[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!