Hello.

This entry’s keyword is Dungeon Time Attack, and the focus here is on introducing time-attack content found across Nexon games.

In MapleStory, when people talk about time attack content, the most representative example is naturally bossing, and beyond that, the remaining content does not currently carry much weight.

That said, there are still three pieces of content with rankings that refresh weekly, and in this post I want to look back on my old time-attack attempts in The Seed and organize a few thoughts around them.

The Seed Ranking Rewards

The Seed provides weekly rewards to up to 50 players based on their clear records for that week.

You can check the rankings on the bulletin board in the middle of the lobby.

Rewards vary depending on the rank you place at,

Alicia's Blessing is effectively the same kind of item as what players commonly call an EXP Buff, while the effect item is purely cosmetic, has no stats, and is displayed above the character’s head.

Competition used to be fairly intense, but at this point the incentive to participate in The Seed has dropped quite a bit, so the number of participants is low. As of the time of writing, if you look only at last week’s Luna rankings, only two players cleared Floor 50, and ranks 3 through 9 were reachable with only a Floor 41 clear.

Even if the first-place record is no longer what it once was, it is still far from easy. Still, outside of first place, making the top 10 is not especially difficult once you are used to it, so if one run can reliably secure 100,000 points each week, it seems reasonably worthwhile whenever there is something you want from the shop.

Things to Prepare

First, because there are so many hunting floors, the more mobbing-related tools you have, the better. When I was doing these runs, this was before Sol Janus existed, so the gap in clearing ability between jobs stood out quite sharply, but I would expect that to have been eased considerably by now. On top of that, having a summon such as a Lucid Soul of any grade other than Magnificent is also helpful.

There are also many floors where you need to pick up items, so whether you have a vac pet or not has a fairly significant impact on your clear time.

As for equipment that grants invincibility frames after being hit, I did not use it myself, but keeping it prepared can still be helpful depending on what you need.

Set your own routine for hunting floors, and make sure you are fully comfortable with obstacle floors

There are quite a few floors in The Seed that require hunting. Even on floors where defeating monsters is not the formal clear condition, there are still cases where you effectively need to kill them, and some maps are wide enough that things like portal placement and summon placement should be fixed in whatever pattern feels most comfortable to you and repeated the same way every run.

• Floor 6 : 300 monsters

• Floor 8 : 100 monsters

• Floor 11 : 300 monsters

• Floor 16 : 200 monsters

• Floor 21 : 200 monsters

• Floor 26 : 300 monsters

• Floor 31 : 200 monsters

• Floor 37 : 400 monsters

• Floor 38 : 100 monsters

• Floor 46 : 200 monsters

As for obstacle stages, there is really no alternative but to get used to them through repetition, and once you do start attempting time attacks in earnest, you quickly realize that the stages with RNG traps are the ones that truly decide a run. In the end, repeated attempts are the only answer.

Rather than going over basic strategies below, I have instead revisited a few smaller points based on what I remember from my earlier attempts.

Floor 1 : If you have a ranged attack, take out the large slime as soon as you enter

The small slimes have a spawn delay, but the large slime can be defeated immediately, so if you have a ranged attack you can take it out right away and move on.

Floor 2 : If the card setup is especially bad, just reset

Because the numbers on the cards are assigned randomly when you enter, there are occasional cases like this where high numbers end up spread across every card. Since this is only Floor 2, if the setup is bad enough, it is better to leave and try again. Because you need to move the moment you pick up a card, it is naturally best to memorize the card colors beforehand as well. From left to right, they are green-red-yellow-blue.

Floor 4 : You can hit the opposite side even from the middle

When you need to cross to the other side, you can defeat the Wild Kargo on the opposite side starting from the middle platform.

Floor 6 : Do not miss King Slime

King Slime disappears 10 seconds after being summoned, and if you miss it, the run is effectively a reset, so you need to kill it as soon as it appears.

Floor 10 : If you have a ranged attack, defeat the boss on the right immediately and move on without taking the reward

This applies not just to Floor 10, but also to Floors 20 and 30. The rewards from these bosses are not especially meaningful, and if you are specifically aiming for a time attack, that is all the more reason to move on quickly.

Floor 12 : Hope you hit as few traps as possible

When attempting time attack runs in The Seed, once you are already comfortable with the obstacle maps, the part that becomes truly stressful is the RNG-based traps. In the early 1/2 section and the middle 1/3 section, there is really nothing to do but hope for the best.

That said, even if this section takes a little too long, there is no reason to get discouraged immediately, and even if it goes quickly, there is no reason to celebrate yet either. There are plenty of RNG traps later in the run as well, so the best approach for your own peace of mind is simply to pass through without dwelling on it too much.

Floor 13 : You can clear all monsters even from the middle of the map, and use invincibility to avoid meteors

Aside from the very first spawn, you can clear all the monsters from roughly the middle of the map. A ranged attack makes this more convenient.

The meteors can be avoided with invincibility skills such as Liberation invincibility, so after clearing all monsters, you should use an invincibility skill and run straight to the exit. If it looks like a meteor is about to kill you, it is better to prioritize avoiding it with invincibility first.

Floor 14 : Be careful, because mistakes hurt your time badly

It may not come up often, but if you get too many wrong, your remaining time is deducted outright, so this floor does require caution.

