[2018] What happened this year to Rayque?

It's that time of the year again! It's time for another summary!
This marks the 8th summary on this blog.

In tradition, I (and the rest of the Rayque3 Staff) wish you a great 2019. This year has been an interesting one...

It started out to be like the majority of 2015 to 2017; a lot of things in my personal life hasn't been all that great. Fortunately, my life has been improving throughout the second half of 2018, to a point where 2018 had some actual game changers that made it worth my while. Especially one particular event that managed to give me some much needed confirmation in where I currently am in life, and where things will go from that point forward. Hopefully this (positive) momentum will stay as long as it can. Next year seems to have a solid chance of being good, for a change.

Anyway, that said - let's get to those statistics of 2018.

[EMS] Sixteenth Legendary Potential GET!

Sup guys! Just before the end of the year, my Chaos Pink Bean Mark decided to rank up to Legendary.

Despite I aimed to roll for some %-STR, I found some additional Item Drop Rate first. I might want to keep this for the time being in preparation for the next Murgoth event. I'm also kind of running out of Chaos Cubic Blades, so I'll have to buy some bulk soon from the Auction House.

There's only one item left for me to rank up, which is my Rex's Perfect Red Earrings! After that, it would be good to start slowly working on having two useful Potential lines on each item before I'd even want to try to raise my Star Force...

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

[EMS] Black - 5th Job's fifth wave!

It is time for another 5th Job wave blogpost! In today's post, we're going to take a look at our next Combo Attack skill: Combo Instinct! In addition to that, we're also going to take a look at the most recent changes to Final Attack and a new generation of Nodestones.

[EMS] Fourteenth & Fifteenth Legendary Potential GET!

 

Damn. Today has been one of those rare days where my luck did a 180 and allows certain things happen with extreme ease, instead of being the usual bind where it takes forever for anything to happen. That said, it has been five months ago since my last item ranked up to Legendary. But this isn't just "another one of those blogposts" - instead of one, I got two rank ups!

With the unlocking of Hero II's rank yesterday for the Black event, I bought all the now-available-for-purchase-Red Cube coupons from the coin shop to throw them on my Amaterasu's Epaulet. After a couple of them, it ranked up.
I then decided to go for my Bunny Disguise III with the leftovers... which immediately ranked up with the first cube of the remaining ones.

Anyway, it was about damn time because since July, my Amaterasu's Epaulet has been eating up all the Meister Cubes that I've found and all of the Red Cubes from the Reward Points/Daily Gift systems. I suppose it's part of RNG, but it's not like I expect anything less from how my life usually goes.

So I'll probably aim to cube some %-STR with my supplies to make these items more useful. That may or may not happen soon. With some items I got two lines of %-STR rather fast, but with certain other items I have yet to succeed in that. The results you get are still somewhat at random, and I don't have an infinite amount of mesos to purchase loads of materials from the Auction House. Either way, I'll prepare to wrap myself in bubble plastic because I'm expecting everything to go back to the usual norm before the end of the day.

All things considered, the loot from the Black event has been pretty great so far. The amount of Nodestones has been staggering and all those extra Arcane Symbols should help to get those Level 20's earlier. It would be cool to have these kind of events more often. At least outside of the Black event, we do have those Sunny Sundays every once in a while...

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

[EMS] Level 237!

Ding! The daily EXP gain from the Black event has been more than decent so far. I might even make it to 238 somewhere early in January.

Given Combo Instinct came out this week, I've been collecting as many thoughts about it as I could. I'll aim to have the blogpost ready before the end of next week. It's definitely going to be a long blogpost, that much I can say.

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

[Other] It's here!

Whoo! It's here - my copy of Smash Bros Ultimate! This box is actually pretty big...

You know what's interesting about this particular box (and the content inside)? It doesn't include Ken and Incineroar, most likely because these editions had to be manufactured way ahead of time. The retail versions of Ultimate have already been confirmed to show all characters that were confirmed for the base game, but these do not.

Anyway, of course I had to make this image. I'll jump back into the game, because I have a lot of unlocking to do!

[EMS] Finished scrolling!

Hi guys! Yesterday I've finished my Rex's Perfect Red Earrings, but I didn't have time to put some effort in writing a blogpost until today. This is the last item that still had slots left, which means I'm finished with scrolling on my Hero!

I've been using this Rex's Perfect Red Earrings for almost five years now! Readers who've been following my blog since 2012 might remember I managed to obtain my Hyena mount back then. The Resurrection of the Hob King Party Quest is definitely something that has been of importance to my Maple career. I mean, it's hard to discard that when you've done this PQ over 900 times in a lifetime on the same character. In total, I've spent way over 80 hours on this PQ... and I've played through pretty much each revamp a few hundred times, even contributing to a few level ups!

Anyway, the attack gains on this item has been somewhat decent. These gains didn't start out great, but fortunately I had some good rolls later on so it redeemed itself in the end. As mentioned on my blog often: you should try to aim for a 2 attack gain per slot average to be in a "safe zone". Less than 2 average can be considered bad luck, more than 3 requires quite some luck, so 2 is the most realistic to expect I guess.

I didn't manage that here, but the stats will definitely do the job regardless. I mean, the attack gains per equipment might not be huge individually, but once you start to accumulate the gains on a total of thirteen equipment...

Did you know that despite I've been working on this Ribgol build since 2008, this is the first time I've managed to scroll all slots? Despite that I've been working on the same build for ten years, the specific layout itself has changed a couple of times in total. However, the fundamentals behind the reasoning of what type of equipment I choose and how I upgrade them remain more or less the same at its core. I've been looking forward to this moment, and I've had to be very patient before I got to this milestone.

