[EMS] Growing Sylph Ring GET!

Hi guys! Recently, the Freud's Journal Event has been running in MapleStory Europe. You'll be able to grow a Sylph Ring; an equip that gives different (rare) bonus stats, depending on what direction you'll make it head to.

I've planned to use this equipment since its initial release in MapleStory Korea - together with my Critical Adventure Ring that I obtained way back in 2011.

Eventually when the infamous RED update was released, Nexon Europe released another Adventure ring for the ones who missed out the original ones from 2011. You might remember I obtained it last year, and that it could surprisingly be equipped with the original simultaneously. This would give me a whopping 25% critical rate bonus and 5% minimum critical damage combined.
However, having both of these items together made me question if it was possible to wear it with the Growing Sylph Ring.

And yes - I'm able to wear these three together! Damn that's quite some heavy critical bonus-investment I got on my Hero now.

Currently, when running on one-versus-one-combat (Enrage) with Incising (Puncture)'s debuff, I'll have 85% critical rate with 67% minimum critical damage and 98% maximum critical damage. In addition to having the final two hits of Raging Blow always being critical - I often have crits on my screen!

I'm aware that critical damage doesn't work on Hero as it should work like on various other classes. But let's say that Hero never worked with critical damage/damage over time/summons that heavily before in the first ten years of the class' existence, consider that also damage over time doesn't work properly and summons don't do much damage at all. Hero's range is quite low and has massive compensation in damage percentage to make up for it - however, the percentages doesn't work for summons, damage over time and transformations. I'm sure that it'll get noticed by the developers eventually because that kind of screwed me over (and still does) at the Hieizan Temple when trying Princess No. But when it'll get fixed, I'll hold onto my bamboo hat and prepare for some dramatic changes...

People may wonder why the hell I actually fund into critical rates & (minimum/maximum critical) damage. For me ít's quite easy to achieve - basically, because I can. It's actually hard to believe for me that there's still room for expanding on those three mechanics. It's possible to get 100% critical rate without Enrage in my case (having a 30% critical rate increase and a Beast Tamer Skill Link should suffice); there's still some (minor) increases for me to gain in critical damage as well. Who knows what 5th Job might give to us? We'll see.

That's it for today. I'll see you guys again next post!

[EMS] Level 8 Cygnus Blessing GET!

Hi guys! Just a few hours ago, I managed to reach Level 120 on my Flame Wizard! This means Night Walker will be the final one to train for getting the maximum level of Cygnus Blessing.

The class Flame Wizard has been re-released last week with it's dedicated revamp. Flame Wizard's speed of defeating multiple monsters has increased dramatically - though not at the point of being great in my opinion.

I'm happy to see that Knights of Cygnus are treated as new classes while maintaining their original concept from the past - however I'm concerned about the playability of some of the five knights.

You can agree or not - but the class itself has some major flaws as for mobility (all-direction-movement), small crowds of monsters, non-flat-maps, having so many unnecessary cooldowns. Every class has some major flaws and advantages - it's part of the game. It's nice to see that Knight of Cygnus are something different from the norm (especially if we look where they started in 2010), but sometimes I have the feeling that Nexon tries too hard to distinct them. On the bright side:

Irrelevant complaints aside, Flame Wizard is actually an easy class to get to Level 120 and beyond! This is always nice for veteran players who train these for their Skill Links and new players who would like to play a high level character without the need of high funds! This is probably the easiest of the five knights to get to Level 120. If you want to have Cygnus Blessing, Flame Wizard might be a great choice to start with if you aren't able to get all five to Level 120. Or maybe the other way around, in case you didn't enjoy the other four and hoped for something more relieving. Either way, it's a giveaway!

That's it for today! Night Walker has no official release date yet, we'll have to wait and see. I'll see you guys again next post!

[Lego] Galidor - Complete Retailer* Collection

From left to right: Allegra (#8317) - Nepol (#8320) - Aquart (#8319) - Nepol & Shimmel (#8321) - Jens (#8312) - Nick Deluxe (#8313) - Nick (#8310) - TDN Module (#8315) - Gorm Deluxe (#8314) - Euripides (#8324) - Ooni (#8318) - Kek Powerizer (#8316) - Gorm (#8311) and Tager (#8325).

Ah Galidor, such an unknown LEGO® theme for the casuals, but a theme disgraced by many (Adult) Fans of LEGO®. All of the Galidor on the image - were officially sold in retailers only in the United States, except for the unreleased #8322 Makarr/Mokarr and the never revealed #8323. The latter two were never sold but Makarr/Mokarr was almost in production.

