maple area ironman

welcome to my maple progress diary.

I kinda thought id get bored and stop, but that hasnt happened. So now im retroactively writing older entries, currently im level 53, still in victoria island. 



day 1 - 27th may 2024

Current maple was making me kinda mad. Bosses and grinding were fun, but i was slowing down, often just playing a few hours. But then those hours would be taken up with grinding legion and donig dailys. This sucked and I didnt like it, so I decided to start playing old school maple on a private server. I'd also recently watched 'Togains' video about old school bishop, so I was a bit inspired. Of the old school servers, i have tried mapleroyals in the past, but the vote to win shit is dumb af. I'd also tried phoenix in the past, but its honestly way too hard, and they don't have 4th job. So I settled on mapleroyals which I like a lot so far, I highly recommend it.

So, I started a magician named "Tabytha", planning to become a cleric. Spent 5 minutes rolling stats to get +10 int, then began doing maple island. As an aside, let me say the stupid conveyor belt area added to the start if maple island is dumb, and never should've existed. But anyways, I started bumbling about doing the quests on maple island. Here I experienced the first ML change, which is that snail shell throw no longer requires snail shells. Made maple island a lot easier for my shitty mage, so I was happy. eventually I left at level 10 (You don't lose skill points for overleveling on ML), after having completed most of the maple island quests.

Now during this time I was actually thinking about special rules for my maple playthrough. I really like ironman mode in runescape, and also those funny snowflake account youtube series, so I wanted to do something like that for maplestory. I also dislike the real world places in maple like singapore (its so unfitting in a fantasy world...), so I decided to do area locked in the order of release in GMS. This would mean victoria island -> ossyria (orbis/el nath) -> ludibrium -> aqua road -> idk whats next. Its kinda hard to say when you've finished an area in maplestory though, since you could theoretically grind to level 200 only staying in sleepywood. Luckily, ML has monster collection book. So I decided an area would be finished when I collected every single monster. This usually means a few hours per monster, depending on how fast/lucky i am. Also a good chunk of every boss monster kill too. Also to make it clear, no trading / help from other players allowed. PQs are fine though as long as I'm not being carried.

So, I became a mage and started doing those starter quests for free potions, and collecting random monster cards. I'm aware of the general mage meta of luckless btw, and know good skill builds etc. I don't have deep knowledge though, so I did reference guides quite a bit. the first place I did was pig beach for pigs & their ribbon variant. This lasted about an hour and I ended up at level 18. Then I did mushroom garden, killing shroomes, orange shrooms, and red snails. Got to 20, and a chunk of the cards but did not finish any sets.

I should probably mention that mp pot costs were a bit tight at the start, but quickly became no big deal. Never upgrading your equipment really helps keep your mesos high.





Day 2 - may 29 2024

start lvl: 18

I finished off pigs & ribbon pig collection entries, and did some blue mushroom & bubbling & axe stumps after. Its worth noting none of my gear does anything, besides my beginner wand (which is worse than the wooden wand you can buy from a vendor! found that out later). I have the white bandana and a normal T-shirt + jeans, so I look like a girl whos about to spend her weekend getting serious about cleaning her whole house. Basically for the rest of today I would go to random spots I still needed cards from, farm there till I either finished the set or got bored, then moved on. By the end I reached level 30, but decided to log off till tomorrow.

I was discussing which job to become with a friend, and while I wanted to become a cleric, becoming an ice lightning wizard seemed like a much smarted idea since they had AOE during 2nd job. But when I explained how cleric has an EXP buff, he insisted on cleric so I obliged. 

Ultimately I think I made the right choice, but finishing victoria island would definitely take a lot longer. Also I/L's single target honestly isnt much stronger than magic claw, which is very surprising. I found a damage calculator to play with, and got a better understanding of damage, accuracy, and how stats affect them.

I should also probably explain GACHAPON. Gachapon was a pay2win mechanic in original maplestory where you gain random valuable items by paying money. on ML though, you get to use it via random drops from any monster. This makes it very fun to occasionally visit the gachapon and see what I get. Not to mention, getting lucky at gachapon is incredibly important for my gear progression. since I have no luck stat there is very few items I can wear (normal mage gear requires luck). The most important items is getting an elemental wand, since without one im stuck with the wooden wand forever. Theres also many scrolls I don't have normal access to on victoria island, but can be obtained through gachapon. Theres also a few other random useful stuff from gachapon.

