Orange Mushroom's Blog

The 2024 MapleStory winter showcase, NEXT, took place yesterday at KINTEX in Ilsan, Korea, where they announced the next three months of content. And of course, right after it ended, KMST was opened with some of that.

I’m going to cover just the showcase in this post, with the main bullet points and some of the details that Changseop mentioned. Currently working on the KMST patch notes, will probably take a longer than normal amount of time considering the number of skills added all at once. The next KMST patch will be in less than a week, and then it all gets released in the official servers the week after so it’s going to be post after post after post!

Also, although I wasn’t lucky enough to be able to go to the Maple Con/NEXT showcase, Steve was and he sent me a million pictures he took there. Would people be interested in a post about the IRL events/minigames/prizes/etc. they had there? It would probably not be for a couple of weeks at least though considering all the other stuff coming out soon.

The showcase started off with a performance of the update’s theme song, NEXT ONE, by the singer Ha Hyunwoo. He’s worked on various MapleStory songs before this, including DARKNESS for the Black Mage update, NEO for the Neo update, IGNITION with his entire band Guckenstan for the Ignition update, and Crack for the New Age update.

The MC introduced the man of the hour, Director Kim Changseop who said a few words before they started. He talked about how it’s been a while since he’s been able to see the players in person (the Dreamer update showcase last winter) and he asked for lots of feedback to the content that they show off today.

The Milestone showcase was to show how they intended to change their monthly patch schedule going forward, and had to explain everything with a lot of detail. This made the online showcase quite long, about 3 and a half hours.

This showcase on the other hand will not explain everything in complete detail, but instead, to help make it clear to players that this is the ‘next’ MapleStory. It will be as compact as possible, and only cover game content. But even though it’s shorter, it won’t be lacking in revealing content.

The first thing revealed was the completion of Mastery Cores, 3rd + 4th Mastery Cores. He said that when they first designed the 6th job advancement, Mastery Cores were the most important feature, but it was a lot to handle so they weren’t able to add them all at once. It was something that they regretted deeply as they couldn’t provide the intended experience and instead made it a work in progress.

They wanted to start the ‘next’ part of MapleStory combat experience by completing Mastery Cores. In addition to improving the numbers and visuals like before, they tried to enhance skills in various ways since it will be their last chance to update Mastey Cores. Some of them create better synergy with other skills, and some skill functions have been expanded or changed.

Since even one Mastery Core provides a significant amount of growth, adding two together will allow players to get stronger much faster, which will help them challenge content that he will mention later on.

