St. Valentine 2023

Posted on February 17, 2023 by dkun

Hello! To my surprise, I’m able to bring myself to write another blog post this year (lol). Not much has happened this month so this post will probably have less detail compared to my previous posts.

It is currently February and that means only one thing: Valentine’s Day! Well, it’s already passed (lol), but the St. Valentine event is still going on (as of this post, there’s still around two to three days left). I haven’t really participated much in the previous Valentine events so I don’t remember which aspects of this event are new. Having said this, from the news page, it seems that the “Heart Treasure Chest” (ハートの宝箱), Rose Whip (ローズウィップ) and “La Vie En Rose” (ラヴィエアンローズ) are new? A new chest for taming spirits (Treasure Chest of Spirits II (精霊の宝箱・Ⅱ)) has also been added, though I unfortunately don’t have enough funds right now to register one in the Ranch Guild. It would be nice to have a light or water elemental spirit as a pet, though.

Graduating from the Magic Academy and Visiting the Desert of the Empress

Incidentally, I’ve (my character) graduated from the Magic Academy in Gloria! After completing my research project on methodical spellcasting in the art of light magic, titled “Efficient Recursive Magic Circles: A Novel Approach to Spellcasting Inspired by Lost Mythological Praxes”, I was able to complete the final course: “Advanced Spellcasting (For Students Specialising in the Art of Light Magic)”. Following this, I’ve changed my attire from school clothes to something more casual and comfortable to wear for adventuring. Still, I’m always up for learning new things so I applied to Avalon for a part-time course and got accepted (lol).

Backstory for my character aside, the “Magic School Howlin” items have been added back to the A-point shop just this month. Luckily, I still had a lot of A-points from before, and there were campaigns for increased A-point gain and discounted warehouse expansions ongoing for a limited period of time, so I took the opportunity to purchase a few silver coins to get enough A-points to buy a full set and buy some more warehouse space.

From my previous expeditions to Valhalla, I learned that I lacked long-range offensive capabilities so I also bought myself a Valhalla Anchor (ヴァルハラアンカー) to get a decent long-range weapon. It’s a paragon level whip that has a 15% critical hit chance (water element), a 10% chance of inflicting slumber and a longer range compared to other whips. It’s also a silver type weapon, though its attacks are only 50% water-attributed (so it can’t be used directly for mitotic enemies). It’s a pretty useful and fun to use weapon, so I found myself using it at some points when I was farming event materials.

I’ve heard that some strange monsters have appeared in the desert in southern Tornea, so I’ve come to see investigate…

Rose Mimics have long range attack where a bee comes out of hiding to attack anyone that’s some distance away in front of the Rose Mimic.

There were these Rose Mimics in the desert. They’re somewhat tough because they have quite a bit of HP, a lot of their attacks cover decently large areas and they have a paralysing attack that is a huge pain in the butt to deal with. Seriously. Initially, I didn’t use any preventative measures for paralysis, so I ended up being hit by their paralysing move quite often. The duration of paralysis is extremely long, so I ended up dying several times even with 22 HP. Luckily, I have a Triple White Lightning Ring to completely remove the threat of paralysis. There’s another type of Rose Mimic that drifts the stage, which seems like it’s supposed to be the boss. The S2 boss music even plays when you encounter it (lol).

As far as I can tell (I haven’t paid much attention, so I might be mistaken with some item drops🙇), the normal Rose Mimics drop the two chests (Heart Treasure Chest and Chest of Thorns) and an item called Large Rose Thorn (薔薇の大棘) which can be used to synthesise Rose Whips. The Choco Rabbits drop Heart Treasure Chests, Love Cacao (ラブカカオ), Rare Cacao (レアカカオ), Royal Cacao (ロイヤルカカオ), Numbing Raisin Chocolate (しびれるレーズンチョコ) and Rabbit Tail (they probably drop Rabbit Meat as well but I haven’t tested this).

The Rose Mimic boss has a lot more HP and more potent attacks. Its paralysing bee attack, for instance, deals 5 HP worth of damage.

Its attacks also inflict a lot of status effects: sleep, fear and poison (in addition to paralysis).

