Ding! Time for this (and last) month's news roundup.
Today I've hit Level 281, which took less than two months. Even though the required EXP has doubled, I still manage to get more than 1% every day. The weekly Cache of Greed, monthly Monster Park entry tickets and the occasional event EXP adds up. But with the New Age events having ended, so did the temporary Hunting Zone perks, so I'm not expecting levels to go as fast until we have the Dreamer update, which introduces High Mountain and Sol Janus.
I've also managed to complete Hyper Burning last month, with two weeks to spare. Man, Hyper Burning has become effortless with the changes made during Ignition and New Age. During the original Hyper Burning, I had to grind daily chunks for two months straight to reach the Level 250 goal. The final twenty levels required at least an hour each day, for a consistent 10%. Ignition's introduction to daily EXP through Arcane River dailies reduced that grind to about half an hour. But it was New Age that changed everything: I hit Level 260 by only doing Arcane Symbol dailies.
Doing Arcane Symbol dailies on a Hyper Burning character should only take less than 15 minutes a day. As I tend to be a cheapskate with these types of events, I prefer to run absolute minimal cost, and I also don't want to compromise any resource that could've gone to my main instead. So nothing fancy like Frenzy, Firestarter, MVP, EXP Accumulation Potion, or even gear that's expensive. No Monster Park runs or event EXP either. Just the basics that anyone can do. Free Sengoku gear and boss accessories sourced from daily bosses. Running 6% Potential with 12 Star Force is more than enough to one shot all the way to Level 260. Don't even need to care about Additional Options. Don't even need the recommended Arcane Force, so I won't pay for what I don't need. If the class can use Elemental Staff, I'll use it - just because I can. Total investment cost? Less than 500m. That's literally one hour on Thursday (weekly bosses).
So basically, nobody in their right mind should be able to fail Hyper Burning from now on. You don't even have to really one shot monsters, to be honest. It's all about clearing the daily quests. It's anything goes, so you could get carried for all I care and it would still work. Nodestones? You get thousands for free. Hyper Rock? No need, it's been irrelevant since Maple Guide. Nexon's been aiming to make Level 260 much more accessible by fundamentally improving the game on several fronts, including the long-standing issues with the levelling curve. They've definitely been successful. Stop wasting mesos on expensive gear and hours on grinding. Embrace the "ghetto build" and be diligent on dailies.
Speaking of "ghetto build", New Age ended with the usual Double Miracle Time. I was lucky enough to rank up three items to Legendary Additional Potential! Granted, the Potential update should arrive this Summer (which will make things a lot easier), but any progress is still progress, and the cubes were free anyway. But until Dreamer, we're in an awkward position where spending mesos for upgrades isn't worth it - so I'll just save up mesos for now. Personally, I can't wait for the Potential update. It's been long overdue, and I've been eagerly waiting for this update for well over a decade now. It's precisely what the game needed the most, and it's also one I'll greatly benefit from. Time for progress.
Last but not least, I've obtained every Urus medal! In 2021, I've organized daily Urus runs for about a year, which was when I got most of the medal challenges done. However, the "Master of Assists" medal challenge is one that's been difficult to obtain. With Urus being removed with the Dreamer update, I decided to speedrun this challenge solo. For which nearly 6000 days worth of experience and knowledge accumulated into a madman piloting two computers at once. The optimization iceberg went deep enough for me to use the oldest raid tricks in the book. Ancient knowledge from the bygone era of when we could enter bosses and party quests with up to thirty people through the defunct expedition system, which ultimately evolved into the 100-player Hekaton and 18-player Urus raids. Surprisingly fitting.
Unfortunately, I have to settle with only just these medals. You see, there are still a lot of rewards from the Urus shop I have yet to obtain. In particular, the most difficult to obtain items require the "Urus Leg Accessory" materials. Urus is currently the only boss that has breakable appendages. Hit these appendages enough, and like a piñata it'll provide materials when they're destroyed. I would highly recommend to read this, if you want to know how these materials are distributed. Obtaining leg materials has been a bane for many years, and it's been rightfully criticized for its difficultly.
I've been trying to force the leg appendages to pop solo, but not even controlling two Bowmasters is enough. You can obtain shoulder and horn materials with only one Bowmaster, no problem. It's just that the required hit count for legs to be fully destroyed is absurd. Bowmaster sports the highest hit count in the game by far, and I'm frustrated that piloting two like a madman isn't even enough. I yet again have to impose on others, if I want that last chair or any of the outfits. From my understanding, I would need at least one really good Bowmaster, or two decent ones. If only I had four arms.
Nope. I've tried with four Bowmasters, it wasn't close to fully breaking the leg appendages. It would need even more...
And believe me when I say that finding the right people for something like this, is easier said than done. I can hardly find people committed enough to appear daily at reset-o'clock for Monster Park Extreme, let alone people that are willing to sacrifice their Urus runs and are able to join daily for several weeks. If there's anything in this game that kills fun, it's being the only committed person in the room when multiplayer commitment is required for the fun rewards. Yet another reason to be upset at seeing the EMS community spread thin. We're short on good men. Thanks, Rebooters. While it would be nice to have these rewards, it's not worth the effort to find others. Unless you want to help me out.
EDIT: I've figured it out! The grind for leg materials starts now! You can now read my findings here.
Anyway, I'm close to wrapping up the images on the Destiny blogpost. I had some unforeseen problems with Blogger's HTML code, and that required several weeks to fix. It's now a matter of programming some tables and tossing in some GIFs and images. I should be done with that within three weeks. As for proofreading: I honestly have no idea how long that'll take. Keep in mind that I have to proofread 142 pages with 61500 words. My declining health hasn't really been helping with productivity, let alone that my eyesight has been deteriorating for months. Some days I've been requiring over 12 hours of sleep, to still end up feeling physically exhausted. Either way, I'll do as much whenever I can.
That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!