Orange Mushroom's Blog

Hey guys! It’s been a while since my last post, but there’s finally news of what’s coming up for MapleStory! A new Developers’ Note confirms that this September, we will be receive even more job balancing! There were also a few events such as the Star Star Festival which are currently running that I’ll talk about as well.

Hello, it’s Bibi.

Today I would like to talk about details regarding the character balancing which will occur in September.

With our summer Reboot update, we did some balancing which affected almost every job. This balancing’s biggest goal was to reduce the gaps between all jobs. Rather than having certain jobs be stronger than others, we want the differences to be about battle patterns and overall fun. However, it was not possible to fulfill all of our goals in one balancing.

Our development team have received new ideas and have also carefully reviewed user opinions so that we can try again to progress on character balancing. Without making too drastic changes, we hope to gradually balance jobs, focusing on the following:

• Elemental resistance reduction skill adjustments
  • Depending on the content, there were extreme differences between jobs, so elemental resistance reduction skills will be adjusted.
  • Jobs with elemental resistance reduction skills will instead have their final damage increased so that the large disparity between overall job performance is removed.
• Instant kill effect removal
  • Depending on the content, jobs could kill monsters without their equipment levels mattering, so the instant kill effects will be removed and the skills will only use percent damage.
• Low battle efficiency jobs’ boost and high jobs’ reduction
  • Adjustments will be made based on a job’s special characteristics without impacting overall fun.
  • Jobs with lower advancements that have difficulty hunting will be adjusted as well.
• Utility ability adjustments
  • Jobs with excessive utility abilities will be adjusted.

A total of 33 jobs will receive changes. Specific job changes will be detailed in the test server release notes later but I’ll talk about overall changes here.

1. Archmage (F/P)
   Archmage (F/P)’s Mist Eruption skill’s performance is very high. The DoT’s durations will be decreased in order to raise the difficulty of stacking DoTs, helping to reduce overall performance.
2. Bowmaster
   The installed Arrow Platter’s performance was excessive in certain content because there was no risk in installing it. After adjusting this area, to help compensate the loss in damage, Hurricane – Reinforce will be strengthened.
3. Adventurer Thieves, Night Walker
   Dark Sight gives thieves very high performance without risk when used to avoid certain boss patterns. We will be changing this skill so its impact on boss fights is not as large as it currently is.
4. Dual Blade
   Dual Blade’s Advanced Dark Sight automatically activates Dark Sight, in this case there will be no cooldown applied.
5. Knights of Cygnus
   The Knights of Cygnus currently cannot receive their Link Skill from each other. This will be changed so they can link to each other. After this change, each job will be individually adjusted.
6. Mercedes
   Mercedes has a fairly high number of hits of low damage, which we kept because of their elemental resistance reduction. Now, we will be reducing Final Attack’s number of hits but change it into a damage increasing buff.
7. Phantom
   Phantom’s ability to steal skills gives him a lot of versatility, and although it fits his character concept, his performance is still very high. We will be reducing the effectiveness of movement skills and buff skills but buff lower used skills like Tempest of Cards.
8. Demon Avenger
   Demon Avengers being reluctant to use Release Overload is contradictory to their combat pattern. We would like to fix this by increasing the performance of Release Overload’s buff and reducing HP recovery of other skills.
9. Resistance
   The Resistance currently cannot receive their Link Skill from each other. This will be changed so they can link to each other.
   
10. Battle Mage
    In the last balance patch, we changed recovery skills a bit, including Drain Aura, but it is still very efficient in certain content. We will be lowering its efficiency but we will be making other changes to its party healing concept.
11. Mechanic
    Mechanic can hunt with very long range and in boss fights, their damage is very high with Homing Missile. But, with Homing Missile, the core attacking skills’ effects become unnoticeable. After adjusting this area, we will be focusing on stronger robot summons to strengthen Mechanic’s concept.
12. Kinesis
    Kinesis’ high mobility, armor, and wide attack ranges make its lower advancements’ performance very high. But in higher advancements, the skills themself are not very strong and are limited by Psychic Points. We would like to adjust their skills overall to have a higher performance.

These adjustments will be added to the test world on August 2. We look forward to your comments again and we hope to meet our promise of consistent character balancing.

Thank you.

The patch should be released to Tespia sometime today so I’ll be covering that in a new post but I wanted to translate this note for you guys.

Unrelated to the upcoming balancing, some new events have begun in kMS. The first is the 13th season of the Star Star event, the Wish Upon a Shooting Star event which started on August 27 and will run until September 9. You can redeem prizes until September 16.

