Merry Christmas! The Christmas event is currently on in Puppet Guardian (and Magicaloss)! This will be a short post, but before I talk about it, some other interesting things have happened regarding the game.
HTML5 Beta
Firstly, the HTML5 version has been released! Well, the beta version, that is. The game systems have been relocated to a new server. This started last month and finished in a week so everything was under maintenance for quite a long time. After that, the HTML5 version was made available and it can be accessed by adding the query string ?html5=1 to request the HTML5 web page. It was quite an exciting addition, though it’s certainly not without issues (quite a lot, unfortunately). Though it’s technically playable, there’s quite a lot of bugs to be encountered, such as the inability to use shortcuts and missing game data. Animations can also be quite buggy, particularly spell effects which will cause crashes depending on what spell you cast. However, as of writing this, an update has recently been pushed to the game and it seems like the issues I’ve had with some spells have been fixed (snow storm and crushing bullet).
I believe quite a lot of these come from simple mistakes in the JavaScript code and these can be fixed quite easily. The bugs seem to cause a domino effect of sorts, with errors causing other errors along the line so hopefully fixing some errors would also fix other ones.
In any case, for now, it’s been recommended to play using the Flash version and the developers are doing their best to polish the game and fix the bugs. The development blog posts progress reports on bug fixing every Saturday 19:00 (JST). Event with all the ongoing issues, the HTML5 version does offer a huge improvement over the Flash version which is the performance in reference to the fps. As a result, inputs are significantly more responsive. I’ve tried using a shield to fight Garm and it felt really good to be able to block almost instantly as opposed to having a significant amount of input response delay.
Christmas Event
I don’t know why there’s a skeleton dog here…
As always, Gateau and Chocolat have come back to the Celestial Castle to celebrate Christmas. Gateau asks for help in building the Christmas tree and Chocolat offers quests to obtain the green “Christmas Elf” set. Over the past few days, Gateau asked for:
50,000 Fresh Creams
30,000 Thunder Crystals
40,000 Iron
50,000 Holy Yarn
30,000 Candy Canes
80,000 Snowballs
Fresh Cream, Holy Yarn and Snowballs can be obtained from the collection points that appeared in the main celestial castle area with snow (the area with towers 1 to 4). The first two are from the collection points with presents. Incidentally, it seems that you can get Diamond Fragment from these presents!
I had 4 Diamond Fragments in my warehouse so I was able to synthesise a Diamond! I’m planning to use it to make a Blizzard Book for one of Varvara’s quests.
I don’t actually know what the Fresh Cream is for, other than you can consume them to heal 1 HP point, but the Holy Yarn can be synthesised into some winter and Christmas themed clothes.
The Christmas tree actually got completed today as of writing this (actually, yesterday if we’re talking about the actual game time/Japan time)! I wasn’t able to contribute to all stages, but I was able to contribute some stacks of items. Gateau gives reward items when you donate, but this isn’t guaranteed and the probability is on a 1:1 relation to the number of items you give. Giving only 1 item will give you a 1% chance of receiving the reward and 99 will give you a 99% chance of receiving it. I believe most of the reward items were healing items. I was able to get a few Christmas socks (which are actually shields, lol) and 2 Candy Cane Swords. The shields are actually quite useful as they block darkness elemental attacks. All items can also be synthesised into Christmas furniture.
I got 4 kinds of rewards! The Candy Cane Swords are in my warehouse.
Here are a few images of the tree building progress:
This is what the finished tree looks like!
I mentioned this at the beginning but for some reason, there were dogs in the castle!
There were these dogs……and these ones!
I don’t know if it’s supposed to happen but it’s quite a bizarre sight (the skeleton dog especially). You can attack them and they attack you, but there is, of course, no damage dealt.
Update: The Christmas plush bear present for 2020 has been given out!
It’s my first time getting one!
Revisiting Shasura
Since it’s the holidays and I’m able to, I thought I’d open a few chests. I got an unexpected Christmas present! I was able to get the 5 back dice ring!