Day 3 - may 30

I did the quest to become a cleric, which sounds very exciting. Turns out it isn't though. Heal at low levels is too weak to be useful, so I was still single targetting everything. At this point I was already VERY tired of magic clawing everything. Levels were also slowing down a lot.

Today I did discover something exciting though, there are a few NPCS that just sell 100% scrolls. This let me get about 12 more MATT, on my earring and wooden wand which was very cool. Theyre a bit expensive, but its fine. I also started running occasional bosses now. Whenever I'd level from now on, Id check on all the bosses I can kill to get a head start on their card collections. At this point thats just Mano and Stumpy though

I grinded from level 30-37 today, all magic claw. I ran out of decent monster cards to collect at this point, since Id collected all the level 10-20 ones, the remaining ones were either really bad monsters like snails, or too strong for me to kill. Honestly I did not expect this to happen at all, I thought I'd just always have monsters to collect. In retrospec, I really should've done KPQ. The slime shoes available there wouldve been my BEST IN SLOT for all of victoria island. Missing out on this is pretty dissapointing. Instead I have to use some shoes from a henesys shop that give 3 speed.

So now that I had to just grind for EXP with no secondary goals, I decided to check out what monsters drop useful items. turns out, stone masks & wooden masks are pretty pog since I can actually kill them, and they give int scrolls for earring & cape & staff. So i grinded on those guys for quite a while and obtained a handful of scrolls, which I'm holding onto.

And heres a list of every monster with a useful scroll drop for me!

100% int cape, bubbling
60% helmet, drake
60% earring, rocky mask & red drake
60% cape, wooden mask
10% earring, red drake
60% glove, red drake

**note: theres actually a lot more options, none of which I noticed.

the bosses also have some useful stuff, but those cant be farmed reliably like monsters can.




day 4 & 5 - may 31 & june 1 2024

This is a big day. The great AOE farming begins now. Once I hit level 39, it finally felt like jr. wraiths were viable for EXP. Before this point I'd occasionally do some zombie mushrooms in combination with horny mushrooms, but there aren't any good maps for just zombie mushrooms. But now that heal is close to max & my damage is higher, I can finally farm jr wraiths. These are great exp, with each level taking about an hour. This is also the point where I actually bought a pet, since paying attention to the mp consumption was annoying. I also started using pure water, which is the best potion I can buy, exclusive to the sleepy wood inn. The space saved in the use tab helps a lot. I also started to play on my laptop with a controller now, which is how i prefer to play maple so thats cool. Controllers so comfy.

So yea, a lot of grinding jr. wraiths dont drop anything exciting unfortunately. Closest thing is just 60% pet speed scrolls, so I used those for my black kitty.

at the end of these 2 days, I reached level 52! a lot of grinding was done. I decided to max teleport after heal, and then bless, leaving MP eater at level 1 for now.

Its also worth noting my occasional boss checks have resulted in finishing the mano, stumpy & faust card collections. Very cool.

Now there was one more exciting thing that happened in this period. I got a 10% overall int scroll from gachapon. This. Could. Be. Huge. So, i do the quest to obtain a bathrobe, and would you look at that, it actually fucking landed. Holy shit. This excited me so much. thats 5 more int permanently, and also now I can put 60% overall ints into it without it feeling like a waste. This did kinda ruin my house cleaner look though, so I decided to get some cash shop items via voter points to put over the bathrobe, returning me to my cleaner look. Sick af. I should also note I got a chaos scroll from gacha earlier, which is incredibly valuable, but is too valuable for me to spend on my funny gear so I'm just holding on to it indefinitely.


day 6 - june 2 2024

So lets harken back to the actual goal of my area locked account. Collect all the monstter cards of victoria island, in order to unlock orbis + el nath. Well its time we start thinking about that again, now that our level is higher.

The 2 main problem with collecting all the cards is our damage is shit, and we miss. level plays an important part in accuracy calculation, so now that we're higher itll be easier. Also blesses +20 accuracy will help a lot. About the damage though, there really isn't a solution to this. Cleric is just a very weak job, which still relies on magic claw for single target. Even clerics spell for single target, holy arrow, is almost the same as magic claw. Both deal the same damage, but since holy arrow is a single hit enemy defense doesn't reduce it as much. What about grinding for more levels then? surely that will increase damage right?

