Bustin' makes me feel - Let's Play MapleStory v251

[TeeQueue]

Good evening, everyone! I’m TeeQueue, and this is a terrible idea.



If you know anything about old MMORPGs, you've heard of MapleStory. Clocking in at over 20 years old, this game currently owned by South Korean developer Nexon still sees a fair amount of play to this day. It has constant-ish content updates, and an endgame so impossible to achieve that only the craziest of people will get anywhere near it.

But… why MapleStory?

I decided that I didn't want to Let's Play Limbus Company, so instead I want to show off a SK-developed live service game with a ton of grinding, time limited mechanics, and an insane difficulty wall instead.

Ha ha, very funny. Seriously: Why?

Because I have lost all control of my life.



If you know anything about me, you are at least peripherally aware that I main a class called Angelic Buster. The Battleground Idol, her entire thing is being a magical girl who dramatically interrupts the BGM of the enemy in order to play her own music, which powers her up while she punches the enemy with dragons. She was a terrible class, with damage comparable to a potato. That did not matter, because Angelic Buster is the best class.

Unfortunately her personal story was hideously bad, with her being creeped on by old men at multiple points throughout the thing. Not great. That all changed for KMS, the Korean server, in October of 2023.



Angelic Buster was given a rework designed to make her significantly more playable. Her skills were given a makeover, her look was changed, and alongside that her story was made much less . To coincide with this a mini-album was also announced, complete with both a remixed full version of one of her old songs as well as an entirely new song—which was added to her buttons alongside her others. She was also given a button that let her hold a concert anywhere and anytime. That update hit GMS, the global server, back in June. When it did, I decided to create a new Angelic Buster and catalog her progress from 1 to 260, covering the entire original plotline in the process.

I thought it would be neat. A fun little side project.

Are… you okay?

I'm Let's Playing MapleStory. You already know the answer to that.

Thread Participation..?

Unlike my previous two Let's Plays, all of the footage for this thread has already been recorded. If my Project Moon LPs are me engaging with the audience and trying to make something memorable, cool, and interesting for everyone… this Let's Play is closer to one man's journey to put in order his own feelings on a shitty game that hates you.

And make no mistake: MapleStory is a shitty game that hates you personally for playing it.

Spoiler Policy

Use spoiler tags, please. I don't care at all about spoilers regarding the plot of a 20 year old MMORPG, and we aren't going to touch Grandis at all so if you want to complain about that you can just do it. The one thing I would like to request is not to cover any of Nexon's actions outside of the game until they're mentioned. There's a lot. I'm sure I'll cover all of it eventually.

So what's the plan?

I don't know. Originally I wanted to do this as a fun little thing for after I was done with Library of Ruina, to give myself time to finish up my outline for the webnovel I've been slowly spinning up. Events have messed with that plan, and I feel like there's meaning in talking about this game now. Otherwise, this thread spinning around in my head may continue getting in the way of my ability to write the story I'm in the middle of... which has gotten very annoying. I'll dedicate one night a week to working on this thing, and the rest can go to the Library of Ruina endgame, already in progress.

I am definitely going to paraphrase the plot, because there's a lot of words and I don't have a text dump this time. I intend to cover every part of the journey to 260. I'll do my best to show the highs, and the lows, and the lows, and the lows. This is an entirely new angle on Let's Play from what I've done previously, so it might suck entirely. I don't know.

Let's find out together.

What if I want to give you money?

I've set up a ko-fi link here. Don't feel like you have to, but tips are always appreciated.

One more thing…

Text quoted from the game will always be italicized. This stuff is 100% direct from the game.

If it isn't italicized, I'm editorializing in some way, usually to paraphrase a whole lot of text.

Table of Contents

Update 1
Update 2
Update 3
Update 4
Update 5
Update 6
Update 7
Update 8
Update 9
Update 10

[TeeQueue]

Reserved.

[TeeQueue]

It was supposed to be going so well.

Angelic Buster's remaster was announced in October and released in November 2023 in KMS, but shortly after that there was an existential threat to the entirety of the GMS server. That threat, released in December 2023, was MapleStory DREAMER.



At the time when news about DREAMER was announced, Nexon Korea was in trouble: the Korean equivalent of the FTC had just fined Nexon approx. $9 million dollars. That wasn't why they were in trouble, however. They were in trouble because of the reason. Nexon secretly manipulated the probabilities of paid items and earned about $420 million over 14 years from these items. The specifics here largely don't matter to us in GMS, but for now just know the following:

-Progression in MapleStory's normal server's late game is effectively four casinos at once.
-Less than three years after a scandal involving the rates of one of those casinos being rigged, a second scandal dropped where a second casino was rigged.

On top of this, a second flashpoint had occurred a little over six months before: a popular streamer had joined KMS Reboot—a free to play server that was supposed to be more grindy than reg server in exchange for not requiring microtransactions to progress—and had successfully gotten to a near-endgame level account in only a few months due to the help of a lot of fans and some very good luck. This enraged the reg server players, who stated that Reboot needed to be worse to justify their investments in their gear.

This had already led to a number of nerfs to Reboot that don't really matter right now, but with DREAMER MapleStory put forward a glut of changes that were effectively a stake to the heart of the still-not-dead Reboot server. In no particular order:

-All forms of meso (the money unit in MapleStory) gains were cut to 20% of what they were on Reboot server, no change to Reg.
-Meso gains for all servers are limited per day, to a maximum of 150m mesos + (10m every 5 levels after 260).
-Cubes (the aforementioned casino they had rigged) have been removed, potentials on both servers are now done with meso. Great news for reg server, the cube cost is ~doubled for Reboot, which was already paying with meso before this.
-The complete removal of a boss designed to help early game players get meso to upgrade gear.
-Boss Crystals in Reboot are adjusted to be worth the same number of mesos as in Reg server, another cut to ~20% of what meso gains used to be for them.

This had the intended effect of completely murdering Reboot in KMS, while mostly molifying their main customer base on the regular servers. However, this created a second problem: For the past several years, the Global server had simply been copying and pasting the patches received without any further tweaks or fixes… and GMS's playerbase was ~80% concentrated onto the Reboot server. Porting over these changes and murdering the server would lead to a mass exodus from GMS, something that management was probably gunshy about given they'd just added a new Reboot server.

The fanbase was loud as the date of the update's GMS release came closer, until Nexon decided to showcase the localization philosophy change in the most Nexon manner possible:

GO WEST Introductory video (You should probably watch this)

GO WEST is announced, with a 97 second video whose opening 35 seconds are focused entirely on all the things they aren't doing. Ah, Nexon.

The fanbase takes it all as a win, patch notes are released, and everything seems to be on the up and up. Reboot is saved! Also it's been renamed, they're called 'Heroic servers' now and I'm now on Kronos (As opposed to Hyperion, GMS's second Reboot server).

Reboot is dead. Long live Reboot.

As for my part in all of this, I was pretty ambivalent. You see, I play this game as a joke. MapleStory is a mean and nasty thing once you start getting anywhere near lategame, and the main reason I'm here is for a simple call and response bit:

"Why would you play a game like that?"
"Because I can push a button and a magical girl theme plays. This works anywhere in the game."

If the game got worse, the joke would get funnier. If it got better, the game would be less shit. At the time, I thought there were no losing outcomes for me.

This brings us to June 12th 2023, the v251 patch day. After an hour of downloading I'm finally booting up the game.

Music: GO WEST: Maple Boys


There's a new login screen, like there usually is with events or big updates. The entire GO WEST aesthetic is based on the Pet Shop Boys's Go West music video, and the two characters there are Inkwell and Dr. Lim, NPCs based on two of the actual developers. Notably, Inkwell has recently been made the head of GMS's development direction.

Anyways, I log in and create a new character—we're actually already about to be hit with the Remaster's first neat trick.

Music: GO WEST: Maple Boys


To help hype up her new mini-album, Shining Heart, Angelic Buster's character creation screen is updated to have a sample of her unique music. The song in question, Shining Heart, is a poppy little number that…

Wait wait, go back. What did that say?

Music: GO WEST: Maple Boys

It seems the character select music is not implemented in v251.

Maybe it's just an oversight..? It's supposed to be going so well, after all…

[EncLun]

Oh boy, we're starting strong with the Nexon "quality", huh.

I've only heard tales of MapleStory, never actually played it, but this seems like it'll be an experience!

[TeeQueue]

Alright, let's make with character creation.



The initial character customization varies based on the class you've selected. Angelic Buster has two hairstyles, two face styles, and your choice of hair and skin color.



I just go with what feels right, as none of this will matter in twenty minutes or so. That means next comes the name.

Naming a MapleStory character is more art than skill. Most of the good names (especially the short ones) are already taken, so you either need something really unique or a naming convention. A lot of people will name alts something like TQBishop or TQBuster or TQHero, attaching their username to the class. I prefer something a little more aesthetically appropriate, myself.



And so, Magilia is born (Technically spelled 'Magiiia,' but when all the good names are taken, you do what you have to do.)



Next we select our keybinds. I have played this game intermittently since Beta, and the alt-jump is etched into my soul. Basic it is.



Lastly, we are asked if we want to make her a Hyper Burning character. With the GO WEST update, everyone was given a single Hyper Burn to spend on a character, which will give us 3 levels for the price of 1 for every level between 11 and 260. This saves a tremendous amount of time, and we will be saying Yes for obvious reasons.



After selection, our character's story immediately begins. I won't be as diligent as normal in linking the music because MapleStory's OST is way too deep for me to recognize all of it by ear, but for a good portion of the following scenes the Pantheon Theme or Pantheon Field Theme is playing, which leads to something I feel needs to be said:

MapleStory music is really good. There are not many misses in the whole OST, and there's a reason that there are 1 or 2 hour MapleStory music mixes all over YouTube. SlipySlidy's channel has been diligently uploading every single song in every version of the game for years, and they're awesome for it.

Anyways, plot.


Tear, what's wrong?

This is Kyle. He's more important in the Kaiser storyline, but he's Tear's buddy.


Why are you crying?

This is Velderoth. He's also more important in the Kaiser storyline, but he's Tear's buddy.


The other kids made fun of me again.

This is Tear. She's us.

You don't have magic. They're always going to make fun of you. You've
gotta toughen up.

I WANT to toughen up, I just…

So do it. Quit crying, start training. Let 'em yap at you. Who cares?

Hey, Velderoth, ease up. This is how she is. She can't help it.

It's how she is for NOW, but that SUCKS for her. It gets her bullied, all the time! Maybe... I don‘t know, can she LEARN magic?

I don't know. It does suck for her.

Well, we can't stop it for her. She's gonna have to get stronger. I mean it, Tear. You're going to have to train so hard, you can face 'em down WITHOUT magic.

Well, you don't have to get all big and buff. You‘ve got us for that sort of thing.




*sniff* Thanks. I'll try not to cry anymore.

All right, let's get moving. We've still got to decorate the hideout today.

Yeah, let's go! There's these pretty rocks we can use.

Good to see you smile again.

For real.

The group wanders off as the screen fades to black.


All right, I think we're done!

Looks awesome! Now what're we going to call this place?

l don't know. Kyle, you got any ideas?

How about the Justice Lair?

Hahaha, what is it with you and justice?

Who doesn't love justice?

How about the Heliseum Hideout?

Ooh, can we be the Heliseum Force?

Yeah, that's who we are. *cough* Our mission is to sneak into Heliseum, take out Magnus, and save the capital.


Right on! And after that, we're gonna take out Gerand Darmoor.

Gerand Darmoor is the big bad of the plot arc we're currently on in MapleStory. He has only ever been seen on screen a handful of times, and for obvious reasons defeating him is not implemented in v251.

You think you can take over Grandis, Darmoor? Not on our watch!

You and your High Flora buddies are ALL going down!

Yeah!

All right, Heliseum Hideout it is.

Home of the Heliseum Force! Who's gonna be the leader?

Well, I'm the strongest, so me.

Sure, yeah! It was your idea in the first place.

You're good with that, right, Kyle?

Works for me.

Cool, we're gonna be knights and kick Darmoor's butt!

Heliseum Force, to battle!


To battle!

We fade out, and then fade back in…


The weather's so nice today.

Decades later, when everyone's grown up.


Sure, yeah, enjoy it. We're busy being KNIGHTS.

Hehe, remember the part where you have magic and I don't?

That‘s why you've gotta keep up with your training.

Ugh, would you stop nagging me? I'm doing my best at it.


Of course you are, and it's paying off. With or without magic, you are STRONG.

Right?! I've been working really hard.

I don't think the knights are going to take you yet, though.

I know, rules are rules.

If she does learn magic, though, you think they'd take her then?

Mmm, well, she'd still need a tail…

If you look closely, you can see that Tear in fact doesn't have a tail. This is actually unusual among Nova, who are usually born with both horns and a tail!

They're also usually born with magic, too, but like. Tear's clearly unusual in several ways, we're setting up a magical girl story here, okay?

Way to crush my dreams, Vel.

You could always pick a different dream. You don't have to be a knight.

Of course she does! We wouldn't be the Heliseum Force without her. Look, Tear, maybe if you got REALLY buff, like 'General Cartalion‘ buff, you could at least help us out with pest control.

Hahaha.


Is there an anti-punching spell? Because you're really gonna need it in a sec.

While there are several anti-punching spells, Velderoth never learns them—a mistake which will prove to be near-fatal for him in events that will not be covered in this Let's Play.

Sorry, sorry. OFF topic, we've gotta report back soon.

Is it that time already?

Yeah, you two go on, do knight things. Be careful out there.

Of course.

We'll see you soon.

Come on, Kyle.



Hold up!



Unfortunately for Velderoth and Kyle's CO, Tear's plot sense tingles, showing us… a cube.



Huh? What's going on?

I've got a feeling. Something‘s gonna happen.

What are you talking about? We've gotta go, Tear.

No, hang on. I'm getting a bad feeling too.

Whatever. We're going to be late. Come on.

I'm serious. I don't know how l know, but there's something going on at the East Sanctum. Something bad.

Couldn't hurt to go check it out.

Oh, what, Tear is psychic now?

I trust her gut. Besides, I felt it too.

We need to go, now.

Don't listen to your leader or anything. Fine, let's go.

We fade to black, and fade back in to the trio hiding behind some bushes as they see…


What did they do to the priest?

Well… this. It seems something is indeed going on at the East Sanctum, and it is something quite bad. All their text here is tiny, indicating that they're whispering.

And who ARE they?

They must be trying to rob the Sanctum. Or sabotage it.

What do we do?


We're outnumbered. I think rushing 'em is out.

I'll go for help. You two keep an eye on them. If it gets dangerous, retreat. You got it?

Got it. Please be quick.

What are they saying? Let's move a little closer.


All we need to do is pull this stone out, and their big ol' shield will be halfway gone.


Uh, isn't it cursed? W-we shouldn't touch it.

These are two different characters. Look at the edge of the hood to tell the difference between them.

NOW you're worried? That 'curse' is nonsense.

T-then why don't YOU take it?

Because that's YOUR job!

They're going to rob the Sanctum AND sabotage it.

N-not on our watch!

If nothing is done, the bad guys will abscond with the important cube, so there's only one thing to do:



Be reckless!!

Tear rushes forward to grab the stone before the Nefarious Priests can steal it.



Upon touching it, however, something strange happens as it glows and shrinks down…



Before turning into a strange bracelet on Tear's wrist. Unfortunately, that's as much as she can do before she and Kyle are both knocked out… somehow. It's not exactly clear.



Point is, they're both at the end of their rope.

*huff' Just a couple of random kids.

Random unconscious kids now.

Well, they've seen us. You know what that means.

...Wait, where's the stone?

l-it was just here. Where'd it go?

In the distraction Kyle made, it seems none of the priests noticed the stone turning into our shiny new bracelet. Now, I know what you're thinking: It's time for Tear to transform and beat up the bad guys, right?

Well, you're close.



You see, Kaiser and Angelic Buster were both released in the same batch of updates, and as a result their origin story is deeply entwined. This same scene happens in the Kaiser version of events, as something strange happens.



You see, the Kaiser is an ancient legendary warrior of the Nova, who reincarnates across generations in order to protect them. The last one died as a result of a betrayal by his buddy Magnus (also covered in the Kaiser Storyline)...



So the position is open.



Well. It was open.

