(re) Compiling the best on Reddit. If you do wish to chat and discuss with others on recently released content, do join the official MapleM Discord

Do note that while the game META (Most Effective Tactics Available) evolves extremely quickly (and has been so in the last 1 year), the basic concept of progression and the system of the itemization has not changed very much.

"if you give a hungry man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"

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Contents

1. Guides for Understanding the game's system

2. Guides for Character Progression

3. Guides for Account Progression (Direct/Indirect)

4. Out-dated/legacy guides (For reference only, execute at your own risk)

• New players = players who are new to the game, yet to reach lvl200 or reached their first lvl220 via a Hyper burn event
• Returning players = players who have stopped playing for a year or more
• Early-game players = Post-220 players, who have yet to hit their max dmg cap
• Mid-game players = Post-220 players, reached or close to their max dmg cap
• Late-game players = Post-250players, pushing 50+m towards 70+m mdc
• End-game players = Post-250 players, 100m mdc and more, why are you here?

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1. Guides for Understanding the game's system

Justmeasure's New Player's Guide [Part 1] Commonly used term and abbreviations, itemization system, the WHAT and HOW to progress, especially in the early game.

Useful for: New Players, Returning Players

Justmeasure's New Player's Guide [Part 2] What do I do next? How do I make Mesos? Mistakes to avoid?

Useful for: New Players, Returning Players

Myrtoa’s summarized progression guide. Gives you the tl;dr on what to prioritize for your progression. Great overview on the mastercraft system and what to prioritize.

Useful for: New Players, Returning Players

Nub14's Inherit vs Necro weapon discussion - a change in meta? Mathcraft and the case for why all players should and can work towards a Necro

Useful for: Returning Players, Early-Game Players

Nub 14's 1-track Chaos Path - A discussion and case for building towards Chaos50 armours for possible late/end-game progression.

Useful for: Returning Players, Mid-Game Players

Bossing + Buffing 101 Guide - Estimated difficulty tier list of early game bosses. (Expeditions till Lotus) Where to earn/buy buffs FOC in the game.

Useful for: New Players, Returning Players, Early-Game Players

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2. Guides for Character Progression

Ginvi_RNG’s EXP Gearing Guide. For newer players who either want to use non-emblemed exp gears as a starting base. For others who plan to have a second set of exp gears.

Useful for: New Players, Returning Players, Early-Game Players, Mid-Game Players

MiloGaoPeng's Gear Progression guide. Affectionately known on the sub as Milo's Guide. Great step by step phases on progressing your gears for bossing, not updated as OP has quit the game, but still a decent step-by-step read. You will need to factor in current events that has leapfrogged a lot of steps of progression.

Mod-Note: Milo has deleted this guide in view of the current metagame. You may still click into the link to read his closing thoughts.

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3. Guides for Account Progression (Direct/Indirect)

These guides are useful for all players

Direct Progression

• Justmeasure's Account Progression Guide [Part 1] [Part 2]  Growing a character? Great! But the strength of your character is also dependent on the overall strength of your account! How do you grow it? What else can you do to grow?
• Justmeasure's Notes about Nodestones (Inclusive of maximizing Boost-Nodes) Almost everything you will need to know about Nodestones, except the specifics on what boost nodes to use for each specific job
• Crystalshadow’s How to Alt-Story  Useful info for newer players on understanding and how do you utilize alts to earn mesos.
• s3phy86’s (on YouTube) Comprehensive DPS Calculator  Comprehensive DPS Calculator (save a copy of the file)
• Keefetang's simplified DPS Calculator Simplified DPS calculator on a easy-to-read interface
• Krey's (On Discord) (Inosys NA and Predatory's GM) Bossing MDC Calculator Quick overview on how much damage you will be doing to a boss in view of it's enhanced defense and how much IED/DIR you have (save a copy of the file)

Indirect Progression

• Justmeasure's Monster Card Hunting Guide  All you cardcaptors fall in here! But no, seriously, Card Hunting is great. Card Hunting is easy! It's as easy as 1-2-3!
• Roselily's & Justmeasure's Maple Home Guide  How to hit 400 score optimally to get that sweet sweet free daily Auto Battle!
• Nub14’s Pharaoh Dungeon Guide  Contains all the basics you’d need to know about the Pharaoh Dungeon. Get your weekly ancient crystals!