• Hero
  • 3rd: Aura Blade VI, Furious Edge
  • 4th: Valhalla VI, Incising VI, Final Attack VI
• Paladin
  • 3rd: Sanctuary VI
  • 4th: Final Attack VI, Rising Justice
• Dark Knight
  • 3rd: Beholder’s Revenge VI, Final Attack VI
  • 4th: Beholder Shock VI
• Bishop
  • 3rd: Angelic Touch VI, Fountain for Angels VI, Bahamut VI
  • 4th: Genesis VI, Heaven’s Door VI
• Archmage (I/L)
  • 3rd: Lightning Sphere VI, Cryo Shock
  • 4th: Thunder Sphere VI, Elquines VI
• Archmage (F/P)
  • 3rd: Ignite VI, Ifrit VI, Fire Aura VI
  • 4th: Poison Region VI, Meteor VI, Megiddo Flame VI
• Bowmaster
  • 3rd: Quiver Cartridge VI, Phoenix VI, Extra Quiver
  • 4th: Flash Mirage VI, Wind of Frey VI
• Marksman
  • 3rd: Freezer VI, Bolt Swift VI
  • 4th: Final Attack VI, Long Range Trueshot VI
• Pathfinder
  • 3rd: Edge of Resonance VI, Cardinal Transition VI, Ancient Astra VI
  • 4th: Combo Assault VI, Raven VI, Relic Materialize
• Night Lord
  • 3rd: Showdown Challenge VI, Dark Flare VI, Darkness Shuriken
  • 4th: Four Seasons VI, Sudden Raid VI
• Shadower
  • 3rd: Dark Flare VI, Cruel Stab VI
  • 4th: Sudden Raid VI, Veil of Shadows VI, Covert Shadow
• Dual Blade
  • 3rd: Hidden Blade VI, All Will Die
  • 4th: Blade Fury VI, Sudden Raid VI
• Viper
  • 3rd: Serpent Stone VI
  • 4th: Hook Bomber VI
• Captain
  • 3rd: Head Shot VI, Fusillade VI, Sign of Bombard VI
  • 4th: Summon Crew VI, Siege Bomber VI, Strange Bomb VI, Battleship Nautilus VI
• Cannon Shooter
  • 3rd: Rolling Cannon Rainbow VI
  • 4th: Monkey Furious VI, Support Monkey Twins VI
• Mikhail
  • 3rd: Deadly Charge VI, Install Shield VI
  • 4th: Offensive Defense VI, Final Attack VI, Soul Majesty VI
• Soul Master
  • 3rd: Cosmic Burst VI
  • 4th: Solunar Slash VI, Solunar Power II
• Flame Wizard
  • 3rd: Orbital Explosion VI, Phoenix Drive VI
  • 4th: Inferno Rise VI
• Wind Breaker
  • 3rd: Fairy Turn VI, Storm Bringer VI, Monsoon Vi
  • 4th: Storm Whim VI, Anemoi
• Night Walker
  • 3rd: Darkness Omen VI
  • 4th: Dominion VI, Abyssal Darkness
• Striker
  • 3rd: Typhoon VI, Advent of the Sea God VI
  • 4th: Sea Wave VI, Rigid Sea God
• Aran
  • 3rd: Hyper Boost End – Last Stand VI
  • 4th: Final Attack VI, Adrenaline Maximum VI, Frozen Ground VI
• Evan
  • 3rd: Circle of Earth VI, Dragon Dive VI, Dive of Earth VI, Drive of Thunder VI
  • 4th: Circle of Wind VI, Dragon Breath VI, Breath of Earth VI, Breath of Wind VI, Magic Debris VI, Dragon Sparking VI
• Luminous
  • 3rd: Apocalypse VI, Eternal Lightness
  • 4th: Twilight Nova VI
• Mercedes
  • 3rd: Strike Dualshot VI, Unicorn Spike VI, Gust Dive VI
  • 4th: Final Attack VI, Elemental Knights VI
• Phantom
  • 3rd: Noire Carte VI
  • 4th: Rose Carte Finale VI, L’Amour Carte
• Eunwol
  • 3rd: Bomb Punch VI, Death Mark VI, Spirit Night Strike
  • 4th: Spirit Frenzy VI
• Blaster
  • 3rd: Revolving Cannon Mastery VI, Hammer Smash VI, Shockwave Punch VI
  • 4th: Revolving Cannon VI, Hurricane Mixer VI
• Battle Mage
  • 3rd: Dark Lightning VI
  • 4th: Dark Genesis VI
• Wild Hunter
  • 3rd: Summon Jaguar VI
  • 4th: Assistant Hunting Unit VI, Drill Container VI, Final Attack VI
• Xenon
  • 3rd: Rocket System VI, Meltdown Explosion VI
  • 4th: Blade Dancing VI
• Mechanic
  • 3rd: Distortion Field VI
  • 4th: Robot Launcher: RM7 VI, Magnetic Field VI, Robot Factory: RM1 VI
• Demon Slayer
  • 3rd: Devil Cry VI, Metamorphosis VI
  • 4th: Cerberus VI, Demonic Descent
• Demon Avenger
  • 3rd: Exceed: Moonlight Slash VI, Overmaximizing Exceed
  • 4th: Thousand Swords VI, Enhanced Exceed VI
• Kaiser
  • 3rd: Infernal Breath VI
  • 4th: Wingbeat VI, Petrified VI
• Kain
  • 3rd: Dragon Fang VI, Shaft Break VI, [Possess] Shaft Break VI, [Execute] Phantom Blade VI, Remain Incense VI
  • 4th: Death Blessing VI, Chasing Shot VI, Sneaky Sniping VI, [Possess/Execute] Sneaky Sniping VI
• Cadena
  • 3rd: Summon Cutting Scimitar VI, Summon Scratching Claw VI, Summon Throwing Wing Dagger VI, Summon Beating Needle Bat VI, Chain Arts: Crush VI
  • 4th: Summon Shooting Shotgun VI, Summon Slashing Knife VI, Summon Releasing Bomb VI, Summon Striking Brick VI, Chain Arts: Takedown VI, Professional Agent VI
• Angelic Buster
  • 3rd: Super Nova VI
  • 4th: Primal Roar VI, Da Capo Fettuccia
• Zero
  • 3rd: Flash Assaulter VI, Spin Cutter VI, Front Slash VI, Throwing Weapon VI
  • 4th: Moon Strike VI, Pierce Thrust VI, Shadow Strike Vi, Upper Slash VI, Power Stomp VI, Shadow Rain VI, Infinite Resonance
• Kinesis
  • 3rd: Ultimate – Train VI, Ultimate – B.P.M VI
  • 4th: Telekinesis VI
• Adele
  • 3rd: Impale VI, Resonance VI, Gathering VI, Blossom VI
  • 4th: Creation VI, Territory VI, Marker VI
• Illium
  • 3rd: Rio VI, Machina VI, Crystal Skill: Deus VI
  • 4th: Longinus VI, Curse Mark Complete VI, Longinus Zone Vi
• Khali
  • 3rd: Hex: Chakram Sweep VI, Hex: Chakram Fury VI, Death Blossom VI
  • 4th: Resonate VI, Deceiving Blade VI
• Ark
  • 3rd: Vengeful Hate VI, Blissful Restraint VI, Endless Agony VI
  • 4th: Endless Nightmare VI, Endless Dream VI
• Lara
  • 3rd: Dragon Vein Absorption VI, Absorption: River Puddle Douse VI, Absorption: Fierce Wind VI, Absorption: Sunlit Grain VI
  • 4th: Wakeup Call VI
• Hoyoung
  • 3rd: Talisman: Clone VI, Talisman: Seeking Ghost Flame VI
  • 4th: Scroll: Star Vortex VI, Scroll: Butterfly Dream VI

