    Tacgnol and cervine try mist training in the Sutra Depository

    My friend and guildmate Tacgnol, the F/P gishlet, had previously tried some Poison Mist training in the Sutra depository alongside a dark knight. She was eager to give it another go, and asked if I had any characters who would be capable of mist training there. For reference, there are three general categories of monsters in the Sutra Depository: bronze ones, silver ones, and gold ones:
    • Bronze: Level 120, 43 AVOID
    • Silver: Level 125, 45 AVOID
    • Gold: Level 130, 75 AVOID
    (I’m leaving out Wooden Fish here; they are considerably easier to hit than any of the metalline monsters, and only appear in 7 F anyways)

    As you can see, these are extremely powerful creatures. And gold ones take the cake, with a completely bonkers avoidability of 75!! I found that my STR priest, cervid, was reasonably capable of hitting the bronze and silver creatures. But the gold ones… Well, I considered cervine, but I’m honestly not sure how magical accuracy works, and I suspect in any case that her magical attacks would not hit these things. But I forgot that, of course, cervine has another trick up her sleeve: melee. Now, melee is not exactly the specialty of magelets; we leave that up to the gishlets, gishes, STR mages, and so on. So I was obviously not expecting to do any more than 1 damage per hit to any of the things in the Sutra Depository. But 1 damage is all I need, as that’s exactly how many HP the monsters have after Poison Mist is done with them!

    [​IMG]

    With GM Bless and some gear borrowed from my physical-attacking characters, I managed to achieve a whopping 551 WACC!!!:

    [​IMG]

    Very doable, even for golden monsters. So we trained at 5-6 F! You can watch a lil video of us testing out 5-6 F mist training for the first time on the Oddjobs YouTube channel!

    And I got some cards along the way, hehe~ cervine just might finish her Mini Gold Martial Artist card set before she finishes hers for Ribbon Pigs, LOL:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    And we witnessed the tragic loss of one (1) DuckNation guild member along the way ;(

    [​IMG]

    More card-hunting/rose-farming/event-ETC-farming with cervid

    Aaaand it is time for more hunting with cervid~~

    This time, I wanted to get Yellow/Red Valentine Roses, event ETC items, and cards. So I was off to Orbis, and to the Garden of 3 Colours:

    [​IMG]

    You can see above, the tears on the cat-unicorn’s face as I one-shot them into oblivion. It’s times like this, that I wonder whether or not I’m the real villain…

    Oh, and two more sets down for cervid >:)

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    For some reason, I’ve been getting White Chocolates like 6 times less frequently than the other three kinds of V-day event ETC items. So you can imagine how pleased I was to finally find one in a hundred:

    [​IMG]

    And to find a rose :D

    [​IMG]

    capreolina using a basket at CDs again

    It was time to basket it up again, and this time on my wood(wo)man, capreolina! This time I was fortunate enough to find a party after a bit of solo grinding, with a priest by the name of oRob. I was getting really nice EPM (experience per minute), and it got even a tad bit better when a dark knight by the name of fartmane came along to trio with us:

    [​IMG]

    Whew. 8.3M is some bonkers EPH. Particularly when not even mist training, heh.

    Gambolpuddy and hashishi bridge the gap between KPQ and LPQ

    Now that my besinner, hashishi, and her DEXginner friend Gambolpuddy had already graduated KPQ, it was time to bring them up from level 31 to level 35! For great LPQ!! I started out with tidying up just a few quests from Victoria Island:

    [​IMG]

    Mano’s quest EXP wasn’t as amazing now that I was level 31, but still pretty good, and I wanted that sweet, sweet fame as well.

    Here we both are, working on For Kyrin:

    [​IMG]

    Turns out, the first Jr. Wraiths map is really quite bad for hashishi, haha. A lot of claw-punching Stirges >.<

    Once we had tidied up to our liking, we headed over to Ariant to ride the Ariant questline to level 35. While attempting to board the ship from Ellinia to Orbis, Cherry rudely stopped me:

    [​IMG]

    After Cherry relented, we took the ship and found a strange book in one of its compartments:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Once we were at Ariant, it was time to get started killing some desert critters:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Pictured above: hashishi and Gambolpuddy being absolute sex icons.

