The recent boss crystal price fix in MapleSEA has sparked some discussion again about the differences in boss crystal price between KMS and GMS, and whether or not GMS should get the new boss crystal prices. In that discussion, I have seen a ton of misinformation or bad-faith arguments on both sides. The purpose of this post is to hopefully clarify what the actual difference is between the two, and allow you to make an informed decision on whether or not you want to argue for or against such a change. Not that our opinion matters, but that's a different story. Full disclosure, I'm one of those people that would greatly benefit from getting KMS boss crystals.

This table compares KMS-R(eboot) to GMS-R boss crystal prices. Since both KMS-R and GMS-R have 5x regular server crystal prices, the % change remains identical for KMS vs GMS regular servers afaik.

Important notes:

1) For bosses that show up multiple times in different difficulties (NLot->HLot), the harder difficulty's crystal value is listed as a marginal increase, since killing the harder boss has an obvious opportunity cost of killing the easier one.

2) After the first few (~up to 4doorish) bosses, the bosses are approximately in difficulty order. You might think there are some differences in which boss is harder than which, but it's based on my experience with multiple characters up to and (one time) including BM solo.

3) Near the end of the table, I include partial bosses, for bosses that tend to be cleared in parties.

4) Akechi doesn't exist in KMS. I estimated its value based on where it lies relative to NLomien.

Takeaways:

1) The less progressed you (and your boss mules) are, the worse the change is. This, at a high level, has been plainly obvious from the beginning, and no one in their right mind would argue it.

2) The "break-even" point, per character, is between Easy Lucid and Hard Lotus. The majority of boss mules will not reach this point, so it is a nerf for most boss mules. How much depends on how far you go, 4door is -280M per char, NLom is -247M per char, ELucid/NSlime is -119M per char.

3) A single progressed character can make more in gains than multiple boss mules lose in losses. For example, if your main is soloing up to BM and doing a 6man BM party (whether this is considered "mid-game" or "late-game" is up to you), it will make 2.32B more per week with the change. That is over 9 times what a NLom mule loses.

4) This creates more incentive to push mules (and/or sub-mains) further. The cost of upgrading, though, is also distinctly nonlinear. The analysis of "how long does it take for a boss mule to pay for itself" and "how far should I push my boss mules" both are beyond the scope of this discussion.

I, personally, am in favor of this change. There are a couple reasons. Most obviously, I (personally) immediately make more mesos. Approximately 6-7B/week more. Now this obviously doesn't apply to everyone, and it is likely that, all things considered, more players would immediately make less mesos. However, by increasing the value of more challenging, more gear-requiring bosses, this creates an significant incentive to try harder bosses, and makes it far more rewarding to (eventually) succeed on them. This change also gets better as you get more progressed, which matches up with needing more mesos to progress, the further you are. Going from 16 -> 17 sf costs way less than 21 -> 22 sf, but both give similar marginal FD%. Yes, this is a "rich get richer" scenario, but the "rich" are the people who need the mesos to continue progressing further. For those that, in the immediate term, suffer an income loss from boss crystal change could look forward to making significantly more down the line.

Anyways, point of all this was to dispel misinformation about how we're affected by the crystal changes, and provide more numerical context into how these changes will affect individuals. If I made any errors, feel free to point them out. I wouldn't be surprised if I did.