MikevsZoda

Bug Type: Progression, Game Logic

Bug Summary:
These quests cannot be completed in the game at this time, despite being available to start. These are not due to bugs or glitches (such as happened to Sengoku characters with their Magnus prequests in the past), but due to unavailable NPCs or content normal players cannot access. (Note that these are all based on my experience on Reboot, I cannot speak to any quest that appear on other servers)

Details:
Dragon Rider, an Explorer quest. An old outdated mount quest that cannot be completed because the prerequisite quests, receiving a Hog and Silver Mane mount, are no longer accessible. This quest can be accepted from the 4th job instructors in Leafre, but cannot be progressed.
(Lv. 35) Amoria: The Sakura Garden, under the quest journal heading Victoria Island. This one is a bit weird now. Before, when old Amoria was still accessible, the problem with this quest was that the Sakura Cellions in Amoria didn't drop an essential quest item. Now Amoria is (normally) inaccessible altogether, and I'm honestly not sure this quest even appears in new character's Available quest lists. It's still listed in my old main character's available quest list, so I'm going ahead and listing it for now.
The Committee Challenges, Under Victoria Island. The first part of this quest, collecting Lazy Buffy marbles for Sabitrama in Sleepywood can be done, but the second part is undoable. Previously because it requires going to Omega Sector, which was closed until recently (though the second part of the quest could be started using a remote quest accepting item. It could not be turned in with a remote quest item though). Now that Omega Sector is back, the required NPC, Dr. Kim, does not react to this quest due to the revamps that have been done. I need to do this questline under other characters, as with the previous quest listed, I'm not sure if that one is even still available to newly made characters. Updates pending me having more free time.
The Missing Hero, under Leafre. This one is only impossible on Reboot due to the nature of the server. The last part of this quest requires a Nine Spirit's Egg from Horntail, but because that item acts like a Scroll, it does not drop on reboot, making the quest unable to be completed. After a recent patch, Nine Spirit's Egg suddenly starting dropping on Reboot, and I was personally able to finish this quest line. I haven't tested it on other characters, but as far as I'm aware, this one is now possible.
The Lantern at Mushroom Shrine, under Overseas Travel, related to Showa Town and Mushroom Shrine. This quest cannot be completed as previous changes to the Mushroom Shrine area have changed the monsters in the area. The quest requires killing Paper Lantern Ghost enemies and collecting the Worn Paper Lanterns they drop. The only place a monster of this type appears now is in the map Zipangu: Vanished Village. However, the Paper Lantern Ghosts there now do not count toward quest completion when killed, although the items they drop still do.
Eliminating Big Cloud Fox, same heading and areas as above. This quest requires killing 80 Big Cloud Foxes. As before, the current iteration of mushroom shrine does not have this monster anywhere that I can find.
Umi's Ambition, same heading and areas as above. This quest requires talking to the NPC Alien Gray in Omega Sector. Before, Omega Sector was closed and this NPC was inaccessible. Now, this NPC doesn't exist in the new Omega Sector.
Eliminating Ghosts, same heading and areas as above. This quest requires killing Nightghosts. There are no Nightghost monster available in-game at this time, in the Zipangu areas or out.

For a time I had the quest to kill Astaroth on Victoria Island active, which couldn't be completed because Astaroth's Demon Door no long exists. However, I forfeited that quest to build this list and now it's no longer listed under Available or receivable from the NPC, so I'm going to assume that one has already been patched out entirely? Otherwise that quest also belongs on this list.

This is all I could come up with at this time, having done nearly every quest currently available in-game over the last few months. I've only created about half of the available character types so I can't confirm that all of the unique character quests are functional, but so far there haven't been any other issues. If anyone else has found any outdated quests that can't be completed due to revamps and changes that cause broken quest logic (not straight up coding bugs like Princess No had for a while there), please add them to the list.

