MapleStory M – Beginner Guide And Tips On Progressing In The Game
Maplestory M is a mobile version of the once popular side-scrolling MMORPG MapleStory.
For those who are new to this game, you may find it confusing at first.
For the beginners, here's a guide on MapleStory M together with some tips you should know of.
1. Always do quests if you want to level up fast
The first tip in this game is to keep doing quests if you want a fast progression. Unlike the MapleStory on PC, this mobile game gives more experience points for quests. It's suitable for those who are already working, but still want to play the game due to nostalgia or other reasons.
You can pretty much rely on quests without grinding at all up until level 80+ or 90. I can't remember the exact level where it gets tougher but it's around there.
Furthermore, MapleStory M has an auto-quest function that allows your character to move and kill monsters by itself. All you need to do is to tap through the conversations.
At the start, it may seem like this function is pointless as the game sort of plays by itself. I mean, what's the point of you playing, right?
Well, once you hit the higher levels, you'll be begging for more quests. You'll notice a scarce number of quests later on and you have to rely a lot on dungeons and grinding.
2. Classes are not equal in this game
MapleStory M at the moment only has five classes to choose from. Supposedly, they play different roles in the game.
For e.g. Bishop is supposed to be the healer and the support in this game. However, you may notice Bishops being one of the top DPS in some expeditions. Additionally, their healing capabilities have been nerfed to become much weaker recently.
The biggest complaints are probably from the Bowmaster class as they seem to be one of the weakest at the moment. Class balances can always happen at any time, so this only applies at the time of writing.
The most overpowered character at the moment is probably the Night Lord. It usually has the highest DPS in most expeditions and doesn't die that easily due to skills like Dark Sight and Shadow Shifter. Edit: The Bowmaster is now on par or better than the Night Lord for expeditions.
3. Equipment is what sets you apart
Leveling is not as important when you're over level 100 and what sets you guys apart is your equipment's stats.
There are different equipment ranks or rarity in the game and the weakest is the 'normal' rank.
A basic hierarchy from weakest to strongest:
Normal (black) -> Rare (blue) -> Epic (purple) -> Unique (orange) -> Legendary (green) -> Mythic (red) -> (to be available)
The color refers to the color of the border of the item. You'll notice each equipment has its own colored border to signify rank. Obviously, getting a legendary or a mythic equipment is seriously difficult for free-to-play players, unless you invest a lot of time.
Those who are heavy on cash items are already using legendary equipment and a very small number already has mythic.
4. Forging
Forging is where you level up and rank up equipment (both weapons and armor).
There are a few things you should know about forging.
i. Level Up
Each equipment in the game has a rank (e.g. rare, epic) and in order to go to the next rank, you need to first level the equipment. Different ranks have a different max level. For e.g. an epic has a max level of 15 while a unique has a max level of 20. It increases while you scale up.
It's also harder and more costly to level up when the item rank is higher. What you need to use to level up equipment is refining powder. There are two types, i.e. weapon and armor refining powder.
Even the refining powder has different ranks. Higher ranks give more experience points to your equipment, which means it levels up faster.
You'll get a good portion of these refining powder from quests around level 1 – 82. After that, it decreases slowly and eventually the quests no longer give such powder, making it scarce.
ii. Rank Up
Ranking up simply means to go from one rank to another, such as from epic to unique. To rank up, you need to have rank up stones and a decent amount of mesos ready.
For e.g. you need 10 unique rank up stones and about 40 million mesos to go from unique to legendary status.
Furthermore, your item has to be of max level before you can rank up, which means you need a lot of powder and mesos even before ranking up. It's pretty hard if you're a F2P player, especially since 10 unique rank up stones is equivalent to 80,000 gold leaves.
Gold leaves are scarce in the game, so it takes awhile to accumulate them. Here's a guide on how to get gold leaves.
iii. Enhance
Another concept of forging is to enhance the equipment. When you enhance successfully, your item adds another star to it and the item stats go up.
These stars are also known as star force in MapleStory M. The higher your item rank, the more slots for enhancement will be available to you.
It gets more expensive as you enhance your equipment and the probability of failing increases. After level 10, your equipment may break. To prevent it, you have to use scrolls that are available in the Cash Shop (good job Nexon). It's hard for F2P players when it comes to this point.
Sometimes they have events to give out free scrolls but it will never be enough if you wish to max out enhancements. That said, you don't need to max out enhancements to take on bosses.
The in-game tutorial should teach you a bit on enhancements.
iv. Fuse
The next concept is 'fusing'. An alternative way to rank up your weapon or armor is to fuse two max level equipment.
This only applies for equipment of rank epic, unique and above. If you're fusing a weapon, both materials have to be weapons. If you're doing armor, then both have to be armor. For example, you can fuse a level 15 epic claw with a level 15 epic bow.
The good part about fusing is that you stand a chance to get an emblem equipment. The chances are really low but if you do get one, do know that an emblem equipment has even higher stats than a regular equipment. It even has better stats than a perfect base stat (PBS) equipment, which is why many players are trying their luck on fusion.
Regardless, you still get a ranked up equipment even if you don't get an additional emblem to it. For instance, fusing two epics will give you a unique equipment (whether emblem or not).
The biggest downside to fusing is that you'll end up with a random weapon of the same class, with random stats. For e.g. if you fuse a claw (as base) with any other weapon, you will end up with a random claw (Briser / Halphas / Jaihin / Utgard).
The stats are also randomized, and may be worse than your previous stats.
v. Change options
Each epic and higher rank equipment will give you potentials in this game. Potentials refers to additional stats like Crit DMG, Accuracy, Evade, Max HP and so on. Sometimes you have a great weapon but lousy potentials. You can change them by using cubes.
These cubes can either be bought with gold leaves or in the Cash Shop. You can also get some Occult Cubes through extracting equipment (but at low amounts).
vi. Transfer
Sometimes when you enhance your equipment above 10 stars, it breaks (if you don't use a scroll). That renders your equipment unusable. You can still transfer the stats to another equipment of the same kind.
However, that requires you to actually buy a new equipment of the same type, which can be very expensive.
In a nutshell
This is only a short guide on MapleStory M containing some of the tips. Hopefully it is useful for at least some of you. You also can play this wonderful game on your PC with MuMu Player.