So, with all of my slots decked out, what's next? The next thing in line is working on my Potential, which I have been working on every now and then. I'm not expecting any fast progress on this though because it's way more RNG based than scrolling is. And you should probably know by now that RNG isn't my strongest suit. Fortunately, being stubborn until it gets to work is a thing I'm good at.

All things considered, the output of my build has been satisfying and according to plan. Although my build has been designed to work hand-in-hand with everything else, and there's still a lot left to upgrade. So I still have a long way to go before I really see the results of that long term effort.

That's it for this post - I'll see you guys again Friday!

[EMS] Sword of Burning Soul - Level 30!

 

Hi guys! Today I've finally maxed out my first 5th Job skill: Sword of Burning Soul! Sobs was Hero's introduction to 5th Job, and is arguably one of the most important, impactful and defining skills to have been released for it in a very long time. Of course I've talked about this skill a lot on my blog, so we'll leave that aside for today.

Why did it take me almost two years to max it out? Well, there are a couple of reasons for this. The main reason has to do with a "lack of Nodeshards". It's not like I don't have a decent budget to purchase Nodestones from other players - I just personally wanted to progress on my own without relying on others. A lot of Nodestones in EMS have been farmed through means that are against the Terms of Use, and I'm never fond of buying items like that simply because it's not worth the risk and involvement. Plus, it feels like those billions of mesos are better spent elsewhere if I'm already going to max out 5th Job skills by finding Nodestones by my own during (daily) grind or questing. If my Potential and Star Force is still far from even decent - why should I invest in something else? One step at a time.

But what probably has been more decisive than that is the fact that back when 4th Job came out in EMS, it took about three years before I maxed out all of my skills. It's a trend I prefer to continue; to progress on a slow but steady pace. It keeps me sharp, and I don't feel happy at all the moment I slack, become lousy or go through shortcuts "just so that I could kill a raid boss quicker than I currently am able to". The amount of gains I receive from maxing out 5th Job is close to none - I already can kill most of the pre-5th Job bosses on my own and I don't have much interest in even doing those. I'm not even going to be concerned about the later Chaos bosses because I know by then I will have enough output to tackle them. Plus, that is not going to be any time soon anyway.

Gains have to be purposeful. Nothing is free y'know. Even having higher damage numbers doesn't mean that something is taken down faster, or that it would change the amount of hits required to defeat an enemy. That said, it doesn't mean that it took me years to find enough Nodeshards to max out Sword of Burning Soul.

If there's one thing that has been made clear by the game, is that it takes a ton of Nodeshards to max out a skill. Crafting a Level 25 skill requires a whopping total of 7700 Nodeshards.

Anyone who has been trying to find Nodestones by themselves on a non-Reboot server knows that it takes forever to gather enough Nodeshards. And if you're like me to prefer the patient and long route, you know that each damn shard you own is valuable and that spending it into the wrong skills could set you back for months. Of course Nodestones are only becoming more common the older 5th Job gets, and that is also exactly why I didn't bother to invest anything into that back then.

However, despite that Nodestones are easier to obtain nowadays still means that it takes a very long while to have 7700 of them. It took me about 1,5 year to gather this much - and we've had events that gave out Nodestones in plenty. So I'm reserving 7700 Nodeshards for a future skill that has yet to surface: Expert Combo Attack. I could write a whole article about why I specifically choose to wait for a theoretical skill like that, but my reasoning should be obvious.

If it takes me 1,5 year to gather 7700 Nodeshards, there's no way that I'll have enough Nodeshards by the time the skill hits EMS after it is revealed in KMST. So being prepared will pay off. This is why I've decided during the Beyond update to park Sobs until I had enough Nodeshards in advance. And if it doesn't pay off, well... all of the shards I've already stockpiled are still there y'know. I can spend them any time whenever I feel like it. At least now that's done, I can focus on maxing out my current skills I own today. That is also why it didn't take long for Sobs to go from Level 18 to 25, by the way. I would've had Sobs maxed out somewhere in 2017 (or early 2018) if I didn't go this route.

So, now that Sword of Burning Soul is done, what is next? As stated in my previous 5th Job-related blogposts, I'm going to invest my next Nodeshards into Aura Weapon. AW's biggest gain with increasing its level is the additional duration. It is currently one of the few 5th Job skills to gain that much duration that it becomes surprisingly reliable in the long run.

Anyway, that's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!

[EMS] Level 236!

 

Ding! I've gone through Level 235 faster than usual because I was participating in the recent Maple Missions for extra Nodestones, which involved completing four days of the Haste event. I somehow managed to gain over 30% in less than four days, which sped up the process of this level up by a lot. At least I got an adorable hamster mount for the effort of completing all of these Maple Missions.

The Black update arrived last Wednesday and I cannot wait to try out Combo Instinct. Unfortunately I'll have to wait a couple of weeks before I can get my hands on it. But for the time being, there's plenty of new things to do - daily Determination points and also working on the Esfera dailies to increase the levels of its Arcane Symbol.

Speaking of level ups and the Black update - they've added a particular Guild Skill that was missing in EMS for quite a long time. This particular Guild Skill is a prerequisite for something most guilds already have (which is the Merchandising Guild Skill), and thus Nexon just raised all of the guilds by two levels who had maxed out Merchandising so that they had enough Guild SP to max out the new skill, in order to fulfill the prerequisite it came with. Conveniently for us, this means that FallenAngel is now Level 25! This is the max level for a guild, by the way.

It's surprising how little amount of guilds in EMS are actually Level 25. According to the Guild Rankings, the Luna server counts over 1100 guilds, but only a two-digit number of guilds are max level. Anyway, did you know that FallenAngel is in the top 50 of guilds in Luna? Guild Rankings are based on the total amount of accumulative Guild EXP, and we're currently the 45th highest guild.

