[EMS] Yeti x Pink Bean Complete!

In honor of the old bean, the self-aware namesake continues to lives on.

Sup guys! With the Yeti x Pink Bean event closing soon, I thought it would be interesting to write a blogpost about it. Released over a year ago (!) in KMS, this event was long overdue for EMS. It was about damn time.

Having experienced the original Pink Bean event in late 2015, I've expressed my fair share of criticism on how that event went - mainly about the grind being inconsistent and overstaying its welcome. I tried out the second round of Pink Bean (which only added a handful of new skills) and gave up between Level 165 and 180. After that, I didn't feel like trying out the event again, simply because there was no reason to go through that slog a second time. That has changed with the Yeti x Pink Bean event however, as there is an incentive to grind out the Yeti class to Level 200 for the Yeti Incredi title, which you can then exchange together with a Pink Holy Beanity for the new Yeti x Pink Bean title.

But as the original Pink Bean event makes for a terrible point of reference, I expected the new Yeti class to be the same. It took me weeks to get my Pink Bean to Level 200, so I was prepared for another slog. However, against my expectations, I was in for a surprise: the event was actually a lot of fun. All of the unnecessary fat is trimmed away and many of the improvements were made on the good ol' grind to Level 200.

For starters, Yeti and Pink Bean can now only be created on a separate world, and that was for the best. Previous Pink Bean events were plagued by the maximum character limit; you would have to destroy a character to make space, which then after the event you had to grind the lost character all over again since it often was part of your Union progress. Additionally, the main servers are no longer swarmed by the large number of Pink Beans (and Yeti's) in every popular grinding spot, which used to be a legitimate problem that was made worse by the slow leveling speed (which then affects map and Burning Field availability, which in turn perpetuated the poor leveling speed). Having all of these characters grind on a separate server also reduces the load on the main server, which further proves why these supplementary servers (including Burning World) are important to have.

To say that the grinding speed has been greatly improved, would be an understatement. Instead of having to spend several weeks like with the original event, I was able to grind my Yeti to Level 200 in less than a day. There are several factors that contributes to this difference, including but not limited to:

• Compared to the original Pink Bean, Yeti has more than double the amount of skills. Skill unlocks are more frequent and better spread out, and Yeti skills are far more consistent than the original Pink Bean. I felt that there was always a new skill around the corner, so the experience never got stale.
• Compared to the original Pink Bean, Yeti's gameplay loop is far more suited for grinding. Lots of AoE skills that can be used often, with a good number of homing skills to help out defeating enemies that are out of reach. Roll for a cooldown skip Inner Ability, and amusingly nuke the map each time Violin Solo resets.
• The leveling curve from 1 to 200 has been reduced a couple of times since the original Pink Bean. Keep in mind that the original Pink Bean came out before 5th Job, Union, Wild/Fury Totem, Kerning Tower, Omega Sector's reopening, Twilight Perion being available at Level 180, Guild Skills giving stats, many staple Skill Links, modern Hyper Stats such as Bonus EXP and Monster Damage, and the EMS migration.
• The Yeti x Pink Bean world runs on a higher EXP rate, topped with Yeti having additional skills with built-in EXP modifiers to further boost it to higher rates. Even without access to guilds, Cash Shop and Union, the grinding speed of a vanilla Yeti outperforms a modern class with over 5x EXP and Wild Totem in the same map, with far less funding available on the character and with half the Burning Field bonus applied.
• The Yeti x Pink Bean world has a special merchant that supplies all kinds of items to fund your Yeti from scratch, similar to what they did with the LAB server. In addition, the "Step Up!" event also provides free equipment and many useful items. Keep in mind that the original event had much less of these shortcuts.

Having finished the Yeti class early, I still had plenty of weeks left on the event. So, out of curiosity I decided to try out the latest Pink Bean, just to see how much difference those 6 years makes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Pink Bean is now (almost) on par with Yeti, and it didn't take much effort to casually grind Pink Bean to Level 200 either.

• As with Yeti, Pink Bean has a bunch of new skills. Many key skills are now unlocked 20 to 40 levels earlier, several older skills have their cooldowns greatly reduced (one even has it entirely removed) and some of the inconsistencies (read: wrath of RNGesus) that harmed the grinding experience are gone.
• Gameplay loop is drastically different. Pink Bean now has two Flash Jumps (the original Flash Jump is replaced with a new one but the old one can still be used through a command input). Instead of relying completely on Pink Powerhouse to defeat enemies, Pink Powerhouse is now mainly used to trigger various homing skills to clear the map instead. The staggering amount of homing skills that are activated makes the grind at least four times faster now, not to mention it greatly improves the grinding experience. Imagine that with the original Pink Bean, you had to party up with six others in Veracent's Dim Light until 160 by holding down shift for many boring hours because Pink Powerhouse's lackluster hitbox was all you had.
• Missed opportunities: the skill Twilight of Gods is unlocked way too late at Level 195 (only for five levels, which is about less than an hour worth of grind), and Pink Bean's cooldown cycles (mainly Pink Shadow) are definitely not suited for the Monster Punch King challenge, making these rankings on Pink Bean mostly decided towards whoever got the luckiest by rolling high cooldown skip rates on their Inner Ability.
• While not new for this event in particular, being able to change the color of your Pink Bean is a great addition. In fact, most of the skills are also adjusted to that same color, and that's just fantastic. Forget soloing Kalos and the grind to Level 300; FashionStory is the end goal what all true warriors strive for.

And last but certainly not least, the Pink Bean's Secret Diary has been reworked into "Step Up!", which takes out all of the poorly designed milestones and narrows it down to the essentials. No more requiring players to do insurmountable tasks such as gaining traits on a character that has no access to Professions, be forced to complete certain Theme Dungeons, do silly nonsense or to complete the We Are Forever Warriors challenge. Additional rewards are available (including a very generous amount of 50.000 Maple Points for little to no effort) and thankfully they are optional and not part of "Step Up!". And as icing on the cake, you no longer have to wait until after the event to claim any of your rewards. You'd be surprised to hear how many Maplers couldn't be bothered to read any of the patch notes back then, and ultimately went complaining on the forums because they ended up empty-handed. Silly Maplers. Heh.

Imagine spending twice the amount of grinding effort... for not even twice the amount of stats.
A weird way of doing things, but it'll do. Is it really too much to ask for double the Boss Damage?

All in all, kudos to Nexon. I had fun with this event, and it's definitely the right way moving forward. Now, if they would further improve some of the skill unlocks and cooldowns for Pink Bean, allow players to receive Yeti x Pink Bean without having to lose your two titles and give Yeti the same recolor option as Pink Bean, then next event would be even better than it already is. For now, I'll have to wait until the next round so that I can get myself a new Yeti Incredi.

Here's a hot take: Yeti isn't just a Pirate, it literally is a pre-Big Bang Buccaneer reskin - but then if the class didn't suck and was released in 2021. Yeti Rage is awfully similar to Energy Charge, and Yeti Smash is awfully similar to Energy Blast. Yeti captures the original Buccaneer's concept and likeness better than the upcoming Destiny revamp. Ironic. 

Don't forget that tomorrow is the 15th anniversary of EMS!

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