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| TEN MILLION CONTRIBUTION! |
Today's the first day in EMS where it's possible to have 10.000.000 contribution, since it's been 2000 days since the migration happened in 2016. Having a perfect contribution score is easier said than done, because it is mandatory to smuggle at least one guild member with you on boss runs in order to cap 5000 contribution on a daily basis.
The procedure of capping on guild contribution is unfortunately prone to human error, where the occasional disconnect or incorrect boss difficulty can end the streak if it is not handled with care. It used to be much worse, and thankfully there are changes coming soon to EMS that alleviates most of these issues.
Now, I did say that you have to smuggle at least one guild member with you. Most people that I know of who do guild contribution in EMS rely on other guild members, as is the intended way. Screw that. I hate to impose on others for these types of things and it is unreasonable to expect that it will remain a reliable way of getting the job done. Thus, the easiest way to pull this off is to use a second account where you smuggle a guild mule for the party bonus.
Nothing new, as the "2 PC meta" has always been a problem with this game. Pre-Big Bang with the Welcome Back mule for Premium Mini Dungeons, the occasional Guild/Crimsonwood Keep/Amoria Party Quest, you name it. This is the reason why I've always been travelling and working with multiple computers since I've started EMS. Once you understand the value being able to rely on yourself for small tasks like these, it's difficult to live without. It's so much easier to rely on self-sufficiency than to impose on others. That and it's a pain to ask others for help. Too lazy for that.
You might ask: am I the only one with a perfect contribution score in EMS? Unfortunately, yes - and with good reason. Everyone who has any experience with the game knows that Maple suffers from reliability issues on multiple levels. Despite that the game always had its daily content since Pre-Big Bang, the service is plagued with unoptimized code, stability/connectivity issues and the always-present looming threat of the unscheduled emergency maintenances. You don't always have 24 hours to do everything, and once in a blue moon are the log-in servers dead for over half a day.
Imagine that even if those things rarely happen, they do happen a couple of times in the course of a thousand of days. And when it does... shit hits the fan. What better example to give than the one day that single-handedly ended the competition between EMS players in having the highest guild contribution score: the infamous "15-minute-day".
Its name is self-explanatory: 15 minutes after reset o'clock, the game went on an emergency maintenance for over 24 hours. To make matters worse: prior to reset o'clock, there was another maintenance that required the game to be patched afterwards. Meaning that if you didn't pay attention to the server status, patch the game immediately post-maintenance and get on those dailies, you were out of luck. And this is me writing about the events of that 15-minute-day in hindsight, because in the heat of the moment, nobody was prepared for it, and nobody was expecting it. But since contribution is one of the first things that I do when I log onto Maple, I was fortunate enough to have it done within that 15 minute time period. I can't say the same for others; everyone was busy exploiting a silly event instead.
Days such as those are a constant reminder that it's best to do your dailies while you still can, unless you are willing to risk being caught off-guard. But ultimately that's a matter of how much one cares for it. Dare I say that it's healthier to not pursuit these things, but personally: I don't care. While it is a silly thing in a silly game that has no right to be that important - it is meaningful to me. Let's see how high this number climbs. To greater heights!
