Regrets' Journal - A Band of Thieves

Hello all!
​

So it’s been around a month since I started MapleLegends and I figured I might as well detail the start of my journal. I started GMS on 2nd Anniversary and have played on and off with splurges of activity for over a decade. During this time I spent varying amounts of time on private servers of many kinds but after being roped in by a former guildmate from Maplestory 2, I’ve found myself on this server.


The goal of this journal is to dictate the track of a fresh player making their way towards creating a strong end game attacker and an unorthodox type of multi farmer, a multi shade setup. Here are the following goals for my shadower/account as well as restrictions I have.

Long Term Goals/Restrictions​

-Wash to 30k/10k as a Shadower.

-Collect all PQ rewards at least once

-Tier 10 Monster card ring

-Clear all bosses at least once (buying runs does not count and ideally I’d like solo if possible)

-Never buy leech (This is gonna be a rough one, I’m gonna have to rely on my other characters to carry them up.)

-No selling leech

-Have 6 total shadowers that are able to farm

-A LPQ Sin Mule that will eventually turn into a 30k HP NL

-A Bishop with 30k MP.


I’ll break down why I’ve set these goals and explain them a bit more.

Wash to 30k/10k as a Shadower​

From asking and researching, it’s commonly understood that shadowers don’t need that much washing to be successful for endgame content due to mesoguard. This is even reflected in HP challenges where they are given the least amount of HP for participating in them at 10k. However, the idea of permanently locking myself to that set HP amount doesn’t exactly sit right with me and I don’t like the idea of having a “gimped” (for lack of a better term) character that would rely on hyper body.) Luckily this amount of heavy washing is only problematic for shadowers until 3rd job when they get access to meso explosion and can start farming in their own time. Until I make it there, PQs will be my main source of XP and time spent there will be rather vast (especially at LPQ) due to some lofty goals that I’m going to explain later.

Back on topic though, the main reason why I want to wash to 30k is to future proof myself for any changes that may come in the future. Legends is a living breathing server and new content is definitely in the cards so I’d like to be as prepared as possible as well as making up for lack of execution on my end (do not ask how I got my top 50 GMS dojo gloves).

Collect all PQ rewards at least once​

This at a glance honestly doesn’t seem so bad outside of a few bad egg PQs like Magatia and Pirate but hidden insane goal under this is….

I want 5 Broken Glasses that I plan to attempt a massive chaos scrolling session with. This is a horrible idea and has no resale value and has many other things that I should chaos instead, but this is a pipe dream and the idea of having +10 in Str, Dex, and Luk in a single eye accessory is too good to pass up. I’ll hold onto them in the dreams of coping.

Benefits of getting all the PQ items like the Ellen forest earring and magatia PQ will help push my int slightly further, any bit helps in the long run as I slowly make my way towards it.

Tier 10 Monster card Ring​

This is gonna be a rough one. I expect this to be done maybe 4-5 months down the line as long as I can keep my mental state going with 2-3 sets a day. Currently at 30/300 with most of them being from the easier victoria island areas. Working on Ariant/Magatia and following the monster card guide elsewise. (Fantastic guide from Nimbus here)

Clear All Bosses (if Possible)​

I want to be able to conquer all levels of content in this game. I expect things to be rough in the initial learning stages due to my lack of mechanical abilities (huhuhu, imagine struggling in a chibi mushroom game) but I think I’ll eventually make slow progress with hopefully doing all bosses. I fully expect to meso explode my fair share of them until I can reset my base Int.

No Selling Leech or Buying Leech​

Gonna be honest, I don’t enjoy playing mages and it already pains me that I have to make a Bishop but the benefits are too good. I much prefer grinding on a character I enjoy even if it’s significantly less efficient. Maybe this goalpost can be moved but as of right now, I’m fairly against doing it. This will only apply until I "washout" my main shadower (reset the INT to put back into LUK) as I plan to leech up my shadower with my bishop.

Have 6 Total Shadowers That Are Able to Farm ​

I want to be able to do a 6 man shadower zak for the funny. Shadower gameplay I greatly enjoy as well so having more shadowers I can boss with sounds like it would be a good time. Currently I have 11 Alts that I vote daily that I plan to cap (if possible) all events on for those juicy AP Resets. It’s a lot of work but I’m greatly enjoying this kind of time sink.