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4. Out-dated/Not-updated/legacy guides (For reference)

1. Astralmist's Exploring PBA In Depth Google Document explaining TPBA and PBA in depth. For those who love Math-Fu. This is just for reference, as of a recent patch, it is not possible to obtain TPBAs anymore.
2. MSM Infosheets Google Document with tons of basic info. Sadly, not updated, but still tons of relevant info that 80% of players will still use.

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In Closing

I hope to be able to see more contributors and will add in relevant guides to this pinned post accordingly.

In the mean time, if you are looking for more mid to end game content related stuff, you would be better off having a discussion on the official MapleM Discord

First did up a similar thread back in November 2025. I know factually, many people have benefited from it.

On top of that, all my theories that I am sharing below has been rigourously tested by myself along the launches of Lynn (August 2025) and Iel (January 2026) launches. If you are interested, I have uploaded the progression journey (of these new accounts) as well as Tips & Tricks for the game on my channel.

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I know people love to be spoonfed and hate to read stuff. So I will try to make this as concise as possible. If you need an explanation to any of the stuff, ask in the comments.

The short answer is. Leverage on the minor events that's happening now, to prepare for the upcoming major event.

We are exactly 2 months away before we have the 8th Anniversary of MapleStory Global. It is almost a certain thing that this will be a major update and even power creep. Major events with this level of power creep used to be a rarity.

The game has evolved tremendously in the last few years - and exponentially so since Dec2024. So if you are a returning player prior to that era, you might be shocked with the power creep and will benefit from knowing what to expect and what you can prepare for.

If you are new to the game and don't intend to be a whale, but want to maximize your progression, you are best advised to flow with these major updates and do your preparations to get the most gains.

If done right, you can leapfrog your progression by easily 1-2 years.

However, I will caveat this by adding this statement too -  Expect only what you are willing to work for.

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Content

1. Personal game objectives
2. Goal milestones
3. Link Skills/Legion
4. "Sweep to clear" stuff
5. Footnotes

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Personal Game Objectives

Comparison is the thief of joy. The reality in a game like this is that people who are differently resourced (in both money AND time), will be able to attain certain things faster/easier. You will have to be realistic with what you expect.

There's 2 main things that denotes the main progression in the game.

- Gearing

- Levels

This is the very reason why the Major Events are so crucial as they usually provide a Burning Weapon that develops into a Crit Dmg Emblem, Mythic level40 Jaihin weapon (that is pretty much the best you can get at the entry levels of the game) as well as 1+4 burning levels that allows you to level up fast. Typically up till level 220 or 230. (likely 230 as seen in Iel's launch for the major events, and till 220 like the Kain/Aran Remaster/Shade Remaster)

So whether you are a returning player or you are completely new to the game, you will need to decide what is your own personal objective?

If you want to be completely F2P and beat Black Mage - at this stage you are completely delulu.

If you want to be F2P and be able to solo Hard Damien in the next 1 year - this is actually a possible and reasonable goal

If bossing progression isn't a goal, and you just want to reach level 250 to unlock the hexa system in the next 6 months, also likely very doable. If you are willing to spend (alot on FOE tickets, auto battle and having the gears to thrive inside) to get there, this is doable too in 2 months.

It's a combination of how much effort you put in to grind COMBINED with how much you are willing to spend. You will unfortunately not be able to outgrind the spenders. There might be some games that could allow you to do that. But this game is not one of them.

Goal Milestones

A widely observed misunderstanding by players is that they see the "combat power" (CP) value (large number thing at the bottom of their character on their chracter splash page) and seek to raise this number. This number is not unimportant - it is necessary for some content - but this number is not the determinant of your damage prowess. So pushing to grow this number is not a good benchmark for milestones.

It is widely accepted that reaching level 250 and having an emblemed (Crit Dmg or Boss Attack) Necro level40 weapon are the major ENTRY level milestones to reach.

Level 250 is the level where you start to unlock the hexa system, giving you the possibility of upgrading your stats at a relatively cheap cost, gaining crucial boost to your existing skills and obtaining the powerful Origin skill - which will be a game changer regardless of the stage of progression you are in.

A Necro weapon is needed for the crucial "Fair Trade" passively activated buff that gives you a 100% crit rate. This crit rate is necessary to embark on certain bosses. There are more nuances to bossing, but we will not cover that here.

However what are the various milestone points to attain before you get to the above?

