Leveling

• Leveling up in MapleStory works in a different way from other role-playing games. The standard for leveling up in role-playing games involves the player starting at the most basic level and then gaining experience by fighting or completing missions. This experience allows them to level up and become harder to defeat, and gain new skills. In MapleStory, the system for leveling up is slightly different and directly relates to the profession of the character. Professions determine what the player's character will specialize in and what skills they can learn as they level up.
  
  

MapleStory System

• In MapleStory, every player can choose an initial class for their character. The classes they choose determine what professions they have access to later in the game. Once a character gets to either level eight or level ten, depending on their class, they are able to choose a profession. Once a profession is chosen, each character has to reach a specific level before they can advance in their profession again. There are four possible profession advancements in the game, and each one takes more experience than the last.
  
  

Initial Advancement

• The advancement from beginner to the first profession advancement is the quickest. The character will start at level one and will progress to level two by gaining 15 points of experience. This is easily done by fighting the monsters near the start of the game. Reaching level eight occurs with 840 experience points and level ten is reached by gaining 1144 points of experience. These experience points are reached by fighting harder monsters or completing missions.
  
  

Further Advancement

• After the first profession advancement at level eight or level ten, the process of advancement becomes more laborious. Getting from the first profession advancement to the second profession advancement requires a character to gain 63,800 points of experience. Leveling from the second to the third advancement requires a total of 1,650,340 points of experience. The third to fourth advancement requires a total of 23,772,654 points. Although the character gains minor advancements with each level up, such as additional points towards their stats, gaining the experience to advance in profession steadily becomes more difficult.