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Maplestory Reboot Guide Created by 4phantom1 / updated by pocket

Foreword: It’s about 15k words in length so it’s fairly wordy but I believe does a decent job of explaining some of the gear progression mechanics and game knowledge to newer and older players. This is a guide designed for GMS only.

If you’re looking for a quick & easy sheet to help, there is a 1-page ‘cheat sheet’ linked just before the credits, that can be found by using the code in the contents below.

Each section will be designated a code that will enable you to find that section more easily using the Ctrl+F feature. 

Contents (Use Ctrl+F to find the sections you need)

1. Introduction [1001]
2. New Classes [1002]
3. Potentials [1003]
4. Star Force Enhancement [1004]
5. Flames [1005]
6. Mastery Books [1006]
7. Stat Distribution [1007]
8. Skill Points [1008]
9. Tips & Tricks [1009]
10. Training Guide [1010]
11. EXP Multipliers & useful  tools for training [1011]
12. Reboot Level Up Gift Box [1011]
13. Guilds [1013]
14. Gear Progression [1014]
15. Important Prequests [1015]
16. Endgame [1016]
17. 5^th Job [1017]
18. Arcane River [1018]
19. Nodes/ V Matrix [1019]
20. Meso Farming [1020]
21. Transferring [1021]
22. Cubing [1022]
23. Link Skills [1023]
24. Making a Kanna Mule/Hs Mule [1024]
25. Sweetwater Weapons [1025]
26. Sweetwater Gear [1026]
27. Tyrants [1027]
28. Transposing [1028]
29. Inner Ability [1029]
30. Bosses [1030]
31. Legion [1031]
32. Stupid Endgame Optimisation [1032]
33. Cheat Sheet [1033]
34. Credit [1034]

Introduction [1001]

After seeing weekly ‘returning player’ threads, I decided to write this guide in hopes that it can help any players in need who are lost upon returning. However this guide ONLY applies to those playing on the reboot server.

What is the reboot server?

Reboot is a server where Nexon has removed most pay to win elements of the game, that is items usually purchased with NX (Nexon Cash/Premium Currency) on normal servers are purchasable with mesos on Reboot. Also, things such as Marvel Machine are not available on reboot. Reboot also has bonus %damage scaling from levels to compensate for lack of scrolling and bonus potentials.

What are the main differences between reboot and normal servers? 

Reboot has trading disabled- therefore making it mainly a grind based server, however in comparison requires little to no real life funds but instead utilises a lot of time instead. 

Normal servers have a higher damage cap, due to the presence of more systems like bonus potentials and scrolling that provide more damage than just potential. 

Both servers can require literally $0. (Note that pets are basically required on reboot as you must farm your own mesos). There are free pets available though (events/blackheart). There are many ways to make mesos in non-reboot mostly centered around farming certain items and taking advantage of events.

Monsters in reboot have a higher exp and HP multiplier. There is a bigger penalty for being underleveled (5% final damage loss per level under the monster). Mesos drop at a 6x higher rate in meso.

Cash shop items that are NX in non-reboot vs meso in Reboot:

Hyper teleport rock

Monster park additional entry ticket

Black and Red cubes

Jett link skill configuration items: – condensed supernova dust, stellar cosmic dust solidifier and cosmic dust shifter.

Safety charms, buff freezers, respawn tokens (note that non-reboot has npc that provides sells these on a limited daily basis for meso: 3 per day of each).

Miracle circulator

Wedding ticket

Android naming coupon

Item tag

Additional convenience items available in general stores for meso in reboot only:

Powerful (Red) flames, master craftsman cubes, 30 day pendant slot, additional character slot coupon, equip-use-etc-setup slot coupons.

Non-reboot exclusive:

Maple reward points shop has many more items than reboot such as pet food for multiple pets, additional inventory slots, 30 day pendant slot, exp coupons, scissors and hammers. These are limited and only refresh on a monthly basis. Most items can be purchasable for mesos in reboot on an unlimited basis, but this is an alternative for non-reboot players who don’t want to use nx.

Cashshop EXP and droprate coupons- these stack with use exp/drop coupons and some events.

RNG p2w: Philosopher books, marvel machine, gachapon which can give equipable items that alter gameplay and give advantages. Note that reboot has gachapon but only for cosmetic items and inventory bags.

The “Zero” character class is only available on non-reboot.

Monster life

Meso market and auction house. The meso market allows you to sell mesos for maple points or buy maple points with meso through an in-game system. Auction house is for buying/selling items.

Should I play on reboot or normal servers?

General consensus is if you’re willing to dish out some $$$$, play normal servers as progression is much faster if you have money but if you aren’t willing to spend $$$$ then go reboot, where the progression isn’t as slow as long as you’re willing to get carried through some bosses.

What class should I play?
Play whatever looks fun to you. If you don’t like it, change. If you’re not sure, look up  some vids on that certain class on youtube and see whether they look like a fun class. But remember not to judge a class until you’ve played it to lv200 and gotten fifth job, because for some classes it’s a massive game changer.

What’s a good class to start with?

Here are some recommendations on what to start with as a first character: Ark, Kanna, Demon Avenger, Demon Slayer, Angelic Buster, Aran, Thunder Breaker. I’m 100% sure there are others that people recommend but in my opinion these are some of the easiest classes to level.

Arks are mobile and require very low funding to progress due to innately high damage. They also come with a great link skill which gives you up to 11% additional damage at level 2 (lvl 120) while in combat.

Kannas are a force to be reckoned with now. They do good damage and are the kings of mobbing with multiple summons. Owner of the Kishin skill which boosts spawn rate and max # of mobs on maps. Also built in with another 10% damage link skill at level 2.

Thunder breaker is innately strong with high damage and very mobile with lots of lines. Link not useful yet until Glorion patch in fall/winter.

Demon Avenger is a super strong class, always has been the king of unfunded due to HP scaling, and has a really nice scaling on skills and he has a 10% damage level 2 link skill so even if you don’t like it having a lv120 one will be useful anyway. 

Angelic Buster has insane scaling, so her damage will output will be crazy while you’re levelling, even if you’re missing some damage from gear. Has a bossing burst damage link skill. (Not recommended if you have bad lag, has a recharge mechanic that lag can glitch out)

Aran has a really nice link skill that quadruples the EXP you get from combo orbs, which is a massive boost to EXP gain from lv 1-60, as well as crazy high base damages I’m fairly sure no one else can match. Has good mobility and insane damage. Also has inbuilt drain, so doesn’t require HP potions until later stages where he can’t outheal the incoming damage. 

Demon Slayer has amazing mobbing skills that scale with a lot of damage, cover a lot of area and are spammable. The damage is not quite as strong as the previous three I mentioned, but makes up for it by having much more AOE damage. Also has the link skill benefit of 10% boss damage at level 2.

Beast tamer and jett have been buffed in the latest patch, though still lower on dps. Kannas have been revamped and buffed and are a decent dps class now in addition to support. Bishop can be played as a main class but keep in mind you will mainly be playing a supportive role because their late game dps suffers a lot due to low scaling, however they are still welcomed in late game raid parties due to their excellent supporting capabilities.

If these classes don’t appeal to you, here are some others that double as good classes to try due to having good/decent link skills/legion effects: Cannoneer, Cadena, Illium, Evan, Kinesis, Mercedes, Hayato, Kaiser, Kanna, Luminous, Mihile, Phantom, Xenon, Wild Hunter and Mechanic 

VERY IMPORTANT- If you’re a new player on your first reboot character, don’t open the reboot gift boxes until ~lv150 (explanation below, Ctrl+F Reboot Level Up Gift Box)

If you’re an OLD OLD player (pre Big Bang) read the following, if not skip to the section marked post BB player (Ctrl+F POST BB PLAYERS)

New Classes [1002]

I’m not going to explain every single new class and it’s capabilities because I’d be writing forever, but the bottom line is, it’s no longer just 5 explorers anymore (or 4 if you played then). Many new class chains exist now, however the explorers are still great characters to play, as many have been revamped with new skills and better kits than old maple. I’d encourage you to look at new classes before deciding to play an explorer, because they might not be as you remember them, and many of the new classes have really interesting skills and mechanics.

Potentials [1003]

Potentials are basically bonus stats that you can get on items. They can be added to equips using potential scrolls, and changed using cubes. 4 different tiers exist: Rare, Epic, Unique and Legendary. The tier potential can be upgraded through using cubes. There are 4 types of cubes: Master Craftsman’s, Meister, Red and Black. Master Craftsman’s can be bought at the Henesy Store, drop from bosses, drop from mysterious legendary veins/herbs and on Commerci voyages. Meister come from the same, the only difference being that Meister can tier up an item from unique->legendary whereas Master Craftsman’s cannot. Red/Black cubes can be bought from the NX store with mesos. More info on cubing can be found in the cubing section. Items with  potential have up to 3 lines of potential, although upon revealing an item’s potential it may only have 2 lines, in which case you can buy a potential stamp from Henesys which has a 50% chance to add an extra potential line. 

Potential lines can be different tiers, known as standard & prime lines. Prime lines are better, and having triple prime lines is a very rare feat that only super-min/maxing endgame players will go for. For example, an epic prime line for level 70-150 gear is 6% stat and standard lines are 3% stat, so getting 3 6% stat lines on an epic tier potential item is very rare, whereas unique potential gear has 9% prime lines and 6% standard lines. 

• Different level gear also have different standard/prime lines. From Maplewiki
• Level 0-30 gear items can get: 1% on rare, 2% on epic, 3% on unique, 6% on legendary
• Level 31-70 gear items can get: 2% on rare, 4% on epic, 6% on unique, 9% on legendary
• Level 71+ gear items can get: 3% on rare, 6% on epic, 9% on unique, 12% on legendary
• GlobalMS only: Level 151+ gear items can 4% on rare, 7% on epic, 10% on unique, 13% on legendary

Star Force Enhancement [1004]

Another way to enhance gear, accessible in the inventory menu at the bottom through the little hammer icon, otherwise it’s bound to O by default. It’s really simple, you just pay a certain amount of mesos and the stats on said item increase. The higher the number of stars you get from enhancement, the higher the chance to fail an enhancement becomes. Once you get to 12 stars, enhancing has a chance to explode your item. You can circumvent this until 17 stars by using the safeguard option, which stops booms but makes it cost extra. 17-25 stars has no safeguard option and you’re at RNG’s mercy. If you do explode your item,you will receive a trace that transfers the previous item’s potential and 12* onto a fresh copy of the item. Flames, anvils, transposed stats and soul weapons will be retained.