The second reveal was the new endgame boss after Limbo, the Apostle Baldrix. He swore allegiance to Darmoor as his knight, and he used to be a human but changed into this form in a certain incident. Baldrix is an apostle among apostles, and is able to handle the power of the ancient gods.

In terms of his battle, he hinted that he wanted to diversify combat mechanics like with Suu. Each player’s understanding and communication will be big factors in the strategy.

Baldrix drops a new level 250 pendant, the Oath of Death (15 all stats, 5% HP, 5 attack/magic attack, 6 slots). It is the second piece of the Brilliant Boss Accessory set and they revealed the 2 set effect (20 all stats, 500 HP, 20 attack/magic attack, 15% boss damage).

Next up, he talked about the Genesis Weapon. This was introduced in 2018 and it has been six years since then. At that time, the missions were difficult and you had to do them all alone, but now, it seems like most people have completed them.

Since the players have defeated the Black Mage and are now working towards gaining power to fight Gerald Darmoor, they will now be adding new progression, allowing players to grow their Genesis Weapon into the Destiny Weapon. To do this, you must defeat Grandis bosses. Only the 1st growth will be available to begin with.

• Destiny Weapon 1st Growth (Defeat Chosen Seren, Watcher Kalos, and Kaling.)
  • Equipment Lv. 200 -> Lv. 250
  • Base stats increased.
  • Can set level 250 weapon potential stats.
  • Can set level 250 additional options.
  • Equip and skill effect changes.
• Destiny Weapon 2nd Growth (Defeat Limbo, Baldrix, and ?)
  • This will be revealed later on. He said it will provide growth in an interesting way.

Further growth is also being planned, but as you can see, even the 2nd mission’s bosses haven’t appeared yet so it’s too early. However, they want players to feel the same as they did when Genesis weapons first came out, providing a weapon that will grow with you for a long time.

As they talked about before, they didn’t want to shorten the Genesis Weapon liberation time because it was the endgame weapon, but now that Destiny Weapons will be added, they can go back and work on it.

Previously, Genesis Weapons took 8 months to liberate because you had to defeat Black Mage every month. However, now, instead of requiring a Black Mage clear every month, you will need Traces of Darkness. You can get them by defeating bosses starting from Normal Suu to Black Mage. The amount you get will be based on the difficulty of the boss and the number of party members, so the stronger you are, the faster you can liberate. If you are strong enough, you can liberate within 3 months now.

The next thing revealed was the Union Champion system. Those who have been playing the game will have heard the term ‘champion’, meaning the players’ strongest characters. This is a continuation of that that helps grow all of your Union characters.

You can access this system if you have a level 260+ character and have reached 8000 Union. Over time, reaching 8k Union has become much easier, so you can think of this as the next end-game challenge goal that will be difficult to complete for a long time.