LPQ Slave (Eventually 30k HP NL )​

Started as an LPQ mule I was making that I’ll bring with Shadower but I figured I would level it up as well along with my bishop as I bus my main through all the PQs. As much as I find their gameplay boring, it’s hard to deny their role as the king of DPM for a single target. I plan to have it progressively wash or fully wash it once I get my 5 broken glasses on my main shadower.

A Bishop Washed to 30k MP. ​

This can change depending on what I want for it. I might do challenges or I might just wash the bare min for a bishop that isn’t a bosser.


_________________________________________________________________________
First Entry
July ??? - September 9th

Prelude​

So dropping onto the server with no mesos, no connections besides @Fove (who was too busy staring at the cash shop), I was pleasantly surprised to find a large population and tons of people in the event area. At this point I was a bit overwhelmed but found myself doing all the event activities grinding up the tickets and looking around for what I should spend them on. In my search for more information, I was pointed in the direction of the forum’s guide mastermind Krythan who managed to get me up to speed on what I should be doing and trying to gauge my goals for the game. Frankly it felt a bit weird since I had scanned through many of his guides but he somehow always kept finding more to send me. I’m convinced he has his brain hooked up to his computer to digest information into guides for all of us.

The Washing Itself​

As shadowers share the same HP growth as Nightlords, I got a lot of value reading both his beginners guide and 30k HP Night Lord Guide. Both were fantastic at getting me up to speed on what I should be doing and what to expect through my process of starting such a heavy wash as a new player. Understanding that I needed Int gear to bring with me, my partner in crime @Fove had suggested that we pool any meso we got together to share a set of Int gear. This ultimately proved amazing as event farming (selling maple items, int statted bandanas/flags, and other goodies) managed to get us to scrape together this set for level 35.



Maple Warrior 20 on left and clean on right
Not bad at all for only playing a bit over a month I’d say! Of course we did get a bit of help with a certain scroll appearing on my bishop.



The delayed reaction to this was astounding.

I will say that almost 60% of the funds for selling this went to a +20 int bathrobe. (Not thinking about this more than I have to.) The rest of the int gear was made from gach tickets and the anniversary event items.

As for what my current plans are, they’re going to be my long grind of LPQ for my 5 broken glasses. I’ll snag some NX along the way which I’ll greatly appreciate but until I get those glasses, I’ll be very happy letting my vote NX pile up.


I don't know why I spent over 200 KPQs just to get this.

This was a bit of a shorter first entry but I did a poor job documenting things in the early stages but I'll be sure to do a better job in later entries.

Thanks for reading my ramblings and I hope I don't fall face first trying this as a new player.

 

Entry 2
September 9th-September 15th
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So a lot has happened since the last entry! Currently I’m level 50 on my Bandit and will be sitting here for the next few months. Gotta grind up that NX and broken glasses! I’ve managed to make a few upgrades and I figured I’d show off some of my gear as well!


Before level 35, I was going through the Ariant quest line and when I had to do that mini boss fight, I was frankly not prepared to fight him. But luckily I did spec 3 snail shells so about 10 minutes and a couple of mana pots later, I had downed them and proceeded with the quest. Hoping there aren’t a lot of other instance quest bosses for me to do. Next time I'll be sure to carry some ciders with me.


I also managed to embarrass myself a few times in LPQ in my first few runs, I completely blanked on how to do JMS method and made a fool of myself. Luckily I watched the method explained over lunch over 3 days and eventually have memorized it. I’ll be doing a lot of it carrying myself through the PQs so I best get efficient with it.


But after some postulating around, I managed to learn it fairly quickly and even 2 manned it with Fove and my 2 other alts. We got worst case scenario twice in one night, that was a rough one. Luckily now, we average around 15-20 minutes with just the two of us with me on my sin/ceric/bandit and him on his Page and F/P Mage. Ocassional people that are willing to run with us has us shave the time down to almost 13 minute averages. (Zoom Zoom!)