Updated as of 8/1/2017, thanks to everyone for the new information

Bug type: Text Errors leading to Functionality Issues/Missing Monster Types



Brief bug summary:
With the monster collection event going on right now (and after participating in a previous thread related to bugged monster collection), I've been sifting through my collection list to see what I should aim for along with the event monsters. I've found several monsters that seem to be entirely uncollectable for one reason or another. If anyone can confirm that they have collected these monsters, I'd be curious to know about it. These monsters include:

Zakum1 (Listed under El Nath, Page 3, Row 5, Column 4, this entry refers to a version of Zakum that cannot be fought through normal gameplay anymore. This entry is decidedly broken and CANNOT be collected, and hasn't been available for at least year as far as I can tell)

Seductive Violent Primitive Boar (Listed under Ludus Lake, Page 3, Row 2, Column 2, Elite Monsters no longer spawn with the prefix Seductive. Apparently it was replaced with the "Charming" prefix. However, I cannot confirm if killing a Charming elite version of this monster can collect it yet, more testing required. Ideally, this would just be changed outright to Charming to avoid any future confusion)

KO Chief Qualm Guardian (Listed under Temple of Time, Page 1, Row 2, Column 4, See above, same case with the KO elite monster prefix, which was apparently folded into the "Overwhelming" prefix. As before, more testing required to see if an "Overwhelming Chief Qualm Guardian" counts for the Monster Collection)

Seductive Chief Oblivion Guardian (Listed under Temple of Time, Page 1, Row 3, Column 4, see above)

KO Steel Xenoroid EX (Listed under Edelstein, Page 2, Row 4, Column 3, see above)

Seductive Alloy Xenoroid DX (Listed under Edelstein, Page 2, Row 5, Column 2, see above)

Magic-resistant Commanding Possibly-Evil Seal (Listed under Near Victoria, Page 1, Row 5, Column 1, may in fact be possible at this time. According to AlexF, he has collected this very monster recently. More testing is required, but this is promising. Even still, as with the Seductive and KO prefixes, it would be ideal if the text was corrected to "Magic Resistant Commanding Possibly-Evil Seal" (punctuation and capitalization exact) once and for all)

Charismatic Ripe Wolfruit (Listed under Arcane River, Page 1, Row 5, Column 4, this prefix does not exist and I can find no evidence that it ever has. It remains uncertain what prefix it is supposed to have (possibly "Charming"?), or whether any of the existing prefixes will allow it to be collected. Much the same as the Seductive, KO, and Magic Resistant monsters above, this should be corrected to any currently available prefix for clarity's sake. Additionally, there are those that have collected this monster. By all evidence, this occurred during the time period most Elites were bugged to display ??? as their prefix, and the Monster Collection happened to display the same for the Wolfruit. Unless you have collected this monster AFTER these issues had been fixed, please don't make a note of it)

Reindeer (Listed under El Nath, Page 3, Row 1, Column 2, this enemy shares an exact name with a different monster found in Mu Lung (under Mu Lung Garden, Page 1, Row 2, Column 1). There is suspicion that this is causing an error where the Lion King Castle monster cannot be collected itself)



More details:
The Monster Collection has been understood by most to rely on exact-name matches between creatures killed and what is listed in the Monster Collection itself. This works normally in most cases, but some oddities tend to happen by the nature of this design, and a lack of foresight in naming certain monsters. For example, it is known that Magnus can be collected in FriendStory during the scene where you hit gym teacher Magnus with soccer balls because the two share a name. It is known that the Chief Cygnus Knights (Mihile, Oz, Eckhart, Hawkeye, and Irena) can be collected during certain events where they appear in different forms (in my case, I collected half of them during Sengoku High runs), again because they happen to share the same exact name. And perhaps in the oddest version, during the Tangyoon's Kitchen party quest, you can summon a creature named Snowman that resembles the kind you might make in winter, and killing enough of these may give credit for collecting the yeti-like Snowman normally found in El Nath instead (happened to me). These are all weird quirks, but each one of these monsters can be collected through normal means as well.

The problem is, each monster listed above does not currently appear in normal gameplay with the exact name shown in the Monster Collection, leading to suspicion that they are currently impossible to collect by any means short of using a Monsterbloom, an item so rare I'm only aware of 6 of them being available from the recent Party Punk Monster event. AlexF, further in this thread, has stated that most of these should be collectible because the monster names need not match exactly what is visible to the player to allow collection, due to the system apparently matching background hidden text strings that we wouldn't normally see instead. As an example, he states that he has collected the Magic-resistant Commanding Possibly-Evil Seal even when the visible name in the Monster Collection was off a bit, which is very hopeful. For the time being however, I must remain skeptical until I can confirm these entries myself, or have sufficient evidence from others as well. All evidence I've been able to see so far continues to support the basic monster name == monster collection name theory, as noted in the above paragraph. Even the oddest monster typo I could find in the list/game, "Mithril mutae", spelled exactly as such with 2 spaces and a lower-case M on the second word, out of formatting with all other monsters I've seen, still has the names match both in gameplay and in the Collection, and I've been able to collect it that way. Once again, further testing may confirm AlexF's claims on the nature of the system, but I will leave the list intact until otherwise noted.

