[Reboot] So You're Level 150

A guide for those who aren't exactly new at the game, but have hit a wall and are struggling to figure out where they should go next. Includes links to many other guides!

Introduction

NOTE: With the announcement of 25 stars, a lot of the progression in this guide has been updated and a lot of it is now based on Code Nox's progression guide, give it a look!

This guide assumes that you've already at least a little bit familiar with the game and with what Reboot is, if you're not, here's a guide on the server and how to get started on it. Some of the things covered in that guide will be covered here too, but this guide is going to try and go more in depth and link to more resources that you'll be able to use now that you're more used to the game.

This is a guide meant for people who have been playing for a little while and who have managed to level their characters up to level 150: a notorious wall to progression for people who are just starting out. Whether you burned there or leveled through theme dungeons- you're starting to get your hyper skills and stats and really get into the game. But Maplestory can be sort of overwhelming and you may be wondering where to go next. Hopefully this guide will be helpful to you!

Before you Get Started

If you got here, you should probably have some stuff going for you already, so before you get into too deep, here's a list of things you may have already done and can go back and do if you haven't already.


If you don't have it already, you should have the one of three sets of armor and weapons. Frozen Set is considered the best of the three and looks like this:



It does not come with gloves or shoes, so you are free to use items from one of the other two sets, or just go straight for upgrades that are mentioned later in the guide. This set is only avalible for 'burning' a character during an event, so you may not have access to it.


You also use the 8th Set of weapon and armor for your class (Utguard weapon and Pensalir armor). These drop from monsters in the game, though it's not always consistent what level of monsters drops these- as some higher level monsters still drop 7th set/Muspell gear. My suggestion is to farm the Yellow King Goblins in the last map of Korean Folk Town. The set looks like this:





The best way to improve this gear immediately is to Starforce it: this is a system where you can pay mesos for a chance to upgrade your gear. If you're not sure what that means yet, here's a guide
At this stage you likley don't need to worry about going above 10 stars.


Gear aside, there are some quest-lines and theme dungeons that you need to have done as well:

Magnus Simulator and Heliseum Quest Lines- fairly easy, and allow you to fight Magnus later. Here's a guide to the quests you have to go through.[rebootms.wordpress.com] Tyrant gear (some of which is dropped by Hard Magnus) is no longer the best gear in the game, but you need to at least advance to the point where you can fight easy magnus, as that is necessary to do for your 5th job advancement.


Root Abyss - You need to kill each boss here 10 times before you can fight the Chaos versions of them, which drop very powerful equipment. Heres the Prequest Guide[rebootms.wordpress.com] and here's a video on boss mechanics. .


Crimsonheart Castle - Doing these prequests allows you to fight Gollux, which will eventually net you some of the best accessories in the game.Here's a guide on the quests you need to complete[strategywiki.org] and here's a guide on fighting Gollux himself.


Commerci - This face and eye accessories from this area are consider 'endgame' a,d the Sweetwater gear you can get as drops during voyages will be a powerful upgrade to your current gear. If you are a Dualblade, the Katara here is considered endgame as well.Here's a list of Commerci quests[strategywiki.org], the first of which can be accepted from the light bulb on the left side of the screen. Complete the quests up through "(Commerci) Ciao, Until Next Time", then accept a quest from Cassandra called "Commerci] Get Rich Quick". Talk to Maestra Fiametta to unlock solo voyages here is a guide for them[www.southperry.net]. When you reach Mu Lung in your solo voyages, you can then go to the Merchant Trade Union where you can participate in the Commerci Party quest with 2 other people 3 times per day. The monsters here are harder but have a higher chance of dropping equipment. Since there are 3 people, usually one person will call the voyage that they're planning to loot. Make sure you don't have your pet out when doing these! The denaro gained from this are used to transpose your gear into sweetwater gear (more on this later), and to buy the face/eye accessory and earring used in the late game.

Silent Crusade - A fairly fast quest if you gave a hyper teleport rock, as it just involves going from map to map and killing bosses. This is required to fight Arkarium who you will need to kill to craft endgame gear later.

(Optional) The Afterlands - Gives permanent totems with decent stats. True 'endgame' totems are Yu Garden (time limited) or Dark Totems (from a returning event). Guide.


