[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!