Might start in Cass....

I heard that Bowmasters are awesome XD. So I'll be starting one very soon in Cassiopeia with a hidden identity :P Though, I will go on Aquila frequently to train my Soul Master so I can make a UE. If I'm lucky I'll be level 110 tonight (impossible >_>). I REALLY want to make a UE very very much that I tremble at the thought of it XD. First day of UE target : level 75 :P Though I'm slacking off big time now....Lol.

No complete pictures though. The pictures are supposed to be normal, but thanks to the Screenshot bug reappearing again after what I thought was a successful fix, I am unable to post complete photos.

Ani Raid pq ^ XD It's fun. So yeah the photos are cut and greyed out ._. So normal screenshots will have to be taken like this.

YEAH! Mousehunt XD

So yeah, I'll be starting a Bowmaster in Cassiopeia for my love for archery xD, though sometimes I miss the target :P. Imma start next week or the week after that, which is after Hari Raya. Oh yeah and my Maple still doesn't work so it might take a while for me to get online. Please forgive me my friends :P

Review on Ultimate Explorer

So the big patch came around yesterday and as I had told my friends..... I wouldn't be around for it. Though most of my friends had a problem trying to get in yesterday due to the server being so unstable after the patch XD. Even so, a few maplers had the chance to actually enter Maple and go on in either making a UE (Ultimate Explorer), going to Von Leon Castle, wondering how to work the new Guild System or just exploring around Chryse, a new town above Orbis XD

Now regarding UE.... I would say that it's a good job to make if you have the time....

However, being a UE has its own respective drawbacks. As people have worried, or are excited about, UEs are rather overpowered. And at this point, people would be worried about getting Ks-ed a lot in the field. Since Ultimate Explorers inherit a "parent" skill that is pretty much a mobbing skill, they would gain the upperhand in Ks-ing innocent people. People these days -.-
The Awakening of Cygnus Knights


The legion of the Knights are bestowed upon a new power by the Empress after realizing that the evil forces are back.The Knights of Cygnus will be granted new skills as well as a new alliance!

►New powers for Knights of Cygnus

Upon reaching level 120, Knights of Cygnus will be able to obtain 2 new skills from Queen Cygnus.

Empress’s Shout: Permanently increases Max HP and Max MP significantly.
Empress’s Prayer: Increases Attack and Magic Attack for 2 hours and allows you to take on monsters of higher level.

1. Travel to Erev and speak with Queen Cygnus.
2. Complete the quest “Empress’s Grace” given by the Queen Cygnus.

►Empress’s Blessing

All the characters in the same account will received a passive buff based on the level of your Knights of Cygnus.

For every 5 levels your Knights of Cygnus character gains, all the characters within the same account will have their Attack, Magic Attack, Accuracy, and Avoidability +1.

I do not protest any of the benefits that the Ultimate Explorer gains along the way, but Nexon should really consider the attitudes of some characters these days that result in public unrest. By public I mean only in Maple :P. People willing to take IN GAME matters into REAL LIFE situations is kinda..... childish don't you think? I mean, Maple is just a game, whether or not if you want to spend your money on a game, then so be it. But must matters within a game be taken to the streets?

Don't worry and be happy like this Tomato here :3

My review on Ultimate Explorer will be too long to contain within one post and will probably end up taking up two posts. And that won't include the other new content in Maple, like Chryse.

Note:

Empress’s Blessing does not stack with Blessing of the Fairy. The character will receive buff from whichever skill is the highest level.

►Bonus EXP

Whenever a Cygnus Knight leveled up, a bonus of 10% EXP is given.

Eg.
Character A (level 10) has gained a level and becomes level 11. A 10% EXP of level 11 will be given to Character A.

A New Alliance


Due to the alliance forged between Knights of Cygnus and Explorers, the Explorers are able to gain benefits from the Empress’ power.

►Empress’s Might

This is a skill available to all Explorer at level 70. In order to receive the quest to obtain Empress’s Might, you must have a level 120 Knights of Cygnus.


Empress’s Might: A passive skill that allows your character to equip item up to 10 levels of your current level.


How to receive it? 1. A quest will appear as a light bulb on the character’s head at level 70.
2. Complete the quest given by your 1st job instructor.
3. Travel to Erev and speak with the Queen Cygnus to obtain the skill. 


Note:
The character must still meet the stats requirements of the item to equip it.

►Knight of Cygnus Skills

The main advantage of the alliance is the ability to tap on the power of the Cygnus knights. They are now able to learn the attacking skills that the Knights of Cygnus wields!