FOR THE GLORY OF KAISER!!


No, n-no, no. I don't like this. Let's get out of here!

The Nefarious Priests do not feel like facing the incarnation of war (dragon ver.) today, and run away instead of murdering two unconscious people like they were planning earlier.



I brought that up again so that none of you would feel bad at watching the Kaiser murder this guy here.



Some time later… Kaiser hasn't moved an inch from Tear's unconscious body. Never know where the priests might be.


Oh, no. Kyle! Tear!

And he maintained his vigil for as long as it took backup to arrive…



At which point he explodes (nonlethal ver.)...



…And passes out again. It's been some time since I last played Kaiser's story, but I'm pretty sure that he wasn't conscious for any of that? I still like how he made sure his buddy was safe before falling over, in either case.

Either way this is the last we see of Kaiser in this storyline. Kyle will still show up, sure, but that armored form won't. Bye, Kaiser! Hope you get to be a real class again soon!!

_{Actually, given how the Aran and Shade class remasters have gone for them… maybe not. Angelic Buster's remaster was really the last one to not cut the legs out from a class… Well, it's Kaiser, nobody plays it to be GOOD anyways. You play it to be a Tokusatsu hero.}


That emblem.


The sign of Kaiser!

Kaiser...?

So he's finally back.

Those two need medical attention.



And we fade to black.


You're awake.

Tear wakes up in an infirmary, for obvious reasons.

Mmm... where am I?

Our clinic. How are you feeling?

My head's still pounding, but other than that, I'm okay.

That's good to hear.

What about Kyle?

Kyle, or perhaps I ought to say Kaiser, is also well.

Kaiser...?

That's right. Kaiser awakened in Kyle as he rushed in to save you.

...THE Kaiser? The Nova Guardian?

Yes, indeed. Our great protector is, at last, reborn. And in the body of a bright young man.

And that's... That's good news, right?

Of course it is. Some of us have been waiting for a long, long time.

Where is he now? I should thank him.

It's then that Tear notices something very important.


...What is this, and why is it on me?

The bracelet that she wound up with from trying to save the stone earlier.

...Tear, there's something we have to tell you. Please stay calm and listen carefully. The Sacred Stone of the East Sanctum has affixed itself to your arm.

Wait, what? 'Affixed itself,' what does that mean, exactly?

It means two things. It's transformed into that bracelet -- which is going to stay on you, as far as we can see -- and it's no longer defending Pantheon.

You sound like you're blaming her, Cartalion. If not for her, and for Kyle, the Stone would be gone regardless, completely.

...True enough.


Okay, so the last thing I remember is running at the Stone, trying to protect it... and then it turned into a bracelet and stuck on me? Does... does that happen a lot?

And the Protective Shield needs the Stone, right? Can't I just go and give it back?

As far as we can tell, it's stuck to you permanently. But, if it's any consolation, you're not in any danger from it

We're ALL in danger, aren't we? Without the Stone? *sigh" I was just trying to protect it...

We understand that. And Pantheon has three other Stones. The Shield will hold as long they do. All three of them, that is.

But... because of me... *sniff*

ls this why they call you Tear?

Cartalion!

...l'm sorry. That was inappropriate.

I didn't know this was going to happen…



Tear goes running out of the room, understandably distraught at permanently removing one of the four stones that keep Pantheon protected from Magnus's forces—as Fenelle said there are three others to do the job, but if any of them disappears then the shield will lose all power.

Pantheon no longer has a safety net, entirely by accident.


Tear!

I'll go after her. General.


I've put us all in danger...

Understandably, she is a bit broken up about this.

I always knew I was useless, but this is even worse…


No, Tear. Please, listen.

There is a silver lining in all this. You asked... well, l think your words were, 'Does that happen a lot?' And the answer is no. The Stone doesn‘t react to just anyone. Not even to its sworn protectors, like the priests who brought it here. We're all committed to protecting our people. But you... There's something very special inside you. Inside your heart.


But I did the OPPOSITE of protecting our people. The shield's weaker now, because of me.

Fenelle does her best… but Tear isn't in a place to hear it right now.



And we get the hell out.


Oh, Tear...


What'll happen to me now? To all of us?

She finds herself at the hideout, worrying about the future.

Tear, hey!


Kyle...

…


Heh. All hail Kaiser.

I've been looking for you everywhere. You okay? You're not hurt, are you?.

No, not hurt. But…

I heard about the Stone. Try not to take it too hard.

Well, it's not the first time I screwed up.

I wish you wouldn't say that.

You know, it's funny; for a second, I thought having this thing on me would actually give me some magic. But nope. I wouldn‘t deserve it anyway, after what I did. You must think I'm an idiot

No one does. You rushed in, with no magic, and you stopped the thieves. That means something. We're just worried about you, all of us. Even Velderoth, if you can believe it.

Thanks for saying that.

And... I'm sure Fenelle‘s told you, but there's three more Stones, and the Shield's still up. So don't sweat it.

Three more, yeah, but if we lose even one of them, the Shield's gone--

That's not gonna happen. I'll protect them. I promise.


Hm. Good old Kyle, always backing me up and cleaning up after me. ...I should go.

Tear says this while walking right past Kyle, there's a lot of little motion to the spritework to try and convey action. You can tell they've been doing this for ~20 years.



And we get the hell out.

Tear…


I can't always depend on Kyle. Now let's see, I was right about here when the stone attached to me...

...l'm not a total failure. I've got discipline. I'm strong. I'll figure this out! There's got to be clues around here somewhere…



W-who said that?



Where are you? Come out!



Are... Are you the bracelet? Are you talking to me?





So Tear focuses… and…



………what

[TeeQueue]

…Right, so. Last time, we left off with an adorable mascot creature appearing out of midair. There's really only one thing to say to something like that.


You're a dragon?!


Can you see me now? Good. I guess it's easier here in the Sanctum.

This dragon is named Eskalade. He is our sidekick throughout the vast majority of our story, as would be expected of a magical girl mascot animal. His voice actor, Xander Mobus, does an amazing job with him. Any time he was talking was a high point of this starting cutscene… and any other one he's in, for that matter. Dude knocked it out of the park.

(Angelic Buster's VA, by the by, is Sarah Anne Williams. She voices a lot of people in this game, and her delivery is excellent as well.)

Call me Eskalade. I've been riding around on your wrist since, you know, 'the incident.' At least now you can hear me. I've been yelling at you this whole time.

So, wait. You came from the Sacred Stone. Are you some kind of god?

Mmm, not exactly. Do you know where the Stone came from?


I do, yeah. They taught it in history class. When Magnus took Heliseum, and we all fled to Pantheon, we couldn't bring the Holy Relic along, so we transferred the Relic's protection spell into the four Stones. Right?

This is also covered more in Kaiser's backstory, but Pantheon and Heliseum are both on opposite sides of the same planet. Magnus stole all of Heliseum around when he murdered Kaiser that time, and also now controls the holy relic… though that's fine, apparently, since the power is in the four stones now. One of which is currently on our wrist.

Yep, we nabbed something powerful.

That's right. I used to live in the Relic, before they put me in the Stone.

So you ARE a god?

Ohoho, I wish. More like a spirit. Honestly, I don't even remember most of my time before the Stone. And I'm... not quite omnipotent, let's say. If I were, I might say something about you not bowing down.

Well, if you were, you wouldn't need help talking to me in the first place.

You know, it's funny you mention that, because before I met you -- I'll admit it -- I couldn't talk at all. Well, I mean, I could, but nobody could hear me.

Wait, you can only communicate with me?

That's right. It wasn't a fluke that the Stone latched onto you. That was me. I did it on purpose.

I wonder if that's why I had that... premonition, or whatever it was. Before I came here. But now, since I DID come here, we're down a Stone.


No, we'd have been down a Stone anyway if you hadn't come at all. Those jerks would have run off with it. I get it, though. You were here, it happened, you feel responsible.

Eskalade also points out the obvious, that what happened wasn't Tear's fault and the stone was going away if she was there or not. At least now we have it strapped to our wrist, where it could do something.

That being said, we ARE down a Stone, and if you want to do something about that...

I mean I WANT to, sure, but what can I do?

Well, you have me now. Like I said, I'm not quite omnipotent, but I'm not exactly powerless either. And now you've got that power at your fingertips. Almost literally.

I can use your power?

I've been looking for someone who can. Me being a spirit, all I could do myself was help with the Shield. But we can't all stay cooped up here forever, can we? We belong in Heliseum. It's our capital, our home. With my power and your strength, we can win this war for the Nova.

*breath* That's what I've wanted to do since I was a kid. So HOW do I use your power?

Well, there is one thing I need first.


Honor.

Honor? What do you mean?

So... I'm a spirit. You know how ghosts are tied down by their feelings and desires? Ghosts are a kind of spirit. I'm the same way. Way back when I was flesh and blood -- this I do remember -- what I wanted most was recognition. Glory. That kind of honor. So if I can earn that -- or if YOU can earn it, as a warrior, while I'm attached to you -- that'll unblock my power.

Um... Okay, that's a problem. They're never going to let me be a warrior. Not like you're thinking. I don't have any magic.

You're the only one who can talk to me, and you're telling me there's no magic in that?

I was born without it. That's all I know.

Huh. Well, there's something special about you. If it isn't magic, it's something else...

Your guess is as good as mine. *sigh* I almost got my hopes up again…

Hey, whoa, whoa, what are you saying?

I'd better go ask Kyle and Velderoth. Maybe they can help put you back.

Hey-- uh, put me back? What?



So we do that. To the hideout!


Hey Kyle, Velderoth.

Tear. We were looking for you. Here…



Kyle gets an entire CG devoted to giving Tear a flower.

I thought about what you said, and... I didn't mean to imply I was 'cleaning up after you.' We both decided to go to the Sanctum. If that was a mistake, we made it together.

No, Kyle, none of it's your fault.


Well, maybe it's nobody's fault, then.

Kyle…

I should have said that sooner, I know. I hope the flowers cheer you up, at least. I know how much you like 'em.

*giggle* I do. Thank you.


Really, you feel better now? I'd be pissed if I were you. The whole thing's unfair.

We interrupt this touching moment to bring you Velderoth being a downer, as usual.

Kyle makes a 'mistake,' and he gets to be Kaiser. You do the same thing, and you get... stuck with that thing on your wrist. Everybody loves him now, and they hate you. Just go ahead and say it. It sucks. We're down a Stone. WE know it's not your fault, but everybody else--[/i]


Would you shut up, Velderoth?!

I'm just saying, coddling her doesn't help her right now. She's got a big damn problem, and she needs to be objective about that.

You're right. It is a problem. But Kyle isn't 'coddling' me. He's being a friend.

…

I was actually going to talk to you guys about something, but... I need to go lie down first. It's... been a day.


Tear?

I'll be fine. Catch you later.



And Tear ollies out, to figure out what to do with the mess that's landed in her lap.



She finds herself somewhere outside of town, a short ways from the hideout.


Hey, uh, Tear?

And Eskalade comes out to join her.

Are you crying?

Why would I be crying?

Not for me, I hope. I'll be fine. You don't have to worry.

I'm not worried about you.

Heh. You're upset. I'll let that go.

I'll find a way to get the Sacred Stone back to the way it was. Then you can find somebody else.

I seriously doubt it. I told you, there's something about YOU. You're unique.

But--

Hang on... Okay, before we get into this, let me ask you: what do you want?

Well, I don't want to be, you know, THE HERO, like Kaiser. I just want to be able to do my part. So my friends won't have to worry about me anymore. I want to make them proud. Granny Fenelle, too. She's been good to me. I want to look after them the way they've looked after me.


There might be ONE way...

A way to gain Honor without being a soldier? Why, whatever could it be?

...And that is?

Well, i-it's hard to explain…

Try.

You might not like it.

You want me to sell my soul or something?

No, no, no, nothing like that. Um... it just occurred to me that there's more than one way to attain glory. You don't have to be a warrior.

Go on…

Right, how do I put this...?


All right, hear me out. You're going to need a name first. Let's say... Angelic Buster. And a catchphrase too, like... Angelic Buster, dress-up!.

Why would I ever need to say, 'Angelic Buster, dress-up'?



With a quick sparkle and some shiny effects, Tear transforms.


WHAT THE--?! I look like a whole different person!

I'd like to pause here to mention that in the old story Angelic Buster actually got a video of this moment. Called Maplestory: Angelic Buster Anime Video, it was an entire magical girl transformation sequence. The song in question is called 'Angel's Room,' and it is played in a special map that only Angelic Busters can gain access to. Importantly, it is not a song by Angelic Buster. Anyways, this kind of anime transformation sequence is not implemented in v251, as we get another musical number a little later on instead.

Now, where was I?


Hahaha, it worked! Woo! Ha, you look great!

Seriously, what is this?!

It's the way you attain glory. If you can't be a soldier, be a star. Your voice reached me. It could reach a lot of people. Sing in front of a crowd, and they'll cheer for you. And my power will ride those cheers straight into your heart.

You want me to sing?


Hehe, let me put it this way: do you know what an idol is?

An idol?

You know, one of those peppy celebrities who sings and dances and wears fancy costumes.

You've been stuck in a rock. How do YOU know about that?

Hahaha, excuse me, I'm not STUCK in the rock, I just live here. So come on. Let's go put on a show.

Wearing THIS?


That's part of the idol gig, yeah. Unless you don't actually need the power.

This is actually a pretty clever plan. A mysterious idol shows up and busts out a song, becoming a legend in order to gain a little bit of fame. That fame powers Eskalade, who powers up Tear. Tear could probably just sing by herself, but that would likely take much longer—I imagine the people in Pantheon would just assume she'd lost it, and that wouldn't lead to any kind of useful fame anytime soon.

It's also a much better setup than the original story, wherein Eskalade was a dirty old dragon who wanted to dress up a girl in outfits in exchange for power. They had nothing to do with each other, while here there's actually a point to becoming meguca.

*sigh* Fine, I'll give it a try.

That's the spirit! Let's get moving!



A quick scene change later, and Angelic Buster is getting ready to sing.


*exhale* So this is stage fright.

You're not thinking of canceling, are ya? W-what about the fans?

They'll be fine. Both of them.


No, no, you can do this. Pre-show jitters, it's all part of the deal. Oh, and when you start, be sure to yell out, Battleground Idol, Angelic Buster!

Can't I just say, 'Hi, I'm Angelic Buster'?

No, no, you need STYLE. You've gotta throw yourself into it, one hundred percent!

All right, all right, let's do this.






I, um, I am the Battleclown Idol, Angelic Buster. BattleGROUND Idol. Yeah.

With her introduction over with, it's time for Angelic Buster's first concert. Like her character select screen, we're supposed to get Shining Heart to play here.

VIDEO
Music: None


Unfortunately, yet again Shining Heart is not implemented in v251.

We get to see the concert in silence.



It's very simple. As a brand-new Battleground Idol, Angelic Buster is not practiced with things like choreography.



The camera does move to try and keep the scene dynamic, but it's just absolute silence with some guys yelling "Woohoo!" over it. It's incredibly strange in context.



Once the most awkward concert ever is over, we're put into the middle of Pantheon and we can finally play the game. The first cutscene is finally over, I will be paring them down somewhat from here on.

Before we get into the gameplay, though, I should probably address Angelic Buster's music. It being missing once is a bug. It being missing twice? And in a fundamental cutscene to the character? There weren't any patch notes stating something was wrong and it wasn't listed as a known issue, so it's fairly obvious that something is strange here.

I have a working theory, but first it'll require a little explanation.



About thiiis much.


Relevant Videos

Baby's First Concert
The full starter cutscene

[TeeQueue]

As a warning, today's update will be a measure less lighthearted than normal. There's some incredibly stupid stuff coming, so if you're having a bad day or aren't really feeling up for reading about the stupid things real life people do online, hey: maybe come back later. This thread isn't going anywhere.

Angelic Buster's remaster was originally announced in October 2023, and in the month leading up to its release on 11/23/23 there was a very cool event page for it. That page is still accessible here, and it is probably the finest bit of kayfabe work Nexon has ever done. They treat Angelic Buster's remaster as though it's a real life idol releasing a new single, covering it with fake entertainment news articles.

MapleStory's idol Angelic Buster will make a comeback with their first mini-album on the 23rd.

