Orange Mushroom's Blog

The third and final Summer (although it’s fall now…) has been released! The First Battle with the Black Mage [Orca & Suu] is a patch dedicated to the story of MapleStory, featuring a new installment to the Black Wings saga.

However, this patch is very disappointing because there are a lot of things they said they would add which they did not (Resistance and other class renewals, high level equipment)…

This patch has MapleStory’s first blockbuster system, Black Heaven. Currently, only the first chapter is released. You can see some concept art in my previous post.

Finally, the Black Wings’ secret weapon, Black Heaven, has been revealed! Get one step closer to the Black Mage in this story’s prelude. Fight in the sky with Maple World’s alliance and the Black Wings, and become the main character in the final fight!

Black Heaven content can be accessed through the new icon on the left side of your screen, or through the Dimensional Mirror.

Talk to Moco to begin the blockbuster experience! This content is open to all users from level 33 ~ 250.

The Black Heaven content is split into different Acts. Each one will be unlocked as you progress through them. As of September 30, only the first two Acts are available. Competing an Act rewards you with a certain amount of experience based on your level and  Honor.

Directly experience the story as a member of the Maple Alliance!

I think this video plays at the beginning of Act 2, when the Maple Alliance uses Crystal Garden to fight Black Heaven!

Here is the completed map, in case you guys didn’t wanna wait for further patches haha.

The first act is titled Act 1. Black Wing’s Behind the Scenes Leader. A more accurate translation would be éminence gris, but basically it just means someone who controls things without being publicly acknowledged as the leader.

The Cygnus Knights’ informant 10 Boogies has been investigating the Black Wings, and has said they are planning something dangerous but he was captured. 10 Boogies needs to be rescued to get more information about the oncoming danger.

The second act is Act 2. Go to War, Crystal Garden! 

Black Heaven is a flying ship designed to destroy Maple World. The fight to protect Maple World from Black Heaven begins.

Each Act of the MapleStory Blockbuster: Black Heaven has an interesting story along with puzzles and other new game elements. Let’s talk about the two Acts released in his patch.

Act 1 has things like trying to figure out a password, avoiding obstacles in faulty wiring, and trying to find background elements which don’t fit.

Act 2 requires you to escape from a situation while avoiding obstacles as well as a moving boss battle!

Act 1 is done together with three new characters as your partners, Goofy, Dolfy, and Leafy. In Act 2, they return, as well as Athena Pierce joining you for a short period of time!

Here’s a playlist of the entire story (Act 1 and 2). I’ll be updating this playlist as more Acts are released so check back!

As for my thoughts about this update, I actually thought Black Heaven (Act 1 and 2) was really fun. The blockbuster style they went for is really great and it made it very different than other content in the game. There was a ton of new concepts/features added like the ‘boss battle’ where you had to survive until the end (I’ll be honest, I died once and had to retry it…).

The story was really good too, with voiceover dialogue for many characters and great cinematic cutscenes. In the beginning of Act 2, you’ll see my character meeting up with the other Adventurers from the story line and them wanting to support the Maple Alliance by helping you out with their buffs (so cute), so different characters will have slightly different experiences (some dialogue in other quests might change as well). They even put in the whole Resistance vs Cygnus conflict in tiny ways, like the Cygnus Knights fighting with the Resistance members onboard the ship.

The only thing that was disappointing about this update is the lack of… actual content? Like I really like the Black Heaven stuff and I’m looking forward to the rest, but the last update was more than a month ago and they only gave 2 Acts… which took be about 3-4 hours to complete… And there was no Resistance revamp or high level equipment… Hopefully the next patch will have a lot of stuff in it though 🙂

Skill Changes

In this patch, 7 jobs have had some skill balancing.

Dual Blade

Dual Blade’s skill damage is very high already but they don’t have many utility skills for survival. We increased the damage on damage-focused skills but we changed Chains of Hell to give invincibility.

We corrected an error in Final Cut and decreased Asura’s cooldown in order to make gameplay smoother.