(Optional) Yu Garden - You can farm the best totems in the game without having to do any quests here, but you can also do dailies which give you coins that allow you to buy Epic Potential Scrolls (more on these later). The further you go in the questline here, the more dailies become available. Yu Garden Guide.


If you don’t have them already, there are also some equipment slots you can start to fill up with fairly low effort:

• A sub weapon can be bought from the the NPC Neville who appears in several towns (If you can't find him, look in Sleepywood).
  
  
• Every class has a quest at level 100 to receive their gold emblems (These two pieces of gear, along with your weapon, are very important as they can gain potentials that give you very large boosts to damage) (Note: apparently some classes don't get their emblem until level 180?). The 'true' best in slot emblem is from the Sengoku high event, which we are not sure will be returning at this time.
  
  
• The boss Zakum drops two items called the Condensed Power Crystal and the Aquatic Level Eye Accessory, both of which add to a boss set effect and will hold you over for a while until you can upgrade them from doing Commerci voyages.
  
  
• The final quest of Tot’s Know how gives a medal which will probably be better than most anything you got while leveling up normally.Simply complete all the quests in the Tot's Know how icon on the left of the screen.
  
  
  
  Also worth doing:
  
  
• The Verne Mines in Edelstine are home to a monster called the big spider. This monster drops a familliar card that, when out, gives makes your drop rate 1.6 times higher than normal, which is very useful in later parts of the game. Be warned that the drop rate for this item is very low, so try to do this during a 2x drop event or with a coupon if you can.
  

Doing Things Daily

There are some things you'll need to progress in but are limited by the number of times per day you can attempt them, so you should start doing these as soon as possible:


Root Abyss Bosses - until you’ve defeated each boss 10 times. This may be difficult to do at first so just check back when you feel you've made a large stride in damage. Even once you've fought them 10 times you can still fight them daily because they drop a crystal that you can sell for a mesos, as well as rewards points which can be traded in for cubes.


Gollux - The coins the various parts of his body (abdomen and shoulders) drop allow you to buy rings and earrings, and you can get these without actually having to be able kill the head portion of the boss (the difficulty of the head is determined by how many body parts you have killed. Easy is you have killed all 3 parts, normal if you have killed 2, hard if you have killed one, and hell if you go straight for his head). You can do two runs where you collect coins from his abdomen and shoulders and leave without killing the head, and then kill the strongest version of him that you can manage for a chance at a belt and/or pendant. Generally you should save for superior gear earrings and will want the superior and reinforced rings, but if you have them all and are still struggling it may be worth getting the earrings that match your belt and pendant for the set effect.


Dimension Invasion - The high quality dimension gloves you get from this are the best you're going to get for a long time. You get pieces of the high quality glove from the bonus where you have to fight the boss Blackheart. Guide[strategywiki.org]. Note: With the increase in drop-rate on Sweetwater Items I found it easier to farm those instead.


Commerci Voyages and PQ - The bosses here (Which start appearing from the Luna voyage and onward) have a small chance to drop the Sweetwater gear, so wear gear/use familiars which increase drop rate if you have them. Save up denaros from voyages to buy the monocle, scar, and earrings, but be careful not to overspend as you require denaros to start a voyage (make sure you always have around 60). This Sweetwater equipment can potentially be made into very powerful equipment thorough a system called transposing. Transposing functions like the transfer hammer, moving the starforce and potential from one piece of gear onto Sweetwater gear... INCLUDING superior stats and flames like from tyrant gear (gained from magnus and Kiritas invasions)- and allowing it to have the Sweetwater set effect, however this is no longer the best and it is generally cost prohibitive to do this optimally. Instead I suggest using sweetwater gear as a midgame upgrade, starforcing whatever tyrant gear you have to a comfortable level (this could be anywhere from 1-5* depending on your funding) and transposing it onto any sweetwaters you happen to get. If you are a dualblade the Sweetwater Katara is currently considered the best weapon you can get for the moment, so you need to continue voyages until you get a lucky drop. Once you get to Herb Town you unlock the PQ which has a slightly higher chance of dropping gear, and can be done 3 times a day

Monster Park - The EXP from this is great at first, but you’ll want to keep doing it after it falls off as the medal you get from completing it 77 times on each day is one of the best ones in the game for killing bosses. You can also get rewards boxes which give Honor EXP and EXP Coupons.