    Gambolpuddy and hashishi get to LPQ~

    After we finished up the last remainder of Gambolpuddy’s level 34, it was time for LPQ!! Our first LPQ was a real strugglebus. We almost didn’t have a party at all, until I realised that my failed/abandoned OPQ mule would make a fine LPQ mule for this purpose. Unfortunately, we were still vastly underpowered, and I was struggling a bit to multiclient my way through. A party member asked whether or not me or Gambolpuddy used the Maroon Mop; I replied that even if such a weapon existed (it doesn’t, in MapleLegends), we are both STRless, so we couldn’t equip the thing anyways. Confused as to how we could both be STRless permabeginners, I showed him the life of the besinner:

    [​IMG]

    Later on, we did form an actually functional party (thank god), and here we are in one of the dark rooms, tring to get a pass from those god forsaken eyeballs:

    [​IMG]

    I didn’t have any HP gear for poor hashishi, so I was stuck cowering in the corner of the last stage, for fear of being one-shot (I have some 536 MAXHP or so, in this image):

    [​IMG]

    And after finally retiring from our first LPQ sesh, we found out that hashishi actually does have Dark Sight, but only in a very particular spot of the Ludibrium pharmacy:

    [​IMG]

    I’m a real sin now~

    cervine at MP1

    And I took my I/L magelet, cervine, to MP1 to try some card-hunting and rose-hunting and event-ETC-hunting:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    These floatye boyes are a lil stingy with the card drops, but I did get a handful, and may come back to finish ‘em up :)
     
    • Like Like x 4
    • Great Work Great Work x 1
  14. Voxtagrams
    Offline

    Voxtagrams Headless Horseman

    885
    381
    376
    Jun 13, 2020
    2:26 AM
    Heart of the cards, guide deer SlimeAngelSlimeEvil
     
  15. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxxiii

    More Shaolin Temple mist training with Tacgnol and cervine

    It was time to attempt even more Poison Mist training with my friend and guildmate Tacgnol the F/P gishlet (a.k.a. Taima, Boymoder, Gambolpuddy, Yotsubachan) in the Sutra Depository, section 5-6 F! With some experience under our belts, we’re gradually getting better at hitting these slippery, high-level monsters. Before starting, my I/L magelet cervine was already most of the way through level 98, so I hit level 99 pretty quickly:

    [​IMG]

    I did level up to 100 in (a bit) less than an hour, but we encountered a bit of a difficulty along the way. When I was some 92%~93% of the way through level 99, Tacgnol leveled up to level 105(!), which meant that we were more than 5 levels apart. Apparently, this screws up the EXP sharing, so I was stuck at exactly 92.68% (I think it was) for a while before I noticed, and drew attention to it. So we had to quickly (before our baskets ran out) shuffle over to STS (Shaolin Temple Square) to finish up my level 99:

    [​IMG]

    The mobs in STS are a bit less formidable (although still extremely high HP), so I was able to hit them and do reasonable damage with my normal attacks, like Ice Strike. And cervine hit level 100~! :D

    More hunting with cervid~

    I did a bit more card/event-ETC-item/rose hunting on my STR priest cervid. This time, I started at Luster Pixies, because I was 0/5 on their cards, and they drop Yellow Valentine Roses! Oh, and I managed to squeeze a White Chocolate out of one of them, which is always welcome (for some reason they are much more stubborn to drop for me than the other event ETC items):

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    I went from 0/5 to 5/5 Luster Pixie cards there (yay!), and so I moved to Chunins to hunt those instead:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    As I expected based on my time killing Chunins with Tacgnol, they were a bit stingy with the cards, so I only ended up with 1 or 2.

    Heading to MPQ with the crew

    Ally (member of Flow, and thus of Suboptimal) sniper Level1Crook was trying to form a functional MPQ party, so I headed over to Magatia as my swashbuckler, alongside my STRmit friend Boymoder. When we got there, there were many vomits and throw-ups to be had:

    [​IMG]

    We were joined also by technopagan the priest (a.k.a. drainer, xX17Xx, maebee, all members of Suboptimal), and BLiiND the chief bandit (a.k.a. CaptainNemo, also a member of Suboptimal). BLiiND had to leave, though, so I was able to get a spot in this MPQ crew:

    [​IMG]

    And so mae (technopagan) was able to get her first-ever MPQ experience and learn how it works! Unfortunately she had to leave after that, so we only got in 1 PQ. Thankfully, though, it was a “true ending”: we killed Angy Fanky, and saved our boy Romeo. Oh, and no one died!

    Trying to use a basket on capreolina

    Now that I had used a basket on cervid and cervine, I went to go use one also on my wood(wo)man, capreolina. It was a bit of a rough start, as I was looking around CDs maps looking for anyone to party with so that I could use my basket with them, but found no one (and didn’t find any open maps, either). But it was about to get worse, as I simply entered one of the CDs dungeons and used my basket there. I got in just about three minutes of solo grinding before my game client unexpectedly crashed:

    [​IMG]

    :(

    Apparently, this is a known, longstanding bug with the Puppet skill. Quite frankly, I never use Puppet, and I only have the skill because it’s a pre-requisite for my birdy. I decided, for no particular reason, to test it out real quick on CDs for the first time, and crashed within just one second of doing so. Let’s just say I’ve unbound Puppet from my keybindings… R.I.P. capre’s EXP~