This is somewhat ironic (that FallenAngel is placed this high on the Guild Rankings), because my contribution of the total amount of Guild EXP in FallenAngel is almost two-third of the accumulative. This essentially means that "an one man army" is within the top 50 of what usually is a group effort-based ranking, because most of my friends in FallenAngel rarely work on their Contribution score. Contribution is only gained in decent amounts when you participate in certain activities with other members of the guild. Since it's quite some extra work on a daily basis, most people don't bother with it.

In context, FallenAngel is able to compete with much larger (and active) guilds because I'm one of the few people in Europe who's assed enough to work on my daily Contribution score. And by "assed enough", I mean that I currently hold the highest Contribution possible in EMS, without skipping, failing or forgetting about it in the past 736 consecutive days.

With all Guild Skills maxed out, this certainly looks fancy and colorful...

Anyway, Contribution bragging aside, the next big part of the Black update should arrive in a couple of weeks, which introduces us to Combo Instinct! This will also be the next EMS-related blogpost, unless I somehow manage to obtain 80 Nodeshards before that. Smash Bros Ultimate is coming out in three weeks, eep.

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

[EMS] Fifth Level 15 Arcane Symbol GET!

 

Sup guys! Today I've hit my fifth Level 15 Arcane Symbol! This time it's the Arcane Symbol for the Morass region, which is one of the more consistent symbols to level up.

 

Personally I prefer leveling symbols such as the one from Morass: you have a bunch of daily fetch/kill quests, and you get a consistent reward from it. The EXP is solid (at least more than daily bosses) and there's always chance to find a Nodestone. Road of Vanishing and Esfera share the same concept, by the way.

 

Although that said, it doesn't necessarily go faster than the dailies from Chew Chew Island, Lacheln or Arcana once you're done a lot of them. But y'know, Dream Breaker and Spirit Savior have quite some risk involved (especially the latter) in terms of how many symbols you get each day. At least the daily symbols from those *can* be higher than the safer ones, so I guess certain risk is rewarded - although I'm stuck at Floor 40 with Dream Breaker, so I don't necessarily benefit much from that bonus.

 

Anyway, my Morass symbol should be done next Summer. But a couple of weeks before that, my Lacheln symbol should hit Level 20. Despite the eternal slow progress on it in my case... I've been doing daily Dream Breaker runs since day 1 through the power of discipline, so I'll get it maxed out eventually.

 

With the Black update arriving next week, I can start doing the Esfera dailies soon. But what's also soon is that fifth skill wave, and I'm certain that you frequent readers are looking forward to my coverage on that one!

 

So, the important question of it all: when will I hit Level 20 with all six Arcane Symbols? According to my current calculation, it should be done before the end of 2019. I wonder how many Maplers worldwide will reach that whopping 1320 Arcane Force... At least I know I will be one of them.

 

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

[YT] Eighth 100.000 viewed video!

Hi guys! Not too long ago, our Pokémon Battle Revolution - All Masters Battles video has reached 100.000 views! This makes for our eighth video to reach 100k, with this video in particular reaching it in three-and-a-half years.

I'm not sure when another video will hit 100.000, but it won't be any time soon unless on of our videos suddenly changes in growth drastically. Anyway, we're happy to see that this particular video has hit 100k!

Did you know that six of our thirteen Single-Part-Videos have reached this milestone? This includes our most recent ones we've released this year, and one SPV that we removed a couple of years ago.

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

[EMS] Ark - 5th Job's fourth wave!

It is finally here! Wait a minute.

Am I not extremely late with this blogpost, given the Ark update was released late June? Yeah, I definitely am. However, even if the Black update will be here in about a month... there is one skill from the Ark update that I refuse to ignore.

The Ark update introduced only a single 5th Job skill that many players won't even get their hands on, because it is unlocked after Level 235. And well, I've only hit Level 235 last week, so it was impossible for me to write a proper blogpost about it back when the Ark update came out.

The majority of Maple's community do not consider the Ark update to have a legit 5th Job skill wave, but I will have to disagree on this one. Today's blogpost will mainly about that one skill that people either don't know it exists or refuse to acknowledge it despite the game clearly considers it a full 5th Job skill: Spider in Mirror.

But before we dive into that web of information, there are also some other interesting 5th Job-related things to write about that came with the Ark update that I simply cannot avoid because they are also of importance.

[EMS] Level 235!

Ding! After almost four months of daily grinding, I've churned through five (!) levels. I'll take that break now.

While 3% a day isn't much of a time consuming task, I could tell that my mind slowly started to demand a break after three levels already. Fortunately I'm good at keeping a daily routine consistent, so the end result was obvious.

Probably the most difficult part of daily grinding is that at certain days I don't want to stop after I hit the daily target, and at other days I barely want to grind at all. The moment I press on the breaks, it's kinda difficult to get back on track. But at least there's been plenty of convenient events to prevent the grind from becoming boring, and I have a good dose of discipline to get back to work.

Anyway, 235 means unlocking the Esfera continent - which means I have my final Arcane Symbol unlocked! The Black update is coming next month, so hopefully I can get to start with Esfera dailies soon enough.

Also, having unlocked the Esfera symbol also means that I've unlocked the Spider in Mirror skill! Which means I'll start writing about the fourth 5th Job skill wave soon. Look forward to that!

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

[Lego] So, I just got this Sealed Box of #10134...

This has been a set that I've wanted to get my hands on when it came out, back in 2004. This year I've went through the effort of saving up enough to afford a sealed box and this one just arrived a couple of hours ago!