Kiritas invasions and dailies - (Optional) More on Kiritas later. You are able to get reset tickets for weekly bosses from here, as well as tyrant gloves and inverse earrings.

Scrapyard and Dark World Tree dailies - These only become available after level 200, and only when you start working towards Absolab gear, but due to the amount of core/stones you need it may be best to start working on these early.

Arcane river Dailies - another thing that's only available post level 200, and only post 5th job advancement. These quest become available after beating the story quest in the related area and are practically necessary to continue advancing, as they give you arcane force. The more arcane force you have, the more damage you do to move in the arcane river zone, and if you're below a certain threshold you'll do less damage. As a bonus, arcane force also gives you more of whatever your characters main stat is.

Other bosses- As you find yourself able to easily solo more and more bosses, it's usually worth it to go back and kill them once a day for the rewards- these are boss crystals (sold for mesos with the Collector NPC in the free market. You can only sell 60 a week so when you become more powerful it may be worth it to only do bosses that give you the best crystals), reward points (which can be spent on cubes in the cash shop), and sometimes cubes and flames for enhancing your gear. You won't be able to do all the bosses on the list at first but as you grow stronger the list will grow longer:

• Zakum (For boss crystals and face/eye accessories. Chaos mode drops a belt/cape that is good for transfer hammering onto Absolab gear)
  
• Ursus (3x a day, during Golden time at 3-5pm CST for about 27 million mess per run)
  
• Magnus (Easy/Normal is daily, Hard mode is weekly )
  
• Hilla (Hard mode can drop a free pet)
  
• Root Abyss Bosses (Normal mode is daily, Chaos mode is weekly)
  
• Von Leon (At the highest difficulty you can manage)
  
• Horntail (At the highest difficulty you can manage)
  
• Gollux (2x for coins, 1x to clear)
  
• Ranmaru & Madman Ranmaru (for confusion fragments, and Japanese gear if you need it)
  
• Arkarium (For confusion fragments and primal essence. This boss spams a 1hko move so he may not make your list until you can burst him down before he kills you)
  
• Cygnus (Weekly at the highest difficulty you can manage. If your class uses a shield, Normal Cygnus drops the recipie for the Demios Shield, which currently is the best item for that slot)

There are some other bosses that don't usually make it into the daily rotation for being to annoying (either to fight or simply to get to). These are:

• Balrog (Very easy to fight, but damage he takes is not shown for 5 minutes)
  
• Omni-Clean
  
• Papatulus (Chaos mode drops a face accessory that is needed to get the best in the game, but he is very difficult)
  
• Theme Dungeon Bosses (Only gives reward points)
  
• Pink Bean (You have to defeat this boss at least once for your 5th job advancement, and the cup he drops is the best item in its slot outside of events.)
  
• Princess No (Has a 10x a week rider, but drops coupons for the best secondary for many classes)
  
• Julietta (Requires Monad Blockbuster and is generally buggy. He crystal is worth a lot but is not generally worth it)

If you're motivated, you can add all of these to your daily list, or simply do them when you feel like it.

When you get to a higher level you will also want to start doing Arcane River Daliy Quests as well as Scrapyard and Dark World Tree dailies (More on these later)

Getting Stronger without Grinding

Don't be fooled, grinding (both for mesos and experience) is still going to be the best way to get stronger at this point, but It can get boring, so heres some things you can look into in between your monster killing sessions.

CUBING AND POTENTIALS
You've almost certainly noticed by now that you've been getting gear that has some extra bonus stats at the very bottom. These are potentials, that every item has a chance to have when dropped and they come in 4 tiers, rare, epic, unique, and legendary with 1-3 lines. Making these lines better for you is going to be one of your fastest, and also most expensive paths to gaining more damage.

These lines can be changed by using a cube on the item, these can be Occult, Master Craftsmans, Meister, Red, or Black cubes, each with an increasing chance of tiering up equipment, and some with a limit to what level of potential they're allowed to enhance.