The boss Rose Mimic allows two collection attempts and, in my opinion, drops more useful items: Large Rose Thorn, Devil Heart, Ruby Fragment and Ruby. During the event, I was able to craft two Rubies from the Ruby Fragments I’ve also obtained and collected one Ruby from this Rose Mimic.

I actually spent most of my time during the event in the desert because I wanted to make La Vie En Rose, which is a holy level whip that is much faster, deals 20% more damage to botanical type enemies and has a 20% chance of inflicting paralysis. This took a lot of time because I didn’t really have the dice accessories to go back and forth the spots where the Rose Mimics are. I had to use all my Silver Dice and Gold Dice supplies as well as my Platinum Dice so I’ve completely exhausted all my dice after farming (I’m gonna have to farm dice again at some point😭). It was especially difficult because I kept getting treasure chests instead of actual event items. I was really confused by this so I kept checking if I had any item that increased the probability of collecting treasure chests. As far as I could tell, the probability of collecting treasure chests seemed to be higher or at least the same as collecting other items for the event enemies (fortunately, this wasn’t the case for the Rose Mimic boss).

At least I was lucky enough to get a few Rubies!

I was a bit bored afterwards, so I actually made the English version of the card (lol), though I couldn’t remember what font was used for the English text:

Visiting the Golden Jungle

As for the Heart Treasure Chest, apart from the Heart Shield ()心の盾, I don’t think there’s any noteworthy item in particular so I haven’t really looked into the items in depth.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really have much time to investigate the Golden Jungle. I did go there a few times, though.

There were Rose Apollos which weren’t too hard to deal with.

There doesn’t seem to be anything new here as far as I remember.

I remembered that there was a hidden collection point here (lol).

Sonya from the Furniture Guild Comes to Haurianna

It’s a bit strange to see Sonya being so close to Fleute (lol). I also happened to capture an interesting expression on Fleute’s face…

From what I’ve heard, it seems like the Furniture Guild NPCs alternate every year. It looks like it’s Sonya’s turn this time. Her quests are essentially about gathering special materials that are only obtainable during Valentine’s for the purpose of making furniture (though at the end, she ends up requesting items to eat for herself lol). I don’t know why, but apparently they’re able to make furniture from cacao seeds lol (so can the player, but they have their synthesis jars for this; I assume crafting items using magic is the norm in the world of Puppet Guardian…). Her quests give some lore tidbits, like the furniture store being situated close to Lost Mythos, though I assume this was also the case with the last events (I don’t know if any of the quests have been repeats from previous events). I was also able to archive her quests (machine translated), which can be found here.

This year, the latter half of her questline gives some aprons and a blue pochette bag as rewards.

The 11th Valentine Cup

I managed to participate in this year’s Valentine Cup! I believe there were some issues with the announced dates this time? As far as I can tell, the announced deadline for registering squires was one day later than the announced date which meant that some people weren’t able to register their squires. I don’t really know much about it because I didn’t really look at Magicaloss news for quite a while.

Anyhow, I managed to enter my squires at the very last minute knowing barely anything about the tournament. I did know beforehand that only male squires were allowed to participate. Luckily for me, all three of my squires were men. I think there were no limits this time in terms of stats and levels which does reflect what I saw on the finals where some squires had 1000+ levels.

Since my last post about the Minotaur Cup, I was actually able to win two matches in the following cup (the Byakko Cup). However, both of those wins weren’t exactly fair. One of them was because one of my squires, Kyoshi, was able to enter a bonus match where, if I remember correctly, his opponent didn’t even have a weapon (his opponent was literally named “Bonus” lol). Thanks to the person who entered that squire, I was able to win my first tournament match! The other win was because one of my squires (I can’t remember who), was up against an opponent who had a significantly lower level.

Following from this, I was also able to win two further matches during this year’s Valentine Cup thanks to one of my squires, Masahige. As usual, I gave my squires some accessories to increase their chances of winning against higher levelled opponents for even just a tiny amount. I gave Masahige my Kenmohororo, Curse Storm Shield, my Zoa Freezing Gloves and one of my critical bracelets (I can’t remember which). Apart from the gloves, I don’t think the items I gave were necessary because he got lucky matchups.