With the release of the new UCS Y-Wing (#75181) this year, the value of the old one has dropped by a significant amount. Not that it would've stopped me from getting #10134 this year, but it definitely has saved me something. Y'know, I can spend that in other LEGO® stuff. Such as my Constructor and Hailfire Droid projects.

Speaking of the new Y-Wing...

A funny and awesome opportunity that happened by coincidence. Before the new Y-Wing came out in stores about a half year ago, I came up with the crazy idea of building both Y-Wings simultaneously... So I kept my copy of the new Y-Wing sealed until I'll start building both at the same time.

Interestingly enough: both Y-Wing models are built in a similar fashion, so it's possible to build them side by side. Quite literally.

Did you know that despite both sets are Y-Wing models, they depict different Y-Wing types from the same squadron? For some reason, almost nobody talks about that and thus people seem to be mistakenly comparing two different Y-Wing models with each other. The old UCS Y-Wing set is said to be too long. On the contrary, it's actually accurate.

I'm going to make space in my room now to start building.

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

[EMS] 11 years of Rayque!

Today's the 30th of September, which means another year has passed by. Eleven years of playing daily with close to twenty thousand hours of playtime... Yet there is still no end to my journey - and it will not be any time soon.

I'll see you guys again next post!

[EMS] 1000 Arcane Force!

Hi guys! Yesterday I reached a thousand Arcane Force! I've been occupied with getting things off my "to do" list in the past four days, hence why I forgot to write this one. 320 Arcane Force left to unlock...

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

[Other] Well... shit 2.0

 

My weekend is officially over. My room is all back in business, so I can play on my consoles again. The game has arrived just in time, I guess.

Wait a minute, this actually sounds familiar. This is going to be another one of those recurring blogposts, now isn't it?

Here's the obligatory showoff. Time to catch up on the DLC content which has been released in the past nine months, which should be worth at least another one hundred hours. I should probably start playing the game instead of writing a blogpost...

[EMS] Third Level 20 Arcane Symbol GET!

Hi guys! Today my Arcane Symbol for the Arcana region has hit Level 20! This means I'm already halfway done with maxing out my symbols...

It took me a bit longer than it normally should to get my Arcana symbol maxed out.

At first I couldn't get maxed out daily scores with Spirit Savior, resulting in just a few symbols a day for a couple of weeks and slowly crawling up that high score to a decent-but-still-not-amazing number. But after doing Spirit Savior for several months, I managed to figure out how Spirit Savior works (i.e. how the respawn locations for Rock Spirits are programmed, how the Toxic Spirit's movement behavior can be manipulated) and get consistent 10.000 scores for each run, even if I required three to five hits to free each Rock Spirit. Of course nowadays it's easy for me to hit a score of 15.000 each run while only requiring two hits for each Rock Spirit, but that still results in the same amount of symbols because of the rewards-based-on-scores limit.

So for now I can take a break with Spirit Savior until they release the maximum level of 25. I'm actually curious to how Nexon will approach this, given the "max Level 15 to 20" change hasn't been received all too well and the process of maxing out the Lacheln/Arcana symbols is often disliked by the community because it's slow, punishing when making mistakes and tough to manage maximum daily rewards. It doesn't stop me from doing those dailies anyways, but I could understand why people dislike it. It's a shame that I haven't been able to make good use of the ticket or pitty systems for Spirit Savior, but at least the system will be there to help out new or returning players.

I should unlock my Esfera symbol next month after I hit Level 235. Expect my Lacheln symbol to be maxed out next Spring, my Morass symbol next Summer and my Esfera symbol before the end of 2019.

Anyway, I should reach a thousand Arcane Force in a few days (expect a small blogpost to celebrate by then).

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

[EMS] Level 234!

Ding! I took the opportunity today to grind out 20% because my room is currently being worked on until the end of this week, and thus I couldn't do more than messing around on my PC since everything else is unavailable to me. It took me about four hours for that 20%, but at least I'm getting close to Level 235! The Bug Brawl event certainly gives a lot of additional EXP...

I've grinded out a total of 40% in the past four days, so you can imagine I feel a bit tired. Time to take it easy for 235 and start with 3% a day again. I should hit that level somewhere next month. Even if the Black update is planned to arrive in (late?) November, there's still plenty of time and space left.

That's it for today! I'll probably see you guys again tomorrow!

[EMS] Ryude's Sword - Still a relevant option for Hero, if you ask me.

Sup guys! Today's blogpost is that "special column" I've mentioned I was going to write about. In this (hopefully informative) post we're going to take a look at a sword that was a popular weapon for only a moment - Ryude's Sword!

Ryude's Sword, without upgrades.

Ryude's Sword had an interesting life so far. When it came out, a vocal majority went nuts for it - it was deemed a top tier sword for a very long time, and it was used in many major builds. It even was unaffordable to many players and it has remained a tough-to-find weapon. Then, a fair balancing adjustment happened to this weapon when it became too popular... Suddenly nobody talked about it any longer, and people moved on with their lives.

MapleStory has a respectable list of special(ized) equipment that allow for certain gimmick builds. The majority of this list involves equipment that has a specific stat modified to distinct itself from the norm, or it has a special effect or skill applied to it. These things have been around since almost the beginning of the game, and even to this day, new ones are released almost each year.

Gimmick builds are usually not a popular choice among the majority of the community (although there are exceptions every now and then), and they often require players to have advanced knowledge and experience in order to pull this off. That, or at least an insane budget in order to afford said items or to even get them running in the first place.

Although, Ryude's Sword has fortunately been a rather easy-to-implement-sword in most cases. This is due to its special effect it has to offer. One that is still pretty much unique to Ryude, and can be outright broken in the right hands.

"So, what does Ryude's Sword do?"
It's simple. According to the item's description, it has a 70% chance to increase the number of attacks by 1 when using a skill. "Not applicable to all skills".

Imagine your main attack has 10 lines. Using this skill with Ryude's Sword gives you a 70% chance to get another line on top of that. That makes 11.

Now, of course there is an actual ruling behind the "Not applicable to all skills" part. It almost takes the same general ruling as the "increases the amount of targets on multi-target skills by 1" from Monster Life and Inner Ability.

Imagine your main attack with 10 lines affects three targets. This means it falls under Ryude's ruling so it gets that 70% chance to get another line. But imagine you also have another attack, which only affects a single target. This attack will not be affected by Ryude. This is an essential difference that is very important - it's the reason why Ryude's Sword is broken for a class like Hero or Kaiser, but loses a lot of appeal for a class like Paladin.

Anyway, as you probably can tell from the blogpost's title (or, if you're a frequent reader of my blog), we're only going to take a look at the skill tree of Hero. And we're also going in-depth for some of these skills, in order to explain why they are affected by Ryude, or why they aren't.

[EMS] Level 233! Ribgol upgrade!

Ding! I had a bunch of EXP coupons and attack potions that would expire in a couple of days, so I took the opportunity to grind out that remaining 13% I had left. Two levels left until I have access to Esfera!

Speaking of Esfera and the Ark update: I think it's better to postpone the Ark-related 5th Job blogpost until I hit Level 235 after all. While I'm still here in Norway with my toaster laptop, it's difficult to gather all the GIFs and spend time/focus on writing something that is of the quality I desire.

I could write it in September when I'm back, but I would be Level 234 by then. So I might as well delay the blogpost even further until I have the actual 4th wave 5th Job skill on that next level, right?

I'll probably remove that planned additional column I mentioned two months ago and make it its own blogpost, given it will be "another one of those lengthy articles". Maybe I could write that column in September...

Hopefully this wouldn't disappoint too many of you - but at least you should be able to have the full blogpost somewhere in October. Probably better than having to wait until the Black update somewhere in November or December this year. Anyway, on to the next subject...


Ribgol related blogposts are rare, even for this blog - so it always feels like something major happened when I can write "Ribgol" in the header.

With the current Maple Missions event coming to an end in less than two weeks, I somehow managed to finish all of them in time. This particular event wasn't so difficult to complete - it was just rather tough to complete the weekly Julieta missions because the boss has a hair trigger for disconnecting everyone and making it impossible to finish all of the daily missions if you run out of entrees. On top of that, all of the other milestones are time consuming, which doesn't help at all if you're running a full time job during your Summer holiday.

One of the final rewards are two Additional Potential Cubes, which is one of the first times in Maple's history to give them out as a reward for events. So, from just a pair of two cubes I wouldn't expect anything decent or something - but it wouldn't be *that* difficult to roll something more useful than +5 All Stats, +3 Jump and 50 MP. I would've been satisfied with anything that would increase my range, even if it's just something very minor like additional flat attack or more flat STR...

But well, damn. The first Additional Potential Cube I've ever gotten just straight up did a rank up on my Ribgol to Epic! And on top of that: it immediately came with 6% STR. I don't expect to work on my Additional Potential any time soon, so leaving my Ribgol on 6% STR for the time being is pretty fantastic. I still don't have many % STR lines, so.

With the Lab server closing near the end of this month, I might as well just show off my Ribgol from Lab. Getting a Ribgol in Lab was easier said than done... Equipment drops at an incredibly high rate in this server; but that is only true for non-World Tour locations. At least I did get lucky with the Potential ranks, although only the Additional Potential is really useful.

I originally intended to scroll all of the 255 slots with 15% Spell Trace scrolls, but given I don't have more than a few hours to play each day, this would be impossible to finish... Context: it takes a few hours to scroll a handful of slots. Maybe next time?

At least I'm satisfied to have a Ribgol that is just impossible to have in normal servers, and I've been able to hit the visual cap for my damage range (read: I might have had a bit too much fun with the Lab server). I know how the damage range display works, just let me have my moment with seeing a lot of 9's in a row, okay?

I can't wait to get my Lab rewards later this month! Those Union blocks are more than welcome.

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

[EMS] Lab server - Level 200!

Sup guys! Yesterday I managed to hit Level 200 on the Lab server, but since it was getting late at that point, I decided to sleep first and publish this blogpost today instead.

The Lab server event has been pretty fun - even though it was a huge time sink on the upgrade department. About three-quarters of my time spend in Lab was Spell Tracing equipment. At least smart play and planning ahead is greatly rewarded here... It's just a shame that the reward requirements have been changed in EMS and that it's unlikely for anyone to even meet those for receiving the best rewards. Maybe next time.

Anyway, in order to get that Level 200 on Lab done, I had to drop that daily 3% grind on Rayque since last week. I will most likely have to keep this short break from grinding until I'll be back home next month (given my stay in Norway has been extended to also include the entirety of August), given the amount of sleep I've had since July has been pretty low - so being able to sleep one additional hour each day is probably something I really need.

But for what it's worth: I'm already pretty close to Level 233, and with that EXP from daily bosses/Arcane River quests I should hit it by the end of the month!

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

[EMS] Level 232!

Still on schedule! Fortunately, the increase of Star Force later this week should help me to soften out the grind.

Getting to Level 233~235 will more or less be the same with that daily 3% grind, but at least we're getting some more fancy upgrades with the remainder of the Ark update. Definitely looking forward for the LAB server, and hopefully I can get my share of rewards from that event. The rewards just seem too good to miss out on.

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

[YT] 10 years of Rayque3!

Woops, I totally forgot that our tenth anniversary of our Youtube channel was last Saturday. I've been occupied with a lot of things lately given I'm currently in Norway again for this month. My baaaad. Either way: better late than never!