• Occult Cubes can be gained from elite and normal bosses, monster collection boxes, and events and have the lowest chance to tier up potential. They can only tier gear up to Epic Potential.
  
• Master Craftsmans cubes can be found from elite and normal bosses, Pollo and Fritto bags, found from Mysterious Ore Veins and bought in Henseys, Leafre, and Edelstine. They can tier gear up to Unique Potential.
  
• Meisters cubes can be found from some bosses and found form Mysterious Ore Veins. They can tier gear up to legendary potential.
  
• Red and Black cubes can be purchased from the cash shop, for both mesos and reward points. They can both tier gear up to legendary potential, but black cubes allow you to chose whether you want to keep the old potential or the new one.

From this Guide: The most optimal path is to use black cubes to unique, red to legendary.

It more worth it to get a decent legendary potential on as much of your gear as possible before trying to get the perfect potential on one thing, however if you're going to be replacing gear, don't worry about getting it above Epic Tier as Unique Tier and above downgrades when being transferred.

If you have gear that has no potential, or rare potential it is often more worth it to simply use an Epic Potential scroll on it instead of trying to tier it up with cubes. You may also have gear with only one or two lines of potential- lines can be added with a successful application of a potential stamp. Both of these items can be gotten randomly from Pollo and Frito/Inferno Wolf reward pouches and from Elite Boss boxes, as well as from the legion coin store. Epic Potential scrolls can also be purchased from the Yu Garden black market with the Yu Garden Coins from doing dailies there. The black market npc appears in Yu Garden from 3-12pm CST and sells a different selection of items each day. If you do not see the scroll in his inventory, try changing channels and checking again.

The priority for cubing usually looks like this:

Secondary Weapon-> Emblem->Weapon
for %Matt or %Att Potentials (depending on which your class uses), as well as Boss damage and Ignore enemy defense, if you need it.

Badge (if you are able to get one that can gain potential)-> Pendant / Belt / Rings -> Armor
for %Main Stat potentials.


LINK SKILLS/LEGION BONUSES
When you get create another character on the same server, all characters on that server get access to it's Link Skill. These can offer bonuses, from extra EXP to extra damage. These can be equipped in the Link Skill menu in the first tab of the skill menu. These have the potential to be quite powerful, so check out this guide[ayumilove.net] and see what might help you out.

When your cumulative level for characters on a server exceeds 500, you will get a quest to start your legion. In your legion, each different class will give you a small buff (in the form of a stat bonus or something similar) and a block that can be placed on a grid to give you an additional buff based on where it is placed. Each member on the grid generates legion coins, which can be spent in the legion shop for things like epic potential scrolls, flames, and even buffs that boost item and meso droprate. Check out this guide[dexless.com] for more.


HYPER STATS AND SKILLS
Starting at level 140, you'll be able to open the Hyper Stat tab. These extra points can be invested into some of the same stats as before, but also can be directly invested into categories like Damage and Boss Damage. Check this guide[ayumilove.net] and decide for yourself what you need to maximize your damage.

Your Hyper skills will vary on your class, and while you will be able to learn all of your active Hyper skills, you can only get 5 of your passive skills, so chose wisely! (If you don't, you can pay mesos to reset your Hyper Skill and Stat points and try again)


INNER ABILLITIES
As you level up (at 30, 50, and 70) you will get quests from the Maple Admin telling you you've unlocked your first, second, and third ability. These are special bonuses similar to potential not tied to any gear, but to your character. They have the same tier system, but instead of cubes the can be rerolled either by spending honor experience or with Miracle Circulators, available in the cash shop for Mesos. Look at this guide[docs.google.com] to see which Inner Ability is optimal for your class.

FLAMES/ BONUS STATS
Sometimes gear drops with bonus stats in green. These are flames, and they come in up to 7 tiers of strength. Sort of like cubes, using and item called a flame allows you to reroll these options- however these flames can't be transferred from one gear to another, and some gear cannot roll the highest tier of stats. Flames can be dropped from bosses, received from monster explorations that are Decent or better, or purchased in the Heneseys/Leafre/Eddelstine store, as well as from the Ursus and Mu Lung Stores.
Check out this guide for more.