I will have doubters of LPQ NX be proven wrong. (We can ignore that I got no NX for 3 runs after this)

But I'm sure everyone is more curious about my upgrades/gear, so I'll have a dedicated section for this.

Int Gear

Spoiler: Raccon Mask

100% Int scrolled, nothing special.

Spoiler: Red Emerald Earrings

This one was really made by accident. I was planning on 60%ing one fully to see where that would get me but with only one slot left at only 2 passes, I decided to splurge on 30% and managed to pass it. Super happy with it since I was expecting the boom but I’m extremely jazzed about this.

Spoiler: Maple Flag

One of the first things Fove and I made when we decided to pool our mesos together during the event. Was the cheapest thing on Krythan's washing gear guide, so was the very first thing we tried going for.

Spoiler: Shield

Oh boy this one was quite the story. So 10% magic attack shield scrolls were actually cheaper to buy 6 of than one 60% magic attack shield scroll so I thought it would be a good idea to just go for a single pass on a 10%. After about 15 fails, Fove logged in and I gave him my last scroll and his dumb above average pan lid he kept harping on about. I never heard the end of it after it passed.

Spoiler: Shoe

This was one of the first shoes I got from the KPQ boss. I was really happy to see it but didn’t know what was in for me when I wanted 2 Str, 2 Dex, and 2 Luk...

Spoiler: Pendant

Was using a +3 int muffler but figured I’d upgrade this since I needed the HP for the Zakum run. Seeing the destroyed stars in a market that had 0 in one stat made me feel a lot of pain and scared for my future with my broken glasses.

Spoiler: Bathrobe

Spoiler: Cape

Was using a +8 int before this and that was made in about 6-7m. Only had 1 failed cape that is in the void now but this cape I just saw for a great deal and snagged.

Spoiler: Cape

We spent about an hour kicking ourselves for not wanting to wait for a +2 int yellow work glove but honestly, this was impressive that we even got all the scrolls to work. It was the result of 2 weeks of continual effort in the event with me NPCing all the mapleades, maple weapons, and Fove’s ungodly Maple Shield drop luck.

So obviously in the picture you can see the amazing +87 int I’m sitting on. I can’t believe I even have this much with my initial projections being only around +50/60 at this level with a ¼ of it coming from the Zakum Helmet. As a side note…

Reset (My Guild)​

Just wanted to give a huge shoutout to my guild for dealing with my dumb questions and for helping me get my Zakum helmet. It was like 3 AM they pulled out the squad to help me get my helmet. I couldn’t be more thankful for having joined such a nice group of people and I hope I can one day pay it forward to them all.

Doing Damage In LPQ as an Inted Bandit

I first just want to thank every person I ran with in LPQ for the past week or so with how cool they've been with letting me into the run. I did my best to be of some use to everyone by maxing haste early but I felt rather bad about being just damage deadweight. So I set off on a goal of making it so I could do decent damage in the runs without being completely worthless outside of non-damaging stages.

Here's my entire setup for trying to do damage in LPQ.

Spoiler: My LUK and non Int Gear

I gotta say, with a coke pill/cider, I have borderline passable damage. (As long as you don’t look at my level lol) I’d say this is pretty dang good for 4 base Luk.

I’m doing around 120-130 per savage blow line inside LPQ which I’d say is perfectly serviceable. This will reduce the amount of pub runs I have to do with multing my LPQ Sin and Cleric to help (I’ve gotten pretty darn good at stage 8 by having to mule them though).
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Not much else to report on other than continuing to work on my monster card ring and glasses grind.


Oh right here’s a snapshot of my current NX situation for APRs.


35 MP Washes done so far.
Until next time, let me know if there’s anything else you guys wanna see.

 

Funnily enough, they're basically who inspired me to think it was possible. I read through it while initally thinking of doing challenges or 18.5k as my goal. I'm hoping I can be another success story like them.

 

Entry 3

September 16th - Current

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Hello everyone, happy Fa- I mean Summer! This will probably be the last weekly entry until I move on from LPQ (I’ve seen 2 full sets of people level from 35-50, maybe it’s a sign I should go.) Here are some important updates that I’ve made.