Angelic Buster's comeback is only 3 years and 2 months after their last single 'Star Bubble', and through this promotion, they are foreshadowing an unprecedented transformation. Fans are curious about what kind of image Angelic Buster, who has maintained a consistent image since their debut, will show.

Eskalade Entertainment stated, "The title song of this mini-album is 'Shining Heart', which contains Angelic Buster's unique, lively pink energy in a bouncy melody." In addition to the new song, the mini-album will also be filled with Angelic Buster's representative song 'Fly Away' full version and 'Star Bubble'.

Meanwhile, Angelic Buster's comeback schedule poster was also revealed on the MapleStory official homepage ahead of their full-fledged comeback. Starting with the concept photo release on the 9th, the 'Shining Heart' MV teaser will be released on the 16th, the full version of 'Fly Away' on the 20th, and the official 'Shining Heart' MV on the 23rd, which is expected to heighten the comeback fever.

With the news of this comeback making Grandis and the rest of the group excited, let's look forward to the pink November that Angelic Buster will present.

Things like this. They actually went ahead and put out a whole interview with the concept release on the 9th, which has been translated by Max of the KMS news blog Orange Mushroom (available here). I want to draw attention to one specific part of that interview:



She did not successfully complete her comeback.

MapleStory went ahead with their plan of releasing the trailer MV of Shining Heart on the 16th, as well as the full version of Fly Away that was promised on the 20th. (Side note: Fly Away is the first true Angelic Buster song ever created. Clocking in at ~30 seconds long, it was the only song associated with her class up until she was added to MapleStory M in 2021. We'll be talking more about it once we get to level 200, but I digress.)

If you clicked on either of the links up there, you found that the videos were private and inaccessible. This is because of Shining Heart.

Shining Heart's music video, also private on MapleStory's channel but available in entirety here, was released on November 23rd, at the same time as a working version of Angelic Buster. It is a very high-quality music video done by Studio Ppuri, also known as Studio Root. Over the course of this 3-and-a-half minute video one of the guys who was drawing the animations put in a single frame of our homegirl, Angelic Buster.



This single frame completely murdered Angelic Buster's comeback, through no fault of her own. Yes, really. Welcome, friends, to the hellscape that is South Korean Misogyny.

You see a number of men on the two main websites South Koreans use to talk about gaming, being very normal people with completely reasonable mental states, decided that this pinch was a reference to a thing called 'Megalia.'



Megalia, to put it succinctly, was created by a bunch of internet trolls who were sick of misogynist memes posted in public spaces. They decided to reverse those memes to piss off the people who would post them. This tactic was wildly successful at angering the very reasonable people who posted misogynistic bullshit, and they wound up accidentally getting a large number of posters and dealing in some actual activism. Wikipedia has more about the specifics, but to make a long story short they had become inactive in 2016 and officially closed in 2017, over half a decade ago at this point.

Being very reasonable people whose thought processes are completely normal, there was a growing movement among terminally online men in South Korea which both likens that pinch to literal Nazi imagery and also imagines that it is put everywhere by rogue feminists who want to laugh in their faces with secret Megalia imagery.

Incredibly reasonable conclusion to come to. I can't see why anyone would think anything different.

The first noted instance of this being used as an attack was back in 2021, and it has since become a regular tactic used to force companies to issue apologies and make art asset changes. Also, purely coincidentally I'm sure, this is also used as an excuse to get as many women fired as possible in the process. They found a woman on the animation team of Studio Ppuri, helldumped her, decided she was definitely an evil feminist, and selected her as the initial target for their very justified rage.

So while certain very normal people on the internet are getting incredibly mad at the music video, Nexon is trying to make their Angelic Buster remaster event go well. They attempt to start a viral dance challenge using the hashtag #ShiningHeartChallenge. The goal was to make a short of yourself doing the following dance from the Shining Heart music video:



Only two videos for this challenge were ever made, one of Pink Bean and the other of a character named Loopy from whatever this is.

It was extremely silly.

It was also derailed very quickly, as Nexon bent the knee and apologized profusely to the Incredibly Reasonable Internet Angry Boys. They threw Studio Ppuri under the bus to avoid taking the blame, and quickly began the process of Rooting Out every single video they'd ever worked on as the Totally Normal Squad had taken to going frame by frame through every video they could find by the studio and pointing out all the Definitely Secret Feminist Conspiracy Signs in each of them.

The #ShiningHeartChallenge did not survive this purge. It is now lost media.

Meanwhile, they cried out to have that animator in question fired. This did not change even when it came out that she didn't even draw the icon. Again, this image (posted here in convenient 180x180 size):



Was not even drawn by the person they wanted fired. At that point it seemed the infliction of pain was the main thing these incredibly reasonable men were looking for, and with the animator getting to keep her job someone needed to pay for the hideous crime of using a throughframe they didn't like (and that was definitely a hate symbol when used in any context period, remember that).

With Nexon having taken down all three new videos as of the 25th of November, they're a bit of a pickle. They need to move ahead with the remaster event, but they've just dumped all of their videos in the garbage to calm a hate m—I mean, a reasonable protest by perfectly normal people. They still have plans to work with Shining Heart, and so they have Angelic Buster do something else fun: A vtuber concert!



Called Angelic Buster: Healing Voice, it was a short run-through of the Shining Heart album by the vocalist who had done both Shining Heart and Fly High (remix), as well as a couple of covers of other vocal songs from their OST. This video is also no longer available on MapleStory's YouTube, though I have a mirror of it here.

Unfortunately, I have misplaced the name of the artist who did the singing for Angelic Buster and am now unable to find it. This is a shame, because—of course—the very normal people also decided to helldump her around this time and, finding a tshirt with the words "Girls don't need a prince" emblazoned on it in her retweets from several years ago, decided that she too was a horrible feminist bastard who needed to be fired in retribution for her crimes of…

Aaanyways, it makes perfect sense if you don't think about it.

Nexon again acted swiftly, with an emergency patch on November 28th in order to resolve all the controversy. They removed all of the animated videos in the game done by Studio Ppuri, but more importantly to our story today, they did this:



Every one of Angelic Buster's new songs were removed. They stayed gone until they were eventually reinstated in March of 2024, in the first update after DREAMER. This update reinstated Fly Away (remix) and Shining Heart into Angelic Buster's On Stage skill, and a short version of Shining Heart is reattached to her Soul Exalt skill as well. They are all music-only without any of the lyrics included… which is a strange thing to do to songs which exist largely to prop up the lyrics of the Battleground Idol singing them. I usually call them (Coward mix) in order to differentiate from the original versions, because I am petty.

That basically sums up everything that happened in KMS regarding the travesty that was Angelic Buster's Shining Heart rollout. Unfortunately, the current director of MapleStory went on stage around a month after all of this was over, and during his talk this happens:



…No one is held responsible and there is no outcry at all because it's not really a hate symbol, very reasonable people just claim it is so they can hurt others. It's all perfectly normal.

But enough about that absolute mess, it's time to look at what servers outside of KMS are doing when it's their turn to drop the DREAMER update.

We'll cover MapleStory SEA first, because DREAMER released there slightly before GO WEST did for us. They had a unique way of dealing with the Angelic Buster music issue, and debuted full EN covers of all three songs associated with Angelic Buster. These songs premiered May 27th, two weeks before the GO WEST update hit GMS. When their version of DREAMER dropped Angelic Buster was working perfectly, with all three songs implemented and also shorter versions of them set on her skills. At the time, there was a sense of optimism among Angelic Buster mains that Nexon might actually fix the issue with localized versions of the music for their Battleground Idol. They already had the songs, right?

This was a mistake. The first rule of dealing with Nexon is to never, ever be optimistic.

You see, GMS lacked any sort of development manpower. They were working on hiring people at the time to fix that and now they have a team that's supposed to handle balance and unique patches, but back then they'd been in a holding pattern of translating the latest KMS patch, mashing two of them together to fit our shorter patch timeframe, and then implementing it as-is.

Remember, DREAMER does not have any Angelic Buster content implemented in the base KMS patch. Shining Heart is nonexistent, Fly High (remix) was removed as well. This explains why those songs aren't currently implemented.

So, it seems pretty reasonable that GMS didn't have the manpower to patch anything in above and beyond the basic DREAMER update, and they slapped things together as quickly as they could to get things out the door. This was almost my theory.

…Except there's one tiny problem with that.



Rereading the top line of this, it says that when we select Angelic Buster on the character creation screen, "only Star Bubble and Fly Away will be played." But that doesn't make sense. Like we saw back in Update 1, it doesn't play anything at all. It's just completely unimplemented in a manner that doesn't add up.

Between that and some stuff we'll get into in a little bit, it's become pretty clear that the longer song files were just never implemented at all, and as a result even the music that we should have if they ported over the update like normal is missing… and most interesting of all is that this has never been officially acknowledged. It's clear we're missing things, and as we go forward it'll become increasingly apparent that the musical portion of Angelic Buster is in complete shambles.

These errors have consistently been brought up to the GMS team. Community managers have consistently said they're passing the information along… but there was no communication. Here in present day, there has still been no communication about it besides a vague 'we are looking into this.' There has not been a single message without that phrase, and there hasn't been any mention of their findings in over two months.

This leads to my ultimate theory as to why the AB music is not implemented in v251:

Putting music into the game would have required developer time and effort due to the way KMS DREAMER ripped everything out, and they just didn't bother. Once we get to the update after GO WEST, we'll likely get a patch that addresses these bugs since KMS did it, but it's really a 50-50 shot that it actually gets fixed and the sound files get put into the game, and if they do it'll almost certainly be with the (Coward mix) versions of the relevant songs.

Based on the lack of any communication or even acknowledgement from Nexon, the most likely answer and my current working theory is that they do not particularly care, and they assume nobody else does either.

I had thought there was no way I could lose when DREAMER was announced, and Maplestory—being a shitty game that hates you personally for playing it—looked at me and said "Bet."

I play this game as a joke and they messed with my punchline.

So. With all that said, there are ultimately two things that I hope to examine as we go through the next 250 levels on Magilia:

>What was the experience that I had leveling this character up all the way to 260?

>What, exactly, are my feelings towards this game?

I think we now have enough information to be at the starting line for both questions.



We can finally do our first job advancement.

[EncLun]

Wow, this all sounds eerily similar to the stuff with Project Moon, also by very reasonable, terminaly online men... Clearly it's all a coincidence!

I'd heard of this stuff happening with Nexon, but wasn't aware it happened with MapleStory, specifically.

[TeeQueue]

Yeah, it turns out my life is suffering because of incel morons… and it’s entirely because I keep liking South Korean games.

[TeeQueue]

To access some quests, like all of our Job Advancement quests, we click the lightbulb on our head to bring it up. If there's only one quest it'll just run, but in this case we have to select it. You can tell which quests are for Job Advancements by the big red text next to the name.


Now that was a performance! Just remember, it's 'BattleGROUND Idol!

Yeah, I GOT that.

Hehe, yeah, uh... sorry. Seriously, though, how'd it feel? You looked like a natural out there.

Well, once I remembered how to breathe, it got a little fun. Who knows? Maybe this COULD work out.

Hal Have a little confidence. I know this was just an impromptu show, but I was watching the crowd, and they loved it. Yep, Angelic Buster's made her first... ten fans.

Ten? That's more than I thought.

Oh, just you wait. You'll have a hundred fans -- no, a thousand, ten thousand, all cheering for Angelic Buster! The more glory you gain, the more of my power l can share.

One might say we'll go from three to a million fans.

…I promise that will be clever in like 90 more levels.

Actually, I think I can share a little bit right now. Hold still. Open your mind.

And just like that…


There you go. That should give you a whole new skill. Just say your catchphrase, and you'll be good to use it.

We can do magical girl things. After this cutscene ends.

Do I HAVE to wear the costume to use the power?

Haha, it'd look weird if you didn't. Everyone knows Tear doesn't have magic, remember?

...Right.

Now, you HAVE the skill, but you haven't mastered it yet. That's going to take practice. Also, to mark the occasion, I just put a little present in your bag, so check that out too.

Okay, NOW the cutscene is over. We're 28 minutes into the recording and we can finally mess around with stats. Eskalade wasn't kidding about the present, either.



We get 100 Sprout Potions, powerful consumables for the extremely early game that restore 5000 HP and MP.

While the windows are open, I also do a little bit of character maintenance.



This is our main stat window. Nothing about it really matters right now, except for the big button that says AUTO ASSIGN. Every level from now on, we get 5 points of AP to put into our stats, and since we only ever will need to put it into Dexterity (Angelic Buster's main stat), we just want to occasionally click on that button and click 'OK.' There is never a reason to put AP anywhere but into your class's main stat, so with the exception of one robot class who has three main stats at once we can rely entirely on Auto Assign to do all of our AP work for us.

I do not know what the robot class does in later levels, because it is not a magical girl and thus not worthy of my notice.



Next I head over to the skills tab. Right now we have access to two of our seven tabs: Beginner skills and 1st job skills. The rest of the tabs will unlock as we make job advancements. Most Beginner Skills are very basic things that give passive boosts or movement options, or else they are a constant change to something basic about the character. I'll quickly go through the ones here, all relevant gifs will be from the relevant orangemushroom article about the comeback.

Blessing of the Fairy: Gives bonus attack power that scales based on your highest level character, max of +20 at level 200.
Empress's Blessing: Gives bonus attack power based on your highest level Cygnus Knight (a specific class type). Scales to +30 at 200, doesn't stack with Fairy, thus obsoletes it entirely.
Dress-Up: Lets us transform or untransform at the push of a button. Rarely used, as only Angelic Buster can attack or use most skills.
Heroic: Basic passive showing we are on a Heroic server. These do not have certain forms of advancement that the regular servers have, thus to make up for some of that all Heroic characters get a base multiplier to all damage they do, and also get a bonus to Meso rates to let them get money to power themselves up without trading—because Heroic also means you can't trade with other players at all. The Free Market is dead.
Maple Crest: Shows off the crest you have for accomplishing Maple Achievements. I will not be discussing any part of this in the LP.
Grappling Heart:

GRAPPLING HOOK!! It moves us upward. While we have an up-jump that goes a fair distance already, this is a good option to have on hand.
Soul Buster:

Angelic Buster does not get a basic attack, and instead fires tiny pewpew balls of light at enemies. It does negligible damage, and will never be used in normal play.

Finally, the real reason we're here is for the Link Manager. Link Skills are something you get from leveling up other characters, and some of them are very powerful.



In addition to Angelic Buster's own Terms and Conditions, a short-term buff that dramatically increases our damage for a short time, we're allowed to equip up to ten other Link Skills to power ourselves up. This is one of the benefits of being a long-time player, it lets me effectively rocket through the early game with some massive bonuses.



I have a preferred loadout for characters who are farming normal enemies, and since that's our life for the next few hours I immediately turn on the related skills. They are:
Bravado: Hoyoung Link, increases damage to full HP enemies.
Combo Kill Blessing: Aran Link, increases EXP from Combo Orbs (don't worry about these yet).
Elementalism: Kanna Link, increases damage.
Elven Blessing: Mercedes Link, increases EXP gain.
Focus Spirit: Lynn Link, increases crit rate, max HP/MP, and boss damage.
Judgment: Kinesis Link, increases damage from critical hits (crit damage, from here on).
Nature's Friend: Lara Link, slight damage increase, increases damage even more to normal enemies.
Phantom Instinct: Phantom Link, Massive boost to crit rate.
Rune Persistence: Evan Link, rune bonus EXP time lasts longer (don't worry about this yet either).
Solus: Ark Link, more damage the longer we're constantly fighting, to a limit of 5 stacks.
Tide of Battle: Illium Link, more damage as long as we're moving constantly, to a limit of 5 stacks.
Wild Rage: Demon Avenger Link, increases damage.

Altogether, these abilities give us a ~30% bonus crit chance, and a number of useful damage and EXP buffs. Setting them up the most important thing to remember to do on a new character, so much so that some guides tell you to not even bother picking a main before you've got most of these characters to at least level 120.

With that done, I go ahead and set my keybinds. How you bind your keys is more of an art than a science, but since I have an Angelic Buster already I know approximately how I prefer to push my buttons. That means I need to reset the default keybindings from this:



To this:



There's a lot of empty space here, which we'll fill in little by little as I get access to more and more of Angelic Buster's utility skills. There's also one icon on Shift that's new: that's because it's one of our 1st Job Skills!



