A Semi-Official Walkaround in the Singapore maps
(Yes, I’m aware that I’m /slightly/ late. >>; )

So I say right, I thought they won’t come up with the maps le loh. They always take so bloody hell long one, say want to have what exclusive map lah, new boss lah, and suddenly really come out with one loh! Unbelieveable sia. [/Singlish]

If you understood that, congratulations, you have almost picked up the new strain of language called Singlish. Why the spate of Singlish though? Well, what better way to kick off a review blog on the Singapore map (hereby onwards known as SG)?

So fasten your seatbelts, passengers, and let Captain Silver take you through the Maple-lised version of my homeland. Just don’t worry about who’s driving the plane. >D

» Buggy, as per every patch with major new content. >>;

The autopatch wouldn’t work, but the moment I sensed that it was dying on me, I hopped to the ‘Downloads’ page on MapleSEA.com and altered the patch links there to get the as-of-then-not-released manual patch. >D

Consequently, I was the first one to login in my guild, and second only to Wolfrage on my BL, from whom I had learnt the above trick in the first place.

Funny, I have never seen Aquila so empty in the evenings before.

Pausing only to scrawl ‘FIRST TO LOGIN, PWN!’ all over the guild notice and the newly installed BBS, I hopped onto the ship to Ellinia and scurried to Kerning to take the plane. The ship to Ellinia was fun: instead of mini-games or just plain stoning around, we had a riddle fest instead. ^^

Take-away of the ride: So why was six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine!

Plane Ride
» The plane ride costs 20K mesos and is very fast, about one minute long: They don’t kid about what they say.
What confused me was the bit before takeoff, when you had to wait outside the airplane itself: I actually messed up and click on the pilot by accident, which resulted in me being kicked out of the ride and having to pay another 20K to get back in again. Klutz. -_-

The airplane itself is tiny and cramped, and you can’t jump inside it, only move sideways. Befits an airplane ride, I suppose. While that isn’t much fun itself, it makes for very interesting dropgames. And lookee, a bird!

Oh, that’s just some suicidal maniac (that’s lagging). Funny enough, he survived the trip and made it to Singapore with the rest of us.

Coming to somewhere near you: PYROMANIAC ONBOARD!

Airport
» Pretty, really pretty. There’s even the familiar control tower in the background; one of the first things you’d notice when you leave/approach Changi Airport. Also, check out the departures board: “Leafre – Coming Soon.” Hee. ^^

Main Town – CBD (Central Business District)
» Most of the iconic landmarks and buildings are there alright, and pretty well-rendered, imo. I also like the city skyline in the background. It’s just so… clean. But what’s funny is that the name of the map itself will be censored if you type it out. Thus, ‘CBD’ becomes, ‘****D’. -_-;

The statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of modern Singapore. No, he does not actually have fat jowls. >>;

Victoria Concert Hall. No, there aren’t any mushrooms in the actual stone details. -_- And the vendor in front of it is really freaky. o_O;

CK Tang. It’s a departmental store that’s been there for ages, and I actually find it quite pretty. (Check out the NPC’s speech below, btw: Be there or be squared! Did she mean ‘square’ or n²?)

The Esplanade (or, as the locals nickname it, the Durians), the spiky looking structure that is the city’s performing arts centre. It’s really gorgeous in real life, all glass and metal, and the view of the city skyline from its rooftop gardens is really nice.

And of course, the Merlion(s). Half lion, to represent the origins of our name (Singa = Lion), and half fish, to represent Singapore’s origins as a fishing village and our dependency on the sea around us. Another one outside the town.

Other than these buildings, I also love the authentic looking road signs and warning signs scattered all over the place. Even the recycling binsand dustbins look authentic, lawl. I do admire the amount of effort whoever it is has put into the drawing of the maps, I do.

More weird NPCs…
Wouldn’t let these guys near my hair and skin any time in the near AND far far future.

Boat Quay
» Tourist hotspot, and one of the busy nightspots as well. I love the way they render this place, with all the familiar alfresco dining umbrella things all down the street. *sighs*
Oh, and it’s so cute how you can either clamber your way up to the rooftops or use the random hidden teleportals to get up there and fool around with the flowers and stuff up there.

Central Way
» You come to this right after exiting CBD. The funniest thing about it is how the Electronic Road Pricing gantry flashes ‘HAVE A NICE DAY!’
Why should an instrument in Road Taxing be so cheerful? >>;

The cars in the background are really cute: they move! and they have all the local taxi companies (mis)represented. >D I even spotted the one my father works for. *giggles*

Loads of sniping perches, which is great for training if you have AoEs/ranged attacks: trucks and limos and recycling bins and dustbins everywhere~ You can even hop onto a lamppost, if you have a mind to. >>;

That’s our sole island-wide train system. MRT~

Mobs: All are of the variety I personally nickname Ebil Black Blobs. The usually inanimate objects come to life and these mischievous looking blobs run around playing with them.
Thusly, we get to hunt down stop signs (Stopnow), rubbish bins (Biner), speed limit signs (Nospeed), fake albatrosses (Blatoo), lorries (Trucker), fire extinguishers (Freezer) and even Pink Octopuses. TOO CUTE! >D

I love the concept of Ebil Black Blobs, btw. How else to make an urban city state come literally to life? XD (Oh, irony that it comes to life just to be killed. Hm.)

POO FOR j00!

