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!)