Wall of Text preamble out of the way, I'll go in more depth on the trouble with each monster.

For Zakum1(sic), this entry refers to the old version of Zakum, before he received a revamp to the current version in-game. Before, Zakum had 3 distinct forms named Zakum1, Zakum2, and Zakum3. With the revamp to the boss, these have all been folded into a single enemy with one life bar, simply named "Zakum". I have read posts dating back as far as September 2016 noting this problem, and I believe that this version remains completely impossible to collect at this time.

Next, Elites with the KO and Seductive prefixes. These prefixes no longer spawn in normal gameplay, apparently having been converted/merged with "Overwhelming" and "Charming" respectively. However, it is uncertain if killing the correct elites with these prefixes will actually give a chance to collect the monster or if this remains broken. I am currently testing elite kills on Steel Xenoroid EXs and keeping track of how many of each prefix I kill for testing purposes. Further updates as I make progress.

The Magic-resistant Commanding Possibly-Evil Seal may be working at the moment. As I noted above, AlexF says he's collected this one even with the name in the collection not matching exactly (should read as "Magic Resistant Commanding Possibly-Evil Seal"). Until I or others can confirm collecting this monster right now, I will leave this one listed for now.

The Ripe Wolfruit elite is an odd case. There was a period where most elite's prefixes were displaying as ??? due to some text error. It just so happened that this monster was listed in the Collection as ??? Ripe Wolfruit, and it appears that numerous people collected this one during that time frame, because the names would therefore match exactly. Both issues have since been corrected, but the monster is now listed with a non-existent "Charismatic" prefix. This makes it uncertain what, if any, prefix will actually allow the monster to be collected. I suspect it was meant to be Charming, but so far, testing hasn't borne any results for me. Further updates in the future.

Finally, the Reindeer is an especially interesting case. Rather than having an improper name, it's actually the name of two different monsters. This gives it the opposite problem from what I stated the in the first paragraph. Rather than multiple monsters being useful for collecting a single entry, it's been reported that both entries can't be collected because killing the Reindeer found in the Lion King's Castle instead provides collection credit for the one in Mu Lung. I intend to test this on a fresh server where I haven't already collected the Mu Lung Reindeer, but if the system works as expected, this is the sort of thing that could potentially happen.

I believe that is all of the potentially impossible-to-collect monsters in-game at this time. I will continue to update this report as I gather more data. I appreciate everyone who has provided their own information and pointed me toward other issues I hadn't noticed myself. If anyone has any other problem monsters, or can confirm having collected any of the listed monsters at any time AFTER this was originally posted, it would be a huge help.

(I feel like this has been discussed before but I couldn't find a recent thread specifically about this topic.)

(Please skip to the bolded bits if you don't care about WORDS. I'm the type that can't help but over-explain to forcibly get my point across as hard as possible. Sorry for text walls)

I think that some adjustments could be made to the ways we can obtain Kritias coins given the realities of GMS, especially in relation to the only item really worth getting from the coin shop (in my opinion), Tyrant Gloves.

Currently, Tyrant Gloves cost 400 Kritias coins. These can be earned in GMS in two ways as of now: daily Kritias quests, a sequence of 5 quests the last of which gives you 1 Anti-magic stone to trade for a coin; Invasions, which occur every other hour during the day from 8am-10pm UTC time, which will give 1 Anti-magic stone to any player who did damage by collecting tokens during the invasion, or 4 stones to the player who dealt the "last hit". Other regions have a third method, the massive boss fight against Hekaton, which rewards up to 10 Anti-magic stones based on damage done during the fight, but GMS does not have this due to alleged performance issues.

