[EMS] The consumption of 1.000.000 Honor EXP

 

Hi guys! Here's a status report about my Inner Ability progress! Just a few hours ago, I have consumed a total of 1.000.000 (!) Honor EXP points on my character since the You & I update.

I know that my blogposts about Inner Ability has been quite lacking in the past 13 months (with the last actual decent blogpost about it back in February 2015) - and the reason for that is unfortunately quite simple. I haven't obtained my second (or third) preferred Inner Ability line yet; but do not worry - I am still working daily towards achieving it.

In case you might have forgotten or if you are new to these blogposts (don't worry, both are fine), I'm trying to aim for an Inner Ability of "Increases Skill Level of passive by 1", "Numbers of enemies hit by multi-target-skills by 1" and "Attack Speed +1 Level".

Since the You & I update has arrived in the winter of 2014, I have been tracking my Inner Ability progress manually. There isn't really a tracking system in most games for things like this, now is there? I'm not keeping track of just only how much Honor EXP I have consumed, I also use this data to improve my basic knowledge to the game. There's a difference between reading websites and seeing it for yourself, right? See below in the spoiler.

Don't mind the random colours for specific Ability stats - it's some subjective highlights for me
And yes, I have fixed a calculation mistake that I made in my chart back in 2015. *gasp*

As you can see in the chart, it seems I actually was quite lucky with obtaining my first Inner Ability line - or perhaps, I might have been unlucky with obtaining my second? Either way, I have only shuffled 71 times in the Legendary rank. Which is to most Maplers, considered not really a lot, I guess.

Because MapleStory as an online game keeps developing further, the resources for Honor EXP has changed,
new ones have been added and also have been adjusted over time too - Kerberos used to give a rich amount of Honor EXP until the Star Force update (which was approximated about 1600 Honor EXP a day just for beating him a mere total of 6 times), whereas today a combination of two Normal Zakum, two Normal Horntail, two Normal Hilla, one Mori Ranmaru and one Easy Magnus wouldn't even get close to that (approximated between 800 and 1200 a day).

Despite that, I'm still doing all of those bosses on a daily basis (within the past year, only have missed out a day or five at maximum) - and I'm glad to see that there will be some increase to the amount of Honor EXP that Honor Medals gives in the future.

Hey, the thing about shuffling Inner Ability is, that anyone can get their preferred lines as long as they keep working for it eventually. That would only leave two questions: how much Honor EXP would you need in total, and when will it happen?

That's it for today guys! Please don't forget that the first of April is our only official day off, so don't expect anything on that day on this blog or on our Youtube channel. Unless Lux wants to fool around like a salami on his Twitter, but hey, that's up to him. See you again next post!

[Lego] CITY Undercover - 100%!

Hi guys! Earlier during the evening of yesterday I've finished LEGO® CITY Undercover with a 100% score!

LEGO® CITY Undercover is one of the many LEGO® games that is part of the "TT franchise", referring to all the LEGO® games (since approx. 2005) that were developed in partnership between The LEGO® Company and
TT Games.

To me personally, CITY Undercover has been the most fun all-around out of the TT franchise (so not including the original LEGO® games prior to 2005) that I have played to date. This includes the main story, world map, puzzles, abilities, humor, special assignments, gameplay, selection of unlockables, red bricks - the "volume", if you will.

While the TT franchise has been mainly about LEGO® games in combination with an IP, it was interesting to see how they pulled off an original and fresh game design from scrap, that still kept the charm of this franchise's gameplay (so no, I do not count Bionicle Heroes to this rule). While most people would compare this game closely to the Grand Theft Auto franchise, I can understand the general idea of "why", but I don't think that the reason why people play GTA is on the same level as CITY Undercover.

Going back to the game being designed from scrap - I was especially delighted with how the game was designed around Chase McCain himself, with him performing in seven strong occupations (Police, Robber, Miner, Astronaut, Farmer, Fireman, Construction). Giving all seven occupations their own significant roles in the main story, unlockables and existence in the world map makes the "CITY part" of this game feel alive and fleshed out.

Talking about the world map of CITY Undercover... it is big. The suggested retail price of CITY Undercover is about twice the retail price of other LEGO® TT Games, this game is only for the Wii U, and you can clearly see that in return. One disadvantage of most multiplatform games is that they have to fit for "all". CITY Undercover takes a while to load the entire world map, but after that; *bam*! After loading the entire world map, dense loading screens are hard to find - most likely only to happen during Special Assignments and the important Police Office.

The volume of land you can walk on, feels almost three times the size of that of Manhattan in Marvel Super Heroes (which already set a significant bar for its time). The entire city of CITY Undercover is divided in a -lot- of districts, all given their own respectful significance in this game. That was a particular thing to note about Manhattan *and* Gotham City (Batman 2); because of their limited allowed size, everything felt cramped a bit too much to give that compact feel.

