Ding! Two levels left to unlock the next destination: Odium! Just a few more months...
But more importantly, I've finally maxed out my Cernium Symbol! Kinda like with the Arcane Symbols, I maxed it out the "old way" before they'll drastically reduce the difficulty. With Savior, there's going to be double the symbol rewards for Cernium and Arcs, and in KMS, they've announced that tradeable symbols will drop from monsters in a few weeks.
Honestly, I much prefer Grandis Symbols over Arcane Symbols, and that's mainly because it is what Arcane Symbols used to be: the late-game tutorial. They had to reduce the difficulty of Arcane Symbols in order to accommodate for MapleStory's shift towards Union; that makes sense. But having high symbol requirements in order to proceed with the game is something I find more fun and rewarding. Y'know, having goals to work towards. And a truckload of STR.
Anyway, from all of MapleStory's progression systems that I've experienced over the past 15,5 years, I much prefer the symbol approach above anything else. It's guaranteed progress, divided in digestible chunks of dailies, that also provides a bunch of EXP. If only everything else could be more like this... but then the game would go bankrupt lol.
It'll still take forever until my Hotel Arcs Symbol is done, though. For the time being, I will continue the Cernium dailies for the EXP reward. At Level 273, it's still way too much, for that little effort. That, and I occasionally need event fodder.
That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!