Broken Glasses Status




I hit 5 way too fast. I was expecting this to take another month at the least so I think I’ll be going for 10 as my goal now. I’ll have to think about it more if the NX is worth it as since my cleric has hit 50, I’ve been making fairly ok gains just grinding for mesos and just having my Bandit just swoop in to grab any that drop. I’ll see what I think after I hit 10 broken glasses.


Luk Gear Updates

I know it’s not the best idea to invest too much into lower level gear but I figure that it has more importance when I’m Inted and staying at the lower levels for PQs for an extended period of time.




8 Luk -> 14 Luk

Luk Cape scrolls were cheap so I just kept slamming them until I made a decent one. Only took about 2.5m to create.




10 Luk -> 15 Luk

Was created by attempting to pass 1 10% luk overall scroll and then finishing the rest with 60%s. Cost was around 4m to create and I’m fairly happy with it.




60% scrolled 6/7

This I debated pretty hard on if I even wanted to do it but I had a ton of dagger scrolls from LPQing so I figured just throwing 2-3 high rolled wagners into the scrolling ringer would be enough. Paid off fairly well and didn’t even spend over 1m doing this since I had spare wagners.




So here’s what I’m looking at for damage now. With ciders, I can creep up to just 400 and I do about mid 200s on the high ends inside LPQ. I can finally stagger the shadows which was a pretty big pain point when I was running with randoms. I’m extremely satisfied and these will probably be my final Luk/damage upgrades that don’t directly help me with MP Washing since 3rd job is in sight for me.




Wowie, I can do level 35 damage with all this gear.

(My Sin Mule also is also happy with these upgrades)


Speaking of the sin mule...


Current Roster




I’m honestly not a fan of doing this since I much rather be just constantly playing on my bandit even with the poor damage but it’s the fastest way to handle things. Currently my sin and cleric are both extremely capable of either farming or acting as strong carries in LPQ. Int gear being self explanatory and the Luk gear transferring fairly well to the Sin. I’m debating if I want to continue bringing the Sin mule over for the later PQs as FovePove only plays on 2 accounts when we PQ together. I’m at the very least getting it up to Meso Up levels but as I plan to wash it, it will soon become a liability as the levels go on with only the cleric being able to pull its weight.



As for the event, I’m just doing raffles. 21 APRs is not much and any mesos I get from doing the raffle even with the diminished pool I have would be better. Plus the double voting event will be plenty for me.


Here’s my current status on my main, about 12k NX used between last entry and now because I wanted some extra space and some pet loot/meso loot.

I hope everyone gets 7x ws/cs a week from raffles, until next time everyone!

 

September 24th- October 4th

Entry 4
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It’s over.

And with this, the longest tretch of PQs is now over. I’m sure a few of you all have seen Malang glasses going around and if my glasses are even half as good as that, I’ll call this a success (we round up for luk right?)


I’m now officially graduating from LPQ and want to say thanks to all the chibi mushroom gamers that have joined me along the way. Still have a lot of other PQs to do and there isn’t much for me to talk about regarding my shadower. My next goal is getting Ellin PQ done (1 clean pair of glittering for collecting purposes) and Orbis PQ (1 clean pair of goddess wristbands) and then work on my 3rd job advancement. I'm looking forward to blowing up some mesos and actually doing some good damage on my shadower. This is a bit of a shorter entry but with current situations, it's a bit hard to play at times. Otherwise, hopefully next time I'll be be blowing up my hard earn mesos.



NX and card status (yeah yeah, i know i’m slacking on my cards)

 

October 4th - October 9th


Entry 5 : D/C Edition

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So despite all the difficulties playing, I actually made a lot of progress within this past week.

My shadower and 2 other mules have managed to get themselves up to level 55 despite the stability issues.


This was done with the result of Ludi Maze PQ carries, EPQs, and mysterious path 3 with all of them under fish buff.


Ludi Maze PQ

LMPQ is known as a pretty poor PQ in terms of rewards/XP, but it was a fairly good option for me to run through it with the constant disconnects. The game plan was quickly getting to room 16 on my cleric and bandit, then trying to finish rooms 6 and 7 on my sin. Even if my cleric and bandit were to D/C, I would still have the window of time to turn in the passes on my sin and get them XP. It’s still not a great source of XP with Ellin PQ actually being a better source and mysterious path 3 on my cleric yielding even more, but it was a nice break and nostalgic vibe.