Flames [1005]

Flames are yet another enhancement system that were introduced to us in the Vcare update on Ark’s release. It’s pretty much free bonus stats. When you apply a flame to an item, you will get bonus stats on that item based on its level and the tier of the stat you receive. If you flame a boss set item/boss gear, such as Absolab gear or the CRA set, you’re guaranteed to receive 4 different stat increases, and they are guaranteed to be of a good tier (minimum tier 3, maximum tier 7). Non-KMS items such as sweetwater accessories will not receive these ‘boss set’ flames, and thus can give 1-4 stat lines that are tier (1-5). Tier 7 flame stats can only be obtained off rainbow flames, which are very rare drops from bosses or come from event stores/monster collection. The majority of players will be using crimson flames, which can be purchased from Henesys/Leafre however they only give a maximum stat tier of 6. 

You can check which stats are given at what item levels/flame tiers here: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/MapleStory/Additional_Options_and_Nebulites

Mastery Books [1006]

Old Mastery Books don’t exist anymore. You can buy 100% success lv 20 and lv 30 universal mastery books from the stores in Leafre and Henesys, or obtain them from quest lines such as Silent Crusade.

Stat Distribution [1007]

Secondary stats barely exist anymore, and as such there is no need to put points into secondary stats. All you stat points go into your main stat now, so auto-assign is perfectly fine and safe to use.

Skill points [1008]

You can no longer lose points by over levelling before job advancement, and skill points are now individual to each  job advancement, so you have a set amount of sp for each job’s skills so you don’t need to worry about using 1^st job sp on 2^nd job skills. Most classes max all skills 1-4, but there are a few who leave skills at level 19. If you’re not sure, google a skill build. 

Tips & Tricks [1009]

Use maple guide to get around while levelling, it’s default bound to U. It enables you to teleport to any map where you’ve killed a sufficient amount of mobs/finish the relevant questline in the area. If you’re on mega-welfare and can’t afford a tp rock, you can completely the sleepywood quest line and use the maple guide to tp sleepywood->walk to six path crossway and use the dimensional portal to go wherever you need

You can get a free pet from doing Hard Hilla, which has a chance to drop a Blackheart box which drops either a Blackheart Pet or an accessory. Most guilds will carry this for you if you have enough contribution and aren’t annoying about it. (Read the ‘Guilds’ section below)

Once you can OHKO them, go farm Big Spiders at Verne Mine in Edelstein, they provide a 1.5x to drop rate whenever they are active, and are very helpful. Before you go into a boss fight or are farming for a certain drop (e.g. Nodestones) it’s useful to have active. You should farm 3 familiars so you can keep it out longer. You can do this on your 150 Kanna mule and transfer the familiars over to your main using storage.

If you have a decent amount of income from bossing/meso farming make sure to buy a Hyper Teleport Rock from the Cash Shop. It costs 25m and lasts 7 days,  but makes life so much easier.

Training guide [1010]

Note: This is just what I do. Other people may have differing training spots, but I will offer a few alternatives however feel free to look up other training guides if the spots here don’t suit you well.

1-30 Mixed Flaming Golems (Henesys)

1-30 Individual Class Story Quests

1-20 Fairies (Ellinia)

20-30 Curse Eyes (Ellinia)

30-59 Ellinel Fairy Academy Theme dungeon

30-59 Gold Beach Theme dungeon

30-59 Riena Strait Theme dungeon

30-59 Elodin Theme dungeon

40-50 Wraiths in Kerning City Subway

50-60 Boars at Perion

60-80 Copper Drakes, 1 map right of Sleepywood

60-80 Drake Cave: Sunless Area- Drakes into the sleepywood caves. 

60-80 Drake Cave: Chilly Cave- rotate in circular fashion and use tp portal on bottom left.

70-85 Ice Fangs, Ice Valley 2 (Accessible from El Nath by taking Danger Zone taxi)

85-100 Sahel 2, Magatia (Go through maple guide or 2 maps left of Magatia)

85-100 Desert of Serenity, Magaitia (Accessible from Sahel 2)

90-100 C-1, C-3: Roids, inside Magatia Laboratory

100-108 NORMAL Zakum with rune, 2x, mvp, any and all exp modifiers. Focus on killing arms and dodge the slams. Suggested to buy a buff freezer or 2 in case you mess up so you keep your exp buffs.

->Important note: This boosts you from 100-104 instantly if you do it right. Here’s a couple notes for the fight. Pop a rune, and immediately use the boss queue feature to find a party (default binded to T). Once you get in, leave the party so you can do the boss solo. Get an offering by talking to the NPC and enter. Before entering make sure you have strong HP potions because if you don’t kill it fast enough, Zakum does a full screen explosion which deals a lot of damage and there is a potion cooldown in the boss room so you can’t chug 100hp potions. If you need to, pick up some Ginger Ales from New Leaf City which restore 75% HP/MP per chug. Make sure you dodge the arm attacks, which are indicated by glowing circles on the ground because I’m fairly sure they OHKO you, which will result in you losing your 2x EXP rune buff. If you can, get a friend to Holy Symbol you as well.

100-110 Rashes, one map left of Leafre

100-110 Ellin Forest: Ancient Fairies

110-125 Toy Trojans/Robos/Master Robos at Apparatus Room, Ludibrium

120-145 Starforce (28*) Gatekeepers near papulatus at clockertower bottom of Ludibrium

125-140 Moon Bunnies, one map left of Korean Folk Town

125-140 One map left of moon bunnies- around the pond

130-140 Jars at Herb Town, Captains/Krus in Mu Lung pirate ship

140-150 Yellow Goblin Kings, Leftmost map of Korean Folk Town

140-170 Temple of Time Questline (required for fifth job advancement)

150-160 Mantises at Stone Colossus (Southmost map of Leafre)

150-170 Coffee Grinder, Kerning Tower Floor 2 rightmost map (This requires 80* starforce, so if you don’t have enough star enhance your Pensalir gear until you have enough)

150-170 Any other Kerning Tower map that suits your classes mobility (most have really good burning)

160-170 Inside the Stone Colossus 2,  requires prequest

160-180 Showa – secret hideout armory 

165-175 Grays at Omega Sector

165-175 Boswell Field II in omega sector

170-180 Corridor 202 at Omega Sector

170-180 Corridor HO3 (If you have enough starforce)

175-185 Savage Terminal (Grandis Map): Seedy scrapyard 2 near the bottom left.

180-190 Swollen Stumps at Desolate Hills, Twilight Perion (Access through Gate to the Future at Temple of Time)

190-200 Fox Valley: Lower fork accessible without prequest. Try Flutterbuzz and Squirrels. Find map by clicking Vulpes in Grandis section, then top right for fox valley.

190-200 Foreign Excavation Site 2/3 Twilight Perion

200-210 Stay at FES 2/3 if you’re too weak to train at Arcane River, otherwise go to any map in Vanishing Journey where the layout suits your class and where you can at least 2 hit KO. Best map in general is Below the Cave. (Add in 10 points to Arcane Force hyper stat for +50, if you complete 1 day of all dailies including erda spectrum PQ you get 90 arcane force which is enough for 1.5x damage against all non-hidden vanishing journey maps).

200-210 Scrapyard Maps in Edelstein (not recommended due to low spawn + exp)

210-220/225 Slurpy Forest Depths or any ChuChu map that suits your character’s abilities (Torrent Zone 3 is also not a bad choice for 220-225 if you’re lacking AF to train at Lachelein)

220-230 Depending on class, try Revelation Place 2/3, Chicken Festival 2 or Clocktower

230-250 Cavern Lower Path for most classes, although some can also utilise other Arcana maps that are unique to for it’s abilities E.g (CLP1, CLP2, CUP, DCUP1-2, Labyrinthine cavern)

235-250 Some esfera maps, such as Mirror Touched Sea 2, although it’s really hard to find a kishin mule for these maps + maps are really class specific

255-275 mostly involves labyrinth and limina maps. Very class dependant.

EXP multipliers & useful tools for training [1011]

->Tot’s Know How is a quest from levels 20-60, and every 10 levels you get a new quest from Tot’s that will teach you about certain game mechanics. What you should care about is the rewards, every 10 levels he gives you an armor/weapon box and at level 50, a teleport rock that lasts 7 days. This is very handy for training as you can just teleport around straight to your training destination instead of using maple guide->Sleepywood->Interdimensional Portal. At level 60,  he gives you a 7? Day pet which is also very helpful as you no longer need to manually loot and it saves time on the 5 hour snail you’re given at the start.

->There is a buff called MVP, that people give out occasionally, which increases xp obtained by 50%. Before using this, people will megaphone “MVP buff Ardentmill xx:30 ch5” or a message similar  to this, it means at xx:30 you should go to Ardentmill (accessible through most major towns, if you don’t know how to get there go to Henesys, left side of town there is a portal to it there) and switch to the appropriate channel and get the buff. Leave a fame because it’s polite

-> On Sundays, you can run Monster Park 7 times (2x free runs, buy 5x tickets from the cash store under time savers-dungeon passes for 3.5m each) to get 7 EXP coupons with varying effects (at worst, it’s a 1.5x for 15 minutes and at best a 2x for 1 hour). If you are super lucky you might get a spirit pendant.

->If you have a kanna friend, ask them to kishin you at whatever map you’re  training. This skill greatly decreases mob respawn time and increases the max number of mobs available on a map, so it’s very useful to have. If you have a second laptop/computer and you’re fairly dedicated, it’s recommended to have an account solely for kishin to help level mules and kishin yourself

->Same as before, but with a bishop/phantom for a party buff called Holy Symbol which improves EXP gain by 50%. If you have a second laptop, kishin is recommended over Holy Symbol as most believe it gives better EXP gain than HS. Update: Bishop HS has been changed to only apply 50% of its effect if the party member is outside of roughly a half screen’s distance at 1366×768 resolution. 25% exp is still nice.

