MapleStory Progression of Equipments Guide

MapleStory Progression of Equipments Guide by NuclearPwrd

This is a guide that hopefully answers a lot of people’s questions before they have to ask them. Often times, people don’t know what to aim for after certain equips, or when they should improve their equipment, so here is an overview of your progression of equipment.

Standard armor (hat, top, bottom, gloves, shoes, cape)

Let’s face it, most armors suck until you get to Empress or Chaos Root Abyss, so just use what you find while training. You really shouldn’t worry about upgrading any of this until you get to about level 105, which is when you can access Monster Park Extreme (the zebra striped taxi in most towns). MPE is amazing for a number of reasons, but here we are going to cover the equipment you get from it. Monsters in MPE have a chance to drop a level 60 hat, overall, shoe, and glove, all of which come with epic potential and may have bonus potential. Work on obtaining a 4-6% stat hat, overall, shoe, and glove for your class. These equips will last you until CRA.

Time for the ultimate question, to go Empress or CRA equips? Let’s take a look at the set effects for each. We are going to take a look at the more reasonable set that less funded people will be able to obtain. The Empress

Empress – At a 5 set effect (Hat, overall, shoes, gloves, weapon), you get +15 attack, +15% hp/mp, +20 all stats, +2 all levels (Let’s face it, if you can’t afford CRA, you won’t be buying the Empress cape or shoulder)

CRA – At a 3 set effect (Hat, top, bottom), you get +10% hp/mp, +50 attack, +20 stat, AND the equips you have are about 15-20 more stat on each equip

Comparing these two sets, it is pretty obvious which one will get you more bang for your buck. Empress looks like the cheaper alternative, but it is not worth wasting you money getting equips that you can put towards the CRA equips since CRA is your end game equipment. Also, Empress uses an overall while CRA has a top + bottom, which means you get the three set effect for a 2 set effect on the empress equips.

So your next question should be, what gloves do I use? Dimension, or High Quality Dimension Gloves. These gloves have high attack, can be obtained through Dimension Invasion PQ (hooray for not spending mesos!), and can easily be spell traced for more attack. Get them and forget about gloves until you can be ranked in Dojo.

Capes are still in an awkward position in the game. They really have no use other than fashion or potential until you get to Tyrant. The Empress cape may be tempting, but the low amount of attack on it coupled with being untradeable after equipping makes it a very low priority (I’d rather have a Blackfist Cloak than an Empress cape). Luckily, a tyrant cape will be fairly inexpensive compared to other end game things as long as you aren’t trying to buy a 5-15 star tyrant and will probably be less expensive than your fafnir weapon if you are a popular class. Final Judgement: Skip buying capes until Tyrant.

Shoes are another awkward equipment slot in the game. Empress shoes have attack, which is nice, but it is really low, so it may not even be better than a 4% shoe from MPE unless you chaos it. My advice to you is to just use the best thing you find while training/hunting and once again save for a tyrant (tyrant shoe will be one of your last end game equips you get) unless you want to have fun chaosing an empress shoe.

Face and Eye Accessories

To start off, I would just use any face and eye accessory you get from events since there isn’t really anything majorly better than these equips until you have potential on them. Your goal should be getting a Sweetwater Tattoo and Sweetwater Glasses. In maple, equips that are require level 151 or higher are on a higher tier of potential than others, which have 1% higher % stat than standard 71-150 gear. Ideally, you want to buy these equips with about 7% stat to your class as a starting point, but if you are really low on money, you can do daily commerci runs and purchase these equips on your own (they come with epic potential.

Shoulder

This is personally an equipment slot that I really don’t like. There aren’t many options for shoulders unless you are an accessory crafter and decide to make yourself a shoulder. The Absolute Ring Shoulder is a great starting place if you have other characters that you play since it is tradeable and has more attack than pretty much all other shoulders until Empress shoulder. Your choices in end game shoulders are Empress or Meister, both of which really won’t effect your range much without potential. Either one will work, so just pick whichever is cheaper for you.

Badge

You really shouldn’t worry about a badge until you are ready to cube, but as something to do, you can always get your end game badge, the Ghost Ship Exorcist badge. It has a required level of 150, but is one of, if not the only badge that can have potential added to it currently. To get it, follow the quest line here (http://www.hidden-street.net/gms/equipment/accessory/badge/ghost-ship-exorcist). CAUTION: Do not use a potential scroll that can destroy it. You can only get one and if you screw it up, then you have one less item with potential late game. If you have caused your badge to explode, I have been informed sending a ticket may get you another one, but I would only use this as a last resort. Note: Angelic Buster and Kaiser have their own emblems. They can be bought from the store in Pantheon and are tradeable!

Emblem

Similar to the badge, this slot really doesn’t do much until you can start cubing. The emblem for most everyone is going to be the Boss Arena emblem. Just queue for boss arena until you have the number of plays to get the emblem. Just like the badge, don’t use a potential scroll that can destroy it since you can only get one.