Thanks to the cup, I was able to learn a bit from what sorts of equipment combinations work and what don’t work very well. In the future, I think I’ll try to give my squires some equipment to cast magic with as an experiment. The short range weapons also don’t seem to work very well, especially the claw because Masahige kept using the special attack and missing with the Kenmohororo due to how its hit registration works. I think the scythe type weapons (I include all weapons like rippers with the scythe special attack here) work quite well because of the dash and the large hitbox; they’re certainly better than claws, at least. I was able to get two Sweet Chocolates and two more medals at the end. I hope to be able to save up and get a Mobius Armlet someday.

More Quests, Gnipahellir & the Minotaur Cup

Posted on January 26, 2023 by dkun

Hello again and happy new year! It’s been more than a year since my last post (maybe my blog schedule should just be yearly lol) and since then, I’ve been so busy with a lot of things (real life stuff). I’ve recently had some time for myself, so I’ve actually been able to play PG quite a bit! There’s been quite a lot of updates since I’ve last posted, so I thought why not check those out? Apart from the usual events, I would say that many of the ‘big’ updates are to do with the mythology raid series and some new NPCs related to both the raids and the Splendor Mythos story. I think last time, there were only two raids (Yggdrasil and Thor’s rock island). Three new raid stages have been added since then: Loki’s palace, Freyja’s palace and Valhalla. Two quest NPCs, Freyr (called ??? in game) and Loki, have also been added to the game. They can both be found in the Celestial Castle.

I’ve also been trying to progress through Varvara’s quests. If I remember correctly, I stopped after completing her 57th quest last time, where I had to defeat 5 Frozen Blue Crabs in the 3rd level using Ideyo Miasma. I’ve completed more quests after that, and now I’m on her 68th quest where I need to give her a Crustaceans Helmet. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough Large Compound Eyes of Ant to synthesise it, so I’ve been trying to farm the ants lately. It’s quite rare, though, so it’s taking quite some time.

Incidentally, the quest that gave me the hardest time was the one where she needed a Phoenix Staff to calm the lava lake. I did not have many materials, so I had to buy quite a bit from the market. I actually bought all the Golden Claws. I had a fair amount of Gold Dusts but I was running out, so I didn’t want to use all of these to make Gold. Luckily, the Golden Season event was ongoing at the time, so I was able to farm these easily (I didn’t need a lot, anyway). Getting enough Burning Mane was really difficult, especially because all the ones in the market were really expensive. At first, I was trying to farm it from tower 6, but they were located at the far end of the stage and I didn’t have the dice nor the magic points required to go back and forth. I was only able to land on the spots with the Night Mares very rarely, and even then, the drop rate for the manes is quite low. I only ended up wasting a lot of dice and time doing that. Fortunately, I did remember that the 6th level had Hell Keepers that also dropped these (albeit they’re also rarely dropped). Sure, the deeper levels can be really annoying, but one thing that they can guarantee (usually) is the amount of enemies in each spot. The Hell Keepers were concentrated towards the beginning of the stage so it’s not too bad because I could just warp to Halma’s Cove when I get too far. However, tempting though it was because I wanted to avoid the chameleons, I did try to limit my orb usage because I don’t have many sapphire magic points (I needed them for healing). An upside of being concentrated towards the beginning is that there are spots where these Hell Keepers exist but the Horned Chameleons don’t. Those chameleons are at the top of my list of most annoying enemies in the deeper levels because of their swallow/glutton attack. They’re probably a good reason why I don’t venture into the deeper levels often…

Mythology Series

Loki’s quests revolve around Valhalla.

I’ve only done two of Loki’s quests, but I believe he only has three quests at the moment? The first quest required a Brilliant Silk of Light (光の輝絹), which is a common drop from two of the special raven adds in the first stage of Valhalla (the Beast of Thought and the Beast of Memory). The second quest required a Seed of Genesis (or Seed of Creation)–創生の種–which seems to be an uncommon drop from the ravens as well. Like all the mythology stages, you can warp to Valhalla by crafting the appropriate orb (in this case, the Orb of Genesis (創生のオーブ)).

Once you use the orb, you’ll find yourself standing on the Staircase to Valhalla.

