holy crap.. nexon is crazy

yj94

im a returning player from 2006 or something .. recently restarted
and i just finished up educating myself about ways to upgrade an item
back in the old days, there was only one way to upgrade an item: percentage weapon/armor/etc scrolls
but now, correct me if im wrong, theres
1. spell traces which is pretty much new replacement of the old percentage weapon/armor/etc scrolls
2. equipment enhancement scrolls
3. star enforcements
4. nebulites
5. souls

... i cant help myself but keep thinking WTF??
no wonder why new players or returning players like me have barriers to entry
all these upgrade possibilities just accumulated on top of each other for 10 years or something

when i searched for recent gameplays of maplestory on google to see how much the game had changed,
all those players had damage outputs of millions while my new character has only 50k
well, now i can see how thats possible.

and one more thing... wtf is anvil???

KerBansot

There's also potentials.

Anvil - it allows you to change the physical appearance of your item to something else. It has to be the same type of item though i.e. make a bowman hat look like a mage's hat.

PhoenixKumo

Yes, a lot's changed in Maple. Power creep happened is what. There's also potential and bonus potential to add more to the insanity. My advice is to take it slow or get overwhelmed early on. If you have questions, ask and ye shall receive answers.

Anvil is used to make one piece of equipment look like another. It only changes the appearance but not the stats. However, both equipment has to belong in the same category and class and they have to be for the same gender so for instance, you could anvil a Dark Calaf to look like a Dark Moonlight, but you cannot anvil a Dark Calaf to look like Red Amoria Skirt, since this is bottomwear. You cannot anvil it to look like a Green Lumati since it's bowman equip and Dark Calaf is mage equip. And you cannot anvil it to look like a Dark Calas because Calas are for males and Calafs are for females. Get it?

Asylum

Anvils are used to make 1 equipment like another. Say you like the look of a stonetooth sword but have a better but uglier sword, use an fusion anvil to make your ugly sword look like the stonetooth. Only works within same equipment types so tops with tops and not with overalls. 2h sword > 2h sword works, but not 1h sword or 2h blunt weapon. They're a cash shop item, but have been rewards for events in the past.

Nebulites and Souls you don't have to worry about till you're one of those players hitting millions. Equipment enhancements scrolls are useless outside of chance enhancing Tyrant capes.

Focus on spelltracing and starforcing your equipment for now.

Barfonwhales

agree'd this game has a very complicated enchanting system the worse i've seen thus far in any mmorpg. it's not about the RNG factor it's about how many of then you have to stack not even including abilities and link skills yet alone buffs but it looks more like a money maker then anything as they seem to have a lot of ways to reset or buy these stuff in cash shop. it wouldn't be so bad if they at least had a meso to nx exchange because im sure you can easily spend hundreds of dollars just to enchant your items to make them very perfect.

then again this game looks like it needs it at the same time there isn't any hard mechanics unlike other games where bosses will 1 shot you if you get hit once or do something wrong i mean it is a 2d ss game

Neospector

Equipment enhancement scrolls and star force are actually both methods to obtain the same stat boosts (stars). Equip enhancement scrolls drop from bosses and such, but they have destruction rates and low success chances unless you get ones without destruction rates. Star forcing means paying a lot of mesos to obtain stars, which also has a safeguard in place in case you destroy your item (equipment traces).

gamechanger

@yj94 - There are many more ways to upgrade your equips now this is true, but most of them were implemented to make upgrading gear easier, not more complicated.

* Spell traces replace regular scrolls. Instead of hunting for the specific scroll you need for each piece of gear, spell traces are a general item that can be used to scroll any piece of equipment. And they are pretty damn good, losing only to prime scrolls and a few other, rare, event scrolls. Spell Traces can give you +9 Attack/MAttack on weapons. They were introduced to simplify the process of scrolling gear

* Star force was introduced to simplify enhancing gear. Now, instead of hunting for EE or AEE, you can use Star force to enhance your equipment. Regular EE and AEE scrolls still work, but Star force is superior for regular equipment in every way. It has no chance to boom your equipment until the 12th star, you can pay double the mesos after that to have your equip not blow up. And even if your equip does blow up using star force, you get a trace that you can use on a clean version to get all of the stats back (scrolling, and potential mainly).

* Nebulites are 100% bullshit, don't even worry about them

* Souls are the newest thing by far, but only apply to weapons.

Azgaurd

Honestly this post seems a bit silly. It's like logging into WoW and being like 'OMG I haven't played since vanilla! There's so many more zones, levels, skills, etc barrier for entry!' Upgrading your weapon is not a barrier for entry as there are very simple and effective ways to do it. You won't reach the pinnacle of power without investing into all of them, but it's certainly not mandatory by any means. Things change. Welcome to the world