->Runes appear every 15 minutes or so on a map. Interact with them (default keybind spacebar) to enter a set of 4 arrow key commands, and after they will give you a small buff depending on the type of rune and give you a 2x EXP buff for 2 minutes. Don’t ignore them because after a set amount of time, they will start decreasing the drop and exp rate of mobs on the map so make sure you activate them. (Evan link skill increases the duration of the rune buff and is highly recommended).

-> Note that reboot has very harsh penalties for damage in relation to level, i.e you lose damage if the mob is higher level than you (5% per level difference). Your first character to level 200 will be very difficult, training mules/other characters gets much easier as you accumulate buffs such as cygnus knight’s weapon attack bonus and link skills. If you’re having trouble killing mobs, it is a good idea to drop back to mobs from the previous training spot until you’re equal or close to the level of the mobs in the new area.

-> If you have legion coins saved up, you can buy 30 minute 2x EXP legion coupons that help alot with levelling

Reboot Level Up Gift Box [1012]

-If you plan on making a meso farmer, save the box for your meso farmer, and use all the epot/upot scrolls for making your meso gear as it’ll save you a bit of hassle tiering up and using the upot scroll can get you your first piece of meso gear relatively easily. Also you can use the cubes/meso in the box to help get your meso gear by buying cubes from the Cash Shop. If you’re serious about getting strong in maple (I’m talking like Lotus/Damien/Lucid parties) you’re gonna need to meso farm and the best way to do that right now is by making a meso farmer. (Ctrl+F [1019])

-This gives a massive advantage to new players who receive it. Each time you open the box, you will receive a 100% success rate epic potential scroll, some mesos and some cubes. It is very important that you don’t squander the potential scrolls because they can save you a lot of time grinding Yu Garden dailies. You will also receive a Unique Potential Scroll from the lv120 one. Your unique potential scroll should be used on your secondary weapon, these can be obtained from the secondary weapon vendor in Henesys for ~500k mesos. Then, your epic potential scrolls should be used on your badge (from the Ghost Ship Exorcist Questline) and your Emblem (from your class’ respective questline). Explorers need to do the Explorer’s Book questline to obtain it at level 100. Other classes such as Kaiser and Angelic Buster can buy it from vendors and some others such as Kanna just get it from a quest for free. Google it if you’re not sure. The rest of your potential scrolls can be used on any BiS (Best in-slot) gear that you have, such as superior gollux equipment if you’ve been getting Hellux carried or event rings that are often found in event shops. If you have any leftover, feel free to scroll any Pensalir gear you have to epic and your Utgard weapon if it isn’t already.

-The cubes you get should be used to reroll your emblem and secondary weapon for either %M.ATT or %ATT lines to maximise damage input. Once you get a %ATT/M.ATT potential line, stop cubing it and cube one for the other or your weapon. 

Guilds [1013] 

Guilds are groups of people who often help each other out with the game. They’re generally friendly, active communities who keep the social aspect to the game on the positive side and being in one grants numerous benefits.

The first benefit is carries through hard bosses, such as Chaos Root Abyss bosses, Hellux, Hard Magnus and Hard Hilla. These ‘carries’ enable you to progress through the game at a much faster pace than normal, which is great. However most guilds find it really annoying for people to beg for carries, so it’s generally better to wait for someone to offer and accept rather than constantly spamming “Can someone take me [This boss]?” or “LF>HELLUX CARRY PLS”. Also make sure you have good guild contribution points to ensure that you can get in on guild carries

-Most guilds will have carries based on your contribution, or guild points. Contribution comes from running certain bosses, such as Magnus, Root Abyss, Zakum, Horntail and Hilla. Most guilds will guild point cap by running the 4 RA bosses + One of the others listed above to hit the 5k contribution cap per day. Otherwise, you can run HHilla+ Chaos Horntail which also gives 5k guild points. You can only get a maximum of 5000 points per day, per character. Keep in mind these bosses have to be run with other guild members to earn contribution. Most guilds will have some rules for contribution like 30k contribution unlocks CRA carries, or maybe something like 50k contribution is required for a Hard Magnus carry.

Important- Carry Etiquette

If you’re getting carried here are some basic rules to follow: 

1. Pet loot off by default unless your carries says so
2. Don’t loot until you get the OK from the carry
3. If you’re new to the bosses, such as Chaos Vellum/Lotus/Damien, at look up the mechanics of the boss/ watch videos so you don’t die 5x in 1 minute and waste time of the carrier. Learn the mechs and practice them to avoid dying.
4. For Hellux, don’t expect to be carried if you’re level 200 or below. Now that 25* is here most people need to continue soloing hellux for drops to prepare for 22* equips, so you’ll need a minimum 300-400k range and level 200 if you want them to leash hellux for you.
5. In Hellux, carries can kill the chin, head and  kill 95% of the gem’s hp and then leave the map/party so you can finish it off. If you’re lucky enough to get a carry like this, DO NOT HIT ANYTHING until the carry leaves the map. This is so they can take others through hellux as well.
6. Be gracious and say thanks, when you carry people you don’t get any rewards out of it other than self-satisfaction from helping others so it’s good to see when people appreciate what they get.
7. Don’t waltz into a guild expecting carries. Most guilds give them fairly regularly and generally, asking “anyone free to help with hellux?” is fine but don’t go around spamming all the time because its annoying and obnoxious.
8. Be wary of the gp requirements/rules. If someone says R>CRA Carry 100k gp req., don’t walk in with 8k gp and expect a carry. You can probably find these in the guild message board.

Guild Skills are another benefit to joining a guild, and there are a few of them, most importantly:  a resurrection skill that revives you in bosses WITH buffs, a weekly gift that gives you 20x 30min attack buffs and access to Noblesse Skills that give you a damage/boss damage/IED buff for 30 minutes (based on guild participation in flag race), these are very helpful for running bosses whether its solo or party.

Gear Progression [1014]

Gear doesn’t matter until level 140. Everything that you get up until here is disposable. If you’re strong enough to clear Hilla, a good gear set is the necromancer set because it gets boss set flames, which most likely will beat whatever potentials you get from your pensalir (when you’re doing this, running Hilla everyday with a big spider familiar and look for flames that give +mainstat). Otherwise if you’re too lazy to wait a few days for good necro gear the first set of gear that you’ll actually want to potential and starforce is your Pensalir gear, which you can obtain by hunting any level 140+ monsters. If you want to get a full set quickly, I recommend grinding at Yellow Goblin Kings with a Big Spider familiar as the drop rate for Pensalir gear there is extremely high for some reason. However eventually you’ll want to get at least some pensalir gear to transfer hammer to your CRA to save some potential scrolls.

While you’re doing that, you’ll also want to work on getting your boss set accessories from Zakum, Horntail,Magnus and Hilla/Pink Bean. Zakum drops the Condensed Power Crystal, and Aquatic Letter Eye Accessory, while HT drops Dea Sidus Earrings, Horntail/Chaos Horntail Necklace and Magnus drops the Royal  Black Metal Shoulder. Hilla and Pink Bean each drop a pocket item and PB’s is better but Hilla’s is more accessible. After getting lv 170, I recommend doing the Hiezian quest line to obtain the 3-piece sengoku treasure set which is a lv150 trio of accessories, (belt, ring, shoulder) that has a nice 3 piece set effect and each piece has good stats too. After getting this, stop using the Royal  Black Metal Shoulder and replace it with Hayato’s Treasure, but you’ll still retain the 5-set boss accessory set effect. The Kanna ring from this set is BiS (Best-in-slot) so make sure you don’t drop it or sell it.

You should aim to get epic 6% stat potentials on your Pensalir gear, which you can then transfer hammer to the CRA gear that you will get from either raiding CRA with guildmates or getting carried. Try to keep your Pensalir gear epic, as if you transfer a unique or legendary potential, it will get downgraded to epic. 

As soon as you finish Gollux prequests at level 140, immediately start running it everyday to save up gollux coins to get your superior gollux earring and ring. The matching belt and pendant can be dropped by Hell Mode Gollux, who you (if you’re lucky) can be carried through by guildies. Otherwise solo easy/normal gollux and use the cracked/solid set of Gollux accessories as placeholders. 

Get your CRA gear, either by raiding/soloing/getting carried- to do so make sure you complete your 10 normal RA clears so you can enter.

Do the Ghost Ship Exorcist quest line to obtain the Ghost Ship Exorcist badge, which is a BiS badge that is inferior only to the Sengoku Hakase badge, which is an event item that is better. However because it is an event-exclusive item, it is perfectly fine to cube your Ghost Ship Exorcist badge to legendary and cube it for 21% stat, however if you’re trying to min/max you damage you should definitely get the Sengoku Hakase Badge. This should be potentialed using an epic/normal potential scroll and cubed to legendary for %stat. Because the sengoku event comes around fairly often I wouldn’t aim for more than 21% legendary on your ghost ship, because the sengoku badge gives a higher tier of potential and a decent amount of weapon/magic attack.   RIP SINGAPORE 🙁 RIP POTTABLE BADGES- On a serious note though, badge best in slot now is the magnus crystal ventus badge, if you’re a new player that doesn’t have the GSE badge your best bet is to wait and pray they bring back the sengoku hakase badge from the Sengoku high event, however it’s future is unknown at the moment.

Here, you have a choice: You can either do the Mushroom Shrine Tales questline to get the Wings of Fate cape, which you can then star enhance to 8-10 stars which will be the best you can get until your tyrant cape, or you can try and aim to get a set of Nova cape and boots from running Normal Magnus. I’d recommend getting carried through normal Magnus with your guildies because nova gear has a relatively  good drop rate from there and the Mushroom Shrine Tales quest line will take a  solid 4+ hours to complete (trust me, I did it and got the nova cape a couple days after was 100% not worth). In either case, you’ll need to get nova boots either by spamming Easy Magnus everyday(very low drop rate) or getting taken through or raiding Normal Magnus. You ‘flame’ your wings of fate cape for free, by continuously dropping it and reclaiming a new pair from the NPC, and this is a nice free way to get a well flamed cape. 

If you’re still having trouble with damage/getting more range, do the Masteria Through Time questline to get the Antellion Guardian medal, which gives 8 w.atk/m.atk and decent all stat however this is very low priority as it takes a *really* long time to finish the questline for a very minor increase in damage.

