[EMS] Level 250!

The twelfth of April

Birthday of Maple Europe

Close to poetic

[EMS] Soul Collector - Mu Gong 6/7!

Well damn, of all EMS blogposts that I didn't expect to write about any time soon, this certainly is one of them.

To call this a small milestone would be an understatement. Long-time readers know that I've been trying to complete the Soul Collection for the Mu Gong Soul for about six years now, shortly after I got my hands on my first Mu Gong Soul back in 2014.

Mu Gong Soul is an anomaly among all souls in MapleStory, and a strange one at that. What this soul offers in terms of stats differs greatly between regional versions. It differs that much that in one version it's considered outright broken, while here in EMS, it's hardly ever discussed as a valid option. I'm currently one of the few in EMS who uses one. It is the only Soul Collection in the game that is considered literally impossible. At least it is for EMS.

Soul Shards usually drop from their respective bosses, even to a point where Nexon goes through the effort of making old shards such as Spirit of Rock still (readily) available in present day, even well after closing the old Kerning Square. If you want to get your hands on any soul from the Soul Collection, you can just grind out the bosses for shards.

But that's only possible for any boss in the game other than Mu Gong.

Mu Gong has ceased dropping Mu Gong shards in 2015, after Ranked Dojo was introduced as a weekly system. Although at the time that was no problem: we had Effie Boxes and the annual Murgoth event to get our hands on Mu Gong Souls (as thoroughly explained here). Plus, we had the prospering thought that the upcoming Soul Extractor would be an excellent all-year round alternative in case we ran out of sources.

But in that band-aid solution lies a fundamental problem. What if they retired Effie Boxes and the annual Murgoth events? What if even the Soul Extractor is a dead end?

Obviously, all of the above happened. Effie Boxes were retired with the migration of 2016, our last Murgoth event was in 2017, and it would take hundreds of billion mesos to craft even a single Mu Gong Soul through the Soul Extractor - let alone the one prefix you need, or the fact that there's not enough supplies in the EMS economy to begin with.

So, how in Maple World did I manage to get my sixth Mu Gong Soul? It's simple: pure coincidence.

This "Flashy Mu Gong Soul" is one that came from those Effie Boxes long ago. At the time, I've been collecting as many Mu Gong Souls as I could find and this just happened to be one of those that unfortunately flew under the radar. So, that means that against all odds:

• This specific soul was found from a short-lived Cash Shop box four years ago...
• Possibly was sold at least once in the Free Market where I failed to buy it before anyone else did...
• The character that held this soul in its inventory was not among the 2,7 million (!) purged characters during the migration period...
• Somehow ended up being listed in the Auction House a few days ago...
• And not only was I able to get in touch with the actual seller of an otherwise anonymous in-game listing, the seller was patient enough as I had to scrape an ungodly amount of mesos together in order to buy this thing as soon as possible, before someone else yoinked it and wasted it for good.

No, I won't discuss the exact number I had to pay for this thing. But I could've bought hundreds of Meister Cubes instead, that much I'm willing to spill. Was it worth the price? Probably not. However, it cannot be denied that this was certainly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I would most certainly regret if I failed to get my hands on this one.

Just for the record: including this instance, I have only come across three "Effie Box Mu Gong Souls" since the migration. One was sold in Auction House last year, and another one was bought by a friend of mine for his own sword. But this was the only one among the three that I required for the collection, and being able to buy it was certainly an unlikely event: a perfect example of a "right time, right place" moment that by all means should not have happened.

Seeing as any of my journeys to complete whatever I feel like always takes a ridiculous amount of years, I suppose one could say that it might be just "another one of those" or "same shit, different day". At any rate, the HP prefix ("Hearty Mu Gong") is the last one I need… and I have absolutely no idea how many additional years that will take.