Participating in the Nexon PEAK Post Challenge

The very first time I really got to experience party play was through MapleStory’s party quests.

The big ones that come to mind are Moon Bunny’s Rice Cake, the Kerning City Party Quest, and the Ludibrium Party Quest, things like that ㅋㅋㅋ

When you’re leveling an alt and all you do is grind on the same map over and over until you’re utterly sick of it, your brain kind of starts to float away a little...

Those moments happen, right? And when they did, this was exactly the kind of content that felt perfect, at least from what I remember.

Out of everything, what I remember most is probably sitting in front of the computer during school breaks, switching between party quests that matched my alt’s level range,

and just playing them again and again.

Those were good times...

They weren’t as simple and mindless as regular grinding, and they helped a lot with early leveling too. And on top of that, the smoother your party’s teamwork was,

the faster you could clear them.

The Kerning City Party Quest especially needed more coordination than you’d think if you wanted to move comfortably into the next stage,

so it really felt like the content where the fun of cooperation and the fun of progression came together best.

So in this post, I want to give a light little introduction to MapleStory’s party quests.

ⅠTable of ContentsⅠ

① Maple’s various party quests

② Why were they so fun?

③ Leveling content that’s even better together

1. Maple’s various party quests

- Moon Bunny’s Rice Cake, Kerning City, and Ludibrium...



Maple’s party quests, like party quests in other games,

were content where several players formed a party and worked together to solve stage-by-stage objectives,



└ The party quests we repeated to death back then



Instead of just staying on one map and killing monsters,

each stage had its own way of progressing, whether that meant gathering certain items by party member or solving little puzzles,

so the flow changed from one stage to the next.

And since clearing them gave a pretty hefty amount of EXP,

quite a lot of people chose to rack up party quest runs

instead of just regular monster grinding.

The most representative ones, and usually the first ones you ran into,

were probably Moon Bunny’s Rice Cake, Kerning City, and Ludibrium.

Ludibrium in particular used to be required

as part of the pre-quest for the Papulatus boss.



└ These days, I guess grinding has become better than party quests anyway..ㅠ



These days, I think quite a few of those pre-quests have been removed.

This one is one of them too.

2. Why was it fun..?;

- Dividing roles

I think party quests were fun because everyone was working toward the same goal,

and that naturally led to people falling into different roles.

For example, in Moon Bunny’s Rice Cake,



└ Source: Inven ┘

unlike regular grinding where you handle everything by yourself,

each party member had to collect seeds, like in the screenshot,

and once seeds were planted in every spot, you could move on to the next stage,



└ Source: Inven ┘

so one person would look for the needed items, while someone else handled the 11 o’clock side,

another took the 5 o’clock side, and each party member’s actions

affected both the speed of the quest and whether the run succeeded or not.

Of course, if someone in the party didn’t know the mechanics, or if mistakes kept piling up,

it could get a little frustrating too.

Still, when people explained things to each other, tried again, and finally cleared it,

there was a kind of satisfaction there that felt different from the EXP you got by grinding alone.

3. Leveling content that’s better when done together

Party quests were basically an alternative for players who were tired of repetitive grinding,

letting them level in a different way for a little while.



└ Romeo and Juliet was seriously such a sweet deal...



You could earn EXP and rewards, and the objective kept changing from stage to stage,

and since you were progressing while communicating with other players, it felt

a little less dull than normal grinding.

Especially for players who were tired of spending n hours grinding alone with YouTube on in the background,

or who liked playing with other people

but felt a little burdened by bossing, this was

honestly a pretty nice leveling option.



└ Of course, there are also party quests you can do solo



Of course, for people who wanted both levels and rewards

but felt pressured by party quests, there actually are

single-player party quests too.

But honestly, I only really did those when the leveling stretch felt especially rough,

because the reward-to-time ratio was a little awkward, so later on

I think I just went back to regular hunting maps ㅋㅋㅋ...ㅠ

In the end, I think the fun of party play isn’t just that several people are standing around on the same

map, but that each person’s role and actions

all come together into one shared result.

In that sense, MapleStory’s party quests

were content where you could experience both cooperation and progression at once,

which is probably why they still stick in my memory even now.



These days,



the NPCs are all gathered together like this in the cross-world party quest area,

and you can enter party quests from here.

And besides the party quests I mentioned here, there are also

all kinds of other party quests for different level ranges.

If you’re curious, trying them out isn’t a bad idea.

You get to see the art style from when each party quest first came out,

and the map gimmicks make them pretty fun to look through too!

Do you have a party quest that still sticks in your memory?

Then I’ll wrap things up here for today.

I’ll be back next time with another story (๑>؂•̀๑)