Next, you will want to obtain a clean tyrant cape and boot from Hard Magnus. Don’t upgrade these, they are just placeholders for your absolab gear. The cape is a direct drop from magnus itself but the boots require 8 weeks of runs (9 coins per run, 8 weeks to get 70 coins for boots).  IF you want fast progression and have access to Lotus/Damien carries you can probably skip Tyrant boots. However if you don’t, you can also do Kritias dailies to get them in 4 weeks by resetting your hmag entry (assuming you can get double hmag carry in the same week).

Flaming your gear will do wonders for your range, even at low levels. Once you get gear that won’t be replaced for a while e.g Fafnir weapon, tyrant cape, CRA Hat/top/bot. If you’re low on funds, or still getting meso gear on your kanna, any %all stat flame of something like a +30-40 main stat flame is good enough for now. If you roll something like +60-70 stat that’s really good and should definitely keep it because that’s really good. Also aim for something like tier 5 attack on your weapon, because the flat boost in wep/magic attack will do wonders for your range. For reference, I was ~5m clean before flames came out, and after spending a small amount and getting %as flames and decent flame on my wep I went up to about 6.2-6.3m range. 

Also start working on doing your daily commerce voyages for denaros and a Sweetwater Katara if you’re a Dual Blade from Commerci pq and solo voyages. These also net you Denaros which you can use to purchase Sweetwater Eye and Face and Earring accessories, which are BiS(Best in-Slot) (aside from accessories from Hard Lotus/Damien but even the top Reboot players don’t have them yet so..)

After you can comfortably OHKO mobs at Vanishing Journey WITHOUT accessories equipped (take off 2x pendants, 4x rings, face, eye, and earrings) you should start making drop gear, that is, cubing a set of accessories (4 rings, 2 pendants, face accessory, eye accessory and earrings) to get %drop lines that will help you farm nodes more quickly. If you’re lazy, you can use my setup, which is basically: A second set of Sweetwater Face/Eye, which you can purchase, Cracked Gollux Ring, Event Rings (Master SS, Chaos, Synergy, Reboot Vengeful and Reboot Cosmos), Silver Blossom Ring, Greed Pendant, Reinforced Gollux Pendant and Reinforced Gollux Earrings. This requires little effort compared to the next setup if you’ve done events previously but may take a bit of time if you’re new to the game, which gives better stats and more damage but requires more grinding to find the items: 2x Blackgate Ring, 2x Event Rings (Reboot Cosmos, Master SS, Reboot Vengeful), Greed Pendant, Reinforced Gollux Pendant, Reinforced Gollux Earrings,  Blackgate Mask and Sweetwater Face accessory. This however requires a few hours of farming at Blackgate for the rings and mask, as well as event farming for event rings. Greed Pendant is recommended in both sets because it gives a bonus 20% equipment drop rate which is helpful for bosses, like CRA and HMag, which will stack with the 20% drop the potential line will give you. It is obtainable from Monster Park. 

Drop gear is an essential part of progressing at Arcane River, as nodes literally double your damage. It will save you lots and lots of time-  keep in mind how much time it will save you so much time farming nodes, however is quite a hefty investment of mesos (recommended to tier these up during DMT if possible). Later on, you can swap your reinforced gollux earrings to superior gollux earrings after you get your transposed Sweetwater earrings.

At some point close to here you’ll also wanna start doing arkarium and madman ranmaru daily to stockpile confusion fragments/primal essence and level 150 shoulders for transfer hammering and crafting your meister gear. For notes on the most efficient ways to get meister accessory crafting look here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/8z9gvc/reboot_quick_professions_guide/

After this, you can start to do Dark World Tree and Scrapyard dailies to get Absolab Equipment (gloves/shoulders). This does however, require you to run Lotus and Damien twice each. Your progression from here onwards is outlined in the following guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/8i234u/reboot_25star_meta_progression_guide/

I recommend you read it for yourself but if you want a TL:DR, get 5 set absolab gear, (weapon, gloves,shoulder,boots,cape) – in that order and 17* them. Then you can choose to upgrade them towards 22*  but it’s recommended to head straight for the arcane set once you get 17* all because you’ll be strong enough to do most if not all content. Late game progression is noted in that guide so I’m not going to rehash what’s already been written.

Cost efficiency of gear progression

This is the order in which you should be doing upgrading your gear

Starforcing (non-tyrant) gear to 10/12 stars>Crappily Flaming Gear>Cubing gear to 21% stat>17* starring equips>Cubing for 3L stat and cubing WSE for 3 useful lines E.g 2L ATT 1L IED/Boss>Flaming Gear Well>22* gear and perfecting WSE for 3L ATT 

This order follows whatever is cheapest and gives the best stats for cost. Generally, star forcing gear to 10 stars is fairly cheap and provides a great damage boost especially on your weapon. 17* Starring can be a fairly expensive, so it’s generally best to do it after 21% potentials which are relatively easy to roll. You can do 3L stat 17* if there’s a cube sale but do remember that it’s literally all RNG.

Important Note

There is definitely debate over what the ‘best’ order is for upgrading gear, however what I have outlined above is what I’d consider to be the most foolproof way. Having 3L 17* gear should get you into just about any raid party you want, everything up to and including HLucid (if this isn’t the case please let me know).

The thing is, once you get to 17* and 3L pots, you’re going to need to use the transfer hammer to 22* a piece of equipment and use it to get 21* on your main piece of equipment, but in the process you’ll override the 3L potential that you’ve rolled. While this is definitely a painful process, keep in mind that estimates for 22 starring a  piece of gear lie in the range of 60-80b on average, whereas rolling a 27%+ potential is much cheaper than that. 

This is your choice to make and the method outlined above won’t work for everyone. If you’re some kind of crazy farmer who makes 200b and saves all of that for DMT/Starforce event or something, you could probably also just 20-22* a piece of equipment straight away and then xfer hammer it, 22* and then roll a pot and save yourself the trouble + meso of redoing a 3L potential. However most people, especially in early stages of the game won’t save that much and thus the method above is the one they should take.

Same applies to flames: roll at your own discretion, however do keep in mind that flat stat is not always what you should aim for, because %all stat can be worth as much as 8-10 flat stat per 1%. when you hit endgame, a 48/6% flame will be the same value as a 108 stat flame. However keep in mind that the less gear you have starred, the less 1% allstat will be worth, so in the early-midgame flat stat flames may be worth more but endgame %allstat is absolutely worth it as a line.

Familiars

There are many familiars: Some that heal, some that increase drop rate and meso rate. Here is a video featuring some of the most common ones, where to get them and what they do:

REALLY WELL FORMATTED ALTERNATIVE PROGRESSION GUIDES 

These alternate guides that are also on reddit are really well done, and actually have graphics, so if you prefer that kind of thing to this bigass wall of text they’re link here:  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1q_D29acfS1mjP6tUFVIBIqCSq1TBLymctu8Xmar3zFg/edit#slide=id.p

• Most of the info is still correct as of 25* release, except that Gollux> Tyrant belt in every way now

I’m working on a guide for 140-200. from Maplestory

Important Prequests [1015]

-Gollux

Available at level 140, starts through a quest from Grendel in Ellinia who will take you to Crimsonheart Castle. Last 2 quests are a pain in the ass but it’s Gollux is a crucial boss who is very important so stick with it and get a Big Spider familiar to help you with it.

-Normal/Hard Magnus

You can start this questline at lv90, with the quest “To Pantheon”- from there just follow the questline. There’s a little break in the questline around lv 120 (IIRC) then it continues at later on. If you want to, skip it until ~150 then just power through all the quests because you’ll oneshot all the mobs required for it

-Root Abyss

As soon as it’s unlocked at lv120, you should be running it everyday to get to the 10 normal Root Abyss clears to unlock Chaos RA requirement.

-Ghost ship

Should be done ASAP to get the Ghost Ship Exorcist badge, start by talking to Ralph the Wanderer in Boat Quay Town in Singapore. Available at lv150

-Temple of Time

Compulsory for completing the fifth job advancement quest, you can start it at lv140 and it’s also a decent training spot if you can survive the mobs there. 

-Commerci

Available at level 140, you don’t have to do the whole questline, just enough to unlock commerce voyages through a quest called “Get rich quick!” from Cassandra, but I’d recommend doing the whole questline as it gives a 100% Epic Potential Scroll and unlocks the teleport to Commerci through Maple Guide 

-Hieizan Questline (For Kanna’s Treasure, BiS gear, if you don’t have a solid/reinforced Gollux set by 170)

Recommend lv170 to do this, because of annoying damage mechanic that scales on levels, doing this with a mage/thief is difficult because your sengoku character hp is based on whatever your actual character hp is. 

-Mushroom Shrine Tales (Optional, if you want a better cape than Pensalir and can’t get Tyrant but not recommended unless doing solo progression)

-Do it whenever it’s available

-Kritias

Not too long a prequest line, it’s needed for Hard Magnus reset tickets. (Optional if you’re opting for Tyrant Boots as a filler before getting 5 set abso)(not recommended)

-DWT

Be high enough level to unlock it, then run weeklies to get stones ( recommended to be level 210+ to clear all 3 tiers of quests, otherwise I’d recommend just doing mid tier + bottom tier because the top tier mobs have a relatively low drop rate for the quest items and are ~215+)
-Scrapyard

Be high enough level to unlock it then run weeklies to get cores ( recommended to be lv210+ as well, check each patrolbot because there are very easy quests (collect quests) where you just kill 1 mob and hope for a drop and channel surf to keep hunting for them, such as the drillbot quest)

Endgame [1016]

5^th job [1017]

At level 200, you’ll unlock fifth job. This requires you to have completed the Temple  of Time questline so you can access the Memory Keeper’s room and completed the Amnesiac Temple Keeper questline. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU HAVEN’T CLEARED EASY/NORMAL MAGNUS ON THE DAY YOU REACH LEVEL 200

I’m not going to write a guide through the fifth job advancement because it’s  fairly self explanatory and there are already plenty of guides out there, but one of the quests requires you to kill Magnus, whether it’s easy, normal or hard, so make sure you haven’t cleared it before then.