The video that inspired me to give it a try. I’m doing about 21k XP per clear on average per character and it takes about 3 minutes per run.


The pot money I received from this was amazing though and I’ll be avoiding grilled cheeses for a bit of time.


Monster Card Progress (and Ellin Forest Ring)

So I had a few people tease me a bit about my progress slowing down, so I decided to take up the challenge of trying to see how many I could knock out within a day. Needless to say, I surprised myself and managed to do 18 sets in a day. Now this obviously won’t be sustainable since I did a lot of the Ludi cards here and those seemed to be almost 20-30 minutes per set. Since I was in Ludi doing cards, I figured it would be good for me to finish the Ellin Forest ring as well if was I doing my cards therel. Both were some nice boosts that I'm super happy with. I just gotta keep grinding it through and eventually I’ll see that beautiful tier 10 ring. (Shoutouts to Fove for farming the wild Kargo eyes and dark stone golem rubbles for me while they were working on theirs)







Ellin Forest PQ

Originally I was only gonna grab a pair but I figured I might as well try scrolling it. I was expecting maybe 5-6 attempts before I settled with a +11/10 luk earring but booming the first 2 was extremely demoralizing with the disconnects going on despite it being early in the process. I failed about 10 EPQ runs and 2 of them were on the boss, so it felt rather draining that I struggled through the disconnects only for them to poof.




The runs were nail biting sometimes since I didn’t have any mobbing and I kept making the mistake of using the cleric to carry when I had a perfectly good sin to use (even if he was slightly inted). Runs were taking about 20 minutes and were volatile due to the overwhelming mobs that the golem would spawn in. I eventually just suited up my Sin with my Luk gear and passed a cider, and we were smooth sailing.My runs took around 14 minutes and it was fairly consistent, not too much slower than if I was in a regular party. Did a few with the occasional person that popped in but usually it was no more than 4-5 runs until one of us poofed.



That one time I got passed SE from someone's BM main, I felt like a lawnmower going at full blast on those tree monsters.

My efforts did bear fruit though and I got these gnarly bad boys.



No Pierces for me for a long time.



With this, I’m done with Ellin PQ, so next stop is my long road of Pirate PQ and Orbis PQs. I’m looking forward to popping that mustached cloud man very soon. See you all in the next entry!

 

October 9th - October 14th


Entry 6 : The Rush


So with the event extending another week, I decided I wanted to quickly rush to the next tiers of raffles. This would involve me hitting 3rd job and this entire process was broken down into multiple arcs.


Early Levels of Attempting to Grind

So it was around this level that I wanted to spice things up besides just doing PQs and leeching up with my cleric, so I wanted to give a try grinding on my own. No way is it efficient, but I think I’d rather spend double the time on my dit than play anymore to heal spam.


FOG was my first map trying to grind and I quickly realized that efficiency wise, this just wasn’t it. Even with all my Luk gear, i was struggling to keep up with just hanging on a rope with my cleric at Mp3/GS.


I tried Voodoos after that but that was quite horrible.



For reference, this is what I was getting at GS2 before I got better at grinding there on my cleric.



I was not exactly pleased so I went right back to doing PQs for a bit.

OPQ: Early Levels

Thanks to server PQ master Bladelord, I was able to get through my first few OPQs fairly unscathed. I had a few hiccups leading it after and I’m still not the best at it (never even done dark room lol) but I’ll probably get more practice in as I continue. Was great to see the return of the NX drops in a PQ bonus stage but after seeing the amount that dropped from grinding, I was pretty disappointed. Oh well, still gotta be here for cards anyway so I might as well get better at the PQ. This and LPQ were some great fun and I think this is probably my 3rd favorite PQ after LPQ and MPQ.



Gonna be honest, I feel like the cloud just makes up whenever he wants us to clear this one.



Featuring Tripitaka from Journey To the West!