Incidentally, I just bought the items required for the quest. The Brilliant Silk of Light is pretty cheap right now (2S), and as expected, the uncommon Seed of Genesis sold for more. I don’t remember how much I bought it exactly, but I think it was only slightly more expensive (right now, the price seems to be around 11S). I did have a reason for going to Valhalla as mentioned in the captions (which is how I got these images). I tried my luck at opening a bunch of chests to get Vanargand (ヴァナルガンド) which seems to be a water attribute halberd equivalent to Sleipnir (it increases movement speed by 2 as well). As I should have expected, it was a hopeless endeavour because the drop rate is only a measly 1%. I did, however, manage to get two Loki’s Anklets (ロキのアンクレット) which I did want so at least it wasn’t too bad. The anklet is an (untradable) accessory that increases your movement speed by 2, so it’s a really convenient item to have equipped. I can now equip other weapons without having to give up the movement speed granted by Sleipnir! It’s a really handy weapon, but I find that it doesn’t ‘fit’ my puppet’s aesthetics, so to speak. However, now that I’ve gotten a taste of moving really fast, I’m still finding it really difficult to not use Sleipnir because my movement speed from before now feels really slow (Ｔ▽Ｔ). I knew that you can upgrade Loki’s Anklet so I took a look at how many of them are required–and, oh my goodness, it requires 10 Loki’s Anklets! I also got the other 1% item in the chest which was Odin’s ring, Draupnir. I wasn’t really interested in it at all and I was disappointed to find out that it was essentially two slightly stronger triple gem gauntlets (Cold-eyed Gauntlet and Evil-eyed Gauntlet with 75% instead of 60% elemental attributes) and a bit of resistance to light and dark (15% each). The flavour text also mentions that it is a heavy ring, and it wasn’t kidding. Wearing the ring decreases your movement speed by 2, so wearing either Loki’s Anklet or Sleipnir (or both) is a must for me.

By the way, Loki’s quests give special versions of Loki and Freyja’s treasure chests (愚者の宝箱(祝) and 愛欲の宝箱(祝)). I’m not sure how exactly the 祝 would be translated, but I’ve taken to calling them the Treasure Chest of the Fool (Prize) and the Treasure Chest of Passion (Prize). The only way I can make sense of the kanji is to think that it’s perhaps supposed to signify something like a congratulatory item from defeating the bosses (these seem to be rare versions that you can collect from the stage after clearing it). I’m not sure if this also applies to non-plus members, but when I tried opening these chests, I was told by the Thieves’ Guild that I could open them for 100S (a 90% discount). I did this but I of course only got the normal elemental weapons (Volcano Ripper (ボルケイノリッパー) and Scare Feather (スケアフェザー)).

It looks like Loki found out that players have been stealing his anklets (apparently, if the machine translation is to be believed), so he wants his anklet back for his third quest. Unfortunately for him, this cost me a lot of money, so there’s no way I’m giving it back. Well, if he wants it, he needs to buy it from me for 50000S lol. Apparently, this is his (current) final quest and that the reward is Card of the Fool (愚者のカード). I’m not exactly sure what it does, but apparently, it’s like the power up items in the deeper levels of CoT? In any case, it’s definitely not something I’m interested in so I don’t see myself completing his quests any time soon.

As for my experience on Valhalla, the magic circle was really a pain the butt because I don’t have any strong weapon that can reach him. The best thing I have is the Zoa Frost Bow that I got from Varvara. It would barely do any damage because Odin has strong light resistance, and it doesn’t have any innate critical hit property. Using the bow would have been a massive waste of time, especially because this version of Odin doesn’t even drop anything. I did try using magic, though, as shown in the images. Using all of my magic points, and a good chunk of my Kobold Ore and Secret Ore supply, I was able to get his HP down to, well…a bit more than half his HP lol.

??? (Freyr) is located in the courtyard of the Celestial Castle.

The next NPC that I talked to was Freyr. His name in the game actually shows up as ??? and he only mentions who he is in his third quest. In this, he mentions that apparently, Freyja’s not herself lately and that he couldn’t get her to calm down. He thought that by being beaten by a little puppet like me, she’d be able to see reason. He wanted a Divine Bird’s Brown Feather (神鳥の褐色羽) as proof that I did it, and so I gave one to him (I don’t know where it came from, but I trust the Merchant’s Guild). Well, it wasn’t me that beat her up actually, but he seemed to believe me.