On the 7th of July, ten years ago; Luxatus Patella and I have started our journey on Youtube with the Rayque3 channel as a hobby. We like the games we play, and we also like to make videos about them. Even just as a hobbyist channel, we've collected a total of almost twelve million views and over eleven thousand subscribers by now!

Maybe I should consider writing another "Behind the scenes" blogpost sooner or later, about that one particular video that I released over a month ago. It would definitely make for a good celebrational and informative blogpost about "the original single-part-video that took almost nine freaking years, an entire walkthrough of the same game and a lot of memes before it got published"...

Anyway, thanks for all the support guys! More content is always on its way. To eleven years and beyond!

[EMS] Maple Union: 6000 Total Levels! Thirteenth Legendary Potential GET! Fourth Level 15 Arcane Symbol GET!

Ah yes, it's July - my favorite month of the year for many reasons. What better way to start this month with not one, not two... but three major milestones!

Let's start with the first major milestone that I haven't talked much about on my blog: the Union system (or, as probably most of you guys know it by; "Legion"). For a long time, MapleStory had a Character Card and Part-Time Job system, which rewarded you for owning and leveling different characters on the same account. Throughout those years, the system has had a couple of changes - which ultimately led the system to have a full redesign in order to make it the Union system as we know it by today.

The Union system by itself is one of those "the more you use it, the more rewarding it'll become". But what is so significant about a total number of 6000 levels? The main grid where you can assign your characters to starts out small and for each couple of milestones, more grid space will be available to you. Having a Total Level of 6000 unlocks the full grid, and can be considered the absolute minimum for any hardcore Mapler. Only the forty highest characters on your account will contribute towards this number - while an average Level of 150 for each character might not seem much, but you still need to put *some* effort behind it in order to reach it.

Either way, I currently only have every relevant character except for Ark past Level 140 now. I won't do too many Level 200 characters just yet, because I still need to prepare some characters and find some time to grind them out. Plus, I prefer to take the patient route and make use of those EXP Potions that the Union system supplies in order to get characters to Level 180.

Maybe it's just me, but I absolutely hate to do the 140~180 segment. I'd rather do one hour a level at Level 190~200 than one hour in that 140~180 region. Perhaps I should consider participating in a Burning Event for a Buccaneer for some additional STR first...

With it being the first of the next month, the items in the Reward Shop have been restocked. Because there was plenty of Reward Point coupons given in the past few weeks, I could purchase all restocked cubes immediately and throw it on the next equip in line - my Amaterasu's Belt is now Legendary!

I currently only have four equipment left to rank up to Legendary. The next in line will be my Amaterasu's Epaulet.
Of course, once I'm done with ranking up, I can finally start cubing for some more %-STR...

Last but not least - my Arcane Symbol for Lacheln has reached Level 15!

Being my slowest progressing Arcane Symbol of all, I have been stuck with a daily Floor 30 score for a while now. Every Arcane Symbol Selector that I've managed to get my hands on has been routed into this one. The final five levels for my Lacheln Symbol will take about another year... But it's not something I cannot manage. I mean, I've already got it to Level 15, despite the slow progressing speed. Just have to be patient, and make use of all the Selectors to shorten the required time!

At least my Lacheln Symbol will not be the final one to hit Level 20, because that title will belong to my Arcane Symbol for Esfera. But that's only because the Esfera dailies come with the Black update, which is still a fair amount of months away from now.

Oh, by the way, for the keen-eyed readers among us...

Yes, I have currently swapped out my Sengoku Shoudan Pin for a Gold Richie's Handkerchief. From the Nebulite removal to reintroduce Additional Options ("AO" for short) that happened last week, I was generously compensated with a lot of Eternal Flames ("E-Flames" for short). Hey, can't say that I didn't expect AO's to return; as I've been saying in several different blogposts since 2016 about that there's no real reason to be surprised or not to have seen this coming.

So, as recurring readers probably might know by now - I have excellent experience and decent knowledge regarding Additional Options, and I decided to store all of my E-Flames for future use because I was aware about how many hundreds, if not thousands of these I will need in order to roll something more than decent on my equipment. And if you (still) refuse to believe me on that: just check out the amount of salt on Reddit and the official EMS forums, or ask around in-game to those unfortunate souls to have spent so much for so little.

However, I thought it might not be such a bad idea to use some of my E-Flame supply to give me something worth my while, as I cannot work on my Additional Options often due to the lack of self-supplying without purchasing Flames in Auction House. But because I run so many "foreign" equipment, the only item that I use that can have proper Additional Options without exploding a budget of billions of mesos is my Chaos Pink Bean Mark - which as you might know, already has some pretty fantastic stats since May 2016.

So that would essentially mean I would have no items left to use those E-Flames on, unless I want to take a leap of faith and trust the "Rayque Number Generator" that could either go somewhere between "meh" and "okay" - which is in my opinion, such a waste of what is otherwise an invaluable supply of an item worth one billion mesos (!) each.

In order to not leave it to chance (as it should be common sense by now that leaving things to chance in my life is a bad idea), the best middle ground I could come up with was to park my Sengoku Shoudan Pin for the time being.

The reason for this "parking" is because while Sengoku Shoudan Pin is by far one of the best Pocket items in the game in terms of possible Additional Options, it is also by far one of the most difficult and unreasonable Pocket items to roll anything more than "meh" on it. And the only way to get something good on it, is unfortunately way out of my budget for probably a few years. Fortunately, I still had one Gold Richie's Handkerchief in storage because a friend was generous to give me one for free as a gift for helping him out about a year ago - an item that is guaranteed to roll hard-hitting Additional Options with E-Flames. Which uhm, it certainly did in my case after applying a few of them.

