In Maplestory M, star force enhancements is one of the many ways to upgrade your equipment. Of course, these enhancements cost resources in terms of mesos. But, since each level of enhancement has different meso costs, and different probabilities of success—not to mention that there are three different ways an enhancement could fail—it can be difficult to determine what the real cost of a star force enhancement is.
| Target SF | Cost | Success | Maintain | Degrade | Destroy |
| 1 | 10,000 | 100% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| 2 | 15,000 | 95% | 5% | 0% | 0% |
| 3 | 20,000 | 90% | 10% | 0% | 0% |
| 4 | 55,000 | 85% | 15% | 0% | 0% |
| 5 | 100,000 | 80% | 20% | 0% | 0% |
| 6 | 200,000 | 75% | 25% | 0% | 0% |
| 7 | 300,000 | 70% | 30% | 0% | 0% |
| 8 | 400,000 | 65% | 35% | 0% | 0% |
| 9 | 600,000 | 60% | 40% | 0% | 0% |
| 10 | 800,000 | 55% | 45% | 0% | 0% |
| 11 | 1,000,000 | 50% | 35% | 10% | 5% |
| 12 | 1,400,000 | 45% | 40% | 10% | 5% |
| 13 | 1,800,000 | 40% | 40% | 15% | 5% |
| 14 | 2,200,000 | 35% | 45% | 15% | 5% |
| 15 | 2,600,000 | 30% | 45% | 20% | 5% |
| 16 | 3,000,000 | 25% | 50% | 20% | 5% |
| 17 | 3,500,000 | 20% | 50% | 25% | 5% |
| 18 | 4,000,000 | 15% | 55% | 25% | 5% |
| 19 | 4,500,000 | 10% | 55% | 30% | 5% |
| 20 | 5,000,000 | 5% | 60% | 30% | 5% |
| 21 | 6,000,000 | 1% | 49% | 40% | 10% |
| 22 | 7,000,000 | 1% | 49% | 40% | 10% |
| 23 | 8,000,000 | 1% | 49% | 40% | 10% |
| 24 | 9,000,000 | 1% | 49% | 40% | 10% |
| 25 | 10,000,000 | 1% | 49% | 40% | 10% |
| 26 | 11,800,000 | 1% | 39% | 45% | 15% |
| 27 | 14,900,000 | 1% | 39% | 45% | 15% |
| 28 | 18,000,000 | 1% | 39% | 45% | 15% |
| 29 | 21,100,000 | 1% | 39% | 45% | 15% |
| 30 | 24,200,000 | 1% | 39% | 45% | 15% |
But, this table1 only shows you the cost from one enhancement level to another, not the estimated total cost of reaching that enhancement level.
Why should you care how much total cost it takes to reach a certain star force level? For one, it helps you budget your resources. Mesos are after all an important currency in Maplestory M, and you could doing doing many other things with them. Another important use is to judge the value of equipment at the trade station, so you don’t risk paying too much for a starforce-enhanced equipment.
To answer this question, we repeatedly simulate the star force enhancement, and take the average cost needed to reach a certain enhancement level. When an equipment is destroyed in enhancement, you need to obtain another one of the same type and rank to ‘fix’ it. Once fixed, you can continue enhancing the equipment, resuming from the same enhancement level.2 So, for target starforce levels beyond 10, we’ll also have to consider the average number of equipment used.
| Target Starforce Level | Average Meso Cost | Average Equipment Used |
| 1 | 10,000 | 1 |
| 2 | 25,788 | 1 |
| 3 | 48,046 | 1 |
| 4 | 112,819 | 1 |
| 5 | 237,598 | 1 |
| 6 | 504,212 | 1 |
| 7 | 932,510 | 1 |
| 8 | 1,544,843 | 1 |
| 9 | 2,546,917 | 1 |
| 10 | 4,005,277 | 1.10 |
| 11 | 6,311,423 | 1.23 |
| 12 | 9,921,744 | 1.41 |
| 13 | 15,746,601 | 1.41 |
| 14 | 24,549,434 | 1.62 |
| 15 | 38,968,670 | 1.93 |
| 16 | 62,766,482 | 2.39 |
| 17 | 109,856,911 | 3.20 |
| 18 | 214,599,874 | 4.88 |
| 19 | 574,454,726 | 10.44 |
| 20 | 2,847,314,794 | 44.98 |
| 21 | 93,094,218,206 | 1,417.32 |
Based on 100,000 simulated enhancements, the average meso cost to reach a maximum star force enhancement level of 15 is about 39 million mesos using 2 pieces of equipment; while a star force enhancement level of 20 requires a whooping average of almost 3 billion mesos and 45 pieces of equipement.3 But this is of course ignoring the use of scrolls, discounts, and other cash or event items.
Want to try your hand at the simulation yourself? Here’s the program used to produce the results above.
1. From reddit user /u/MapleStoryM_SEA_CM‘s post here (August 2018).
2. Thanks to reddit users /u/hehe6 and /u/serge462 for the corrections!
3. The estimates don’t go further than this because getting beyond SF21 is so unlikely that the simulation takes way too long to finish ‘enhancing’ to that point.
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