After that, he apparently went back to check on her and saw that she hasn’t been ‘disciplined enough’ apparently. Well, of course! I didn’t actually go beat her up lol. Well, some people did at some point, anyway (and multiple times, too, from how many feathers I’ve seen being sold). This time, he wanted a Divine Bird’s White Tuft of Feathers (神鳥の白群羽). I checked the prices at the market, but they were too expensive (I was too broke from opening the treasure chests) so I had to give up on this quest. I did want to try and see how strong Freyja was, but I didn’t have many Faded Stone Fragments (色褪せた石片) left so I had to farm these.

Here are the machine translations for the quests that I did.

Deeper Levels of the Cave of Trials (Second Attempt)

At first, I didn’t really go that deep in CoT because it was troublesome having to defeat the bosses. I even repeatedly went through the 6th level because I didn’t really want to waste my Healing Potions fighting Grani. Furthermore, I also didn’t have some of my best weapons and accessories because I gave them to my squires for the Minotaur Cup in Magicaloss.

Well, I did eventually advance to the 7th level and saw (remembered) that it was better than farming the 6th level because the enemies weren’t as annoying as the Horned Chameleons. From that point onwards, I then tried to go as far as I could go like last year. Last time, I got as far as the 11th level but I accidentally used my gun which spawned a lot of Feast Mists. This time, I was able to get past the 11th level. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn on my clipboard history before taking screenshots, so I don’t have screenshots for the 12th level and 13th level. I also only have a few screenshots of the boss of the 14th level, Hildisvini.

I found out that it was vulnerable to fire attribute attacks. Apparently it’s vulnerable to thunder as well, but I didn’t have my Lightning Bracelet and I didn’t have any thunder attribute weapon.

As I mentioned, the boss in this level actually wasn’t that hard to fight. While I was travelling here, I didn’t notice that there was another monster that could multiply itself. What monster could that be? (Hint: see captions).

During the fight, I wanted to put Hildisvini to sleep so I used a Gold Scale. I didn’t know that the Phantom Hawks could multiply! That spawned a LOT of the adds (exponentially) because Gold Scale deals continuous physical damage. Fortunately, at the time, I had some Blaze Scrolls and I was also playing on the HTML5 client so my frames didn’t drop like it would have in Flash. Well, the latter is also a bad thing at the same time, because the game crashed. The good thing is that it crashed somewhat gracefully, because I was able to resume the game, but with a messed up UI (there were no text elements and the background for my backpack turned to white). I couldn’t log out because it would leave me vulnerable (the screen was full of hawks) so I tried to clear the screen. This was really difficult and I had a few close calls with my HP going down to 1 because I had to scroll down to use the Healing Potions and Blaze Scrolls in my backpack. Fortunately, at some point, all the hawks disappeared, presumably because of some limit. I’d like to say that I learned my lesson by organising my backpack better, but there’s just too many things in it lol.

The 15th level was lava/volcano themed. It had some really cool animations.

The boss in this level is Surtr. He’s actually not very difficult especially with my claw weapon Kenmohororo (けんもほろろ) which I believe is an onomatopoeia?

This level wasn’t bad overall. I quite liked the animated flames because it made the stage feel dynamic. Also, the enemies weren’t annoying at all (i.e., there weren’t any monsters as pesky as Horned Chameleons lol).

Incidentally, in mythology, Gnipahellir is supposed to be where Garm lives, so it kind of looked as though Garm migrated at first lol (more on this later).

The 16th level looked really nice! It’s possibly one of my favourites so far out of all the deeper levels.

Enemy-wise, this stage is not that difficult. The piranhas are slightly annoying, but not to the extent that Horned Chameleons are. Of course, this is only true if you have a war hammer, scrolls or other consumable offensive items that cover a wide area. You might have noticed, but in all the screenshots above, there’s almost always a sealing stone. That’s because the number of spots where magic is sealed increases very quickly as you go further. In fact, I’d even say that almost every spot (or maybe even all of them) seals magic once you reach the 8th level or so.

The boss for this stage is Gullinbursti. He has some really heavy hitting attacks so I’ve had to use a few Poison Fog Scrolls.

The stage was really mushroomy, so I was wondering whether the boss would be a mushroom as well…

As to be expected, the boss is also Norse mythology creature (Gullinkambi).

The next level was very similar to the Baleful Cavern.

