The Maple Now stream for the September patch was pretty long since there’s so much in this patch, including the skill balancing for all jobs which was previously announced. I definitely won’t be posting the KMST patch notes since this will be coming to the live servers next week, but I expect it will take longer to finish since there’s so much in a single update.

Introduction

• This is probably one of the biggest September patches in MapleStory history, with a lot of changes that weren’t revealed ahead of time.
• The Maple Now was split into five parts:
  1. Skill Reorganization
     This was already announced in August. There are a lot of changes for each job.
  2. Economy/Growth Systems Reorganization
     They will be restructuring economy and growth systems. Some players already expected changes like boss rewards, but they are also adding more meso sinks.
  3. New Content/Events
     Normally, this would be the main part of a September update, but since there’s so many other changes, it’s pushed down to #3.
  4. MVP/Mileage Reorganization
     The MVP and Mileage systems have been significantly changed.
  5. IP Collaborations
     There will be a Catch! Teenieping collaboration, as well as a couple of more to announce.

Skill Reorganization

• Recently, they have been rapidly adding skills, and in addition to that, there have been many changes related directly to combat such as the Destiny Liberation process. Combat-related aspects naturally need to conform to certain standards more and more, so there are a growing amount of incoveniences that need to be fixed. In terms of numerical values, some skills had a certain intention behind them when they were first added, so they were reasonable then, but looking at them from today’s perspective, they needed to be adjusted. Now they have the proper data to be able to make more accurate changes.
• They wanted to make all of these changes all at once, so they tried to put everything in the September update to the best of their abilities.
• There are five main points:
  1. Mitigating Deviations in Mobility
  2. Synergy Skills Reorganization
  3. Install-Type Skills Reorganization
  4. Skill Damage Redistribution
  5. Job Structure Reorganization

1. Mitigating Deviations in Mobility

• Generally, they are improving the usability of double jump and rush skills.
• In MapleStory, there are Teleport classes and double jump classes. The biggest difference between them is whether or not you can use movement skills while using skills. Teleport classes can do so in the middle of using attacks, so they can dodge or follow enemy attacks more responsively. Double jump classes would have to wait for an attack to end, jump, then attack again, so they had comparatively lower responsiveness.
• You can now use double jump and rush skills while using other skills.
• Previously, all rush skills used to deal a little bit of damage, but now, that has been removed. They are now purely for movement.
• Previously, certain jobs’ rush skills had different distances, but now, all rush skills and all teleport skills have been unified to move the same distance (some have been lengthened, some have been shortened, so it might take a bit to get used to).
• Previously, some classes could up jump after double jumping or vice versa while others could not, but now, all double jumps have been unified to allow you to up jump after double jumping or double jump after up jumping.

2. Synergy Skills Reorganization

• All synergy skills related to damage that affected other players have been completely removed and replaced with personal buffs.
• When considering a job’s performance, if they were able to increase their party members’ damage, naturally that would become a factor when balancing them. Although it feels nice to be able to buff up your party in boss fights, it became a problem when considering things like the Destiny Liberation missions, boss rewards incentivizing soloing, etc. where solo play is also important and valuable. He said that one of the biggest advantages of MapleStory is that you can play alone, so this original idea that your own damage would be lower to make up for the ability to buff your party members doesn’t really fit anymore.
• Synergy skills related to survival and invincibility will remain. They considered to remove those as well, but if they ended up touching them, it would result in an unintended increase in difficulty in party play if you relied on them previously, so they will be keeping them.
• Bishop is one of the key synergy jobs, so skills like Pray have basically been completely remade.
• Skills that debuffed monsters for the party have also been removed and turned into personal buffs.

