MapleStory Classic World glossary

16 terms

AP - ability points: The stat points you get five of on every level-up, and spend on STR, DEX, INT or LUK. They cannot be moved once spent, which is why every guide here starts by saying which stat your class wants.
Attack speed stage: Every weapon carries a stage from 2 (fastest) to 8 (slowest), and the printed label is not reversible: "Fast" is stage 4 or 5. A booster moves the stage, so the stage is the number that matters. The export carries no milliseconds per stage, so nothing here says how long a swing takes.
Basic Attack: A flat damage number, as opposed to the percentages every other branch quotes. Magician skills are written this way - "Basic Attack 130" rather than "Damage 130%" - because a spell's damage is built from magic attack and INT rather than scaled off your weapon. Bigger is better, and the numbers are only comparable to other magician skills.
Booster: A buff that speeds your attacks up. Every weapon booster gives its full two stages at rank 1 and the other ranks only make it last longer and cost less, so one point early beats twenty points later. The mages' Spell Booster is the exception and the one to read carefully: it gives one stage until rank 11.
Buff, debuff: A buff is a timed effect on you or your party; a debuff is one you put on monsters. Both have a duration and have to be recast, which is why the guides show how long each lasts.
Job advancement: Changing class. It happens at levels 10, 30 and 70, you keep everything from before, and each one hands you a new pool of SP and a new set of skills.
Knockback: Throwing a monster away from you rather than pulling it towards you. Five skills in the snapshot do it, and it is the difference between a skill that gathers a platform up and one that scatters it.
Mastery: A passive skill that raises the lowest damage a weapon can roll - not the highest - so your hits stop varying so wildly. Seven of the ten 2nd jobs get one per weapon type and it is nearly always the first thing worth maxing; the three magician ones get no mastery skill at all, which is part of why a mage plays so differently.
Mastery level, and master level: Two different numbers with nearly the same name. A mastery skill's tooltip counts "Sword Mastery level 1" up to "Sword Mastery level 10": ten is the top of that scale. A skill's master level is something else, the highest rank it can hold, and twenty ranks of Sword Mastery buy mastery level 10. Magician attack spells carry a mastery level with no mastery skill behind it, counting up as the spell's rank rises.
Mob: A monster. The cards on this site say "hits up to 6 monsters"; the game's own community says "mobs" and means the same thing. Either way it is how many the skill can catch in one cast, which is what separates a training skill from a boss skill.
Overall: A single piece of armour that fills the Top and Bottom slots together. You wear either the overall or the two of them, never all three, which is the one thing a list with a row per slot cannot show you.
Party buff: A buff everyone standing near you gets. Rage, Bless, Haste, Meditation and Hyper Body are the five, and they are the reason parties want particular classes.
Rank, or level, of a skill: How many points are in it. A skill has a maximum - its master level - and its numbers grow with every rank, which is why each guide shows what one point buys next to what a maxed skill buys.
Shield: Worn in the free hand, so it goes with a one-handed weapon and cannot be worn at all with a two-handed one. Half the weapon ladders on this site are entirely two-handed, and on those a shield is a purchase you cannot use.
SP - skill points: What you spend on skills. A job earns its own pool: one point at the advancement and three per level after it, until the next advancement stops the pool filling. Also not refundable.
Upgrade slots: How many scrolls a piece of equipment will accept before it stops taking them. A hat with 7 slots can be improved seven times, and every failed scroll uses one up. Nothing on this site needs you to use them; the count is there because it is most of what separates two otherwise identical pieces.

Words that have a page rather than a definition

Some of what people mean by jargon is not a word at all, it is a mechanic, and a card the size of a tooltip would misrepresent it. Those have their own pages:

Damage, accuracy, avoidabilityEvery formula the site computes with, and how confident it is in each.The EXP curveWhat a level costs, and what that is in kills.Crafting and disciplinesAll 348 recipes with their ingredients, fees and EXP.Citizenship and contributionThe ten grades and what each one unlocks.Scrolls and slotsSuccess rates, what a scroll grants, and what it can go on.Party questsWhich of them are in this build at all.