This level is probably a contender for the most annoying level of the Cave of Trials along with the 6th level. This is thanks to the Black Treant which not only cover a lot of area for the little space available, but their attacks also have a large hit area. They also hit really hard, dealing 3 HP worth of damage with their attacks so I had to use a lot of Healing Potions. It didn’t help that I didn’t have a lot of my good weapons and my Fire Bracelet. Well, I suppose it’s to be expected because it’s really deep into the Cave of Trials after all. Thinking about it, I think I still prefer this level to the 6th level because there’s no enemy that has the glutton ability lol.

Regarding my earlier remarks about Garm, well, it actually does live in Gnipahellir!

After seeing many enemies with Gnipahellir in their names, I feel like I’ve gained a new piece of lore information! It makes sense that with how the Cave of Trials’ bosses is related to mythology (especially Garm and Managarm), and how the Cave of Trials descends to Helheim, the Cave of Trials’ name is actually Gnipahellir (or Gnipa Cave).

The 19th level has a pretty unique aesthetic like the 16th level.

Noo! I was so close to Helheim… I got stunlocked by the Lindwurms and got swarmed by the Flauroses.

Unfortunately, I was too cocky and too stingy with my items so I didn’t use any Yellow Oil to prevent paralysis. As a result, my expedition had to stop in this level…

Out of curiosity, I checked the wiki to see what the boss in this stage looks like. Apparently, I’d already met them! The 19th level has two bosses: Huginn and Muninn. They’re both the stronger ravens accompanying Odin in Valhalla (the Beast of Thought and Beast of Memory)! It makes sense, considering that these ravens are supposed to be Odin’s eyes and ears for overseeing Midgard in Norse mythology.

As a consolation, at least I was able to collect a lot of Faded Stone Fragments. I don’t think I’m ever going to need all of them though lol.

Something’s Brewing in Splendor Mythos…

Another set of significant updates added new NPCs and quests to Splendor Mythos. The wizard NPC that was previously beside Morias in the palace now moved to a spot beside the egg in the central square. A few other NPCs with dialogue have also been added to the square.

This archer is training for, well, something…

The troubled adventurer near the Millenium Tree and the troubled adventurer inside the Cave of Trials pretty much have the exact same questline format with minor differences in text. In their first quests, they both ask the player if they’ve heard from either Morias (when talking to the male adventurer) or Maris (when talking to the female adventurer). They then talk about collecting some material to make weapons (Steel for the male adventurer and Obsidian for the female adventurer). Both quests then ask for 10 Blue Egg Shells for their second quests, and both reward fire prevention related items (Fire Extinguisher from the male adventurer and Sand of Stars from the female adventurer). In fact, apart from their second quests, all other quests are identical in what items are given out. Their quest texts are also almost identical with some minor differences in speech patterns and with the tasks themselves being changed (such as the fourth quests requiring the defeat of a creature, the male adventurer’s quest requiring the player to defeat 4 Wyverns and the female adventurer’s quest requiring the player to defeat the Hellcat).

This NPC has finally been given a name! Actually, although he was moved to this place, if I remember correctly, there’s a brief period of time where he didn’t give quests. At the time his name remained as ???. However, an update finally revealed that his name is Fleute (フリューテ). According to the katakana, ‘te’ is actually pronounced as tɛ so I didn’t put his name as Flute. Having said that, I’m not exactly sure how his name would be romanised in English.

I actually did the quests before I ventured into the deeper levels and Valhalla. I didn’t think I’d be making a blog post at the time so I unfortunately don’t have screenshots of when I was progressing through his questline. Having said that, the quests that he currently gives out don’t really reveal much lore. His quests is basically just him testing you to see if you were strong and skilled enough for, err, some request that he has in mind I suppose? His last quest gives out a Jade Pendant which is an item that transports you to some isolated void-like space (stage 127). I’m not sure what the translation is because I don’t understand what the kanji characters are supposed to mean, but the map for that stage does have an English title–“Neverwhere”. I think my best attempt at making sense of the machine translation would be “Remnant of a Distortion” (as in, a magical distorted space in some dimension).

It kind of looks like a boss stage. Perhaps they’ll add a boss here in the future?