Another note: Ensure you fully charge the stones you’re given during the 2 hours- it should only take 20-30 minutes per stone and after you complete the job advancement, all 3 stones turn into EXP  potions that give about 25% of your EXP bar from 200-201, so it’s highly recommended to charge them to the max while you can.

Arcane River [1018]

Arcane river the new region that is unlocked at level 200. You start at Vanishing Journey, often abbreviated as VJ until level 210, then from 210-220 go to ChuChu Island, then after that go to Lachelein from 220-225, then Arcana from 225-230 then Morass at 230-250. 

Mobs in Arcane River work differently to normal mobs through a system called Arcane Force, abbreviated as AF. Each region, VJ, ChuChu, Lachelein, Arcana and Morass  each have their own Arcane Symbol, which supplies your character with Arcane Force. To increase the level of your Arcane Symbol and thus get more Arcane Force, you need to feed your arcane symbol other arcane symbols you get from either farming mobs in each region (i.e. VJ drops VJ symbols, ChuChu drops ChuChu symbols) or doing daily quests. Each map will have an Arcane Force requirements, for example Below the Cave in VJ has a 60 AF requirement. If you don’t meet this requirement, you will do less damage to the mobs there, i.e. if I have 30 AF I’ll do half my normal damage. Conversely, if you have more AF than is required, you’ll do more damage. This is most notable when you have 1.5x the required arcane force, which makes you take 1 damage and do 150% of your normal damage to mobs there.

With the introduction of the Arcane Force hyperstat, it is highly recommended to put points into this stat to ease your transition into Arcane River. Assigning 10 points into Arcane Force will give you 5 AF per point for 50 at level 200. 

For Vanishing Journey, you’ll need to do 5 daily quests, each of which reward one arcane symbol and upon completing a all 5 you receive another 3 symbols. There is a new PQ called Erda Spectrum from the NPC next to the 5 dailies quest which gives you 2 symbols per run up to 6 per day. See Stella’s guide here 

For ChuChu, you will need to run Muto everyday, which is a little party quest that gives a maximum of 15 ChuChu symbols per day if you run Hard Muto and clear it effectively enough. Video tutorials of how to complete it can be found on Youtube. Try to run it with guildies as Hard Muto is relatively difficult to clear if you just finished your ChuChu prequests

For Lachelein, you’ll need to do Dream Defender daily, to get points that are exchanged for Lachelein Symbols. In dream defender, you start inside a room that has 4 portals to other rooms. Using a map found on the left side of your screen, you’ll be able to see which room(portal) has a purple music box in it. You are required to kill the purple music boxes that spawn in the rooms. As you progress through each stage, the mobs guarding the music box and the box get tankier and tankier so you will progressively need more damage to kill them. For each stage you clear, you’ll be granted one coin. 30 coins can be traded in for 1 lachelein symbol. However every 10 stages, you’ll unlock a checkpoint, and the next time you run dream defender you can start from that checkpoint. So for me, I have cleared up to stage 45 and therefore everyday I just clear stage 40->41 and leave to get my easy 40 coins x 3 runs, so 120 coins. After you finish your 3 runs, remember to go into the main town and talk to the 5 npc’s of the top 5 clearers of dream defender to get some free coins everyday.

For Arcana, there is a thing called spirit saviour that you need to do everyday to get Arcana symbols. You go into a map with some spirits that you need to attack to ‘set free’ (yes it’s very counterintuitive). You can collect up to 5 spirits at a time, and have to maneuver around the map to collect these spirits while avoiding a ‘toxic spirit’, which removes all your collected spirits if it touches you. This takes a fair amount of practice, and you need to practice and do it daily to get better. Here, some classes have an innate advantage due to having better mobility, for example most classes with a flash jump will do fairly well whereas classes with teleport and poor mobility (luminous + kanna) will do fairly poorly and have a difficult time. You trade 3 coins for 1 symbol, and you can only get a maximum of 30 coins per day. You get 1 coin for every 1000 points you get during a spirit saviour run. You have 3 attempts per day, so most players proficient at it will just do 2 15,000 point runs and be done with it, but if your mechanics are lacking you may have to settle for doing 3x 10,000 point runs.

Morass dailies involve killing, collecting and doing special missions- starts at 3 per day and can be reduced to 2 by completing Esfera prequests. 3 quests per day: 2 symbols each and 2 for completing 3 quests for 8 total.

Esfera is exclusively killing and collecting- 3 quests per day: 2 symbols each and 2 for completing 3 quests for 8 total.

Each region in Arcane River has their own set of prequests, which unlock each region’s arcane symbol and for VJ and ChuChu, it is recommended to have a friend or guildie help you with the prequests, other it takes a long time to complete by yourself, especially for ChuChu. VJ prequests are doable solo, however require a fair amount of time as you’ll have to kill Tranquil Erdas who require 60 AF while you only have 30. When you hit level 210 and unlock ChuChu, you’ll have an estimated 80-100 AF from your VJ symbol, which makes the first region of ChuChu soloable, however the maps afterwards require up to 160 AF, which combined with level disadvantage make killing mobs there extremely difficult. 

However Lachelein, Arcana, Morass and Esfera are perfectly soloable, as most of the quests are kill quests, not collect quests and you should have enough AF from previous regions to do it. I did the Arcana prequests while my Lach symbol was level 1, so it’s perfectly possible, it may just take a tad longer. 

Unlocking each region reduces the number of dailies for the past region. For example, if I clear Chuchu, I’d only have to do 4 VJ quests instead of 5, and once I clear Morass, I only have to do 1 because I’ve clear chuchu,lach,arcana and morass so 5-4=1. Same applies to Muto/DD/SS

Any mobs in Arcane River also drop nodestones, but at a low rate. This is key for the next section.

Nodes/V Matrix [1019]

These are pretty much your fifth job skills. They are unlocked by equipping nodes, which come from Nodestones that are dropped by any mobs in Arcane River. There are 3 types of nodes: skill nodes, boost/enhancement nodes and special nodes. 

Skill Nodes 

Skill nodes provide access to new skills- and there are 3 categories. There are common, job specific and class specific. For example, Night Lord has access to 3 skill nodes exclusive to Night Lords only, which are Shurrikane,Spread Throw and Dark Lord’s Omen and access to 3 skills which are exclusive to all Thief classes and Xenons, which are Venom Burst, Last Resort and Shadow Walker. Common skills are skills such as Decent Sharp Eyes, Decent Speed Infusion and Decent Holy Symbol which are accessible to every  single class. Each skill node that you disenchant will give 40 node shards. Some fifth job skills are said to be relatively useless, such as Venom Burst for Night Lords. In this case, you can just disenchant them and use the shards to either craft more boost nodes to feed to your ideal trios or use them to craft other more useful active skills, such as Decent Holy Symbol which provides a 20% exp boost and a 13% item drop rate increase at level 1. 

Boost Nodes

Boost nodes, or enhancement nodes provide final damage bonuses to any 3^rd/4^th job skills you may have. Each boost node will improve the damage of 3 skills that you have. For example, again using Night Lord I might get a boost node that improves my damage from Sudden Raid, Quad Star and Showdown. However each class has an ideal trinode, which is a boost node that improves the damage of 3 desirable skills. In my case, these nodes would have been any node that had the skills Assassin’s Mark, Showdown and Quad Star. Each boost node can have a different ‘primary skill’ which is the skill that is at the top of the three when the node is hovered over. This skill indicates what other nodes can be used to enhance its rank. For example, if I had an Assassin’s Mark, Showdown and Quad Star node, and an Assassin’s Mark, Dark Flare and Sudden Raid node, I could use the latter to improve the level of my first node. Levelling nodes improves the passive damage bonuses that they provide.  

To maximise efficiency, people usually  try to find 3 variations of their ideal boost node, so 3 nodes that have the same 3 skills but have different ‘primary’ skills. In my case it would be:

-Assassin’s Mark, Showdown and Quad Star

-Showdown, Assassin’s Mark and Quad Star

-Quad Star, Assassin’s Mark and Showdown

It is OK to level up a node that has 2 out of 3 of the skills you want. Using a boosted “imperfect” node to level up a perfect one will transfer ALL the exp to the new node with no exp loss or penalty. Do make sure the temporary node has a perfect primary skill though.

Because nodes gradually require more nodes per level of enhancement, it’s usually best to find 2/3 ideal node variants and get each to level 25 to achieve the maximum rank possible of 50. However don’t be discouraged if you can’t find ideal boost nodes because they’re relatively rare and may take a while to find. If you get really lucky and find all 3 variants of boost nodes, you can also level each to 17/17/16 respectively –Not recommended, however keep in mind you will want to eventually move to 25/25 in the future to save node slots..

For any nodes that don’t have the 3 ideal skills you want to enhance as the ‘primary’ skill, you need to disenchant them to obtain node shards, which can be used to craft nodes of your choice. For example, if I find a boost node that has Gust Charm, Quad Star and Assassin’s Mark I should disenchant it because it can’t be used to enhance any of my ideal node trios. Boost nodes provide 10 node shards per one that you disenchant.

Because of the low base drop rate of Nodestones, it’s highly recommended to make a set of drop  gear to increase the drop rate and decrease the amount of time you need to farm them. (Ctrl+F ‘Gear Progression’ section for more detail.)

Special Nodes

They are nodes that provide buffs upon certain checkpoints, such as using a skill hitting a skill x amount of times or defeating x amount of enemies. Generally for new players the best thing to do is disassemble these nodes for nodeshards as each provide 60? (IIRC) because they expire after a set  duration. Some can be quite useful though, although they are relatively rare and usually don’t come from opening nodestones.

Enhancing Node Slots

Since the Vcare update, we can now enhance node slots using matrix points. Each time you level you get 1 matrix point, and enhancing node slots will increase the level of the node in that slot. Each slot can be enhanced a maximum of 5 times to give a +5 to the node level. This enhancement can increase the max level of your nodes, boost nodes can cap at level 60 if you place 2 boost nodes  in 2 fully upgraded slots and active skills can be boosted from a max level of 25 -> 30.

Meso farming [1020]

After the recent meso nerf, changes had to be made and this is how to make mesos after the changes. Firstly make a Kanna and level to 149. This unlocks Blackhearted Curse (140), an aura that constantly damages any mobs within a small radius of your character, which makes telefarming possible. Telefarming is pretty much activating Blackhearted Curse and holding down Ether/Teleport to kill  mobs that way.