Each skill has its own 'Book' at the top, and all of ours are titled 'Angelic Buster.' This is purely for flavor and mostly comes up for base Explorer classes. As for the four actual skills we get for right now…

Melody Cross: Increases HP and MP, also raises our Attack Speed by +2 as long as we have it.
Affinity Heart: Raises walking speed, max walking speed, and jump height.
Feather Hop:

Hitting Jump again in midair lets us flash jump, up to two times. We can also hold up while activating this skill to go flying upwards instead.
Star Bubble:

Hits up to 8 enemies at once for enough damage to make them die. This is our main mode of attack in 1st Job.

When getting skills, it's important to put 1 point into your main attack skills and any decent passive skills, at which point we first level up mobility-based passives, then damaging passives, then attack skills, then whatever else. This is ultimately more an art than a science, though, and you don't have to worry about building wrong. These days, all characters get enough SP to get all their skills from each job.

This was not always the case back when they sold an SP reset scroll for real money to fix poorly planned skill loadouts, because of course they did that.

I'd also like to point out that Angelic Busters now have an MP bar. This is actually a change from their original form, where they used a unique system that meant they could never run out of MP, and by level 120 or so all of their skills were just good to go at all times, forever, barring cooldowns. For better or for worse, however, the Recharge system is not implemented in v251. We have MP… and it basically doesn't matter because we have more than enough to cast all our abilities for nearly forever.

Lastly, I check and make sure my Legion is in order. "What's a Legion," I hear newer players ask? Well, it's another form of bonus I get for having so many characters.



The Legion system gives us a legion grid that gives a variety of bonuses. I'm not going to go in-depth over it, but you need a total of 6000 character levels over the highest 42 characters on your account to get the full grid access, letting me get 10% bonus EXP, 20% crit damage, another 19% crit chance and 40% bonus normal monster damage, on top of unique bonuses from each class's block I put in there.

Grinding your Legion is a new player's personal hell, as you need to have thirty level 200 characters to hit that 6k benchmark to get access to everything. Many players stop long before they get there out of boredom from playing the same few areas over and over again to get to 200 on so many classes. Beyond that 6k benchmark would be what's known as an 8k Legion, at which point we get the ability to place a good number more character blocks onto the grid, filling out much more of it. This is generally considered an 'endgame' level of Legion, as leveling beyond that point requires a LOT of time in exchange for placing 1 extra character block every 500 total levels.

I have 9004, because I play this game as a joke.

While I'm here, I also check out the other new toy implemented in the Legion screen, added fresh in v251: Legion Artifacts!



Legion Artifacts get points from doing daily quests and weekly bosses, and give even more bonuses that apply to all characters on your account. They can expire, but realistically they should never do so since keeping them running is remarkably cheap compared to the points the quests give you. Because I had a number of Special quests done (these are milestones like defeating certain bosses or the like), I was able to start at Artifact Level 28.

Grinding this up is also a personal hell for new players, but less of one since it's mostly stuff you were going to do anyways. It's like diet hell.

Okay! I've looked through everything, now it's time to-

Click on the star tab. There's more gifts!

…What?



The star over here on the far left is a foldout tab, it tells us we have nine event quests that are available, as well as a fire icon that is related to our status as a Burning character. We start by clicking on the fire.



This shows us our event track. We're currently at the very start of it, and can get a number of rewards right now that are meant to smooth out our trip from level 11 to level 200. For obvious reasons, we claim the reward immediately.



I also start the COMEBACK Battleground Idol quest, which gives me even more bonuses as I level up Magilia, in addition to another bonus daily as long as I get 1000 kills with any Angelic Buster. I already did that on my main, so there's one gift ready to be claimed already.




Next, I grab the [Skill] On Stage quest to get unlocking another one of our class's core skills out of the way.


So Tear, I have another tip on how to get more famous. You want to hear it?

Sure, why not?

The key to fame in the music business is more concerts! Squeezing them into your busy schedule, on the other hand, is gonna be tough… So why don't we try a little something I like to call a 'Guerilla Concert'?

Guerrilla Concert?

Yeah, like busking in town.


How about it? Wanna learn how to throw a concert at the drop of a hat?

Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes.

With the Onstage skill, you can throw a surprise concert whenever you want. Give it a shot.



This quest gives us the On Stage skill, which is a 1 hour cooldown ability that lets us play songs from the Shining Heart album not only for ourselves but for any character within a certain radius around us. It is the only skill in the entire game powerful enough to hijack the audio of other players, and thus makes Angelic Buster the most powerful class in the game. It can only be used in towns.

Anyways, that's enough setup. Let's carry on with the plot already, shall we?


So now that you're settling into your power, what're you going to do next?

Show it off to my friends, of course!

You want to tell them you're Angelic Buster?

Yeah, you think that'd be all right? Just Kyle and Velderoth, nobody else.

I mean, you CAN do that, but... think about what you said earlier. You didn't want your friends to worry. Now, sooner or later, as your power grows, Angelic Buster's going to get called up to the front lines. How are your friends going to feel about that, if they know you're her?

That's, uh... surprisingly thoughtful of you, Eskalade.

I'M VERY THOUGHTFUL!

I guess you're right. I really don't want them to worry about me.

If you really want to tell somebody, how about the High Priestess? Fenelle, was it? She seems to know a lot about you. What was it she said? You had a special heart?

We get a yes/no prompt here, to start the quest. Every quest has them, and players who are skipping the cinema will frequently move their 'advance dialogue' keybind to the Y button to automatically hit yes on any that occur. Anyways, we agree.

All right, off to the Great Temple we go.



We get a little arrow over our head to help us navigate there. This is a regular feature of later quests, helping keep us from getting lost when trying to find NPCs or maps.



She's located inside this building, as the nav arrow is kind enough to tell us to use the portal.



Once we arrive, the arrow goes away and it tells us we're there. We can complete the quest by clicking on the book over Fenelle's head whenever we like.

Who are you? You seem familiar…

(Oops, I should have changed back before I walked in.) Um... I am…

You're Tear, aren't you?

How'd you know?

Well, your aura is unmistakable. That kind heart, that will to protect everyone… That… outfit, though. That's new.

Well, after the Stone latched onto me…

...I see. That's quite the story. So the Stone did choose you for a reason. Heh, I hope I‘m not the last to know about it.

No, you're the first. No one else knows, just you, me, and Eskalade. ...Why?

Well, if word gets out that the Sacred Stones can give you powers, everyone will be after them.

Oof. Right, I hadn't even thought about that.

So tell me, what do you plan to do with that power?

I want to do my part, help our people.

I thought you might say that. Give me a moment. Let me find a way for you to help. Come back in a bit, won't you?

This is today's variation on the most common trope in this game: the "We need to segue from one quest into another but there's no easy way to end this conversation without just giving you said quest so we'll ask you to wait a moment." This happens so often over the course of this game, particularly when reporting information and ferrying it between multiple NPCs, that the only reason it isn't a community meme is because nobody who plays MapleStory bothers reading the plot of MapleStory.



Anyways, we get a decent chunk of EXP for our trouble, and the next quest bulb is already over our head. Let's roll.


She's got a point. Keep quiet about being Angelic Buster AND about the Stone.

Got it.

And just t-to manage expectations here, it's good for you to help people, but it won't always lead to more power.

Well, it's not always glorious helping people, but there's honor in it, right?

Of course there is. Just not a lot of recognition, which unfortunately is the kind of honor it takes here. What I'm getting at is that eventually, every Nova on Grandis is going to know the name Angelic Buster -- yay! -- but that's not enough people to bring out my full power. Ha! Sooner or later, you're going to have to take this show on the road.



As a result of talking to people a total of twice, we gain our first level. Each level gives 5 AP for stats, and 3 SP for skills. From now on, we're also in HYPER BURNING mode, which means each level up will give us 3 levels instead until we hit 260.



Everything goes into Feather Hop for me, it's our fastest form of movement and getting around is the hardest part of early Maple. After it's maxed, I'll be taking Affinity Heart and then beyond that it doesn't really matter because neither other skill will do much of note for Magilia.

Anyways, back to talking to Fenelle.


Tear... or do you prefer Angelic Buster now? Thank you for your patience. There doesn't seem to be much for you to do here at the temple. Have you asked General Cartalion? I‘d be happy to send you with a letter of recommendation.

Obviously, we agree…



And get a new navigator arrow. That little quest prompt lets us know we can turn in the quest we've just taken—it's more handy when the quest requires us to pick up a number of items or kill a number of mobs.



We find General Cartalion in the courtyard right outside, sitting near where Angelic Busters come out of their initial cutscene. We also find a couple of our ten fans here, some of whom have taken to wearing identical outfits to ours. Their identities have been censored for privacy reasons.


And who are you?

Angelic Buster, sir.

Ah, I've heard the name. So what's your business here?

Gran-- *cough* The High Priestess s-sent me. I want to help our people, any way I can. Give me a mission. Please.

Well, Fenelle seems to think you're capable enough. But any mission I could send you on would be outside the Shield. No civilian‘s equipped to survive out there.

Just tell me what you need. I'll do it.

You're asking me to order a civilian into certain death. Not happening.

I'm volunteering. Give me a chance. For our people.

Hmm... I might have something for you.



Woah… did I just power-up at the possibility of being useful?

He's a general. His attention's worth a lot of glory. Makes sense, really.

That's a good point…

Who are you talking to?

Oh! Myself… ahaha. That's me. Angelic "talks to herself" Buster! Anyways, you were saying?


I'll start you off with a trip to the outskirts. Minimal risk, relatively speaking. Selene needs some ingredients from the West Plains.

It feels so weird to be playing a game where the outskirts aren't a hideous deathtrap.

If you're sure you want to do this, those plains are full of the creatures they call Sleepy Grobblers. She needs ten of their stalks. Don't push yourself too hard.

Once again we get a navigation arrow, this one taking us to the far left portal and out of Pantheon's main hub town.



Magilia arrives at her destination right after leaving town, a map full of Sleepy Grobblers for us to harvest the stalks from.

It has been 41 minutes and 2 seconds of playtime since I began this recording, and finally Magilia is ready to fight her first mob.

…Next time.

[TeeQueue]

Alright. Ten Sleepy Grobbler stalks. We can do this, easy-peasy. Let's take a closer look at the enemy we'll be fighting.



The Sleepy Grobbler is a level 10 enemy, and is the most basic of the enemies we will ever face in our time in MapleStory. It has 350 HP, which I have been told is 'A Lot' for a low-level enemy in an MMORPG. This may seem intimidating, but we have it well in hand.



This is our first hit of Star Bubble, a 3-hit skill. It is already dealing 30k damage.

The HP of mobs do not matter, and this will continue to be the case for normal players until they're around level 100-140, depending on class and equipment. In the case of a juiced account like Magilia has… well, you'll see.



Anyways, after her first three kills, she immediately gets another 5 which lets me show off two things. The first is the Multikill bonus, which gives us a slight increase to EXP gained any time we kill 3 or more mobs in one shot. The amount isn't very large, so it's not worth waiting on combos over just killing more enemies. The second is that tiny 2 combo behind the defeated enemies. This is our Combo meter, it goes up by 1 each time a unique skill cast defeats an enemy, and every 50 a Combo orb will spawn that gives us more EXP.



Defeating enemies makes them drop mesos and various other items, including the 10 stalks we need. We do not have any kind of autopickup normally, and would have to hit the pickup button while standing on each item manually in order to get them.

Thankfully, Nexon sells a solution to the problem they created: Pets!

Oh, right. You're going to need a way to pick up all that stuff… Hey, there's a box in your inventory. Maybe take a look inside?



This thing? _{It doesn't look like any chest I've ever seen…}

That's the one! Crack it open. It's another present.



It's a… snail. Great! I'm so excited to use it..!

Aww, I know. It's such a helpful little guy.

New characters will always get a box with a snail in it that lasts for 5 hours of active time, because the first hit is free.

Burning characters will also get a second snail that lasts for 30 days, and that one is the one I've decided to pull out here. In addition to picking up mesos and items for us, this snail can also automatically use HP or MP potions on us whenever we enter "critical" HP/MP. We can set what critical is in our settings by deciding when the HP/MP bar starts flashing at us.

We go ahead and equip this one, which will do for our purposes for now.



The Snail runs around and grabs all the items on the ground. In the top-center of the screen, the game will track our quest progress as we go. We could open a dedicated quest window to do this as well, but… why?



Hiii-yah!

So we begin the time-honored tradition of jumping back and forth spamming our attack skill while everything dies. This is… really the core gameplay of most of MapleStory. We jump and airdash forward, use attack, things die, repeat forever.

Since mobbing is so much of the game, I decided to try doing a kill counter for Magilia. However, there are two problems:

-I forget frequently to pull up my kill counter.
-Even when I do remember, it will shut off randomly at inconvenient times.

I'll still do my best, but know that it's an approximate kill counter based on what I think I saw.



Anyways, it doesn't take us long to get the stalks. Time to head back to town.

Total Kills: 17



On the way to turn in the quest, I use some of my meso to buy Pet Food. Pets will use fullness while they're on the field, and when their fullness hits 0 they'll go away and make us resummon them. Remembering to feed our pet is now a responsibility, but thankfully Pet Food is very cheap.

MapleStory sells an ability for pets that lets them feed themselves, because of course they do.



Keybind update. I usually put Pet Food on ; just so it's out of the way when mobbing but I can press it to feed my pets easily.



Anyways, let's get this quest turned in.


Hello? Oh, you must be Angelic Buster.

You brought ingredients? Ah, this is exactly what I need. Thank you so much.



And now it's helping someone just once..?

Ehhh…. Maybe she's really into idol culture?

I guess it's possible…

Probably best not to question it. Don't look a gift dragon in the mouth, and all that.

Ah. While you're here, there's one other thing I could use help with…

Shoot! Go ahead.


We've had a shortage lately. It seems someone's been stealing from us.

At first, I thought I was being paranoid, but no, things have definitely been walking out of here when my back's turned. I suppose I ought to tell the General. Or... would you mind telling him for me?

Of course! I don't mind.



Jumping over to the other side of town, this took exactly four flash jumps to accomplish. We get two per normal jump, so… it really wasn't very far at all.


You made the delivery? You're tougher than you look.

I have a heads-up from Selene.

...Someone's stealing our provisions, huh? That's a problem. We can't spare the people to guard the storehouse.



That IS a problem, given that an army runs on its stomach. The Nova are maybe not the best at war. Thankfully, there's a magical girl around to solve all their problems in a flash♥


Hm? You're volunteering? You know the risks.

I know I can do it.

In that case, I'll post you in front of the storehouse. If you see the thief, call it in. Do NOT engage on your own.


I'm serious. You notify me, first thing.

Some quests will instantly move us to the map in question upon accepting. Those quests will warn us when this is the case. Be sure you're ready for a fight before saying Yes, just in case.



The timer in the top-center means that we're on an instanced map. This almost always means that we're going to be fighting something. Sitting around until the timer ends will fail the quest, but the timer is so generous that it's nearly impossible to fail.

Anyways, we wait for people to show up until they do.


I recognize their... auras. Those are the same thieves as last time!

They have somebody on watch this time.

So... should we back off?

Nah, it's just some wimpy little girl. Let's take her out and get the job done.

I don't think we're going to get a chance to call the General…

I think you're right. Let's get 'em, Angelic Buster!



Our quest objective is to beat up a bunch of evil priests to keep them from stealing our supplies.

I hope you're ready to taste ground!

You'll be eating a bunch of it… when we kill you. And bury you six feet under!

Pewpewpew!!

What-?!



BIFF!

BARF!!

Total Kills: 19

We do not even give them the honor of dying to Star Bubble. Anyways, once the fight is over we can leave through the portal on the right to continue the story. It brings us back to town, so let's talk to Cartalion again and tell him all about our glorious and honorable victory.


Volunteer, report. Any sign of the thief?

Okay, here's what happened…

...Those weren't ordinary thieves, they were Nefarious Priests! Why did you engage?! I specifically ordered you to... *sigh* Are you hurt?

I'm fine. I know there's at least two more of them out there. You want me to go track them down?

I can't ask you to do that in good conscience. Go on, volunteer. Good work. You‘re dismissed.



…Or so he says, but I'm definitely feeling that honor. You did good, kid!