Mysterious Path
In these maps, you travel along lines of bumboats into what seems to be another dimension. I mean, they don’t usually have purple coloured skies in Singapore.

Well, the story is that this bit of the city is haunted, and you get this Ghostbuster quest that gets you to eliminate a few hundred of them. It was pretty fun.

Psst! You can even deliberately fall into the Singapore River if you have half a determined mind to. There are glitch gaps between the boat platforms for you to drop into oblivion and be randomly teleported around. ^^

Mobs: All them cute ghosties. <3 Their death animations are even cuter. :X

I wants to HUG them, lulz. 8D

Anyway, MP3 (that is, according to the infamous Singaporean Impulse to Abbreviate*, Mysterious Path 3) is an awesome place to train. Selkies and Slimies give 240 and 250 exp each, even more than Mixed Golems, and you have two sniping spots: on top of this truck and on a raft to the side. The first is so convenient for Arrow Rain/Explosion/any other similar AoEs, and the second so convenient for me.
The spawn is constant, the EXP good, the drops pretty wonderful (I managed to gather Gastropoda’s armour up till the level sixty-eighth. >D), and the money good (because even if the ETC drops only NPC for three mesos each, the meso drops (Up till 450 each drop) more than make up for it).

Thus, it is little wonder why MP3 rapidly devolved into a party slot/map owning system as per SEA’s FoG. :/

I was training there too, and the spawn was so thick that if it weren’t for Bakwa, I would have missed a lot of equip drops. An Olympus (lvl 50 bow) did drop on the truck’s edge while I was there, and I didn’t notice it through my Arrow Rain until some Ice Mage kept struggling to climb up to where I was, and picked it up before I managed to. T__T I tried to ask for it back, but he refused to give it back. Oh well.

*see below quote

*Also see this link . You know there’s something wrong when they have a whole list of jokes for the ‘national’ Acronyms themselves.

Hop across above mentioned raft, and that will bring you to… *dundundundun!*

Ghost Ship
Dark, glowy, titantic-esque and a little confusing to navigate through (Then again, it might be just me. -_-). All the mobs here are similar to what’s on MP3, and it is a cleric’s haven. Obviously a training spot to be exploited, and the last I heard, there was a KS war between a guildie and some other intruder because the intruder wouldn’t leave the guildie’s map.
The first time I went in, I was also told to ‘ccplz’, by a single Priestess who wanted two whole HUGE levels to herself. Kids these days. *tsh*

Go deeper, and you will find a formidable monster: Mr Fat Ghost Pirate aka Mr Anchor.
I didn’t go past that, because. They hit like, 2,000 magic damage, and the leeetle problem here was that I only had 2208 HP. Pile a 300+ touch damage and wham! Itsa ded Silvar.
There is a boss inside, but I obviously can’t make it. :/ It does three to four thousand damage to a lvl 119 Hermit, so uh, I guess I’d pass.

Here’s a link to some more SSes.

And if you scrolled all the way down, skipping everything because you have a short attention span for text, here’s two videos about it. It’s not mine, duh, but I found it on the PlayPark forums, and it’s pretty thorough. It covers the insides of the Ghost Ship too, which I didn’t spend too much time in. Andandand: the video maker got lost too! So it’s not just me!

(Psst, there’s an Annikabelle inside the first video. @ 5:12. A sweet Priest, eh? *nudgenudge* XDXD)

Potions
Nawp, no fancy pots. :/ I’m a little disappointed though, especially after seeing all the NLC’s pots. They just have the usual ones dressed up as local cuisine, but it’s cute enough. (And cheap too. )
My favourites: Chicken Rice, Pepper Crab, CHILLLLII <3 Crab, and the King of Fruits, DURIANS!

Music
Elevator music, but it’s cheerful. A little repetitive, and Wolf says he prefers El Nath music. But I usually play with the sound muted, so eh. >|

Quests
There was a bug in one of them, when they SAID you had to collect 200 of Metal Poles and Speed Limit Signs, but the Quest Alarm stated only 100 of each, but you need to go back with 200 of each, else they’ll say you have no Use space left to receive the reward even though you have a completely empty Use inventory. I think they fixed it now, I’m not sure.
But collecting 200 of those Signs were NO JOKE. I got more Metal Poles than Signs, and felt like battering the NPC over the head with it after I was done. -_-
However, it gave a 60% Wand for Atk scroll, which I dumped on Gastropoda’s Cromi, and IT WORKED! Pretty good, for my first scrolling attempt since my level forty bow. >>;

THIS was the quest I was waiting OH SO LONG for. You have to fly to Singapore, back to Henesys, then run all the way into Sleepywood to claim the flag.
I love the flag so much, I did it on SilverFx, Gastropoda, muwhaha, Gemina, Dustbunnies and even my noobie ‘Sin, Azriel. That was such a scary business, for Azriel, because she only has level one Darksight, and was completely unequipped. Not good, if you want to survive Cold Eyes and Drakes at lvl 25.

It’s such a spiffaric flag, it’s so huge, it’s so cool, it’s so NICEEEEEEE. *squeeees* I love it to death. XD
IT SO PWNS J00!

Yepyep. That’s all from me about SG. It may be about one month late, give or take a couple of weeks, but hey. Nothing like a whole exclusive map tailored to your homeland to, uh, rouse that good ol’ patriotism sometimes. Haha.

Ha. >>;

*scatters* Cookie for you!