Kinda but not really, Napkin math says each level will let us do about 2% more damage, and with each level taking longer and longer (its closer to 1.5-2 hours per level now), this doesn't seem very impactful.

Also, even if I hit level 70, I cant become 3rd job since I'm not allowed to visit el nath, where the instructors are.

So how bad is it to muscle our way through the harder monsters? Well its looking like most monsters will be around the 4-6 hit range. With the exception of tauromacis and tuarospears being around 18 hits. Jesus christ. So thats kinda awful, but its probably what I'm just going to have to deal with. Theres just no significant power increases to aim for. I'm going to aim to finish victoria island at around level 60, and am going to resume working on monster cards instead of just grinding exp always.

So yea, thats what I did today, i finished around 6 more sets which were too strong for me previously, and reached 30 collections, allowing me to upgrade my monster ring to give +1 int. Very cool. Theres about 28 monsters remaining to collect, with most being level 40+ so I've got my work cut out for me.

Since this isnt written retroactively anymore, I'll start writing what I collect in more detail, today that was:

ligator, jr. necki, octopus, wraith, lupin, zombie lupin.

I also hit level 53 and 75%

I also became strong enough to do zombie mushmom now, so thats fun. Her drops suck though.






day 7 - june 3 2024

lvl 53

who is the final boss of victoria island? Jr. balrog of course I dont suspect he'll actually be hard, but between him and the other strong monsters my potion funds might take a large hit. Against jr balrog even at level 60 ill only have around 40% chance to hit him, which is pretty awful. estimated 80 hits to kill, so after accuracy itd actually be like 200. Pretty awful. Just thought that was worth mentioning. Anyways back to more card farming. 

So i was did the undead dogs in perion, and turns out theres actually a normal monster higher level than tauromacis. The friggen skeleton commanders over there are 73, and i missing hella on them. So I left after doing the dogs. I also tried out big wraiths, and they're actually faster than jr. wraiths now, and also much more afk. Their exp/hp is a lot worse, but theyre dense AF so I'm basically always hitting 5 of them even while teleporting around. Also since they take longer to kill, it requires less attention.

I started doing golems which are 4 or 5 hits for me. Let me say, god damn is finishing victoria island gonna take forever. after like 1.5 hours, im at 3 cards. Also the exp is maybe 20% as fast as wraiths, probably less honestly. It's not great, but I will press on. fuc kam i getting unlucky with golem cards. im going somewhere else.

ended up having a nap, then finished stone golems, then dark golems. Turns out dark golems can give capes, which i thought were gachapon exclusive so thats cool. did drakes which were alright, then tried kargos. Kargos are giga fucked though, barely any spawns, and theres cold eyes all over. Its also 6+ hits, and the cold eye are 2-3. Most of the time the cold eyes get in the way of my hits too. horrible. dark & icy drake have a nice map, but i still miss on them unfortunately.

cards collected: 1/5 red drake, stone golem, dark golem, fairy, drake, mummydog, skeledog, curse eye





day 8 may 04 2024

lvl 55 and 90%

nvm im actually 86% cuz i fucking died. magic guard fell off while watching a stream doing red drakes... I bought 5 safety charms immediately after. I also actually checked exp, and these drakes at about 25 minutes per 10%, where wraiths are 7 minutes. Not as bad as you'd think, considering im just spamming magic claw.

iron hogs went quick, iron boars took a while. crocos took quite a long time. malady werent too bad. did some more wraiths since a gm buff went out, and hit level 58. Also i got elemental staff from gachapon. So close to an elemental wand... but since elemental staff requires luck its useless. Theoretically the anniversary event may come this month, which usually has maple weapons as a reward from party quests. The best maple weapon would give me about 11-12 extra levels of damage, which is a ton.

I decided to investigate the non drakes in sleepywood dungeon. Im fucked. taurospears are insanely strong, and have incredibly high avoid. I need to be like over level 75 in order to get close to 100% hit. Not to mention they do a billion damage, im constantly being hit for 1000s, and each hit is -1600 meso from potion costs. at my current level its a average 27 hits to kill ignoring accuracy, at level 70 its 20 hits, and at level 80 its 16 hits.