Still…



Our next quest is one of those ones that appears over our head. Time to think on things!


Why didn't the general think I could handle that?

He‘s just worried about you, that's all.

But those thieves, or priests, they're still out there. We're gonna get raided again.

The general will take care of it.

Don't just try to make me feel better. Let's figure out how to fix this.

...I might be able to track their auras. Back to their hideout, if we're lucky.

You can do that?

If you want me to. Once we find the hideout, we'll call in the general, and he can take it from there.

Do it.

All right, give me a second... I'm getting some bad vibes out of the East Forest. *sigh* Let's check it out.



And so we go off to the right, which is where the East is.



Aaand up here…



And here we are! Our very first hidden portal. These are indicated by yellow oval outlines that appear only when we get close to them. Some of them warp us around on the same map, acting as shortcuts. Some of them take us to other maps entirely—this portal is one of those.


You know, I'm actually pretty full. Do we need to keep stealing food?

Is that why you think we're doing this? 'Cause you're hungry?

W-was it not?

We're doing this to get to the Stone, you idiot!

Oh, right. Don't yell at me, man…

Now that they know we‘re raiding the storehouse, they're gonna keep more guards there. Then we can hit the Sanctum and grab the Stone before they catch on.

I don't know, that one girl was guarding the storehouse pretty well. What if they keep her there, and they don't move the knights?

Ah, not a problem. I scoped out the storehouse, and the knights are already there.

Sweet!

Let‘s go check in real quick. He's gonna want to know what we're up to.

Okay. Right behind ya.



The two of them head back inside their base of operations, quite confident. And they should be—this is a pretty good plan! Unfortunately, there's one thing they didn't count on:


This is bad. The Sanctum‘s in trouble.

A magical girl, standing just offscreen. I have no idea how they didn't see her.

Yeah. We'd better tell the general.



We're given a navigation arrow back to Cartalion. This is a big deal, so we'd better tell him ASAP…







So we do that.



Oh… It's you.


Angelic Buster? Got something to report?

A lot, actually…

...Hmm. They didn't say which Sanctum, did they? ...No. We'll have to cover all three.

A new quest pops up immediately.

I want you to help patrol them. You and Kaiser. We'll be spread thin, but you'll have support nearby. You'll take the North Sanctum. Notify the priests on watch if you see anything suspicious.

Yes sir! I'll keep an eye out!



I'm actually going to help protect everyone, Eskalade… For real, this time!

You sure are. Just give it your all, Angelic Buster! _{And… maybe think of some choreography for when we're fighting.}

There's no time for that! We have to get going!!

Just keep it in the back of your mind, okay? Your fans are going to want awesome dance moves..!

Fiiine.

[EncLun]

Ah yes, Nexon's preferred MO of "Invent the problem, sell the solution" rears its head already. Get them while they're still new, huh?

It'd be funny if Cartalion goes from gruff soldier to Angelic Buster's super fan later on. Let him have some fun in his life, man could use a little smiling.

[TeeQueue]

We rejoin Angelic Buster as she reports to the North Sanctum to protect the Stone from the Bad Guys.


Wow, Angelic Buster! I'm a fan.

Thanks. Is the Stone safe? The Nefarious Priests are after it.

Well, they're going to leave disappointed as long as I'm here.

Still, just keep an extra close eye out.

Sure thing. But I think the big worry is the South Sanctum. Christina's the only real guard there, and she's... kind of frail.

We'd better go there next.

(Kyle's there, so it should be okay, but...) We will.

Hey-hey-hey, before you go... could I have your autograph?

My whatograph?

Oh, uh, he wants you to scribble something on a piece of paper and give it to him. People like it when celebrities do that. *shrug"

Whoa! Thank you. Christina's going to be so jealous.



Again? But he was already a fan…

You're a battleground idol now, remember? The better you get at idol stuff, the stronger you'll become too. So, when you signed your first autograph…

I got better at accessing my powers?

You got it!

…I see… Anyways.

Lightbulb over our head, we have another quest already.


I don't know about that guy. What do you think, Eskalade?

He seems a little... cavalier, but lucky for all of us, it's not just the Stone on the line here, it's his pride. He'll stay on task. Let's leave him to it and head to the South Sanctum.

Right. Fast as we can go!



The South Sanctuary is just a short walk from the North one. The area within the shield is actually pretty small, the Nova aren't doing too great for themselves at the moment.

_{Ya-tu-tummm… nyoom-nyoom~!}

Really getting the hang of those air dashes, huh?

They're the fastest way to get from point A to point B! And…

I thought they might qualify as "awesome dance moves." If it'll let me help even more… right?

That's the spirit. Dash on, Angelic Buster!

Flash Jumping everywhere is as normal in modern day MapleStory as doing dailies. With ours maxed out now, we've got some serious schmovement on our side.



We make it without any complications, of course. Let's make sure that Kyle didn't screw up everything's okay with Christina.


You're that idol girl Anor likes, aren't you? It isn't safe here. You should go.

I'm Angelic Buster. I'm here to help guard the Stone. What do you mean 'not safe'? Have they attacked already? Where‘s the Stone now?

It's still here, thanks to Kyle-- Kaiser, excuse me. He got here just in time. Then he went back to report to the general.

Good work, Kyleser. Seems like everything's okay here too. With two sanctuaries fine and one empty… There's only one place left to look. To the next quest!


If Kyle's with the general, the West Sanctum might be shorthanded.


That‘s our cue, then.

It's another auto-move prompt… yep, something's definitely going down.



Oh… Looks like the Nefarious Priests decided to GO WEST! as well.

How'd it go in the south?

Not great.

G'ah, we're surrounded by idiots.

At least we did OUR job. Should we go straight to Magnus?

Nah, he'll come to us. Let's just get the Stone back to the East Forest.


(They have the Stone?!) ...You put that back RIGHT now!

Unfortunately for them, these two Nefarious Priests are also vulnerable to a Magical Girl standing just offscreen.



Reacting quickly, one of the Priests summons a shield.



But Angelic Buster fires off a Star Bubble right over it…



…To no avail. The Nefarious Priest readies another spell.



Aaaand, kaboom. We're down.


Who the hell was she?

Forget her, she's got friends coming.

Yeah, let's go.



The Priests run off, taking the Stone with them. We're officially 0-2 for protecting these things.


Tear! Tear, wake up! (Why am I whispering? You're the only one who can hear me!)

We fade to black here, and come back…


Tear? Are you all right?

...Back in the infirmary. Dammit.

...Ugh, what happened?

You fought with the thieves who took the Stone. Kaiser and the general found you afterwards.

They took the Stone? They didn't get away, did they?!

…

Did they?!

It's not your fault.

Oh, gods... I blew it again…

For now, you need to rest.

Wait, no… Magnus is coming.

Magnus?

The general needs to know, right now.



No time to waste. We run off immediately to let General Cartalion know exactly what a big mess this is—with two stones gone, the Shield is down, and with the Shield down, Magnus can pop in. Given that he killed the last Kaiser… Well, it'd be bad.

Tear, wait!



Angelic Buster has no time to waste, and we spawn in right next to Cartalion to expedite things.


A little soon to be back on your feet, don't you think?

I have to tell you something. Those priests? They're going to give the Sacred Stone to Magnus.

Magnus? You think he's behind this?

I heard them say it. He's coming to meet with them.

So that's their plan. This is the second Stone we've lost. The other one attached itself to a girl named Tear. We have two left, only two… That's not enough to power the Shield. It'll fall apart soon, and then Magnus‘s troops will be all over us.

This can't be happening... It's my fault…

Don't say that. I was the one who clustered the knights around the storehouse instead of the Sanctums.

I agree, this is mostly Cartalion's fault. Angelic Buster was doing just fine guarding the storehouse, she could have just kept doing that.

...l‘m going to get it back.

How? We have no idea where they've taken it. The only clue they left at the Sanctum was your unconscious body. And no, it's not in the east woods. Kaiser already swept their base looking for it. You're a civilian volunteer. This is a fight for soldiers. Sing your songs, keep morale up, and leave the rest to us.



Level 26, and a new quest to go with it.


If I'd been stronger, I could have stopped them…

Blaming yourself is a waste of time at this point. We need to get the Stone back BEFORE the Shield falls.

Do you have any idea where to look?

Hmm, I don't. ...But you might. You had a connection with my Stone, so… so you might have that same connection with the others! Let's go back to the West Sanctum and see if you can pick up its trail.

I don't know how to do that. Can't you read its aura or something?

You don't have to know how. You didn't know how when my Stone latched onto you. Just go there and be who you are. That's all you've got to do.


Listen, Tear, if you don't believe in yourself, believe in me. When I tell you… you got this.

Eskalade believes in us. But do we got this?

Well, yes, of course we do. A magical girl with incredible hidden powers has to have at least one crisis of faith, and Angelic Buster Magilia is getting hers out of the way as early as possible.

All right. I'll give it a shot.

Scene transition once again…


There might be some residual energy here. Try to feel it. Imagine what it looks like.

Okay.

And it's detective time.



Angelic Buster focuses on locating the artifact, and we get to see our first instance of Nexon's favorite CG cliche: Dramatic eye-opening.



Like so.


I... I think I see it!

Good. Lead the way.



We head off to go take back the Stone and save the day.


Wouldn't it be safer to head back to base? We pretty much just stole their whole defense grid. You know they‘re going to be looking for us still.

The brilliant reason that the East Forest base didn't have the stone? The Nefarious Priests were just standing around somewhere else. Pantheon isn't very big, how did they get away with that?

I'm really starting to suspect Cartalion isn't very good at his job.

That pink-haired girl probably heard... ONE of us mention the East Forest. And she was still breathing when we took off. So if she told anybody, that base ain't gonna be there much longer. Too bad her friends showed up before we could finish her off.

What was she doing there, anyway? Did she know we were coming?

Probably not, considering nobody's talked about the plans outside the base... or have they?

As a reminder:

The two of them head back inside their base of operations, quite confident. And they should be—this is a pretty good plan! Unfortunately, there's one thing they didn't count on:


This is bad. The Sanctum‘s in trouble.

A magical girl, standing just offscreen.

I don't think this quite counts as 'outside the base,' but really if they'd just remember to check offscreen for magical girls before doing nefarious stuff they'd have won twice by now.

You think we've got a mole?

Or an idiot. A bigger idiot than we thought. Gotta wonder where Magnus finds these guys…


We found them. Now what? Jumping out and yelling at 'em didn't work last time.

Meanwhile, Angelic Buster plans her attack from a hiding place so immaculate that she can't even be seen.


Yeah, yeah, it did not.

Oh, wait, there she is!

Can you go tell the general?

Hahaha, I could TELL him, but he wouldn't hear me. Remember?

Right. And I can't go back and tell him now. What if they get away? What if the Shield falls before we get there?

Both good points.

So I'm going to have to fight 'em again.

Wait for the right moment. Don't go two against one this time.

Okay. I'll wait until they split up or the Shield starts falling, whichever comes first.

If the Shield does fall and you rush in, th-they could kill you.

I'll just have to make enough of a show out of it that other people come running. The troops love a concert, you know.

…

Fine, not like I have any say.


The Shield's still up for now, right?

For now, she focuses back on the Nefarious Priests to watch for her chance to bust in.

As far as I can tell.

Any word from the south?

No word.

Guess one of us has to go babysit those morons.

I'll do it.

Don't be long.



The Nefarious Priest leaves, giving Angelic Buster an opening.


This is our chance…

The screen fades out…



And we enter an instanced map against the same Nefarious Priest who defeated us before. This boss fight only has a single enemy instead of the two before, but as we saw earlier these Priests can apparently oneshot us.



Angelic Buster, ready!!

You again?! Hey, what are you doing??

Isn't it obvious?



I'm dancing!

BARF!

That's the way, Angelic Buster! With footwork that fancy, enemies won't be able to touch you!

Total Kills: 20

All of that only applies in cutscenes, though. Like every enemy this early on, this Priest is nothing. That cube there is the Stone, we make sure to pick it up on the way out.


Got it! Let's get it back to the general, on the double.

This portal drops us right back into Pantheon, thankfully.



General Cartalion!

You—what are you doing here?!


Magnus has launched a full-scale attack. You ought to be sheltering.

I got the Stone back, the one from the west!

What-- How?! ...Never mind. You're a lifesaver. I'll have it returned right away. Once it's set in place, the Shield will come back up.

What about that full-scale attack? Can we get the Shield up in time?

According to Kaiser's recon, Magnus is sending in a smaller wave first. To test our defenses, I'd wager. If we can hold them off, the Shield will do the rest.

Our next action is clear… and we've got another new quest.


*puff* This day's actually turning out okay.

Hmm…

What's wrong?

Something's off. You got the Stone back. The enemy doesn't have it. But they're acting as if they do. If they knew -- and they SHOULD know -- we were about to raise the Shield again, they'd go all-out on us before we could do that. And Magnus would probably lead the charge. But they're sending a smaller wave, and he's not in it.

You think maybe that wave is a diversion?

It could be. Which raises the question: what's their actual plan?

...The south!

Go on.

That's what the priests were talking about.

Any word from the south?

Right! They already had enough Stones to drop the Shield! Th-they wouldn't care about the south unless they had something else planned there!


Let's go see what they're up to.

Time to go to work.



Four priests are right near the border of the Shield, ominously making some kind of magic circle. Unfortunately, they too are falling for one of the newest and most consistent of Novan gambits:


What on Grandis is that?

The offscreen magical girl.

It's a summoning circle. They're going to bring in their main forces here and then attack before the Shield comes up, while our guys are looking the other way.

We can't stop this on our own. We've got to tell the general.

And sure enough, we're brought right back to Pantheon to tell him.


A summoning circle? So it's a two-pronged attack after all. I'll tell Kaiser to fly south and stop the ritual. Thanks to you, we still have a chance... but only a chance.



Again..? Wow! It feels like I'm getting close to the limit of what my powers can do, Eskalade.

I… may have a couple of tricks up my sleeve saved for when you get that far.

Really? So there's even more that I can do…

Sure is! Let's worry about that later. Right now, we've got bigger fish to fry.

Right!

All done, miss Angelic "talks to herself" Buster? There was something I wanted to ask you.


lf Kaiser doesn't succeed, we'll be swarmed.

Fighting at the Shield's edge is one thing. Fighting in the heart of Pantheon is... something else entirely. As much as I believe in Kaiser, we do need a contingency plan. Stay in Pantheon. Help us keep a fallback position.

Can do, general!

Thank you. I'll let you know as soon as I hear from Kaiser.

Pause, two, three…


Well, that didn't take long. Kaiser came through. He stopped the summoning ritual, and the Shield is now back up.

Woo hoo! So... why the long face?

We've started discussing our next step. Kaiser's proposed a... certain strategy.

Sounds like you're not too happy about it.

Heh. Well, I might as well bring you in on this now. By the time Kaiser reached the summoning circle, they'd already called in multiple units. He closed the circle, but they had enough men to push forward, past what would have been the edge of the Shield. Then the Shield came back up, and the enemy troops inside just… vanished. Vaporized, apparently.

The Shield can do that? Just to the enemy?

Yes, and that's when Kaiser came up with his suggestion to drop the shield, let them all in, and then turn it back on. The idea is to give them the impression that we don't have the Stone back, and we'd only managed to hotwire the Shield for a short time before it flickered out again.

IF they take the bait, and IF we can get the Shield back up in time afterwards, we could sweep them all away, just like that. It could work, but only if everything goes our way. If we lose the Stone again, or if they charge in too quickly and overwhelm us, it's over. And there's the actual physical task of uninstalling and reinstalling the Stone. I'm not sure we can leave that to the priests, I'm sorry to say.

That's a fair point. The Stones aren't easy to handle at the best of times.

I have to keep watch here. Kaiser's busy guarding the west, in case they go for the Sanctum again. And the knights are all busy either guarding the front or running recon.

So you need someone to handle the Stone?

Before we even consider that, we're going to need Council approval. I can't just drop the Shield on my own.


(Should I volunteer?)

This plan is crazy as hell, and as the one person in Pantheon who we know can handle stones there's a roughly 90% chance this will work…

And if it doesn't, hey, second bracelet!

If you need me, I can take care of the Stone.

You're sure? You'd be taking on a massive responsibility, more than you ever have. You're reliable, but think very carefully.

