Hello! To my surprise, I’m able to bring myself to write another blog post this year (lol). Not much has happened this month so this post will probably have less detail compared to my previous posts.
It is currently February and that means only one thing: Valentine’s Day! Well, it’s already passed (lol), but the St. Valentine event is still going on (as of this post, there’s still around two to three days left). I haven’t really participated much in the previous Valentine events so I don’t remember which aspects of this event are new. Having said this, from the news page, it seems that the “Heart Treasure Chest” (ハートの宝箱), Rose Whip (ローズウィップ) and “La Vie En Rose” (ラヴィエアンローズ) are new? A new chest for taming spirits (Treasure Chest of Spirits II (精霊の宝箱・Ⅱ)) has also been added, though I unfortunately don’t have enough funds right now to register one in the Ranch Guild. It would be nice to have a light or water elemental spirit as a pet, though.
Graduating from the Magic Academy and Visiting the Desert of the Empress
Incidentally, I’ve (my character) graduated from the Magic Academy in Gloria! After completing my research project on methodical spellcasting in the art of light magic, titled “Efficient Recursive Magic Circles: A Novel Approach to Spellcasting Inspired by Lost Mythological Praxes”, I was able to complete the final course: “Advanced Spellcasting (For Students Specialising in the Art of Light Magic)”. Following this, I’ve changed my attire from school clothes to something more casual and comfortable to wear for adventuring. Still, I’m always up for learning new things so I applied to Avalon for a part-time course and got accepted (lol).
Backstory for my character aside, the “Magic School Howlin” items have been added back to the A-point shop just this month. Luckily, I still had a lot of A-points from before, and there were campaigns for increased A-point gain and discounted warehouse expansions ongoing for a limited period of time, so I took the opportunity to purchase a few silver coins to get enough A-points to buy a full set and buy some more warehouse space.
From my previous expeditions to Valhalla, I learned that I lacked long-range offensive capabilities so I also bought myself a Valhalla Anchor (ヴァルハラアンカー) to get a decent long-range weapon. It’s a paragon level whip that has a 15% critical hit chance (water element), a 10% chance of inflicting slumber and a longer range compared to other whips. It’s also a silver type weapon, though its attacks are only 50% water-attributed (so it can’t be used directly for mitotic enemies). It’s a pretty useful and fun to use weapon, so I found myself using it at some points when I was farming event materials.
I’ve heard that some strange monsters have appeared in the desert in southern Tornea, so I’ve come to see investigate…
There were these Rose Mimics in the desert. They’re somewhat tough because they have quite a bit of HP, a lot of their attacks cover decently large areas and they have a paralysing attack that is a huge pain in the butt to deal with. Seriously. Initially, I didn’t use any preventative measures for paralysis, so I ended up being hit by their paralysing move quite often. The duration of paralysis is extremely long, so I ended up dying several times even with 22 HP. Luckily, I have a Triple White Lightning Ring to completely remove the threat of paralysis. There’s another type of Rose Mimic that drifts the stage, which seems like it’s supposed to be the boss. The S2 boss music even plays when you encounter it (lol).
As far as I can tell (I haven’t paid much attention, so I might be mistaken with some item drops🙇), the normal Rose Mimics drop the two chests (Heart Treasure Chest and Chest of Thorns) and an item called Large Rose Thorn (薔薇の大棘) which can be used to synthesise Rose Whips. The Choco Rabbits drop Heart Treasure Chests, Love Cacao (ラブカカオ), Rare Cacao (レアカカオ), Royal Cacao (ロイヤルカカオ), Numbing Raisin Chocolate (しびれるレーズンチョコ) and Rabbit Tail (they probably drop Rabbit Meat as well but I haven’t tested this).
The Rose Mimic boss has a lot more HP and more potent attacks. Its paralysing bee attack, for instance, deals 5 HP worth of damage.
Its attacks also inflict a lot of status effects: sleep, fear and poison (in addition to paralysis).
The boss Rose Mimic allows two collection attempts and, in my opinion, drops more useful items: Large Rose Thorn, Devil Heart, Ruby Fragment and Ruby. During the event, I was able to craft two Rubies from the Ruby Fragments I’ve also obtained and collected one Ruby from this Rose Mimic.