3. Install-Type Skills Reorganization

• For install skills that have 100% uptime and deal damage, as well as Spider in Mirror/Crest of the Solar, they will be changed so that they don’t have to be used in boss battles anymore. Their damage share will be redistributed to other skills.
• The intention of this change is so that players don’t have to worry about having to continuously re-summon them as the boss moves back and forth. Also, the number of skill keys keep increasing, so they want to alleviate this burden a bit. In addition, balancing classes based on having 100% uptime on a summon is not realistic in boss battles, so they want to reduce that deviation between dummy DPS and actual DPS.
• Spider in Mirror/Crest of the Solar are just old and not very good conceptually. They were originally meant to be hunting skills, so they’re using this opportunity to just get rid of the need to use them in boss battles. They will give some passive stats instead.

4. Skill Damage Redistribution

• Skills have been added one-by-one over many updates, and they were designed to fit a certain need at those individual times. Now, they can take a look at them all at once and adjust them together.
• The biggest one is Sol Hecate, which has great utility with the revive and additional bind, but also does a lot of damage. Looking at it now compared to other skills, it has very high utility. In addition, it’s become more common to try to use the bind to instantly stop a boss pattern you don’t want to deal with, but that results in a loss of damage if its not aligned with your burst. Now, Sol Hecate: Styx’s bind deals basically no damage anymore, and that damage has been moved to other skills.
• There have been so many changes to both common skills and job skills that you can’t look at just one. You need to see everything overall to understand.

5. Job Structure Reorganization

• Some core aspects of certain jobs have been changed and updated to match the current combat experience.
• There are three main targets:
  • Pathfinder and Hoyoung were both gauge classes, but actually looking at them now after all of these skills have been added, their gauge systems didn’t really work as intended anymore.
    • For Pathfinder, the Relic Gauge has been completely removed and their mechanic of switching between emblems has been reorganized.
    • For Hoyoung, originally they had to manage both Talisman Energy and Scroll Energy, but this wasn’t a very meaningful experience so they have been unified into a single gauge.
  • Mikhail has essentially become a brand new job.
    • Their key skill Royal Guard, which let you parry and counterattack enemies’ attacks, has been reorganized. It was important for both defending and attacking, which became awkward when bosses were bound. They wanted to make their identity a bit more clear, so they are keeping the mechanic where you become invincible when you parry an attack with Royal Guard but they have removed the counterattack portion. Now, you receive a 60 second buff that synergizes with your damage dealing skills. Royal Guard’s timing has been alleviated a bit too.
  • Demon Avenger is the only job in MapleStory that relies solely on HP.
    • Their identity was to keep their HP lower to deal more damage, which will still remain, but now, they did some work so you don’t temporarily lose your bonus damage when you use your recovery skills.
    • Release Overload’s final damage boost is now passive, it doesn’t reset your Exceed stacks, and is a more usable recovery skill.
    • Demon Avenger’s Conversion Star Force skill and HP from items have been adjusted overall to be more efficient, to try to reduce the gap between other jobs.

• All level 260 or higher characters that have completed the 6th job advancement can claim a HEXA Matrix Reset Scroll. It will reset all 6th job skills except for Sol Janus.
• Mikhail characters will receive a Change Circulator that changes their Ability to more relevant stats, after the big changes.
• For Angelic Buster characters, only a single mode’s NX equips’ stats will be applied.
• This is a significant update, so of course, there are probably many unintended issues, which they will work their hardest on to fix as fast as possible.
• They have been using the data provided by players through the Training Grounds to match with their own internal data, and have even been able to catch some mistakes they made.

Economy/Growth Systems Reorganization

• Usually, when talking about economy related adjustments, they touch meso generation, but this time, they are also making significant changes to meso consumption. Growth systems will also be reorganized accordingly.

Meso Generation Adjustments

• Meso Generation Trend Per Source
  • The graph shows the different sources of mesos in the game.
    • Red = boss rewards, pink = grinding, dark blue = Selazar Coins (Epic Dungeon bonus), light blue = coin exchange (old Epic Dungeon bonus), grey = etc.
    • In January 2026, Sol Hecate was added.
    • In May 2026, the job common core was added.
    • In July 2026, the Overdrive update’s 1st patch was added (20 minute boss change).
    • In August 2026, the Overdrive update’s 2nd patch was added (3rd skill core).
  • The rate of increase of mesos generated from boss rewards has significantly increased compared to all other sources. Part of this increase is also from the increase in number of players, but various changes such as the time limit decrease and changing boss patterns also play a big part in how steep its becoming. They previously lowered boss crystal prices by 5-10% previously, but they already knew that wouldn’t be enough.