    A little event ETC hunting with cervine

    Before I went to turn in my quest for another basket on cervine, I decided to do just a bit of event ETC hunting at the Henesys Hunting Ground:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    White Chocolate success!!

    rusa does the chair quest

    And now that my DEX spear(wo)man rusa is free of EPQ (and thus able to gain EXP), it was time for her to do Romeo & Juliet’s chair quest! The first place I went to look for Love Tickets was at Cube Slimes, and the Cube Slimes were so kind as to almost immediately drop an amazing Korean Fan for me!!:

    [​IMG]

    Over the course of the quest, I managed to finish the sets for both monsters in that map, Rumo and Cube Slime:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    To wrap up the quest, I headed to HHGII to collect some cards and event ETC items there as well:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    And I guess the rose gods smile upon rusa, because she could not stop getting those damn roses:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    LOL <3
     
    • Like Like x 6
    • Agree Agree x 1
    • Great Work Great Work x 1
  16. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxxiv

    Grind. Grind. Grind. Grind. Grind. …

    cervid hunts more Chunins

    For more card/event-ETC/rose hunting, I headed back to Chunins with my STR priest, cervid. My previous 60-minute sweatgrind session at Chunins yielded just one card, so I still needed four more to complete the set… Another 60-minute sweatgrind session got me two cards, leaving just two more to go:

    [​IMG]

    The above-pictured Dark Snowboard was the first of two Dark Snowboards that I got in this farming sesh. This one is 70 WATK (quite good, one less WATK than perfect), and the other one is basically useless, at just 61 WATK…

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    At this point, I was still starved for White Chocolates~

    [​IMG]

    My third Chunin farming sesh got me the two cards that I needed to complete the set! All in all, it was about 2.5 hours of continuous grinding on the Chunins map in order to get 5 cards.

    More event ETCs

    Because I was still starved for White Chocolates, and there was no end in sight, I decided to just smega asking to trade my other event ETC items in exchange for other folks’ White Chocolates. Fortunately for me, a number of people replied to my smega, including Phuonggo, who kindly donated five White Chocolates to me in exchange for a whole lot of nothing! Thanks Phuonggo!!:

    [​IMG]

    And to round out my collection, I went to HHGII on my STR priest, cervid, Kebob in hand:

    [​IMG]

    LPQ with the crew~

    We were able to gather up me, Kelsey (Gambolpuddy, Taima, Tacgnol, Boymoder, Yotsubachan), and mae (maebee, drainer, xX17Xx) for some LPQin’! In order to fill up our party and be capable of doing the thief and mage portals, I tagged along with my assassin mule sets (just to do the thief portal), and we invited some other folks from outside of the guild as well. After our mage disconnected during the stage that has the mage portal (ouch), we exited that PQ with style:

    [​IMG]

    Pictured above are hashishi, my besinner, maebee, mae’s woodwoman, and Gambolpuddy, Kelsey’s DEXginner.

    We did manage to fully complete at least two LPQs or so, though :p

    Some more mist training at Shaolin Temple with Tacgnol

    My I/L magelet, cervine, and Kelsey’s F/P gishlet, Tacgnol, were headed back to the Shaolin Temple region of China in order to do some more Poison Mist training! Unfortunately, like last time, we were only able to stay at the 5-6 F section of the Sutra Depository for so long before Tacgnol outleveled me, and we were forced to go back to STS… Here I am, getting a Censer card:

    [​IMG]

    After a brief break, Tacgnol was ready to use another basket to do some more mist training. Rather than be stuck at STS all day, I moved over to my STR priest, cervid, who is higher level. Of course, cervid is at quite the disadvantage w.r.t. WACC, because she is DEXless and LUKless (unlike cervine, who is pure LUK). I was able to make up for some of this just by being higher level (if you are lower level than your target, the probability of hitting scales down linearly with the size of the level gap, ceteris paribus), but also, Kelsey helped me out by letting me borrow some pretty insane WACC/DEX gear, including a 14 DEX YAC and a Guan Yu with 50 WACC and some 17 or so DEX!!! Here is cervid, achieving 337(!) WACC with the help of a basket:

    [​IMG]

    We trained enough to get cervid to level 109 (yayy!), and I even got some Silver Spearman cards along the way:

    [​IMG]

    Grind sesh @ Fancy Amps w/ Taima

    In order to get both cervid, and Kelsey’s STRginner, Taima, some EXP, we headed over to Fancy Amps for a 60-minute grind sesh:

    [​IMG]