Rings

This part is probably one of the most involved parts of this section. There are a ton of options, all of which will suffice until you are looking to use cube for potential. To start off, evolution rings are great (evo ring 1 and 2 level 17, and evo ring 3 level 10) since they can be traded and have high base attack. Another option is the Absolute Ring for similar reasons. As you progress, I would ignore stat% tempest rings and simply go straight to gollux. When you hit about 150, you should do your Gollux pre-quests and start farming coins. Skip the cracked gollux ring and go for the solid, reinforced, and superior gollux rings. The solid rings can be scrolled with gollux scrolls bought with gollux pennies, meanwhile reinforced and superior require the 30 coin scrolls. This is something you can work on with mules (if you have mules that can kill gollux) to get your main these equips faster since they are tradeable until equipped.

If you don’t already have it, it may be too late, but you can still attempt to get the ring from leveling a shade to 150 before the event ends. The ring comes with unique potential and can be traded across your account without limitation. Great for people who have lots of characters they use often. Note: This can be an end game item, but since it is on the 31-70 potential tier, it should be more of the poor mans end game ring.

Probably the best ring out there at the moment is the Lightning God Ring. If you look at it, it may seem on par with the gollux rings, but the extra effect it has is a +16 attack/m.attack buff which stacks with everything. This piece of equipment is very expensive and should be saved for last (even after multi-starred tyrant equips).

Another option you can consider is crafting a dark angelic blessing ring. Their recipe can be bought for cheap (4mil+ depending on your server) and give some good attack and effect if you don’t plan on cubing for a while. The nice thing about crafting this is it’s quite easy to farm the materials for it.

Belts

Progression is pretty simple here. Start with the Cubroc’s belt or an Absolute Belt or Evolving belt if you use other characters often, then get either a reinforced or superior gollux belt (superior is obviously better, but the most important thing is having the full reinforced or superior gollux set for the 30% bossing). When you have enough money to buy a 5-15 star tyrant belt, upgrade your gollux to tyrant.

Pendant

A little more involved than belts, but still fairly straight forward. You don’t really have shareable pendants, so just use whatever pendants you have until you can get your reinforced or superior gollux pendant (match it to your belt, earrings, and ring). I wouldn’t really worry about getting a chaos horntail pendant unless you are a demon avenger. If you have an active guild, try getting them to do CWK PQ to get you’re a mark of naricain until you can get your gollux equips. Ideally, you want the gollux pednant which matches your gollux set, and a dominator pendant in the other pendant slot you buy with nx (for the super funded).

Earrings

Same as belts and pendants, you want earrings which match your gollux set. Until then, you will often find people selling 6% stat half earrings for fairly cheap, so feel free to pick up a pair for your class.

Android

Androids are being given out fairly often as hot times or events, so try to get one while you can. Android hearts can be scrolled with any scroll, so use weapon for attack scrolls on a permanent heart that your android can use. For end game, you want a superior lidium heart, since it is a higher potential tier than any other heart and is permanent, but the recipe is a very low drop chance from killing boss in Dimension Invasion PQ. Ochiroids are also really nice for Night Lords since you can double click the android and open a shop which can be used to recharge stars.

Sub Weapons vs Shields vs Kataras

Ignore sub weapons until you get to level 100. At level 100 you will probably find yourself doing evolution lab for a while, which is where you can get evo coins. Use 400 of these coins to get yourself a tradeable sub weapon for your class and use it until you can start cubing. If you don’t want to farm the coins and have some mesos, you can probably go into the evo lab area and advertise which sub weapon you are looking for and try to find someone to sell you one from the store.

If you are a class that has the option of using shields or two handed equips (heroes, paladins, mages), you get to make a choice. In the end, the shield is going to be the better choice (one handed weapons have faster attacks, can be scrolled for attack, has same kind of potential), it is just going to be far more expensive than if you go with a sub weapon.

For Dual Bladers, you pretty much just use whatever kataras you can get your hands on, just keep in mind that your end game katara is a sweetwater katara. The reason this is the case is because it is the only katara (that I know of) which has % bossing built into it. Fafnir Rapid Edge does not have this and isn’t worth the additional money over an empress katara.

Weapons

For the most part, use whatever weapon is better than your current weapon if you find it while training. Don’t worry about scrolling or spell tracing until you get up to an empress weapon. MPE drops level 110 weapons, so that is a good place to start when you hit 105. Cores can be added to evo lab to make it drop level 120 weapons. When you hit 140, I suggest you pick up an empress weapon and spell trace it with +5 attacks if you are a more popular class since the fafnir weapon will be expensive. At 150, buy a fafnir weapon and slowly scroll it to perfection. I wouldn’t worry about sweetwater weapons for a couple of reasons: they cannot be PSOKed once equiped and they do not fit in with CRA set (no additional 30% bossing from completing CRA set and sweetwater set conflicts with too many other items + expensive). If you are leveling fast and have enough money to buy your fafnir weapon, just skip the empress weapon. The 10’s of millions will not be worth the marginally faster training speed (if increased at all).