As things stand, for many players the daily quests are the only viable way to get coins day to day is through the quests. Invasion times remain absolutely terrible for American players most days since the server switch to UTC, as during EST-PST invasion times, they will likely either be sleeping or at work/school. For example, in my timezone, invasions happen from 4am - 6pm. On an average workday, that means your average student/worker might get one or two invasions in a day depending on their schedule. That translates to 2-3 Kritias coins per day (assuming perfect attendance, and assuming you're not the lucky 1 person to get the final hit), or 167-200 days to get a single Tyrant Glove, or 5.5 to 6.5 months. And that further assumes a populated enough server to complete the invasion. I play on Reboot so there's never a problem finishing in 5 minutes or less, but I've heard that some servers at some times of day just don't have enough people participating to finish at all. In the worst case scenario for any server, a player only does daily quests for 1 coin a day, for 400 days, or over 13 months (assuming perfect attendance) to get a glove.

Let's compare that to the other 3 tyrant items you get from dealing with Magnus. Tyrant capes are pretty much a guaranteed drop for any Hard Magnus kill, and he can be done twice a week with Kritias reset tickets. So let's say 2 capes every 7 days. Magnus drops 9 Magnus Coins with each kill, or 18 per week. In the Shadow Merchant shop, Tyrant Boots cost 70 of these coins, and Tyrant Belts cost 100 coins. So after 4 weeks (~28 days), one could buy some boots (8 kills = 72 coins), or 6 weeks (~42 days) for a belt (12 kills = 108 coins). This is a much shorter timeframe than even nearly ideal Kritias play to get some gloves. To get anywhere near that, a player would have to do their daily Kritias quests, as well as the maximum 8 daily invasions to get gloves in ~45 days, which I'd think is an impossible schedule to keep for all but the most obsessed player. 7 daily invasions would take 50 days, 6 is ~58 days, 5 is 67 days, 4 is 80, 3 is 100, 2 is ~167, 1 invasion daily is 200 days, and only doing quests is 400. And as noted with the UTC server time problem, those last few options are probably the most viable for the average GMS player assuming they even bother doing every part with perfect attendance every day. This means gloves will typically take anywhere from 2-5x longer to get than the next longest to get Tyrant item, and the worst case scenario, over a year to get! And this isn't even to mention how much easier it is to get all your weekly Magnus coins in just a couple quick runs with friends than it is to do a long series of daily quests and being online at specific times for invasions...

Why care about this at all? Well, personally, as a GMS Reboot player, Tyrant items remain top tier end-game items when star forced up high enough, and possibly transposed to Sweetwater equipment (which is another set of absurdly difficult to get gear, but is another topic of discussion). But by their nature as Superior items, Tyrant equips are prone to being destroyed while star-forcing them to end-game levels. On Reboot in particular, we have no scrolls or means to mitigate the ever-increasing odds of booming a tyrant piece as they get stronger. For the capes, this isn't so bad, you get 2 a week to work with. It's a bit more hurtful for belts and boots, as they take a month to a month and a half to get. But with the current state of Kritias in GMS, it's exceptionally risky to even bother starring your Tyrant Gloves to a decent level because it would take so very long to get them in the first place. One bad roll and upwards of a year of grinding flies out the window. That's patently absurd even for the grindiest of MMOs in my opinion.

So what's to be done?
These are several methods I can think of to ease the difficulty of getting Tyrant gloves in GMS. Any one would help, or some selection of them with tweaks. Anything to drive down the insane time commitment Kritias demands for its best rewards.

Fix the Invasion Times
There's several ways to do this. (a) revert servers back from UTC to PST. This will almost certainly not happen at this point. Nexon has been adamant about this so far. (b) Adjust the times Invasions occur from 8am-10PM server time such that it more closely resembles the original, pre-UTC times. This seems like it'd be far more doable. (c) Make invasions happen every 2 hours ALL DAY, but limit entries to some amount per day, so people don't no-life it and never sleep to get coins.

Bring us Hekaton
Hekaton, as I understand it, is a huge daily source of coins for those that can top the damage charts. However, this seems unlikely to happen because of apparent server performance issues. One would hope Hekaton would be redesigned to function better, enough that it could be brought to GMS (maybe make it work like Inferno Wolf somehow to keep the number of players on-screen low? I dunno), but as things stand, I'm not getting my hopes up.

Lower the Shop Prices
Shop prices are set right now with the assumption that enough invasions can be attended and that Hekaton is available. Tweaking the prices in the shop itself could alleviate the amount of days required to get anything from it. This however runs the risk of those who do no-life it to do as many invasions as possible getting tons of gloves to flood the market with...but then it just wouldn't be far off from being like capes, right?

