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So, here we are! During the Yeti x Pink Bean event this is the login screen they have decided to give us. I suppose it summarizes what we're all about here in Maple.
Our main focus here will be on the Yeti x Pink Bean world, of course. The world has 30 channels, rather than the usual 20. Likely to help with the influx of all users going into this same place to allow for less killstealing and such. For those that aren't aware, the channels are like Worlds in FFXIV, while the world here is like a server there. Confusing enough yet?
As you can see, I already have a Yeti character made in this world. I'm working on it during free time I have in order to show off its unique stuff. Admittedly, it's not a lot of unique stuff, but the impermanant nature of all this means I'd kick myself if I didn't go fully into it. But, for now, let's create a Pink Bean character!
This shot is just way too adorable. I love how he uses headphones despite having no visible ears. It's just the best.
I took some suggestions from folks on various Discord spaces on what I should name our intrepid adventurer, and I decided to go with "BYOBean". It's a pretty good play on words, at least I think so!
Now, let's take a look at his intro...
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By the way, before we go any further... I will apologize in advance for the numerous visible cursors in these shots. It doesn't go away on its own quickly enough and for getting through text on my end I need to be clicking often, so it's just something to get used to.
I guess I'll just do what I always do... Doot doot doot...
Ugh, this won't do! Doot de doot.
Now I'm bored again! What can I dooby-dooby-do about this?
The game then shows Pink Bean repeating all of the prior activities in gradually quicker speed.
Nothing new!
Hrm, that's boring. This thing always gets summoned here.
The area visible through the portal is the boss arena you'd normally fight Pink Bean in.
I just want to do something new, and those weird little people keep beating me up.
And I get weaker when I go there anyway...
That place is no fun anymore! Hmph!
Stu-pid.
Looks like 'e hasn't seen me!
Ooo-ooh, I think it's prank time!
I'll fix 'em up with my best LEVEL DOWN curse when 'e pops through that portal! Hee hee.
And after my color-changing curse, he'll have to change his name!
Surprise, surprise! Get ready for a butt-kickin'!
He sneaks off...
Hmmm... Hm! This portal is new!
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Smashing Mushroom easy, like scratching itchy head!
You eat... Yeti Punch!
Wait, that not work? Um... Yeti Punch!
That not Yeti Punch! THIS Yeti Punch!
Um, no, THIS Yeti Punch!
*pant* *pant* Yeti... lose... Mushroom too strong...
Wow. Somebody actually lost to a mushroom.
Huh? Who you?
Well, YOU look like a weakling.
Let me show you how to do this. Watch.
Eat this... Pink Bean Attack!
What the...?
...
Am I under a 'LEVEL DOWN' curse?!
You weak too. Yeti disappointed.
I'm not weak!
I've defeated SO many adventurers!
He's not wrong.
Yeti's fist break icebergs!
All right, let's see who's stronger, then!
Okay! We fight now!
J-just walk on by...
Why don't we... hold off until we both get our strength back?
Uh, Yeti think that good idea.
Yeah. Let's train ourselves all the way up, and then we'll see who's REALLY the strongest.
Okay! We get stronger!
Hehe... If I win, I'll turn you pink, like all my friends.
There's a lot to see around here. Might as well make a fun little adventure out of this...
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And here we are in Henesys, which is probably the most famous town in MapleStory. Our Bean is going to start his journey here. Before we do anything, let's make this annoying lightbulb go away.
Do you know what a Return Scroll - Nearest Town is?
Return Scroll - Nearest Town is an item that sends you to the nearest town from your current location. Use it when you're out hunting and ready to return to town. Then you can save those footsies for fighting! Pretty useful, huh?
But don't forget one Return Scroll - Nearest Town will be consumed immediately upon use. Also, you can't use it in places where Teleport is not allowed.
Last, you can buy Return Scrolls - Nearest Town from a Merchant in the nearest town.
Now I'm ready to hand it over. Do you want Return Scroll - Nearest Town x10 now?
We do.
I just gave you Return Scroll - Nearest Town x10. Happy travels, BYOBean!
Though it's a bit heavy handed, the usefulness of these scrolls can't be understated, especially in a normal server where you don't have any better ways of teleporting from place to place. As a slight bit of annoyance, these return scrolls are Untradeable, meaning they occupy a separate inventory slot than normal return scrolls. I'll use them until they're used up, and then buy a set of new ones.
