DA POTENTIAL SYSTEM GUiDE

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GUIDE ON DAT POTENTIAL SYSTEM
Concerning all aspects regarding the system.

[big wall of text introduction][/big wall of text introduction]

Terms:
Pot - Short for potential, ie the potential on an item, or "pot scroll", etc.
EE - Equipment Enhancement scroll, AEE is the same with an "Advanced" before it.
Tier X - What level range the equipment falls into. Explained later on.
Cube - Miracle Cube. Explained later on. Also PMC, premium miracle cube. Also explained later on.
%STAT - Any one of %INT, %LUK, %DEX or %STR

Introduction to potentials

What is the potential system?
It's basically a system that allows your items to have extra stats or features that affect you in addition to any scrolling you do.

How can I get potential on my item, and how does it work?
There are three ways to obtain pot stats on your item.

1. Find an equip dropped from a monster with hidden pot.
2. Via Professions (Smithing, Crafting or Alchemy); scroll down to the spoiler.
3. Use a pot scroll on an equip to give it a hidden pot.

The latter is much easier to do. Once you do obtain a hidden pot, it will have a red frame like so:

Once you have the red frame, you use a magnifying glass on it to "reveal" the pot stats on it.

These can be bought from most (if not all) Potion selling NPCs.

Prices for Magnifying Glasses:
Basic - 2k mesos; Reveals anything in tier 1.
Average 8k mesos; Reveals anything in tier 1 or 2.
Advance 32k mesos; Reveals anything which has a level requirement of 0~120.
Premium 128k mesos; Reveals all items.

Hold on a sec! What's a tier??
The tier of the item is based completely on the item's level requirement. The tier will indicate how "good" or "strong" the potential can be on an item.
Tier 1 - Level req. 1~30
Tier 2 - Level req. 31~70
Tier 3 - Level req. 71+

gMS has removed Tier4 with Chaos. Tier 3 is now 71~200.

So what do the tiers do?
They indicate what sort of stats will appear on your item.

Take, for example, a tier 3 armor, say a top with a level 80 requirement, vs a tier 2 armor, a top from the same class but a level 70 requirement.
You reveal both and they are both Rare. Let's say you obtained %LUK on both of them.

The tier 3 top will have 3% LUK and the tier 2 top will only have 2% LUK.

In short, on one line, you can have:
Tier 1: 1%,2%,3%,4%STAT
Tier 2: 2%,4%,6%,9%STAT
Tier 3: 3%,6%,9%,12%STAT

For weapons it's a little bit different because you can obtain better potentials for your damage, for example, %Damage or %Attack. These adhere to the same rules as %STAT.
You cannot get anything that's not on that list, including the old 4th tier potentials in gMS.

Lines?? Weapons? RARE UNIQUE WHAT
Long explanation, WALL OF TEXT.

Spoiler!

Lines: The maximum number of lines of potential an item can have is 3. The minimum is 2. You can increase the number of lines ONLY with Premium Miracle Cubes, and it is NOT guaranteed. Note that Legendary Rank items cannot be cubed with PMCs, and thus you cannot increase their lines.

Rarity: The order from least to greatest is Rare -> Epic -> Unique -> Legendary.
Legendary Items can achieve the highest stats on the potential lines, but require Cubes that cost 1.8k NX rather than 1.2k NX. These are called "Super Miracle Cubes" (SMCs), and, while they can be used on any rarity, the regular Cubes cannot be used on Legendary rank items. Note this also applies for Premium Miracle Cubes, so make sure you make your end-game item 3-line before trying to obtain Legendary tier.

It is extremely hard and not-worth-your-money to try to get 3 Legendary lines; it is (theoretically) possible, but just never happens. Most of the time you will settle for one Legendary line and 1 Unique line (21% at tier 3), though occasionally you'll see 1 Legendary and 2 Unique lines (30%@Tier3). If you're not planning to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on this game, I highly recommend you leave your items at Unique; getting to Legendary rank on any item is rather unreliable from what I've seen on other forums.