•  Chains of Hell: after being used this skill now gives 3 seconds of invincibility (during which you can use other skills), a cooldown of 45 seconds has been added
•  Blade Fury: damage has been increased from 165% to 195%
•  Phantom Blow: damage has been increased from 200% to 210%
•  Final Cut: distance moved after using this skill has been decreased, fixed a bug where using Final Cut with a pet would disconnect users from the game
•  Asura: cooldown has been decreased from 90 seconds to 60 seconds, this skill no longer activates Damage Reflect

Viper

Viper’s field battle is highly effective but their bossing capabilities are low. We increased Fist Enrage’s damage and increased the effects of Ultra Charge and Counter Attack to give greater merit to their melee fighting style.
We also gave Unity of Power’s damage cap increase a boost by increasing the maximum number of stacks.

•  Fist Enrage: damage has been increased from 270% to 320%
•  Ultra Charge: stance effect has been increased from 98% to 100%
•  Counter Attack: chance to activate has been decreased from 40% to 25%, duration has been decreased from 45 seconds to 30 seconds, damage boost has been increased from 15% to 25%, now in addition to existing effects when hit there is a 25% chance to reduce the damage taken by 70%
•  Unity of Power: cooldown has been decreased from 20 seconds to 10 seconds, maximum number of stacks has been increased from 3 to 4

Captain

In our previous balancing, we wanted Headshot to be a good skill but its efficiency was low due to its skill delay, so we decreased it.

•  Headshot: skill delay has been decreased from 1260ms to 1050ms

Mercedes

Mercedes was changed a lot in the last balancing patch, with a large focus on linking skills. However, starting off with Charge Drive created many problems, with awkward skill delays and moving you too close or too far away from monsters. We tried to fix this by changing some skill ranges.

Legendary Spear also created some unusual situations when used in the air so we disabled that.

•  Charge Drive: can now be used in conjunction with the Down arrow key in order to cancel the knockback part of the skill (only performs the knockup), skill delay has been adjusted
•  Strike Dual Shot: damage has been increased from 240% to 260%, can now be linked with Wrath of Enril
•  High Kick Demolition: skill delay has been decreased from 870ms to 630ms
•  Leap Tornado: damage has been increased from 215% to 235%, downwards attack range has been increased
•  Unicorn Spike: can now be linked with Wrath of Enril
•  Gust Dive: can now be linked with Wrath of Enril
•  Legendary Spear: can no longer be used in the air
•  Rolling Moonsault: downwards attack range has been increased, delay has been decreased from 810ms to 540ms
•  Lightning Edge: in addition to existing effects Lightning Edge now passively increases Gust Dive’s damage by 50%, can now be linked with Wrath of Enril
•  Advanced Strike Dual Shot: damage has been increased from 288% to 300%
•  Wrath of Enril: this skill’s cooldown is now decreased by 1 second whenever skills are linked together

Demon Avenger

Demon Avenger’s HP boosts from the Star Force enhancements were not as efficient as other jobs.

A new passive skill was added that increases the efficiency of enhancements. In addition, using Demon Strike will no longer reset Exceed stacks, and Forbidden Contract’s maximum HP boost has been changed to a damage increase due to the existence of the HP cap for characters.

•  NEW! Conversion Star Force: Based on your currently equipped Star Force enhancement count, gain HP for each Star Force. Gain 150 HP for each Star from 1~30, 925 HP from the 31st, and 175 HP for each star from 31~40.
•  Demon Strike: using Demon Strike will no longer reset Exceed counts
•  Forbidden Contract: HP boost has been changed to a 10% damage boost, cooldown has been decreased from 90 seconds to 75 seconds

Demon Slayer

Demon Slayers tend to use only Devil Cry due to its high range and low Force consumption while hunting. We think its a very boring hunting pattern and so we have added an effect where Devil Cry’s Force consumption increases when the skill is used consecutively.

We know this will greatly impact Demon Slayer’s hunting efficiency so we are compensating it with better movement and increasing Demon Explosion’s efficiency as well as increasing Demon Impact’s damage to bosses for better boss fighting.