The CDs from my Past

So little backstory, I had a lot of vivid memories playing post big bang doing my link skills in GMS. Usually on the first day of a new class, the stopping point for me was kerning city square. Needless to say, I was super surprised to never know that it was just rereleased content of Taipei101 with a fancy skin and questline. More you know huh.


Anyways I’m sure all of you know why anyone would come here at around my level.



Yep, it was time to try to grind CDs.

This was not cheap to do and it was difficult to even kill them. They took around 8-9 savage blows under dish and I wouldn’t have been able to hit them without dish . Every hour I was here I’d drain through 600 barbarian elixirs and 200 grilled cheeses. I also had a few incidents with getting reminded that pet auto pot isn’t 100% reliable. Had my safety charms for that so there was some XP loss I avoided there. Did use 4 safety charms so I have to be really careful now haha.


Looks like the inside of my fridge.

I was pretty excited to hit this EPH so I decided to check what GS2 self leeching was like. Surely self grinding would still be better right?


Right….

I pushed through to level 69 and was going through grinding before I actually saw a smega for a duo at CDs. I wanted to avoid partying up since my damage was so poor, it’d just be unfair to the other party members. But luckily, I found a fellow that was in a similar boat to myself.



It was only for about ½ a level, but man that XP was super nice.


Vroom Vroom


After 30 minutes with them (thanks Spin for helping me level that 1% left), I had managed to level to 70 and it was time for me to job advance. Was super excited and was confident that I’d be able to whack down the mini boss quickly.

3rd Job Advancement


This clone's aim is horrible with his avengers.


And with this, I had officially made it past the point of my pre-bbb experience. I’ll be a lot less experienced going forward as my only experience with later game content from this on was in higher rate servers or post BB experiences. I’m looking forward to bomb everything in sight, but I’ll hang around OPQ for a bit since I still want my card set.



Yeah I know I’m slacking again on cards, I’ll pick it up now that I can bomb F3. Until next time!

 

October 15th - October 22th
Entry 7: Moving Up
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So a large chunk of things have happened since last time. I’ll go over them by talking about the upgrades that were involved since almost all of them involved what I was grinding over the past week.



Rav Helmet Service

So I read over Ainz’s post about pre-auf helmets and settled on wanting to get a Rav Helmet to be my choice of helmet. Problem was, service for this boss generally isn’t a thing. I didn’t want to bug anyone in my guild (more on that later) so I poked around looking to see if anyone did actually do service at all.

Low and beyond, DrBobu did just that in discord. He did manage to get me a 19 dex helm but I wasn’t gonna bother scrolling it until I gotten a 20 dex one.




Feel free to show him some love, he was willing to keep it going until I got a 20 dex helmet. Luckily, I had a guildie willing to take me for a run to just loot the doll. It’s a bit spooky sometimes but luckily being able to pin just keeps me safe if I stand on the side. (I still popped dish and they gave me a quick afk check as well smh. Got hit in the noggin with a rock). Managed to get one on the second run with them.

Spoiler: Drum Roll

And the results were….





Yeah we scroll things on first try. This will surely be true for things to co-



We will…get to this.

OPQ Gloves


So I’ve been in OPQ for quite a while and ever since hitting my 3rd job, I was enjoying my time just bombing papa pixie away. I wasn’t initially gonna stay here for long but I figured I could spend some time working on some potentially decent gloves for myself. I was gonna go for 2 60%s then finish with 3 70s. I knew it was gonna take around 6-8 gloves but I didn’t expect me to just not even be able to do my 70s.



Honestly I wish I just blew it up so I’d get more annoyed and leave OPQ earlier.

It’s here though, so I’m not gonna fret too much. Luckily MPQ pendant is 100% per scroll attempt so I’ll be able to relax a bit there.


At what point should I have just bought 12 watt gloves.


Capitalism Helps the Inted

So as a 3rd job bandit, being able to meso bomb allowed me to train despite being inted. I tried himes for a bit and it felt weird being able to quickly clear out mobs.


Nothing more swaggy than assaulter.
Was using steal to lure (steal having a use is the most surprising thing I’ve seen) and swapped over to assaulter/ BOT once I got access to them.