I decided to visit Shasura in stage 9 as it’s been years since I’ve seen him last time in the English version (in fact, it’s probably been more than 10 years!) I had to wait a while after getting the ring though. I thought the ring only required 1 of each gem point but apparently it needs 3 so it’s quite costly to use… The least amount of gem points that I have are emerald points, of which I only have 15 of.
Shasura sure has a lot of HP…
It’s been a while since I’ve seen his spell animations. They look pretty cool, but unless you’re using a ranged weapon or casting spells from afar, he won’t hit you with them.
I thought he’d have much less HP than he actually does (lol).
I finally defeated him after a long fight.
It was a really long fight as I had a hard time hitting him due to his charge attacks. My weapons’ damage were also reduced considerably so critical hits only do little damage (it was hard charging up my mace fully, too).
After all that, these were what I got:
I’m never going to the ruined spots again (lol). I was expecting a gem fragment, but I guess I got blinded by my luck at getting the dice ring.
A festival is currently happening in PG! As usual, it is a repeat event, though some new items have been added. Incidentally, some days ago, an update on the Ragnarok tournament was posted on the official artifact blog showing the rewards for the winners. It looks like they’ve managed to tackle the tournament problems! There is also a small bit at the end promising a progress report on the HTML5 transition. That’s a really interesting news—hopefully, things are going well on that end.
Anyway, I hadn’t played PG for a long time so I had no idea what the event adds. It took quite a long time to look around but it seems like the event takes place mainly in stage 2. Compared to the last event, this provided a bit of a relief.
Apart from the new “stages” (boss arenas) and the stage 2 changes, the only other feature added was the new NPC. I’m not quite sure what he’s called, but I believe his name and title is something like: Pyrotechnician Tamaya.
If I remember correctly, he gives 11 quests, all of which is to help him with preparing the fireworks. Most quests require event related items, though some can be as simple as giving 10 Gunpowder. There were also two quests where I had to tame Kappas with Cucumber that you could collect from the last spot of stage 2.
There were so many cucumbers in that container but alas, you could only collect from it once (unless you travel back and forth repeatedly). Some of the decorations weren’t collection points, unfortunately, like that tub of cold Ramune.
I don’t know exactly which enemies drop which item as I just tried to hoard as many as possible. I think I’ve collected a decent number of each, apart from those you can get from the bosses.
Oh! By the way, the event reintroduced some old pets. One of that was the fox which I believe is called Zenko (善狐)? Anyway, it’s really small and cute. I tried to fight the urge to get it… and I failed.
It’s sooooo small! Pressing the Pet button command will make it come to you and perch on your shoulder.
I have to say that while it is a cute pet, it doesn’t seem to want to do anything most of the time, particularly with collecting items. It does have a pretty cool attack where it transforms into some sort of animal statue (tanuki?). It’s a slow attack with limited range, but as far as I can tell, it can inflict vertigo and poison.
By the way, there was also another pet that I couldn’t help but get…
It’s called Amabie (アマビエ) and while it looks strange at first, I’ve come to think of it as cute as well (in a way). Apparently it’s a mermaid/merman! I wanted to get it mostly because it can inflict Holy (the Holy Water effect). The Holy Book and all the items that can inflict Holy require items from the Requiem Event so I thought getting it is a way to get around waiting for the event. I wanted to be able to inflict Holy because Kappas drop a special item (which I think is called a Medicine Ball?) as a conditional drop. Unfortunately, because it’s a pet, it’s hard to reliably inflict Holy because of three things: the effect is not guaranteed; only one of its attacks can inflict Holy and Zenko often defeats Kappas before Amabie does.
Apart from some enemies being replaced by their event counterparts like the Kobold, there are also new enemies in stage 2, like these Shikigami which I found annoying to deal with. Not only is its HP high for what it is (a piece of paper), its attack can also inflict vertigo.