The defaults work well enough for most purposes, but there are usually a few changes I make for my own sanity. First, I move Interact off of Space and onto Y - Y is its own special shortcut for "Yes", as in confirming when a Yes/No option is given during a quest or something. So having that be the same button that advances text and such is very convenient. "Item Pot" is a hardly relevant keybind that you won't lose anything from taking off, especially in this world. I also take the unbound "change channel" hotkey and put it on 5, replacing "Alliance chat". I hardly use it in the real game, and in Bean World we're not going to be joining any guilds or alliances, so it's free real estate.
I also unbind C (maple chat is an irc-style chatroom with other people, which is a bit cumbersome), and X (sitting is pointless with the more inflated HP and MP numbers we have). We'll use these for skills later.
You might have noticed that we start at level 10. Rather than going through a "tutorial" on Maple Island like classically, most characters simply start at level 10 and get thrust into their own personal storyline quests that have a few tutorials baked into them. Bean's not so lucky, but it does mean we have stats to allocate.
There are four main stats. STR, DEX, INT, and LUK. Pink Bean is considered a Warrior, so it focuses on STR. There are no secondary stat requirements to worry about, so pressing "auto assign" will just dump any points we have into STR. This is good. We also can't invest into HP or MP - they're traps, anyway, so that's fine by me.
Now for our skills. Bean starts with a few passives in the "beginner" skill tab that will always stay active.
First is Master of Organization, which gives us a lot of extra inventory space for free. It's quite helpful when we'll be picking up a lot of crap as we go, and due to the lack of paid aspects in this world (no Cash Shop access, for instance), we have really no other way of expanding our inventory.
Second is Curse of Black Bean, our story-related character establisher. It basically just assigns us as a Warrior and gives us our conditions. Unfortunately, our Pink Bean is not allowed to trade with other characters, similar to the "Reboot" world in this game that's more focused on self-progression. It also denies us from partaking in professions, but they are not that important - I would have liked to show them off a little, but I suppose we'll ignore it.
Finally, there's Yeti x Pink Bean. This passive boosts our EXP and our damage. It makes the prospect of grinding to level 200 a little more bearable. Passive skills like this are typically reserved for special temporary worlds like these.
We don't really need to worry about Maple Crest, all it does is show off how many Achievements we have.
Rather than investing SP into skills every level, Pink Bean simply learns skills as it levels up, and all of his skills get stronger by a factor of his level. As you can see, there are a few thresholds at where we learn several skills, and some where we only learn one. The current skills we have access to are:
Pink Powerhouse, which is a three-hit combo that replaces the normal Attack button. Some other normal jobs have a skill like this, but in most cases I tend to put a job's basic skill over the CTRL keybind anyway. Pink Powerhouse will also increase the damage of the next skill used after any step of the combo, but the further you are into the combo the more boosted the damage is. It also gets a fourth hit at level 80. There's a slight radius on the skill, so it can kill multiple enemies at once, up to 6 or 8 depending on which hit it's on.
Let's Roll! is a very fun and useful skill. Hold down the key it's assigned to to become a Sonic Spindash, after which you can move around freely. Anything you come into contact with will take damage. After about 3 seconds or so, the ball doubles in size, allowing it to strike enemies on platforms above you if you jump while moving about. It's really great for clearing a map, and its basic attack power is quite strong for being a skill we start with. It lasts for up to 7 seconds, and it has a cooldown of 25 seconds, which only starts counting down after you've stopped rolling.
Let's Roll! also has another function - if you double tap right or left while in the air, you'll dash forward in a quick horizontal maneuver. It does light damage to enemies you pass through, so it's more just for movement purposes. This has its own cooldown of half a second so you can't just move forever without losing height.
Bounce is very simple. Press jump while you're in the air to jump again, launching you forward. Veterans of the game will recognize this as the "flash jump" that back in the day only Thieves could do. Nowadays basically every class has a way to move faster through either a flash jump or a short-ranged teleport, and this is no different.
Umbrella's button can be held while in the air to descend slowly. I didn't find much use for it, personally, but the animation is really cute. Like all of them.
Finally, Pink Bean's Dignity is a passive skill with a myriad of effects.
First off, being a monster, Pink Bean will do contact damage to other enemies if he touches them. It's not that much, but it is handy.
Secondly, it boosts several of his stats. He can't be knocked back by enemies that do damage to him, he gets boosted jump height and movement speed, his max HP and MP are boosted by 150% each, he gets boosted status resistance, can ignore some enemy defense, gets a flat 40% reduction to damage incurred, and has natural boosts to item drop rate, meso drop amount, and exp gained. This is all on top of the Yeti x Pink Bean skill from earlier.