While it was fast… I knew I had a faster option if I was willing to burn mesos rather than being more neutral at himes.

Forest of Towers was said to give a huge amount of XP if I was ok with burning through my meso reserves so I gave it a try once I had meso guard and BOTs. Needless to say, they were right.


Zoom Zoom, fly high.
My technique still isn’t perfect and my Meso explosion wasn’t even fully leveled. I even lost dish a couple of times in those levels from HS overwriting my dish HS (why is this a thing T_T) when grabbing maple warrior, so some of these times could be a bit faster. I’ll be stopping at level 85 though so that I can finish up MPQ and grab the pendant. Once that’s done, the only PQ I’ll have left is Pirate PQ which will be a weekend of piracy I’ll have to partake in.




Decent card progress and the NX is finally starting to fall a bit as I power level. Fingers crossed for APRs next event.

 

October 23rd - November 2nd


Entry 8 : Stretching the Limits.
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Been a bit of time since the last entry, but I'm trying my best not to slack. So lets just get right into what I’ve been up to.

MPQ
So it’s really at this point that I’m at the limit of being able to contribute to PQs. In an effort to remain relevant, I ended up bombing way more than I should have when running this PQ (even during non boss stages). Ultimately, I leveled my cleric to the PQ levels since there was a ton of time spent just waiting for a mage. 3 manning this PQ was pretty much par for course with how little people were there. But we carry on here, plus I got to bomb the boss so I had some pretty nice enjoyment there. I actually ended up teaching a few people how to do the PQ/spawning angry. MPQ has always been in my top 3 PQs outside of LPQ and OPQ, so glad to have been able to share it with some other folks.

Bombing this stage is always funny with all them funneling under you.

We zoom zoom here.

Gotta do what ya gotta do.

Carried on for a bit with the occasional bombing at FOT. Finally it came time to redeem my pendant. I just wanted it for collection purposes but a bit of extra int and stats could never hurt right?

Spoiler: ...

Cool beans!

With MPQ done, it was time to move onto the next PQ.

Pirate PQ (Still ongoing!)

I wasn’t really looking forward to running this one but I found that runs were generally pretty fast while soloing it. I had my priest do all the other stages and then my bandit bomb the boss. There were some occasional parties here that I tagged in to speed it up to around 6 minute runs, but I wasn't gonna count on them always being there. The extra XP for my MesoUp mule and Priest were nice while running this, will save me the trouble of having to do a 3 party while I grinded. Still only about ½ through (38 lord pirate kills and still have to do the quest in the rooms, but I’ll knock those out towards the end.

The drops for the boss is always awful F3.


Luckily these guys are a lot less tanky than MPQ mobs.

Questing, Hunting, Prepping for the future
So in preparation for something later, I did the CWK exchange prequest. It didn’t take that long and I managed to snag some cards in NLC while doing it.I have some plans to do a few exchanges every week or so when I get bored of grinding. I’m finally at my base int of 430 as well, so I’m actually gonna get stronger outside of my skills! I’m hoping CDs will finally be a decent option for me at around level 95.


I’m finally breaking out a bit more into the map and even with the annoyance of area bosses (I’m never getting sage cat done), it’s been fun traveling around doing my cards. I look forward basically every play session to doing some cards, very chill!

I still get lost without a guide ngl.

I have been grinding for cards. I might have gone a bit overboard compared to last entry but I’m still chugging along and enjoying it.



First time being here for over a decade, these meso rangers making me do all the work.

It’s green!

Also scrolled myself this bad boy that I’m gonna be super looking forward to being able to equip it. I was hoping to get it as a GDK for the looks, but this one looks plenty snazzy with a dkhanjar. Will definitely hold me over pre-horntail for quite a while.

Thanks to all the 99 WATT GDKS and Kaznirs that died for this. All 8 of you lads o7.

And with that, we’re ending off this entry. I’m actually really looking forward to just raw grinding for a bit since I’m no longer at my favorite PQs. Lots for me to explore and maybe some side activities I’ll do.


We shall see when I’m stronger hehe.