    Which meant inching even closer to the fabled level 110~ Wowie ^^

    Starting the Taipei 101 concert quest

    Some may be familiar with Dreamy Park Concert, a quest in Taipei 101. I completed this quest a while back, on my woodwoman capreolina, because Tab (known in-game as Outside, Dodogge, TestChars, Romilda) informed me of the quest’s existence and claimed that it rewards a random Umbrella weapon on completion. The promise of an Umbrella was enough to get me to try it, although I will say that the quest is quite painful, simply due to one part of the quest which requires you to collect 200 ETC items from each species of Perfume (thus 600 Perfume ETCs in total). Now, killing Perfumes is kind of a massive pain in the ass, because killing them initially doesn’t do anything. Once they die, you have to wait for it to spawn a Transformed Perfume, and then kill that. Because of the delay, and because the Transformed version does not retain the aggro of the original, and because the Transformed version uses magical ranged attacks, and because the ETC items only drop from some of the killed Transformed Perfumes, among other things, collecting 600 Perfume ETCs is not something that I could ever look forward to…

    [​IMG]

    The first time that I completed this quest, on capreolina, I got fairly lucky, and got a Black Umbrella (the two rewards that you generally really want are the Black and Beige Umbrellas). Of course, I boomed the thing on the first slot, which really made me feel vindicated for all of the hard work that I put into the quest. This time, my motivation for doing the quest (this time, on my STR priest cervid) is only partially the Umbrella; it has come to my attention that this quest leads into another questline that involves getting the Spirit of Rock’s Music Score. I actually already have this item, from when I soloed the Spirit of Rock on cervid. Taima has been wanting to try duoing the Spirit of Rock with me, both of us with basket in hand, and if that were to result in SoR dropping his Music Score, that would mean we could complete the quest at the same time! That is, as long as I complete the pre-requisite quest first, so that means a lot of perfume-killing for cervid…

    rusa OPQs for the first time

    My DEX spearwoman, rusa, tried out OPQ for the first time! I met up with some fine OPQers, including Lvoe, June31st, TheHadesGod, SaMa, meringuesoup, MoedB, and someone with whom I’ve actually OPQed before: LegendKnight. LegendKnight is the spearman/DK of IHealForYou, who you might recognise from previous entries where my pugilist, rangifer, was at OPQ. Here he is, decorating OPQ for old times’ sake:

    [​IMG]

    Here we are, fighting Papa Pixie:

    [​IMG]

    …and rusa is now level 58! Neato~

    A lil more grind, for capre and cervine~

    I went to use my baskets on my woodwoman capreolina, and my I/L magelet, cervine. I tried sending out a smega on capre, asking if anyone wanted to party up with a, um, crappy level 106 ranger. Sometimes I find it best to just not tell anyone that I’m a woodwoman, and just pretend I’m a normal ranger who just has crappy gear and a lot of INT (and hope they don’t notice that my bow damage is way too stable for that to be the case…). I did get a response from a level 10X priest who was willing to come to Gallos (Galloperas) and try training with me. When he got to Gallos, though, he ran into a bishop who was Genesis’ing the map, and decided to inquire about leech. Before I realised what was going on (I was in a different channel for most of the exchange), the bishop had agreed to give Gallos leech to us two as long as we provided them with potions. I expressed a lack of interest, but the person who replied to my smega was kind enough to insist on providing all of the potions, thus amounting to completely free leech for me… I felt rude having to reject their offer, but I insisted that my guild does not allow leeching, and left them to their business.

    I tried a little bit of solo grinding in another Gallos channel, with basket active, just to see how that would compare to the same EPH (experience per hour) at CDS:

    [​IMG]

    This might be a slight underestimate insofar as the map was a little bit new to me (although I had trained there a bit before), but still indicates pretty clearly that this is worse EPH than CDs for me. Plus, the potion cost is even significantly steeper than at CDs! So for the remaining duration of my basket, I headed to CDs to get a solo EPH of around 5.5M~5.6M.

    I did the same on cervine (except without the brief excursion to Gallos; I was at CDs the whole time), getting her closer to 102 (and thus to 103, when I can start using Elemental Staves!)~ Although, somewhat ironically (considering that cervine is a mage), I get considerably less EPH on cervine; “only” about 3.3M~3.4M when soloing CDs with basket during the event.