There are two collection points in the stage. These give you Residual Treasure Chests (残された宝箱). Again, this is just my best guess on the translation of the name (another candidate would be Abandoned Treasure Chest). The item description says something along the lines of the treasure chest being left behind between dimensions (or in an interdimensional space). This just furthers my suspicion that Fleute is a time traveller…

The treasure chest contains items that are related to Fleute. I really like how Fleute’s staff looks so I initially wanted to get the staff at first because I didn’t know it was tradable lol (now it’s really cheap to buy in the market). The Sharp Dagger (尖鋭のダガー) in the chest is actually not bad as well. It has 50% thunder and 50% light attribute properties and has a 15% critical chance for both elements. Another good item is the Candle Hair Ornament (燭の頭飾り) which you can use to cast a spell that not only heals, but also grants protection from some negative status effects and increases movement speed.

The machine translated dialogue of all the NPCs mentioned can be found here.

Minotaur Cup

This will be a short section, but I was able to participate in my first Magicaloss tournament! Well, my squires did. Unfortunately, none of my squires was able to get past the qualifiers. One of my squires, Haruto, had a good chance because he was able to guard and inflict petrification on his opponent using an Invasion Bracer (a magic accessory that adds curse reflection effect to shields). Sadly, I didn’t really prepare my squires that well (I have so many magic accessories that I don’t know the effects of lol) so he couldn’t really capitalise on it because he didn’t have the appropriate weapon lol. Another one of my squires got absolutely destroyed as he got paralysed at the start by a squire wielding Paralyzing Book. I didn’t think that mage squires were viable at all but that match changed my mind. They’d need a lot of MP though.

There’s actually another tournament right after, called the Byakko Cup.

I’m also planning on entering my squires into the next tournament. This time, they should be a bit more prepared. This is roughly what the text above says:

News from the Fight Guild!

Sorry we’ve kept you waiting! No rest for the fighters, huh?
The upcoming “Byakko Cup” will be held on January 29.
This is a special tournament that takes place only once every 12 years.
To qualify for the tournament, the participant must have a total of 750 or less in physical strength, mental strength, and attack power.

The guild is looking for participants for the qualifiers. Choose the squire you want to participate.

For each win, you will receive a “Tiger Liquer”, a “Small Medal” and a “Chest of Secrets”.
The winner will also receive a “Holy Lightning Rapier” and a “Golden Byakko Statue”.

Recruitment will close at 24:00 on January 27 and the preliminary round is scheduled to begin on January 28.

Note that the application period is shorter than usual.

My goal is just for one of my squires to get to the qualifiers lol. I don’t have high hopes for my squires, but you never know.

I don’t know when my next blog post will be, but I think if there’s any new stuff added with regards to the Splendor Mythos story, I’ll probably make a new post. I’m personally looking forward to what’s going to happen because it feels like the story is finally moving forward. I believe there’s still some issues with the HTML5 versions so I wonder how things will develop on the development aspect as well (particularly with Avalon).

In any case, who knows when the next blog post is. Probably next year if we’re being honest lol.

Till next time!

PG Picture Diary and Imaginary Towers! Update

Posted on November 27, 2021 by dkun

It’s been a while! I have been extremely busy so I haven’t had time to update the blog. I also haven’t played much recently, though I have occasionally logged in during these past few days.

I was originally going to put these in a blog post with its own topic, but I thought I’d just make a post about what I’ve been up to instead! Well, it’s mostly about real life and computer science stuff that belongs elsewhere (certainly not in this blog). It’s been a while since I last played so these are quite dated now, but nevertheless I wanted to share them.

An Eventful Start to the New Year

If I remember correctly, there were two events running during that time simultaneously. There was a lot to do!

There were these fortune boxes you could open for a small fee (Omikuji). I can’t remember how much it was, but I believe it was either 5000S or 2000S. I opened a few to get dai-kichi (大吉). 2021 is the Year of the Ox so the box had cow themed accessories. I actually had cow plush equipped for most of the year (I only took it off recently)!

The Requiem event was ongoing at the time.

I took the opportunity to get my hands on a Holy Book.

There were also Valkyrie enemies in stage 6.

They were somewhat tricky to deal with because most of my strong pieces of gear have light/ice as their element…

…a giant from another world comes out of it sometimes. His name is Bergrisi (“mountain giant”).

There was also this guy alongside Salamander, called Jötunn.

Bonus image. I call this, “Slumber Party with the Queen”.