• Weekly Boss Meso Generation Trend
  • The graph shows the amount of mesos generated from clearing different groupings of bosses over the past couple of years.
    • Dark blue = below Hard Suu, Red = Hard Suu ~ Hard Jin Hilla, green = Normal Seren~Hard Seren, purple = Easy Kaling ~ Extreme Suu, yellow = Normal Malefic Star ~ Normal Limbo, light blue = Extreme Seren ~ Hard Limbo, pink = Hard Bellona and higher.
  • You can see that the bottom section has actually decreased a lot. Compared to that, the other sections have been increasing steeply, particularly the green and purple sections, which now make up about 50% of total meso generation.

• Boss Solo Clear Difficulty Section Distribution
  • The graph shows the ratio of boss solos comparing the Crown 3rd patch from February 2026 to the Overdrive 3rd patch from August 20.
    • Dark blue = below Hard Suu, Red = Hard Suu ~ Hard Jin Hilla, green = Normal Seren~Hard Seren, purple = Easy Kaling ~ Extreme Suu, yellow = Normal Malefic Star ~ Normal Limbo, light blue = Extreme Seren and higher.
  • The level of bosses that characters can solo is increasing, mostly up to the Grandis bosses.

• All bosses below Hard Suu’s crystal prices have been decreased by 50%. Honestly, these bosses are not difficult and are essentially for macroers.
• Arcane Symbol’s enhancement costs have been decreased by 30% so they are not as big of a burden in the early stages of growth.
• Most of the remaining sections are about 5~15% reduction, but you’ll notice there are a couple that are 30/35% reductions. These are for Seren and Black Mage, which became significantly easier after the 20 minute boss change due to their mechanics, so their crystal prices were just too high. The bottom 10% of solos for Seren required ~32% less Combat Power than last year, and ~40% less Combat Power for Black Mage.
• Bosses at Hard Limbo or higher have not had their crystal prices adjusted.
• Memento Cube drops have also been adjusted. The average level of bosses that players are clearing as increased, so they have moved the section of bosses that reward them up as well.

• The weekly 12 crystal sell limit has been removed. There is already a limit on the number of bosses you can enter per week, so this was not necessary anymore.
• When your character level is 11 levels or more higher than the monster level, the meso acquisition reduction has been increased. This is to target macroers.

Meso Sinks Added, Growth Systems Reorganization

• There are three main systems that have been updated to both modernize them and act as meso sinks.
  • Souls
  • Scrolls
  • Ability
• For Souls and Abilities, most players have already stopped upgrading them as they’re done. They wanted to add additional ways for players to grow by spending their money.
• For Scrolls, they’re an extremely old system, scroll acquisition is scattered in so many places, and sometimes you don’t even know which scrolls can be used on what. It’s stuff you can only find out by searching on the internet. Now, they will all be unified to mesos. It will make it more convenient, less complex, and act as a meso sink.

Soul Reorganization

• Every soul past Magnificent Bloody Queen is essentially the same, and the only difference is cosmetic. They want to let you upgrade your Souls more while using mesos and a new type of boss reward.
• When you put your weapon in the UI, you’ll see a bunch of new things.
  • There is a new type of resource called Soul Aether, which can be used to upgrade your Magnificent Soul. They vary from Stage 1-4 and each stage drops from different bosses (Adversary/Kaling, Bellona/Malefic Star, Limbo/Baldrix, Jupiter).
  • You can use Soul Aether and mesos to enhance your Magnificent Soul, which is called Soul Amplification. You can enhance it from stage 1 to 4.
  • Soul Amplification has a gradual pity system. Every time you fail to increase the stage, the success rate will go up a bit. If you fail a certain number of times, it will be guaranteed.
  • Souls will also now have potential, which can go up to Legendary rank. These are reset only using mesos.
  • While they are separate systems, the Soul Amplification stage will increase the numerical values of the potential.
  • You can work on both sides whenever you want. For example, if the Soul Aether is too expensive to work on the Soul Amplification stage at the moment, you can switch to working on upgrading your Soul potential. Players who are already at the end-game will have two new avenues to challenge.