    <333
     
    • Like Like x 6
  17. lv1crook
    Offline

    lv1crook Capt. Latanica

    354
    187
    278
    Jan 19, 2021
    Male
    2:26 AM
    Level1Crook
    Corsair
    1
    Flow
    pog blog
     
    • Friendly Friendly x 1
  18. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxxv

    PPQ with allies~

    Tab (known in-game as Outside, TestChars, Dodogge, Romilda) wanted to do some alliance-only (Suboptimal-only) PPQs. Once we were able to get together, we had a formidable crew:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    gogigagagigo got a key from the boss during one of the runs, so we set out to get him some sweet loot, and fight angy lord pirate:

    [​IMG]

    Tab then had to leave, but we were able to keep going as a full Oddjobs party for a few runs:

    [​IMG]

    By the end of all of this, rusa had leveled up to level 59! Yay!

    cervid wraps up Jerry Yan’s quest

    As featured in the diary entry before this one, my STR priest cervid has been working on Jerry Yan’s quest, Dreamy Park Concert. I got the hard part out of the way first, getting those pesky perfume ETCs partway done. I finished them up now, for a total of 600(!!) perfume ETCs…

    So it was time to gather up the rest of the ETCs (the easier ones):

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Having nearly finished the Cheap Amp ETCs, cervid got enough EXP to hit level 110!!! Finally, I can buy a MoN, hehe~~

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Now that I finally had every single one of the 1200 ETC items necessary, it was time for my reward:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    I think the Green Umbrella is (correct me if I’m wrong) the worst possible reward here. In any case, I was hoping for a Beige Umbrella or Black Umbrella. Thanks a lot, Mr. Yan…

    hydropotina tries CDs for the first time

    Now that my swashbuckler, hydropotina, has graduated MPQ, she’s all on her own. Most of my characters at this point are stuck at CDs, and with hydro’s ability to shred up to six monsters at once with her Somersault Kick (SSK), CDs are the obvious choice for her as well…

    [​IMG]

    (This is with event EXP + basket.) Pretty impressive for level 86!! Along with my SSK, I also have my octo and my birdy on my side. It can, however, be rather frustrating to corral the CDs so that I can kill them reasonably efficiently. Because I have my skis equipped when doing this, I can’t benefit from Recoil Shot, and my reach is very close-range (SSK has about the horizontal range of basic-attacking with a dagger…). So I have to make some careful movements, and make use of my basic-attacking (not good for damage, but has more reach than using SSK; although, the boxes/crates in the map often get in the way of this) to try to round up these circular bastards so that I can bicycle-kick them into oblivion.

    I met LABanditz (a shadower) here, who graciously agreed to grind with me, and even added me to BL afterwards :)

    cervid hunting with basket

    I wanted to eat up a basket on my STR priest cervid, but, as usual, it’s harder for me to seriously benefit from the basket on cervid than it is on my other characters. So I used it for a little casual farming:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Aaand I finished my Stirge card set~

    It looks like Jr. Neckis have too much AVOID for this SR strategy to work for my STR priest:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    …But a lil bit of brute force does the trick.

    [​IMG]

    Captain Latanica wanted dead, not alive!

    Slime (OmokTeacher, Slime, Slimu) wanted to run quad Capt. Lats for great justice (and great EXP)! The idea was to use a single basket not too long before server reset (reset being 00:00:00 UTC), then kill two Capt. Lats, then wait until reset, and then kill two more. Assuming that we plan it right and kill the guy quickly enough, this allows us to do four(!) Capt. Lats in the span of a single basket (which lasts for 60 minutes). The reason for orienting this around the reset time is that Capt. Lat is considered a raid boss, so you can only kill him up to a maximum of twice daily. So I set about getting some more White Essences so that I would have three ready for our runs. My woodwoman, capreolina, had never done the prequest before, so I went to do that:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    I got so many cards from the Mr. Anchors that I was able to finish the set for both capre and cervid!

    Once I had finished the prequests on capre, and done the repeatable White Essence quest on cervid, I had three essences ready to go (I already had one from before this), so we gathered in GS7 to prepare:

    [​IMG]

    So it was me, as my level 110 STR priest cervid, and two STRginners, OmokTeacher and Gumby.

    [​IMG]

    Each run took 5~5.5 minutes each! So fast :O! So after four successful Capt. Lat kills, we finally got to see the boat cleaned up:

    [​IMG]

    hydro grinds CDs with Taima

    I went back to CDs with my swashbuckler, hydropotina, for some more basket grinding. But this time, I was joined by my STRginner friend, Taima (Tacgnol, Boymoder, Gambolpuddy, Yotsubachan, Numidium)! And we ground enough to get Taima some pretty solid EXP, as well as get hydro from level 87 to level 88!:

    [​IMG]

    General grinding nonsense

    Not included in this diary are the numerous episodes of me painstakingly grinding at CDs every day on my woodwoman, capreolina, and my I/L magelet cervine, as well as some other sad (and occasionally, less sad) grinding sessions. capreolina is now level 107, and cervine is 102 (so close to that Elemental Staff 3!).