You can start by registering 2 characters, and you can unlock up to 6 character slots. By completing boss solo missions on each character (Hard Suu, Hard Jin Hilla, Hard Black Mage, Hard Chosen Seren, Normal Watcher Kalos), your character’s Champion rank (up to level 6) will be increased and you will unlock more slots. Each Champion acquires stats called Champion Insignias based on their rank, and these stats will be shared between all Champions. At maximum level, the stats are:

• 30% boss damage
• 15% critical damage
• 30 attack/magic attack
• 30 all stats
• 30% defense ignore

There’s also new playable content, the Champion Raid: Dragon Island. This is real-time tag-team content where you can swap between your 6 Champion characters. It’s monthly and lets you acquire 30 minute Champion’s Blessings buffs, the stats and number of which are based on your performance.

He said that in terms of combat, controlling multiple characters wasn’t something that they had properly challenged before, so they are trying something new. He said it’s like a better version of the Immortal Gorgons event they had a long time ago.

Next, they showed a quickfire video listing out multiple changes that he said would fundamentally change the gameplay experience.

• Arcane River story remaster
• Monster Park Extreme turned into weekly content
• Epic Dungeons can be completed on up to 2 characters per week
• Arcane River Special Content number of Symbols provided increased
• Boss/area quest skip feature changed from per world to per Maple ID
• Grandis daily quests shortened based on level
• Monster Park medal acquisition difficulty alleviated
• Sol Erda usage expanded
• Medal/Title appearance and stats separated
• Quest UI overall reorganization
• World Map/minimap UI reorganization
• Movement convenience improvements (portals to move between towns, return to town feature, Teleport World Map improvements)
• Maple Auction search and purchase through Maple Hands
• Union atttacker placement mode improvements (auto placement feature)
• New System: Skill Sequence (use all of your buffs with a single button)
• Cross-World Maple Auction
• Cross-World Meso Market
• Cross-World Boss Content

The first key point of these changes is ‘integration’. He said that he thinks most MapleStory players like MMORPGs as does he, and what makes the genre different than others is that it gets more fun as the number of people you can interact with increases. They want to maximize this fun by maximizing interaction between users. Therefore, they will be introducing the cross-world Maple Auction, which they expect will bring many positive effects but mostly the fact that buying/selling items will become much more convenient and easy.

It will be still be separated into 3 groups: regular worlds, Burning worlds, and Eos/Helios worlds (these are the renamed Reboot and Reboot 2 worlds), because the economies are significantly different in these worlds. There will also be a Maple Point fee when buying items from another world.

The cross-world Meso Market will also be added, with functional improvements as well (maximum trades increased from 5b to 100b, being able to check prices during trades). It will be split into 2 groups: regular worlds + Burning worlds, and Eos/Helios worlds. Just like the Maple Auction, the Meso Market will grow in size and so the prices will become more stable, things like the Azmoth Canyon incident will have a much lower effect, and game play that generates mesos will become more valuable to players.

The cross-world boss content will be added in the Baldrix update. The details may change but for now, it will only support bosses at Easy Kalos and higher.

The second key point was the new Skill Sequence system. The amount of time required to prepare bursts has become very long and the combat experience wasn’t planned thinking that there would be this many skills that needed to be stacked, so they decided to change it. You can now use all of your burst buffs with a single button with minimal delay. He mentioned it will actually be faster than what was shown in the clip in the showcase.

The third key point was improvements to Union training and to speed up growth.

• Monster Park Extreme turned into weekly content. It can be completed on up to 2 characters per week and the clear experience has been increased to 5x as much.
• You can now participate in Epic Dungeons on up to 2 characters per week.
• Expanding the usage of Sol Erda. (He mentioned that it feels bad to train when you’re at max Sol Erda so they wanted to improve that.)
  • You can extract Sol Erda Energy to move to your other characters.
  • You can consume Sol Erda Energy to make a Hexa Booster, that works like VIP Boosters.
• Monster Park medal acqusition difficulty alleviated.
• Grandis daily quests shortened based on level.
• Arcane River Special Content number of Symbols provided increased.
• Boss/area quest skip feature changed from per world to per Maple ID.

He then talked about the remaining improvements one by one.