•  Demon Trace: this skill can now be used in the air, skill delay has been decreased from 810ms to 600ms
•  Dark Thrust: skill delay has been decreased from 900ms to 720ms
•  Devil Cry: when this skill is used consecutively, the Force consumption will increase by 40 for 15 seconds (stacks up to 4 times)
•  Demon Explosion: Force consumption has been decreased from 50 to 25, skill delay has been decreased from 900ms to 690ms
•  Demon Impact: damage to boss monsters has been increased from 30% to 40%
•  Metamorphosis – Enhance: now 5 seconds before the Damage Reflect ignore effect wears off, an effect will blink over the character’s head to inform them

Angelic Burster

To help Angelic Burster be more efficient, we are increasing the functionality of 2 buffs and allowing Super Nova to ignore damage reflect.

•  Lyrical Cross: accuracy boost has been removed, Lyrical Cross now increases attack speed by 1 stage and maximum HP by 1500
•  Super Nova: this skill can now ignore damage reflect
•  Soul Exalt: 100% Recharge chance has been removed, Soul Exalt now gives the ability to ignore Damage Reflect, 20% boss damage, 30% defense ignore, and increases Soul Seeker Expert’s chance to activate by 15%

They made some changes to Star Planet to make it more convenient to use for Maplers.

• Whenever there were a lot of people in Star Planet, they used to cover up NPCs. We changed it so that NPCs are always on top.
• Star Planet’s available channels have been decreased from 20 to 5, so that users can meet up with others better.
• We changed Star Arena a bit to make the minigame entrance more convenient.
• We made it easier to get the EXP buff from Foming.

They also changed the Star Point gauge at the bottom of the screen, so that it shows your current SP and the percentage. In addition, your current rank will show your current SP instead of an unlabelled bar.

Hektaon‘s rewards were not as good as they could be. Now, instead of experience, you get a 1.5x Experience Coupon for defeating him, and they increased the number of coins you get as well.

In addition, the Kritias Shop has had some new items added as well as the price of Damage Skins dropped.

Speaking of which, users can now use Damage Skins on Zero!

Finally, they realized that getting Honor was a big hassle for users, so they removed them as drops from bosses. Now, bosses drop Boss Medals of Honor which give 20x the amount of Honor as regular medals.

These Boss Medals are instantly used up when looted (this also applies to regular Medals of Honor, finally!!) and based on the difficulty of the boss, they’ll drop more Medals.

They also added in something different in this patch. Many skill animations and monster skill effects have been changed to a more compressed image format. This will help low-end users with performance and fix certain issues at bosses.

The Autumn Attendance Check event has begun and will run until October 15. Each day you have to collect 30 of Tangyoon’s Chicken Legs to be counted.

You’ll get special prizes of course, based on the amount of days you participate!

• Day 1: 2x Experience Coupon (expires in 7 days)
• Day 2: 100 Scroll Traces
• Day 3: 10% Clean Slate Scroll
• Day 4: 2x Experience Coupon (expires in 7 days)
• Day 5: Special Medal of Honor (gives 10,000 Honor)
• Day 6: 200 Scroll Traces
• Day 7: Gold Potential Stamp
• Day 8: 500 Scroll Traces
• Day 9: 50% Gold Hammer
• Day 10: 2 Special Medals of Honor

New Cash sets for this patch have been released, the first is the Runaway Suu set which comes with a hat, overall, and cape.

There’s also the Wounded Orca set, which has the same items.

In addition, the Choice Hair Coupons now have Orca and Suu hairstyles, along with some other new ones.

I don’t think I’ve talked about Choice coupons yet, but they’re a new type of hair/face coupon which come by like once a month. These coupons are not like other seasonal coupons because they allow you to choose any of the available hairstyles, instead of leaving it up to chance!

And here are the Choice Face Coupon faces as well.

Finally, from Epi’s Boxes, you can now get some special items like the Captive Orca Chair, Commander Orca Chair, Rabbit Box Chair, and the Suuroid and Orcaroid!