This post was created as part of Nexon's PEAK activities.

Hello.

Online games offer a wide range of achievements, and MapleStory is no exception. It has a dedicated achievement menu covering a remarkable variety of activities. There are achievements to earn in virtually every part of the game, from hunting and boss battles to professions, events, and character styling.

In this post, I want to share the achievement that was both the hardest and the most meaningful for me to earn.

My Hardest—and Proudest—Achievement

Of all the achievements I have earned, this one stands out as the hardest and most meaningful. It never felt like something I was forcing myself to do. At the time, it was essentially my main goal in MapleStory, and I remember working hard toward it. The achievement's name also carries meaning in The Wizard of Oz, the film that inspired this content, which made earning it feel all the more special.

The Tower of Oz has largely been forgotten now, and many players who joined after I did may not even know what it involves. It is a dungeon with 45 stages, excluding rest areas, and earning this achievement requires defeating its final boss 500 times.

You can still access it through the Special Content: Competitive tab in the Maple Guide. It used to be quite popular because special skill rings were available exclusively here, rather than as boss drops.

Those rewards have since been removed, and its design no longer fits the current MapleStory meta, leaving it barely active. These days, players mainly visit for the World Archive and Monster Collection.

Even for an experienced player, reaching floor 50 of the Tower of Oz generally took 40–45 minutes per run, so the time commitment alone was considerable. The biggest obstacles, though, were floor 43, where “everything depended on luck,” and floor 48, which you may have heard described as “the map where every platform is invisible.”

Floor 43 asked questions about what had happened during your run up to that point, so taking notes and recording video were essential. That would have been manageable if those preparations guaranteed you could get through. The problem was a question asking how many Black Flower Golems you had defeated on floor 11.

As you can see, Black Flower Golems and Flower Golems appear together on that map. Even with a recording, it was practically impossible to count how many of each you had defeated, so all you could do was hope that question would not come up. There was no option to switch to another question. If it appeared, you simply had to leave.

The only guaranteed solution was to form a party, have another player defeat them for you, and enter 0 as your answer. This led to players taking turns helping one another. Even that was difficult, though, since few players were attempting floor 50. The floor was later replaced with the obstacle map it is today.

Floor 48, where every platform is invisible, is one you may have heard about in stories that sound almost like horror stories. It has 3 levels, and you had to escort an NPC all the way to the top. That meant memorizing both the timing and the position of every platform.

Once you had memorized the stage, however, you were guaranteed to clear it as long as you made no mistakes. Perhaps surprisingly, that made it fairer and more forgiving than floor 43.

If you would like to practice now, the simulation in MapleStory Worlds can be a great help in memorizing the map. The most effective way to practice the actual stage is to leave a character on floor 45 in the live game, then copy that character to the Test World. Your key bindings now transfer automatically too, making the process quite convenient.

Honestly, it is hard to recommend this content for practical reasons today. Still, if you are looking for a challenge with varied stages and mechanics, I think it is worth completing once just for the enjoyment of it.

Tower of Oz Achievement Requirements and Completion Rates

I was also curious about the completion rates for achievements tied to clearing the Tower of Oz, so I checked the figures as of 10/21.

Achievement Name	Requirement	Completion Rate
Where Is the Giant Spider?	Clear floor 10 of the Tower of Oz	7.71%
I Think Oiling Up Is Unfair	Clear floor 20 of the Tower of Oz	3.14%
Feel the Fear!	Clear floor 30 of the Tower of Oz	2.15%
Burn! Burn Bright!	Clear floor 40 of the Tower of Oz	2.01%
So You Made It This Far	Defeat Dorothy 1 time (floor 50)	0.26%
Ungrateful Young Lady	Defeat Dorothy 5 times	0.06%
I will find you and…	Defeat Dorothy 10 times	0.04%
Tower of Oz Conqueror	Defeat Dorothy 100 times	Less than 0.01%
Over the Rainbow	Defeat Dorothy 500 times	Less than 0.01%

Thank you for reading.