Three Snails

Beginner’s Guide

General Information

This guide is intended for complete beginners to MapleStory M. If you are interested in more advanced guides or specific information on gear progression, please check out our other guides.

Advice before getting started:

Congratulations on making your first character! 

Level 1-100 (Skip Story/New Version)

The new version is very simple. There is a new Adventurous Training Grounds to level a character from level 20-100 through auto-battle. Simple do quests from level 1 to level 20. Collect your growth support gear at each milestone and level offline in the training grounds.

Video Demonstration from MapleStory M Tips

Level 1-100 (Story Exploration/Old Version)

Follow this version of level 1-100 to play gain the full MapleStory experience.

  1. Each character comes with its own story quest. Follow the epic questline (purple). Complete questlines to receive red meso theme rewards from the quest page.
  2. At level 30, do the story exploration, Elinia Fairy Academy. This will reward you with equipment, rank up stones and an exp potion. Do not use the rank up stones unless you need to complete a new character release event mission.
  3. Claim your free teleport stones, pets and gear from the event -> growth support page. This will help you greatly with early game gear and starforce (SF, needed to kill mobs at starforce fields).
  4. Auto-battle at the highest starforce field that you have SF for and you can survive in. If you have epic gear from growth missions and story exploration, you can enhance them evenly to achieve a higher SF. Meso will be the limiting factor.
  5. To access starforce fields, go to menu, click the dungeons icon and find starforce fields. Click the green colored ones indicating you have sufficient SF to kill in the map.
  6. Join any existing parties to kill mobs faster. Exp will be scaled according to number of participants in the party.
  7. Join a guild when guilds unlock at level 30. You can join the explorer’s guild or search existing guilds. MapleStory M discord is a good place to ask if anyone has a guild for a new player.
  8. At level 70, complete the Riena Strait story exploration for more equipment.
    You should have cape, eye accessory and gloves from the fairy academy and face accessory and medal from Riena Strait. These equipment will give you extra HP (survival) and experience rate increase.
  9. Try to complete as many daily and weekly missions as possible. This is found by clicking the “tasks” icon. Daily missions give a significant amount of experience and useful items such as auto-battle coupons.
  10. Try to complete daily dungeons at the highest difficulty you can beat. Can use 1 ticket to try it first and go down a difficulty if you die. Pay special attention to Thursday, Saturday and Sunday daily dungeons to obtain exp increase yellow jewels that will help you level faster.
  11. At level 80, start doing Nett’s Pyramid at Chaos difficulty (make sure you join a full party as you may not kill fast enough).
  12. At level 85, start doing Elite Dungeon everyday. ED rewards powders used to level equipment. Once all of your equipment is leveled, you can also use powders to make a profit by leveling two pieces of epic equipment to lv15 and fusing them to make a unique. Level the unique to lvl 20 and sell on the trade station once you can access. it. Meso will be hard to come by. If you have time to stare at the screen, you can complete quests for more meso and experience.
  13. Continue to auto-battle at SF fields and complete daily missions until level 100.
    At level 100, you will receive your fourth job. If you are unsure about the skill wheel for autobattle, make sure to look on MaplestoryM reddit or ask in discord for proper skill rotations. Evolution dungeon is unlocked – gives a good amount of exp and counts toward the daily mission. Takes 5 minutes to complete. Once you have completed 3x tickets entry once, you should have enough cores to upgrade exp to 100% increase for subsequent runs.
    Goal: Enhance your epic rank equipment to 10SF to achieve 80 total SF.
    From this point on, your goal is to level in starforce fields and get stronger through gear progression and legion. Guides for level 100-200 will be posted soon!
    Starforce field progression: sf80 –> sf113 –> sf120 (sf123) –> sf130 –> sf144 (sf147) –> sf168 –> sf180 –> sf194
    Note: starforce fields in parenthesis are alternatives that offer better survival but less experience.

  • Before you choose a main, try multiple classes and watch some gameplay videos. Don’t commit too early.

