[EMS] Level 273! Cernium Symbol MAX!

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!

[EMS] Level 272! Super Yeti x Pink Bean Medal GET!

Ding! Time for this month's news roundup. As I've hit Level 272 early this month, I'm not too far away from Level 273. That should happen next week, alongside finally maxing out my Cernium Symbol!

I've also managed to obtain the Super Yeti x Pink Bean Medal, which is a reward for reaching Level 220 on either a Yeti or Pink Bean character. Last year I've mentioned that I would give the next Yeti event another swing to claim a second Yeti Incredi title, as I've had to exchange my previous one for the Yeti x Pink Bean title. Which of course, I did.

As Level 200 was as effortless as last time, I was curious to see how challenging Level 220 would be. To my surprise, those twenty levels were arguably easier than the first two-hundred. You see, the event is incredibly generous when it comes to post-Level 200 support. You'll receive more than enough 3x EXP coupons, a free Arcane weapon, a billion mesos and hundred Arcane Symbols to start out. Even better, after Level 210 you'll receive 5x (!) EXP coupons, free Arcane gear and even more mesos/symbols. This kept the EXP rates consistent all the way to Level 220.

To make the grind even easier than it already was, the current Rock Spirit growth event gives everyone enough EXP to go from 212 to Level 220. As Yeti and Pink Beans are located on a separate world, it would not sacrifice the rewards on your main account. I planned to take the daily approach, where I would kill 3000 monsters each day for twenty days to max out on the Rock Spirit EXP coupons and hit 220. However, I reached 220 in considerably less time.

That was how effortless Level 220 was for the Yeti class. I ended up with everything in spades: lots of unused items, lots of unused EXP coupons and with minimum effort, one-shotting everything with Yeti Smarts skills was pretty much guaranteed. If you are aiming for Level 200, you might as well give 220 a shot... Free 250 Growth pot if you manage.

Anyway, I'm close to wrapping up on the first draft for the Destiny blogpost. I'm expecting to have it done towards the end of May, where I'll then be cleaning up the bloat and streamlining the text. Creating all the GIFs required will take another several weeks, so I'm currently expecting a June or July release. Whether if that's possible will depend on how many breaks I'll need, or how many distractions I'll have. Because remember: blogging is just a hobby.

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

[EMS] Level 271!

Ding! It's been a busy month, so I haven't been able to work on the Destiny blogpost as much as I'd like. In fact, I was hoping to have this month's blogpost to be either a Bionicle-related blogpost or something entirely different, but my Bionicle parcel has been stuck at customs for five weeks and I felt too tired to write about the latter.

Had to travel several thousand kilometers this month, and because of a renovation I haven't been able to sleep well. Being tired and having a declining health doesn't give the best productivity. Progress on anything lately has been slow.

But I did manage to wrap up the first three chapters of 5th Job though, which is about half of the work. I doubt I'll be able to finish the blogpost before June, as there's just too much stuff left. The current draft is nearing 40.000 words.

I'll see what I can do next month. I do believe it's possible to at least wrap up the 5th Job chapters in the next coming weeks. Also, it won't take too long until I reach Level 272. But that it's for today - I'll see you guys again next post!

[EMS] Level 269! Level 270!

Ding! Time for this month's news roundup. With the Ignition event wrapping up, I took the remaining Maximum Growth Potions to speed through these two levels. That means I'm now Level 270, which hits another important milestone, as it unlocks the next Grandis symbol from Hotel Arcs. Next milestone: Level 275! Should be possible this Fall.

To my pleasant surprise, I ended up liking the Hotel Arcs and Kalos storyline a lot. When they were revealed back in early 2021 and 2022 respectively, I kinda shrugged them off and felt indifferent to it. But after seeing these chapters in-game myself and going in spoiler-free with no expectations, and a weird instance of perfect timing where the original Korean voice acting happened to be included when I did these, I found myself having enjoyed it. Kudos, Nexon.

