Hello.

This time, the keyword is International Day for Biological Diversity, and the goal is to put together a personal field guide to the many lifeforms that can be found across Nexon games.

MapleStory, in particular, is a game where regions built around very different settings and worldviews are all intertwined, so it contains an astonishing range of creatures. Humans, elves, fairies, Anima, demonkind, beastfolk such as pandas, seals, and wolves, aliens, demons, undead, dragons, Hobs, Yetis, half-human and half-beast races, mushrooms, and more... it features just about every kind of lifeform one would expect to encounter in a fantasy world, to the point that it really can be called a treasure trove of diversity.

With that in mind, I found myself wondering what kind of framework would work best, and the answer that came to me was the World Archive from The Seed, the undersea tower. The Seed is an ark created by the Transcendent of Life, and because a wide variety of organisms exist within the tower as well, I used that material as a foundation and added extra notes wherever I felt further explanation would be helpful. Since many players have never actually played The Seed, I think this may also feel fairly fresh.

A List of Creatures Chosen by the Transcendent of Life

As mentioned above, The Seed is an enormous ark created by Alicia, who was the Transcendent of Life at the time, in order to preserve creatures driven to the brink of extinction by the Black Mage. For that reason, the various lifeforms and environments Alicia selected and brought aboard are still preserved within The Seed.

Because it was created such a long time ago, many of the creatures found inside no longer exist in the present-day Maple World. The construction date of The Seed was revised from 800 years to several hundred years when it moved from the test server to the live server, and even without a perfectly precise number, several hundred years is still an immense stretch of time, so any monsters inside The Seed that can still also be found outside the tower have, in a sense, survived extraordinarily well.

Humans, meanwhile, were never creatures Alicia had in mind in the first place, so they do not exist in The Seed by design, though depending on the circumstances they may still have entered it. If you watch the Snowfield Minstrel episode in the Dimensional Library, you can confirm the relevant details there.

From here on, for the archive entries, I have added related notes wherever an item felt like it would benefit from supplementary information tied to the investigation records.

The Seed World Archive: Monsters

These are the ancient Slimes that appear with the Henesys backdrop. It is genuinely striking to think that they were once said to have flourished as much as Orange Mushrooms.

The archive describes them as being overwhelmingly larger than the Slimes we know today, and since the images above show their sprite size exactly as it appears in-game, that description feels entirely apt.

These are Hector and White Fang, shown with the El Nath backdrop. There is no real difference from the versions most players already know. One of the distinctive traits of The Seed's World Archive is that monsters like these, which also exist outside the tower, can still be registered separately here. I considered attaching the World Archive entries for the original monsters as well, but since they are almost identical to the ones above, I left them out.

These are ancient turtles that appear against the Deep Forest of Minar backdrop. The turtle eggs mentioned here are the items Alicia's thought asks you to bring as the condition for clearing Floor 3, and she likes them so much that the required number was 3,000 at launch and is still 1,000 now.

This is the information referenced here regarding Breston.

Although it looks the same as the King Slime outside the tower, here it is described as nothing more than a mass of Slimes gathered together. If you go by monster defeat count alone, one King Slime is equivalent to 30 normal Slimes clumped into one body. The King Slime that appears in First Accompaniment, the Kerning City Party Quest, originally came into being because Lakelis of Kerning City dumped growth stimulant into the sewers.

As the description shows, Perion at the time was a land where volcanoes periodically burst up from the ground.

Since it is described as having presumably lived outside the tower as well, it appears to be the only one among The Seed's bosses that was not created by Alicia, but was instead a creature that once inhabited Victoria Island.

The line about deflecting all attacks refers to an attack reflection pattern, but since that pattern has now been removed, it seems likely that the Giant Spider no longer uses it either.

The baby spiders that appear if you fail to break the cocoon are quite cute. Several of them come out at once.

The White Thorn Bear is one of the creatures that appears with notable prominence in the Dimensional Library.

These could once be seen at Florina Beach, but because that entire region was removed, they can now only be found inside The Seed, just as the archive record states. A similar case is Lupin, though even Lupin can no longer be encountered there as an actual monster and now only appears as a banana-throwing obstacle on an obstacle map.

If the oiling succeeds, all attacks are converted into instant-death damage.

The lion's Courage Gauge can be lowered using the fear amplification device placed on the map.

The explanation and appearance of the Fairies found in Maple World are as follows.

It is described as cute, and even its attack animation is, frankly, pretty adorable.

This is how its size compares to a standard Slime.

This is what its hide looks like. Personally, I expected at least some explanation for the black creatures perched above its head, so it was a little disappointing that none was given at all.

The scarecrow takes a fixed 10 damage from normal attacks, and as noted in the archive record, it can be lured into the fire at the center of the map and burned to death.

This used to be the greatest obstacle for players attempting Monster Collection.

It may look human, but it is not actually human.

The Seed World Archive: NPCs

Below is the list of NPCs in The Seed World Archive. These figures are unrelated to the tower's original function as an ark, and the humans among them are all explorers summoned by Alicia's thought in order to seek help.

Alicia's true body is, at this point, effectively dead, so this does carry a certain significance in its own way, but for that very reason she has also become a character who is difficult to bring into the main story proper.

As for the Suspicious Artifact, it is not even an item players can obtain in-game, and aside from Fleta it is never mentioned at all.

Here, “incur her displeasure” refers to the dialogue option, “Hey! How am I supposed to guess that!”, and if you choose it, you are immediately sent back to the lobby regardless of how much time remains.

Thank you for reading.