The Perfect Corsair - Corsair Guide by Intensity

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Hello! Due to getting many questions on the workings of a Corsair and how to play one exactly, I decided to make a guide to try and help answer some common questions.

As for myself, my IGN is Intensity. I’m currently a 18x Corsair on MapleRoyals. In addition to this, I played Corsair on GMS before Big Bang up until level 15x and then continued to 200 post-Big Bang around 2011, before the level cap was raised to 250.

The way I play Corsair may not be the exact same as everyone else, so feel free to leave any suggestions that you may have! I’ll be sure to take everything into consideration and I’m always open to new methods of playing my favorite class!

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Foreword
2. Pros/Cons and Class Comparisons
3. AP Build
4. 1st Job Skill Build
5. 2nd Job Skill Build
6. 3rd Job Skill Build
7. 4th Job Skill Build
8. 4th Job Skill Quests/Book Locations
9. Battleship Mechanics
10. HP Washing
11. Corsair Bossing!
12. Recommended Equipment
13. Damage Formulae and Useful Knowledge
14. Tips and Tricks
15. Training Locations
16. Thanks and Acknowledgements

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Introduction and Foreword

The journey of a Corsair is long and hard, it however has one of the biggest payouts in terms of damage during 4th job. This means that you must prepare yourself for one of the longest and most difficult paths to 120 out there, with extremely lackluster damage and mobbing abilities. If you’re not leeching, expect to be sitting down at Newties for hours on end.

Despite the struggle, however, they are one of the best representations of the “ugly duckling” archetype. After the hard road up there, they begin to shine in 4th job.

Corsairs are a ranged DPS class. This means they deal high amounts of damage to one enemy at a time. They even have a skill called “Bullseye” that enhances the amount of damage they do to a single monster by 20%. I’ll go into depth on the skills later on in this guide.

Being the epitome of a “selfish class”, Corsairs have absolutely 0party buffs; there is, however, something that makes them highly wanted for bossing parties: Pure, raw damage. A Corsair’s DPS is top tier and not many classes can compare to it. A Corsair is also a very situational class at first. It takes a lot more to learn than just pressing the same button repeatedly. Their damage is highly reliant on their Battleship, which I’ll go into detail about below.

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Pros/Cons and Class Comparisons


Pros

1. Extremely high DPS
2. DPS is dependent on being on your Battleship
3. More active in paying attention to boss fights than any other class
4. Does not require massive amounts of funding to be strong
5. Benefits from almost every single party buff

Cons

1. Has absolutely no party buff to contribute to the party
2. DPS depends on being on your Battleship
3. Leveling before 120 is hard and leveling post 120 is based upon bossing
4. More active in paying attention to boss fights than any other class
5. Low health

The most obvious classes that compare to a Corsair are Bowmasters and Night Lords. All three of the classes are a form of ranged DPS class with high damage output.
Bowmasters don’t have quite the same amount of similarities to Corsairs as Night Lords do, but the two classes are close enough that I’ll still explain the comparison.

Bowmasters are a form of supportive DPS, and with equal gear and funding a Bowmaster will do less damage than both a Night Lord and a Corsair.

In exchange of the damage they lose, they gain one of the best party skills in the game. Bowmasters get Sharp Eyes (often abbreviated to ‘SE’), which allows everyone in the party to hit critical Strikes (Corsairs + Night Lords love this buff).

In my opinion, they’re more of a supportive DPS. They’re a class that brings a sizeable amount of damage, while also being extremely useful to the party.


Night Lords are the most similar to Corsairs. The damage provided by both classes is strong, and both will always be the best bossing candidates for a party that needs damage output. As a general rule, Corsairs are much less dependent on a party than night lords are. If a Night Lord doesn’t have Sharp Eyes, their damage is much less effective and the class feels a lot weaker.

Night Lords also receive more damage from attack pots, such as an Onyx Apple or Heartstopper, due to the multiplier on claws being higher than on guns.

On the other hand, Corsairs benefit from Speed Infusion, which is a skill that Buccaneers have. This doesn’t have any effect on a Night Lord’s attack speed, but it does with a Corsair’s.

For more in depth information about speed cap and weapons, read:

Spoiler

If you already know how attack speeds work then just read the below two statements.
This is due to guns having a speed of fast (5), which does not reach the speed cap with booster alone.
Night Lords, on the other hand, use claws, which are generally fast (4), meaning they reach the speed cap with just booster. This means that they receive no benefit whatsoever from speed infusion.

If you don't then oh boy oh boy, put on your learning caps.
fastest (2) -> faster (3) -> fast (4) -> fast (5) -> normal (6) -> slow (7) -> slow (8) -> slowest (9)

All weapons lie somewhere on that chart. Being closer to the left means you attack more often and on average one attack speed level difference is ~12% total DPS. Booster increases your speed by 2 levels so if you're at fast (5), you go to faster (3). Speed Infusion (SI) increases your speed by 3 levels so if you're at fast (5), you go to fastest (2). Guns are generally fast (5) while Claws are generally fast (4) meaning that Claws reach the fastest attack speed with just Booster while Guns do not. This allows Corsairs to benefit from Speed Infusion while Night Lords do not receive a benefit.

As mentioned in the introduction, though, a Corsair’s damage is limited by access to their Battleship.

In general: Solo = Corsair does more damage without party buff.

Just Sharp Eyes = Night Lords do more damage.

Sharp Eyes and Speed Infusion = Corsairs deal higher damage.

Generally Onyx Apples/Heartstoppers will make a NL do more damage, due to them having a better weapon attack multiplier.

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AP Build


For Corsairs, the primary damage stat will be DEX, while the secondary stat that allows you to wear non-maple guns is STR. In this section I’ll discuss the various types of builds and what I would personally recommend.

RECOMMENDED: STR-less transitioning into low-STR.

This AP build is fairly straightforward. Beginning at level 1 at Maple Island, dump all your AP until DEX. Continue this trend until around level 90 or so, where you will start adding STR until you have enough from base and equipment to be able to wield a Concerto. Aim for around 50 base STR by level 100.

The reasoning for this build is due to the mass availability of Maple weapons in MapleRoyals. These weapons, along with a STR-less build, will make you stronger than a normal-STR build. You are also not limiting yourself endgame to only using maple weapons, and you allow yourself to take advantage of the early power of STR-less and the late-game damage of higher level guns. According to the damage formulas for Corsairs, which is put in a section near the end of the guide, DEX is worth quite a bit more in the early levels than it is in the later levels.

This means that DEX in the early levels will increase your damage more than the extra weapon attack from regular weapons. In this case, it's better to still use a Maple weapon and add points into DEX, instead of adding to STR to wear non-Maple guns .

You will do more damage at early levels and be in good shape to transition to an end-game Concerto.

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tl;dr

• Place all points into DEX until level 90.
• At level 90, start getting STR equips such as an overall and then work on adding as much STR into base that you need in order to wear a Concerto.

If you do not have a decent Concerto to use, I would save up 50 points and continue playing as a STR-less Corsair until you can get a good Concerto. DO NOT use them on DEX right away unless you’re sure you’ll be able to gain the levels necessary to pump points into STR after.

NON-RECOMMENDED Builds:

Normal-STR Build

Str = Your Level. Cap it at 70-80.
DEX = Rest of points.

This build is by far the most inefficient and, in my opinion, is a worthless build. With this build you have your STR equal to your level forever. You’ll just be focused on getting DEX equips and keeping a high amount of STR. Cap your STR at 70-80 since you should have a zhelm + a depstar to allow you to hold a Concerto without having 100 base STR. I don’t recommend this at all, but you can do it for nostalgia’s sake if you’re really pushing for it.

Low-STR Build

Str = As low as possible while being able to hold standard guns for their level.
DEX = Rest of points

This is the same as the first build except you’re low-STR the entire time you’re playing. This is not worth it in my opinion due to the early DEX being more important than wielding any gun other than the Maple guns until late game.

The damage will be similar if you’re WELL-FUNDED and have access to extremely well-scrolled non-Maple guns, but this build is not as efficient compared to the first one.

Not only that, but STR overalls are usually level 50-70 which means you’ll need enough base STR + a zhelm to gain access to these overalls. Unfortunately, by the time this happens, the first build would have already transitioned to a low-STR build and you will end up at the same point, but you’ll be weaker the entire duration beforehand.

STR-less Build

DEX = All points. Do not bother with STR.

This build is extremely strong during the early levels due to the aforementioned early DEX being worth a lot more at early levels.

However, the reverse is also true where weapon attack is worth much more than DEX at the later levels. This means that in the end, even with a perfect Maple Cannon shooter and perfect DEX bathrobe, you will fall short to a well-made Concerto using STR equips. The early power is not worth the late-game drawback, but as I said in the first build, it’s a great idea to start off with a STR-less build and transition into a low-STR build.

If you go a full STR-less build you’ll peak at level 64 and never get significantly stronger compared to the power boost at level 100 for a low-STR Corsair. One of the plus sides however is that you’ll never have to bother looking for rare Corsair equips since you’ll be using a bathrobe and Maple Cannon Shooter for your entire life.

I hope I’ve covered enough about all the various AP builds and which is the best in my opinion and the reasons for it. Please tell me if you need anymore help!
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1st Job Skill Builds

The skill build for 1st job is fairly straight forward and not too difficult, though there are 2 different paths that you can take. The differences are extremely small though, and won’t cause you much headache between picking.

The difference is entirely based upon whether you’d prefer training with Somersault Kick in first job, versus standard Double Shot. Somersault Kick can honestly be faster since it allows you to mob, and the damage is decent even if you’re not planning on becoming a Brawler. It’s faster training, but training at these levels is extremely fast regardless; especially on 4x.


Standard Build - Not Recommended
10-16: Double Shot
17: +1 Double Shot (MAX) & +2 Dash
18-19: Dash
20: +2 Dash (MAX) & +1 Bullet Time
21-26: Bullet Time
27: +1 Bullet Time (MAX) & +2 Somersault Kick
28-30: Somersault Kick (11)

Skill Distribution at Lvl 30: 61 Points Total
• 20/20 Double Shot [MAX]
• 10/10 Dash [MAX]
• 11/20 Somersault Kick [MAX]
• 20/20 Bullet Time [MAX]

This build is the standard Corsair build. You max Double Shot first since that’s your damage skill, and then follow up with Dash to move around faster. Some people prefer to max Somersault Kick instead of Bullet Time, which is doable, as well. I only put points into Bullet Time since you gain that extra 9 points of Avoidability, which may come in handy in the future, although the difference is extremely small.


SSK First Build: Recommended for faster first job
10-16: Somersault Kick
17: +1 Somersault Kick & +2 Dash
18-19: Dash
20: +2 Dash (MAX) & +1 Bullet Time
21-23: Bullet Time
24: +1 Bullet Time (11) & +2 Double Fire
25-30: Double Fire (MAX)

Skill Distribution at Lvl 30: 61 Points Total
• 20/20 Somersault Kick [MAX]
• 10/10 Dash [MAX]
• 11/20 Bullet Time
• 20/20 Double Shot [MAX]

If you’re going SSK first then I’d just max SSK over Bullet Time. If it’s your main method of training, it’ll probably be more useful than 9 Avoidability in the end. Your Avoidability isn’t going to be Night Lord or Shadower level, anyway, and 9 Avoidability won’t make you that ultra missing machine. This build is faster training, but overall the differences are extremely small. On a final note, however, do NOT use guns while training. Try and use the highest weapon attack weapon you can find. You don’t need to use a gun while using SSK so don’t limit yourself to one.

Overall, pick either one. As long as your core of Double Shot and Dash are maxed, nothing else really matters.

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2nd Job Skill Build

30: Invisible Shot
31-36: Gun Mastery
37: +2 Gun Mastery (MAX) & +1 Invisible Shot
38-43: Invisible Shot (MAX)
44-45: Gun Booster (6)
46: Wings
47: +2 Wings (5) & +1 Recoil Shot
48-53: Recoil Shot
54: +1 Recoil Shot (MAX) & +2 Wings (7)
55: Wings (MAX)
56-61: Blank Shot
62: +1 Blank Shot (MAX) & +1 Gun Booster (7)
63-66: Gun Booster
67: +1 Gun Booster (MAX) & +1 Bullet Time (Grenade instead of Bullet Time if standard build)
68-69: Bullet Time
70: +1 Bullet Time (MAX) & +2 Grenade (2)

Skill Distribution at Lvl 70: 121 Points Total

• 20/20 Gun Mastery [MAX]
• 20/20 Invisible Shot [MAX]
• 20/20 Recoil Shot [MAX]
• 10/10 Wings [MAX]
• 20/20 Blank Shot [MAX]
• 20/20 Gun Booster [MAX]
• 20/20 Bullet Time [MAX]
• 2/20 Grenade -if SSK build, 11/20 Grenade - if standard build


As a Gunslinger, you’re no longer some SSKing scrub anymore. Throw away that spear or whatever and pick up your gun even if you went the SSK route. The first point goes into Invisible Shot allowing you to gain access to a mob attack.

Mastery is obviously best due to stabilizing your damage, which in turn increases your damage a ton; so max that right after you put your first point into Invisible Shot. (Side note: You can leave Mastery at level 19 until level 70, due to the last point only giving accuracy and bullet storage.)

After maxing out Gun Mastery, max out Invisible Shot, as that’ll be your main attacking move, especially in CPQ.

This is more of a personal preference, but I always get 6 points into Booster in almost any class after the main attacking skill, due to it having a good balance between length and points spent. You’ll max it later on, but there’s no point in maxing it out right away when the only increase will be buff duration.

Put 5 points into Wings as this is the prerequisite for Recoil Shot. Recoil Shot is sort of the Flash Jump of Corsairs, except that there’s a delay, which makes it a fair bit worse than Flash Jump. You’ll be maxing that immediately after the 5 points into Wings.

After maxing Recoil Shot, finish maxing Wings for the mobility and max Blank Shot just for its ability to stun.

You’ll rarely use Blank shot, but who knows when it may come in handy.

Finally, put the rest of the points in either Bullet Time (if you didn’t max it in first job) or Grenade, so you can troll people and throw grenades that look stupid, although currently other players can’t see them ! If you went the pure gun route however, your useless skill is slightly stronger!

Important Note: There is a specific way for Corsairs to get around that some people do not know about. Create a macro with Wings first and then Recoil Shot second. Put this somewhere on your keyboard. Now, when you move around, you can Dash and run in the direction you want to move, turn around in mid-air, press Recoil Shot, then press the macro button over and over again. You could also simply put Recoil Shot first then Wings and press that. (Thanks to Teddie for noting that) You’ll notice it heavily in flat areas and it’ll greatly improve your mobility speed. This is put down in the tips and tricks section as well and there will be a video in that section.

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3rd Job Skill Builds

Be forewarned: Unfortunately, Glaze Capsules and Blaze Capsules do not work in MapleRoyals. What this means is that your 3rd job is EXTREMELY lackluster compared to what it should be. The damage over time (DOT) of Flamethrower is also NOT WORKING. The skill build here will be prioritized slightly differently than in GMS pre-Big Bang due to this fact. Your octopus is also bugged, and you can’t summon as many of them as you can in GMS. The bugs seem to have low prioritization of being fixed so do not expect either of these skills to work for a long time.

UPDATE: THE CAPSULES ARE WORKING AND YOU CAN PUT THEM BEHIND THE REST OF YOUR BULLETS. THIS ALLOWS THEM TO ALWAYS HAVE THE EFFECT WHILE NOT CONSUMING THE BULLETS! Flamethrower DOT is still not working however.