Change the Rewards for the Daily Quests
Right now you have to do all five daily Kritias quests to get a single Anti-magic Stone. Perhaps instead of only the last one giving a proper stone, and the other 4 giving fragments, all five could give a stone? That would drop the time to get Tyrant Gloves by doing dailies alone from 400 days to 80. Still high, but less. Or if that's too much, have it be a chance for the first 4 quests to give a stone? If daily quests are about the only sure way people will get Stones and thereby coins everyday, it could be more viable.

Change how Bonus Anti-Magic Stones are Rewarded in Invasion
Currently, you can only get 1 Anti-Magic Stone per invasion, unless you're the one person each invasion that gets the final blow on the supply commander by snagging one final token at the last moment. What this means right now is that everyone lets a pile of those tokens stack up on the ground until there's about 1/4 of the health bar left, at which point it instantly dies because everyone loots all the tokens at once, hoping to be the lucky winner. This is a frankly stupid way to do things. Why not have it just be the more damage you do, the higher your rewards? Do a million damage, get 2 stones, 2mil get 3, 3 mil get the whole 4? This is already seen in how much anti-magic (that you use to buy the silver coins for reset ticket) you get from invasions as a secondary reward, you get more and more the more damage you dealt. Why aren't the stones like this?

Or it could be more like Hekaton where those who did the highest "damage" get more stones. This runs the risk of making invasions fly by quickly as those with high drop rate slaughter the health bar in nothing flat, but it seems like adjustments could be made to mitigate that. (Adjust token drop rate, raise invasion health, have a temporary "invulnerability" period to the health bar, have invasions be shorter and last a set time, and it's a time rush for players to see how many tokens they can gather?)

Have Anti-Magic Stones Drop from Kritias Mobs
Not commonly of course. We could be talking Arcane River Droplet, Nodestone, Arcane Symbol, Stigma Stone, Alishan coins, and other rare daily reward drop rates here. Even if it was very rare, it would still be another way to acquire Kritias coins as a more reasonable rate.

tl;dr
Please do something to make the Kritias shop not the worst grind ever to get items from. Whether it be lowering the prices, changing how coins can be obtained, or just fixing the server times to something more reasonable for the majority of players, anything (and preferably some combo of my suggestions) would be helpful in making it not absurdly long and difficult to get one piece of end-game equipment. Only normally long and difficult.

And also fix the prequest problem where Will of the Five Planets 4 doesn't show up for some people after they finish Five Planets 3 so they can at least attempt to get Princess No's secondary.

Agreed. The times schedules for invasions are completely absurd for the typical north american as they stand. As an EST player, I'm lucky in that I can do several a day because I have a strange day-to-day schedule, but the average work day is typically 9 am - 5 pm, completely negating chances of a working stiff doing any invasions, since the invasion times before the time range will probably involve being asleep or getting ready for work for the responsible individual. Students, either younger ones or those in college, likely have similar schedules to follow, maybe they can squeeze in a few extras here and there depending on their location. PST players could probably wait up to do one at midnight or 2AM if they don't mind being tired the next day.

If the items in the Kritias shop weren't priced so expensively, it might not be so bad just getting the one Kritias coin per day from daily quests, maybe the occasional weekend invasion, but they're still priced as though GMS has Hekaton available. 400 days, give or take depending on your schedule, to get the main useful item from the shop (tyrant gloves), is pretty god awful.

There's several solutions available that would make this less of a problem for GMS:
1. Lower the shop prices. Heck, set tyrant gloves to 60 or even 90 coins. 2-3 months is a far sight better for getting your gloves than over a year of perfect daily attendance.
2. Give us Hekaton so we can get more anti magic stones (unlikely)
3. Set the server time back to PST like it ought to have been (also unlikely), alternatively alter the invasion timeframe.
4. Alter invasion entry such that they run hourly, but you only get a limited number of entries per day, like 5 or so. Treat them like guild flag races or the events like bingo and OX quiz that pop up over our heads at regular intervals.
5. Change invasions to work more like Sudden Quests or Bounty/Inferno Wolf portals. After some odd number of kills, time, whatever a portal pops to join an invasion event. (I'll probably get dope-slapped for this one, given how many people have trouble getting their portals, just an idea guys!)

Oh well, I've got 100 coins at this point. Probably another half year to go for me if I can maintain my current lifestyle.