    I’m an idiot

    Tacgnol (Taima, Boymoder, Gambolpuddy, Yotsubachan, Numidium) graciously offered to do some Poison Mist training with me, again with me playing cervid, and with us grinding at the 5-6 F section of the Sutra Depository. Short story shorter, some 3%~5% or so of the way through the 60 minute duration of our baskets, I died.

    I didn’t have the basket quest ready, so I was kinda screwed, and we ended up deciding to move to 3-4 F (which has no golden monsters). But I was so frazzled, I was frequently forgetting to re-HS myself and was just generally kind of frustrated with myself for unexpectedly dying…

    [​IMG]

    After Tacgnol’s basket was done, we went to go do something more chill, and LPQed on her DEXginner Gambolpuddy, with my besinner hashishi (and my MPQ-mule-to-be, potpan).

    <3
     
    • Like Like x 5
  19. OP
    OP
    deer
    Offline

    deer Pac Pinky

    195
    398
    191
    Oct 27, 2020
    Female
    Oddville
    9:26 AM
    cervid
    Bishop
    130
    Oddjobs
    (You can also read the original diary entry here, and/or read the diary entry on the Oddjobs forum.)

    rangifer’s diary: pt. xxxvi

    cervid and OmokTeacher slay Capt. Latanica (four times)

    Oh, you thought we were only gonna kill Capt. Lat four times once? Think again! Capt. Lat must pay for their crimes a thousandfold!! Here I am on my STR priest, cervid, doing the quest to get some more White Essences:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Omok Rival left us with an ominous portent just before we went to slay the captain:

    [​IMG]

    …But the Capt. Lat runs turned out just fine! We slayed all 4 captains easily within the span of one basket. And got some joocy EXPs~

    LPQ with doiob and Celim

    Some allies of mine, doiob (STR cleric and member of Oddjobs) and Celim (STRginner and member of Flow), wanted to LPQ, and my besinner hashishi was in level range as well! So off we went:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    We get a few confused questions about why we were still beginners, in LPQ… and I did surprise at least one person by throwing stars as soon as we entered the PQ (if besinners have anything, it is surely the element of surprise…). And again, we got some joocy EXPs, which is always nice~

    Getting a MoN for cervid~

    Now that my STR priest cervid has since hit level 110(!), I have been on the lookout for folks selling MoNs. I found some sellers, and set off into the mysterious unknown that was CWKPQ. I’d never actually seen any of it, and I got to attend two runs.

    It seemed to me (based on what I saw) that CWKPQ is somewhere between a PQ like OPQ and a raid boss like Zakum. Like traditional PQs, CWKPQ demands the presence of some classes (presumably to encourage diversity in the jobs that players choose to play), starts out with a series of stages that are not necessarily combat-oriented (puzzles, JQs, etc.), and culminates in a boss fight at the end. Unlike traditional PQs, and more like raid bosses, CWKPQ requires significant pre-questing, uses “expedition”-style signups to circumvent the limitation on parties that they can only hold up to 6 characters, and spends most of its time on the boss-fighting. One of the stages features a large statue, which must have special items placed on corresponding parts of the statue in order to complete the statue and move to the next stage. That concept will be very familiar to OPQers — but, whereas only a small portion of the time spent OPQing is spent killing Papa Pixie, the majority of the time spent CWKPQing is spent bossing.

    Here is a composite of some screenshots that I took of CWKPQ’s interior, because I think CWKPQ looks cool and spooky~:

    [​IMG]

    And I got a MoN!!:

    [​IMG]

    Obviously I was shooting for a 5 WATK one, but I didn’t like my odds when it came to relooting another one (as I would be paying just as many mesos, even if I ended up downgrading, which was fairly likely). This one is almost there (4 WATK), and the other stats are quite good. Maybe in the future when I can pay to loot enough MoNs to seek a 5 WATK one, I will upgrade :p

    hashishi and Gambolpuddy embark on more LPQ (mis)adventures

    It is time for another episode in the series: LPQ shenanigans with hashishi & Gambolpuddy!

    [​IMG]

    This time, we ended up LPQing with some LPQ mules who dealt truly unwarranted quantities of damage and were sometimes found throwing stars whose worth is in excess of 100 million mesos!

    [​IMG]

    (Pictured above is FleetingFool, an LPQ mule.)