• The existing Soul system will also be updated.
  • You can now change your Soul’s appearance, to any Magnificent Soul you have registered in your collection.
  • Seasonal boss souls (Kai, Maerin, BTS Jin’s Dragon Roar) will also be able to be registered.
  • The Soul Gauge and Soul Skills have been removed. The attack boost from filling up the gauge will become passive stats.

Scroll Reorganization

• Rather than adding new things, this is more focused on lowering complexity and increasing accessibility of the existing systems.
• You can now use most of the core scrolls through the enhancement UI with mesos.
• They also added some things like Earring Attack Scrolls to match the Magic Attack ones.
• Some of the other sources of these scrolls have been removed so you don’t need to think about having to go anywhere else. For example, Return Scrolls are no longer in the Cash Shop, you can just use them directly from the UI with mesos. Premium and Magical Scrolls won’t drop from bosses anymore. However, event rewards will remain like before.

• The scroll UI also has a 3rd tab called the Exclusive Scrolls tab. You can click it to see all of the scrolls that can be used on the equipment item, even those you don’t currently have.

Ability Advanced Reset

• Like Souls, Abilities were pretty much a completed system since a long time ago. Therefore, they are creating further growth with them.
• When resetting Ability, you can now use the second tab for Advanced Resets, which allows you to get more than one legendary rank line. These resets cost more honor and mesos, and let you choose before or after by default.
• Actually, a long time ago, you could get multiple legendary lines through the Aswan content where Ability originated, so it was legacy. Now everyone can get it.
• You’ll need more honor for this system, so the honor limit has been increased from 10m to 1b.

• A new Abyss Circulator has been added. This one is like Black Circulators, which only reroll the values of your lines, but it works if you have multiple legendary rank Ability lines. The existing Black Circulators will only work if you have 1 legendary rank Ability line.

New Content/Events

New Content

• The level 290 Epic Dungeon: Aurum Regis has been added.
• It gives about 1.5x the experience of Nightmare Paradise. Since it is for level 290+, it is designed to accelerate leveling up at that level range. In addition, all level 295+ characters will receive more experience from all other Epic Dungeons.
• There are 5 stages like the other Epic Dungeons.
• It takes place in the Arboris royal palace, and explains some more story about Gerand Darmoor. The special gimmick includes controlling an erda bullet through the map to destroy objects.

• The level 295 Geardrak area has been added to Monster Park.
• The Monster Park entry UI will now also save the number of sweeps that you set.

Events

• The autumn event is called Visitors of the Argo. The event features the backstories of the Apostles. The ship Argo, created by the Alliance for information gathering, has been involved in an incident and its information has been scattered.
• In September, you’ll learn about Ymir, Bellona, Limbo, and Ypsilon. In October, you’ll learn about Baldrix, Havoc, Reina, and Ressa.
• The stories will be incorporated into the Dimensional Library afterwards.
• It’s a two month event with a regular attendance check and rewards.

• The new Personal Burning event will take place.
• After Challenge World, many players have reached level 280-285. This event is designed to motivate them to continue to level up and grow their characters even after Challenge World ends. It’s similar to the Change Burning: Lucid event from March, but more systematic.

• The event provides growth missions, personalized to your current level and experience %.
• For example, a level 280 character at 0%’s first goal is to reach 28.055%, then 56.110%, and so on. The final goal is to reach level 285 at 99.818%.
• Every time you complete a growth mission, you’ll receive experience and Personal Coins.

