Hello.

This time, the theme is small groups, a chance to look back on memories of playing games with other players.

I have been playing solo for quite a while now, but I still have fond memories of the time I spent playing with others, and this seemed like a good opportunity to revisit them.

Memories of [The Tower of Oz]

The Tower of Oz is now a solo-only experience, with the lobby and rest areas the only places where you can encounter other players, but before that change, many of us would form parties and make our way through it together.

Even then, not every map supported party play, so we had to put up with inconveniences such as disbanding on certain floors and regrouping after moving on, but it felt well worth the trouble. Above all, playing together brought a little enjoyment and cooperation to an otherwise repetitive routine, while also letting us get through monster-hunting maps a little faster, so quite a few players were sorry to see the maps become entirely solo.

Beyond the simple enjoyment of playing together, parties also served an essential purpose. Before the revamp, there was a rather unforgiving period when the only way to be certain of getting past floor 43 was to have a party member help you.

At the time, floor 43 of The Tower of Oz had you answer questions from Fleta about your progress through the tower. You had 3 attempts at each question, but you could not move on to the next one until you answered correctly.

• How many Oz Points did you have in the lobby?

• What was the platform sequence on floor 9?

• Which BGM was the correct answer on floor 24?

• How much time did you have left on floor 35?

Questions like these were a nuisance, but at least you could handle them on your own by keeping records. The real problem was that some asked for details so specific that they felt unreasonable, such as “How many monsters did you defeat on that floor?”

Of these, the question shown above—“How many Flower Golems did you defeat?”—was particularly difficult for solo players, for the following reason.

As you can see, the two types appear together, making it impossible to keep separate counts. The reliable way around this was to form a party and have another member defeat 300 monsters for you, clearing the floor while leaving you free to enter 0 as your answer.

Back then, the special skill rings we have today could be obtained at random from The Tower of Oz's ring boxes. Rank 2 boxes, awarded for clearing floors 41–45, were overwhelmingly more popular than the Rank 1 boxes awarded for floors 46–50 because they were so much easier to obtain, which meant there were not many players aiming for floor 50 as I was.

That is why I remember those of us attempting floor 50 taking turns helping one another on floor 11. It was something of a relief that an Oz Practice Ticket let us lend a hand without having to make our own way down to that floor.

I cannot honestly say I miss that process, but looking back, party play in The Tower of Oz still holds some good memories for me.

Revisiting Party Quests for [Monster Collection]

I also remember returning to Party Quests again and again to help another player. These days, practically all of them allow solo entry apart from Dimensional Crack, the Ludibrium Party Quest, which has made things much easier for anyone working on Monster Collection.

Dark Eye from Another Dimension still requires a party, just as it did then, so I imagine it continues to give players quite a bit of trouble. I remember registering it first in the early hours of the morning, and thankfully, the person I was helping managed to register it afterward, so we could celebrate together.

Frankenroid in Romeo and Juliet also gave us quite a bit of trouble. Unlike the other 2, it is a boss monster that only appears at the very end, which made each attempt especially demanding, but thankfully, both of us eventually registered it.

Finally, our attempts to register Flying Griffey in Dragon Rider all ended in failure until a patch made things easier. On a day with a Sunny Sunday bonus, we even tried with 4 other characters, and the fact that we had to complete a quest just to enter makes those attempts particularly memorable.

Memories of [Challenger World]

A guild's role as a community is important, of course, but in MapleStory today, guild skills carry a little more weight, particularly Noblesse Guild Skills. The same is true in Challenger World, though one difference is that building up guild contribution is essential when the world first opens.

Contribution allows a guild to level up, and a higher level means it can recruit more members, so building it up is essential in the early days of Challenger World, alongside the Underground Culvert and Flag Race.

This is even reflected in the passive skill exclusive to Challenger World, which sets the multipliers for both guild contribution earned and the contribution limit to 2.

You can earn contribution each week through attendance, the Underground Culvert, Flag Race, and daily and weekly boss clears, with bosses accounting for the largest share. Defeating them alone still earns contribution, but doing so in a party earns more, so players often look for daily boss partners in guild chat. I did the same, and although arranging it all was a little cumbersome, there was something enjoyable about the routine.

Usually, we would take on the four Root Abyss bosses (1000 each), Normal Magnus (1500), Normal Papulatus (2000), and Hard Von Leon (2000) together. We would leave out Normal Arkarium and Normal Pink Bean because they drop items such as the Dominator Pendant, Pink Holy Cup, and Black Bean Mark, which tend to fetch high prices in Challenger World.

This usually stops being a weekly requirement once the guild reaches around level 25. While the activity itself is not particularly entertaining, it is something we need to do anyway, and there is an unexpected enjoyment in doing it together, so it is worth remembering to keep up with it each week in the upcoming Challenger World Season 4.

Challenger Partners, meanwhile, did not work out quite as I had hoped. If it returns in the future, I hope the issues that made it inconvenient will have been addressed.

Thank you for reading.