  • If there is a new character release, make that character first. Event rewards will help greatly with account progression.

  • Meso (the game’s primary currency) is the basis of general progression. There will be tips how on you can obtain meso at different stages of the game.

  • We use a lot of acronyms, here’s a list

  • There are enough skill points to max every skill until level 140. Prioritize passive skills or click auto-assign.

Congratulations on making your first character! 

Level 1-100 (Skip Story/New Version)

The new version is very simple. There is a new Adventurous Training Grounds to level a character from level 20-100 through auto-battle. Simple do quests from level 1 to level 20. Collect your growth support gear at each milestone and level offline in the training grounds.

Video Demonstration from MapleStory M Tips

Level 1-100 (Story Exploration/Old Version)

Follow this version of level 1-100 to play gain the full MapleStory experience.

  1. Each character comes with its own story quest. Follow the epic questline (purple). Complete questlines to receive red meso theme rewards from the quest page.
  2. At level 30, do the story exploration, Elinia Fairy Academy. This will reward you with equipment, rank up stones and an exp potion. Do not use the rank up stones unless you need to complete a new character release event mission.
  3. Claim your free teleport stones, pets and gear from the event -> growth support page. This will help you greatly with early game gear and starforce (SF, needed to kill mobs at starforce fields).
  4. Auto-battle at the highest starforce field that you have SF for and you can survive in. If you have epic gear from growth missions and story exploration, you can enhance them evenly to achieve a higher SF. Meso will be the limiting factor.
  5. To access starforce fields, go to menu, click the dungeons icon and find starforce fields. Click the green colored ones indicating you have sufficient SF to kill in the map.
  6. Join any existing parties to kill mobs faster. Exp will be scaled according to number of participants in the party.
  7. Join a guild when guilds unlock at level 30. You can join the explorer’s guild or search existing guilds. MapleStory M discord is a good place to ask if anyone has a guild for a new player.
  8. At level 70, complete the Riena Strait story exploration for more equipment.
    You should have cape, eye accessory and gloves from the fairy academy and face accessory and medal from Riena Strait. These equipment will give you extra HP (survival) and experience rate increase.
  9. Try to complete as many daily and weekly missions as possible. This is found by clicking the “tasks” icon. Daily missions give a significant amount of experience and useful items such as auto-battle coupons.
  10. Try to complete daily dungeons at the highest difficulty you can beat. Can use 1 ticket to try it first and go down a difficulty if you die. Pay special attention to Thursday, Saturday and Sunday daily dungeons to obtain exp increase yellow jewels that will help you level faster.
  11. At level 80, start doing Nett’s Pyramid at Chaos difficulty (make sure you join a full party as you may not kill fast enough).
  12. At level 85, start doing Elite Dungeon everyday. ED rewards powders used to level equipment. Once all of your equipment is leveled, you can also use powders to make a profit by leveling two pieces of epic equipment to lv15 and fusing them to make a unique. Level the unique to lvl 20 and sell on the trade station once you can access. it. Meso will be hard to come by. If you have time to stare at the screen, you can complete quests for more meso and experience.
  13. Continue to auto-battle at SF fields and complete daily missions until level 100.
    At level 100, you will receive your fourth job. If you are unsure about the skill wheel for autobattle, make sure to look on MaplestoryM reddit or ask in discord for proper skill rotations. Evolution dungeon is unlocked – gives a good amount of exp and counts toward the daily mission. Takes 5 minutes to complete. Once you have completed 3x tickets entry once, you should have enough cores to upgrade exp to 100% increase for subsequent runs.
    Goal: Enhance your epic rank equipment to 10SF to achieve 80 total SF.
    From this point on, your goal is to level in starforce fields and get stronger through gear progression and legion. Guides for level 100-200 will be posted soon!
    Starforce field progression: sf80 –> sf113 –> sf120 (sf123) –> sf130 –> sf144 (sf147) –> sf168 –> sf180 –> sf194
    Note: starforce fields in parenthesis are alternatives that offer better survival but less experience.