Last Updated on by Samuel Franklin
MapleStory Legion Guide – Ranks, Grid, Effects & Coins
This MapleStory Legion guide breaks down this important progression system with the effects, grid bonuses, ranks, coins and raid mechanic covered. Also known as Maple Union on some servers this system was first introduced in early January 2017 to KMS replacing the character card system that was previously in place. For many wanting to fight the mid to late game bosses that MapleStory offers like Chaos Root Abyss (CRA), Lotus and Damien reaching high Legion ranks (6k or above) is a critical step due to the powerful stats of IED, Boss Damage and Critical Damage on offer.
Similar to the old character card system the intent of Legion is also to encourage players to play other characters by rewarding them with passive benefits to all of their other characters. The Legion system also has a coin based system that players can spend on key important account boosting items with both passive and active methods for earning these Legion coins.
In this MapleStory Legion guide you’ll learn the basic overview, how the grid works, Legion character pieces and ranks, the best Legion effects and how to earn Legion coins.
Table of Contents:
– Overview
– Legion Grid Bonuses
– Legion Character Pieces
– Best Legion Effects
– Legion Coins & Coin Shop
MapleStory Legion Overview
Legion is a diverse MapleStory system with many mechanics that can make it confusing on first introduction. The basics of the system are included below with further detail available in the respective guide sections of this page.
- The Legion system is unlocked via a quest from Dame Appropriation (available in most towns) once you have a cumulative 500 levels on a single server. In order to contribute to this 500 requirement characters must be at least level 60 with a second job advancement (level 130 for Zero). Once unlocked you can access the Legion through the game menus.
- Each character that reaches this minimum level can contribute to your MapleStory Legion. This contribution includes generating passive Legion coins overtime, providing you a piece to place on the Legion grid for passive stats that you select and giving you fixed passive stats based on their specific class in MapleStory.
- Higher level characters and StarForce on equipment that is equipped by each character impact on the amount of passive Legion coins generated.
- Higher level characters boost their rank from B, A, S, SS and SSS which boosts the size of Legion grid pieces and the fixed class specific passive stats they provide.
- As your Legion rank grows (based on cumulative levels and Legion coins) you can have more active characters up to the maximum.
- Legion coins can be spent at Squire Pancho Sanza for a number of useful items that have weekly caps or in upgrading your rank noted above.
- Players can complete two daily quests from Dame Appropriation to gain additional MapleStory Legion coins.
MapleStory Legion Grid Bonuses
The Legion grid is the heart of the Legion system and the inner grid is unlocked as soon as you reach the minimum requirements to unlock the system. the outer grid first unlocks at 2k total Legion levels and is only fully available once players reach the elusive 6k Legion and pay the necessary Legion coins to upgrade their rank to Heroic Legion 2.
Unlocking the Legion grid is just the first step though and in order to actually obtain any stat benefit players need to place character pieces onto the grid. The more grid squares covered by character pieces the higher stats you’ll receive passively for your MapleStory characters.
The inner grid has 25 squares per stat as follows:
- Stat (STR,DEX, INT, LUK) – 5 per grid square
- Attack/Magic Attack – 1 per grid square
- HP/MP – 250 per grid square
Each outer grid area has 40 squares per stat and is as follows:
- Bonus Experience – 0.25% per grid square
- Critical Rate – 1% per grid square
- Boss Damage – 1% per grid square
- Knockback Resistance – 1% per grid square
- Buff Duration – 1% per grid square
- Ignore DEF – 1% per grid square
- Critical Damage – 0.5% per grid square
- Abnormal Status Resistance – 1% per grid square
Players can not just simply place pieces in the outer squares though as you are only allowed to place your first piece in the middle 4 squares and all your pieces from this point must be connected together either horizontally or vertically. Accordingly, the most common setup for grid bonuses to setup the bottom 4 inner grids left to right to be Attack or Magic Attack (depending on your class), your secondary stat, HP and then your main stat. This ensures that the bulk of your grid effects are set to your required attack type and main stat as you build horizontally towards the outer grid. Archers are a favourite in the Legion for this as their long horizontal pieces can be used to achieve the setup noted above.