A pet is an absolute must for this. The more pets you have the better, having triple pets will actually increase rates by quite a lot to help boost your meso rates. Make sure you get all the auto-move skills to maximise the range that it can auto-move. 

To optimise this process there’s a few things you’ll want to do, and the first is farm a Leprechaun/Eye of Time familiar, which make mobs drop double  meso bags. Leprechaun lasts about 1/3^rd of the time that EoT does. Personally, I’m extra lazy so I use EoT, although keep in mind it takes longer to farm the EoT familiars than it does to farm the Leprechaun Familiars. There’s a great youtube guide on how to farm Leprechaun, I recommend doing this using your kanna because using kishin autofarms it for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJeHuTwG6Jw , otherwise you can go to the first map of Temple of Time and farm an EoT familiar.

This is where it starts to get a little hardcore- Those very dedicated to the game who want to achieve endgame gear will want to do this ASAP to get the best meso farming rates. Accessory items-(pendants/eye/face/rings/earrings) are what are able to  obtain %meso lines. You’ll want to cube these to legendary to obtain 100% meso obtained, each piece will give 20%. That is the maximum amount of %meso obtained you can get from items, so you only need 5 pieces that each give 20% meso each. If you’re lucky enough to roll 2 20% meso lines on one of your accessories, you’re in luck  because then you only need 4 pieces in total to get the 100% cap. Most people use the boss accessory set to roll meso gear because it’s easy to obtain, that is Condensed Power Crystal and Aquatic Letter Eye Accessory (both from Zakum), Horntail Necklace, Dea Sidus Earrings and Silver Blossom Ring (from Horntail). You’ll easily be able to kill Zakum, and get carried through Horntail/Chaos  Horntail through guildies.

Then you can get another 20% meso from rerolling your inner ability to get a prime legendary meso line. You should do this by first rerolling your inner ability tier to Unique using 100xp honor rerolls, then using circulators to get it to legendary, then continue using circulators to roll a meso prime line. However this one is extremely RNG based and I recommend saving it to the last, as I myself  spent 2b on circulators to get a %meso inner ability. (Ctrl+F Inner Ability)

The last 5% meso you can get is from a lv250 Phantom, however most people won’t do that because it takes way too much effort , so just get a Phantom to level 140 and place it on your legion grid to get a bonus 3% meso. 

You’ll need approximately 60-70k range to OHKO at Byebye Station. You should be able to achieve this range with your 5 boss set accessories + a full set of Pensalir gear you should get from grinding to 150. If you’re missing damage, star force enhance your weapon and armor/accessories. If you want full optimisation, get around ~200k ish range so you can ohko with the skill soul bomb and get any hilla soul which will boost your rates by helping you kill more quickly.

–For Telefarmers

Make sure you Re-Kishin every 2 minutes and 20 seconds. I set an interval timer that repeats and beeps every 2:20 to let me know I need to Re-Kishin to increase spawn and therefore increase the meso you gain. If you’re ultra-lazy you can get a keyweight and just re place it on your alt key every 2:20 after you kishin. But keep in mind you should still watch it in case you get whiteroomed.

Also keep in mind you need to actively activate runes, mainly to get rid of them so they don’t curse the map and reduce the drop rate. Also, a Rune of Greed is incredibly good, doubling your mesos obtained for 30 seconds after activation.

Spanish Keyboarding: A very useful trick to help you mesofarming can be found here: https://imgur.com/a/tPvP1Yu (Sorry, not sure who to credit for this)

Transfer Hammer [1021]

Transfer hammering is using a lower level piece of gear and sacrificing it to transfer its potential and stars to a piece of gear that is up to 10 levels higher than it. The biggest use of this will be for transferring your Pensalir gear potentials and stars to your CRA gear. Keep in mind that only a maximum potential tier of Epic can be transferred. For example, I had a unique Utgard Claw that I transfer hammered to my Fafnir Risk Holder and this is what happened to its potential lines.

Unique Utgard Claw 10 *                   Epic Risk Holder 9*

               9% ATT                            → 6% ATT

               6% LUK                            → 6% LUK

               6% STR                             → 6% STR

As shown above, any prime lines of the unique/legendary potential will be reduced to an epic prime line. Transferring also reduces the star enhancement by 1. Superior Items, such as Tyrant gear cannot be transfer hammered. 

If you have potential lines that are exclusive to that potential tier, for example “Invincible +1 more seconds after taking damage” is exclusive to unique potential armor, however if transfer hammered, it will be randomly rerolled for a new epic potential line.

Cubing [1022]

The essence of Maplestory. To get better potentials, cubes MUST be used to enhance gear if you want to get to endgame bosses. To make this section easier, I’m going to divide it into 3 sections: Types of cubes & their use,what each piece of gear should be cubed for and the recommended cubing priorities of your gear.

Types of cubes & their use

Master Craftsmans’ Cubes come from the Henesys store, boss drops, veins, Commerci runs, event stores and the legion shop. They are generally only used to tier up rare potential gear to epic potential because their epic->unique tier up rate is terrible. You can also use them to roll for 6% stat of 6% att on your Pensalir/Utgard gear.

Meister cubes are pretty rare, and AFAIK only available in reboot through Commerci and vein drops. They do the same thing, however can also raise potential tier from unique->legendary, something that MCC cannot do.

Red cubes are primarily used to reroll gear that is already legendary, however there are some people who prefer to use red cubes over black cubes to improve potential tier.

Black cubes are primarily used for tiering up potential, as they have a higher success rate than red cubes, however also have a higher cost because you can choose whether to keep the old potential or new potential. I recommend using these, as I have found the most success with them.

Ideal stats to cube for on gear

Abbreviations here: 2L Att= 2 lines of Att, IED=Ignore Enemy Defense, Boss=Boss Damage, DSE=Decent Sharp Eyes, DSI=Decent Speed Infusion

IMPORTANT NOTE: ‘DAMAGE’ LINES SUCK ASS, THEY PROVIDE A MINIMAL DAMAGE BOOST COMPARED TO ATT AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED A ‘DECENT’ ALTERNATIVE

Weapon – You should aim for 2L Att 1L IED, 3l Att, 2L Att 1L Boss, 1L Att 2L Boss however this can be dependent on your potentials that you have on your Secondary Weapon and Emblem (see note below). If you’ve just started cubing your gear, 2L att with any third line of potential is fine because 2L att is fairly difficult to get already. 

Secondary Weapon – Same as Weapon

Emblem – Same as Weapon

Note: These 3 pieces of gear are what constitute what is known as your ‘WSE’ (weapon, emblem, secondary) and are very important because they are the only pieces of gear that can roll %Att, IED and Boss lines (except for the emblem, which can’t roll %boss lines). An easy and GENERAL rule to follow is aim for 200% boss damage and 93% IED. This I should enable you to do most endgame 300% PDR bosses such as Chaos Vellum, Lotus, Damien and Lucid if you also have the appropriate range. To fully optimise your damage, use a WSE optimiser that will tell you exactly what potential lines you should roll for the most possible final damage from your WSE potential lines. It can be found on the Maplestory subreddit, just search bar WSE optimiser. Specific classes, such as Dual Blade/Luminous have insane amounts of inbuilt IED in their skills, and thus only require around 90% IED(or less)in their stat window, and thus require less stat window IED. However classes that don’t have this inbuilt IED item should aim for 93%.

Hat – Main Stat %

Top – Main Stat %

Bottom – Main Stat %

Shoes – Main Stat %

Gloves- Gloves are a bit special, you can roll potential lines that enable you to use DSI and DSE which are decent and save you node slots, so you can use boost nodes/active nodes instead however for  late game damage you’ll want to roll for % Crit Damage lines. If you can get 2L Crit Damage you are godly and probably spent way too much time meso farming. If you get 3L Crit Damage go to the lottery or you’re a hacker. Most people settle for 1L Crit dmg with other suboptimal potentials, such as a DSE/DSE line or a Main Stat % line.

Cape – Main Stat % 

Shoulder – Main Stat %

Ring – Main Stat %

Earrings – Main Stat %

Pendant – Main Stat %

Belt – Main Stat %

Face Accessory – Main Stat %

Eye Accessory – Main Stat %

Badge – Main Stat %

Cubing Priorities

WSE>Badge/Shoulder/Boots/Belt>Hat/Top/Bottom>Drop Accessories>Damage Accessories

The reason for this priority is that WSE provides the most damage boost due to %Att lines. Then, Badge/Shoulder/Boots/Belt generally take less cubes to get a good % stat because they have less ‘garbage’ potential lines. Armor pieces such as top/bottom can roll lines like ‘5% chance to ignore 40% damage’ and ‘Enables the use of Decent Hyper Body’- these kinds of lines are absolutely useless for most classes (except for Demon Avenger, see note below) and having them in the pool of possible lines makes it more costly to get a good %Main Stat potential. 

Accessories come last because you’ll be using drop gear unless you’re bossing so you can use your drop gear for node farming. You’ll need to have enough damage to OHKO mobs with just your WSE/Armor/ Badge/Shoulder/Boots/Belt because there’ll be a noticeable drop in your damage range when equipping drop gear, which is just accessories, and having %stat lines on your main armor will help a lot with getting enough range for this.

Damage Accessories come last,  because you’ll be using your drop gear 90% of the time unless you’re bossing or you need the bonus damage for grinding levels.

Note: For Demon Avengers, Hyper Body may be a decent potential as the HP bonus will give a significant damage boost however you can also get a DHB node, so consult a Demon Avenger guide/player because I have no clue.

Link Skills [1023]

Link Skills are passive/active skills that are class specific, that can be shared between characters after level 70. For example, Mercedes link skill is a permanent EXP bonus and this skill can be given to another character upon reaching level 70. Link Skills level up automatically at levels 70, 120 and 210. 

