After 15 years of MapleStory, it’s finally happened. The fight with the Black Mage has begun! In this test server patch, the last area of Tenebris, Limen, has been added, and with it, the Black Mage himself. There’s also some other stuff like QoL updates and missions but who cares about that right?

Tenebris Expedition

The Alliance rank Legend has been unlocked. Along with the special prizes from the Empress you’ll receive below, the Legend rank Alliance skills and Legend rank Alliance Supply Shop items are now available. You can see them in my last post!

• Legend I
  • 50 Alliance Teleport World Scrolls
  • 3 Meister Cubes
• Legend II
  • 30 Core Gemstones
  • 3 3x Experience Coupons (15 minutes)
• Legend III
  • 30 Selective Arcane Symbol Vouchers
  • 3 3x Experience Coupons (15 minutes)
• Legend IV
  • Legend Medal of Honor
  • Tenebris Expedition Ring Enhancement Scroll
  • Alliance Meso Support Box III
  • Alliance Maple Points Support Box

Missions

The Defense Mission: Light of Purification has been added. It will run from ??? to ???.

• By talking to Helena, you can learn the Light of Purification skill.
• In maps with monsters around your level range, you can activate the skill by right clicking it.
• While the Light of Purification is activated, whenever you kill a monster within your level range, there is a chance for the Light of Purification to be activated. 
• When the Light is activated, a countdown will appear above your head. When the countdown ends, a powerful light will surround your character and give you Desire while attacking nearby enemies. You will gain additional Desire for every monster killed by the skill.
• If you have already collected your daily limit of Desire, you can no longer activate Light of Purification.
• Light of Purification cannot be activated in certain areas, including Tenebris.

The Defense Mission: Final Naval Warfare has been added. It will run from ??? to ???.

• Final Naval Warfare is a mission where you must defeat enemies within the time limit with your ships and crew members.
• You can start the mission by talking to the NPC Koon in the entry map.
• When the mission begins, you will be given a ship and crew members based on your Captain Rank. 
• By defeating incoming enemies, you will earn Naval Warfare Points and Gold Coins.
• Your Naval Warfare Points will be exchanged at a 100:1 ratio for Desire after the mission ends.
• Gold Coins can be used during the mission to hire more crew members or enhance them.
• Occasionally, you will be able to save captive sailors and have them join your crew.
• The mission will end when you collect a total of 1 million points or the time limit runs out.
• Based on your total accumulated Naval Warfare Points, your Captain rank can increase, up to 4 stages. As your Captain rank increases, your ship’s speed will increase and you will be able to have higher level crew members.
• You can collect a total of 1 million points per day.
• If you have already collected your daily limit of Desire, you will not gain any more Desire but your total Naval Warfare Points will continue to increase.

The Change in Maple World: Aura of Life has begun.

• While killing monsters around your level range, the Aura of Life will surround your character.
• When the Aura of Life is completely activated, your attack/magic attack will be increased and you will gain Desire for every monster defeated.
• The Aura of Life will end when you collect 500 Desire or when the time limit runs out.
• If you have already collected your daily limit of Desire, the Aura of Life will no longer activate.

The Change in Maple World: Crevice of Darkness has begun.

• While killing monsters around your level range, a portal to the Crevice of Darkness will appear.
• Using the portal, you can move to an unknown location and attack the roots of a giant enemy for 30 seconds.
• When you enter the unknown location, you will receive the Crevice of Darkness buff for 30 seconds, which increases your attack/magic attack and fixes the cooldown of certain skills to 5 seconds. However, for players who are already extremely strong, there will be no change in their attack/magic attack.
• Based on the damage you inflicted on the enemy’s roots, you will gain Desire.
• You can only enter 5 times per day.
• If you have already collected your daily limit of Desire, the portal will no longer appear.

Limen

NOTE: You can no longer enter Labyrinth of Suffering. The Expedition Mission: Labyrinth of Suffering can no longer be completed.

Tenebris’ 3rd area, Limen, has been added. You can access it through the portal in the Maple Alliance Outpost. It is only available for users that are level 200 or higher and have completed the 5th job advancement.

Based on the world’s progress of the Journey of Destiny, Tenebris’ story will proceed gradually. As you can see above, the area’s maps will be revealed over time, so you’ll have to work together and collect enough Desire to unlock everything. However, you cannot enter regions from previous stages.