Once reaching the outer grid the majority of character builds will be focusing on Ignore Defence, Boss Damage, Critical Damage and Critical Rate. Players can also setup a Legion preset for bonus experience and critical to activate while training.
Determining these setups can be a daunting task but there is a community developed Legion Solver to assist with this and worth using as your Legion grows over time to ensure you have as little unnecessary overhanging pieces into non wanted stats as possible.
MapleStory Legion Character Pieces
The Legion character pieces size and shape available to you varies based on the archetype of each class and their level. Each character level corresponds with a Legion rank that applies to Legion pieces and passive Legion character effects as follows:
- Level 60 (130 Zero) – Rank B
- Level 100 (160 Zero) – Rank A
- Level 140 (180 Zero) – Rank S
- Level 200 (200 Zero) – Rank SS
- Level 250 (250 Zero) – Rank SSS
Each piece is the following shape at the various ranks and character archetype:
The Lab Server Legion block comes from a 2018 MapleStory event and has not been repeated since, it is unlikely to return which leaves many without access to the powerful legion effect it provides.
MapleStory Best Legion Effects
In addition to the grid stats from placing each piece on the Legion grid your characters offer their own member Legion effects based on their specific class and the same Rank B to SSS. The best Legion effects that players will want to prioritise are listed below with many of these also having some of the best Link Skills that make them even more valuable. While reaching Rank SSS can be a significant investment reaching Rank S (level 140) ties in nicely to obtaining Link Skills (level 120) and can easily be done through daily Zakum bossing with minimal effort slowly overtime.
Zero: A great early addition to your MapleStory Legion with a boost to experience gained that can assist in future Legion and general account progression.
Mechanic: Offering the rare buff duration statistic this can be a quality of life improvement while also boosting your training speeds and boss safety by requiring less rebuffing of your character.
Hayato/Shade: These offer deadly Critical Damage and should be prioritised accordingly for both boss fighting and regular training. Note that Jett (a global MapleStory class retired in mid 2023 also offered this Legion effect).
Demon Avenger/Kanna: Both already popular classes for their damage boost through Link Skills their attractiveness continues with their Legion Boss Damage boost and thus worth having in your grid for boss orientated players.
Phantom: Ideal for Reboot players due to the boost in Meso that this offers and can significantly add up over 100s of hours of Meso farming.
A full list of Legion effects is available on the MapleStory wiki.
MapleStory Legion Coins and Coin Shop
Legion coins add an element of regular choice to the Legion system with a Legion coin shop that sells various strong consumable items. These coins are shared across all your characters and shown within the Legion coin shop window.
How To Earn Legion Coins:
- Passive: As your active Legion characters fight in the Legion raid you’ll generate coins. By dealing damage to the large dragon they will generate coins up to a cap. If you’re wondering how to collect Legion Coins players must start a Legion raid to collect these coins (recommended to do this after accepting the daily quests).
- Active: If players want to earn additional coins they can enter the Legion raid and attack the dragon themselves. These active coins are limited and when the maximum daily amount is obtained a shield will appear to protect the dragon. Given the time involved to earn this I do not recommend doing this regularly unless you are only a few coins short of an important item or rank upgrade.
- Daily Quests: Every day players can accept two quests from Dame Appropriation which are both done during a Legion raid. These quests require players to kill 100 Dragon Whelps (10 Legion coin reward) and 20 Golden Wyvern (20 Legion coin reward).
Legion Coin Shop
Squire Pancho Sanza provides access to the MapleStory Legion coin shop which resets weekly. Each item has a weekly cap that limits the number that players can purchase each week. The shop includes Legion buffs to damage, experience, drop rate and Meso drop, clean slate scrolls, epic potential scrolls, potential stamps, cubes flames, Meso boxes, growth potions, legion preset coupons, potential scrolls, bonus potential scrolls and arcane catalysts.
While your best purchase needs will depend on your current progression and goals purchasing the Legion Expertise (experience gain) is a fantastic boost to your training efficiency. Luck and Wealth are also viable ways to maximise your Arcane River drops or boost Reboot Meso rates.