I can handle it.

...Good. Full disclosure, you're probably the only one I COULD ask. Aside from Kaiser, and he's busy. Thank you. I'll leave the Stone in your hands -- IF the Council approves.

With the plan all set up, we just have to get the council's approval. One guess what our next quest is.


...And on that note…

I‘ve written down Kaiser's plan. Since you're part of it, introduce yourself to Council President Beldar over there and give it to him. Tell me what he says. I'd eavesdrop, but that'd be rude.



We are officially on messenger duty for a guy roughly ten feet to Cartalion's left. Ostensibly this is to introduce us to the Council President…

But politics are a lot of work, and we've been bustin' our rear for a while keeping Pantheon safe. We'll handle this next time.

[TeeQueue]

Okay, let's talk to Beldar and get the ball rolling on our great plan to… Let me check my notes.

"Let down the shield, let the enemy overwhelm us, and then bug zapper them en masse," apparently? Eh, sure, it's not the worst idea given how outmatched the Nova apparently are.


Who are you? What do you want?

My name's Angelic Buster. The general needs clearance for his new plan.

All right, give me a moment to read this… *sigh* This is... an INCREDIBLY risky plan. And it all depends on YOU? What is Cartalion thinking?

It IS risky, but if it goes off, it'll wipe the enemy out.

IF, yes. ...Yes, it could. I'll need to speak with the Council. Please wait a moment.

Quest transition.


The Council has voted yes. We commend our fate to Kaiser, and to you.

Cartalion must see something in you. So I'll defer to his judgment. Good luck. Tell him... he has our approval.

Will do, sir!



So we once again walk ten whole steps to deliver some information which could have been conveyed by just Talking Slightly Louder. Eh, it's free EXP.

General Cartalion.

I know. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop… but it's hard not to when he speaks so loudly.


They actually voted yes. Well... *sigh* there it is, then.

We'll have to move immediately. Let's just review the plan one more time first.

Quest transition.



Woah… so much power!

The whole of the Nova are placing their hopes on you and Kaiser. Ain't much more honorable than that.



I feel like I've mastered all of my new powers, too!

That's because you have. Without a new level of growth, this is the most you'll be able to do.

At level 30, all first job classes have enough SP to max all their skills. This is because our 2nd job advancement comes at level 30. We'd normally get it out of the way now, but…



I get distracted by having two quests overhead instead of just one. The one with [Job Advancement] next to it is for getting to 2nd job, so let's go for the [Skill] quest and see what new power we get.


Hey, Tear. You've been putting in some extra effort lately, haven't you?

Yeah, I have. The more I practice magic, the better I get with it. Great motivator, huh?

It is, yeah. Just remember, you need to practice your singing and dancing too. That's part of it.

I'm doing MAGIC now, and you want me to practice my pirouettes? Come on. Priorities.

Ah, 'priorities,' nothing. Idols have it rough. You made a good first impression out there, but if you want to keep your fans, you've got to keep stepping it up.

I know... but where am I even supposed to practice? If I start singing and dancing in public, someone's going to recognize me.

Ah, yeah, I know. So, good news, I found a little studio for you. You want to go check it out now?

Obviously, we do.

Okay, I'm not too familiar with your taste, so I gave it an Angelic Buster theme.

That's, hmm, not sure how I feel about that.


Well, *sniff* don't knock it till you see it. Um, you can use your Day Dreamer skill to get there. Get your practice in, and you'll fly up the charts in no time!



This little conversation adds the Day Dreamer skill to our Beginner repertoire.



We're ready anytime, but the longer we wait the more suspicion will…



Using it makes a cool little animation play around us, as we disappear in a flash of pink.



…Okay, I guess she can teleport now, too. I'll keep it in mind.



Using Day Dreamer anywhere in the world brings us to the Angelic Buster suite. It's a room used mostly for photo-ops, and as long as we're here the Angel's Room song plays in a 30 second loop. Forever.

This is Fly Away in other versions of the game, but Fly Away is still not implemented in v251, so we'll make due. The most important part of this skill is what happens when we leave.

Okay, it's growing on me… but we've still got a lot of work to do.



When we exit, it always drops us off right back in Pantheon. This is great for reasons that we will discuss once we're out of the tutorial. Let's job advance real quick…



Or not, I guess. The game strongly recommends finishing the tutorial before we do that.

I mean… do you really want to get used to a whole new set of powers just as Magnus's army is on the rise? It's crunch time, kiddo. Do or die!

I guess you have a point… but we're so circling back to this right after we're done.

Ah, you're back. Are you ready to go?

Ready as I'll ever be.


Kaiser is at the Western Border, with Velderoth backing him up.

You'll go to the West Sanctum and disable the Shield. If all goes well, the enemy will come rushing in. Kaiser and Velderoth will keep them off you. Once all the enemies have crossed the border, Velderoth will fire off a signal flare. As soon as you see it, reactivate the Shield.

Go to the West Sanctum, take out the Stone, wait for the signal flare. Got it.

And don't leave your post until the Shield's back up. Protecting that Stone is our top priority. Once that's done, Kaiser and Velderoth will join you at the Sanctum.


Now, are you ready?

Accepting automatically sends us to the West Sanctum. It's time to save Pantheon.

I'm ready.

I wish you the best of luck.


All right. Easy does it…

Eskalade's tiny dragon spirit is also here, he's currently hovering behind Angelic Buster's head.



We get our first quick time event now, because of course MapleStory has QTEs in it. For this one we press the Ctrl key when the button is over the yellow area, like it is now. They are all this simple, and you cannot actually miss anything by failing them. You just try until you succeed.



Once we land the button, Angelic Buster removes the Stone and starts walking.


Now to wait for the signal flare. ...And wait. ...And wait.

But not far. We've got our orders… even if they're totally boring.

Hey. It's all right. Kaiser's got this.

Of course he does. Especially with Velderoth right there with him.

Hey, right? Just believe in your friends.

I do, it's just... They're fighting a whole army. What if there's too many of them? What if they're stronger than we thought?


Then we go with Plan B. Take the Stone, sprint over to the North and South Sanctums, grab those Stones, and then head for the Great Temple.

Yes, that's correct: Eskalade's plan B is "Loot all the important stuff and run away."

We take the Stones and run? Why go to the Temple?

Oh, I've got it all planned out. Don't, uh, don't worry about it.

You are way too chill.



Suddenly, a flare goes off in the sky. The screen even zooms in to make sure we can't miss it.

The signal!



One more QTE to put the stone back. This time we push up.


Kyle, Velderoth... Please hang in there.

We fade out and then fade back in…


A short while later…

Angelic Buster is pacing back and forth.


Why aren't they here yet? The Shield came back up, didn't it?

Something must have happened. We should go find out.

Yeah, let's go.



It's time to go check on Kyle and Velderoth. What could possibly be holding them up?



Oh. It's Magnus. He'd definitely do it. Thankfully, we've arrived before he's laid everyone out.



Angelic Buster quickly runs in to help her friends.


Huh. So you're the new baby Kaiser.

(That's Magnus! Even inside the Shield, he's still standing. But it must've weakened him, at least...)

Oh, who's that? Are you drafting little girls now? Guess that makes sense. All your men are gone.

Did you come here to talk, or did you come here to die?

The Shield's made him weak. Let's get him now!



Magnus easily sidesteps Kyle's attack.


Ha! Not weak enough for you.

And he teleports behind us, cutting off our escape.







One attack later, and both Angelic Buster and Velderoth are blown clear, with the screen fading into white.

…Knew we should have done that Job Advancement first.



We come to on a platform a ways away.


Tear! Are you okay?

Where are we? Did Magnus knock us all the way here? Where's Kyle? Where's Velderoth?

I don't know. But if Magnus is still alive, inside the Shield, we need to warn everybody.

*groan* Right. Back to Pantheon.



Probably best to tell the General that our worst nightmare is here inside the Shield and that even weakened he kicked our asses, yeah.



Before we talk to him, though… I remember we're level 30.



The Burning Event gave us a present: Free gear!



We get a level 30 Hat, Gloves, Shoes, Weapon, and Outfit. Outfits can be either Top, Bottom, or Overall (which uses both slots at once). This is an Overall.

I quickly equip them all, moving our damage from "Kills everything in one hit" to "Kills everything in one hit but, like, more." Gear upgrades do matter, but not right now for Magilia.



Because all of our equipment is on Tear's model, the only change in gear that we will ever see is our weapon. Our updated Soul Shooter is now on Angelic Buster's arm. This is actually one of the major reasons to play an Angelic Buster: they effectively get free transparency on all normal gear, making it easier to coordinate a cool outfit.

Yes, that matters. The community as a whole agrees that Fashionstory is the true endgame.

I also finally remember to spend my stat points, slapping 105 points into Dex. Yet again, this doesn't actually matter for Magilia. It's still a good habit to get into when leveling.

Anyways we should probably get around to telling the General that Magnus showed up. We can't put it off any longer.


Angelic Buster! I'm glad you're safe. The plan couldn't have gone better.

*huff* No. Magnus got through the Shield. At the Western Border--

We know. Velderoth told us.

Velderoth. Was Kyle with him? Are they okay?

They're both safe. They hobbled back here together a little while ago.

*phew* What about Magnus? Where is he now?

No sign of him. He must have retreated. I like to think I scared him off.

*huff* So we won? And everyone's okay?

That's right. And we couldn't have done it without you. Everyone in Pantheon is grateful.



Darn right they are. Feel that power!

Speaking of, I should really get on those new abilities…

Eh, when the time is right.

At level 35 we can learn about professions and attributes. I'm not dealing with it yet. MapleStory throws a whole lot of stuff at you, and a lot of it doesn't matter until well down the line. Let's just finish up with Pantheon and get going.


I was so worried when I saw Kyle take that hit.

You've got to remember, he's Kaiser now. He can handle things other people can't.

I mean, I GET that, but…

Heh, I'm just teasing you. You've gotten pretty strong yourself.

I guess the one I AM worried about is Velderoth. He's the only one of us who didn't get powers.

Oh, I thought his power was stubbornness. Well, why not pay him a visit? As Tear, I mean. I'm sure he'd love to see a friend, and Tear'd make him feel stronger by comparison.

Well, if he is upset, he'll probably go back to the old hideout.

So we head back ourselves, as Tear.



Tear can actually still do the Angelic Buster Flash Jump without transforming—it and the Grappling Hook are the only abilities of hers we have access to. Anything else forces us to transform. I'd question why nobody can see her doing this and put 2+2 together on who Angelic Buster is, but she's high enough to be just offscreen so they clearly can't see us.

Anyways, let's go see how Velderoth's doing.


Hey, Tear.

Hey, Velderoth. I heard about the battle. Are you okay?

Hmph, the 'battle.' Magnus one-shotted me and took my lunch money. You come here to laugh?

No, no, of course not. I just thought maybe you could use a kind word.

Oh, kind words. Super helpful. What could you possibly say, huh? What do you know about it? You've never been to war. You never will.

It's just... You've always been there for me.

You know what? An idol -- an IDOL stepped up to fight. Where the hell were you? Hm? What's your excuse?

Uh… funny story, really…

Ah, forget it. It doesn't matter who else steps up. We're all just Kaiser's cheerleaders now.

...I did the smart thing, back at the East Sanctum. I went for help. I told him, 'if it gets dangerous, retreat.' And then he rushed right in and stumbled face-first into power. Now he gets all the glory, and I get 'kind words.'

Velderoth… (I can't tell him anything that matters. Not without giving myself away.)

(I should probably give him some space for now.)





We leveled up from dealing with Velderoth's frustration, and also Kyle is here now. Surely everything will go well, right?

(Kyle must feel bad too, about losing to Magnus. Maybe I can talk to him.)


Tear! Wow, it's been a while. How've you been?

I've been good, Ky-- Should I call you Kyle or Kaiser?

Use my name, please. No one else does anymore.

*smile* Okay. I heard you... fought with Magnus. How are you feeling?

Not great. Sore. But I've just gotta take it as a learning experience and get stronger for next time.

Right on! I'll be cheering for you.

...Wait, are YOU hurt? What's with that bruise? What happened?

(Oh, Magnus must have done that.) Oh, yeah, this is, uh... I tripped.

You tripped.

Uh-huh. Yeah, I've been a little clumsy lately. I was playing around, and just... tripped.

Off a cliff, or what? Here, let me take a look.

Of course you were playing around. While we were in the line of fire.

Velderoth, why would you say that?


Why--? *sigh* You want to go on coddling her, fine. The 'Heliseum Force' is done. I'm out. Next time I see you, Kaiser, I'll be stronger than you. And UNLIKE you, I'll earn it.



And he vanishes, in a puff of anger.

…Anyways, we should probably see how Kyle is taking, uh. That.


We need to go after him.

Let's do it.



Velderoth heads out of the Shield and vanishes. We're too late.


Velderoth…

Should we tell the general?

*sigh* You know, he's a grown man. We're not in charge of him. Maybe once he sorts everything out, he'll come back on his own.

...Okay.

We do not see Velderoth again in Angelic Buster's storyline quests.

Velderoth will go on to betray the Nova and join Magnus in order to get the power to defeat Kaiser, becoming one of Magnus's guardians who must be defeated to open the way to his throne room. We will not be seeing him again because this all happens in a level 90 questline to return to Pantheon, which is really long and annoying while giving nowhere near enough EXP to be worth the effort. Just know that it happened, it was all very dramatic, and then we beat him up in one punch because Velderoth kinda sucks.

Really should have gotten around to learning that anti-punching spell, my dude.

Well, I guess we can't stay here forever.

I'll be right behind you.

Don't stray too far. It's probably still dangerous out here.

I won't.



Or so we say, but our next quest picks up immediately after this one. Time to talk to ourselves right next to the border.


...Wow. This has been a lot.

You're telling me. Eight updates in and we're not even out of the tutorial yet.

Hope you're not regretting teaming up with me.

I do have a couple regrets, about losing the Stone, losing to Magnus, hopefully not losing Velderoth... but if it weren't for you, I'd just be sitting around someplace, praying for somebody else to come save us. I'm glad I could be a part of all this.

I got the Stone back, I volunteered for Kaiser's mission, we accomplished that mission... People smiled, everyone was smiling at me… If I'd stayed the way I was, none of that would've happened. So... thank you, Eskalade.

You've done what you wanted to do. You fought for your people, and you won. What now?

Now? Heh, I'm just getting started. I want to keep growing as a person, get strong enough to protect not just MY people, but... I don't know, everybody. Everybody I can. Weak OR strong. Even protectors need protectors sometimes.

(Wow, wish I'd thought of all that when I was talking to Velderoth...)

Oho, that's... surprisingly grown up of you. Oh, all right, not 'surprisingly.' You've grown up a lot, and you'll keep growing. Not to mention all that fame and honor. Everybody in Pantheon knows your name now -- well, your stage name, anyway. I've heard them call you 'the Nova's new hero.'

Oh, really? Never thought anyone would call me that. Wow.

And now we can finally do our first Job Advancement. Let's accept it via the lightbulb.


Yep, and on that note, are you ready for more power?

More than anything in the world.

All right. You know the drill. Focus your mind.



We get a flashy Job Change effect, and a new medal to commemorate our new strength. More importantly, we also get new skills. Because we're level 38, we get 4 SP for our first level + 3 more for every level past 30, for a total of 28 SP to work with. Let's take a look at what we can do with them.



Lovely Sting:

Hits up to 8 enemies at once for enough damage to make them die. Has a larger area than Star Bubble. Our main mobbing skill in 2nd Job.
Pink Pummel:

Hits up to 12 enemies at once for enough damage to make them die, but less than Lovely Sting. Can only be used while grounded, and moves us forward a set distance on cast. This is a primary movement skill for endgame, and can also be used to mob on certain maps.
Soul Shooter Mastery: Lowers the variance of shots by increasing our weapon mastery. Your Mastery of a weapon determines what the lowest % of damage you can deal is. The default is 10%, which means we could do anywhere from 10-100% of our damage with each hit. SS Mastery increases it to 50% at its maximum level of 10, giving us much better consistency. Mastery skills are almost always the first ones to max out for this reason.
Beautiful Soul: Raises Dex and Final Damage. Final Damage is a modifier which all damage we deal is multiplied by, and it stacks with itself multiplicatively. More sources of Final Damage are always welcome.
Affinity Heart II: A sequel to Affinity Heart, this one does something completely different. Instead of raising our Speed and Jump, it instead raises our Status Resistance, Elemental Resistance, Damage, and Critical Rate. Critical hits are a big deal, but not until 4th job so this isn't a high priority yet.
Power Transfer: This ability used to be a buff that gave us a useless shield, but this version of the skill is not implemented in v251. Instead, it just decreases damage passively by 5% per level, to a maximum of 50% at level 10. It's much better this way.