There are Kappas, as well! When one is tamed, its colour changes into green.
All of the new enemies (apart from the boss, of course) drifts around the map.
The bears also have their costumes on! I know for certain what they drop, apart from Leather but I believe they also drop pieces of the target circles they wear. Unfortunately, I had to throw away a lot of Leather because my warehouse is already full of them.
The last spot has been meticulously decorated with various things, like this shooting stall here.
I don’t quite know what that thing with taiko is.
Here’s the shrine that I mentioned in the last post.
The shrine takes you to a stage that’s, well, inside a shrine. It’s a boss stage, similar to that of Memories of the White Lion.
I actually don’t know what the boss’ name is but I call it Chagama Tanuki.
It can be quite a difficult boss, especially with its “boil” attack that deals a lot of damage (see the previous image). I managed to get defeated by the boss a few times, actually (despite the HP boost that I have lol).
The pets that I got really helped a lot in fighting enemies, regardless of whether it’s a boss or a normal enemy. Incidentally, their names are the same: they’re both Main/Myne (マイン) which is from my favourite light novel (there’s also an anime adaptation) “Ascendance of a Bookworm” (本好きの下剋上). I made sure not to make the mistake of having different names for them like I did with two of my frogs which are a pain to summon.
Again, I’m not sure what exactly it drops. I do know that it drops Tea Leaves which Tamaya (the quest NPC) requires. It’s probably the hardest quest that he gives because it’s an uncommon/rare drop and I believe he wanted 10 of them.
Right on the top area of the stage, there are three scroll paintings…
All scrolls are portals to other boss stages. The left one leads to this stage where you fight this cat which I also don’t know the name of.
The right scroll takes you to this stage with strange-looking enemies. It’s safe to say they’re also yokai creatures.
The umbrella ones are easy to take down. However, the slime-looking one seems to be immune to any element so I had to shoot it down with my gun. By the way, I managed to change my gun into the one that inflict paralysis instead of petrification.
As you’ll probably notice, the last scroll—the centre scroll— is larger than the others. If you look closely, you’ll see a drawing of a skeleton…
That’s right. Inside is a humongous skeleton creature that’s similar to Jörmungandr from the 19th level of the Cave of Trials.
He looks bigger than Jörmungandr, though. It’s HP is really high which is to be expected. My pets also helped; sometimes they’d inflict vertigo and sleep it.
Oh, I forgot to mention one thing that’s really cool and useful about my Amabie pet: it seems to be able to regenerate HP! I’m not sure what the conditions are, but I’ve noticed it regenerate to up to one less than its maximum HP a lot of times. Sometimes it doesn’t so I’m confused as to how it works. I also forgot to mention its water attack which is a small AoE attack that can sleep enemies.
Initially, it was difficult to defeat this boss solo. The pets help, but they’re quite weak. I was also trying to keep my pets alive a lot of the time because they got hit quite often. I was also fighting the boss from the front and/or underneath it during the early days of the event. Thanks to other players, I found out you could just hit it from behind so only its magic fire attack can hit you. It can still be dodged, though, so it was really easy to just press z whenever it readies up this attack.
After completing Tamaya’s quests, he tells you when the fireworks will be set off. During those days, you can play the animation whenever by simply re-entering the area.
I can’t remember when the dates are, but I took this image during the first firework day. It was a pretty cool fireworks display (though the frames drop massively whenever it plays lol).
So that’s it for this event! I believe the next event in schedule is Halloween. I’m really interested in the progress report regarding the HTML5 transition so that’s something I’m looking forward to.
The Catharsis event is currently happening in PG (at the time of writing this, anyway)!
…Well, it started quite a long time ago and it’s going to end in around an hour. I wanted to write about it and what I’ve been doing in PG/MR for quite a while now, but I’ve been occupied with a lot of other stuff this month. It’s a repeat event as usual, though I believe there were some new items added–namely, the necromancer clothes and some weapons (Necromancer Staff, Halberd of the White Lion and Thorn Sword Club–I think it’s an upgraded version of the Sword Club which might have been previously available already). Two doll accessories of the skeleton band members located in stage 9 were also added as A-point items.