Regular Miracle Cubes (Cubing): cubes reset the potential of any item that is Unique rank or lower back to hidden. This means you can "reveal" it again, and it will have different potential stats. Regular cubes do not increase the number of lines an item has. If it has 2 lines, it will always have 2 lines as long as you cube with regular cubes. Upon reveal, it is possible your item will go up in rarity (up to Unique only!), but it is not possible to go down. Therefore, an Unique item will always be an unique item using these cubes.

Premium Miracle Cubes: These work exactly like the regular ones, but have a 25% chance at adding another line on 2 line items. There is discrepancy as to whether they increase the rarity of the item more often than regular cubes, but it is, as of now, unconfirmed.

Super Miracle Cubes: SMCs can be used the same way as regular cubes, on any potentialed item; they reset the potential the same way. The difference is that there is a (low) chance to get your item to Legendary rank (the highest rank), which will mean you can obtain some really nice stats on there. The downside is that you cannot use any other type of cube on Legendary items. Yes, once Legendary, you can ONLY use SMCs on the item to change its potential. These cubes are supposed to raise the rank of your item at a higher rate than regular Cubes, but it's unconfirmed because of the horrible RNG that Maplestory uses.

Equipment Enhancement: These scrolls have a chance to add random stats to your item, as long as the item has 0 slots. This means you can use EEs when you have 0 slots Unhammered, 1 hammered, or hammered twice.

The chance for it to work decreases as you use more of them on the same item.
If it fails, the item is guaranteed to blow up. You can prevent the explosion with a Shielding Ward, which is available occasionally (11k nx per though).
Regular EE scrolls start at an 80% success rate and decrease by 10% for every success.
Advanced EE scrolls start at a 100% success rate and decrease by 10% for every success.

Most people will not use these on Armor or Accessories as they have a notorious reputation for breaking things; however, they will use them very commonly on weapons, because they guarantee to add attack on weapons.

EEs add more attack as the attack of the weapon increases. I believe if the weapon has an attack from 100~149 an EE will add 3 ATT, from 150~199 it will add 4 ATT. 99 and below will only gain 2 attack from EEs, while weapons with 200+ ATT (yes, this is possible) will gain a whopping 5 ATT from every star added. This also applies to Magic Attack, scaling exactly the same.

Note that the stats added by EEs on other equips (EXCEPT GLOVES) are +STAT, HP, MP and the like, never ATT (to my knowledge). Gloves, on extremely rare occasions, have been known to gain attack through EE scrolls.

Maker, Alchemy, and such.

Spoiler!

With the new maker system (featuring Smithing, Jewelry Crafting and Alchemy), it's now possible to obtain hidden pots on your items at a low rate. This rate is similar to that of hidden pots on dropped equips; very damn low.

All three "crafting" professions can obtain pot. Here's how;

SMITHING
Simply make any item; the item will have a chance to have a hidden pot. The stats are also random (like you would get in a drop), so be wary of that as well.

JEWELRY CRAFTING
Most Accessory CANNOT obtain pot; the only accessories that can randomly come out with pot at this time are all earrings and certain other accessories that have slots. The vast majority of accessories that can be crafted CANNOT obtain pot; note if the item has slots or not and plan accordingly. Again, obtaining pot on earrings is quite rare.

ALCHEMY
Now here's a strange one. The only way you can create hidden pot items in this profession is by fusing. This technique lets you mix together two of the same item with a few Alchemy Stones to create another one of the same item. Two non-potted items can make a potted item; one potted, one non-potted has a slightly higher chance to, and two potted items will (almost) always come out hidden pot. This means if you have two items with bad potentials and you don't have the means to cube, you can fuse them to reset the pot (in a roundabout way). Very useful indeed!

Final words
The tier you should aim for with all your items is tier 3. It's currently the highest tier for all equipment, and are also coincidentally the easiest to find. Having tier 3 gear means that you can cube to your heart's content and not have to worry about "mediocre" stats.
Note that some equips, depending on your server, may or may not have an equip of that slot in tier 3; for instance, as I write this, gMS doesn't have an eye accessory that has a level requirement over 71 (Spectrum Goggles are level req 70 and are therefore 2nd tier). They do now; Kenta's PQ gives an untradeable eye accessory that has a level requirement of 80.

Post questions if needed. Please don't ask stupid things I've already explained.