This'll do for now. Beautiful Soul maxes at 14, so we'll be focusing on Affinity Heart next, then the rest doesn't really matter.



Lastly I update my keybinds. I like to keep Pink Pummel on Z so that it's close to where I keep my hand in case I need to dash out of something.

Unfortunately this is where the easy part of things end. The game has not told us how to leave Pantheon yet, and if we look at our quest list via the lightbulb on the left side…



There's a lot of options. The correct answer is "Beldar's Call."


Angelic Buster, there's something I need to discuss with you. Could you come see me, please?

Accepting this quest would have moved us to Pantheon… Which I wish I'd known before I wandered back myself.

Let's go see what he wants.


Ah, thank you for coming. I apologize for the rudeness earlier. Your, um, your attire didn't sit well with me at first, but you've proven yourself many times over.

Haha…

Well, you, um, you have my thanks, and the Council's, but that's not why I've called you here. We have a new mission in mind for you. To get straight to the point, I want you to venture beyond the Interdimensional Portal and find us new allies.

I went ahead and skipped a new quest flag, to save ti—wait we just have an Interdimensional Portal?

There's an Interdimensional Portal?

And apparently Angelic Buster never heard of it before, either.

Indeed there is. If you want to know the history, it first appeared in the Great Temple as a temporal disturbance, when Gerand Darmoor stole the power of Chronica, the Transcendent of Time. At first, we kept our distance, since we had no way of knowing where it led.

We do know now that it leads to a new world. Inhabited, and quite possibly dangerous. And, given our urgent need for outside assistance, we're sending an expedition there, with our two most capable candidates: Kaiser the Nova Guardian, and Angelic Buster the Battleground Idol.

Back up. 'Urgent need for outside assistance'? Didn't we just wipe out their whole army?

One of their armies, yes. Which is why we have a chance to take the fight to them. We're going to assault the Tyrant's Castle and reclaim Heliseum. You and Kaiser forced Magnus to retreat. But out there, on the offensive, we can't bring the Shield along. And even with the two of you leading the charge, we just-- We don't have the numbers yet to take a hardened stronghold. I should mention that Kaiser has already agreed, and has left through the Portal just a short while ago. Will you join him?

Sure… I'll go through this Interdimensional Portal that we've apparently always had. Where is it?

Oh, you're never going to guess this one.



…You're kidding.



It was here the whole time?!

By clicking on the Interdimensional Portal, we can travel to Maple World—the main hub of the early game. Obviously, we warp.



Maple World is a very different vibe from Pantheon, and after looking at it, there's really only one thing to say:


Wow! We're on a whole different world!



With that expression of wonder, we receive the achievement for completing all the Angelic Buster story quests. There's still a couple more cutscenes to go through before we're really free to do whatever, but we could skip them if I felt like it.

We will not be skipping them. Remaster Eskalade and Angelic Buster's rapport is great and they will be given all the time I can grant them.

Still, with us about 90 minutes into my first session with Angelic Buster and us only having gained 38 levels we'll have to look into how to get fans on this new world so we can gain EXP and power up even more.

And hopefully a bit faster than this. We've got 222 levels left to gain, after all.

[TeeQueue]

Okay! New world to explore, lots of things to do, let's see what the quest over our head is about and we'll get right to work.


Don't get too excited. This isn't a vacation.

I know, but I've never even been outside of Pantheon before!

Well, you better get used to it. This is going to be a long trip. If you want to find allies, you're going to have to be strong enough.

What do you mean?

I mean not everyone here's as pure-hearted as you, and even the good ones have to be practical. You lend your strength, they lend theirs. Make sense?

Yeah, I guess so. So... should we find a place to practice, or what?

Well, you could just go out and do push-ups, but, uh, remember something else: you're Angelic Buster. The way YOU get stronger is with honor and recognition. And this world is a whole new audience for you.

Ooh, you're right. Okay, let's figure out where we are and go from there.

This place is called Maple World. And this is the Six Path Crossway. It's a major thoroughfare.

This isn't your first time here, is it?

Hehehe, you got me, I've been here before. Sometimes I get to slip away and wander around. This is where I learned about idols, incidentally.

Oh, hang on... This is why you picked the Great Temple for 'Plan B'!

Ah, got me again. Yeah, my plan was to have you escape to Maple World. Oh, this is what I meant about 'taking the show on the road,' by the way.

I guess there aren't enough Nova to bring out your full power, huh? You need a bigger crowd?

And a crowd the size of this world should do nicely. All we have to do is get the word out about the 'Battleground Idol Angelic Buster,' and then hold a big concert.

H-how big are we talking about?

We'll be fine as long as it isn't a Dome concert. They tend to be…



Well, they're over before they begin. Moving on!


Ah, let's worry about that later. First, we need to get your name out there, and the way we'll do that is with good deeds.

Okay, yeah. That I can do.

Aha, there's someone over there. Maybe they need help, or know somebody who does. Let's ask them.



And so, we go with the brilliant plan of 'ask the first person we see if they need help.'

I'd say this was a silly plan, but given how chaotic Maple World is it's actually not that bad. Anyways, we say hello.


You're looking to help somebody? Well, you can always reach out to Athena Pierce. She's the leader of the Explorers. Got an office over in Henesys.

Quest bridge goes here.

Great! Henesys it is!

...Um, how do we get there?

Oh, I know where it is. You want to go there now?

Of course!

It's time for yet another instant-warp to our destination.



That destination being: the inside of Athena Pierce's house in Henesys. She's actually a very important NPC… but mostly to Explorers. Here she's kind of just a footnote.


Welcome to the Bowman Instructional School.

Hi! My name is... well, call me Angelic Buster.

I'm Athena Pierce. I run the Explorers. What brings you here?

I, um... Well, I'm interested in helping others. Is there anything I can do to lend a hand?

Ah. We love hearing that around here. There are always people who need assistance. I can suggest a few places to start. Let's see... Ellinel Fairy Academy, Gold Beach Resort, Riena Strait, or the Secret Forest of Elodin. Feel free to visit any of them.

Where would you like to go first? You're welcome to visit all of them if you like.

This is actually our introduction into the level 30 Theme Dungeons. Each of the four options there is different content, and we can select any of them using our lightbulb menu by just clicking it there on the left and selecting the relevant quest. Each has their ups and downs:

Riena Strait is probably the most plot-important of the four, as it involves the Black Wings. This secret organization of people trying to revive the Black Mage is also trying to melt the icecaps, and we get to help three warring tribes of animal people to get along before beating up the bad guys and winning a prize: a cool bandanna we wear over our nose so we can feel like a bandit.

Ellinel Fairy Academy is a fun little sidestory about helping Fairies learn to realize not all humans want to harm them, and also saving children who went too far in trying to prepare a play about the great heroes of Maplestory. It gives us a low-level cape and eye accessory, but has an annoying sidequest where you need to get a specific random message from a bunch of random drops that can all have one of a number of random messages… and you do a version of this quest twice.

Gold Beach is about going on an island vacation only to be suddenly press-ganged into working for the rich mogul behind everything, which winds up resulting in beating up a submarine that is hanging around polluting the waters. It's mostly notable for being the theme dungeon with the best map setups for grinding levels if you want to just farm.

Lastly, Secret Forest of Elodin exists, I remember doing it exactly once, finding it entirely unremarkable, and if you asked me I can't remember anything about it other than I think we had to feed a bird some stuff.

So, which one are we going to do?

I'm not sure… I'll take some time to think about it. In the meanwhile…



Let's have one of those surprise concerts, to let people know I'm here!

Henesys as a town has the distinction of being one of the hangout spots for players. There's an entire subculture of Maplers (known in the community as 'henihoes') who will hang out in Henesys talking and showing off their cool fashion and chairs. So, if someone hypothetically had the ability to hijack the game's music with a Beginner skill…

…Well, there are worse places it could be deployed, is all I'm saying.

Let me sing for you!


I really missed you! Enjoy the show!

Now, the way On Stage is supposed to work is simple: Angelic Buster's Shining Heart album has a total of three songs: Shining Heart, Fly Away, and Star Bubble. On Stage is supposed to play a total of five songs selected randomly between the full versions of these three songs. As a result, it lasts roughly 15 minutes if used to completion and has a cooldown of 1 hour.

This is, of course, not implemented in v251. For one, Shining Heart and the Fly Away remix are both still Rooted Out. For two, the Star Bubble full version was not brought over or put into the skill. For three, despite having full EN translated versions of the song in mSEA, those were also not implemented here. As a result, this skill only plays two songs: Angel's Room and a 40 second cut of Star Bubble from a skill we haven't seen yet. They alternate between the two songs, with the first song being chosen entirely at random.

In conclusion: Our 1 hour cooldown 'throw a concert' skill lasts for a maximum of 180 seconds of the same two songs.

What I plan to do is keep track of how well the AB songs are implemented throughout our skillset, and to that end I'll start with On Stage. First off: Angel's Room is not an Angelic Buster song and is worth no points. As for Star Bubble, we do get 40 seconds of the KR version of the song, which has an actual runtime of 2:57. This would be a total of ~22.59% of an Angelic Buster song. We'll round up to 23%, and use that for our answer.

Total Songs: 0.23 of 3



Anyways, I take my couple of minutes to do a little bit of account maintenance. Finishing Angelic Buster's story gave us 500 special experience towards our Union Artifacts… which doesn't do anything for us now but hey, more UA experience is nice.



I also pick up our level 30 Angelic Buster levelup gift, which gives us equipment that we already have and more importantly 4 Inventory Expansion coupons. These let us add more room to our paltry starter inventory space. In the earlygame, these should generally be used on Equip slots, with Use and then Etc being the priority after that. Lastly, I head into the cash shop.



In a rare moment of something cool being added to GO WEST!, there was a massive expansion of the Reward Point section of the shop. Reward Points are something that players get from fighting bosses or doing some other niche content, to a maximum of 50k/month, and the new update has us now able to get things like Transparent equipment (which hides what's being worn), Hair and Face slot coupons for the salon (saves fashion for later), and even unlimited Pet revival potions—previously we could only get 1/month, and they lasted for 90 days, meaning only one character's pets could be maintained for free if we had 3 of them.

Speaking of, we want that Pet Snack. It allows us to equip 3 pets on a single character after a very quick quest which I will not be covering here. It's like, two textboxes. Not even worth mentioning.



So, you figure out what you want to do yet?

Well… The concert was great, of course, but none of the options Athena Pierce gave us seem very… Idol-y.

Ah, well, whatcha' gonna do? Oh… hey, you got a message just now. Maybe we should check it out?



While the theme dungeons are great fun once or twice, we won't be doing any of them today. That's because the GO WEST! update has implemented something known as Tera Blink. To get it started, we just select its quest from our Star menu. We could have done this as soon as we were level 10, but then we would have missed Angelic Buster's story, and that's a fate worse than death.


Oh. just in time! You're just the kind of adventuring sort I've been looking for!

This is Spiegelmann, one of MapleStory's recurring event characters. He is… Spiegelmann.

What kind of adventuring sort?

The kind that needs powering up inside my magic hat. I saw your concert, you have a load of potential!

Wait. So… You have a magic hat, and you want me to go into it?

Of course! In order to gain UNBRIDLED POWER.

Um… I don't think I can get any honor or glory from inside a hat.

Don't you worry about that. We can record it and put it online. You'll go double, no, triple viral!

*whistle* Triple viral… That's a lot of power.

…Ah, what the hey. I'm in!

Then take a look into my hat…



As we do, we're drawn into another world…



Welcome to the Tera Blink world. We'll be spending most of our next half hour of play here on this one screen. Let's chat with Spiegelmann and get the ball rolling.


Welcome to the world I've prepared!

Now that you're inside the world of my hat, we're going to do some missions. Their purpose is to power you up. Complete them all, and you'll become a worthy warrior! Ready?

Ready!

Good! Then talk to me to start!

So we do that, talking to him again, and…


I didn't do anything, but my HP decreased!

This is our first instance of our Sprite Portrait. This is what's usually used for events where any class could be the speaker. It's a neat shortcut to avoid having to spend a lot of space putting every class's portrait over every cutscene… and it lets you see your own fashion to boot.

I reduced your HP slightly to give you my mission! Don't worry too much!

He says "slightly" but we are at half health now.

I shoved some Power Elixers in your bag. Use one to fix yourself!



A stack of 1000 Power Elixers is pretty good for the start of the game—these items are effectively a full HP and MP heal, and are used in endgame bossing. Bosses drop enough that at this point I have around 30-40k of the things at this point, but… hey, free potions. We down one and continue.

Good job! You drank it.

Yeah, it tasted pretty good.

You heard her! Spiegelmann potions available soon, somewhere near you. Naturally sourced from the finest Zakum Fists! Just remember to look out for getting Potion Locked! Hahah!

Um… so what's next?

A second hat!!


Spiegelmannl What is this hat?

We're given a Dazzling Hat alongside this line, to continue the quest.

It's one of my most cherished hats. Not only is it a real charmer, it makes delightful rustling sounds! Use it as a pet! It can pick up items and mesos, and-

Oh, we know that already. I have a cute little snail.

Ah. I'll skip ahead a bit. Equip it, and its equipment, get it all ready, and we'll continue!



Pets do more than just pick up items and mesos for us. For one, they can equip Pet gear. On Heroic servers, this is purely cosmetic. On the regular servers, however, they can be scrolled to give us more Attack power. They can also equip two other things. First off, a Pet who has the Pet Skill ability can equip up to two timed buffs to act as automatic buffs. We have none of those yet, but Spiegelmann gives us a temporary one to use while we're inside the hat.

We can also equip potions to automatically activate when our HP or MP gets too low. To do this, we set a potion into the correct spot on the pet menu here, and then we go into options and select when our HP begins to flash low. The default is 50%, but it can be brought as low or as high as we like. That threshold is when our Pet will automatically give us whatever Potion we've selected. It's very handy.



I keep mine at ~60% for HP and closer to 15% for MP, but this can be whatever you like.



There we go, all set.

Good job on equipping the pet. Also, you'll need food if it gets hungry.

I know that, I have 30 of them, so-

Here's 500 Pet Food.

…Sweet!

Now then… You've already reached level 30. Let's move on to the next step!

What's the… next step?

Your second job advancement!

Oh… uh, we did that already.

Did you?

Uh-huh! There was a cool light show and everything.

Congratulations! Then… the NEXT next step it is!


How do you feel after completing your 2nd Job Advancement? This is only the first advancement of many, and its usefulness should not be underestimated.

I do feel more powerful! What's next?

Hunting!!

…Hunting?

Yes! Using your new skills, it's time to defeat monsters until you're level 60.

But… it took me forever to even get this far.

True! But you weren't livestreaming to thousands of people back then, were you?

…I was not. Alright, let's do this! Battleground Idol Angelic Buster, ready!!

That's the spirit!



Right on cue, a number of Slimes and Orange Mushrooms appear, but they're different from the usual sort: They have top hats.

This means they are worth way more experience than normal, obviously. Top hats denote unknowable wisdom, after all.


Pew pew!

So we get to work. Angelic Buster's mobbing skills all have voice lines, and depending on your taste they are either charming or annoying. Surprising no one, I like them.


Feel the love!

Around 28 kills later, we hit level 44. This causes an explosion which clears all surrounding enemies, bringing the total up to 40 seconds later.

It's working already! I can feel the power!

And I can feel the people cheering you on. Go, Angelic Buster! Show them what for!



Directly after this level, I realize that we're on a flat surface with no platforms and switch to the superior Pink Pummel. It'll move us and attack the enemy, letting us be more efficient.



We blaze right through the next several levels in a similar manner, aiming to get past 60…



And after 152 kills, I finally remember to use the Battle Analysis feature. This lets us see how much damage we deal, how much exp we're gaining, and most importantly: how many kills we get. This saves me a lot of effort in my estimations.