    At one point, though, we did have some trouble just finding any mage, and unfortunately LPQ mules can’t help with that. Boredom, another LPQ mule, wanted to attempt the PQ anyways, suggesting that our gunslinger party member could make use of Recoil Shot to fall off of each platform in the mage portal, and then recoil back to the platform just below it. Gambolpuddy and I were skeptical of this, since we both believed there to be a large platform spanning the width of the map, at the top of the map (where you enter), that blocks downjumps and absolutely requires Teleport to bypass. But we gave it a try anyways, as we didn’t seem to be getting a mage any time soon, and Boredom promised to commit suicide to atone for his dishonour in the case that he was wrong…

    [​IMG]

    Because Gambolpuddy and I are beginners, we had nothing to lose from also dying, so we took leaps into the golems for fun. I managed to survive them (on the basis of no more than some fortunate timing), and decided to try my hand at doing the thief portal. After all, I am a (be)sin(ner)!:

    [​IMG]

    cervid does a little more card-hunting

    I did some more card-hunting on my STR priest, cervid, and managed to complete my Jr. Necki, Horny Mushroom, and Zombie Mushroom sets!:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    cervine duos with FireKatana at CDs

    As part of my quest to force myself (lol) to use my baskets every day, I was at CDs, grinding as my I/L magelet cervine. Some way into my basket, as I was solo grinding, an F/P mage by the name of FireKatana showed up and ask to party, and I obliged. F/P mages are a rare sight indeed at CDs (unless they are giving leech with Meteor Shower, I suppose), because they are generally off somewhere else doing Poison Mist training. FireKatana was not using Poison Mist much, if at all, instead opting for Explosion spam.

    Some 15 or so minutes into our duoing, FireKatana grew so concerned with my troublingly low damage that he started repeatedly spamming Meditation on me to see if that would “fix” my damage… Pro tip: I already had a 20 MATK boost from the basket, and in any case, I have my own maxed Meditation. So of course, this did nothing. It was at that point that FireKatana had had about enough of me:

    [​IMG]

    Oh well, more solo CDs it is…

    cervid and Gumby slay Capt. Latanica (four times)

    MOAR Capt. Lat slaying!! This time, OmokTeacher (Slime, Slimu) couldn’t make it, so I duoed with Gumby (another STRginner from Flow):

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Duoing CDs with Gumby

    I also did some duo CDs grinding with Gumby, who, thankfully, did not leave due to my poor damage like FireKatana did :p

    [​IMG]

    We got some pretty solid EXP (Gumby was getting somewhere around 3M EPH, I think), although unfortunately Gumby’s game crashed about 3 seconds(!) into the duration of his first basket :( So he had to relog and get another basket to grind with.

    Preparing to slay Ravana :O

    In preparation for our alliance’s (Suboptimal’s) all-odd-job Ravana run that we had planned a few days prior, I went and completed the Ravana pre-quests on my woodwoman capreolina:

    [​IMG]

    The Ravana pre-quests can be kind of a pain in the ass (especially if you’re, say, relatively low-level, and/or are an odd-jobber…), as the monsters that you’re required to kill have some pretty steep stats, and very high HP. This culminates in killing Strong Stone Goblins for their bright red panties, which tends to be very difficult indeed, considering their high level (99), very high HP (60k), high WDEF (850), high AVOID (38), and just all-around overpoweredness. The expensive bit of the quest consists in the dozen or so crystals that you need, but if you’re not committed to collecting/crafting these all yourself (god help you), they can be relatively easily purchased in the FM anyways.

    Oh, and the pre-quests reward 10 Guavas, which is nice for my magelet :p

    Scrolling a usable Elemental Staff

    Now that my I/L magelet cervine is level 103, she can finally make an upgrade that will give her a bit of a damage boost :O, thanks to the Elemental Staff 3! I actually bought up probably a dozen or more of these things, all clean (along with a similar, but smaller, number of Elemental Staves 4), with the intent to throw a lot of 30%s and hope that I can pass two on the same staff (and then improve later on, by getting progressively more greedy as I try to beat my previous highest TMA staff). I never managed to pass more than one on the same staff, and couldn’t even pass more than one 70% on the same staff, so I was just booming them (and just generally horribly failing) left and right… until this one.

    I actually failed the first three(!) slots of this thing, but it had quite good stats when clean, and staff 30%s are relatively cheap, so I continued trying (particularly due to Dizz, who was actively encouraging me in alliance chat to be as greedy as possible) and managed to actually pass a 30% on the fourth slot. Oh, and another 30% pass on the fifth slot :O… At that point, the thing was already better than my crappy staff I was lugging around to use at the time, so I could honestly have just 60%ed the last two slots. Even at (+2) with an embarrassing only two slots left, the thing was already glowing purple. But Dizz and OmokTeacher egged me on, and OmokTeacher helped me by owling for more staff 30%s, so I set out to 30% those last two…

    [​IMG]

    One did fail, but the other passed, and it survived the whole way (yes, it survived all seven 30%s)! And hey, passing 3/7 is a 42.86% success rate, which is better than 30%, heh. I hope to do better than this in the future (this weapon is very important, as it is the only thing empowering me to get the EXP for level 120, and even then I have to keep using it until level 130), but for now this is a great upgrade!!

