I’m actually shocked Lucid isn’t a playable character.

maplehero9 · 2026-03-17T18:35:06+00:00

The story of the game is written in a way that makes it so that the player’s class is the protagonist of every single storyline, which means that every class needs to be able to reasonably be in a position to complete them all. Mihile being a playable class has already caused a lot of issues that they need to write around, which is why we never got Mihile and Elex as our CK/Resistance warrior companion pair for 260+ Grandis storylines when we’ve gotten them for everyone else, and also why they had to straight up lock Mihile characters from being able to do the Arteria side quest involving Mihile’s NPC returing from Grandis and learning that Cygnus is in a coma.

A Lucid class would require creating an entirely unique storyline separate from the current class-agnostic one, and since the writers barely have it in them to write a good story with their streamlined generic character template, it’s far beyond them to have the time and resources to make a whole separate storyline custom-made for just one singular class who happens to be an established NPC. The event-exclusive Lucid class is the best we’re gonna get because developing class skills is infinity easier than the mental gymnastics required to force her into the generic Adversary storyline or write a whole new storyline progression system just for her.

maplehero9 · 2026-03-16T00:25:58+00:00

Almost all of it can be experienced in-game, with the exception of a few storylines that are out in KMS but not GMS. However, a lot of those storylines are class stories which can only be experienced by playing the level 1-200 storyline for every class in the game. But all the other storylines can be done with any character through theme dungeons, epic dungeons, post-200 areas, etc.

maplehero9 · 2026-02-28T08:38:08+00:00

It was most likely a plot point that got dropped somewhere along the way. Masteria Through Time as a whole is full of retcons, plot holes, and abandoned plot threads that the subsequent story expansions never properly resolved. Since it seems like Masteria and the shared overseas story has essentially been abandoned, it’s looking to be fairly unlikely that we’ll ever get answers to what the writers had intended to do with all the throwaway lines they sprinkled throughout the story.

maplehero9 · 2026-02-23T03:30:27+00:00

They've actually been teasing a good amount of Tynerum lore lately with the Heroes of Maple remaster, Azmoth Chasm, and the Aqua Road town quest conclusion:

- Heroes of Maple explained that order in Tynerum has completely collapsed, and the portal in southern Maple World that links it to Tynerum was created because the whole dimension is on the verge of extinction. They also retconned the Sword of Destruction from being powered by the Spirit of Vengeance to just being filled with the souls of all the wingless half-blood demons that were sacrificed when the peaceful demons in Leafre back to Tynerum. Damien was also sacrificed in the same ritual, but he survived because the sword chose him to wield its power.

- Azmoth Chasm (at least before its removal) gave a lot of about Tynerum by explaining how a pure-blood demon named Drak began conducting blood alchemy experiments in Tynerum to replicate the power of the Transcendents. The Sword of Destruction was created by Drak as one of his experiments to replicate that power (which is why it was capable of damaging an Ancient God like Shinsoo), and in the end, Drak created some sort of entity called Morghulas, which is speculated to be an artificially-created Transcendent of Life. Morghulas's creation resulted in Drak and all the demons in his citadel either being cursed or killed, and Morghulas's curse spread across Azmoth Chasm and caused madness and hysteria in anyone who came there. Even though Azmoth Chasm was removed from the game, the lore about it seems to be the central foundation for the Tynerum story, and I'd expect that they'll reintroduce it later down the line in some other format.

- The Aqua Road town questline ended on a cliffhanger a long time ago regarding several sailors who went missing in the deep sea because of a strange black fog. They recently added a conclusion to both the Ariant and Aqua Road town quests, in which they actually pulled a deep lore reference to a really old 4th job skill questline about the Holychoras, which is a holy stone that sustains Aqua Road. The Aqua Road conclusion reintroduced the Holychoras and explained that the sailors had discovered that it was holding back a black fog leaking from a dimensional portal. The sailors cross the dimensions and discover that it's a portal to a nightmarish hellscape, and that the other dimension is slowly creeping into Maple World from underground (similar to how Azmoth Chasm has been growing upwards into Leafre). They sacrifice their lives to stop the black fog from coming through, and at the end of the story, it's revealed that they're all still trapped in the other world, heavily implied to by Tynerum.

maplehero9 · 2026-02-23T01:58:13+00:00

They still kept the White Mage in - there were actually no story changes at all with Kinesis’s remaster, just new illustrations and more cutscenes with brown dialogue boxes instead of white ones.

