Orange Mushroom's Blog

Hey guys! After a long dry spell for MapleStory 1 news, a new patch has been released in Tespia! Although it’s really big (almost 600MB!) the patch notes only talk about 7 jobs’ skill balancing and some other stuff. Sadly, no Resistance revamp or ’32 jobs’ of balancing. Maybe this will come in future Tespia patches.

However, inside the data are a bunch of images, monsters, and NPCs for something called Black Heaven. It’s definitely the new content coming in the third summer patch, so read on!

Hekaton’s rewards have been changed. The chance of getting some rewards has been increased when you successfully defeat Hekaton. If you are in the top 50% of players, you can now get 1.5x Experience Coupons.

The Hekaton and Kritias coin shops have been changed a little bit. New items like the Unquenchable Flame, Eternal Unquenchable Flames, Chaos Blades, Strong Chaos Blades, Scroll Traces, and advanced personality trait items have been added. The price of Damage Skins has been decreased.

Medals of Honor from bosses have been changed. Now, bosses only drop Boss Medals of Honor, which give 20 times the amount of Honor as regular medals. The higher the difficulty of the boss, the more Medals you will get. Boss Medals of Honor are used immediately when picked up.

 Skill Changes

Dual Blade

Dual Blade’s skill damage are 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: other skills can now be used while this skill’s invincibility frames are active, 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

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 300%
•  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 30%
•  Unity of Power: cooldown has been decreased from 20 seconds to 15 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
•  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 30%

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%

Now, let’s talk about Black Heaven!! It’s not mentioned in the patch notes at all, and it’s not available in game, but this huge patch added a bunch of things behind the scenes! I’m trying to piece it together from just images and what we know of beforehand, so here’s what I have:

I’m assuming the Black Wings have activated a giant airship called Black Heaven. This airship is going to attack… somewhere. Maybe Edelstein? Maybe Ereb? I’m not sure.

This patch was said to use a new blockbuster system, and I think I know what that means. There are 7 acts in the data, and this world map above, along with a blockbuster UI. I’m pretty sure this entire story will take place over 4 acts, with each one possibly having a different sort of game play.

I’m so excited for this patch you have no idea.

What I do know is that the Maple Alliance will join together to fight this huge threat!

There will probably be some part where you have to infiltrate the Black Wings headquarters in Leben Mine, and face giant monsters. They’re probably the ones seen here.

There’s a bunch of ships added in this patch, along with NPCs (such as the Cygnus Knights, Kyrin, various knights and Resistance members) all fighting. Maybe it’s a co-operative defense mode, sort of like a better Aswan.

There’s also some interesting cutscene images! Who is that missing Knight? A creepy crossword with answers like Black Heaven is Ready…

Like they said beforehand, this new content will be using a new type of storytelling, similar to Zero and the new Mushroom Kingdom, so it comes with its own set of NPC illustrations!

Even Francis and Hiver (wow I thought they forgot about that guy) appear! And there’s an NPC for Aria, as well as an enraged Phantom. This one’s probably from a flashback since the patch is subtitled [Orca & Suu] but still, very interesting.

I’m also pretty sure this patch will involve aerial battles! There were some monsters added that are in flying ships and they released these other images in a preview last week.

There were some BGMs added as well (thanks to SlipySlide!). One of them is named the Doll Master, maybe Francis will play a bigger part in this patch than we thought.