[Participating in the Nexon PEAK Post Challenge]

When I first started Elsword, my goal was simple.

I wanted to choose one character, clear dungeons quickly, gear up, and see how far I could make it into the tougher sections. Since it was an action game, I naturally assumed combat would be what stayed with me the longest.

But after some time had passed, I realized I was checking my wardrobe more often than my equipment window.

I would register a costume piece from an event, look up a head accessory I still did not have, and compare colors that might suit another character. There were even days when I ran a dungeon three times and called it there, then spent more than an hour standing around town just changing my outfit.

The Nexon game where I found the most joy in collecting was Elsword.

I was not just gathering things that were essential for getting stronger. There were costumes, accessories, pets, and titles that were not necessary to progress, but if I left those slots empty, they stayed on my mind.

As those things built up one by one, it felt like my time in the game was being recorded in my account.

It started with a single event costume

I did not love collecting from the very beginning.

Back then, I cared more about stats than appearance. Even if I got a costume from an event, I would put it in storage if it did nothing for performance.

Then one day, I got a costume top that I really liked.

It looked pretty good on its own, but it clashed completely with the pants I was already using. So I started looking for bottoms with a similar feel. Once I found those, the shoes looked off, and after I changed the shoes, the hairstyle started to bother me instead.

At first, I only meant to swap out one piece, but before I knew it, I was putting together a full outfit.

On the day I finally completed the last piece, my combat power had not increased at all, but I was almost as happy as I would have been after finishing a new gear setup. I left my character standing in town, turned them back and forth, and took several screenshots.

From that point on, costumes were no longer just items I put on a character.

They became records that reminded me of what events were happening at the time and which character I had been focusing on.

As I added more characters, the way I collected changed too

In Elsword, each character had a distinct appearance and atmosphere.

A costume that looked perfect on one character often felt surprisingly awkward when I put it on another. Some characters suited bright colors, while others looked more natural in darker tones or neat, understated outfits.

At first, I styled all of my characters in similar ways.

Black and white combinations were hard to get wrong. But as I ended up with more characters, they started to look so similar that it became hard to tell them apart.

So I set one basic theme for each character.

For one character, I collected neat outfits that felt like school uniforms. For another, I focused on battle wear. For someone else, I leaned mostly toward seasonal costumes. Once I gave each character a direction, it became much easier to decide who should get a new costume when one came out.

That made it more fun than simply collecting as much as possible, because it felt like I was creating a small display for each character.

With pets, what stayed with me was the time we spent together more than their performance

The collection I remember most after costumes was pets.

At first, I looked at how useful they were in battle. I considered whether they attacked well, what convenience features they had, and whether they were worth raising.

But the pets I actually kept with me for a long time were not always the strongest ones.

Pets that had been with me from the early days were hard to replace, even if their abilities were ordinary. They kept appearing with me on dungeon result screens and in town screenshots.

There were plenty of times when I got a new pet, used it for a little while, and then went back to the one I had before.

In the collection list, each one only filled a single slot, but the attachment I felt was completely different depending on how long I had actually traveled with it. That difference made pet collecting more enjoyable than simply filling out a number.

I ran dungeons I normally would not visit just for a single title

Titles were another part of the game that held my attention much longer than I expected.

Some titles mattered because of their effects, but there were others I wanted simply because I liked the name or the way they looked.

The problem was when getting one meant running a dungeon I would not normally visit over and over.

The first few runs were fun, but once the count started adding up, I gradually got tired of it. Even then, it was hard to stop when my progress was almost full. I would tell myself, “I’ve come this far, so I might as well finish it today,” and run it one or two more times.

The moment I got the title, I equipped it right away and checked it in town.

A few days later, I might switch to a different one, but the record of it stayed in the list. I liked that equipment goes into storage when you replace it, while collection records remain as part of your account.

The rules I settled on after collecting for a long time

At first, I tried to collect everything I could see. When I did that, I spent less time enjoying the game and more time counting what I still did not have.

After that, I set a few rules for myself.

First, I collected only one category at a time.

One month it would be costumes, then pets after that. I divided my goals that way. If I tried to fill several lists at once, I ran short on currency and also lost track of what I had already picked up.

Second, I started with sets I could actually complete.

If I held on to the rest of a set because of one piece that was especially hard to get, my storage just became more cluttered. It was much more satisfying to focus first on sets where I already had several pieces or could get the rest through an event.

Third, I checked whether an item had been registered before selling it or clearing it out.

There were times when I assumed something had already been registered because so many items looked similar. On the other hand, I also once got rid of an unregistered item in a rush and later had to spend time getting it again.

Fourth, I checked the event period first.

I made sure to see whether the shop or exchange would close the moment the event ended, and whether rewards could still be claimed afterward. That came from experience. I had once tried to exchange everything on the last day, only to find I was just short of the materials I needed.

Finally, I kept screenshots of finished outfits.

Once I changed costumes later, it was hard to remember exactly how the old look had been. Keeping one shot in town and one in a dungeon let me look back on them like a small album.

When collecting started to feel like homework, I stopped

Collection content keeps pulling you in because the empty spaces are always visible.

But if you try to fill every category, the pressure starts to outweigh the fun. I had times when I kept chasing event costumes I had missed or items that were difficult to obtain, until even launching the game started to feel tiring.

That was when I let go of the goal of filling everything perfectly.

I narrowed it down to a few costumes for the characters I liked, a pet I knew I would keep with me for a long time, and titles whose names appealed to me.

It was fine if some empty spaces remained.

If anything, not filling everything gave me a reason to start collecting again whenever I found something I liked in the next event.

Looking at my collection brought back the time when I was playing

If you stay with a game for a long time, equipment performance and combat styles keep changing.

But when I look at old costumes and pets I got in the past, I remember—almost strangely clearly—what I was doing at the time. The item I got while running dungeons with a friend, the costume I barely managed to exchange for on the last day of an event, the accessory I bought after hesitating for a long time because I was low on currency... each one holds a different memory.

That is why collecting in Elsword never felt like it was only about increasing a number in a list.

It felt more like preserving the times I had passed through.

Even when I briefly got tired of making my character stronger, opening the wardrobe to change an outfit, choosing a pet, and wandering around town was enough to give me a reason to log in again.

To me, a game with great collecting appeal is not the one with the most items.

It is a game where every item I gathered comes with the thought, “I got this back then.”

In that sense, Elsword was a game that kept me looking through my wardrobe and collection list long after the fighting was over.

When you play games, which do you hold on to longer: powerful items, or collectibles that simply look good?

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