I'm one of the few that actually enjoys the theme, and I have quite a few duplicates in my collection. I don't feel ashamed to own sets like Jack Stone, Galidor, Znap, Clikits or Scala - because I buy them on purpose to expand my LEGO® knowledge to understand that from these so-called failures (which are all actually quite underlooked if you ask me) came the strongest factors for the company to become the largest toy manufacture of the world. I also have fun in collecting these, consider the rare elements and colours that came with them. Not many people know that the ratcheted joints came from Galidor. You can say whatever you want about Galidor - without we would probably never seen the successful colour Dark Green (so no 10242 Mini Cooper in that colour), a proper EXO-FORCE or Jurassic World and your beloved Smaug being sturdy. The same things can be said about the other "failures" as well, or specific era's in the LEGO® timeline - but that's for a different moment to explain.

Due to having multiple joints in most (not all) of the available limbs, you can get some nice posing. But if I'll be honest, posing these figures might take some time, but you can get some pretty sweet poses if you manage to (see the group image above to spot Aquart doing the infamous Iron Man pose). See below in the spoiler for one cool pose you can do with Ooni (#8325).

Though I've had this retailer collection complete for a year now, I still lack the McDonalds promotions that started the series. Ironically, for the price of the cheapest Galidor figures, you can get more than ten of these promotions (I'm just too lazy to order). In addition to that, the value for an entire Galidor collection - is worth more than most of the individual Comic-Con figures. Blame Tager and Aquart for being so overly rare and expensive. Geez.

Was Galidor really that bad? A lot of fans would say "yes", but I think there are still a lot of good things to say about these. Most of the "yes, Galidor was bad" arguments can be narrowed down to a subjective point of view. On an engineering perspective the sets are quality-wise surprising for "just a toy" and that the manufacturing costs for these pieces would go through the roof due to the amount of (manual) assembly, printing that wraps around various shapes, multiple-injection moulding (often a mix of different plastic types) to a few pieces and metric tolerance these would require.

Anyway, Galidor pieces are hard to age and stay in a very good condition even after a decade. It's difficult to distinct new from used Galidor pieces, unlike most other (System) pieces. The sets are pretty indestructible and you really need to go far in order to break any of the pieces. The prints are like any other printed LEGO® pieces and will probably last for decades. The second most common backfire to Galidor's parts selection is the fact that the rubbery pieces "becomes a nightmare" as they catch a lot of dust and "become dirty". It's not that rubbery pieces in LEGO® sets are exclusive to Galidor anyway - nothing a good rinse can't fix.

But what's the most common backfire, you ask? "All the Galidor pieces are way too specific to be used anywhere else and they can only be attached to the ratcheted joint system!" While I understand that view, just don't forget that the "limited" use of pieces is only limited by your imagination.

That's it for today! I'll see you guys next post!

[YT] Fifth 100.000 viewed video!

Hi guys! Recently our fifth 100.000 viewed video milestone has been reached!
The fifth video is the Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 100% Subspace Emissary playthrough, released at the 16th of August 2013.

It took this video just barely 1,5 years to reach this milestone, which makes it the third quickest video to reach 100.000 views, with Donkey Kong 64 - All main bosses being the second quickest and Mario Party 7 - All Mini-Games being the first by a large lead.

It is currently the third most viewed Rayque3 Staff video a month, according to our Youtube Analytics. It is presumably slowly going to catch up Donkey Kong 64 - All main bosses and take over its second place later this year. It'll be unlikely to catch up with Mario Party 7 - which is really a tough video for us to beat (and let's be honest, compared to other Rayque3 Staff videos, it's more like a fluke) even though its growth have slowly been dropping the past few months.

It's highly expected that Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards - All main bosses will be the next 100.000 viewed video! It's most likely for it to reach that milestone in the second half of this year, consider its growth has dropped dramatically last year compared to its initial release in 2012.

Outside of the current five videos and the upcoming sixth one, it'll probably take at least one year to two years before the next 100.000 viewed video if we would consider the current growth to be static & no new video would be released. Which is totally unrealistic to consider since quite some different-aged Rayque3 Staff videos have been shuffling within the Analytics! A lot of older and newer videos have either dropped or increased in growth, creating several interesting speculations!