I actually spent most of my time during the event in the desert because I wanted to make La Vie En Rose, which is a holy level whip that is much faster, deals 20% more damage to botanical type enemies and has a 20% chance of inflicting paralysis. This took a lot of time because I didn’t really have the dice accessories to go back and forth the spots where the Rose Mimics are. I had to use all my Silver Dice and Gold Dice supplies as well as my Platinum Dice so I’ve completely exhausted all my dice after farming (I’m gonna have to farm dice again at some point😭). It was especially difficult because I kept getting treasure chests instead of actual event items. I was really confused by this so I kept checking if I had any item that increased the probability of collecting treasure chests. As far as I could tell, the probability of collecting treasure chests seemed to be higher or at least the same as collecting other items for the event enemies (fortunately, this wasn’t the case for the Rose Mimic boss).
I was a bit bored afterwards, so I actually made the English version of the card (lol), though I couldn’t remember what font was used for the English text:
Visiting the Golden Jungle
As for the Heart Treasure Chest, apart from the Heart Shield ()心の盾, I don’t think there’s any noteworthy item in particular so I haven’t really looked into the items in depth.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really have much time to investigate the Golden Jungle. I did go there a few times, though.
There doesn’t seem to be anything new here as far as I remember.
Sonya from the Furniture Guild Comes to Haurianna
It’s a bit strange to see Sonya being so close to Fleute (lol). I also happened to capture an interesting expression on Fleute’s face…
From what I’ve heard, it seems like the Furniture Guild NPCs alternate every year. It looks like it’s Sonya’s turn this time. Her quests are essentially about gathering special materials that are only obtainable during Valentine’s for the purpose of making furniture (though at the end, she ends up requesting items to eat for herself lol). I don’t know why, but apparently they’re able to make furniture from cacao seeds lol (so can the player, but they have their synthesis jars for this; I assume crafting items using magic is the norm in the world of Puppet Guardian…). Her quests give some lore tidbits, like the furniture store being situated close to Lost Mythos, though I assume this was also the case with the last events (I don’t know if any of the quests have been repeats from previous events). I was also able to archive her quests (machine translated), which can be found here.
This year, the latter half of her questline gives some aprons and a blue pochette bag as rewards.
The 11th Valentine Cup
I managed to participate in this year’s Valentine Cup! I believe there were some issues with the announced dates this time? As far as I can tell, the announced deadline for registering squires was one day later than the announced date which meant that some people weren’t able to register their squires. I don’t really know much about it because I didn’t really look at Magicaloss news for quite a while.
Anyhow, I managed to enter my squires at the very last minute knowing barely anything about the tournament. I did know beforehand that only male squires were allowed to participate. Luckily for me, all three of my squires were men. I think there were no limits this time in terms of stats and levels which does reflect what I saw on the finals where some squires had 1000+ levels.
Since my last post about the Minotaur Cup, I was actually able to win two matches in the following cup (the Byakko Cup). However, both of those wins weren’t exactly fair. One of them was because one of my squires, Kyoshi, was able to enter a bonus match where, if I remember correctly, his opponent didn’t even have a weapon (his opponent was literally named “Bonus” lol). Thanks to the person who entered that squire, I was able to win my first tournament match! The other win was because one of my squires (I can’t remember who), was up against an opponent who had a significantly lower level.
Following from this, I was also able to win two further matches during this year’s Valentine Cup thanks to one of my squires, Masahige. As usual, I gave my squires some accessories to increase their chances of winning against higher levelled opponents for even just a tiny amount. I gave Masahige my Kenmohororo, Curse Storm Shield, my Zoa Freezing Gloves and one of my critical bracelets (I can’t remember which). Apart from the gloves, I don’t think the items I gave were necessary because he got lucky matchups.
Thanks to the cup, I was able to learn a bit from what sorts of equipment combinations work and what don’t work very well. In the future, I think I’ll try to give my squires some equipment to cast magic with as an experiment. The short range weapons also don’t seem to work very well, especially the claw because Masahige kept using the special attack and missing with the Kenmohororo due to how its hit registration works. I think the scythe type weapons (I include all weapons like rippers with the scythe special attack here) work quite well because of the dash and the large hitbox; they’re certainly better than claws, at least. I was able to get two Sweet Chocolates and two more medals at the end. I hope to be able to save up and get a Mobius Armlet someday.
spongy's Blog 