The Additional Options on my Handkerchief is pretty damn sufficient for what I need to run, so you can imagine that using this until I can afford something better might not be such a bad idea. Either way, that was probably the best way for me to make use of my E-Flame supply, and I still have about thirty of them left. I'm not sure about where or when I would use those E-Flames and for what, but it's best to keep these stored until I ever come across a time and place where I need them the most. I'd rather not sell (these) invaluable supplies for mesos - if I really wanted a shitload of mesos, I can throw four thousand Cube Fragments and seven thousand Superior Item Crystals in Auction House tonight (which I obviously won't).

Phew, what a way to start July! Probably should hit Level 232 later this month, by the way. That's it for today guys - I'll see you again next post! (be sure to check out the new Single-Part-Video on our Youtube channel!)

[EMS] Level 231!

Ding! I'm back at trying to do a daily grind all the way to Level 235. What changed? A mixture of 5th Job adjustments that came with the Ark update, a slight increase in %-STR, Arcane Force  and a bunch of expiring 2x EXP coupons. Seeing what they did with the Black update in KMST got me motivated enough to give it a(nother) shot as well.

Going from 229 to 230 was plausible due to aiming for 6% each day - with how the EXP curve essentially doubles each ten levels, I knew it was a bit unreasonable to expect 6% a day from that point forward. However, given that the Black update will most likely take its damn time until the end of 2018 to hit EMS, I thought it might be reasonable to aim for one level a month - with 3% each day (dailies + additional grind) I should have at least two months worth of buffer time to ensure results.

Knowing myself too well though, I did manage to keep up the 3% a day - but the closer I get to 100%, the more I would manually grind out myself (16% in the past two days). Plus, the closer I get to Level 235 - the more Arcane Force and less level penalty I'll have, and possibly some more Star Force along the way. That would contribute for a faster 3% gain each day. Either way; the daily 3% works.

Anyway, I'll probably start writing about the 5th Job related stuff from the Ark update in a few weeks. Because I'm not going to hit Level 235 until late 2018, I'll have to park my coverage on the "Spider in Mirror" skill until my coverage of the fifth skill wave that comes with the Black update. I'll also put a reminder in said blogpost. Fortunately, I have plenty of things to write about the adjustments that has happened to 5th Job, and I also have an interesting new column to write about as well, so there should still be a good mass of stuff to read!

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

[EMS] And now for something totally different...

I've had to wait eight long months for this to arrive in my hands. I'm not a huge geek in collecting merchandise aside from having a respectful amount of Pokémon/Kirby plushies and some artbooks from Xenoblade, but this thing has been on my "to get" list ever since I saw this being released four years ago.

MapleStory never has a lot of merchandise to begin with, because setting up merchandise is surprisingly expensive and often involves third party companies to help you out. It's a community demand that has been asked about (many times) before, but it hasn't helped the supply that much. A lot of merchandise that people own are actually from MapleStory 2, and for the little amount of merchandise from the original MapleStory that exists; it has always been in limited supplies, hard to come by and had a short shelf life.

Even if I'm more of a plushy guy in terms of merchandise, I can't say I have had any interest in owning a Mushroom, Pig, Yeti or Slime plushy. In fact, there has only been one item in MapleStory's merchandise lifespan where I feel it has a meaning and purpose in my life: this artbook. The "Bon Voyage" artbook is one of the very few artbooks that Nexon has published, and it is the only one that interests me.

Nexon published this artbook for the 10th anniversary of the game, and it contains a lot of concept arts from those first ten years of the game - including scrapped designs, which is something that is very difficult to come by given Nexon has always had a concealment regarding MapleStory's development. In the EMS community, I've been dubbed "the maple nerd" by many, because of my knowledge regarding this game, and my never ending hunger to know more about it.

As a passionate hobbyist, owning a physical copy of a game is part of that gaming experience that makes me love playing them. Not just only the CD or cartridge... it has to include at least the original box, a manual and even the box inserts that holds the items within. Owning a digital copy has never felt like I truly own or play the real thing. With digital copies, I don't need to open a box and take the CD or cartridge and insert it in a console, and I don't have a physical representation of said game that is tangible. I don't get the same experience, or the same feeling.

MapleStory has always been just a download on your Windows PC, and it never had a physical CD release like some other MMORPG's did. It has always been on all of my PCs ever since I've start playing, but it never could be found in my physical gaming collection, which still made it rather distant and felt disconnected, if that makes any sense. Meeting over thirty Maplers in real life like I've been doing for the past ten years is a whole different feeling and meaning: it fulfills the role of me as a human, as a friend who cares about them - but not as a gaming enthusiast, or a passionate hobbyist.

So you can imagine, as a person that has played MapleStory for almost eleven years on a daily basis through a digital platform - everything that is not social related to the game itself remains digital, and one could argue it's almost a criminal offence not to have something physical to represent the game outside of my computer screen. Something that is tangible, that I can hold in my hands, and don't need a power source with a digital screen to give it my attention.

With this book now on my shelf next to where I play the game, it now feels like it has filled in a gap that I've had for a long time.

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

[EMS] Second Level 20 Arcane Symbol GET!

Alright! My Arcane Symbol for Road of Vanishing is Level 20! This puts me back on having both my Road of Vanishing and Chew Chew Island's maxed out again, given Nexon raised the maximum level of 15 to 20 not too long ago.

Level 25 Arcane Symbols will probably happen eventually, but for now I can say once more: two down, four left to go...

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

[EMS] Twelfth Legendary Potential GET!

Sup guys! Today I managed to rank up my Amaterasu's Cape Potential to Legendary! This marks my twelfth Legendary item that I use on my character.