I will list a few milestones (without eleborating on how to get them)

1. Reaching level200. Once you are level 200, this unlocks the VMatrix system and will give you a huge boost in prowess. Whether for leveling or for bossing.
2. Reaching starforce 160. This allows you to start doing Chaos Daily Dungeons which is your main source of Ancient Crystals - that will be used for mastercrafting.
3. Reaching starforce 170. This gives you access to Pharaoh's Dungeon and an added source of Ancient Crystals.
4. Reaching level 230. This might be arbitrary, but the game has released 1+2 burning level events to get to 250, specifically for chars 230 and above. I have reason to believe that it will happen again.
5. Obtaining 150k HP which will allow survive some boss mechanics that will otherwise OHKO you
6. Understanding Boss mechanics and how to obtain and use various bossing buffs

These are non-exhaustive, but they are minor goals to get to.

Link Skills/Legion

Once of the highest priority things to do is to utilize all free character slots to build your link skills and legion. It will benefit all characters in your account.

Previously, people veered towards EXP related stuff. However with the EXP curve changes and all the burning events, EXP% will only be beneficial if you are spending prolonged periods of time in mobbing maps. Which is not the norm for normal play.

Currently, I am proposing for newer players to focus on link skills and legion that will provide you more Combat Power (CP) as well as raw damage stats. Yes I did mention in the previous section that CP isn't something to focus on, but CP is still important.

CP is necessary to get into higher tiers of Elite Dungeons as well as reach Expedition requirements. And until you reach these requirements, you will need them.

With regards to link skills. The order of priority will be Crit Rate > HP% (only kaiser has this) > FD> PDI/MDI> BA > CD. Crit Rate gives a inordinate amount of CP gains. You have 15 link skill slots at any one time, and you can stack the same link skills together to take up only 1 slot for that skill. However, with a lack of character slots (unless you spend), you will not be able to benefit from stacking link skills.

Legion wise, just use the auto-placer. Max out Crit rate first (you can shift this inner skill around) and move towards PDI or MDI. After you have done so, you can start to look into getting Boss Attack and then Crit Dmg. Physical attack or Magic Attack will be the LAST parts to touch.

At the same time, legion character bricks also gives an additional passive stat, which again is good to take note, but not something to worry about at the early stage of planning.

- Warriors give HP%.

- Archers give BA%.

- Thieves give CritDmg%.

- Pirates give EXP%.

- Mages give PEXP%

- on top of the above, all SHINE chars gives FD% (Sia, Iel and Erel)

"Sweep to clear" stuff

These are necessary/useful tasks, that will allow you to "sweep" them so that any new burning characters can leapfrog levels. You only need to/can do these ONCE and your account benefits forever.

- The easiest ones are story exploration (Elinel and Reina Straits). These wont take very long to complete. For none burning characters, you can get from level 100 to 107 instantly by sweeping these (even more there's a burning level event attached to it). You will also get a decent amount of red mesos too when you complete, which is more than sufficient to fund any alt chars to SF100.

- Clear the blockbuster quests (affectionately known as the lotus and damien storylines). These will take HOURS to clear and has several Acts. You can now auto-run like 90% of the quest, but it will still require some attention to continue parts of it. Clearing the quests will allow yout to "sweep to complete" and get more EXP at levels 140 and 160 respectively. Especially useful when leveling Alts.

- Special mention to <Arcane> quests. These are the "Blue Quest"s you get after level 200. They are needed to unlock certain aspects of the game. You could "instant complete" the <Arcane> quests that appear from level 200 onwards. But the caveat to this is that you don't get the EXP attached to these quests. The EXP is useful and in a way necessary to have. So not recommended to "instant complete" unless you really know what you are doing.

Footnotes

- The above is really just a skinny of things. If you want to really plan your progression properly. You will need to gain more game knowledge. It's ok to ask around. However, some questions that covers extremely basic stuff should really be self-led. You should spend some effort to read up the New Player Guide.

- I get it that not every one wants to play a specific character that the game pushes out to you and would like to play a character of choice. That works, I respect that. However, you will still have to leverage on these major launch event characters to get a foothold in the game and generate mesos. Only then will you have teh lxri, whilst you gradually build your choice of main.

- There is no "right/wrong" way to play the game so to speak. Many mistakes can sometimes be avoided, but yet making mistakes is how we grow and learn.

- I am not adverse to spending money in the game. But do note that spending money does not change how progression works. It's the same pathway. What it does is give you more resources at your hand to do some things faster, or perhaps straight up purchase pre-loved gears.

- It is still a social game. A lot of benefits can be gained by making friends in your game world/server (esp now that cross server bossing from Lotus onwards is a thing) and getting help. Getting into a guild with sufficient daily check ins is a huge gain. It will be beneficial to find an active alternate (Alt) guild to join.