    Attempting an all-odd-job Ravana run for the first time!!

    As mentioned, we planned an all-odd-job Ravana run. The day and the time was now, and so we gathered up at the entrance to Ravana’s lair, desperately trying to get ready. We had some people show up a little late, although it didn’t matter too much, since we really just needed people to show up at all, for a full party of 6. I had prepared a ton of USE items for the run:

    [​IMG]

    Including some >2.4k PEs, six apples, 60 unripe apples, a bunch of Diamond Arrows, a stack of ACPs (which it turns out we really don’t need, but better safe than sorry), and some other crap. Our party did eventually form, though:

    [​IMG]
    We were really scrambling to get our shit together, trying to make sure that everyone had enough PEs, enough WATK buffs (apples/unripe apples/heartstoppers), etc. Especially because OmokTeacher (Slime) called in a favour from Steve (known in-game as OpTiC, level 200 marksman of Kyoto), who blessed our run with a very helpful Echo of Hero!:

    [​IMG]

    Steve was very patient with us and wished us good luck, and so off we went to give it our best shot! At first, things went quite well; Ravana behaved more-or-less predictably, and in a way that allowed me to Strafe him with minimal interruption (this was particularly a concern for me, since I was doing a lot of damage and was the only one not meleeing). He telegraphs his attacks quite a bit, and many of them simply missed me because I was not in the way, or I stepped out of the way, or they simply MISSed. Of course, the attacks that do hit tend to do a bit more than 5k damage each, so using a PE immediately after each hit (pet auto HP on 100%!) is necessary for all of us (except Cerebellum, as an HP warrior); for example, with HB from basket, I was sitting at 5584 MAXHP. We also seemed to be doing pretty decent DPS at first, surely enough to keep pace with the 60 minute time limit.

    As the run went on, I started to notice how much Ravana was healing himself. Our damage seemed more impressive at first, before he really started healing himself in earnest, but once he did start healing quickly, our DPS was only beating his healing by a small amount. So, it seemed we could still be on pace to finish in 60 minutes, but it was going to be a pretty tight squeeze.

    Then we had the first real mishap of the run: OmokTeacher died, a few minutes into the run. Although he definitely had his pet’s auto HP set to 100%, and set to use PEs, and he said that he was rapidly spamming the PE hotkey in the moments before he died, these things were finnicky enough to kill him anyways. I kind of figured (and OmokTeacher likely did as well) that this was just an inevitability, or at least something that was likely enough to happen, with no way of stopping it. Pet auto HP is well-known to sporadically fail at seemingly random times, and even manual inputs have this issue; in my personal experience doing a lot of manual potting in dangerous situations, one press often works, a double-press is necessary in more dire situations (even if you only need one potion to be consumed), and in general there is no particular limit on how many times you press your potion’s hotkey before the game actually registers the potion usage.

    It is here that I should note that one of our party members (Gumby) had actually not participated in the fight yet. Unfortunately, he had an important report due very soon (just a small number of hours) that he had to cram and get finished before the deadline. So he said that he would probably not be able to participate in the fight at all for the first 20~30 minutes, but could stand AFK (or semi-AFK) in the far corner with his pets there to heal him. This worked well enough, as he was still alive after the first 30 minutes or so of the fight (Ravana had yet to waddle far enough to actually get near Gumby, so Gumby had only tanked a handful of magical attacks). That was good, because we had long since realised that we really needed Gumby’s DPS to be able to kill Ravana within the time limit, especially since OmokTeacher died.

    So about 30 minutes into the fight, Gumby was finally able to join. Fortunately for Gumby, he has a whole lot of HP for a beginner (due in part to his T8 ring, which will be T9 soon~!). Unfortunately for Gumby, upon entering the battle, he almost immediately had a mishap similar to OmokTeacher, and died as well. At that point, the run was definitely hopeless, and so we quit early to save ourselves the massive potion/consumable cost.

    Although we did fail our first attempt, this was essentially to be expected, and it gave us a lot of information that will be very useful on our next attempt. Although the run was a full 30+ minutes before we bailed out, it felt more like 3 minutes to me, because I was so intent on killing that half-dozen-armed bastard. I really do hope to try again, and I know that we can do it, although I will say that each attempt is quite costly; among other things, I used some 7M~8M mesos worth of consumables just in that botched half-run.

    Here’s hoping for another full-party all-odd-job Ravana run <3
     
    • Like Like x 6
  20. Slime
    Offline

    Slime Pixel Artist Retired Staff

    641
    1,184
    381
    Apr 8, 2015
    Male
    Israel
    11:26 AM
    Slime / OmokTeacher
    Beginner
    102
    Flow
    Damn I'm so bad I can't believe I died that early, LF> revenge.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1

Share This Page