Those marked with * are the ones I prioritised the most

Notable Link Skills for levelling

Mercedes -> 10/15/20% permanent EXP boost*

Aran- -> 400/650/900% bonus EXP from combo orbs

Evan -> 30/50/70% increased rune duration

Notable Link Skills for damage

Ark (%damage for being in combat) -> 1/2/3% damage per stack, stacks 6 times * 

Beast Tamer (Boss/Crit Rate/Max HP/MP) ->4/4/3, 7/7/4, 10/10/5 *

Angelic Buster -> 30/45/60% increased skill  damage for 10 seconds 

Cadena ->3/6% damage increase to lower levelled enemies, doubled if enemy is status afflicted

Illium -> Damage increased by 1/2% per x amount of unit travelled, stacks 6 times. Each stack lasts 5 seconds

Demon Slayer -> 10/15/20%  increased boss damage 

Kanna ->5/10% increased damage *

Demon Avenger -> 5/10/15% increased damage *

Kaiser (For Demon Avenger) -> 10/15/20% Max HP increase

Kinesis ->2/4% increased Crit Damage

Hayato -> (All Stat, w/m.atk) 15/10, 25/15 *

Luminous ->10/15/20% IED increase 

Phantom ->10/15/20% Crit rate increase *

Xenon ->5/10% All stat increase *

Notable for Utility 

Mihile -> 90/110/130 seconds buff that provides 100% knockback resistance. 180 second CD *

Note: Only bother with this if you are a playing a class that doesn’t naturally get 100% stance from skills/passives

Resistance -> 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8 seconds of invincibility after resurrection. Must have 4 lv120 resistance characters to get 8 second duration

Cygnus -> 2/5% increased abnormal status resistance

For a list of BiS Link Skills, : https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/8e9x2n/gms_complete_3line_optimal_inner_abilities_for/

Making a Kishin Mule/HS Mule [1024]

If you’re keen on optimisation, you’re going to want to level your own kanna mule for nodefarming/grinding purposes. If you have a second laptop and you’re dedicated enough it’s worth putting in the time to make a kishin mule. It saves you having to leech other kannas in exchange for kishin service which will slow down your levelling by a fair bit. 

You’re going to want to use a Burning Event to get your kanna to 150 with a decent set of Frozen gear, then level it to 160. If you’re level 200, or have friends close to that level ask them to leech it to level 200, which will make you life 1000x easier. Leeching requirements are as follows: must be at least 5 levels lower than the mob and within 40 levels of the attackers, e.g. if my kanna was level 160 and I was level 190 and the mob was level 162 we’d be all good. While grinding, your kanna has to be ‘in combat’ so you can just keyweight kishin on a safe platform, which counts as ‘in combat’. Eventually you’re going to need autopot on this kishin mule to survive early stages of Arcane River where you don’t have enough arcane force to get hit with 1’s. 

You actually need to clear Story Lucid solo to get past Lachelein, which is doable with about 1mil range if you have consumables to buff your range( mp blue, guild buff, ursus buff, wilderness hunter buff etc). This range is easily achievable with minimum effort, just grab a set of CRA gear and a tyrant cape/boots and cube until you have your desired range. You actually get a fkton of meso from leeching from 200-220 so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue if you cube smartly.

If you plan to get to 235, make sure you do your Arcane dailies and continue leeching meso because it’s going to take decent gear/Arcane Force to clear Morass Solo Dungeons and Story Will in Esfera. 

SW weapons [1025]

Kind of useless now, used to be a decent alternative to completing the SW 4-set but now that 25* is here they’re obsolete unless you’re a Dual Blade, in which you should be running CPQ/Solo everyday for SW Katara.

SW Gears (Gloves/Shoes/Capes) [1026]

Used to be best in slot, now with 25* available there are better options. If you find them you can keep them for the memes.

Tyrants [1027]

Starring Tyrants is a pain in the ass process predicated entirely on RNG. It’s kind of like regular star force enhancement, but a metric fuckton more expensive and with a much higher chance of failure. Unlike regular equips, tyrant starring starts at a 50% chance to succeed from 0-1 stars and costs 55m per try. Star Force enhancements events don’t apply to these equips. After you get your tyrant equips to 5 stars (good luck with that), each further enhancement has a chance to destroy your item and THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. The item destruction chance increases as your item level increases. General guidelines are, you can try and get your cape to 10-12 stars because they’re fairly replaceable and you can try it over and over again as long as you’ve done your weekly Hard Magnus runs. However for more casual players, 5/8 stars also work fine. For your boots, 8 stars are good enough because it takes about 2 months to get them without reset tickets, 1 month with reset tickets however if you’re aiming for endgame people usually go for 10/12 stars on them as well. There’s also the Tyrant belt, (which you’ll use once you get 2 Superior Gollux Pendants) that you want to get to 10 stars as well (12 for the hardcore). With gloves, they take anywhere from 2 months to a whole year to get them, depending on how often you run invasion and kritias dailies, however most take 6 months-1 year to get them, so personally,  I would not bother trying to go past 5 stars on them because of the crazy amount of effort you need to put in to get them, however some endgame players will go for 8 stars if they’re feeling ballsy and some 10* if they wanna make bad life decisions. 

Pretty much useless now, it’s worth getting a tyrant cape from Hmag just as a stepping stone towards absolab gear but no point in upgrading it. They have a special enhancement system that is 100% BS. Used to be op because you could transpose to sweetwater but now there’s a better option.

Transposing [1028]

Transposing is a game mechanic that exclusively works for Sweetwater gear/accessories. It transfers over any stats you get from star force enhancement to your Sweetwater gear while providing an extra star slot. For normal equipment (not tyrants, so your weapon), it essentially allows you to get an extra star of enhancement for free. What you do is 1 star a Fafnir weapon and transpose that onto your SW weapon, and you’ll get that extra enhanced star while retaining the normal 15-star capability (essentially you get 1 extra star worth of stats). -Not really relevant now that SW weapons are obsolete. Keep in mind this also transfers the flame from your xpose material to your SW accessory/armor, and because SW doesnt receive boss flames, then you should perfect the flame on your pap mark/meister earrings before xposing to SW.

Because of this, you’ll want to transpose a 16* papulatus mark to a sweetwater monocle and a 16* meister earring to your sweetwater earring. This effectively lets you get the 15->16* bonus twice which is really nice to get bonus stats. (even though pap mark is rare af)

Inner Ability [1029]

Inner ability is yet another RNG based game mechanic, you unlock one line at lv30, one at lv50 and the last at lv70. Best way to go about getting it to legendary potential is saving up about 100k honour exp you get from grinding, using 100 xp honour rerolls to get to unique tier, then using circulators from the cash shop to get a legendary tier IA. To get 3 lines of potential you want, most people I know used circulators to roll a desirable first line, which is usually, Att Speed +1, Boss Damage +20% or Buff Duration +50%. Circulators will always give the best line, for example if I try to roll for a +30 attack line using honour, I may only get +27 or +25 attack whereas any attack line I roll using circulators will always be +30. To obtain desirable 2^nd/3^rd lines, lock the first line , and reroll your second/third lines using honour exp. It’s best to wait for the half price honour rerolls before doing these to maximise the number of rolls you’ll obtain.

Another way to do it, is to roll a unique second/third line using circulators, to ensure you get a decent 2^nd line, and then roll your first line using honour xp. This is because your second and third lines can be rare/epic/unique tier, however your first line is always guaranteed to be legendary so you can guarantee a good second line and then use honour exp to get a decent first line, even if it isn’t perfect.

BiS IA’s differ between each class, so google/reddit search what’s most optimal for yours.  Nox(Sam) is a legend so use this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/8e9x2n/gms_complete_3line_optimal_inner_abilities_for/

Bosses [1030]

There is a very helpful post by /u/Ekanselttar, it’s linked in the Credit section but I’m going to add little bits of information from my own experience for the bosses I’ve done

Zakum- Recommend level 100/4^th job just to do it, notes for the fight can be found in ‘Training guide’ section. Doesn’t really require much mechanics/range, just dodge the hands and you’ll be fine

Chaos Zakum- Requires CRA level damage to kill it, If you can solo, you should be running this weekly to get transfer hammer material for your absolab cape.

Hilla-30k Minimum, 200-300k to kill quickly

Hard Hilla – 3-4m to solo if your class has good burst, most if not all classes should be able to easily 1-bind at 5m range.

Easy Magnus – be level 180ish to make it easy or have decent gear. Around 200k range it becomes pretty easy, prior to that it takes a while to kill but isn’t particularly hard mechanics wise.

Normal Magnus – Depends on how good you are at dodging meteors/push attacks. At around 1.5m range I could kill him within a bind solo, but that’s not really necessary as you can actually fight him at much lower starting at around 500-600k but be prepared to dodge a lot of shit and actually have to deal with mechanics.

Hard Magnus – Heavily varies based on skill and class. To be in a raid party, 1.5m range with 85% IED, to solo around 4m range to be able to burst hell phase in a bind. Again that number varies heavily based on class, I know that Thief classes with access to Shadow Walker may be able to do it earlier because they can attack freely and ignore meteors/gas. I can comfortably solo within about a minute at ~5m range 199% boss and 92% IED (unless I die). I’d recommend checking out this guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/5wte8t/hard_magnus_for_dummies_the_winged_bitch/

Easy HT- As soon as you unlock it, should be easy, just make sure not to get ohko’d by the tail hit on the right side on the ground.

Normal HT- 100k range for a comfortable solo, be very careful of tail hit as it does 16k damage, which is enough to OHKO most classes at that level range. Stance is very important here, getting knocked off the platforms constantly is very annoying

Chaos HT – Recommend 600k, although it can pushed lower if you’re patient and have good reactions to seduce+1/1 and if you get seduced while Hero’s Will is down, well unlucky.

Easy Gollux- If you can kill the abdomen, you can kill him it’s really easy. Should be doable as soon as you’ve finished the prequests.

Normal Gollux – if you can kill Normal Horntail, you can probably do this as well. If you’re not comfortable get 200k range and try again

Hardlux- 400-500k for first timers

Hellux- Recommended is 3-4m to solo but again varies based on class. If you’re not sure, just try it if you have 5^th job. I had 1.9m clean as an NL and I can clear it in about 7 minutes and with 60-70% time left on the timer, however this is because Dark Flare clears the mobs at the bottom and I have insane burst from Shadow Walker/Last Resort/Spread Throw. I had a friend with 1.6m clean who is an AB, and he had trouble clearing it with another AB because they couldn’t gem in time, so it’s pretty class dependent.

