Your First Million Mesos in MapleStory Classic World: A New Player Plan

You won't reach your first million mesos from quests alone. Every one-time meso-paying quest in Classic World adds up to about 200,000 mesos, once, so the rest has to come from selling to other players, a few crafts that turn a profit, and simply not spending. This page lays out a realistic order to do it in, with only sourced numbers. Nobody has measured mesos per hour on the live servers, so we don't pretend to.

Assumptions: you're on your first character, you play solo, and you don't merch (buy low, sell high) until you know prices. Where we say "player prices", we mean whatever the Free Market pays that day; no reliable price list exists yet.

Why quests won't get you there

Counting the launch quest data: 218 one-time quests pay mesos, worth 201,745 mesos in total if you did every one (that includes both Henesys and Kerning City citizenship quests). Dailies, weeklies and the repeatable Glass Shoe quest come on top, but they pay a few hundred mesos at a time. That's a one-time pot, and it explains a classic Maple feeling: a new character is rarely short of mesos, while a Lv. 50 one often is, because the quest money has run out. NPC selling won't bridge the gap either: a community check found no item a shop sells for less than another shop buys it (shop inventories aren't in the game data, so we can't re-check it), so the only things worth vendoring are things you didn't pay for.

So the million comes from three places: what you don't spend, what players pay you, and a handful of crafts. The meso math that matters is profit, not income: what you earned minus potions, travel and gear.

Stage 1: Lv. 1 to 15 (trade-locked)

Per Nexon, trading only opens 24 hours after a character on your account reaches Lv. 15. Until then:

• Do every quest on your route and grab the potions they hand out, so you buy fewer.
• Vendor spare weapons. A Long Sword sells for 1,500 and a Wooden Sword for 2,500.
• Keep ETC drops, ores and leather. You'll sell them to players or use them in crafting later.
• Claim The Journey Begins check-in rewards from Lv. 10 (30 Maple Leaves from Lv. 10+ monsters per check-in, once per account per day, until November 18): free potions now, and later Regular Store Permits.

Stage 2: Lv. 15 to 30 (the market opens)

• Visit the Free Market. Lewis gives "Welcome to the Free Market!" at Lv. 13 (306 mesos). The Journey Begins hands out a Regular Store Permit on Day 4 and again on Day 12, untradable and 7 days each: free shop time to sell your stockpile.
• Sell to players, not NPCs. Community sources warn that player prices for crafting materials and crafted gear often run an order of magnitude above NPC prices. Scrolls from quests like Jane and the Mushroom (Lv. 20, 658 mesos plus a random weapon attack scroll) are worth far more on the market than at a shop.
• Join a town at Lv. 12 and do your daily Community Board quest. The game picks one per day from a pool of 18 per town, so you can't choose the best one: a town-resident request pays 286 mesos plus 8 Lemons (Citizenship Grade 1+), and the two main-NPC requests pay 716 mesos plus 8 Blue Potions once you reach Grade 5, per the game data. Each "First Greeting" quest that unlocks them pays once (409, or 1,023 for the main NPCs).
• Start a profession that will pay later. At character Lv. 15, Woodcrafting Lv. 3 unlocks the Hardwood Wand. Counting its Processed Wood at full cost (10 Tree Branch + 100 fee each), it breaks even at NPC prices (+10), so it's free crafting EXP rather than income, but it gets you toward the arrow recipes at Lv. 4 and 7. Some community calculators show +710 because they count Processed Wood at its 10-meso NPC price. See the Woodcrafting guide.

Stage 3: Lv. 29 to 40 (the big one-offs)

Community sources say Fire Boars drop Arwen's Glass Shoe (the game data has no drop tables), so it pays on top of normal training; each turn-in also gives 4,430 EXP. The Cursed Doll chain's ore rewards (up to 5 Gold Ore or 5 Diamond Ore at the 100-doll step) are crafting inputs players buy.

Crafting gets better here too, at NPC prices on farmed raw drops, with every ingot and Processed Wood counted at what it costs to make:

• Bronze Arrows (Woodcrafting Lv. 4, character Lv. 20): +140 per 500. Needs a Bronze Ingot from Smithing.
• Black Crystal (Arcforge Lv. 6, character Lv. 30): +800 per craft. Arcforge guide.
• Iron Arrows (Woodcrafting Lv. 7, character Lv. 35): +640 per 500. Needs an Iron Ingot from Smithing.
• Not Iron Knuckle. It's often listed at +1,576, but with its 8 Iron Ingots (200 each) and 24 Screws (40 each) at full cost it loses about 160 per craft. Good Smithing EXP, not income. Smithing guide.

Later: Lv. 50 and up

The Citizen of Honor quests at Lv. 57 (Citizenship Grade 10+ in that town) pay 1,248 to 1,784 mesos each, once, and John's three Deep Forest of Patience quests at Lv. 65 pay 2,032 each, once. Useful, but by then your gear and scroll costs are bigger too. Bosses can drop valuable items, but community guides are clear that they aren't reliable income.

What slows down your first million

• Buying gear you'll outgrow in a few levels. Craft or wait for drops; see the class pages for craft-versus-buy prices: Warrior, Magician, Bowman, Thief.
• Expensive potions. Recovery per meso beats recovery per click.
• Merching too early. Learn the market with items you got yourself before flipping.
• Big sinks. House furniture, crafting stations and shop scrolls; see meso sinks and saving mesos.
• Buying mesos. Don't. We don't link sellers, and it puts your account at risk.