So all that's left is the grinding. It's thankfully short, because these Top Hat enemies give a ton of EXP.



It's not a real grind session, not really. This is because we're still in the honeymoon phase of MapleStory. Games like this want to addict the player, so they take their time boiling the frog so they never notice the heat. Progression for any new player will feel quick for a good while.



And just like that, we're level 62.

Total Kills: 254

We've also duodecupled our total kills.

Anyways, let's talk to Spiegelmann and see what's next on the agenda.


Did you get used to your 2nd Job Advancement skills on the way to Lv. 60? At Lv. 60, you can receive your 3rd Job Advancement!

I feel like I'm advancing through jobs without a break!

That's the beauty of the World Inside the Hat, isn't it? Hehe!

Go do your 3rd Job Advancement and come right back. Here's 100,000 Mesos for pocket money if you need it to get around!

Eskalade, I'm going to level with you: this was the best idea ever.

Yeah, I'm sure thousands of people have seen those sweet new moves you keep bustin' out! At this rate, you'll be a real star in no time!

I can't wait~!

And so, within five minutes we have already gained more levels than we did in our first hour and a half of game time.

~Tera Blink!~

Anyways, we have a job _{(advancement)} to do. Let's get on that.


Eskalade?

...Eskalade, where are you?

...Yo, I'm here. What's up?

I've been getting a lot of attention lately. People keep asking me for autographs.

Of course. You've got the best producer ever. And you've been putting in a lot of work. *ahem*

Well... yeah. Yeah, I have been working hard. And you're a great producer. So... how's that next power coming along?

Actually, I might be able to free it up for you right now. You've gained a lot of new fans in Maple World.

Seriously? All right, yeah! Let's do it!

Well... Okay, um, there's just one little hurdle in the way.

What's that?

It's, uh, you know, kind of embarrassing, um…

I didn't know you could get embarrassed. It just never occurred to me.

Yeah, I'm... I'm tired. Like, low on vitality. Not 'sweepy.' It's just... it's too much so(sic) to unlock the power right now, so... yeah, didn't mean to tease you. Sony.

Well, we can fix that, right? How do you get your vitality back?

I MUST CONSUME ESSENCE STONES. In Grandis, I knew exactly where to find them, so it wasn't a problem, but in Maple World, though...

Well, that explains where you keep disappearing to. If you tell me what they look like, I could help you find 'em.

I did find some, I just ran out of gas before I could get there and eat them. So yeah, if you want to help me, I can tell you where to go.

Of course! Let's do it, Eskalade!


Okay, so: in the Initial Excavation Site, there are these creatures called 'Wooden Masks' that carry Essence Stones. Uh, want me to send you there now?

Next time, we'll hunt some monsters that aren't wearing top hats, get a stone, and go through the entirety of our 3rd job career.

Yes, really.

[TeeQueue]

Okay, time to go beat up a Wooden Mask for their Essence Stone!


I don't think I can do that from here. I should try again from somewhere else.

Or not. We can't teleport anywhere from inside of the hat! It's easy to leave (Just talk to the Spiegelmann), but not knowing this means having to watch the cutscene again right after before warping. It's a tiny inconvenience to the whole affair. Still, we leave and we can—oh hold on another quest popped up.



For you, Angelic Buster. A little something for working so hard.

Gee, thanks! I'll treasure it always!

Eskalade gifts us an Emblem. Every character class gets two, one at 60 and one at 100, and they're considered important for reasons we will get into later.

(There is a third Emblem that all classes can get as well, but it is beyond the scope of this Let's Play.)



Anyways, we do the warp and exactly four kills later we get the stone we need. This is a random drop, but the rate is pretty high.

Total Kills: 258


All right, just in time! I was starting to get hangry. And I'm a dragon. Eating people is not out of the question.

Mmm, oh, they taste like, uh, like a foreign delicacy. Oh, very nice. Aw yeah, there's my energy, comin' right back. Okay, let's give you the power. Focus your mind and all that.



Angelic Buster, blast off!

Quick as a flash, we've unlocked our 3rd Job skills.



First I max out all Magilia's 2nd Job skills—I frequently slack on this when doing insane earlygame leveling sprees like this, since time spent upping skills is time spent not mobbing. Now, let's take a look at our new toys.



Soul Seeker:

Creates 2 balls that each hit 1 nearby enemy for 320% damage for 1 attack each. On each hit, the ball has an 85% chance to respawn and target another (or the same) nearby enemy, to a maximum of 7 times. Gets real stats because it's the first attack we've ever had that matters past level 100 or so. As a point of reference, Lovely Sting did 160% damage with 4 Attacks, so these balls are pretty weak, the selling point is that you don't have to aim and they can wipe a map for you if you can oneshot with them.

Back when AB was first released, these could also be spawned to a point where it would crash the client for you if you used too many of them, which is both very funny and thankfully not implemented in v251.
Star Crash:

Hits up to 8 enemies for enough damage to make them die. The main mobbing skill in 3rd Job if you can't oneshot with SS. High vertical tolerance means it's better for hitting platforms just above us than Lovely Sting.
Blossoming Star: Provides a flat bonus to Dexterity, a Final Damage bonus, and up to 40% Knockback Resistance. Normally, when characters are hit by enemies in MapleStory they are knocked around slightly. Knockback Resistance is a stat that maxes out at 100% and removes this issue entirely.
Dragon Whistle: Provides bonus Attack, Critical Damage, and Ignore Enemy Defense (IED for short). Critical Damage raises our damage on critical hits, which we want to always be doing so it's basically a straight damage increase. IED, meanwhile, lets us ignore a portion of enemy damage reduction. I'm not going to delve too deep into this for now, but we want our base IED to be around 90+% by the time we get into later game bossing, so any source we can get for free is nice.
Love Me Heart: Gives bonus Max HP, MP, and Defense. Also provides the other 60% Knockback Resistance to get to 100%.
Affinity Heart III: More Dex, more Damage, more Final Damage.
Center Stage: Raises Critical Rate and Critical Damage.

Back in the day, there was one other skill that went here known as Heavenly Crash. This skill had the Angelic Buster using a hammer to knock the enemy into the air. Because it stunned enemies, it was very useful for newer players back when we couldn't oneshot everything.



The hammer was so iconic to the Angelic Buster's design that the NEW AGE animated trailer, released only two months before Angelic Buster's remaster happened, had her using it in her only scene to smash a poor gargoyle.

Heavenly Crash, and the hammer that accompanies it, are sadly not implemented in v251. I have a pet theory that this was done so that the Angelic Mallet could return in a skill that would actually see use past level 100, but since 6th Job has only recently been released and is missing 5 new Job-exclusive skills it remains only a theory.



This'll do nicely. Time to head back into the hat.




Does your 3rd Job Advancement feel different from the 2nd? Even if you feel stronger, there's always room for improvement. Of course, the 3rd Job Advancement isn‘t the end either... hehe.

Now that we're over level 60, it's time to learn about portals. This is around when they'd start showing up in natural progression, so Tera Blink is kind enough to quickly explain them to us.



Portals appear while we're mobbing, and give us a chance to get fabulous EXP and prizes. Going from right to left because that's the order they'll usually appear in, there are four kinds of portals.

The furthest right is a Friito portal, which brings us to a minigame that is played for EXP and Hunter's Bags. These bags are random loot bags that give us a variety of things that are all kind of "okay." If we're mobbing using EXP bonuses in any form, it's not really worthwhile to do these past level 200—we'd get more EXP and level faster by simply continuing to attack monsters like normal.

Its identical twin brother next to it is a Pollo portal. These portals give us hunting opportunities with monsters that are generally worth more EXP than the mobs we would otherwise hunt. EXP bonuses do apply in these portals, making them lucrative if you're not worried about losing your map. (Several maps in MapleStory have a fairly high rate of usage, meaning sometimes there's competition. It's considered rude to try and kill mobs on a map where someone else is actively training, so losing a map is sometimes a concern.)

Next to it is the Inferno Wolf portal. In this portal, we're teleported off to fight a horrible wolf for 20 seconds. We want to deal as much damage to it as we can, and we're rewarded EXP for how much damage we do. Additionally, when the monster finally dies (its HP is shared across the server so multiple players beat on it together) we are given a Hunter's Pouch based on our contribution. Its EXP is very good and it's short content, so I usually take these portals.

The last one is the fancy purple portal. It belongs to Especia, and one of these will appear in place of every fourth yellow portal you'd see. These are a quick minigame where we break down a totem pole. Each pole section counts as a mob, all our EXP bonuses apply, and the rates they give are massive. In conclusion: do every portal except for Friito, who can be ignored if you're busy mobbing.

And maybe do Friito because his minigames are fun.



By listening to all of this, Magilia has gained 12 levels.

So… we're viral?

Yes, and nearly double viral! Just a little more and we'll be ready for the next step!!

Awesome! …Anyways, for no reason I feel like a break.

Oh sure sure, no rush! I'm a man of magnanimous patience!

We have a lightbulb over our head that gives us a quest unique to our storyline… so once more we leave the hat.


(Oh hey, is that Kyle?)

(Wow, I haven't seen him in forever. Let's go talk to him.)



We approach the Kaiser.

Kyyy... ser!



Oh, Angelic Buster? Nice to see you. I've heard a lot about you lately. How've you been?

Hmm? Heard what, exactly?

Oh, just stories about you going all over the place, helping people out. Like you do. You look good!

Reminder: We have been in a hat ever since leaving Pantheon.

Thanks, you too. How're you holding up?

Eh, you know, same old.

You're always so chill.

'Always,' huh? ...How long have we known each other again?

Oh well, you know, just... saying, um… Hey, you found any allies yet?

I've been working on it. We just made friends with the Cygnus Knights.

Oh, nice! I've heard of them! They're supposed to be the strongest good guys in Maple World. Great job breaking the ice!

I was lucky. They approached me first. ...Turns out we have the same enemy. Well, their MAIN enemy is a guy called the Black Mage, but apparently HE'S got Magnus on his payroll. And Magnus knew about Maple World before we did. So I'm going to work together with the knights. We're going to share information. Win-win.

For sure. I've been looking for allies too, but honestly, I don't even know WHERE to look. You've gotten in good with the knights already. I'm kinda jealous.

Hey, don't get jealous 'cause I got lucky. That's Velderoth's thing. I am lucky, though. Even before I was Kaiser, I had Tear back home. She always told me I was special. I'm not, but she wouldn't let me say that.

You are special, Kaiser. You're amazing. You put other people first, you sacrifice for them... Not everyone can do that, you know.

Heh. That's just what she would have said. If she were here. ...Thanks.

...Hey, listen, I... um… Oh, no, it's just... It's good to see another Nova all the way out here. I should get going. I've got a lot of work to do if I'm gonna catch up with you, right?

Heh. If you say so. Take care.



Completing this quest gives us a new level 75 quest as well, and the real reason I left: Alliance Invitation. This quest is supposed to give us something really nice.

Hey… Eskalade. Do you think that the Alliance would accept some help from the Battleground Idol, Angelic Buster?

Eh, probably. Wanna go ask?

Do I!



And so we teleport to Ereve, and find ourselves in front of the most important NPC in the entire game.


Hello. I am Cygnus. Thank you for coming on such short notice. I was eager to meet you after I heard about your accomplishments in Maple World.

_{…Wow! We really DID go viral!}

Shh! Focus, Tear.

Tell me... What do you know about the Black Mage?


He is an evil Transendent, who destroyed Maple World hundreds of years ago. Great heroes, and a multitude of their supporters, risked their lives to stand up to him, but even together, they couldn't kill him. The best they could do was seal him away.

And now, the seal has been undone. Perhaps you can already sense it. His followers are on the move, and the danger is close--closer than most people know. Under my banner, the Cygnus Knights are working against him, but our numbers are too few. Thus, we search for those with strength, courage, and righteousness in their hearts.

Yes, someone like you. Explorers and the Resistance have already joined us in establishing this Alliance. Please do everything you can to aid the Alliance…

Lot of terminology thrown out here, most of it beyond the scope of the LP: We don't know anything about Transendents, or about the Resistance. Explorers are those guys who are the base classes, Athena Pierce mentioned them once (and it's one of their fault that the Black Mage's seal came undone). The Resistance joining in particular was a Big Deal in both the Resistance and Cygnus Knight class stories, as this required them to overcome a long-held grudge against the Cygnus Knights in order to actually work with them again. It's actually not a bad story…

But it's got nothing to do with magical idol dragons, so do we really even care?

Of course not.



For completing this quest, we get two things: a medal called 'A Member of the Maple Alliance' and the Alliance Inspiration beginner skill. The medal isn't worth much of anything, but the skill is great: It's a free 5 to all stats, and 5 in both Attack and Magic Attack. It's a straight +5 to everything.



Just one problem: Where is it?!

Well! It turns out this quest is bugged post-remaster, and despite finishing it we don't get the skill. For Angelic Busters, Will of the Alliance is not implemented in v251.

…Let's just get back to the hat.



Hey, Spiegelmann. I'm back.

Welcome back! Are you ready for the next mission?

Sure am! What's the plan?

More hunting!! Make sure to use those third job skills, and glam it up!

Alright! Will do!



Twinkle twinkle, little STAR!

So we get to work. In such a compact area Soul Seeker isn't significantly different than Star Crash, so I use the latter.



With the starlight of hope!

It really doesn't take very long.



Only 223 kills later, we're at level 101 and ready to go.

Total Kills: 481

Now, my virally marketed Idol friend: it's time for the next step! You're ready!

Ready for what?

To advance your job a fourth time!

Wha-Already?!


Don't you think you'll feel complete after your 4th Job Advancement? It's like a fresh start!

The 4th job advancement is the most important one by far: most of the skills we'll be using for the rest of the game are here. It's a very big deal, so we'll get it done ASAP.

…Right after we leave the hat again, just in case.



Unfortunately, I am an MMO player and I get distracted during the "exit" cutscene. Now that we're over level 100, we can participate in all the events of the game. First and foremost, the Angelic Buster Comeback event gives me access to the bottom track, and with it something truly important.



Eskalade? What's this?

Oh, it's another one of those pet dolls. It says it's supposed to be a cute li'l me. Go ahead, equip it!



It doesn't look very much like you…

Eh, they must have taken some liberties. But look how cute I am. Ah, I could just pinch my cheeks! If I could… you know. Touch things.

Okay, now let's see about that Advancement quest.


*sigh* You know, Eskalade, I used to think Magnus was the worst of the worst, except for Darmoor. But the more I go around and talk to people, the more I think there's worse out there.

Hey, why the serious talk all of a sudden?

Well, I was thinking, if there ARE bigger threats, I'm going to need to get stronger.

Yeah, all right. We'll train harder.

That's what I've been doing. ...All right, let me spell it out: how many more fans do I need to unlock the next power? Did you say ten thousand?

Uh, did I?

Yeah, something like that. You said ten first, then a hundred, then a thousand, then ten thousand. Hmm, I'll need a bigger concert venue for that.

You don't need concerts now. You're already strong enough to help people, earn your honor that way. Also, we're not on Grandis; you can be yourself here.

You mean Tear? Could I GAIN honor as Tear? Would that work?

Well, the reason I said you shouldn't back in Pantheon is because everybody there knew you couldn't do magic. I should've mentioned it sooner. That's my fault.

Hmm. I had been wondering if I could just be Tear out here, when I wanted to be.

So how come you've been Angelic Buster the whole time, then?

Well, there's Kyle. He'd be worried if he knew I was here. Plus, you know, I like to sing. People really seem to enjoy my songs. They light up when they hear them. I love that. Even the outfit's grown on me, believe it or not. And I didn't always love pink.

Well, to tell you the truth, the reason I didn't say anything sooner is because... because I like your songs too. *cough* I like your Tear side AND your Angelic Buster side. And I worried if! told you, you wouldn't want to be Angelic Buster anymore. ON that note, um... I have one last power to give you, and it's yours now if you want it.

Wait, you were holding out on me?!

People recognize you everywhere. You've made it, on two different worlds. All the honor, fame, and glory anyone could ever want. So yeah, if you're ready, go ahead and focus your mind.

We do. But unfortunately…



I'm gonna be the strongest!!

The freaking Maple Boys photobomb Magilia's job-up animation.

99 levels remain until the end of Tera Blink.