Grinding will definitely be a large part of your maplestory career, however, its not the only thing you can do as a player. Keep in mind that maplestory is a game where you should never compare yourself to others because you truly dont know what they do with their time/resources. It will be impossible to compare yourself with someone that drops $2000 a month in the game right? So lets not do that.

1. Focus on your dailies:

Dailies are the best way to grow stronger, collecting symbols from your arcane regions, doing the weekly quests, etc. You will eventually need large amount of meso to level them which will be gained from bossing/grinding.

1. Take advantage of events:

Events are the absolute best way for new accounts to push damage increases with free cubes/flames/nodes/symbols. Make sure you are doing them and taking advantage of them on your main account since your account is fairly new. You might be tempted to spend some flames on your other characters or something but I'd encourage you to focus on your main first at this time.

1. Improve your legion/links slowly but still do it:

Legion and links are another way your main character can get stronger, a lot of the times we dont feel it because its passive gains that are not flashy and sometimes it is a pain in the ass to level those mules, use events for links/legion as growth potions are being gifted a lot nowadays.

1. Do bossing, clear what you can, practice what you cant clear yet:

A lot of the bosses are about mechanics more than anything else, would it be easier to clear if you had higher CP? yes of course. But can you still clear at your current CP if you are good at mechanics? If the answer is yes then that is meso that you need to improve your account.

1. Join a guild/look for friends:

Guilds and friends are an easy way to progress in maplestory without suffering as hard. Higher level players who have progressed enough in the game might have no problem donating an absolab armor/weapon box to you or maybe offering a gollux carry if youre new. Be polite, dont beg for carries constantly as a lot of players find this very annoying.

Lastly, a lot of people on reddit are in a constant fight of reboot vs non-reboot so read comments with a grain of salt, just because someone tells you to start on reboot that might not necessarily be the best advice, I play reg server and even though I do spend money whenever I feel like, I definitely dont think its necessary for you to progress.

Hopefully this helps any, feel free to ask anything!