[Participating in the Nexon PEAK Post Challenge]

https://peak.nexon.com/post/2152

Hello, this is Edgar.

There are a lot of ways for a character to get stronger in a game. You can level up, change your gear, or learn new skills.

But the progression goal I stayed focused on the longest was, unexpectedly, not something all that grand.

Being just a little short of the number I needed to enter the next dungeon.

If you play DNF for any length of time, there are moments when new content asks for a certain level of gear and Fame before you can even step inside. When the goal is still far away, it is oddly easy to stay calm, but when you are missing just a tiny bit, that is when the impatience really starts to creep in.

I remember opening and closing my equipment window over and over, doing the math in my head.

“Would swapping just this one piece be enough?”

“Should I do the enchant first?”

“If I push enhancement up one more level, will that finally get me over?”

In the end, that one number got to me so much that I even had a night when I finished everything I would normally have left for the next day.

At first, I thought all I needed was a bigger attack power number

When I first started seriously spending time in DNF, my way of judging gear was pretty simple.

If the number on it was higher, I assumed it was better gear. If my attack power went up, I thought that meant I had definitely gotten stronger, and when I saw someone with a high enhancement level, I treated that as the whole difference.

But once I actually went into dungeons, something felt off.

Even people whose gear looked similar were clearing monsters at completely different speeds, and there were times when my character’s numbers had gone up, but I could barely feel any real difference.

Later on, when I took a closer look, I realized how much I had been overlooking.

Some of my gear combinations did not really work together, some enchant slots were still empty, and instead of building the stats I actually needed, I was chasing the numbers that simply looked good. I was even changing gear without properly sorting out my skill order first, so of course I was not getting as strong as I expected.

From that point on, the way I thought about gearing up changed.

I stopped seeing it as just raising numbers, and started seeing it as a process of filling in the weakest parts of my character one by one.

The goal I remember most was my first entry into a higher-tier dungeon

At one point while I was playing, my friends started getting into higher-level content before I could.

We had started together, but before long they were already talking about new dungeons, while I was standing off to the side just listening because I still did not meet the entry requirement.

They would talk about who died to which pattern and what rewards had dropped, and I had no real way to join that conversation. More than the gear gap itself, that was the part that bothered me.

So I set myself one goal.

Meet the entry requirement this week, and run it with my friends at least once.

From then on, I stopped buying gear blindly. I wrote down exactly which parts I was lacking, then worked on the ones that would give me a clear increase for the lowest cost.

I filled in the enchant slots I had left empty, replaced gear I had been wearing for too long, and made sure not to miss the content I could run every day. None of it was some dramatic change, but every small adjustment made it easier to see the target number getting closer.

At the very end, I was still just awkwardly short of it.

I pulled materials out of storage, cleaned out gear I did not need, and even went through with one upgrade that I could have easily put off until later. The moment my number finally crossed the line, I just sat there staring at the equipment window for a while.

If you stay with a game long enough, you eventually get better gear and hit higher numbers. But strangely, the moment I remember most is not reaching some top tier, but that day when I first got over the entry requirement.

Maybe it was because the goal was so clear, and I could see every step of the process with my own eyes.

The moment I felt the difference right after changing my gear

The fun of gearing up was always bigger for me when I could feel the difference in actual combat, not just watch the numbers in the equipment window go up.

Rooms that used to take several skill casts to clear were suddenly over in one go, and in boss fights, I no longer needed to squeeze in one more full skill cycle.

It felt especially good when a friend noticed before I said anything.

“Oh? You’re a little faster today.”

Whenever I heard that, I would act like it was nothing.

“I changed one piece of gear.”

But in reality, that one piece had taken days of collecting materials, comparing prices, and checking its stats against what I was already using. To someone else, it probably looked like a simple gear swap, but to me, it was the result of finishing one small plan.

That is exactly what made gearing up in DNF so fun for me.

The next goal never felt impossibly far away. There was always something right in front of me that I could work on immediately, whether it was one gear slot, one enchant slot, or one skill setup.

Practical gearing habits I picked up by failing

Of course, things did not always go according to plan.

There were times when I spent too much on enhancement or gear changes and ended up short on the resources I actually needed, and there were also times when I copied gear that other people said was good, only to realize later that it did not really fit my character and have to sort everything out again.

After that, I started keeping a few rules for myself.

First, I treated entry requirements and actual combat strength as two separate things.
Hitting the required number did not automatically mean the dungeon would feel comfortable to clear. Even after getting over the requirement, I would test things in the training room or in familiar dungeons to see how much stronger I had actually become.

Second, I looked for the cheapest upgrade first.
If you start with expensive enhancements, your resources disappear almost immediately. So I worked on the parts that could be improved clearly at low cost first, like empty enchants or outdated gear.

Third, I did not spend everything I had all at once.
Once an update or event starts, gear prices and required materials can shift around. Leaving at least enough for the following week always made me feel a little more at ease.

Fourth, I did not copy someone else’s final gear exactly.
It was much more realistic to set an in-between goal that matched the dungeons I could actually run and the resources I actually had.

A different kind of progression from MapleStory

I have set gearing goals in MapleStory too.

The process of changing gear, leveling up, and filling in missing stats so I could beat the next boss was definitely fun. Still, at least for me, there were times when finishing a single goal felt like it took quite a long time.

DNF felt different. There was a stronger sense of changing one piece of gear, going straight into a dungeon, and immediately checking how much had changed.

The gear I finished today changed my results today, and I could also see the entry requirement for the next piece of content right in front of me. Because short-term goals and long-term goals existed side by side, it always felt like there was something clear to do, even if I only logged in for a short session.

Of course, if you keep chasing numbers alone, it starts to wear you down.

Once you begin comparing yourself to other people, even getting stronger than you were yesterday can still leave you feeling lacking. I went through a stretch like that too, where I kept looking at rankings and other people’s gear until the game started to feel more like homework.

When that happened, I lowered the bar.

I set goals I could check for myself directly—change just one piece of gear this week, shave a little time off a boss I already knew well, get used to a newly adjusted skill order.

A game where you can clearly see that you are a little stronger than yesterday

The main reason I enjoyed gearing up so much in DNF was that the goals and the results both felt relatively clear.

I could look at my equipment window and tell what I was missing, and once I filled that in, I could enter a new dungeon. The results of changing gear showed up in real ways too, through clear speed and damage.

More than the moment I finished top-tier gear, what stays with me is the time I spent filling in those missing numbers one by one so I could enter the same dungeon as my friends.

In the end, gearing up was not just a competition to become stronger than someone else.

It was the process of entering a place today that I could not enter yesterday, and finally clearing a boss this time that I had failed against before.

So if I had to choose one game where progression goals felt the clearest to me, DNF is still the first one that comes to mind.

What about you—what stays with you more, the moment the numbers in your equipment window went up, or the moment you beat an actual boss for the first time?

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