In the Tenebris area’s maps, up to 10 characters can enter the same instance of a map. The monsters will be individually assigned, so you will only be able to see and hunt your own monsters. However, Elite Bosses will appear for all characters, but will not summon any Elite Monsters and the Bonus Stage will not apply. Elite Monsters and Elite Bosses that appear in the Tenebris area will have stats proportional to the map’s monsters’ stats, based on the average level of the characters in the map.

In the Tenebris area’s maps, you cannot create parties, but all party buff skills will be automatically shared with other characters.

In the Tenebris area’s maps, unlike regular maps, there will be no Runes, flowers/veins, or Burning Fields and no items will be dropped. However, you will be able to gain a lot of additional experience from various exclusive gimmicks.

In the Tenebris area’s maps, you will have a 1 hour time limit and after that time is up, you will no longer gain any experience from monsters. The time limit will reset every day at midnight.

Limen Missions

The Expedition Mission: Limen has been added.

• Mission Requirements: Complete the “[Black Mage] Gather at the Outpost” and the 5th job advancement.
• Mission Beginning: Accept the “[Alliance Mission] Expedition Mission – To the Black Mage” quest from Helena.
• Help the Tenebris expedition to escape dangerous situations inside Limen.
• When you begin the quest, you’ll also receive 3 random missions.
• The Limen expedition and the 3 additional missions can be completed once per day. The limit will reset every day at midnight.
• When you complete an additional mission, you’ll receive 10,000 Desire.
• If you complete all 3 additional missions, you’ll complete the Limen expedition and receive the Alliance’s Loot. This will give 6m mesos, 2 Core Gemstones, and 1 Rare Reward Box.
• The dangerous situations can vary based on the Journey of Destiny. If they change, you can talk to Helena to replace the missions with new ones.

New monsters have been added.

• Guard Captain Dunkel (Lv. 210)
• Transcendion (Lv. ???)
• Ascension (Lv. ???)
• Ancestion (Lv. ???)
• Embrion (Lv. ???)
• Seed of Life (Lv. ???)
• Activated Seed of Life (Lv. ???)

A new medal has been added.

• Destiny’s Great Adversary (Lv. 200)

New illustrations and NPC illustrations.

Black Fury

Lost Space

Subterminal Point

Tears of the World

Temple of Darkness

The World’s End

Throne of Darkness

World Horizon

New BGMs (including some that weren’t on the teaser site!).

Here are the new maps! Some of them are quite amazing to look at! The second last one (space looking one) is called the Boundary of the Beginning and the End. The last one is called Nonexistent Space.

Black Mage

Finally, you can fight the Black Mage.

• When the Journey of Destiny has completely progressed, you will be able to meet and battle the Black Mage. The Black Mage’s HP is shared between all worlds.
• You can only fight the Black Mage at specific times.
• During the times when you can fight the Black Mage, you can deal damage against him and complete the [Alliance Mission] Special Mission – Black Mage quest. Special Missions have separate daily completion limits than regular Expedition Missions.

Obviously I don’t know the specifics, but here’s the Black Mage’s animations and skills.

I think his skills above activate these animations!

Some other animations I found that are probably from him?

It seems he has another form, made of light that you will also be fighting.

A flying summon (?) called Zodiac.

There’s also these two, some of my favourite monster designs in a long time!! They’re called the Aion of Creation and the Demiurge of Destruction.

Voice of Mapler

The skill window’s size has been expanded to allow players to see more skills at the same time.

The Damage Skin Storage‘s maximum number of slots has been increased to 30. The Damage Skin window’s size has been expanded to allow players to see more Damage Skins at the same time.

After maintenance, the average stage of Burning Fields has been increased to a minimum of stage 5 up to a maximum of stage 10.

The Daily/Weekly Quest Only alert icon has been added.

• In the quest window’s Available Quests tab, you can now activate/deactivate daily quest notifications.
• Quests that have been activated will have their notifications appear in the Daily Quest Only alert icon.
• Quests that have not been activated will still appear in the alert icon but they will be grayed out.
• Haven and Corrupted World Tree daily quests can also be done through the icon.
• Kritias’ daily quests’ notification cannot be turned off.

It is now easier to distinguish between regular quests and guide quests in the quest alert icon.

• Guide quests will have their names shown in blue and have a special guide quest icon.
• Guide quests will be sorted to the top of the list in the quest alert icon.

The Continental Travel Stations have become more convenient to use. You can now use them instantly without a waiting time, and the travel time has been shortened (e.g. Victoria Island to Ossyria takes 30 seconds!).