Fortunately, my cape immediately started out with 9% All Stats when it ranked up. I used to keep it between 6~9% STR when it was Unique, so I pretty much have some gain here given I still run high DEX on my Hero.

You know what's even more ironic? I ran out of Chaos Cubic Blades two days ago, which means that this rank up happened with yet another Meister Cube found from Commerci...

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

[EMS] Eleventh Legendary Potential GET!

Hi guys! Yesterday I managed to cube my Emblem to Legendary! But wait, didn't I have a Legendary Emblem already? As mentioned in my "Tenth Legendary Potential GET" blogpost, I would explain the situation. Soooo...

To keep the explanation straightforward: I do consider weapon (Primary, Secondary, Emblem) potentials to be on a higher priority than most equipment. And thus, I aimed to get my Emblem to Legendary as soon as possible. However, I did not expect to gain a better Emblem in terms of base stats back then - shortly after I rolled that Gold Maple Leaf to Legendary, we had our first Maple Leaf High event in a long while. That event introduced the (at the time) new Honor Roll Emblem.

So pretty much I had some poor timing with a luck-based upgrade, with an unexpected opportunity that has arisen on a coincidental "inconvenient" timing with said upgrade, if you will.

So of course, I preferred to use the Honor Roll Emblem over the Gold Maple Leaf because of the stats and because I have an undeniable bias towards non-KMS stuff. But by doing so, I would have to slow down my progress on Legendary cubing - which I personally am fine with.

Anyway, this Legendary Honor Roll Emblem will not in use any time soon. Why so? Because my current Honor Roll Emblem with 15% Total Damage and 6%-STR will be pretty tough to beat with a Legendary emblem, and it's probably more important to roll some more % STR on my equipment - which requires those other Unique equipment to be ranked to Legendary first if I want to have a sufficient boost.

Yes, I actually do have more than one Honor Roll Emblem. The Maple Leaf High event is recurring enough to me to stack more coins than I can spend. One of the many perks of never quitting and being a pure main...

You know what's ironic? Even if I have been crafting over one hundred Meister cubes in the past week and my Chaos Cubic Blade supply is running out, none of these have ranked up any of my equipment yet. It's a Meister cube I found from Commerci that did the job. Sometimes I have the feeling that even crafting Meister cubes does not speed up my progress at all, and that I'm stuck with some sort of time wall that one might consider "fate". Oh well.

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

[EMS] Ani Pendant - Finished scrolling!

Sup guys! Today I've finished scrolling my Ani Pendant, which is the second last equipment on my Hero that I still had upgrade slots left on. It is interestingly the only upgradeable equipment of mine to have ever gotten to Legendary Potential before I had used any scrolls on it.

With the currently ongoing Star Squad 13 events, I've managed to find a couple of ICOG scrolls through the Petite Planet minigame, which ultimately was enough to finish all of my Ani Pendant's slots.

I'm really happy to see that 25 attack on my Ani Pendant, as it has been a while since I've managed to enhance an equipment's attack by more than twice the amount of slots it has. The "two attack for each slot" average is kinda the minimum goal that makes me feel satisfied with the result, as that should be more than reasonable to reach. As you probably know if you're a frequent reader; I didn't reach that average with my Mark of Naricain, Amaterasu's Helm, Shoes and Overall. Fortunately I did reach that average with all of my other equipment, though.

The final equipment left to upgrade in this first batch is my Rex's Perfect Red Earrings! It has eight slots, so it might take a while before I will finish this one.

I have also been working on cubing some of my equipment since I've reached Meister Blacksmithing a couple of days ago! I haven't had much success and I'm already past 70 cubing attempts... but I can tell you that I've managed to increase my Sengoku Hakase Badge's %-STR from 7% to 23%! Let's hope I can manage some more improvements than just that one...

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

[EMS] Level 230!

Well then, Level 229 has been a fairly short lived one now hasn't it? Anyway, that daily grind of a few extra % each day really helped speeding to Level 230. It's really an one off thing, as I don't intend to do the same "just to get to Level 235 quickly" - it's tempting to do the same daily effort again, though.

With the EXP curve changes each 10 levels, don't expect my journey to Level 235 to be a fast one. Under normal circumstances I do get more than one-and-a-half billion EXP each day worth of dailies, but given I need almost 250b EXP for the next level...

I eventually cannot avoid grinding forever anyway, and perhaps doing some occasional grind might not hurt too much. Daily grind would probably be too much for me to keep up for such a long stretch, though. But perhaps before I start something like that, getting some more %-STR might not be such a bad idea.

I'm running out of slots to ICOG in less than a year, and the next step would be working on my Potential. I mean, I'm only at about 115%-STR in an environment that expects you to have *way* more than that. With a lot of (Legendary) items only having 15%-STR or less, it shouldn't be too difficult to raise that number on a couple of my equipment...

I mean, pfffffffft. I've been preparing and sitting on thousands of Superior Item Crystals, Cube Fragments and hundreds of Rock of Times and Chaos Cubic Blades for years. I believe "easy" is an understatement here. But I can say that I've been considering to start crafting cubes for a couple of days now, given that daily Arcana grind to 230.

Even if I still gain Arcane Force, that alone won't do the job for defeating enemies in Arcana or Morass swiftly - as the ones in Morass still seem to require almost four Raging Blows (or three with Sobs) before they die. I don't even instant kill enemies in Chew Chew Island with my main attack, for what that's worth. Eh well, it could've been worse.

It's funny that my Arcane Force contributes for more than half of my range, but it's arguably an unfavorable situation despite the amusement. I have the damage to defeat Hell Gollux, Chaos Root Abyss and Princess No on my own nowadays, and yet I still lack the damage for actual reasonable grinding...

Either way: another symbol added to my inventory - one left to obtain.

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