Job Advancement in MapleStory Classic at Levels 10 and 30

Job advancement in MapleStory Classic happens twice in the launch build, at level 10 and level 30, and the second one includes the only test the early game ever asks you to pass. 3rd job at 70 is held back until after launch, per Nexon's 21 August report, so for now these two are the whole ladder. Both worked the same way for twenty years of the original game, and Nexon's line about "balance adjustments" is about skills rather than the advancement itself, so here is how they went, town by town, with the bits people always got wrong.

The first job, at level 10

Every character starts as a Beginner on Maple Island and picks a job on Victoria Island by talking to the right instructor in the right town. Three of the four jobs need level 10. Magicians need level 8, which is why the fastest route to 30 sends them off the island first.

Job	Instructor	Town	Stat you need
Warrior	Dances with Balrog	Perion	35 STR
Magician	Grendel the Really Old	Ellinia	20 INT
Bowman	Athena Pierce	Henesys	25 DEX
Thief	Dark Lord	Kerning City	25 DEX

The stat requirement is the part that caught people. A Beginner gets AP from level 2 onward, and if you put them anywhere except the stat your job wants, you arrive at the instructor at level 10 and get turned away. Forty-odd STR for a Warrior means most of your Beginner AP goes into STR; a Thief needs DEX first, LUK later. Our stat build post has the full ratios, but the short version is: know your job before you leave Maple Island, and put every Beginner point into the stat in that table.

The advancement itself is a conversation. Talk to the instructor, confirm, and you get your first skill point and your job's beginner skills. No quest, no fee. From there, the level 1 to 30 route takes over.

The second job, at level 30

This is the one with a test, and it is a small rite of passage. The steps in the old game:

1. At level 30, go back to your first job instructor. They give you a letter of recommendation and send you to a Job Instructor NPC who stands outside one of the towns.
2. The Job Instructor takes the letter and sends you into a sealed test map full of monsters that drop Dark Marbles. Collect 30. The monsters differ by class and they hit a little harder than what a level 30 has been fighting, which is the point.
3. Bring the 30 marbles back to the Job Instructor for a Proof of a Hero, then take the Proof to your original instructor.
4. Choose your branch. Warriors pick Fighter, Page or Spearman. Magicians pick Fire/Poison, Ice/Lightning or Cleric. Bowmen pick Hunter or Crossbowman. Thieves pick Assassin or Bandit.

The choice is permanent. Old Maple did not let you change branch, and Nexon has said nothing to suggest Classic does. Our class guide weighs every branch on the old balance, and the two we would roll first on a fresh server are the Cleric and the Spearman.

Then you get one SP and the second job skill window, and the game changes. Second job is where every class gets the skill it is known for, and the first thing most people did after the ceremony was walk to the Free Market and price the weapon that skill wanted.

The mistakes everyone made

Arriving at 30 without potions. The test map is the first place a solo level 30 dies, because the marble monsters come in numbers and you are used to Pigs. Bring a slot of the right HP potion and read the potions post if you are not sure which one.

Doing the test with a party. You could enter the test map in a group, and people did it to make it faster. The marbles only counted for whoever picked them up, so a party of four took four times as long to finish, and the polite thing was to go in alone.

Forgetting the letter. If you talked to the Job Instructor before your own instructor, nothing happened, and a surprising number of people stood outside Perion in 2006 clicking a man who would not talk to them. Instructor first, then Job Instructor, then back.

Leveling past 30 without advancing. The test does not get harder, but every level you spend as a first job character past 30 is a level with a first job attack, and KPQ kicks you out at 30 anyway. Advance the evening you hit it.

One of us hit 30 on a Bowman in 2005 and picked Crossbowman because the crossbow in the shop looked better than the bow. It was a fine class. It was also chosen for the wrong reason, and we still get reminded of it.

What comes after 30

Nothing that requires an NPC, for a while. The stretch from 30 to 70 in old Maple was Ludibrium and the Sleepywood dungeon and El Nath, and at Classic launch it is Victoria Island until the first post-launch phase adds Orbis and El Nath. Where to train from 30 to 70 has the maps, with the ones that are not on the island yet marked.

3rd job, when Nexon adds it, was the big one in the old game: a level 70 requirement, a trip to El Nath, a fight against a copy of yourself, and a real test of whether you had built the character properly. It is a post-launch topic, and the moment Nexon dates it we will write it up. Until then, the two advancements above are the ladder. Get the stat right at 10, bring potions at 30, and pick the branch you actually want to play for a year, not the one with the nicer weapon in the shop.