GMS: PvP and the Golden Temple Item Explosion!

Yesterday, GMS released part 3 of the Chaos update, Player vs. Player (pvp).
It’s finally here… I’ve been waiting for it for so long.
Talk to Maximus to get into the arena map, where you can enter a pvp match, trade Battle Points for Gallant Emblems, and trade Gallant Emblems for items.

He’s actually part of the background… Look what happens if you lower the quality:

Interesting, huh?

When you log on, you’ll receive a quest from Rosette.  Accept it; the rewards for completing the series will be amazing.

When you’re in the arena, Rosette will ask you to get 50 points in a match.  50… should be easy as pie.  She’ll follow up with 100, 300, 500, and 1000 point quests, each of which will grant you 1 Gallant Emblem (very, very worth it) and a time-limited accessory that adds ~2 to each stat and 1 w/matk each.  All, that is, except for the 1000 point quest.  For that, you’ll get a permanent equip.  I myself got the ____ pendant.  Good thing, I don’t have a good one.  I guess the shoulder or ring would have been nice, but I won’t complain–most people will want to get the full set anyways.

I got 1k points~  pretty much for all of my first 5 or 6 games -.-

I should be happy; it seems that most people can’t get nearly as high.  My top score so far (without the 1.5x) has been just over 2k.  Unfortunately, I was trying to record that match and Hypercam decided to stop responding after I changed my settings.  Sad day.

The first of four.  Seems like I forgot to take the pic until today o.o
The equips are lv 30+, and when you have the full set, you get +10 to all stats and 5 w/matk.  GET IT GET IT GET IT.
They unique and untradeable, BUT the pendant and the belt also have slots.  You can therefore potential them and scroll them.  I’m guessing chaos will be a popular choice for the scroll, but you can also trade 5 Gallant emblems for a secret scroll that can give you an accessory scroll when you open it.
The permanent equips are 10 emblems each.  7 emblems cost 2.5k BP.  Every 10 points you get in pvp is automatically converted into BP at the end (I believe it’s rounded down).  If you DC in the middle of a match, you will still get BP, but not the exp.  It takes me about 2-3 days to get each equip (I don’t play that much), but I’m going to stay in pvp until I can get them.

12 emblems ^^  I managed to get it today after a few games.  (sorry for the large images, the crops aren’t letting me save them).
Okay, let’s go a bit further into PVP.  First of all, LAAG.  SO MUCH LAAAAAAAAAAG.
Everyone experiences lag in PVP.  Skills don’t work all the time, you might see people flying across the map (not due to some rush), and sometimes you die 10 seconds after you get hit.

Glitchhhhhh.  My db froze in midair after I used flying assaulter.  Don’t believe me?

Still frozen.  Derp.
You can get out by using any other skill (another FA will get you stuck slightly lower).  I’ve seen it happen to someone else, so yea.  BEWARE!!! nah, you’ll be fine.
Moving on…
There are two modes currently available: Free for all and Team fight.  Free for all usually consists of about 10 players who go all out against each other.  I’m not sure, but I think there’s only one map.  I’ve played a few rounds and it’s always been in this Pink Bean map.  It’s pretty convenient for a chief bandit ^^ band of thieves ftw!

Single player is pretty fun.
Team fight has several maps, one of which is, I believe, Lionheart Castle-themed.  I hate that map so much -.-  I’ll explain why later.  In a team fight, you are placed randomly in either red or blue team, and when the game has 3 or more people on both sides, it begins.  Note that the teams can be unbalanced.  I wound up playing a game yesterday that was 3v6, to our disadvantage.  It sucked.
There’s also Ice Knight, but that’s gonna come out with the next Chaos update.
So there are the three types of PVP, two of which are open.  Here’s some more info about it:
There are no damage numbers in PVP–your attacks can be “cool”, “hit”, “no hit”, “critical”, or “great”.  There are probably others I can’t name.  It sucks when you get “no hit” on chains of hell.
Items drop in the game.  They act like CPQ pots, where they activate as soon as you pick them up.  There are hearts (blue, purple, red, and cure-all), fists, shields, and a mystery box.  These items spawn randomly throughout the match, and all I can say is GET THEM.  The hearts are for recovery (other than the cure-all): Blue for mp, Red for hp, and Purple for both.  You can recover 15% or 30% of your hp/mp from hearts.  Fists add to your damage.  It is a significant boost, so get it.  Same with the shield.  It adds to your defense.  Get it and you’ll be able to stay alive a lot longer.  The mystery box is a bit… mysterious.  It can give you any of the above (recovery, boost, etc), as well as add a status effect to all your enemies (darkness, weakness, seal, covering most of the screen), give you a bubble shield (what the hell does that do), give you some BP (I usually get 20), or turn you into a monster, which causes you to not be able to attack or use any skills for the duration.  Do your best to not get hit when you’re a monster.