Warriors - Mihile’s Soul Driver
Magicians - Oz’s Flame Gear
Bowmen - Irena’s Wind Piercing
Thieves - Eckhart’s Vampire
Pirates - Hawkeye’s Shark Wave

1. Character level must be level 70 and have completed 3rd job advancement.
2. Character must have already obtained the skill Empress’ Might.
3. Travel to Erev and speak with the instructor that represents your class.
4. Complete the quest given by the instructor to gain the skills.


Note:
The skills can be raise after achieving every 10 levels and completing the quest.

As I said, the benefits that an Ultimate Explorer gains will be much much more than probably all the other Job classes combined together. Except for the jobs that offered things like the Lirin Ring, Evan Glasses and Resistance Ring XD. I'm not mentioning the Dual Blade Mask because it's untradable even if you use Scissors of Karma.

Now regarding the Empress' Might, I would like to refer to it as Free Seal :P It's like the Supremacy Seal inside Cash Shop :P. This would be good in equip-ing equipments 10 levels above you, which means a UE Paladin can use a Reverse Ballanche at level 110 and level it up quickly @.@ . Can't wait for Chaos though, The Santuary animation looks awesome.

Gif image taken from Spadow's Blog :P This motivates me to make a UE Paladin :P Just for the skill animation because it looks awesome XD. Seriously imagine driving down the highway and that thing appears behind you XD.

The Ultimate Explorer


In order to stop the Black Mage, Cygnus Knights have entrusted all of their strengths and hope to a new generation of Explorer. An Ultimate Explorer is the successor of the Knights of Cygnus, they inherit the powers and duty of their predecessor.

►How to create an Ultimate Explorer?

Knights of Cygnus character who have achieved level 120 and have completed the “Empress’s Grace” quest are able to create an Ultimate Explorer now!

1. Achieved level 120 and complete the “Empress’s Grace” quest.
2. Speak with Queen Cygnus in Erev.
3. Choose your desire In-game Name, class, Face, and Hair.


Note:
1. Your account MUST have an empty slot.
2. One account can only create an Ultimate Explorer ONCE.
3. You will NOT be able to create another Ultimate Explorer again if you deleted the first Ultimate Explorer.

►Starting off as an Ultimate Explorer

- Ultimate Explorer character will start with level 50, and has the skills of both Explorer and Knights of Cygnus.
- Ultimate Explorer will inherit the predecessor’s gender and skin color.
- They will share the same cash shop wardrobe with regular Explorer class.

►Ultimate Power awaits the new Explorer

Ultimate Explorer surpasses their predecessor and is stronger! They are been bestow upon exclusive Knights of Cygnus skills by the Queen Cygnus. Depending on the class of your Ultimate Explorer, you will receive one of the skills below:


Warriors - Mihile’s Soul Driver
Magicians - Oz’s Flame Gear
Bowmen - Irena’s Wind Piercing
Thieves - Eckhart’s Vampire
Pirates - Hawkeye’s Shark Wave



Note:
The skill will automatically level up each time your Ultimate Explorer gains 10 levels. The max level for the skills is 5

Empress’s Might: A passive skill that allows your character to equip item up to 10 levels of your current level.

►Empress’ Equipment

Not only will the Ultimate Explorer received a new power, they will be given a set of Empress’ equipment to aid them in their mission. As soon as Ultimate Explorer is created, they will receive a set of equipment and a successor medal. The set consist of:


Empress’s Fine Set level 60
- Empress’s Fine Hat
- Empress’s Fine Gloves
- Empress’s Fine Shoes
- Empress’s Fine Robe
- Empress’s Fine Weapon (Job specific weapon)


Empress’s Brilliant Set level 80
- Empress’s Brilliant Hat
- Empress’s Brilliant Gloves
- Empress’s Brilliant Shoes
- Empress’s Brilliant Robe
- Empress’s Brilliant Weapon (Job specific weapon)


  


  

►Successor Medal

I find the equipment provided quite satisfying. Although the number of people creating UEs will be high, I doubt many will maintain their characters for long and eventually go back to their original characters and go online their UE when they're bored XD

The next post will be regarding the Von Leon Patch!

Von Leon Patch

So.... The Von Leon Patch was just released yesterday on the 17th of August 2011..... And I wasn't around to witness the epicness of the event..... Doesn't sound like I'm missing much :P Just a new job and a new training spot to train with your friends. Nothing that hasn't happened in the past few years cannot compare to this situation, so why do I feel bummed....?? .....