Floor 18 : Pray for luck

To start with, the worst possible case for coconut drops is opening every box and still ending up with only seven. Since you can reliably get one each from the single coconut tree on the right side of the map and the two on the left, situations like that are genuinely frustrating in a time attack run. Because the coconuts from the trees are guaranteed, it is usually best to pick those up while you are opening boxes anyway.

As for Rorang and Clang, once they have been summoned, if you leave them alive and the map reaches its maximum number of summons, no more will appear. You can handle that part however you find most comfortable.

Floor 19 : Obstacles can be bypassed with invincibility

These cotton balls inflict stun if they hit you, but you can avoid the stun by using a Will skill, and with an invincibility skill you can simply pass through them. If you get hit badly and fall, there are cases where you are removed from the stage entirely, so this is a floor where you need to be especially careful.

Floor 22 : Falling below the clouds deducts 1 minute, which is a massive penalty

If you fall below the clouds, 1 minute is deducted from your remaining time along with the message shown above, so you need to be extremely careful here.

With the clouds, there is usually some footing at the edges, so if you happen to slip in the middle, you should try to use those points to stay alive. This is especially true in the final section. Many times you simply fall, but there are also plenty of cases where you barely catch yourself and survive, so it is worth trying to salvage it as much as possible.

Floor 23 : Falling is fairly punishing

There is no separate time deduction here for falling, but if you fall from the edge without having saved with the portal, you are sent all the way back to the start, so the penalty is still quite substantial.

On the other hand, saving with the portal costs time as well, so if you are aiming for a time attack, the best option is to memorize the route completely and clear it in one attempt.

Floor 24 : If you get the answer wrong, even because of a typo, the time attack is effectively over

After the revamp, a text hint is now provided like this, so it is best to use it and move on quickly.

If you get it wrong, you lose as much as 5 minutes, so this is one of the floors where you really need to be careful.

Floor 26 : Place your portal properly in the center

Because you need to keep returning to the center to summon slimes, if you have a portal skill, it is best to place it there.

Floor 27 : Pray

There are three separate RNG traps here, so there is not much to do besides hope for good luck.

Floor 29 : Start checking from 2 sand crystals

In the past the answer could be anywhere from 1 to 7, but now the correct count falls within 1 to 4, so starting from 2 seems sufficient.

Floor 30 : Kill the lion before it runs away

Once the lion is summoned, you need to defeat it quickly before it disappears. While it is running away, it cannot be attacked at all.

Floor 31 : Keep the Fairies in check while clearing

The Fairyls inflict skill seal on the player and grant an invincibility buff to the slimes. Realistically, though, it is difficult to respond to this purely by watching their animation, so it is better to use an invincibility skill and kill the slimes as quickly as possible.

Floor 32 : Jump and use an Ascent skill

If you jump and use an Ascent skill, you can clear everything quickly.

Floor 33 : If the arrow layout is truly awful, reset

At present, when you enter, you are given six clockwise and six counterclockwise arrows each, so in most cases you can simply continue. Still, if it looks too awkward to deal with, you can re-enter through Alicia Soul Connector, and at that point you should be careful not to misclick and exit to the lobby instead.

Floor 34 : Getting hit from above and falling is especially annoying

There are occasional cases where you get hit the moment you go up and fall all the way down, so going up with an invincibility skill is helpful. After collecting everything, you can simply jump down and land in front of the exit portal.

Floor 36 : Attack calmly

When attacking here, it is best to check the message and make sure your hit actually registered before moving on. In my case, since I played in windowed mode, I used to keep track of the order in Notepad as I went.

Floor 40 : Make active use of Bind and invincibility skills

Since a common knockback skill is available, push the scarecrow into the fire as quickly as possible, and when it starts the animation for teleport, you can lock it down with Bind, an Origin skill, Sol Hecate, and similar tools so that it cannot move, which makes for a somewhat faster clear.

The scarecrow’s pulling attack can be ignored with Will, and the fuller the scarecrow gauge becomes, the more damage you take when hit, so it is also helpful to make use of invincibility skills here.

Floor 42 : Cross the disappearing platforms at the start calmly

Once you are used to the floor, the section that ends up being the most frustrating is inevitably the disappearing platforms right at the start, and there is really no answer there except to watch carefully and move across calmly. If the timing for the platforms is awkward, or if the meteors make the route difficult, you can simply use an invincibility skill to get through.

Floor 48 : Use Liberation invincibility in the third section

Floor 48 is actually fairer than the maps with RNG traps once you are used to it, because Fleta arrives later than the player, so no matter how fast you move, the minimum clear time is effectively fixed. That said, the difficulty of the third section changes depending on whether you have an invincibility skill, and now that Liberation invincibility has become common and is broadly available, it is best to practice around that.

Floor 49 : Do not make mistakes

You need to be careful here, because a failed input deducts 5 minutes from your time. Also, if you click Dorothy's Illusion and then press the final option that appears, you will be sent straight back to the lobby without exception, so it is best not to press it out of curiosity.

As for Dorothy on Floor 50, even taking non-Boss Damage into account, she only has twice the HP of Chaos Vellum, so at present your bossing spec itself should not be the issue.

Lastly, as mentioned earlier, unless you are aiming for first place in your world, it does not seem necessary at present to force the issue too hard, so I would recommend approaching it as comfortably as possible.

Thank you for reading.