I thought id be able to finish at around level 60, but i think im incredibly wrong. Rip being able to do orbis PQ... I think maybe ill grind up to level 75, then resume the card collecting. Finishing with my current power level does not seem possible. In regards to maple weapons from PQs, guess I'll just have to repeatedly make alts to level 30 lol.

cards collected: red drake, copper drake, iron hog, iron boar, croco, malady




day 9 may 05

lvl 58 and 0%

hit 60, so now i can wear a cape. my one 10% scroll failed, then 3/5 60%s succeeded which isnt too bad at all. I am now trapping myself at wraiths forever. Anyways, just grinding. I shouldve spent my gacha tickets before doing the cape thing incase i got one of those matt capes, but oh well. I'm gonna hold all my gachas till lvl 65 I think.

Something neat, once I get to orbis, I can farm an ok weapon, yellow umbrella has 52 matt, and drops from pixies. Its only about half as powerful as the higher level maple weapons though, and equal to the lower ones.

finished at level 63



day 10 may 06

lvl 63 and 0%

today i learned HS is a scam. I noticed since gm buffs give HS, and it only increased my exp by 10% instead of 50%. Turns out this is just a maple mechanic, not a maple legends exclusive thing. the HS becomes more effective if you're in a party. So if i leeched another character while training my priest once I get holy symbol, I'd end up with 20% more exp instead of just 10% more. And then my alt character also gains levels for free basically. doing 3 characters would lower exp for my priest though, so I dont want to do that. Thats all kinda dumb, so I should probably level another dude.

The one problem is getting my alt in exp range. I'd rather level the alt during the anniversary event so I get maple weapons while doing pqs, but that'll probably take too long to wait for. I guess theres not really a reason to make it now, I can just wait till I finish victoria island and unlock el nath + hs from third job. Thats when it'll be worth the effort. I only need to get the alt to level 52, since at that point I can do coolie zombies which will probably be the best exp till ossyria is finished.

Also worth noting, I dont use mp pots at wraiths anymore, ever since i maxed mp eater. The meso is piling up!

just hit level 66. I saved up my tickets since like level 58 i think? used them all and got 2 more elemental staffs... Very dissapointing. sigh. And now I have no more room in my use tab, and have to make more mules. I'm just gonna take a break for now. I also timed 65-66, it took 1 hour and 35 minutes at wraiths. Not that bad tbh.

just hit level 68, while watching the first lord of the rings movie. decided to try out deep sleepywood again. Feels much more doable now which is sick. gonna farm tauromacis till i run out of pots i think.

I GOT A TAUROMACIS CARD AHAAAHAHAHAHAHA OWOWIEIOWFIOMWOMIEWOIO. AYO. 

oh baby, 2 taurospear cards. seems these guys card rate is above average, very sick. I also accidentally got 4 cold eye cards, which doesnt matter but is neat i guess.

BOOM all 5 tauromacis, and all 5 taurospears. This took just a few hours & about 1800 fresh water potions, aka 3 million mesos. I saw a lot of people going to jr. balrog though. Seems he's going to be tough to farm the 5/5 cards from (especially since im sure I do like zero damage). I also still need dyles cards, I've literally never seen him alive so far. dyle is 2h, balrog 3h respawns. Originally when I was thinking through the rules, I was considering excluding bosses cuz pvp competition is lame af/no fun. I might go back to that ruling if its gonna just be days of afking for balrog kills.

finished at level 68, 17%

collected: tauromacis, taurospear, coldeye


day 11 may 07

cleaned up some low level cards, blue snail, stump & slime. also found dyle for once.

Found a balrog. Died. Was gone when I came back :(.
then I found another one tho. died again... this time he was still there when I got back tho, so i killed it :). nothing dropped of course, but its cool. the pet auto pot seemed unreliable for balrog for some reason? idk. he does like 2.7k damage compared to my 1k hp, 4k mp

I tried a bit of ice + dark drakes, but only got one card. I'm just gonna camp balrogs a bit since I know roughly when theyre respawning.

What the fuck is this shit. I did all 6 jr balrogs, and only like like 4 power elixirs lmao??? zero cards too.... Oh and the level 70 warrior shield xd. each kill takes like 120k mesos of potions xdddd. calling it for now.



day 12 may 08

(i think i hit level 69 today)

did mixed golem. shit took like 3 hours. annoying. Gonna investigate florina beach.