Moving on F3. The Von Leon Patch has restricted character creation, which I remember posting somewhere at the start of the month explaining what the reasons would be for such a thing happening, and the benefits and downhill falls it will bring to Maplers :P. Though Evan Hackers make up the majority of hackers in Maple, new jobs are rising up to the challenge with their hacks and bots. Such jobs would include Soul Masters, Arch Mages and, believe it or not, Buccaneers, though I've only encountered one Buccaneer Hacker somewhere in Time Temple a while ago..... So this Character Creation Blockage, which will be on for a while, is said to bring back the jobs with even GREATER power. -.-" That's not bad news, but at the same time, it ain't good either.

New Master Monsters?

[Master Monster] New Master Monsters!

• The Master Monsters are new boss monsters.
• Each has new quests associated with it.
• The quests to fight the Snow Witch begin at level 57 with Scadur’s Advice (El Nath)
• The quests to fight the Bamboo Warrior begin at level 100 with Shadow Ghost of the Herb Field (Herb Town)
• The quests to fight Richie begin at level 135 with Attack of the Zombies (El Nath)
• When defeating a Master Monster in a party will receive bonus EXP! 30% extra EXP for each additional party member up to a max of 150% extra EXP for parties of six.



.....As if we haven't encountered, and defeated, such monsters that have appeared while training, slacking or doing whatever the hell we were doing at the time of encounter. Snow Witch can sometimes be defeated just like that, but then again you might need the Hector Tail and put it somewhere so that she'd be weaker.... Makes no sense at all lol. The Bamboo Warrior can be encountered in Zipangu while training on Dreamy Ghosts, all you had to do was hit some bamboo to weaken this guy and then you can just attack him. Richie's a pain..... I haven't found a way to defeat him yet.... But I'll see if I can find a way. However, these "Master Monsters" will be assigned to new places, as stated above, but I'm sure you can still encounter them at their usual places.

4. [System Event] Fairy Pedant Event (Event Period: 17/08/2011 – 31/08/2011)

In celebration of the born of the new alliance between Explorer and Cynus, Queen Cygnus will be rewarding all Maplers by bestowing Fairy Pendants once again before the arrival of Chaos!
Talk to NPC Cassandra to find out more! For characters level 13 and above.

Now this is a BIG difference between the "More than 2 hr: 30% extra EXP" thing before Big Bang. This, being handed out to Maplers, would not be surprising if people ignore it. Some people are willing to ignore this because they probably have godly Horntail Necklaces or Mark of Nerricains.

5. [System Event] Crayon Event – Portrait of a Popular Monster (Event Period: 17/08/2011 – 31/08/2011)

Collect crayon of different color to complete the Rainbow Drawing! Remember, you can collect only one color per day.

Talk to NPC Cassandra to find out more! For characters level 13 and above.

Missed out one day and short of 1 color crayon? Not to worry! Gaga will give you the crayon of color that you want at the end of the event!

List of the Crayon quest is as follows:
• View of the Rainbow
• Gaga’s Indigo Crayon
• Gaga’s Purple Crayon
• Gaga’s Red Crayon
• Gaga’s Orange Crayon
• Gaga’s Yellow Crayon
• Gaga’s Green Crayon
• Gaga’s Crayons

Reward for completing the Rainbow Drawing

+2 weapon attack. The first Overall I've ever seen in the history of Maple to have ever added Weapon attack. Imagine using a Chaos scroll on it and it becomes 7 weapon attack @.@ You can continue Chaos-ing it a further 9 times. And to make it better is that you can enhance it as well, further increasing the weapon attack. However, funding might be a problem in this case :P

6. [System Event] La Tomatina Party Quest and Exchange Event! (Event Period: 17/08/2011 – 14/09/2011)

Giant Tomato on the loose in all towns!

Collect Strange baby tomato dropped by Giant Tomato that will appear in all towns randomly and find NPC Charles to exchange for special tomato related items!

Look for NPC Charles and Ben in Event Map! Complete 2 of Ben’s requests in a party of 3 to be able to activate the special exchange quest by Charles!

Ben’s requests are very tricky~~so stay alert! For characters level 12 and above.

Quest Name
• Ben’s tomato farm 1
• Ben’s tomato farm 2

Such a cute .... er "little" tomato :3. The word that really caught my attention was the "exchange for special tomato related items" sentence. Is it possible to achieve the Tomato Hat only available in Cash Shop? Or other tomato related equipment for example.... a tomato spear? xD Those weapons would be juicey :3 F3. Chances are there's gonna be a hat and a pair of shoes/belt involved.

8. [Gachapon Update] New Gachapon Rewards!

All new Gachapon items are available in ALL Towns.

Hurry down to the nearest Gachapon Machine and try your luck now!

As a chair .... erm... collecter (Jk i have no useful chairs XD) I find the Dunas Jet Chair rather appealing... And the same goes for the rest if I can ever achieve them through Gachapon....