CQueen- If you can kill Hellux you can probably do Cqueen. It’s not too difficult once you learn her mechanics, just make sure to turn down the autopot threshold so you dont get autopot lag while you’re on fire and make sure to Hero’s Will the zombify effect, otherwise you’ll die while you’re on fire and you try to heal using pots. For more in-depth check out this guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/5ogczh/chaos_root_abyss_for_dummies_the_old_lady/

CPierre – Very annoying if you can’t burst within one bind to avoid the split phase, I did it with about ~2.5-3m range but had to wait for the right hat phase. For details on mechanics: https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/5oosf1/chaos_root_abyss_for_dummies_the_clown_man/ . For me this was actually the easiest because it’s kind of hard to die if you have autopot.

CVonBon- Must say, in my experience this was the most difficult. With the other 2 it’s kind of easy to survive once you get the hang of it but CVB always found a way to fuck me over. Pretty much everything in this boss will oneshot you (his jump, his sperm ball, his meteors). For me I like to dps normally until I hit his last phase, then bind + burst to finish him because trying to hit him while he’s not on the map in the last phase makes the clear difficult. Also try to avoid jumping too much otherwise you’ll die if you land just as he pounds the ground. More details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/5pv5vd/chaos_root_abyss_for_dummies_the_chicken/

Chaos Vellum: The big snake.. It’s really just getting used to the timing of the tails and falling rocks and timing your binds + burst correctly. I first did this at 5m range, although I’m 100% sure it’s possible at lower ranges but you ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE SUFFICIENT IED. My damage to Cvell tripled after dmt, not because I got more range but because I finally made the jump from 88->93% IED. Things to watch out for: don’t be greedy for dps during the poison stage, focus on watching the ground for his tails because they’re difficult to see under the green shit all over the ground, and don’t be greedy for dps in general. It’s better to dodge a tail than to hit 1 more rotation of spells. 

Lotus: Damage requirement to be in a party is to be able to solo Cvell in 10 minutes. Honestly, damage required to solo isn’t that high but usually it’s difficult for people to get used to the mechanics and not die during phase 1 which leaves you less wiggle room in p3 for the buggy purple orbs. In GMS, can be difficult to solo clear especially after the removal of -2 sec status neb but is definitely still doable without godly gear. P1 can be buggy as hell, so dont feel bad if you fail a run here and there (teleporting lazers, portals not working, lasers speeding up forever). Don’t be an ass and ronaldo the platforms because you’ll fuck everyone in your party over if its not available to dodge electric ground.

Damien: Similar to Cvell in the idea that your dps windows are fairly limited, and it’s hard to keep track of where the boss is. Damage requirement is similar to lotus as well. Avoid dying with full stacks otherwise the run becomes hell when multiple swords spawn. Make sure you have good communication with party members – in phase 2,keeping the blue balls away from your party is crucial because they make you do 10% of your normal damage and dying to brand makes the run hell for everyone else.

Lucid: Absolute minimum requirements are probably 21k stat, level 230 and 540 AF. Although most people will want 22-24k stat minimum, level 235 and 540 AF. Good communication is key here, try be on voice comms with your party, so people can call dragons/when to cleanse butterflies/when to clear golems/binds etc. Being in a discord channel or smth similar makes the run so much easier. I also cannot stress enough the importance of a support class. I run it with a kanna, and it makes my life so much easier and my damage so much higher. Same applies to a bishop- they are more valuable than a sixth DPS member.

Legion [1031]

Legion is the old character card system- it’s pretty much a reward system for making mules. Once you get a cumulative server level of 600, you’ll unlock the legion grid, which is pretty much free stats for having mules. You then play Tetris with your character blocks to place them onto the grid onto the sections that give the stats that you want. You start with just the Inner Grid, which gives you access to HP,MP,STR,LUK,DEX,INT,ATT,M.ATT. When you get to 2000 legion, you unlock the first part of the outer grids, which give Boss Damage, IED, Crit Damage, Crit Rate, Buff Duration, EXP, Knockback Resistance and Abnormal Status Resistance. Every 500 levels after that you unlock the next outer part of the grid. 

Each character that you place on the grid will grant a bonus effect – the list can be seen here https://i.redd.it/vuhgqhpn5m401.png ordered by priority that you should take them for damage. Credit to /u/MsNyara. 

Additionally, each character also acts as an ‘attacker’ on the legion dragon. Every x amount of damage done to the legion dragon will give you one legion coin. This ‘raid’ continues whenever you are online, you don’t need to actively do it. You can use these coins to upgrade your legion and buy various buffs and items from the legion store, important stuff like 50% Epic Potential Scrolls and Wealth buffs that increase your mesos gained by 50% (very helpful for Kanna meso farmers). The damage done by your other mules on the legion grid is determined by their level of starforce and character level.

Stupid Endgame Optimisation/or for the really dedicated [1032]

If you’re going for 8k legion and want faster grinding and have a 3rd access to maple (laptops/craptops) it’ll be beneficial to make a lv170 Bishop Mule for Holy Symbol. Get it to 170 so you can also use it as heaven’s door mule for lucid/lotus/damien runs.

If you’re going for an arcane weapon/set, you might want to make a farmer for dedicated farmer character for more efficient rates, I’ll list a couple here:

Kanna- Best farmer as of now. Great map control with Yaksha boss, kishin boosted with nodes, domain, tengu strike, nimbus curse, high damage lucid soul- easy to get into lucid parties for a lucid soul to boost rates and has insane soul scaling

Mechanic- The class you make if you’re super dedicated to farming, they can farm decent rates even at low stat, at least 500-580m/hour if you 2hko with rock n shock and can go up as high as ~650m/hour clean if you’re funded enough.

Evan- ^ Same as mech

Blaze wizard- Still mid/high tier rates, should be around 500-600m per hr when funded enough.

Luminous- Cheapest farmer, with 17k stat + 540 AF you can comfortably farm all arcana maps and make 670-720m/hour with 120% meso obtained at Lab Cavern Upper/Side Path. Not recommended if you have high ping, as an australian player myself Lumi’s are heavily gated by ping, I was making 580-600m/hour instead of higher than that because of the tp delay With the Kishin nerf, lumi is now a mid-tier farmer as it is harder to maintain 100% door uptime due to lowered spawn rate and makes around 500m per hr.

If you main any of the following classes or the classes listed above and dislike the thought of funding a farmer you can just grind on them because the rates they make are good enough to compete with farmers, although some of them require heavy funding to hit certain breakpoints that enable them to farm efficiently.

Blaze Wizard (22-23k to 1hko orbital flame)

Ice Lightning (2 tick Ice Age)

Angelic Buster (3/2/1 tick soul seeker)

Kaiser (2hko dragon breath)

Beast Tamer (2hko? (not sure) majestic trumpet)

Shadower (1hko dark flare)

Night Lord (1hko mark)

Night Walker (1hko bat)

Cannoneer (2hko summons)

Corsair (1/2hko summons (not sure this one))

Secondary Weapons [1033]

If you’re deadset on getting everything maxed, go for Princess No or Maple Treasure but honestly you’re only losing a few wep atk so it’s absolutely fine to cube your normal secondary to 3L ATT.

Cheat Sheet [1033]

Obtaining Mesos: The best way is to make a kanna for meso farming, more details can be found in the ‘meso farming’ section.  In essence you abuse kishin and kanna’s AOE damage aura to auto-farm mesos with little effort or use her excellent mobbing to actively farm and make mesos at Singapore. The other option is to solo run all your daily bosses, such as Zak, HT, Pink Bean, Root Abyss and sell the boss crystals for mesos. You can also run Ursus everyday for ~50m mesos.

Increasing your range: The best way to easily increase damage is by making Link Skill mules. Link skills such as Demon Avenger, Kanna (both give 10% damage at lv120), Ark (11% dmg in combat) and Illium (11% dmg while moving), as well as Hayato (+25 all stat and +15 w/m.atk at lv120) and others are really easy ways to increase range. You can also do the Will of the Alliance quest to get 5 m/w.atk and some all stat. Best way is to meso farm and cube/starforce BiS gear.

Kishin: It’s a super broken kanna skill that increases the maximum number of mobs on the map and increases spawn rate. It makes levelling and node farming much easier. This is why many players make a second account and use a spare laptop to kishin themselves while levelling mules or themselves.

Legion: It’s the old character card system, essentially you get bonus stats for having a lot of characters. Players generally leave this till last because levelling 40 level 200 characters takes a long, long time to get 8000 legion which is what it maxes out at. It also gives some small benefits like exp/meso buffs, potential scrolls and cubes.

Gear Progression: Simply, your gear progression starts at lv140 with Pensalir gear and your boss set accessories from Zakum/Horntail and Magnus. After that you progress to CRA gear + Gollux accessories along with Tyrant cape/boots. Then you’ll  slowly move to AbsoLab Gear, Superior Gollux Accessories, SW face/eye and 17/22* rings. After that you can get your Arcane Umbra weapon/gear but not many people have time for that.

Everything explained  here can be read in the main guide in much more detail, using the codes in the contents. 

Credit [1034]

Gear Progression- My own experience/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ziVDExb01i5zWx2aHycS9f3V5Sn_JgGLCV246lt7GrQ/edit#gid=0 credit to /u/yumesuke

My guild, Oceania /u/Oceania_Reboot, who taught me a lot of this stuff

Legion table /u/MsNyara

Bossing Range recommendations: https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/5rjoi8/reboot_recommended_range_for_all_bosses/ by /u/Ekanselttar

Potential Tiers by Level – https://strategywiki.org/wiki/MapleStory/Potential_System

25* Progression Guide – /u/CodeUmbra

IA/Link Skills Guide – /u/CodeUmbra

Professions Guide – /u/MrTaoism

Bossing Guides – /u/zergJun0

Alternate Progression Guides – /u/ StompUrRofl  and /u/JuliettSierraFoxtrot 

If I’ve missed any sections or there is anything you’d like me to add to the guide, please comment below and let me know. I made this to hopefully stop the flood of “Returning player pls help!’ posts that always seem to flood the subreddit. 

Any criticism/errors will be welcome, There are probably errors here and there! 

If I’ve linked your material and you’d like it to be taken down please contact me and I’ll remove it ASAP. 

Thanks for reading.

Last update: 8/26/2019 by pocket