• There are also Personal Boss missions, which allow you to receive experience from defeating weekly bosses. This is something people have been asking for, and he thought that bosses giving experience in addition to their already existing meso and item rewards would be excessive, but they will give it a try in the form of an event.
• The experience from defeating bosses can also be acquired through party play, but the experience will be divided by the number of party members. To avoid bussing, you’ll need to do at least 5% of the total boss HP to receive experience.
• For example, if a level 280 character that can solo up to Easy Bellona, they’ll receive about 4.7% a week from bosses.
• A level 290 character that can solo up to Hard Baldrix would receive about 5% a week (if you’re strong enough to do that).

• Every week, you can defeat 24,000 Personal Monsters, which you can customize to your desired rewards (Sol Erda, Sol Erda Fragments, or Personal EXP). It will accumulate up to 36,000 monsters if you don’t finish all of them in the week.

• In the coin shop, you can buy Karma Cubes, Abyss Rebirth Flames, Sol Erda Fragments, ad Sol Erda.

• The new Ascendant Link event will take place.
• It includes a new higher-spec event ring. While late-game players can have enough rings without having to use a event ring, newer players will generally still be using one. The Ascendant Pulse Ring is level 130 and can be enhanced up to 20 stars.
• You can acquire resources to enhance the ring by participating in the event. You can use those resources to scroll, cube, or Star Force the ring without having to use mesos. If it booms, you can buy up to 5 spares in the Meso Shop like Plasma Hearts.
• When it’s done, it will be slightly better than an 18-star Meister Ring, so it’s not an really high-spec item, but if you’re using an event ring already, it will be a good upgrade.

• There will be a small event for Hangul Day where you can play a minigame to get cosmetics.
• A Hyper Burning Booster will be given out. September isn’t like summer or winter where there are a ton of events that make it a good time to start MapleStory, but there can still be new or returning players that want to try the game so they will give one out to go with the Personal Burning and Ascendant Link events.
• Monster Park Hands will be updated to give progress to passes or events that require you to defeat monsters within your level range.

MVP/Mileage Reorganization

• Both the MVP and Mileage systems will be reorganized with the intention of better rewarding players buying NX.

MVP Reorganization

• For MVP, there are some general benefit changes but it is mainly focused on making MVP Black better.
• The following changes have been made.
  • MVP Resort experience increased to 2.2x. The experience was set when it first cam out, but compared to now where there are many more sources of experience, they wanted to increase it.
  • The Symbol Quick Passes have been changed so that instead of being 1 per area, they are now a shared count that can be used on any area of our choice.
  • For MVP Red/Black, you can claim Daily Gifts without having to hunt monsters first.
• The following changes have been made for MVP Black.
  • The required charge amount has been decreased from 3m NX in the past 13 weeks to 2.5m NX.
  • If you charge past 2.5m NX, it will carry over to count for the next week’s accumulated charge (up to 100k NX).
  • You can use 2x speed mode for MVP Resort and VIP Sauna, that lets you use up the accumulated time twice as fast.
  • All of the quick pass counts have been increased (14 Monster Parks, 3 Epic Dungeons, 28 Symbol dailies, 12 Symbol weeklies, 6 Tenebris dailies).
  • You will receive 1 hour of Monster Park Hands usage time.
  • You will receive more MVP Resort usage time, 5x Experience Coupons, more 4x Experience Coupons/70% Additional Experience Coupons/Superpower Buffs.
  • You can claim the Kinship Ring/Experience Boost Ring/Spirit Pendant on each character instead of once per Maple ID. They will also give more experience than the MVP Red versions.
  • The MVP Black title and medal stats have been improved.
  • You will receive additional rewards from Daily Gifts.

Mileage Reorganization

• Mileage has been completely reorganized. The Mileage you received from in-game gameplay and the Mileage you received from buying NX items will be separated.
• Mileage was meant to be a sort of extra gift for buying NX, but it was also provided through in-game methods, which ended up being a bigger source of it. Even if they wanted to provide more benefits for buying NX through Mileage, it was acquired more from free in-game methods which made it hard to change. Therefore, they are taking this opportunity to make a more clear distinction between them.

