Scrolling

Scrolling is how equipment is upgraded in MapleStory Classic World. A scroll is a use item that permanently adds a stat to a piece of equipment and spends one of that equipment's upgrade slots. Scrolls can fail, and one kind can destroy the equipment outright.

The game ships 208 scrolls. They are not 208 separate things to learn: there are 52 families, each covering one equipment type and one stat, and every family comes in the same four tiers.

The four tiers

Each step up the ladder grants more and succeeds less often. Only the top tier can destroy what you are scrolling. All 52 families share one sprite per tier, so a scroll's icon tells you its tier and nothing else.

	Tier	Success rate	Grants	Destroys the equipment on failure
	Lesser	100%	the base step	no
	Intermediate	60%	double the base	no
	Greater	10%	triple the base	no
	Chaos	10%	quadruple the base	yes, on half of all failures

The base step depends on the stat. Most families run 1, 2, 3, 4. The magic attack and defence families run 2, 4, 6, 8. The six HP and MP families run 10, 15, 20, 25, and that difference changes which tier you should use.

Which tier is worth using

A scroll is consumed whether it works or not, so the figure that matters is not the number printed on the scroll but the stat you can expect per scroll spent, which is the success rate multiplied by the grant.

	Tier	Success	Grant	Expected gain per scroll
	Lesser	100%	+1	+1.00
	Intermediate	60%	+2	+1.20
	Greater	10%	+3	+0.30
	Chaos	10%	+4	+0.40

Intermediate is the most efficient scroll in the game for 46 of the 52 families. It returns a fifth more than the guaranteed Lesser, and it is the only tier that beats it.

Greater is the trap. It shows a larger number than a Lesser and returns less than a third as much, because a 10% success rate does not come close to paying for the extra point. Anyone scrolling for a result rather than for a gamble is better served by the cheapest tier on the list.

The six HP and MP families invert the answer, because their ladder is 10, 15, 20, 25 rather than a clean multiple of the base.

	Tier	Success	Grant	Expected gain per scroll
	Lesser	100%	+10	+10.00
	Intermediate	60%	+15	+9.00
	Greater	10%	+20	+2.00
	Chaos	10%	+25	+2.50

So for a Hat, Topwear or Bottomwear being scrolled for HP or MP, the guaranteed tier is the best one, and it is the only place in the system where that holds.

What a Chaos scroll costs

A Chaos scroll succeeds one time in ten, and half of the nine failures destroy the equipment. That works out at a 45% chance of losing the item on every single attempt, which compounds quickly across an item's slots.

Seven is the common case rather than an extreme one, since most equipment carries seven slots.

Upgrade slots

A piece of equipment can only take as many scrolls as it has slots, and the count is fixed when the item is created.

Full list

Every family, with what it grants at each tier. The value in each column links to that scroll.

