Hello, I’m Jaepamin, currently maining a Shadower

on the Bera server!

Today, I’ll be going over a MapleStory Union and Link skill order guide. If you plan to stick with Maple long-term, 유니온 is absolutely essential content that you should build as early as possible.

If you’re just getting into 유니온, it can feel overwhelming at first. You might not even know what it does yet, the board looks like Tetris, and it’s hard to tell which characters to level first. I’ll explain everything in a simple way, so hopefully this gives a lot of newer players a solid reference point. Let’s get started.

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1. Why Maple Union and Links matter

In MapleStory, 유니온 and 링크 are core systems that boost your character’s passive stats and overall combat power. For a 고스펙 player like me, just setting up 유니온 and 링크 can increase combat power by around 30 million.

As those bonuses stack up, leveling 부캐 gets much faster, and your damage ceiling goes higher too, so this is basically mandatory progression. In an MMORPG, tedious leveling is part of the content anyway, and if you push through it, the long-term payoff snowballs hard.

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2. MapleStory Union leveling order

1. Zero: Increased EXP gain

2. MapleStoryM: Increased Attack Power and Magic Attack

3. Night Lord, Marksman: Increased Critical Rate

4. Eunwol: Increased Critical Damage

5. Mercedes: Reduced skill cooldown

6. Mechanic: Increased buff duration

7. Wild Hunter: Chance to increase damage when attacking

8. Demon Avenger: Increased damage against bosses

9. Blaster: Ignore Defense buff

10. Phantom: Increased Meso gain

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Early on, it’s best to start with classes that boost EXP and damage. For MapleStoryM, you can just push it to 140 whenever there’s an event running. I marked the harder classes to level in bold purple, so use that as a guide.

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If possible, it’s best to get them to level 200, but if that’s too hard because your account is still lacking account-wide progression, level them to 140 first. After raising all 10 characters listed above, move on to classes that increase your main character’s main stat or additional 링크 skill characters.

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3. MapleStory Link skill order guide

For mobbing

1. Mercedes: Increased EXP gain

2. Evan: Increased Rune duration when activated

3. Hoyoung: Increased damage when attacking full-HP monsters

4. Ark, Illium, Lara: Damage increases the longer you keep mobbing

5. Demon Avenger, Khali: Increased base damage

6. Explorer Bowman, Phantom: Increased Critical Rate

7. Explorer Pirate, Xenon: Increased all stats

8. Cygnus Knights: Increased Attack Power and Magic Attack

9. Kinesis: Increased Critical Damage

10. Aran: Increased Combo Kill EXP

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Just like with 유니온, Mercedes is the number one priority for 링크 skills too. It gives almost cheat-level utility through cooldown reduction and bonus EXP, so I strongly recommend leveling it early if you can.

The class is definitely harder to level, but these days you can use Tera Link to basically cruise to 200, so it’s still very manageable.

For bosses

1. Angelic Buster: Activates a burst buff

2. Demon Slayer: Increased damage against bosses

3. Explorer Thief: Extra damage to enemies affected by status debuffs

4. Kain: Increased damage when conditions are met

5. Luminous: Ignore Defense buff

6. Ark: Damage increases the longer combat continues

7. Adele: Grants damage to party members including yourself, and increases boss damage in solo play

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For bossing 링크 priority, the order is Angelic Buster, Demon Slayer, then Explorer Thief. Most of the players reading this are probably 메린이.

Personally, I think it’s perfectly fine to place Demon Slayer a bit later in your priority list. Early on, you won’t be fighting endgame bosses anyway, and even if you stack boss damage, it’s hard to get efficient value out of it right away.

Because of that, you can first build up your 유니온 with easier Explorer Thief classes, then level Demon Slayer and Luminous afterward.

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4. Union placement (Tetris)

The characters you worked hard to level can strengthen passive stats through “Union Placement Mode”. Since every character has its own Tetris-like block shape, you used to have to place everything manually and think through each piece one by one~ but!

These days, there’s an auto-placement feature for 유니온, so the Tetris side of it is much more convenient. For your 유니온 setup, you can generally go with main stat + boss damage + Ignore Defense, or main stat + EXP + normal monster damage.

As the combined total levels of your leveled characters gets higher, the board expands, so let’s keep building it up together.

That wraps up this MapleStory Union and Link skill order guide. I’m glad to see MapleStory gaining momentum again. After this update, my personal goal is to reach 10,000 Union.

If you want to enjoy Maple more, try setting a clear target for yourself like I do. I hope this guide was helpful, and that’s it for today.