[Lego] Black light - #71310 Umarak the Hunter

Oh man, I've been looking forward to capture this one. A lot.

Umarak the Hunter, the main villain of 2016's Bionicle "The Journey to One" chapter.
I'm trying out a new layout for these images, one similar to ArcFire and that one Scifi Ninja back in 2013.

[EMS] Traits: Level 100 Insight!

Hi guys! I've just hit Level 100 on the Insight Trait a few minutes ago!

Insight is one of the more underrated Traits in my view - despite just raising accuracy and avoid by a large proportion and a little bit of Enemy Elemental Resistance Ignore, it still does hold some value.

Especially on lower funds, obtaining almost thousand accuracy and avoid may be of use before you reach the default maximum of 9999 later on. While nowadays accuracy and avoid may not have that much influence today,
it still applies to the game - especially in World Tours, enemies tend to have a high avoid. The level penalty isn't the only thing that gives a miss rate, y'know?

While to most 5% Enemy Elemental Resistance Ignore may not seem that shocking, any improvement is still an improvement. Especially when you gather many small percentages of boosts, the decisive outcome is changed significant. Even more important when certain bosses nowadays have a high Percentual Damage Reduction,
base Weapon/Magic Defence *and* Elemental Resistance (including resistance to physical attacks!) since Hilla got introduced back in the Justice update (2011). It's a shame that many people just slap a bunch of high amounts of stats together as if it's nothing, and forget the value of a single point...

While my Diligence Level is 95 as of today, it might still take a while before it'll be close to Level 100. And if I'd be honest, I don't expect my Empathy Level to reach Level 100 within a year (or two?), unless there will be some
Storm Trait Potions like they released a few years ago. Shame, consider the MP boost and Buff Duration are useful...

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

[EMS] Level 211!

 

First 'Up for this year.
How many 'Ups will there be?
Let's see in twelve months.

[EMS] Pink Bean's Secret Diary rewards!

Hi guys! Quick blogpost!

It's the 20th of January, which means we'll get the rewards from the Pink Bean's Secret Diary.
I'm pretty happy with the loot. Despite some of the rewards expire within 2 weeks, I'm pretty sure a lot of people will be happy with them and make good use of it! You can pick up your Pink Bean rewards until the 2nd of February.

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

[EMS] Dark Critical Adventure Ring GET!

Hi guys! As some of you might remember from my Summary of 2015, I've mentioned I was close to obtaining a Dark Critical Adventure Ring. Well, as you might have guessed, I managed to obtain one recently!

The Dark Critical Adventure Ring is a so called "Critical Rate" Ring, where the main focus of the equipment is giving Critical Rate to the character who equips it. While most players prefer rings that gives Potential, "Critical Rate" Rings sacrifices upgrades (Scrolls, Star Force, Potential, Nebulites, etc.) for a passive increase of Critical Rate. This ring was obtained from the Firepower Coin Shop that was part of the Leap update for a staggering amount of 2000 Firepower Coins.

Critical Rate isn't a stat in EMS that is easily obtained in high amounts. While you can argue to choose for a solution of 30% Critical Rate from Inner Ability, through Hyper Stats or through Potential, you'll always sacrifice a slot for a boost of this stat.

Having 30% Critical Rate means that you'll need to sacrifice your first Inner Ability line, while you could also have something like 50% Buff Duration, or perhaps a special line such as Attack Speed Increase. Same thing can be said about Hyper Stats; if you spend Hyper SP in Critical Rate, you're not able to gain something else that might be of use for your build. Proper building is not just about knowing what you'll gain, but also what you'll miss out on - finding that sweet spot of balance is important.

Most frequent readers might know I've been gathering Critical Rings since the Balance Patch, which was back in 2010. Through the years, Nexon has released various Critical Rings - most of which are in the "Adventure Style", which is a graphical design of the equip that is often recognized through having a blue-white-yellow-red Maple Leaf symbol. Another known recurring design is the "Gratias Style", which is a gray ring that consists of three gems (red, purple and a mix of orange/green).

Two things that all Critical Rate Rings share, are the so called "Equip Restrictions" and having an infamous harsh requirement for obtaining one. The Equip Restrictions limits the player in how many *of the same* rings can be obtained and how many *different* rings can be equipped together. These restrictions utilizes the "Original Item" and/or "Distinct Equipment Item" features, where the former prevents a player to have more than one of the same equip on a character and the latter disables an equip to be worn twice simultaneously (but you still can own multiples of the same item on a single character).

With almost six years later, my current collection on Rayque has reached 9 "Critical Rate" Rings, together with two Sylph Rings that has the Maximum Critical Damage upgrade. Three Adventure Rings are worn together as of the time of this post, which are the Grand Adventure Ring, the Pivotal Adventure Ring and the Adventure Critical Ring.
The other Critical Rings held in my inventory cannot be equipped simultaneously with those three - however, I can swap the Pivotal Adventure Ring with this Dark Adventure Ring if I want to (however, the stats of both rings are identical).

In total, I currently own a Pivotal Adventure Ring, two Buff Bro rings, Legendary Gratias, Zero Gratias, Grand Adventure, Adventure Critical (Post-RED) and the "old" Adventure Critical Ring. Despite I can't wear all of them together, it's a tradition for me to collect these specific items - similar to how I tend to collect swords in this game too. It's an advantage if you play for that long on a single main; you have the ability to cross different "generations" of equips for some very interesting builds...

That's it for today! The Pink Bean Secret Diary rewards are going to be given out somewhere next week, and
I'll probably write a small blogpost about it. I see you guys again next post!

[EMS] Pink Bean's Secret Diary Complete!

Hi guys! Just a few hours ago, I've finally managed to complete the Secret Diary for the Pink Bean event class. The Pink Bean class is an event class that is available for about two months, which after this event ended, all Pink Beans will be removed from the game.

Similar to more recent events in the past few years, there's a list of objectives which you need to complete for rewards. The objectives for the Pink Bean class are varied a lot, ranging from level milestones (Level 100, 150, 200), miscellanous objectives (such as activating runes, travelling to certain maps, leveling Traits), and defeating bosses (such as an Elite Boss, Zakum, Pink Bean itself). Not only would you receive rewards on Pink Bean itself, but you'll also receive rewards on a different character of choice. Most rewards for Pink Bean are thankfully to improve training and equipment; which is to ease the difficulty for especially people who are relatively new to the game. Three objectives gives a Squishy Bean pet each, which comes with a desirable Looting Skill in order for you to get the necessary Mesos to buy Potions.

In order to give the opportunity to most players for being able to fully complete the Secret Diary, the overall gameplay of the class has been designed on a way to ease that difficulty. Pink Bean works with a "damage scaling" set of skills, similar to certain skills for Battle Mage, where stats are being automatically raised upon raising your character level - this reduces the need for strong equipment (because most area's in MapleStory do require a certain amount of funds before the location becomes feasible to train at). In addition to that, Pink Bean also starts with some "rare" stats,
such as Status Resistance, Defence Ignore and additional EXP/Droprate to easen the gameplay.

Despite Pink Bean having a well thought out system where the class is designed to be accessible to
all kinds of players (such as veterans and people who are just familiar with the game), I can't help to express
my honest opinion that there are some minor flaws to the design by itself.

I won't complain about the excessive required effort to achieve all the milestones; consider keep in mind that we *do* play a MMORPG. RPGs require a lot of time, both online and offline - more people should be aware of it...

The thing that I kind of felt missing on Pink Bean is a bit of encouragement and smoothed out combat gameplay.
Pink Bean gets a respectable set of skills for combat, but the last skill is at Level 140 - which means there's no new skills to look up for after unlocking that. While on paper it wouldn't seem *that* bad, the last 50 levels on
Pink Bean feels it lacks something refreshing to help out the longer training sessions you might have.

As for its combat gameplay, it does feel stiff after playing it a lot. This is perhaps because certain skills of Pink Bean are RNG-based. Certain buffs and skills have different effects - some of which have quite a large difference between - and that doesn't help when most skills have a rather long cooldown.

I think that the combat gameplay could've been improved by either of the following small changes:
- Reducing the cooldown for most (if not, all) Pink Bean skills. Especially for the Let's Roll, Instant Garden, Chill Out and Everybody Happy skills; the cooldown does hurt its usability
- Raise the amount of active Mini Beans to five or six
- Prevent the player from accidentally chaining Blazing Yo-yo twice in a row by requiring each consecutive hit with another press on the assigned key (similar to Pink Powerhouse)
- Or just remove the RNG in skills to make the class more consistent and reliable. Keeping the various visual aspect of skills like Pink Powerhouse and Instant Garden is fine, but at least remove the differences in hitboxes/attacking speed and stick with one reliable decision

Ah well. The class itself ends at the 19th of January - I wish you all good luck on the last objectives you have left! That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!