Unfortunately I can't say the same about Neo Tokyo 2, as I really did not enjoy the story direction post-Core Blaze. That was the turning point for me. I'm not going to write an entire blogpost about it because that's currently too much to write about, and I'd rather wait for the full release of NT2 before I jump to conclusions. But man, I find myself asking where it went wrong. The original Neo Tokyo is perhaps one of the most important updates in Maple's history, as it laid the groundwork for almost everything that is still relevant today. That cannot be understated. It was Nexon's magnum opus, and they've always treated it with an adequate amount of care. Not when they developed NT2, apparently.

When every major World Tour and mainline content adheres to the foundations that Neo Tokyo laid, it says a lot about the consistency, attention to detail and the quality of writing. The production quality of recent World Tour content has only gone up, with that jaw-dropping Phantom Forest makeover, the gravitas of Asura War and its ability to give even the flattest of characters some meaningful development and growth, or Showa Town's revamp being actually useful when it comes to maintaining Wings of Fate. It says a lot about the barren state of NT2 when it fails to adhere to the mere basics of its predecessor, when all other content made it look so effortless. NT2 has even less content than when Asura War was just an event, and it has less content than Neo Tokyo fifteen years ago. It then also destroys all the good writing and characters the original had. But I digress, I'll save this dissection for another time.

Anyway, an update on that Destiny blogpost. After spending weeks on that damned Power Stance chapter, I've just wrapped up the initial 4th Job draft. There are still three chapters left: Hyper Skills, 5th Job and my closing thoughts. That's all I have to say about it, for now. Hopefully I'll receive my big overseas Bonkles parcel next month...

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

[EMS] Level 267! Level 268! Hyper Burning: Level 250!

Ding! I've decided to consolidate this month's three blogposts into one, in order to prevent overloading the homepage. Level 267 happened the day after I've published my year summary, which would've been too soon for another post. 

But as is somewhat of an unintended tradition on my blog, here's the annual "start the year with a level up in January".
And not just one, but two! The daily EXP from Monster Park Extreme and (Burning) Cernium are fantastic, topped with seven (!) Maximum Growth Potions spread out over this season's event schedule. I haven't claimed all of those, so I expect to hit 269 next month. I can't wait to unlock Hotel Arcs at 270, for that next symbol and even more daily EXP.

Now, I've also managed to complete the Hyper Burning event on my I/L. In 2019, I've participated in the Breakthrough event to grind an I/L to 220 from scratch for Maple Points. After that, I threw most of the leftover resources (over a thousand Arcane Symbol selectors, Growth Potions and hundreds of Master Cubes) on this character for over two years. As a result, my I/L started at Level 231, decked out and was more-than-qualified for a serious grinding session.
This was the sole reason I was willing to try out the Hyper Burning event, as otherwise I wouldn't even have bothered. 

With Hyper Burning lasting over two months, I took the slow-but-steady approach of grinding 10% every day during the event. My I/L was more than capable of one-shotting anything at any given level with Chain Lightning, with either two or three ticking mobs with Ice Age. At Level 231, getting 10% was manageable within half an hour. This continued until I hit closer to 240, where it started to become 45 minutes. Before I knew it, the last stretch was more than an hour every day, for over a month. This was without any spawn modification, but was done with as many non-exhaustive EXP boosters that I had. With the current trade restrictions, I wasn't allowed to buy bonus 50% EXP coupons off Auction House, but I probably wouldn't have bought them before Level 246, anyway. Either way, I got my I/L to 250.

That said, I'm not planning to fully participate in the next Hyper Burning event, that comes with the Savior update. The next character would be my Level 220 Bishop, but that one doesn't have the same level of preparation as my I/L, and neither will it have one in time. You see, the next Hyper Burning is definitely not going to be as easy as this one, due to the lack of the Clover Guild event (20 EXP Nodestones a month should not be underestimated), and next time you can no longer claim any milestone rewards below your starting level. Even with the softening of the EXP curve post-Savior, it's just not going to be as easy to hit 250 as it was this time (let's not also forget Savior's complete butchering of the Elemental Staves classes). I'll definitely aim for the low-hanging fruit, but I'm not quite sure just yet whether if I'll leave my Bishop at 230 or 240. I guess that by then, I'll just start without much of a thought and see where I'll end up with.

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