HP Boost
Before the event, I’ve managed to get the one thing that I’ve always wanted to get: the Bulk-up Pants–even better, actually–Zoa Bulk-up Pants! This is an accessory item that increase your max HP. The normal version increases it by 3, the High, by 6, and the Zoa, by 12. It took a lot of coins and I really didn’t want to have to pay a lot. Fortunately, I’ve had some spare money to spend which would have normally been for another game that I play (Final Fantasy XIV). Since I was pretty much playing just PG the whole time I didn’t have time to play it and didn’t renew my subscription there for quite a long time. I also had luck with selling items, particularly White Dice; I got a considerable amount of coins with this.
I was unlucky at first, as I was getting duplicate items (mostly Nose Scudetto and Santa’s Snow Globe) that I didn’t need or want. Perhaps that’s not a very good way to put it though, since the gem charges were really helpful. Thanks to the duplicate items, I managed to upgrade my Santa Snow Globe and Nose Scudetto to Zoa as well as get some of the other items in the chest.
I got enough to make Zoa Snow Globe and Zoa Nose Scudetto! I had a few more extras of each, actually, which I only have on my backpack due to the charges they give. I wish you could desynthesise items like these to get the individual gems instead…
During the last attempts where I was on the verge of giving up because I didn’t want to spend all the coins on the chest, I managed to successfully get one! I was really happy. And then I had this irrational thought: what if I get another one the next time?
Well, I did! And I got three more, almost sequentially, one after another.
The HP boost is extremely helpful, mostly because I didn’t have to heal as often. I can use the Heartful Box without overhealing now and I pretty much don’t have to worry about every dying–mostly, anyway. I became more reckless and I did die a few times, though.
My secondary motivation for getting the HP boost is actually to be more capable of withstanding the attacks of the superbosses, in case I get the opportunity to fight them. I mean, I know I won’t ever be able to defeat them so I’m preparing to last as long as possible trying to fight them. I’m quite sure Thor would obliterate me in one hit so perhaps one of the Sisters of Destiny (or however they’re called) would be easier. There are Thor and Yggdrasil raids being scheduled quite regularly, but alas, I cannot communicate and even then, I doubt I’d be of any use lol.
Anyway, I thought I’d try to get another HP boost item: Dragon Relic. Like the pants, I ended up getting a better and upgraded version: Dragon Soul. It’s easier to get than the pants in the sense that you don’t have to gamble for chests. However, arguably, making it purely without coins is another matter–to get the base item, Dragon Artifact, you’d need Dragon Tear, Dragon Amulet and Dragon Talisman. The latter can only be obtained by trading 1 Small Medal with the Fight Guild. To upgrade this further, a Dragon King Horn from the True Red Dragon in Magicaloss is needed. It’s a really difficult enemy so that’s out of the question for me. What’s also out of the question is the item needed for the strongest dragon accessory: Dragon Soul. The previous upgrade which requires a Dragon King Horn, Dragon Relic, is combined with a Veteran Horn to make this. The Veteran Horn is dropped by the Veteran True Red Dragon in Lost Mythos which apparently has a level of 38000.
Fortunately, players have gotten so strong over the years that I’d presume the dragon would be small fry to those who are high-levelled. Dragon King Horn costs a mere 2S or so on the market. Veteran Horn is a little more expensive, but still no more than 200S. Incidentally, I bought one for 111S.
Thanks to these two, the max HP that I can now have (if I equip both) is 28. The pants are more than enough for me so I’ve locked it to one of my accessory slots.