The Pollo and Fritto’s Bounty Hunting: Dance of Courtship‘s play time has been shortened. The final success stage has been changed from 20 times to 10 times.

The immersion in cinematic moments has been improved.

• Titles, medals, name tags, pets, and Androids will no longer be shown.
• You will no longer hear sounds from quest completion, Auction House/Meso Market, achievements/Monster Collection, Maple Union, notes/Maple Chat, or Monster Life.

For certain two-handed weapons, the weapons’ positions have been changed so that they no longer cover characters’ faces while standing. However, some weapons will remain the same as before.

• Two-Handed Sword
• Two-Handed Axe
• Two-Handed Blunt Weapon
• Crossbow

New system options have been added.

• In the Chat and Invite tabs, a new option to stop adding buddies has been added.
• In the Game tab, a new option to display/not display avatar megaphones has been added.
• In the Sound tab, the skill effects and other effects’ sound options have been separated. You can now control their volume separately.

The Item Link feature for the chat window has been added. If you click the Item Link button at the bottom of the chat window then click a piece of equipment, the item will be shown in your message.

Items that cannot be purchased because the store is out of stock will now be displayed in red. When less than a certain amount of stock is left, the stock amount will now be displayed.

In the Auction House’s Market Price tab, you can now use the Quick Search.

In the Keyboard Shorcut Settings, you can now double click installed shortcut keys to remove them.

A new shortcut key has been added that allows you to mute all sounds at the same time.

A new Battle Analysis shortcut key has been added. You can start/stop the Battle Analysis using the shortcut but you cannot turn off the UI.

The beginning location in Spirit Saviour has been changed.

Items with an expiration date of 24 hours or less will now flash in the inventory, Cash Storage, and storage.

The maximum number of items per slot for certain items has been increased to 9,000.

• Magic Powder (Brown)
• Magic Powder (White)
• Magic Powder (Blue)
• Magic Powder (Green)
• Magic Powder (Yellow)
• Magic Powder (Purple)
• Magic Powder (Red)
• Magic Powder (Black)
• Strength Jewel Powder
• Luck Jewel Powder
• Intelligence Jewel Powder
• Dexterity Jewel Powder

In quests that require you to capture monsters, you can now capture them without having to lower their HP.

The Cash Shop’s Cash Storage now has a search feature.

In Premium PC Rooms, when you revive after using a Safety Charm, you will be revived with 100% HP.

When you rent an item from a Premium PC Room, they will no longer disappear if you reconnect at a Premium PC Room.

When using Avatar Megaphones, you can now input a total of 24 characters.

Game Related

Character rankings will no longer be shown in the Character Select window.

The following errors have been fixed.

• Fixed an error where Ark’s weapon would be shown while riding mounts.
• Fixed an error where Illium, Angelic Buster, Kaiser, and Demon’s wings would appear while riding mounts.
• Fixed an error where the Reward Selection window would appear when using less than 10 Gold Apple Fragments.
• The instructions for the August Premium PC Room 90 Hours Box have been refined.
• When taking out a pet on Angelic Buster, it will no longer ask you which Mode you would like to equip it on.

Skill Related

 

Final Attack skills’ ranges will now use the same attack ranges as the skills that activate them.

The following errors have been fixed.

• Fixed an error where changing maps after using Dark Sight would cause it to be cancelled.
• Fixed an error where Hero’s Combo Instinct’s scars in space would charge Combo Counters.
• Fixed an error where Bowmaster’s Quiver Full Burst’s flame arrows would attack areas with no enemies if activated against enemies that could not be attacked.
• Fixed an error where Night Lord’s Dark Lord’s Secret Scroll’s stars could hit enemies that should only be targeted by basic attacks and could not hit certain enemies.
• Fixed an error where Soul Master’s Soul Eclipse effect would disappear if they used Hidden Portals to move to a far away place.
• The usability for Arans using Final Blow with Commands after Fenrir Crash has been improved.
• Fixed an error where Evan’s Zodiac Ray’s number of hits would be doubled on certain enemies.
• Fixed an error where Phantom’s Mark of Phantom’s marks would disappear after using Soul Steal.
• Fixed an error where Luminous’ Baptism of Light and Darkness could not damage certain enemies.
• Fixed an error where Wild Hunters could sometimes not move while using Wild Grenade.
• Fixed an error where Zero’s Shadow Flash would not deal damage when re-using the skill far away from the sacred area.

Cash Shop

In the Cash Shop, the item names of the Slot Expansion coupons have been changed to look better.