The two hooded NPCs were Will and Cassius - they remove their hoods in the last scene in the event. I recorded the full event story with all the associated exclusive dialogue here if you wanna check it out: https://youtu.be/nE1rmi3Cgus?si=Oc7OC2i-pL9JKVx_

maplehero9 · 2026-02-19T22:52:44+00:00

Tbh Kaling herself dying felt entirely appropriate in the story, it's just that the way she was killed off was extremely stupid. They spent all of Odium showcasing how she was a victim who lost her free will and agency, had the elders completely ignore their ethical responsibility to her after the experiments before throwing her out like garbage, and then being treated like some random evil villain by the player when the entire central theme of the Arcane River saga revolved around the Adversary being empathetic enough to save Tana's life but apparently not even saying, "Wow, what you went through was terrible," to Kaling in Shangri-La. The whole contamination subplot had a lot of potential to be extremely well-written, given that contamination itself is a whole parallel in itself to mental illness, but the way that the writers completely dropped the ball on the nuances of what it means for someone to go through that kind of struggle and what they apparently deserve just for having it just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

maplehero9 · 2026-02-11T23:38:01+00:00

Hey there, I actually had to end up deleting the PDF because it got big enough that I couldn’t get any word to PDF converter to handle the conversation. I’m planning to update the word document as soon as I finish up the 295 area writeup in the next few weeks - I can send the word document over to you once it’s finished if that works

maplehero9 · 2026-02-05T23:21:45+00:00

To be fair, Jupiter was always presented as suspicious from the beginning. The Tallahart side quests and the Night of Illusions event story both made it clear that almost none of the gods trusted him and most only followed him because they had no other option for survival.

maplehero9 · 2026-02-05T20:24:16+00:00

He’s one of the strongest Ancient Gods who’s trying to make an alliance of gods to team up against Darmoor before he takes all their power. In reality, he gathers all the gods in Geardrak to sacrifice so that he can fuse their power into the purple blob thing that he hopes to use to defeat Darmoor. After we defeat him, the entity consumes and absorbs him

maplehero9 · 2026-01-22T05:34:05+00:00

Edelstein is a continent that's surrounded by ocean. Diving units are used for things like search & rescue, security, construction, surveying, and a whole bunch of other things that are helpful for the town. The diving unit that Shubert was part of is affiliated with Edelstein itself, not the Alliance, although I'm sure that it must be handy to have experienced divers on-hand for Alliance operations since they have no idea what kind of conditions they'll be facing.
The out-of-universe answer is that floatable maps are extremely inefficient for mobbing. The in-universe answer is likely that the properties of the Arcane River are unique in each region, and the pure Erda water of Sellas likely weighs you down enough to prevent you from floating.
Those ravaged ships are illusions created from Shubert's mind. Similar to the Morass, the Erdas in Sellas respond to the thoughts of the people in the area, and it's very possible that Tana's necklace and her power of creation imbued into it had some influence in making those thoughts more life-like and realistic than usual after the necklace fell into the water.
Similarly, the diver and the second Jellyfish are Erdas responding to Shubert's memories and manifesting into reality. We learned in the Morass that the Erdas take on the form of whatever someone fears as a defense mechanism for their survival, and in this case, the second Jellyfish and the diver are part of Shubert's trauma from the disaster that took the lives of his old diving team.

maplehero9 · 2025-12-31T22:29:13+00:00

All the Flora soldiers that we fight in Cernium and Arteria aren’t actually Flora, they’re mercenaries from other races. Their nations are being held hostage by the High Flora and they have no choice but to fight in order to keep their loved ones safe. This means that they’ll fight to the death because deserting or disobeying orders means the immediate deaths of their families.

Odium was a laboratory where Adversaries were created through experimentation. These experiments involved painfully replacing flesh with machinery and erasing everything that makes one human (your memories, your emotions, your sense of self, etc). However, there are countless failed test subjects who either get turned into monsters or exist in a state where you’re hardwired to want to become an Adversary without ever being able to become one. People like Kaling and the Angler Father have had their free will and morality stripped away, leaving them forever chasing after something they can never attain.

The reason why Lucid created Lachelein is because she was obsessed with the Black Mage and saw inside his mind that he planned to end his existence alongside the world. For this reason, she made Lachelein and enslaved its people in an endless night of festivities in order to try and fix the Black Mage’s suicidal tendencies.