The other event was the Golden event!

Challenging the Cave of Trials

I also tried to challenge the Cave of Trials at some point to see how far I could go. Here’s how it went.

I conquered the 6th level quite easily!

The 7th level was a bit harder but it was manageable. You can see a red Reborn Ogre above. It drops a chest that you can open to get an item to tame some rather interesting creatures. I unfortunately did not open one because I didn’t have enough money to register the pets…

Phew! That was a lot harder than the other two. I needed warmer clothes for the next level…

Now it was time to go further. Hopefully, the next one wasn’t as cold (and it actually wasn’t!)

There were trolls and large frogs. Everything was going relatively well, until I forgot about one specific type of enemy in this level…

These fear mists weren’t that hard… right? I could hit them a few times and they’d instantly dissipate.

I encountered these large man-eating plants and another red Reborn Ogre. However, this was when everything went wrong…

I used my gun by instinct! I forgot that the mists multiplied when hit by purely physical attacks…

And it was all over for me. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten further than the 11th level yet. It was a good try, though!

Imaginary Towers! The Epic of Antiqua Magis

My last update on this “series” (which I don’t think can be called that anymore) was a few years ago. I have actually done quite a lot since then, though it still hasn’t finished. I had hoped to at least finish the map, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish it. I hope I can, someday!

I’ve been thinking up and drawing these “imaginary stages” since I was a lot younger (a lot, lot younger). It really brings the nostalgia whenever I think about those times. I played a lot of Puppet Guardian, probably more than I should have, but it has played a huge part on my life and I wouldn’t be where I am now without it. It was one of my only pastimes back then so I actually had a huge stack of papers, each detailing different “imaginary stages”. I wish I still had them now because my imagination back then was really something lol.

By the way, I managed to think up of a name for this imaginary new season: The Epic of Antiqua Magis. It’s quite longer and doesn’t fit the style of the second season, Splendor Mythos, but I suppose it can be shortened down to Antiqua Magis.

Anyway, my last post was a preview about a stage that continues on from the Cave of the Land. This stage certainly received a lot of my attention. I’ve put in a lot more detail than the others, and it’s still not finished. I wasn’t on planning to make a whole design document on the stage, but it ended up like that anyway lol. It’s still not finished, and I’ll probably change some of the details. I thought it’s quite a waste to just leave the documents and the images stored on some server somewhere, so I decided to share what I did here.

Here’s what the (unfinished) map looks like:

For comparison, here is roughly what the finished map is supposed to look like:

It’s a really messy plan, isn’t it? I was actually thinking of changing the gate because it looks really out of place. I wasn’t sure what to replace it with, though.

While I’d like to write more details about the stage in this post directly, I think it would be impossible to put everything in. Instead, I decided to share the link to the document directly. Click here for information about the imaginary stage. It also includes some other information about the entire season, such as the BGM inspiration for each stage.

The main motivation for the stage is that I wanted to think of some way to remove the dependence on critical hits. I also wanted to force players to have to use magic and give players a way of roleplaying a magic-user not just from their clothes, but also during fights. The synthesisable wand/staff weapons are also ways for new players to use magic easily and reliably. It’s not a stage a stage that new players can just go into at all, of course. It’s a really hard stage, and it’s probably extremely unbalanced (and impossible to conquer), but it was fun to think about. You can see that I was really inspired by MMO mechanics (particularly at sections of the document describing the boss fights).

I also thought it would be fun to add new mechanics, so I did. For example, maps can now have diverging paths and players can choose which way they want to go when travelling. Some of the stages are also “sealed stages”, meaning that players will need to use special dice to travel through them. I thought that this would encourage players to team up and pool their special dice together. They could also try to farm these special dice as a team! (By the way, there is no team limit in Antiqua Magis).

Additionally, here’s how I thought the stages in the new season could be linked together. The final stage is “The Crystal Heart” which has a really powerful superboss. The “Arcane Clock Tower” linked to the final stage is like Helheim, but instead of a single boss, it has a timer much like the one during the ending of the first season. This timer actually repeats, so this stage is basically a player’s room in Magicaloss, but in Puppet Guardian (lol). It would have powerful enemies that drop valuable loot, but not a boss. Who knows, maybe the enemies could even change during story events!

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