BOSS SOULSThis is a rather marginal way or increasing damage, but as you are fighting bosses you will notice they will drop soul shards. 10 of these can be exchanged for a boss soul, which can be applied to a soul weapon- which is created by using a soul enchanter (gotten from random drops) onto a weapon. Look at this page to decide which soul you want[maplescratch.wordpress.com], and keep an eye out for events that make it more likely to obtain magnificent souls.

Gearing Up

As you level up you'll slowly start replacing your gear with better and better stuff, here's where to get some of it:

• Completing the Princess No Theme dungeon gives a belt, ring, and shoulder that are better than cracked gollux gear thanks to the set effect. Start with the quest in the lightbulb menu "Regards, Takeda Shingen" and complete the dungeon once for each character. The ring from this questline in particular will stay with you into the endgame.
  
  
• Horntail drops earrings, a ring, and a pendant. These will eventually be replaced with Gollux gear, but the silver blossom ring in particular will probably stick around for a very long time, as it contributes to the boss set effect along with several other items. It’s recommended you be at level 155-160 depending on your class before trying to fight this boss. Do the quest "Mark of the Dragon Squad" to challenge this boss from the boss menu.
  
  
• Mushroom Shrine Tales gives a cape with incredible base stats- and the cape can be dropped and the quest accepted over and over again to re-roll flames on them. Alternately you can try and fight easy/normal magnus for the nova cape and shoes, as well as the royal black metal shoulder (which is another contributor to the boss set effect). If you can find a party or carry for hard Magnus, the tyrant cape and belt are also powerful upgrades.
  
  
• The Masteria Through Time blockbuster gives a medal that's better than Tots medal, accessed from the quest in the light bulb menu "Onwards to Masteria". If you can’t do this for whatever reason, do Beasts of Fury instead.
  
  
• Heroes of Maple blockbuster gives the best non-event based title. You’ll eventually want to do this anyways, as it is needed to fight Damien farther down the line.if you can't get this, complete Silent Crusade instead. This, and the Black Heaven blockbuster (which is needed to fight Lotus) can be started in the Alliance Hall reached from the Dimensional Mirror.
  
  
• Once you get the pocket slot open, the cup dropped from pink bean will be the best you can get outside of events. If you can’t kill him yet, the stone of life from Hilla is a good replacement.
  
  
• The best totems in the game can be repeatedly gotten from Yu Garden, but they eventually expire so if you want to use these you will have to farm them monthly.
  
  
• When you’re able to do horntail you get get a nice little bump to your Ignore defence/ damage by finishing the leafre codex, which requires doing the dragon rider party quest with 3 other people. it gives +1 level to your skills and 30% ignore monster defense.
  
  
• Start working in your crafting skills. If you are a shield using class you need smiting to make a shield, and all classes will eventually want to be able to wear the meister ring and earrings, gained from accessory crafting (however you will need a lot of resources to make these, so look at what is needed to make them and make sure you save any you find).

The end goal here is to get the weapon and armor gained by killing the Chaos version of the Root Abyss bosses (As well as some other notable gear from other bosses). If you have a friend that can carry you, great! If not, be prepared for a long grind to get strong enough to do this.

But you can't really escape the grind

Gear aside, one of the best ways to get stronger at this point is simply to keep leveling up. There are many leveling guides out there, but here is a general path you can try and take:

Do the Temple of Time quests (which are required to reach your 5th job advancement anyways), which should leave you around 165, then do the Stone Colossus theme dungeon/grind at Blood Mantis followed by the Omega Sector and then Future Heneseys/Perion (If you don’t have anyone to carry you through Chaos Root Abyss and intend to fight Normal Cygnus, this is also necessary).

Here's a link to a more in depth leveling guide.[ayumilove.net]

You'll also want to consider making a kanna, not only for the link skill which provides damage, but to use it in order to farm mesos- a large amount of which are necessary in order to improve your gear.
Heres a guide on the how and why.

When you finally hit level 200 you’ll end up with a large boost to damage thanks to the new skills you'll be able to get in a system called V Matrix.
You can also get arcane symbols every day from those dailies. These are very important as the areas that require them are going to be your main source of progression and the symbols themselves give you a bonus to whatever your main stat is.Besides this, progressing and cubing your gear is still going to be the next-best way to get stronger.