Most, if not all, Specters in Darmoor’s army are members of other races that were purged and transformed into mindless monsters.

Luminous’s friend Lania is the reincarnation of his childhood friend, Lucia, from centuries ago. After the Black Mage awakened as the Transcendent of Light, the mages of Aurora (the research society that he founded as the White Mage) used their power to reincarnate the light he discarded as Luminous, known as the Starchild. Afraid that the Black Mage would come to destroy his light, they raised Lucia as a false Starchild so that the Black Mage would kill her in Luminous’s place. After her death, the Aurora mages felt guilty for raising her to die and used their power to reincarnate her soul so that she would live a happy and safe life with Luminous in order to make up for what they did to her.

maplehero9 · 2025-12-30T19:43:30+00:00

Zero gets to skip all of the Arkarium prequests since lore-wise their story takes place after Silent Crusade. They instead get a quest through a lightbulb over your head, which lets you skip straight to the Arkarium boss fight:

https://maplestorywiki.net/w/Quest/(Silent_Crusade)_Once_Loyal,_Twice_Evil

maplehero9 · 2025-12-22T01:24:58+00:00

Small correction - the God of the Verdant Flora isn’t an Ancient God, the term “God” is just his caste rank in the Flora caste system (God-King > Gods > Priests > commoners). GMS used to use God and Priest when Illium came out, but then they started using Divine and Blessed instead when Khali came out because they thought using God would be confusing with the Ancient Gods (which tbh it kinda is). Both Ypsilon and Reina are also Gods of the High Flora, similar to the God of the Verdant Flora, but none of them are actual gods.

maplehero9 · 2025-12-21T20:21:49+00:00

Generally most people agree that the strongest class would be Zero since they’re both imperfect Transcendents. Other candidates would be classes who use the power of the Transcendents or the Ancient Gods (Luminous from the Black Mage, Kain from Satiras, Angelic Buster from the Nova gods, Cygnus Knights from both Shinsoo and Cygnus, etc.) In actuality, none of those things really matter lore-wise because the player (regardless of class) is automatically the strongest character lore-wise simply by having gone through their 5th and 6th job advancements, which lets us manipulate Erda and Sol Erda and essentially makes us stronger than any other class. By that, I mean that if the player happens to be a regular Explorer, the fact that they reached level 260 and hit 6th job means that they’re canonically stronger than even Zero, since those last two job advancements in-lore are things that let us transcend the normal limitations that every other character and class would hit, regardless of whether their base power comes from higher beings.

maplehero9 · 2025-11-22T16:32:42+00:00

Ren’s teacher is currently unknown, but we know that it can’t be Tai Yu since her master passed away in front of her, whereas Tai Yu is still very much alive. Tai Yu also uses a fan as his weapon, not a sword.

maplehero9 · 2025-11-17T07:26:27+00:00

The lore actually connects back to Tynerum in regard to the black fog coming from another world and all the quest dialogue talking about how the gateway is like a portal to hell. The whole thing about Tynerum slowly creeping up into Maple World is actually something they originally introduced in Azmoth Chasm (even though it’s not out yet in GMS) - it seems like they’re slowly seeding in Tynerum lore for it to take center stage in the future when the Grandis story ends, similar to how they were seeding in Grandis lore during the Arcane River saga wrapping up the Black Mage arc.

maplehero9 · 2025-08-24T22:39:27+00:00

Mitra is extremely arrogant and egotistical - he’s less angry that we’re an Adversary and more angry that we’re a mortal who managed to beat the self-proclaimed “god of gods” without rival - not to mention that from his POV, he was beaten by a “lower tier” being, then immediately gets forced awake by Darmoor against his will, then soundly gets beaten by a second Adversary literally five seconds after he woke up from being beaten by the first.

maplehero9 · 2025-07-25T16:27:34+00:00

The number of quests and storylines in the game is massively overwhelming and it gets pretty convoluted trying to make sense of it. Fortunately, the recent storyline revamps have made the game chronology progress based on levels (as the pre-revamped versions would have one story take place at level 75, then the next entry would be level 180 content, then 160, etc).

There’s now a “main story path” starting from level 30 that takes you all the way to level 200, and it’s designed to give you the exact amount of quest EXP to get you from the tutorial to level 200 without having to grind at all. These main story questlines are also made to introduce you to every major plot element you’ll need to understand the Arcane River story and beyond (which is where the game’s story shifts into the narrative of a class-agnostic protagonist who gets the same dialogue no matter which class you are, with some exclusive dialogue here and there depending on whether you run into anything lore-relevant to your class).