Given Chase McCain is just a regular minifigure without real superpowers like in the DC or Marvel games; this fact really did this game a lot of justice. You really had to scale buildings to reach puzzles instead of flying to the top and be "done", all abilities are in balance and all are frequently used, Red Bricks are used to a very good effect, vehicles are prevented from becoming superfluous and are a great help, and so on.

I'd love to talk more about this particular game in-depth, but damn this blogpost is already way longer than I want to...

Fun fact: this is really the first LEGO® TT Game that required me to play with a guide to 100% it. It's not only because this game is *that* big, but also because it lacks a bit of a fancy map layout to aid you with getting that 100%...

Actually, this was *the* particular game that got me interested to try out this franchise as a whole. At the time when
I was aware of this game, I didn't own a Wii U yet - and eventually I came across Batman 2 on the PC.
Next to CITY Undercover and Batman 2, within this franchise itself (so again, not including the original LEGO® games prior to 2005), I have also played Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel's Avengers, Batman 3: Beyond Gotham,
Jurassic World, Worlds and CITY Undercover: The Chase Begins. While I may have not finished Avengers and
The Chase Begins with a 100% score yet, both are still on my list to finish.

I have to admit I haven't touched Worlds that much as I'd like to, but I think that's because the game is still relatively new and in beta - but as far as I have seen what they're planning to do, I am invested with the possibilities that the game has to offer in the future.

I know that this particular kind of blogposts aren't as "recurring" as it used to be. In the past I've blogged about a 100% score on LEGO® Batman 2, while for Marvel Super Heroes, Batman 3: Beyond Gotham and Jurassic World have been pushed back to the annual summaries of 2014 and 2015.

After Batman 2, it was intended to keep a dedicated blogpost for each following game as recurring - however, when
I was about to write about Marvel Super Heroes, I pushed the release of said blogpost back, and eventually it went into a loop of delays until it got neglected entirely. As you can see with this blogpost in particular, I'm trying to bring these back - and Lux knows why.

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

[EMS] Traits: Level 100 Diligence!

Hi guys! The first blogpost for this month, and unfortunately will be one of the (probably) very few possible subjects to talk about. Not much really has going lately on that feels "blogworthy". That kind of sucks because blogging about EMS is one of my favorite subjects to write about! Well, we just had a third Capsule Toy event that ended this week where you had a chance to obtain Amaterasu equipment, but there wasn't many people doing Capsule Toy in general so we kind of missed the opportunity to finish my set of armour... What a shame! Well, the more hype for a fourth batch, I guess?

Back on subject! This is a bit surprising to myself if I'd be honest, but my Diligence is now Level 100!
Diligence is one of those Traits that is often considered useful, and I can kind of understand the thought behind that because scrolling is one of the most important things in this game as for upgrading. You gotta scroll right to get a solid foundation for your character, otherwise you'll struggle with building Potential and other goods.

Nexon Europe has been quite generous with events lately to keep us busy until the next patch (which won't arrive for the next pair of weeks, unfortunately) and thus we got to see that infamous Mysterious Trait Potion again. This potion is surprisingly rare the past several years - it used to be a recurring reward with Hot Time events (a total of 3 times as far as I can remember) but after that it kind of disappeared. So I'm more than glad to see we got another one!

For the Maplers out there who are unfamiliar with the "Mysterious Trait Potion", it's a rare (and to an extent highly desired) event potion that raises a random Trait by ten (!) Levels. The potion will not raise any Traits that are Level 100 prior to obtaining one, but it could be potentially wasted on a Trait that might be Level 99 for example. This is the second time the game decided to raise my Diligence by ten levels, which means twenty (!) levels of Diligence has been raised by this fancy potion alone.

The same thing can be applied to my Empathy Trait, because it has been raised twice by ten back when the potion was a recurring reward. When the Professions were introduced during the Chaos update in 2011 (and some of you might remember the various blogposts related it) there was a lot of limitations at first that Nexon has slowly lifted over time throughout the years. One of them was the fact that you could only learn Mining *or* Herblore - and most people might remember I picked Mining over Herblore. So before we could learn both, I raised my Empathy to Level 35 (!) through Party Quests and Mysterious Trait Potions...

So, with Diligence being another Level 100 Trait, the only one that's left is Empathy. As mentioned in the previous post, Empathy might take a while - and I wouldn't expect it to reach 100 any time soon within a year (or two). Hey, perhaps Nexon Europe might release a few more of these fancy potions, who knows? At least it's my only Trait left
to be raised, so every +10 Levels is guaranteed to raise this particular personality trait...

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