Maple Inven published a new interview today, with the director of the MapleStory V update! There was a lot of interesting information and I won’t be translating it completely but I will post the big tidbits!

The director mentioned that 5th job is still a work in progress, they will continue to develop things for it and they are aiming to add another skill for all jobs.

In terms of V Cores and Core Gemstones, he said that it is random for what Cores you can get but when you open Core Gemstones, there is a slightly higher chance to get Cores for your job (they are willing to adjust this if it’s still too bad).

In this month, they will also be adding the Core Combine and Core Disenchant systems to help ease the randomness.

In terms of Arcane Force, he said it is extremely important in the Arcane River and there is no other way to increase your Arcane Force other than upgrading your Arcane Symbols.

Here’s what the level 200 equipment set looks like! I think they’re awesome, the whole starry/interstellary theme is great.

The director said that the level 200 equipment set’s stats will be reflective of its level, but the level 160 set will still be useful as it will take a long time to obtain these new equips. If needed, level 160~200 equipment sets may be added in the future as well.

The experience table has been decreased by approximately 30%. Certain level ranges which do not have as much content available have been decreased by 40~50%.

When asked about the maximum damage cap removal, the director said that they wanted users to be able to access their full strength, and did not want the game to be decided by the highest number of hits per second. They are willing to buff/nerf jobs based on this change in the future.

For the status resistance changes, he said that almost every user could get to 100% status resistance, which caused bosses to be trivial unless they were able to ignore status resistance, which was a bandaid solution. He said there are limits to how interactive avoiding attacks can be in a 2D side-scrolling game so they changed status resistance to decrease duration of status effect. In the future, if this causes bosses to become significantly more difficult, their battle patterns will be readjusted.

For other battle-related stats, he said that for a long time, accuracy has been thought of as useless so they removed it and changed hit rate to be based on the user’s level. For critical damage, it was very unintuitive that your minimum critical damage would become your maximum critical damage if it exceeded it so they combined them into one.

The new continent Arcane River features a mighty flowing river that leads to the Black Mage. It consists of 3 areas: Road of Vanishing, Chu Chu Island, and the City of Dreams Lacheln. They will be added one at a time because they are putting a lot of attention to each area.

Each one is made to be a new type of experience. For example, the BGMs and sound effects will have more acoustic and environmental sounds. This year, they will be composed and produced by Nexon’s internal team rather than outsourcing. Last month, the Damien soundtrack was released and even more great and high-quality BGMs will be released through the site.

The interviewer asked where the idea for the bright and cheery Chu Chu Island came from. He replied that for MapleStory, as monsters get higher and higher levelled, they become more fierce looking, and they wanted a charming high level area with a more happy concept.

Grandis still has some work to be done, while Friends Story is not part of the main story so it is not as high a priority. Currently, development is focused on the story of Arcane River.

Commander Lucid has appeared before but now, with a new appearance, she will be a large part of the story and a boss monster in Arcane River. She will not be part of a blockbuster because they felt that there is a difference between a closed story in a blockbuster and a more open story in a new area.

At the end of the continent Arcane River, you will be able to meet the Black Mage. However, this won’t necessarily happen during the summer update.

Their goals for the new UI were to make it more convenient to use and to increase openness for easier skill usage. They know it is a huge change for existing users but they are very open to comments and concerns from users in the test servers.

Finally, they do think that Hard Suu will be defeated sooner or later after this patch. In addition to the level 160 item set, there are still some rewards from him that have not been found yet!