MapleStory: Encyclopedia II - MapleStory - Gameplay

MapleStory - Gameplay

Characters in MapleStory advance by gaining experience points (EXP), leveling up, and collecting various items and pieces of wieldable equipment. The player combats monsters, acquiring money (called mesos or meru in-game) and various items as well as completing quests.

MapleStory gameplay takes place on "worlds". Players are allowed to create up to three different characters in each world for every account made. Each world, which is identical, is split into up to 20 channels where players can play. Each channel is identical in terms of maps, monsters, and other things. The only difference is that there are a different people on each channel. One physical server hosts two channels. Characters, items and money can not be transferred between worlds.

New players are sent to Maple Island, a floating island specifically designed to be beginner-friendly. Unlike many other MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft and Everquest, players in MapleStory cannot choose a character class when they create the character. Rather, every character starts with the class Beginner until they meet the requirements to complete the first job advancement.

When you start the game, there are 25 points that are spread out amongst the different stats. These are STR,DEX,INT and LUK. the minimum that can go into each is 4, and for most players, any stat that they dont use in game, they try and keep at 4. You cannot chose where the points go, but you can continuously randomly generate the stats, until you get the desired ones.

To level up, a character must acquire a certain amount of EXP (experience) points, which are accumulated by killing monsters. At each level-up, a player receives 5 ability points (AP) to be distributed among the stats of STR, DEX, INT, and LUK as necessary. After undergoing the first job advancement, the character also gains 3 skill points (SP) at each level-up to use on various class-specific skills. Whenever a player makes a job advancement, one skill point is gained.

AP can also be put into Maximum HP (Health Points) or Maximum MP (Mana Points). However, because these stats increase automatically at each level-up, putting points into them is strongly discouraged by many players.

There are four main types of stats, which are necessary to advance through the jobs:

• Strength (STR) increases the maximum power of melee attacks. It increases the max damage for warriors and minimum damage for bowmen and thieves. It also increases the amount of HP gained when leveling up. Warriors need 35 AP in STR to make their first job advancement.

• Dexterity (DEX) increases the accuracy, avoidability and minimum damage of all attacks, except magic. It increases the max damage for bowmen and the minimum damage for warriors and thieves. Bowmen and thieves need 25 AP in DEX to make their first job advancement.

• Intelligence (INT) increases the magic attack and magic defense stats. Magic attack affects a magician greatly as their damage and accuracy is based on it, although INT isn't too useful for other classes. It also increases the amount of MP gained when leveling up, but the increase is so small that it's almost unnoticeable. Magicians need 20 AP in INT to make their first job advancement.

• Luck (LUK) increases the avoidability and accuracy of all characters, and decreases the EXP lost when a character dies. It increases the maximum damage of thieves.

Exact effects of each stat depend on the player's weapon and class.

It is recommended by most game guides that the various classes should only increase class-specific stats. Warriors should only increase STR and DEX, (with STR being the main priority) as they only use physical attacks. Bowmen should also raise STR and DEX, with with DEX being the main priority over STR as archery damage is mainly affected by DEX. Magicians should increase only INT and LUK (INT being the main priority). Thieves are advised to increase LUK and DEX (with LUK being the main priority), although STR dagger thieves (thieves who use a STR dagger) also need some points in STR.

Every character class has specific skills to invest in. The effects of Skills vary greatly. Skills fall into one of two categories, passive and active skills. Passive skills (such as an archer's 'Eye of Amazon') take effect as long as SP has been placed in the skill; they work automatically. The effectiveness of these skills increases as more SP is added. Active skills must be used when necessary. There are two types of active skills, attack and enhancement skills. Attack skills tend to do more damage and can be used as the main attacking method (such as a magician's Magic Claw). Enhancement skills add temporary enhancements to only the character (such as a thief's Dark Sight) or the character's party (such as a Cleric's Bless).

Quests are tasks that players may perform for NPCs (non-playable characters) for rewards and experience. Most quests have level requirements (and some have job requirements, or other types of requirements), and are usually difficult to accomplish for a first time player. You can also receive experience after completing certain quests, and some quests have substantial rewards. Some quests can be redone as well after completing it for the first time, though the rewards and given EXP may not be the same. Also there also a party quest in Ludibrium (Ossyria) but it not available yet in TaiwanMS, ThailandMS, GlobalMS, and MapleSEA.

There are many different party quests, the first of which can be done in Kerning between level 21-30. There are 20 channels in each server, and only one party can Party Quest (PQ) in each channel. There are 5 stages in a party quest.

When a character's HP on the health bar (red) reaches 0, a character dies. This is depicted by a tombstone falling from the top of the screen, and the character becoming merely a head on a ghost-like body. Upon dying, a character is teleported to the nearest town and revived with 50 HP. The amount of MP after a character's death does not change. Beginners lose no EXP when they die, which suggests that dying is a cheap and quick way of getting to the nearest town. However, once they make their first job advancement, each death will cost them a certain percentage of EXP depending on the amount of LUK they have, (10% XP loss for under 10 LUK) meaning Thieves and Magicians will lose less EXP than Warriors and Bowman because they have LUK and the others don't. Luk stops helping at 50 (with 50 luk or more you lose only 5% XP) A character cannot fall below 0% EXP of its current level. Which means that if you die, you will not level down, you will only reach 0 EXP. If a character dies, the character can still speak, but instead of the usual speech bubbles, a "thought bubble" is subsituted in. *Don't train LUK unless you are a thief/mage it will hurt you too much to put points into LUK... Just don't die and then it won't matter your archer or fighter has 4 LUK*

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Gameplay", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki