Ah yes, MapleStory… The good ol’ days of killing snails in Maple Island and shouting “S>18 ATT WG @@@@@@@@@@@” in the MapleStory Free Market. If this sounds familiar, you’re probably an old-school mapler (MapleStory player) like us!

Despite gaming being 'bad' for us (according to our parents at least), MapleStory (maple) has taught us some pretty important life lessons that you may not have noticed, especially when it comes to personal finance and investing.

Be it learning how to trade and make a profit in the free market, investing in gear to farm mesos more efficiently or finding friends for party quests and boss fights…

There are plenty of skills that we’ve picked up as maplers that have actually helped us later on in life with our personal finance.

Grinding levels: Education and upskilling

Although grinding could sometimes be a pain, levelling was always essential as it meant that you could get access to new skills, bonus stats and job advancements.

I remember struggling to job advance on my thief to attain the Flash Jump skill, after witnessing just how fast my assassin senpais (Japanese for seniors) could fly across the map while killing all the mobs in it.

At that time, it was peak efficient meso and level grinding compared to my character having to walk within range just to use Lucky Seven.

As I grew older, I realised that levelling in games taught me the basics of 'levelling up' in life too. When it comes to our careers, education and frequent upskilling are important to improve our income.

We all know that in our academic driven society, the certificate we hold unfortunately has a huge impact on our pay if you join a company. You could easily look up poly graduates' starting pay versus university graduates' starting pay and make that judgement for yourself.

For those of us who are already working, upskilling is important to make sure we stay relevant in our industries.

In the end, it is important for us to grind or 'hustle' as they say to become more efficient and earn more income.

Buying gear: Investing

That said, there’s not much point to having a large income and having a ton of cash sitting in our banks to earn a measly 0.05 per cent base interest.

In maple, we frequently use mesos to upgrade our gear to further improve our damage. This in turn leads to more mesos per hour and generates a return on our mesos invested.

Of course, some of us who love 'FashionStory' will use those mesos for cute cosmetics and other things. However, almost every mapler will upgrade their gears at some point.

The same can be said for personal finance. If you have spare cash sitting ducks in your bank account, it is recommended that you read up about investing.

That doesn’t mean that you should Yolo all your cash into risky investments like how some of my maple friends squander all their mesos to roll for a 22* equipment.

Rather, evaluate your risks and do your own due diligence (research) before making a decision. Like investing in gears, you can invest in stocks, ETFs, REITs and a whole lots of other investment products to generate a return on your spare cash.

Free Market trading: Investing and day trading

Were you a Free Market buyer/seller who knew all the ins and outs of generating a profit?

Or maybe you were a HeneHoe (mapler who idles in Henesys) who’s seen many people shout stuff like “S>18 ATT WG @@@@@@@@@@@” back in the old days of maple?

Either way, you would have learnt about trading through the Free Market, or the Auction House for those of us living in the more civilised age of Maple.

While playing maple over the years, I’ve seen various strategies used by people to turn a profit on items.

For example, some maplers would buy items in the wee hours of the morning when demand is lower and then sell it for profit in the evening when there’s a surge in demand.

Others might go for a long-term strategy by buying items such as cubes or even hoarding all the items available in the market at that time and then waiting for an event that will drive prices up.

As the years go by, maplers experienced meso inflation. Yes, even games can’t escape inflation!

As such, many long term maplers either tried to beat inflation by trading for profit or farming mesos at higher-level areas.

It’s easy to draw similarities between the Free Market/Auction House to how the stock market works.

If you were flipping in-game items for profit during the day, you would essentially have experienced what it’s like to be a day trader.

On the flip side, if you had held onto items and waited for a price increase before selling, you would have had a strategy that is similar to buying and holding a stock long-term.

Investing in the stock market doesn’t seem all too intimidating now when we relate it to MapleStory right? If you were a successful mapler trader then, you would already have a head start over your peers!

Union/Link Skill system: Dividend investing

As the updates came along, MapleStory introduced the Link Skill system and Union system. Some of you might also have remembered the character card and part-time job system which has since been replaced by Union.

In essence, these systems encouraged players to level up multiple characters for bonus effects such as more boss damage, attack and so on. The Union system also allowed maplers to have AI control their characters to fight a boss monster and generate Union coins.

While it can be tedious to level multiple characters one by one, the effects and additional stats attained were permanent once the minimum level was achieved.

Levelling characters and placing them in the Union system also allowed for a passive way to generate Union coins, which could buy cubes, scrolls and other in-game items.

If you like the idea of passive income, you might be familiar with the term 'dividend investing'.

In order to enjoy passive income, however, you’ll have to put in the initial effort of doing research on the investment vehicles you are interested in…

just like the grind you’ll have to go through when levelling multiple characters in maple.

Scamming

Unfortunately, no matter whether you are in the digital or physical world, scammers will always be present. In maple, you’ll have people who will scam you of your hard-earned money, items and mesos, even when MapleStory used to be a very friendly and community-driven game.

If you’ve been scammed in a game like maple before, you’re definitely much more cautious when accepting trade requests from other people or people who seem too nice for no reason.

Likewise, we need to be increasingly cautious about scams in the real world too. Recently, we’ve seen the infamous OCBC phishing scam where even IT-savvy people fell prey to scammers.

Needless to say, it’s important for all of us to be vigilant and take some preventive measures by reading up the types of scams out there and the telltale signs.

Party Quests/Bossing: Joining a community

On the bright side, maple has been a welcoming community for many of us where we could team up with friends, guildmates and even random strangers to take down bosses and do Party Quests (PQs).

Some of us were even lucky enough to have friends who hard-carried us through tough bosses and shared the loots with us.

Similarly, it is great to have a community of like-minded individuals in your personal finance journey.

Whether you are interested in stocks, budgeting, saving hacks, or even adulting, making friends and finding mentors will enable you to learn faster and help others too.

Afterthought

MapleStory has certainly has taught us plenty about personal finance even if you may not have realised it till now.

In fact, plenty of other games such as RuneScape, Dragon’s Nest and WoW also have similar in-game economies and systems that taught us the basics of finance and economics.

So for those of us who are still hesitant about stepping foot into the world of investments and personal finances, don’t be afraid as you may already have gained some knowledge from MapleStory or other games!

READ ALSO: 3 reasons why rising household income is not making Singaporeans happier

This article was first published in Seedly.