NX and Card Status, I’m hoping my slow leveling will offset the MP wash NX costs. But maybe I’ll just power level once I’m able to do CDs well enough. Halloween and Christmas are close, so I'll just have to see what they got to offer.

Bonus Fanart from my fellow Coper:

Spoiler: >.>

I swear Grave just likes to poke me.

Until next time!

 

November 3rd - November 12th
Entry 9: Unknown Depths Beyond

Sometimes cards just don’t wanna drop… (credits to Grave on discord)
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Hope everyone is having a great spookvember!


Halloween Event

I know I’ll be grinding a lot of the event for those coins, not like I have any good options for money besides normal grinding and slaving away at night ghosts. Spooktober has always been my favorite time of year with the general vibe so having it bleed over to November is absolutely cool with me. Had a blast running around doing the prequest and I think the staff did a great job with the entire thing.


On our way to poke ghosts.

PQ Completion

And with this, we’re officially done with all the PQ items so that means I get to mark off one of my goals. I had a lot of fun along the way and while I was expecting to solo grind through a lot of it, I actually met a lot of people during it. I’m normally not super into chatting it up but something about doing this challenge had me be way more of a yapper than normal. A bit alarming honestly but others have said it’s a good thing. Nonetheless, I’m super happy to be done with it all. The next steps of course will be some silly scrolling but I don’t plan to do that for a long while, I have to first get to the point where I can sustain that level of bleeding.

Training Until My Eyes Bleed

So I’m finally at the point where I think I’m comfortable training solo. Luckily, CDs basically stays viable for a very long time and the spawn makes mesos and gach fairly common. Even with the meso guard and pot costs, I found myself ahead before even turning in my gach ticket.


I didn’t want to level my priest anymore so no HS here, I’ll do it later.

I also mixed in a bit of bombing at a lesser known location, Cavern of Honor. The speed is about ½ of himes but comes with less potion costs and potentially plussing off the badge exchange, drops, and gach. It really helps that it’s also less stressful to do. I followed the rotation provided by Marty and it felt really smooth to do that I was comfortable bringing my HS mule over. (Thanks Soblet for pointing me in the right direction on this)



This badge grind is just a precursor for something else.

Tier 6 Ring Acquired (and Gear Preview)



At this point I’m kinda running out of freebies to do. I’m gonna start working on finishing El Nath but a lot of the other cards going forward will take a bit more time for me to do. I’m hoping I can still maintain my pace as I’d like to get tier 10 before I hit 4th job so I can put on my entire set. Speaking of which, I figure you all would be interested in the set for myself that I’ve been putting together when I finally hit 120. I think a few of these pieces I’ll be able to put on early with some event gear but there’s some more thinking on it I’ll have to do.

Spoiler: Gear

I think besides the obvious Horn Tail pendant at 120 (maybe Mark of Naracin before then?), I’ll be pretty comfortable rocking everything here except the squishy shoes (very sad). I’m expecting to wear the christmas sock that’s most likely coming in the christmas event but I’m still gonna want myself a nice pair of dex shoes. I’ve been debating between red mystiques, osfa boots, and some snowshoes if I wanted to scroll but I’ll probably just buy them prescrolled to not test my luck.

Bonus Latanica Journal Entry

It started as a joke but I figured since I was gonna want to grab his card anyway, I’ll get my first taste of trying to get myself some pcoins. I’m nowhere near strong enough yet to fight him properly so until then, just gonna be fine with bombing away.

No vacuum needed!
I know the droprate is notoriously bad for pouch 1 but I figured it be fun to record it all down until I hit 100 kills. Here’s the data so far after killing him for about a week.


That one Pouch 1 only gave me 1 coin btw.
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Oh right, I also hit level 100! I’m getting pretty close to hitting my 4th job...

Ok not really. I’ve been told a lot of people that have tried to do what I am doing usually give up around here due to how bad the EXP curb gets here, but I’m gonna keep on trucking forward. I hope everyone has a great spookvember and may you all yellow line.


I’m ascending beyond music here.

 

Too proud of rigging a lab with explosives.

Itchy trigger fingers on my part, got too excited to pop them but can you blame me when they're all rounded up. I did my best to actually wait so everyone would get XP, but sometimes self control is hard.