[EMS] 19 years of Rayque!

Today is day 6941, the 30th of September - which means I've been playing EMS daily for 19 years now!

Starting this year, EMS is now longer under the management of Nexon US than it was under Nexon Europe. Last year I've talked at length about the state of EMS and hoped that things would be better. Unfortunately, we're in a race to the bottom and next week's going to add another dumpster fire to the long list of Go West flops. It will burn... very brightly. To be honest, it's not even worthy of attention and it's funnier to just give future readers no context about any of this.

That said, we make do with what we have. For all of the abysmal exclusive content we got instead of major updates and events, as we'll discuss in next month's blogpost: there's still some good to be found. Not good for Nexon that is, as explained in my acquisition of a Breath of Divinity, all of their thoughtless choices have resulted in several baffling oversights that drastically changes the way we progress our characters. For a while I felt kinda stuck with the lack of the Additional Potential revamp, but with Mystic Frontier and the Star Force changes I now have a clear path forward.

It's this ample supply of busywork and tinkering that keeps me coming back every day. Having been able to achieve a Breath of Divinity has been rejuvenating for my motivation, since that challenge also solved other problems including the need for large quantities of cubes and mesos to buy resources. Potential and 6th Job are now solved over time, and that allows me to save up mesos to work towards six Union Champions. While I certainly can try to increase my Star Force to 22, the game doesn't provide me enough incentives to choose that over building more powerful mules.

The plan moving forward is to copy my entire build on Rayque and to run the same on my Union Champions. I'm not too concerned about whether if that's possible. I have already achieved this once, and each subsequent character will progress faster with how the game is designed. I'm in no rush to achieve this ASAP; it defeats the point of having fun. But make no mistake: I would absolutely not recommend to return to the game any time soon. Now is not a good time.

Cheers everyone, I'll see you guys again when we'll discuss how stupid Mystic Frontier really is. Now leave me alone.

[EMS] Level 294!

Ding! I figured that with today's level up I'd write a separate blogpost for this, since it otherwise would've had to be part of another or be November's blogpost. At that point I might already be (close to) Level 295, because the time between Levels 293 and 294 was only forty-four days. Either way, events end tonight so the next update is around the corner.

To my surprise, I got really lucky with the Sunday discounts on Star Force, so I only have my cape left to upgrade. For now I'd like to save up just to have mesos on hand whenever I want to purchase something from the Auction House. 

I'm expecting to want Sol Erda Fragments in bulk with Blitz Shield VI releasing soon, as I've been leveling skills on my Wild Hunter. It has its Ascent at Level 29 already, but with Extreme Lotus taking 24 minutes and costing boss potions, I'd like to focus on Blitz Shield VI to shorten these runs and cut the need for finite resources. While Blitz Shield VI and Rage Explosion are the cheapest within their respective skill groups, they both cost 4000 fragments each and there's less than four months between them. They'll probably start releasing a new 6th Job skill each season after Nexon has done most of the class balancing that's scheduled for later this month. We'll see how that goes. Now leave me alone.