Mesos in Founders Access, and What Changes on 21 October

Founders access has turned Classic World into a small, rich-in-time, poor-in-mesos economy, and that will flip on 21 October when the grand launch opens the game to everyone for free. Until then only Orange Mushroom and Zakum package holders can play, which means a few weeks where a limited crowd farms Victoria Island with nobody else competing for the drops. If you are in founders access, this is your window to build a stack. If you are waiting for the 21st, it explains why everything will cost more on your first evening than you expect.

Dates and rules here come from Nexon's founders access release notes. The predictions are ours, based on how every fresh Maple world we have played behaved.

A small economy with a head start

The founders build caps characters at level 100, with second job at 30 and Victoria Island as the whole map. Nobody is past second job. Nobody has a merchant stall full of scrolls. The bosses are Mano, Mushmom, Shade, Zombie Mushmom and Jr. Balrog, so the only "rare" drops in circulation come from those and from whatever the regular maps cough up.

That makes mesos scarce in absolute terms, which is why the market quotes in K, thousands of mesos, rather than the millions people remember from later GMS. A few hundred K is real money right now.

It also means the people with mesos are the people who played the most hours in the first week. In old Maple that was always the same handful per world, and by the end of the first month they owned the Free Market.

What costs the most right now

NPC prices are fixed. A Red Potion is 50 mesos whether there are ten players or ten thousand. So the things that swing are the things players sell each other.

• Second job weapons and the first decent armour pieces.
• Useful scrolls, especially for gloves and weapons.
• Materials for the new Crafting system, which nobody has stockpiled yet.
• Anything that saves time on the way to 30.

Expect those prices to be high and jumpy for the first two weeks, because a single good drop or a single bored player can move the whole market for an item.

What 21 October does

Grand launch is free, at 11:00 AM PDT on Wednesday 21 October, and founders progress carries straight over. Every player who did not buy a package arrives on the same evening, and every one of them needs potions, a better weapon and a few K to get going.

That is a huge spike in demand, landing on top of a supply that founders players have been building for two weeks. We expect three things in the first days after the 21st:

• Low-level gear and scrolls jump in price, because the new crowd all want the same starter items at once.
• Founders players become the sellers, and the ones who saved up their spare etc drops and level 20 to 30 gear do very well.
• Meso prices in real money hold up or climb briefly before starting the long slide down, the same shape as in our meso price post.

None of that is a promise. A world can surprise you, and if Nexon opens more channels or worlds than demand needs, the rush spreads thinner.

If you are in founders access

You are in the best position you will ever have in this economy. A few habits from the old days pay off now.

Keep the level 20 to 30 equipment you outgrow instead of dropping it at an NPC. The new crowd on the 21st will want it. Hold one or two stacks of the etc drops that early quests ask for, and NPC everything else. Our first week money guide has the details on what to keep.

One of us made more mesos in the first fortnight of a new world in 2006 by selling Work Gloves to newcomers than in the whole month after it. The trick was simply having them when everyone else wanted them.

If you are waiting for the 21st

Plan for your first week to be expensive, and do not panic about it. Potions are the same price as ever, and the first thirty levels need very little else. The gear that costs a fortune on 22 October will cost a fraction of that by mid-November.

If you are thinking about buying mesos for the launch, the first days after the 21st are the most expensive time to do it, for exactly the reasons above. Buying also breaks Nexon's terms, and since Nexon applies sanctions to the whole account, a ban reaches your main MapleStory characters too. Our honest take on buying goes through when it is worth it and when it is not.

Our view from this side of the counter: if you buy at all, buy a small amount once you have hit second job and know what you want. Arriving on the 21st with a shopping list is fine. Arriving with a shopping list and a fortune is how you pay launch prices for gear you outgrow in four days.

For a recap of what founders access has looked like so far, see our post on founders access going live.