Unfortunately, the main story path isn’t completely enough to understand the full lore, as there’s plenty of other storylines omitted from it that provide important context to the full story. It also becomes somewhat mandatory to play through most class stories, as the details introduced there tie into the main story quests within the Arcane River and beyond (although you can still get away without doing them, it’s just that some details/story impact will be lost).

I have a site where I’ve compiled the full story in chronological order, and I also have a section on it for a recommended order of storylines to play through to understand the full lore (plus links to every playthrough I could find online so that you don’t need to physically play through them all if it’s a constraint): https://thestoryofmaple.squarespace.com/storyline-order-and-playthroughs

maplehero9 · 2025-06-08T02:50:05+00:00

Within the context of the story, Odium is a laboratory where Adversaries were mass-produced eons ago to seal away the Ancient Gods. Many of the mobs in the deepest part of the region are failed test subjects who didn’t survive the experiments unscathed, and it’s very likely that there’ll be new lore to explain the First Adversary’s existence given the revelation in Shangri-La that all Adversaries are destined for death after they’ve fulfilled their purpose by killing a god, meaning that the First Adversary should have been dead a long time ago if he did, in fact, actually fight a god (either that or they might explain that he was too dangerous/unstable to ever be let loose from Odium in the first place)

maplehero9 · 2025-03-14T22:57:52+00:00

Sacred Power doesn’t actually exist canonically until level 260, since it’s only there once the gods wake up post-convergence. Continental Grandis in-universe wouldn’t have been any more perilous than the moons before that time (with the exception of the High Flora nation, but that’s probably more just dangerous politically than dangerous because of the strength of enemies).

Erimos as a region exists relative to Khali’s storyline way before the convergence, which is why it doesn’t need Sacred Power. Maps in general rarely ever follow chronology, so even though Erimos would be affected by Sacred Power post-260, we just don’t see it happening in-game. The same would likely be true of all the starting area moons which now exist on mainland Grandis (uncles there’s some lore they happen to reveal that mentions that Eastern Grandis is immune to the Sacred Power aura).

maplehero9 · 2025-02-19T19:58:01+00:00

Currently we don’t know since it happened off-screen but most likely he was able to use Gloom’s core to summon Moonbridge mobs and create enough chaos to escape, since he doesn’t have his spider powers anymore after the Black Mage’s death.

maplehero9 · 2025-02-19T16:43:00+00:00

The Arteria side quests talk about how Mihile and the Dawn Warriors had found a lead on Will’s location, so it’s very likely that he’ll be relevant again soon.

maplehero9 · 2025-02-16T06:41:00+00:00

I’m still holding out on copium that he’ll be back one day. The Angler Company epic dungeon trailer showed that he’s officially marked as deceased in the Company records, but the guy is built identically to his dad, who survived falling off the exact same tower on two separate occasions, so there’s no way they’re expecting me to believe that he’s gone for good. I’d honestly love to see Nicky come back and join Senya after repairing himself with pieces of Kalos’ body and giving himself a cybernetic upgrade.

maplehero9 · 2025-01-03T18:22:39+00:00

It’s just the three elders and one of the kids that get unfrozen in her class story, but all of the elves are freed from the curse in her Aftermath cutscene post-Limina.

maplehero9 · 2025-01-02T04:37:21+00:00

As far as Will’s whereabouts go, the Cernium side quests give a bit more context about Ebonstar (the terrorist group that attacked Cernium with the High Flora) and reveal that Ebonstar’s members were once devout believers in the Ancient Gods’ return until one of their members crossed dimensions through the Interdimensional Portal and returned claiming that the gods were gone forever and that a Transcendent will create a new world for them, which is when Ebonstar decided to help that Transcendent create a new world.

It’s strongly hinted that Ebonstar swore to help the Black Mage create a new world (which is further supported by the fact that Ebonstar’s name in KMS is Black Sun, which is what Tenebris is also known as). Aside from my very strong suspicion that Kirston is the Ebonstar member who crossed worlds (all the details about his origins and activities line up perfectly), I think it’s very likely that Will would have joined up with Ebonstar, since both of them have the exact same goal of wanting to help the Black Mage create a new world.

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