There are also triple items that drop in team fight, and these will apply the buff to your entire team.  I cannot stress how important it is to pick these up.  It may be the difference between a win and a loss.
Each game takes 10 minutes.
Note that you can join a game in progress.  I found myself in a game with 3 minutes left.
In pvp, your skills get changed.  DB’s get hardcore nerfed, with several cooldowns on skills (flying assaulter, chains of hell, upper stab, etc).   Certain skills may not be used at all (meso explosion, pickpocket, etc)
-Depending on which mode you join (you’re forced to join a certain range, all but my aran are forced into 70+), you may be limited to third job and under, etc, or you might not have potential (any potential on your items are nullified).  That means that when I go in with my db, I lose all my equips -.-
Also, the HP bar of enemies only appears after you hit them. I don’t like it, since the lag makes it hard to hit anyone to begin with.  The hp bar also lags, so you’ll see some ghosts that look like they still have 10% hp left.
When you die, there is no penalty.  You simply turn into a ghost for 5 seconds and respawn at the top of the map.  Any fighting attempted there is a “no hit”.
You get points for hitting enemies (I think only “good” and “great” will give you points), killing them, or getting lucky with a mystery box.  Every so often, the person with the most points gets a star on them (their icon on the minimap will also become a star), and if you kill him/her you will get 2x the points that you would normally get.  If the person survives until the end, they get a tiny exp boost (like 600).
So that’s about all I have to say about pvp itself.  Here’s my experience with it.
First game I go into:

Second:

Third:

(stopped taking ss’s of team fights)
First free-for-all:

So I’ve done pretty well in all my games.  It’s actually really great playing a CB.  We got assaulter, band of thieves, and eventually flash jump.  I’ve seen hermits, arans, and cb’s do really well.  Other classes… well, there are good ones and there are bad ones.
The exp from pvp is also amazing, if you noticed in my screenshots.  I believe that it’s worth it training there if you can do well until, well, you get bored.  Winning a team fight with around 500 bp (should be pretty easy if you don’t freeze up) would land you at least 350k exp in the 70+ fights.  I leveled up in 3-4 games yesterday, and got from 85-90 (it’s so much more fun playing pvp than it is grinding).
So… that’s all for pvp.
Nexon gave the people who didn’t get their hot time items the appropriate items.  I used my gatch ticket at kerning in hopes of getting a db mask and instead got an underaverage kebob.  It’s cool, I guess, but it’s still underaverage.
Now, on to the return of the Golden Temple.

This time around, the Golden Temple’s mobs will be dropping maple, reverse, and timeless weapons.

Actually, I’m not sure about the timeless, but they do drop maple and reverse.

They also drop a chair: Musical note chair.
It looks pretty nice :]
I was in the reverse goblin cave and I got a bunch of random maple stuff (all lv 64).

I also found two groomsman suits right outside Useless, but still nice.
I later went on my db and killed a bunch of monkeys in hopes of a reverse weapon.  Instead, I got a bunch of maple items (I also got the warrior shield twice, so I’m not sure what the drops include) and two chairs.  Ravanna, of course, is still available.  You only need 5 sunbursts to enter.
Back to the PVP stuff: The quest, Honor of the ___ (depends on your job), asks you to get to rank 9 in pvp.  It takes quite some time, about 3k bp (total earned, not excluding the bp you spend), if I’m not mistaken.

But guess what you get?  A gallant emblem.  Bleh.  The hardest quest only gave me a gallant emblem.  I suppose it’s good.  This, along with the other quests and two sets of 7 emblems, gets me a total of 3 of the equips.  I got the shoulder today .
I’m trying to record another video so I can show PvP, but my fraps on this computer is free, so there’ll be a watermark… unless hypercam decides to work.
One last tidbit: I HATE the new Advanced Dark Sight.  The auto-proc is terrible.  It is just terrible.  More rant later.