• You will now acquire Exploration Coins through gameplay.
  • This includes from hunting monsters, Daily Gift, Monster Collection, PC Room rewards, clearing bosses, and MapleStory M.
  • The daily acquisition limit has been removed, and the monthly limit has been changed from 50,000 Mileage to 100,000 Exploration Coins. The Daily Gift and PC Room rewards will not be included in this limit.
  • The Mileage acquisition limit for clearing bosses has been changed from 1 time per day per world per boss to Exploration Coins limited to 6 times per week/month per Nexon ID per boss.
  • You no longer have to enter the Cash Shop to settle the Mileage (Exploration Coins now).
• You can use the coins in Cassandra’s Exploration Coin Shop. It includes almost everything that you could previously buy with Mileage from the Cash Shop (e.g. weather effects, MVP Superpower, Ursus buff, Water of Life, pets, certain cosmetic items, transparent/translucent equipment, basic NX equipment). Return Scrolls now have a monthly limit though and are Karma Return Scrolls.
• You can no longer use Mileage to discount NX purchases by 30%.

• You will now acquire Maple Credit from buying NX items.
  • You will receive Maple Credit equal to 5% of an NX purchase.
  • There is no daily/monthly limit.
  • It is shared within the Nexon ID.
• You can use Maple Credit to buy items in the Credit Shop.
• Since most of the items that were previously in the Mileage Shop are now available in he Exploration Coin Shop, the Credit Shop features higher value items like Sol Erda, Colouring Prisms, Custom Dyes, etc.
• They thought it wouldn’t be very interesting if it was just existing items, so there are two new items available here, Prime Cubes and Prime Additional Cubes.
  • They let you reset your item’s potential while locking the 1st line.
  • While it’s not a huge change, they want to try something new, and these cubes can still lower the amount of rolls required by a lot since one line will be guaranteed.
  • Since potential resetting is done through mesos, these cubes are directly affected by the value of mesos. They will only be available for 2 months at first as a test, after which they might be brought back or adjusted.

IP Collaborations

MapleStory x Catch! Teenieping

• The MapleStory x Catch! Teeniepig collaboration will take place.
• Pretty sure nobody guessed this, it’s pretty random. They know that the current generation of MapleStory players doesn’t fit with those that watch Catch! Teenieping, but the two are quite similar. They’re both Korean IPs, MapleStory which stole the hearts of people that are now 20-30+ years old, and Catch! Teenieping which is currently stealing the hearts of kids under 10 years old.
• The collaboration is quite unique because they’re trying out some 3D designs.

• There are Luna Petite pets (Princess Hachuping, Eclipseping, and Dianaping).
• There are 12 types of Illusion Rings which let you become different Teeniepings. They know a lot of people are saying they don’t fit at all, and they expected that, but still suggest you try them out in game because you might end up liking it.
• There are 5 types of Teenieping Sol Hecate skins.
• There are chat bubble/nametag rings, and a Romi outfit package.

MapleStory x Blue Archive

• The MapleStory x Blue Archive collaboration will take place in November.
• The Blue Archive collab will have not only Cash items but also month-long events like for Demon Slayer and One Punch Man.

Other IP Collaborations

• They are also working on a bigger collaboration for later.
• MapleStory Escape will open on September 21 in Hongdae. This is a set of MapleStory themed escape rooms, which will be open permanently, following the Maple Agit PC Room and Maple Island theme park.
  • In October, you can sign up for Maple Escape Day where popular streamers will be working as part-time employees at the escape room.
  • There’s also a special event where MapleStory creators will face off against expert escape room players, and you can vote on which team you think will win.

Patch Notes

• Client 1.2.206 Release (Skill Changes)
• Client 1.2.206 Release (Events, Content, Improvements, and Bug Fixes)