As there are have been no tournaments at all in Magicaloss right now, I had to do Varvara’s quests as she gives a Dragon Artifact as a reward. I’d only done a few of her quests at that point so I had quite a ways to go. If I remember correctly, in the English version of Puppet Guardian, I only got as far as her second quest because I knew it was pointless. Her 3rd quest required a Healing Scroll, but her 4th quest needed an Aqua Dagger. A lot of her quests need chest items and I had no way to reliably get coins at the time. Not only were items expensive in the English version’s market, I also could barely play and buying coins was out of the question.
Anyway, prior to this point, I believe I’d gotten as far as around Varvara’s 9th quest, which requires you to defeat 40 Dwarf Ghosts. Prior to that, Varvara wanted you to give her a Peacock Bracelet. I already completed it at that point but I remember it being really annoying–I was very unlucky so I’d opened a lot of chests (this got me a Curse Storm Shield though so it wasn’t entirely bad I suppose).
I was able to complete many of the quests with relative ease, mostly due to the Japanese version’s economy. Many of the required quest items were cheaper compared to the English version. They were a bit more expensive compared to items in their category, of course (such as the normal elemental weapons), but they were still more affordable. Getting some items was quite strange, though, like the Tourmaline one. Before, a gem being cheaper than, for instance, elemental weapons, would be unthinkable. Now, the price of Tourmaline is around 111S, sometimes dropping down below 100S which is insane.
Some quests were annoying as expected, like the one where you had to tame 5 Silver Wolves. There was also a quest where she wanted a Lava Ring which is from the Flame Chest. I was lucky that time because I only had to open the chest twice.
Catharsis Event 2020
I was away for quite a long time so I didn’t have time to play much last month. As a result, I didn’t really participate in the event as much as I wanted to.
The event adds quite a lot of things to the game. I’d say there are 5 main aspects:
Land of the Dead
Lions in Mangool, the Dark Forest
Guardian Spirits in Shasura’s Laboratory
Skeleton Band in the Mirror World
??? Quest NPC inside the Mausoleum
I’ve pretty much ignored two of them: the skeletons in stage 9 and the lions in stage 11. My aim this time was to just hoard as many materials as possible in case I wanted to make any of the event materials for some reason. I could already tell at the beginning that I wouldn’t be able to gather much, mainly because I wasn’t really motivated to participate in the event at the time. There was also the problem of dice. I still have some dice left right now, but not enough to gather many items. I’m slowly working on getting a good supply of dice back, but as I’m busy at the moment, this isn’t possible. I went to see the skeleton band once but I don’t think they drop anything that I’m interested in. I also visited stage 11 a few times for the event quests but it’s pretty hard to get there without the orb for it.
Fire torches were added to the entrance and inside of the Mausoleum.
Come to think of it, isn’t there a ghost NPC in the basement of Avalon, as well?
The NPC seemed interesting at first, but as I was doing the quests, I soon thought otherwise. My initial speculation was that the fire spirit (the NPC with the ??? name) could perhaps be Org or Yun but I doubt it. As far as I can tell, it’s simply an NPC tied to the event in the same way the Celestial Emperor is. In any case, perhaps their way of speaking could allude to this, but I don’t know any Japanese so I couldn’t tell.
The spirit’s quest line had me purify the souls of Puppet Guardians. If I remember correctly, there were essentially 3 tasks: one required you to defeat the “regular” Puppet Guardian Spirits (the ones without scythes), one required you to tame the ones wielding scythes with “Subordination Scrolls” (because they couldn’t be purified by defeating them, apparently) and the last one had you defeat the lion spirits in stage 11. There were 8 quests in total, but they were all quests that required you to do one of those 3 tasks.
Here, you can see the special scythe-wielding spirit that can be tamed.
The halberd-wielding spirits were annoying because of the long range of their attacks. They could also paralyse you.