• Our most recent Single-Part-Video, the Kirby's Return to Dreamland - All Mini/Main/EX Bosses, is close to already beating my Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards video's current growth, while just being online for almost two months now!
• Luxatus Patella's first part of his Croc 2 Walkthrough has been taking over our Analytics and is growing quite fast - to date this is actually his best growing video he has ever made (surpassing the almighty classic Tarzan Action Game Walkthrough Part 1's best growth that it could ever offer) - and is still growing! Will this mean the first part of Croc 2 will be Luxatus Patella's next 100.000 viewed video? I'm certainly that this is likely to be true - and let's be honest, he deserves it. It has been two years ago since Luxatus Patella had his most recent 100.000 viewed video. Let's change that.
• My other Single-Part-Videos have actually been growing just a tiny bit more than it initially did. Most notably, the Lego Alpha Team and Xenoblade Chronicles ones are growing much better than it used to. In comparison with several years ago, the High-Dex Hero series have unfortunately been "kicked" out of the top 20 most viewed Rayque3 Staff videos a month. This doesn't mean that the series has stopped - in fact, there are some ideas around that I still want to cover!
• The entire top 100 of most viewed Rayque3 Staff videos a month is being occupied with the majority of videos from Luxatus Patella's most recent walkthroughs! The best about it is that the growth of these parts are significant increasing every month - I'll be looking forward to see these crawl up the most viewed Rayque3 videos to prove others that his old Tarzan Action Game walkthrough wasn't just a fluke! That's something I really love about our Youtube channel - despite being around since the summer of 2008 - it feels there's a balanced mix of various generations in the top viewed Rayque3 videos!

That's it for today guys! I'll see you again next post!

[EMS] Traits: Level 100 Ambition!

Hi guys! Today I finally managed to obtain my first Level 100 trait on my Hero! It's the Ambition trait and its level is mainly raised through defeating non-World Tour bosses.

Since the Chaos update back in 2011 the "Trait System" has been added. This system includes some small but useful bonus stats if you would raise specific area's on your character. All area's have their own sources to level these and all area's give different types of stat bonus.

Ambition majorly concentrates on raising your Percentual-Damage-Reduction (PDR) ignore and on your experience loss penalty if you would die in most maps. It also raises your Battle Mode damage, but unfortunately this mode has been closed in MapleStory Europe so it doesn't have much use at the moment.

[EMS] 3 Years of Ribgol Sword!

Hi guys! Not really a major milestone but still worth to mention. Today is the third year for me of using my Ribgol Sword!

As older readers on my blog might remember, at the 4th of January in 2012 I finally managed to obtain my Ribgol Sword after a three-year-long-struggle. This basically means today is the "break-even" so to say, so every day after today will be considered profit! Wait... that actually doesn't make sense now does it?

Through those years I managed to add several interesting features in addition to the original form I obtained back then. I manage to add some Additional Potential that's still far from being refined - there will be quite some work required on that part. There has been some temporary enhancing, purely done with Protection Scrolls that were obtained from the annual event for MapleStory Europe.

Most notably, the largest improvement on it is the Mu Gong Soul. Originally, it used to have +7 LUK as you might remember from an older blogpost. Several months later, I managed to replace it with a +5 All Stat bonus and eventually a friend of a friend gifted me a +7 STR bonus (as seen as currently applied). The Strength Bonus is unfortunately as best as it can get - as a counterbalance for the useful Skill Effect it gives it has been suppressed in passive bonus stats and variety. For example, other Boss Souls except for Ephenia have a somewhat more lackluster Skill Effects - but are counterbalanced with higher passive bonus and more variety (in example, Boss Damage, Attack, Critical Rate).

Another small trivia, is that MapleStory Europe has changed the name for Ribgol Sword through the years. Originally we used to have the name Stonetooth Sword - which often indicates it can't get higher base maximum attack than 105 (outside regular monster drop or legal obtaining). Back then the lower maximum attack was exclusive to the Global and European version. The French, Spanish, German and Dutch translations are based on Stonetooth Sword as well.

After the Big Bang update, Nexon Europe changed the name to Ribgol Sword, increasing the maximum attack to 108 with it. Ribgol Sword now became identical to the MapleSEA version, which had the first translation from "Saikotsuto" (Japan, which roughly translates into "Crusher Sword") to Ribgol Sword - Stonetooth Sword is the second translation from "Saikotsuto". Ironically, Ribgol Sword's reference to the source material (the anime Bleach) is actually made of (something near to) "metal" - it isn't made out of "stone" at all. In addition to that, the attacking speed may question the material itself, consider that the only obvious two-handed sword that is made from stone; Berzerker (Level 90), has the slowest speed of all two-handed swords, while Ribgol Sword is as fast as (the majority of) one-handed swords.

After the Tempest Update, Nexon Europe reverted the name back to Stonetooth Sword, as far as I know kept the original 108 att as the maximum limit. However, the in-game translations that were still available prior to the RED update (which have been removed permanently after that update) still used the Ribgol Sword translations (in example, "Ribgol Zwaard" for the Dutch translation) instead of the Stonetooth Sword (in example, "Stenentand Zwaard" for the Dutch translation). Consider these in-game translations are not available anymore in-game (but there's still a multilingual service through the customer support and official forums), Stonetooth Sword can be considered the "correct" term in MapleStory Europe (although Ribgol Sword was the first official English translation of "Saikotsuto"). I'll still call it Ribgol Sword on my blog though!

That's it for today! I'll see you guys next post!