For those of you who don’t know, the Star Star festival is a common event in KMS where you can log on in-game and stay logged in to collect Star Star Stamps. Then you can trade them in on the website for in-game and real life prizes! This year, you can get one Star Star Stamp per day for logging in and then collect 4 more by staying logged in for 15 minutes each. You can also catch up for days you missed.

You can see all of the prizes on this page. I won’t be covering the real-life ones but you can see there are notebooks, tablets, headphones, even a cute Pink Bean USB! The prizes marked in red are a lottery but all of the other ones are first come first serve.

• Shooting Star Box (5 stamps) [infinite]
• Meso Lucky Bag (10 stamps) [50,000]
• 5 30 Minute 1.5x Experience Coupons (15 stamps) [50,000]
• 2,000 Mileage (20 stamps) [3,000]
• Miracle Circulator (20 stamps) [3,000]
• 50% Epic Potential Scroll (25 stamps) [50,000]
• Random Boss Accessory Box (25 stamps) [5,000]
• 3,000 Mileage (30 stamps) [3,000]
• Shooting Star Hair Coupon (30 stamps) [1,000]
• Life Reversal! Hongbu Chair (35 stamps) [2,000]
• Baby Urus Riding Coupon (permanent) (35 stamps) [1,000]
• 100% Clean Slate Scroll (Mysterious Meso Bag for Reboot World) (40 stamps) [2,000]
• 50% Innocent Scroll (Mysterious Meso Bag for Reboot World) (45 stamps) [50,000]
• Choice Chair Box (45 stamps) [2,000]
• 6 Red Cubes (45 stamps) [500]
• Permanent Pegasus Riding Coupon (50 stamps) [2,000]
• Unicorn Ethel Package (Unicorn pet with 90 days of magic, can be revived, and its equipment) (50 stamps) [2,000]
• Unicorn Tiel Package (Unicorn pet with 90 days of magic, can be revived, and its equipment) (50 stamps) [2,000]
• Unicorn Genie Package (Unicorn pet with 90 days of magic, can be revived, and its equipment) (50 stamps) [2,000]
• 6 Black Cubes (55 stamps) [200]
• 100% Premium Accessory for Attack or Magic Attack Scroll (unavailable for Reboot World) (55 stamps) [100]
• Heat Wave Damage Skin (60 stamps) [50,000]
• Permanent Damage Skin Storage Scroll (60 stamps) [100]
• 200,000 Maple Points Coupon (60 stamps) [5]
• Magnificent Soul Box (65 stamps) [100]
• 500,000 Maple Points Coupon (65 stamps) [2]
• <Wished Upon a Shooting Star Here> Title (70 stamps) [20]
• Epic Absolabs Weapon Box (your choice) (70 stamps) [10]
• 1,000,000 Maple Points Coupon (70 stamps) [1]
• 100% Unique Potential Scroll (70 stamps) [10]

The Shooting Star Box can give the following items:

• Shooting Star Badge (13 all stats, 10 attack and magic attack, tradeable with the Platinum Scissors of Karma)
• Wish Upon a Shooting Star title (8 all stats, 1 attack and magic attack, 5% defense ignore, untradeable)
• All Cures
• Power Elixirs
• Personality trait items

The Random Boss Accessory Box gives 3 out of 7 possible boss accessories.

The Shooting Star Hair Coupon gives you the choice of one of five different hairs depending on your gender.

The Choice Chair Box lets you choose one of five different chairs, including the Mesodizer Red, Maple World Chair, Mermaids’ Reef, Giant Ducky Chair, or the Andromeda Chair.

The Magnificent Soul Box gives you one of the above boss’ Magnificent Souls.

The Wished Upon a Shooting Star Here title gives 13 all stats, 5 attack and magic attack, 5% boss damage and 5% defense ignore. It is untradeable.

Finally, the Absolabs Box gives you one of the level 160 Absolabs equipment.

The Star Star Attendance Check event started on August 27 and will run until September 9. Each day, you must collect 5 Star Star Stamps to participate.

The prizes are:

1. 10 Elixirs
2. 50% Positive Chaos Scroll (20 Strange Cubes for Reboot World)
3. 100 Scroll Traces
4. Gold Potential Stamp
5. 30 Elixirs
6. 50% Golden Hammer (70% Potential Scroll for Reboot World)
7. 200 Scroll Traces
8. Special Medal of Honor
9. 50 Elixirs
10. Meister’s Cube
11. 250 Scroll Traces
12. 300 Scroll Traces
13. Eternal Flame of Reincarnation
14. 500 Scroll Traces

There will also be 2x experience from 1pm ~ 3pm and 7pm ~ 9pm every Saturday and Sunday for the month of September. There will also be 2x experience from September 26 to 29 at the same times.

Every Sunday in September will also be a Fever Time, for 24 hours, increasing the success rate of all Scroll Trace scrolls.