But that's not all! This skill also passively gives Pink Bean's attacks a chance to summon Mini Beans, which will attack various monsters on the map. This has a cooldown of 10 seconds per summon. Any enemies Pink Bean kills also have a chance of dropping an item called Yummy Meat, which is a powerful healing consumable. I'll show it off when we get some.
For now, I keybind Umbrella to Shift, and Let's Roll! to X so they're quick to reach at my usual position. The basic classic control for MapleStory is to have your right hand on the arrow keys, while your left hand is at the far end to hit CTRL and ALT for jumps. I like to use movement-based skills or class-specific gimmicks on Shift, so Umbrella fits there for now.
We still have some more prep-work to do before we can start adventuring. The Step-Up Mission can be started from what the game calls the "Star Notifier" on the left side of the screen. Clicking on it makes a window appear that shows you what you can accept that's tied to temporary events, for the most part. The actual "star" part just has an explanation of Yeti x Pink Bean World and its various rules, but the circle with the two friends will start the step-up mission.
...Woo, let's calm down. I need to get my strength back before I run into Yeti again.
Good thing I set up that 'Step Up' mission list!
So yeah, not gonna panic. I'm just a little lost... All I've gotta do is look for the 'Yeti x Pink Bean Step Up' icon! That'll tell me what to do, and then maybe I can get my strength back.
I can't lose to Yeti. Luckily, I brought this 'Power Elixir' and some other things, so let's see how this goes! Hahaha.
Items are distributed into our inventory.
Great! I have everything I need now! My first goal is to reach Lv. 30!
So here's our mini-guide to what we need to do. Each goal needs to be completed in order. So even if we fulfill some future tasks, they won't start counting until we reach level 30 and move onto the next mission. The blue spaces on the board will give rewards that are distributed to real characters, while the purple ones give rewards directly to Pink Bean to help his advancement. At the bottom are the main prizes for my main character, the Holy Pink Beanity title and the Yeti Incredi title. These can't be acquired until we're fully done.
The reward for level 30 is a Character Slot Expansion Coupon for the main world. It does what you think it would do. Accounts start with 8 slots for characters, and can reach a potential max of... I want to say 54. Basically enough slots for one of every character class.
Also, now that we've initiated Step-Up, we get another option in the star notifier, Slime's Meso Shop!
Slime here will sell exclusive wares for drop-dead prices for our bean here. Not all of these are immediately relevant, but for now just know that most of these will help Pink Bean make his equipment much stronger. Some things I should go over right now - the Safety Charm will one-time protect you from getting a strong EXP debuff when you die in battle, and the Power Elixir is basically a full heal of HP and MP. Part of our initial step-up rewards is getting 1000 Power Elixirs for free, though, and we likely won't be using quite that many of them, especially with the Yummy Meat supplementing us. Speaking of which, I should keybind the power elixirs to a side key! I like Insert for my basic healing stuff.
Now here's the actual items we got for initiating Step-Up. The little Pink Beans are "Chroma Bean" pets. A pet follows you around and passively picks up items for you that it runs over, which saves a lot of time. Normally we would have to worry about pets dying and needing to be revived, but this world isn't going to exist for long enough for that to be an issue, so we should use the pets as much as possible. The pink box is Pet Food, which keeps Pets from getting too hungry that they'll retreat from you - feed them when you see them hungry! I assign those to the Page Up hotkey.
This is the game's generic dialogue each time you make a new pet active for the first time. There's some lore here, but nothing too fancy. Oh, I should also mention - the Chroma Beans also come with a passive boost to my Attack Power called Pink Bean Mania, so that's another reason to keep them active. We can't use all three right now, though, so just stick to one until later. I use a provided naming tag to give our first Chroma Bean the name "JustBean". 
We also have Selective 8 Slot Coupons. These let us expand our inventory even further, and we get 5 of them. I assign one to the Equip tab, and two to the Use and Etc tabs. Set-Up isn't going to be very useful for us, so that gets left alone.
Pink Bean starts with very, very generic gear. Due to being a monster, there isn't any fashion we can use with our weapons and armor, so I feel free to simply use the best stuff I find as we go. One of our Step-Up gifts is a "Level 30 Equipment Box" that'll give us some decent starter gear when we get there. One of our things looks a little weird, though...
Well, it's not that much to worry about. I think that's enough explaining for one day - when we get back, we'll start taking on some generic questing and begin our level up process!