Dear Maplers,
I can't believe it's already been a month since we last published a Producer Blog. I want to thank everyone who's tuning in to read the blog today, and I'd like to report back on the progress we've made up to now. Our upcoming
Skilled Ally update arrives next week and we hope it infuses some excitement! I'll go over the big ticket items of this update briefly, but rest assured there will be a lot more details shared via our event post and Patch Notes as usual.
Here's the rundown of topics for today that are included in the
Skilled Ally update:
- Dungeon Helpers and More
- Job Rank II Skill Rebalancing
- Trader's Ribbon for Lv. 60 Equipment
- Red Crystals for Pet Talent Changes
- Maple Life Improvements
- Meso House Assistants
- Plot Purchase Price Reduction by 90\%
- New Housing Blocks from Community Requests
- And More!
Dungeon Helper and More
As the community has been discussing, we think there's more to be done to assist new players with settling into MapleStory 2. There have been some excellent community initiatives to do this, and we wanted to find a systematic way to reward players for doing good deeds with the Dungeon Helper system.
In a nutshell, the Dungeon Helper system is designed to reward players who assist newbies. With this update, if you are a veteran who's played a specific dungeon more than 10 times, you can assist those who haven't cleared that goal and receive a token for your help. If you are a novice player who's played fewer than 10 times, you can click a button to get help and your request will be blasted out in world chat to summon your knight in shining armor!
We understand that this system won't function at its best if the rewards are not meaningful for you. With this token, you can purchase some of the most desired items in MapleStory 2. This includes not only the often discussed and requested Epic Accessory Attribute Lock Scrolls, but also Legendary scrolls and more. The Dungeon Helper system is now a designated permanent location for receiving these scrolls, and an exact list of potential rewards and prices will be detailed out in the
Skilled Ally Patch Notes, so stay tuned.
While we hope the Dungeon Helper system will help new players grow, we also wanted to revisit the balance for Lv. 60 Hard Adventure Dungeons. Compared to the easy-to-follow Epic questlines, the Lv. 60 Hard Adventure Dungeons that follow right after come as a jarring experience as the difficulty ramps up significantly, as some players have pointed out. To put these dungeons more in line, we'll be lowering the HP of enemies by 25\% for all Lv. 60 Hard Adventure Dungeons, and reducing damage from enemies by 30\% for The Song of the Oracle and Guardian of the Seas.
Job Rank II Skill Rebalancing
As skills are one of the most discussed topics among players, we rounded up as much feedback as we could and went back to the drawing board with the development team to see if there were any changes we could make. We're happy to report that our first full pass of the Job Rank II Skill rebalance is done and ready to make its way into our
Skilled Ally update. The full list is pretty extensive, but all the final adjustments for each class will be fully detailed in the
Skilled Ally Patch Notes.
Our focus at this time was to make the less popular skill trees of each class more interesting, giving you more of a choice in which tree to pursue. Please note that we had to be selective in choosing the changes we elected to make, in order to keep the overall balance of current meta while not jeopardizing future meta as well. By no means will this be our final adjustment of skills though, so please do let us know how they feel after you've experienced them.
Trader's Ribbon for Lv. 60 Equipment
Lv. 60 Epic and Legendary Equipment that came with the Awakening update can now be traded using Lv. 60 Trader's Ribbons. Similar to how Lv. 50 Trader's Ribbons worked, these new ribbons will be obtained from Dungeon Rank Boxes from Lv. 60 Chaos Raids / Eye of Lapenta.
Please note that only Dungeon Rank Reward Boxes obtained AFTER the
Skilled Ally update will contain the Trader's Ribbons. If you are planning to save your runs for the noted dungeons until then, we wouldn't advise it, since this means you will be saving runs for the entire week to be done in a couple of hours (assuming a quick and problem-free maintenance). That said, the choice is ultimately yours, and we wanted to make sure this was known for everyone today.
Red Crystal for Pet Talent Changes
Currently Pet Re-rolls consume Green Crystals, the same as accessories. With the
Skilled Ally update, we are switching this to Red Crystals instead. This is so we give specific purpose to each of the crystals. After this update, Red Crystals will be for your pet talent changes, Green Crystals will be for accessories, and Blue Crystals will be for your armor.
Same as the Lv. 60 Trader's Ribbons, we thought this would be important to know ahead of time, so that players who plan to re-roll their pets' talents will have time to accrue the right crystals for their needs.
Maple Life Improvements
With the
Skilled Ally update, we're introducing some additional changes we wanted to bring related to housing. This includes:
Meso House Assistants
House Assistants available for hire have previously been a meret-only service, but we're now introducing Meso House Assistants. We'll be adding four Meso House Assistants, just like Meret House Assistants, with all four specialties: Ring, Necklace, Beverage and Cooking. For those who have Meret House Assistants, rest assured: Meret House Assistants function better than Meso House Assistants, as they require fewer materials to craft the items.
Plot Purchase Price Reduction by 90\%
We're also going to permanently reduce the house plot purchase and extension costs by 90\%. While we've done similar changes as limited-time events, the feedback and activity that resulted has convinced us to make this a permanent change. We'd love to see you decorate the world of MapleStory 2 with your own colors!
New Housing Blocks from Community Requests
We asked, we heard, and we listened. We're adding 18 community-suggested objects and blocks from overworld to housing blocks, including picture frames, glass windows and the almighty Foosball table! There are also some popular community items in the Style Crate and Paulie's Hairstyles this time around!
And More!
We haven't forgotten players concern over the lack of Onyx Crystals. To remedy this, we've crafted
Skilled Ally update events to favor Onyx Crystal rewards. We are also preparing weekend discount events on enchant materials to aid you for the month.
In Closing
As you may have noticed, in today's blog we mentioned things at a mostly high level. We will discuss the changes in more detail in this week's livestream, but the main reason we opted to wait to share the full details in the Patch Notes is because we are still making some final adjustments, especially on the skill rebalancing pass.
I hope I don't sound like a broken record by saying that our ears are open and always ready to hear more from you about MapleStory 2. We care deeply about your feedback because we truly believe that's the only way we can build a better game together.
We've discussed a lot today but I know you'd like more details on some topics. Please be on the lookout for the official
Skilled Ally Events, Sales and Patch Notes posts next week for more information. We also have an
official preview livestream happening on
July 18th at 1:00 PM PDT (8:00 PM UTC) to discuss next week's update, so don't miss your chance to join the conversation. Please let us know your questions and feedback via the subreddit and forum links below and we will go over some of them in tomorrow's livestream as well.
Thank you for being patient with us and see you in game!
Sincerely,
LAMBCOOK
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