• Quest UI overall reorganization.
• World Map/Minimap UI reorganization.
  • The main point is the new Teleport World Map feature. All Teleport Rocks/related items have been removed, and you can use this feature once every 5 minutes. You can also get a ‘subscription’ from things like MVP that let you use it every 10 seconds.
• Medal/Title appearance and stats separated.
• Arcane River story remastered. He mentioned that players might wonder why they’re touching on a story that’s already done, but it is one of the most important parts of MapleStory’s story so they wanted to improve it. It slightly conflicts with the story skip being made into Maple ID shared, but it will also be updated in the Dimensional Library so players can still check it out.
• Union Attacker placement mode improvements. They gave up on being stubborn on the point of it being ‘fun to place the characters on the board’ and just added the optimizer in-game. He mentioned he used third party sites too haha.
• Maple Auction searching and buying through Maple Hands. (This is a KMS only mobile app that lets you see all of your characters, their equipment and inventories, etc.)
• Movement convenience improvements.
  • Portal to move between towns.
  • Return to town feature added.
  • Teleport World Map improvements.

The winter event is called the Dawn Star Banquet. They will continuing to link events to the main story, and this one is a banquet held for Darmoor’s Apostles.

There will be Winter Tutorial Missions, a simple event for new and returning players that guides them through the various in-game systems.

They will be releasing boss monster concept outfits, featuring Magnus, Arkarium, Dark Cygnus, Demian, Will, Jin Hilla, Dunkel, Black Mage, Chosen Seren, Kaling, Extreme Bigfoot, and Limbo.

This winter’s attendance check event requires you to just login and click the button like usual. However, for many players, some of these rewards were simply useless and they had to accept them with no other choice. This time, they will allow players to choose event coins instead of the predetermined rewards. It might be less efficient but you won’t need to claim useless items if you don’t need them.

The weekly attendance check requires you to defeat 2000 monsters 3 times per week (can be done in a single day like the Milestone events). The reward for doing this 24 times is related to the next event…

Hyper Burning MAX! Instead of 1+2 level ups, this event gives 1+4 level ups. Every time you level, you will be able to go to a new area in Arcane River. In addition, the reward from the weekly attendance check is a Hyper Burning MAX Booster, allowing you to make a second Hyper Burning MAX character!

This winter will also have Challengers World, replacing Burning world. It’s just a better Burning World, giving 3 Tera Burning characters instead of 3 Mega Burning characters, as well as several world-exclusive missions.

As you level up and defeat bosses in Challengers World, you can complete the various missions to increase your tier and get more rewards. Most people will be able to get up 30k points but if you get 40k points, you can receive the highest rewards of 2 Karma Legendary Potential Scrolls (Level 200) and up to 20 Ultimate Union Growth Potions (instantly levels up a character to level 200), which lets you instantly get 4000 Union.

Item Burning has also been changed so that you can use it on existing characters, and higher challenge goals have been added.

Roadmaps

Event Roadmap:

• December: Challengers World, Item Burning, Hyper Burning MAX + Tera Blink, Dawn Star Banquet
• February: Hyper Burning MAX Booster, Champion Burning/Champion Challenge, New Spring Event
• April: 22nd Anniversary Event

Content Roadmap:

• December 7:
  • 1st Test World
• December 12:
  • 2nd Test World
• December 19:
  • Mastery Cores
  • Cross World Maple Auction and Meso Market
  • Genesis Weapon Liberation quest improvements
  • Skill Sequence
  • NEXT Improvements (Union character growth improvements, UI and convenience improvements)
• January 16:
  • Union Champion (Champion Missions and Champion Raid)
• February 20:
  • New Boss Baldrix
• March 20:
  • Destiny Weapon

Showcase Gifts

Players can claim the following gifts after the showcase. Regarding the Maximum Growth Potions, there were over 250k viewers on the test stream so they will be giving out 25 potions. However, you will have to use them before the December 19 patch because otherwise, it would make the Hyper Burning MAX event end right away with the 1+4 level ups. He asked for players to understand his point of view and apologized.

• Selective Mannequin/Slot Expansion Voucher
• Cotton Candy Pink Bean (30 Days) Box
• Selective Maximum Slot Expansion Voucher x4
• Character Slot Expansion Coupon x3
• Maximum Growth Potion x25
• NEXT Cash Effect
• VIP Sauna Entry Ticket x4
• NEXT Action Damage Skin (Unit)
• NEXT Medal Voucher