MapleStory's Black Mage Update Speeds up Leveling, Adds New 5th Job Skills, & More

While MapleStory 2 may have stolen most of the spotlight recently, MapleStory continues to get a lot of love from Nexon. The game's Black Mage update is launching in pieces between now and the end of December, 2018 which will culminate with a battle with the Black Mage, MapleStory's long running villain.

The game already introduced the Maple Alliance earlier this month, which introduced new war missions for players which rewarded them with special skills and items. The game is also hosting a special Tera Burning event between now and January 22, 2019 which will allow players to reach level 200 3x faster. A more permanent change was a reduction in XP required to reach level 200 as well as tweaks to the XP curve between level 200 and 220 which will also result in faster leveling. While leveling has definitely gotten easier, reaching level 250 is still quite an accomplishment.

New 5th job skills are coming to the game in December for all job categories. New players who reach their 5th job will also automatically unlock all their 5th job skills upon completing their job advancement. Players can also look forward to accessing the final region of the Arcane River, Tenebris, which includes over a dozen new maps and enemies to defeat.

TLDR: New maps, new enemies, and much faster leveling between levels 1-220.

Further reading: Black Mage Update Page