Equipment and stat	Stat	Lesser	Intermediate	Greater	Chaos
Cape Accuracy	Accuracy	+1	+2	+3	+4
Gloves Accuracy	Accuracy	+1	+2	+3	+4
Hat Accuracy	Accuracy	+1	+2	+3	+4
Shield Accuracy	Accuracy	+1	+2	+3	+4
Earring Evasion	Avoidability	+1	+2	+3	+4
Shoes Evasion	Avoidability	+1	+2	+3	+4
Earring Crit. Damage	Critical damage	+1	+2	+3	+4
Gloves Crit. Rate	Critical rate	+1	+2	+3	+4
Cape DEX	DEX	+1	+2	+3	+4
Earring DEX	DEX	+1	+2	+3	+4
Overall Armor DEX	DEX	+1	+2	+3	+4
Cape INT	INT	+1	+2	+3	+4
Earring INT	INT	+1	+2	+3	+4
Overall Armor INT	INT	+1	+2	+3	+4
Pet Equip Jump	Jump	+1	+2	+3	+4
Shoes Jump	Jump	+1	+2	+3	+4
Cape LUK	LUK	+1	+2	+3	+4
Earring LUK	LUK	+1	+2	+3	+4
Overall Armor LUK	LUK	+1	+2	+3	+4
Gloves Magic Attack	Magic attack	+2	+4	+6	+8
Staff Magic Attack	Magic attack	+2	+4	+6	+8
Wand Magic Attack	Magic attack	+2	+4	+6	+8
Cape Magic Def.	Magic defence	+2	+4	+6	+8
Bottomwear HP	Max HP	+10	+15	+20	+25
Hat HP	Max HP	+10	+15	+20	+25
Topwear HP	Max HP	+10	+15	+20	+25
Bottomwear MP	Max MP	+10	+15	+20	+25
Hat MP	Max MP	+10	+15	+20	+25
Topwear MP	Max MP	+10	+15	+20	+25
Cape STR	STR	+1	+2	+3	+4
Earring STR	STR	+1	+2	+3	+4
Overall Armor STR	STR	+1	+2	+3	+4
Pet Equip Speed	Speed	+1	+2	+3	+4
Shoes Speed	Speed	+1	+2	+3	+4
Bow Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
Claw Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
Crossbow Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
Dagger Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
Gloves Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
One-Handed Axe Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
One-Handed Blunt Weapon Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
One-Handed Sword Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
Polearm Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
Spear Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
Two-handed Axe Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
Two-handed Blunt Weapon Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
Two-handed Sword Attack	Weapon attack	+1	+2	+3	+4
Bottomwear DEF	Weapon defence	+2	+4	+6	+8
Cape Weapon Def.	Weapon defence	+2	+4	+6	+8
Overall Armor DEF	Weapon defence	+2	+4	+6	+8
Shield DEF	Weapon defence	+2	+4	+6	+8
Topwear DEF	Weapon defence	+2	+4	+6	+8

What the files do not settle

Two details of the mechanic are not written down in the game data, and this article does not assume more than it can show.

• The destroy figure is stored as a plain 50 against the Chaos scrolls. Read the usual way, that is the chance of destruction given a failure, which is what the 45% above is calculated from. If it were instead a flat 50% chance on every use, the figures here would be worse rather than better.
• Whether a failed scroll also consumes an upgrade slot is not recorded anywhere in the client. The expected-gain figures above are per scroll spent, so they hold either way, but the total a piece of equipment can reach does depend on the answer.
• The client draws a small coloured flag on a scrolled item in the inventory, six of them, but nothing in the files says which flag an item earns. No piece of equipment carries a grade, quality or rank field anywhere in the data, only its slot count, so the game works it out as it draws. The wiki shows those flags on marketplace listings using a rule of its own, described below.

How the wiki grades a scrolled item

This grading is the wiki's, not the game's. The colours are the client's own, but the thresholds behind them are unknown until the game launches and they can be observed, so every flag is labelled as an estimate. Treat it as a rough guide to whether a listing is worth a second look, not as the figure the game would show.

The difficulty is that one item can carry scrolls from several families at once, so no single stat describes it, and the families are not on the same scale: a Chaos scroll grants 4 weapon attack but 25 MP. Adding the raw numbers would make a hat look six times luckier than a weapon for the same run of luck.

Instead each stat's gain above what the item was made with is divided by what a Chaos scroll grants for that stat. One successful Chaos scroll is then worth 1 whatever it granted, an Intermediate 0.5, a Lesser 0.25 and a failure nothing. Those are added together and divided by the item's slot count, which gives the fraction of the luckiest possible result, and that splits into six bands.

Two examples, both on a five-slot pair of Work Gloves:

• Five successful Chaos attack scrolls give +20 weapon attack, the most the slot can hold, and land in the top band. Five successful Chaos MP scrolls on a five-slot hat give +125 MP and land in the same band, which is the point of dividing by the grant.
• Two Chaos attack scrolls and two Intermediate crit rate scrolls, with the fifth slot spent on a failure, come to three scrolls of luck across five slots and land in the middle.

Only the part above the base counts. A bow is made with accuracy and a staff with magic attack, and neither is luck.

A listing that states no stats at all gets no flag, because saying nothing is not the same as saying the item is untouched.

See also

• Equipment
• Use items
• Damage formula