The orb for the event stage (Orb of the Underworld) required 5 Shadow Fragments (uncommon item collected from scroll in the last spot of stage 8), a Soul of Resurrection and a Fireball. The latter two were given as rewards for the event quests. Completing the quest line gave you 4 of each which gives you just enough to make the orb and also synthesise the Fruit of Resurrection Earrings. Or, you could choose to use the Souls of Resurrection to “revive” the Scarecrows and/or Scarecrow Dogs in the new stage as pets. I chose to make the earrings instead, of course. They can be used for taming… I think. The NPC seemed to mention something along those lines when turning in the quests that gave you the Souls of Resurrection.
First spot of the stage.
There were these enemies that I thought were candles (lol). They were called something like Spirit Grass.
There were also Kobolds that were basically Kobold reskins so they don’t pose any threat at all.
There were far too much items in the event so I barely paid attention at all to what enemy gives what item. I know the Spirit Grass sometimes gave Yellow Liquid (and I believe Tourmaline Fragments, as well) and the boss gave Coal and Magical Sparks but apart from those, I don’t really know much. Incidentally, there were two types of Spirit Grass enemies: the ones with yellow fire tails could take damage from elemental attacks but the red fire ones absorb them. It embarrassingly took me a while to figure this out. I was lucky that I had bronze axe and a gun. The latter type only had around 3 HP, anyway.
The stage had quite a lot of these Blue Herb collection spots. It looks like a perfect stage to farm for when I need to stockpile more Blue Herbs.
The last of the “regular” enemies on the stage was the Dullahan Kobold that drifted the stage. I put “regular” in quotation marks because it has 2 phases…
Once you deal enough damage to “defeat” its normal form, it grows…
…into this large (Kobold) Dullahan. The BGM also changes to the boss BGM as well which was quite a surprise because the BGM stays on the normal BGM for the “boss” at the end of the stage. Maybe this dullahan is the true boss lol.
This giant fire ghost boss has 4 adds (additional enemies) that follow it like Cthulhu in Halma’s Cove or the Ice Queen in the World of Ice.
Its attacks have a really large range so they’re impossible to avoid if short-range weapons are used. It could also inflict Blaze and Fear which can be quite deadly. Fortunately for me, Sleipnir protected me from Blaze and I had lots of HP so it posed almost no threat—or so you’d think. As I mentioned, having lots of HP made me reckless so one time, I almost got defeated due to Fear. The small fire ghosts and the main boss kept attacking me, preventing me from moving. I managed to escape, but not without being forced to heal. That could’ve been avoided if I just used magic to paralyse the boss (which honestly made it really easy to defeat) but I wanted to save gem charges and xaps.
All in all, I managed to collect materials to make some event clothing during the time I played but I doubt I gathered enough to make a complete clothing set. I guess I managed to make the earrings but that’s it. Oh, I managed to gather quite a bit of “Subordination Scrolls”. I wanted to use them before the event ends because they’d be useless after the event. And so I did.
I successfully tamed 6 of them!
They were annoying at times because you need to defeat all enemies in the area before they start gathering. There’s also the fact that pets would gather everything including items you don’t need or want. However, they were pretty helpful in battle, even if they only did 1 damage (or none at all) because they could distract enemies and sometimes stunlock them to prevent them from attacking.
Their starting HP was around 260, if I remember correctly, so there was no need to worry about them dying.
They were pretty helpful overall and they made me want to get a pet again, even just for helping with gathering. I actually wanted to keep one, but, as you’d expect, that’d be quite cruel wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t want to get enslaved even as a spirit. Nevertheless, I did try to register one at the Ranch Guild but his response to me was as expected lol.
I didn’t think I’d have fun in the event but I did! The most fun part was collecting as many spirits as I could, though I couldn’t get one permanently in the end.
The next event is a matsuri! It looks like it’d be a repeat event that takes place in stage 2. I’m looking forward to seeing the shrine which I’ll hopefully see in a few hours.
(As it happens, I’ve actually discovered what I assume is the entrance to the shrine accidentally when I was farming Zoisite. The dialogue that I think said something about not having a key popped up on my screen when I walked over a specific area on the last spot of stage 2.)
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