Milestones

Milestones in your progression are usually tracked in the form of being able to kill bosses. By the time you're level 150 you can almost certainly already kill normal Hilla, your next milestones are are :
Ranmaru-> Horntail ->Normal Root Abyss-> Easy Magnus-> Easy Von Leon & Normal Gollux -> Chaos Horntail->Normal Pink Bean-> Normal Von Leon ->Madman Ranmaru -> Easy Cygnus

When you are able to defeat them, you can decide if you’d rather get the gear from fighting Madman Ranmaru and crafting it yourself (which may be faster but you’ll have to grind your crafting skills and for ingredients) or fighting the Easy Empress boss and getting her gear (which is slower because you can only fight her once a week, unless you can buy a reset pass from Kiritas). Easy empress is widely considered the harder boss due to her mechanics and the limit to the number of times you can die.

You can also do the Monad blockbuster as a diversion here. The medal from act two is better than Masteria through time, but the stats are time limited, and more importantly, the equipment boxes have a chance to give Cygnus gear without having to do the boss. However be warned, as the questline and boss are buggy.

Also keep in mind Sweetwater gear from Commerci voyages as an upgrade as well.

However you may not have to worry about any this if you have a strong friend or guild that can carry you through:
Chaos Root Abyss (armor and weapon),
Hell Gollux (Belt, pendant),
Hard Magnus (Cape, shoes)


IF YOU DONT HAVE ANYONE TO CARRY YOU:
Your next milestones are:
Hard Gollux -> Normal Magnus -> Normal Empress and then finally Chaos Root Abyss, specifically Von Bon

Chaos Pierre actually has lower health but his mechanics are a lot tougher, but if you can kill Von Bon you should try him every week
You can also try Chaos Zakum and then finally Chaos Crimson Queen. Assuming you haven't been carried, You’ll finally get your fafnir armor, and this is what you'll be using for a good long while. Feel free to cube the top and bottom all the way to legendary as they will be used all the way to the end of the game.

Moving on from here

If you've gotten this far that means you're probably level 200+ and rocking some pretty good gear. The milestones after this get further and further spaced apart but they are achievable

Hell Gollux->Chaos Vellum->Hard Magnus->Damien->Lotus-> Lucid-> Will.

The general rule of thumb is that you should be able to kill Magnus solo before you'll contribute to a party trying to kill Damien.

Each of these will have a huge difference between them, but Chaos Vellum speicfically is very important as the fafnir weapon will complete the set and give you another damage boost.

There are a few more things you may want to start doing:

• Dark World Tree/Scrapyard Dalies - The items from these, when combined from droped from Damien/Lotus will eventually get you Absolab gear, which is the upgrade to Fafnir.
  
  MAKE SURE TO KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR EVENTS - They often give gear that is considered the best in the slot, or even give out free absolab weapons. Of note are :
  
  • Oda High School events (Best badge, emblem, pocket slot)
    
  • Warriors of Darkness - gives the best permanent totems, though Shanghai are still better if you take the time to farm them every month.
    
  • Pink Bean's diary events give the best title in the game, currently.
    
  • Most events that utilities coins and coin shops sell rings that are fairly powerful and useful even lategame as drop/meso gear.
    
  • Wonderoid for a Permanant android heart
  
  
  Good luck and good mapling!
  

[Ensō]

Is this updated

[spreadnuts]

great guide, 150+ is such a leap for new players and this is a super encompassing resource (y)

[Goblins!]

@Fordream Unfortunantly the droprate for some familiar cards (like the big spider) is quite low, and it only gets lower the farther away from the monsters level you get. However luckily familliar cards can be transfered through the storage inventory, so the next time you are training a character and they are around that level you can try other things that increase droprate (such as a coupon from an event or another familiar such as the mixed golem or racoco familliar) to try and increase your chances of getting the card.

[Fordream]

Hi, Do you know the reason why the big Spider in Edelstine didn’t drop any familiar card for me? I am know Lv160, is this higher level a possible reason for that?
Thx.