CSS = Money Earner?

Von Leon Cash Shop Update

Dear Maplers,

With the arrival of Lion King Von Leon, we have also updated our Cash Shop with more exciting items!


1. Premium Cash Shop Surprise


For a period from 17th August – 14th September 2011, there’s a surprise waiting for you in your Cash Shop! Purchase and open a Premium Cash Shop Surprise, and you can get a Cash Item completely at random!

These boxes are packed full of stuff, from beauty coupons to store items, Miracle Cube to pets like Bing Monkey, Ruby (Perm Pet), and Mir (Perm Pet) .

What’s more, the Premium surprise includes Vega’s Spell , AP Reset , Aurora Ring and many more!

Plenty more surprises in store for you, but we can’t tell you everything, or it wouldn’t be a surprise… So test your luck with the Cash Shop Surprise today!

I find this event rather fishy =-=" Jkjk. Such events would result in thousands of Maplers desperately trying to get the Permanent Pets, believing that they might have limited stock. The other items available through CSS might not have a plausible time limit either.... Like most of the stuff I got from CSS last year lasted a week, which isn't very good for someone who goes on and off randomly. They should set Cash Shop Equipment expiry dates according to the activeness of the character.

2. Peanut Machine


Peanut Machine is back!

If you like Gachapon, you will like Peanut Machine more!


More exclusive and powerful items like Timeless Weapons, level 20 – 90 Lion series Shoulder Equipments, Gold Source Weapons, Advanced Equip Enhancement Scroll, and Chaos Scroll awaits for you!


For the period of 17th August 2011 to 14th September 2011, Peanut Machine will be available in Cash Shop.

Are you feeling lucky today?
Crack a Peanut and get rare items!
Join in the fun of cracking the Peanut!

I got my first Yeti from this event last year =-="  OH YEAH, that reminds me, this blog reached a 1 year old milestone 4 days ago but I was so distracted by something that I had no idea that this blog's birthday would turn up XD. Next week, If my Maple works, I'll send someone 10k cash :P.

Time moves slowly...

As the days go by in silence, you start to notice that time goes slower. Ever had this feeling? Like you look at your watch its 12.31 and 5 minutes later you look back at it and it says 12.32? Yeah your watch battery is getting weak XD.

Haha what's up humansssss (and aliens on the moon). I heard Maple is going on well, giving you guys reimbursements for the unexpected maintenance that day. However this only affected Aquila, Bootes and Cassiopeia. So they got 1.5x EXP and drop rate event for the inconvenience :D. Unfortunately, but somehow predictably, there was another rollback.......Not surprising. The amount of people from Cass, Bootes and Aquila going online just for the 1.5x EXP event would be enough to crash the servers hundreds of times over. One of the maplers who suffered from this event would be CryZDit, who lost 10% (meh) after the server rollback :P His glove also lost 20% exp lol. His blog link is : http://cryditz.blogspot.com/ and his post about the rollback is http://cryditz.blogspot.com/2011/08/maplestory-post-rollbacks.html Check it out lol.

Moving on, your probably wondering, why I haven't posted anything related to my adventures in Maple (or something like that XD). To those who haven't noticed, my Maple has gone down since the 24th of July following the removal of my antivirus and my Firewall......

I wasn't able to control the amount of crap attacking my computer overtime = =" and by the time I discovered that something was wrong, it was too late. Irreversible damage was done and there was nothing I can do. However, I can reformat the computer to make it factory-new but then a crap load of my files would be lost and I'd have to start from scratch again ==" I doubt my backup drive....

And regarding Ultimate Explorer's release in MapleSEA! Though expected to be released with the Van Leon Patch, I think it won't be released directly after that patch. In my opinion, there will be a server maintenance and then UE will be released XD. Such is the case of the Resistance class XD.

Fluffy Whipped Cream~ +w+

I can relax for one more month before I have to bury myself in books again. But I still have to celebrate Hari Raya XD. The money will be saved for my future......in Maple HAHAHA.

..................I hope my dad doesn't read that X-D. If I ace this test I'll get RM5k lol, which is around S$2.4k or something @.@ Don't scold me if I'm wrong :P I don't follow currency rates now =="

Speaking of which, A lot of MapleSea players are angry over the prices in Korean Maplestory and Global Maplestory cash items being cheap compared to MapleSea cash items. Currency difference and state of economy play a vital role here so please compare our own nation's economy with others first before flaming
= = " kthnxbai

Old picture :P The Special Discount Package had a lot of Cash Equipment and other things being sold at a cheap price, but there might have been a catch...........

I'll post more about Maple or some other unrelated things soon, so stay tuned :P