Oh shit they sell pots above fresh water here, neat. After checking the database, seems I need to collect clang, lorang, tortie, and the boss here. gonna start collecting these guys.

I have sinned. Theres a cat guild I wanted to join, but you must have cat hair or other cat stuff on. So I had to visit the china area to get the cat hair. Obviously I just grabbed the hair and left xd.

I got a 60% overall int scroll. From the boss in florina beach i think. and ofc it succeeded on my bathrobe, so 7 int now :)

5/5 torties, 5/5 lorang...

YELLOW FUCKING UMBRELLA!!!! OHN MY GOD, CLANG CAN DROP YELLOW UMBRELLA. YELLOW UMBRELLA HAS MORE MATT THAN SHITTY BEGINNER WAND. HOLY GUACOMOLEY. really this is great though, an extra 20 matt, aka 4 levels of damage. I have a few scrolls too, which I may put into it. I think some are dark scrolls though, and I dont want it to explode without a backup... so probably only normal ones. 5/5 clang

5/5 commander skeleton, the second highest level monster. Since I was heal bombing these, potion costs were zero, but I did die twice (while having safety charms). took like 3 hour. Also got 2/5 officer skeletons, even though theres almost none in the map

doing the other skeletons now, its approx 12 minutes per 10%, which aint too bad at all. Still worse than wraiths, but not too bad. 5/5 skeleton soldiers

5/5 shade. ive been doing a lot of boss checking / tracking lately. 
5/5 mushmoms :)

im pretty tired, I think thaats all for today... im 3/5 on the skeleton officers, so thatll get done quick next day.



day 13 may 09

5/5 dark drakes. got a 70% matt shield scroll too while killing them. Feel like i got pretty lucky with their carddrops. Always remember, these strong monsters take forever to kill, around 7-8 magic claw hits per dark drake for example. This is also officially 60 monsters collected.

5/5 officer skeletons. last 2 cards took way too long lol. also hit level 70 while there, but ofc no 3rd job yet.

got another elemental staff, making that 4 before getting a wand :/

5/5 king clang, the boss. gonna camp dyle now, since I wanna chill from the grind stuffs and i know his last death.

fucking ppl camping dyle guh fuck off bitches

yo, turns out king slime is a card on victoria island. Honestly I just assumed it would be some boss that was a clone of king slime somewhere, but turns out its the actual pq boss. If you level past the pq, apparently you have to buy it from some place called the nightmarket. Anyways, not much I can do about that now considering im already level 70, and quite frankly having a card be semi locked to levels 21-30 is stupid anyways. I dont mind & dont care :).

Fucking bitches farming balrog and shit

got my last dyles, so im 5/5 now. just waiting on balrog spawns... unfortunately he seems quite camped lately, im at 3/5 right now so hopefully I get lucky.



day 14 may 10

wooo got the next wave of 6 balrog spawns all to myself, and finished 5/5 jr balrog. All thats left now is ice drake, wild kargo and jr. boogie.

5/5 ice drake, last 2 cards were quick, and the previous 3 I got yesterday. Kargo time.

ok not kargo time. theres just an oddly lot of people there right now, its like 8 am est. Gonna take a break. Kargos seem rough btw, I got 1/5 after a bit.

ok kargos are actually awful. feels like 1 hour per card, im at 2 so far. although dark/ice drakes were slow, atleast I could look away easily. Cant look away from kargo though, since all the cold eyes will eat my magic claws

5/5 kargos. Thats gotta be my hardest card. kargo then high level drakes then tauros, then various golems i think. special thank you to jenny nicholsons video about land before time. took a total of like 55% of level 70 xd. Onto Jr. Boogie.

5/5 boooooogies doooone. Not too bad at all. I double checked my monster book, and other resources and im pretty confident I haven't missed any. Onto ossyria & third job!

Conclusion:
In total it took 14 days to finish victoria island, I finished at level 70. My pet at the end was level 9, at 206 closeness. Maybe you can estimate my playtime using that? I'm not sure. I finished with 67 monster card collections, 26 million mesos. I'd estimate 70% of the time was spent collecting cards vs 30% of time spent leveling.