Standard Mobbing Build -Recommended
70-76: Burst Fire
77: +1 Burst Fire (MAX) & +1 Gaviota (1) & +1 Ice Splitter (1)
78-85: Ice Splitter
86: +1 Ice Splitter (26) & +2 Flamethrower (2)
87-95: Flamethrower
96: +1 Flamethrower (MAX) & +1 Homing Beacon (1) & +1 Octopus (1)
97-105: Octopus
106: +2 Octopus (MAX) & +1 Gaviota (2)
107-110: Gaviota
111: +1 Gaviota (15) & +2 Homing Beacon (3)
112-120: Homing Beacon (MAX)

Skill Distribution at Lvl 120: 151 Points Total

• 20/20 Burst Fire [MAX]
• 26/30 Ice Splitter
• 30/30 Flamethrower [MAX]
• 30/30 Octopus [MAX]
• 15/30 Gaviota
• 30/30 Homing Beacon [MAX]

Max Burst Fire because it is by far the best 3rd job skill you’ll have. Just 1 point in it makes it better than max Double Shot. I put one point into gaviota because it does half the damage of maxed Gaviota at level 1 and can be useful for anything basically.

Begin maxing out your Ice Splitter, but stop at 26 because adding more points into Ice Splitter once it has maximum freeze and monsters hit is a waste compared to leveling up Flamethrower. Once you start getting a few decent points into Flamethrower afterwards, you can start training at locations with mobs such as Himes. I recommend having a macro with Ice Splitter and then Flamethrower which I’ll put in the tips and tricks section.

Once you get maxed Flamethrowing, you’ll have both your single-target skill (Burst Fire) and mobbing skills maxed out (Ice Splitter + Flamethrower). Put a point into Homing Beacon since it’ll help you if you’re gonna hunting Headless Horseman or any other boss. Then max out Octopus because even though it’s buggy, there’s nothing else to put it into except Gaviota, but you’ll be mob training anyway and adding skill points into it isn’t really worth the payoff.

Finally, max out Homing Beacon so you can get Bullseye once you hit 4th job.

Old, Newties First Skill Build. Training is of comparable speed, but just more tedious.
70-76: Burst Fire
77: +1 Burst Fire (MAX) & +1 Gaviota (1) & +1 Homing Beacon(1)
78-81: Gaviota
82: +2 Gaviota (15) & +1 Ice Splitter
83-90: Ice Splitter
91: +1 Ice Splitter (26) & +1 Flamethrower (1)
92-100: Flamethrower
101: +2 Flamethrower (MAX) & +1 Octopus (1)
102-110: Octopus
111: +2 Octopus (MAX) & +1 Homing Beacon (2)
112-120: Homing Beacon (MAX)

Skill Distribution at Lvl 120: 151 Points Total
• 20/20 Burst Fire [MAX]
• 26/30 Ice Splitter
• 30/30 Flamethrower [MAX]
• 30/30 Octopus [MAX]
• 15/30 Gaviota
• 30/30 Homing Beacon [MAX]

Max Burst Fire because it is by far the best 3rd job skill you’ll have. Just 1 point in it makes it better than max Double Shot. Once you max out Burst Fire, put one point in Gaviota and Homing Beacon. I put a point in homing beacon here and not in the other build because leveling up Ice Splitter and Flamethrower for newtie sniping does not help you in anyway.

The point in Gaviota helps quite a bit at Newties, and one point of Gaviota is half of its total damage. It’s very useful at Newties, which is where you’ll be for a very long time. The point in Homing Beacon is there to help you if you ever plan to hunt Headless Horseman before 4th job.

This is where we diverge from the standard build in GMS. Due to Glaze capsule and Blaze capsule being bugged, both Ice Splitter and Flamethrower’s actual damage is complete garbage. This means you’ll basically be sniping Newties for your entire lifetime as an Outlaw, and getting your Gaviota to level 15 (where you’ll cap it) will be better than leveling up either Ice Splitter or Flamethrower.

You can opt to put a few points into Ice Capsule early if you’re getting hit by the Newties, but Outlaws usually aren’t strong enough to do this unless extremely well-funded. We cap Gaviota at 15 because if the Glaze and Blaze capsules ever get fixed, it’s more worthwhile to have the points in the other two skills. 15 is also the minimum level of Gaviota required to get Air Strike in 4th job.

Next up, get Ice Splitter to level 26. The reason for level 26 is because at that point, Ice Splitter will hit its max amount of monsters as well as freeze for its full duration. Ice splitter is more used for its utility than its damage and putting more points in for a few measly %, especially without a working Glaze Capsule, is not beneficial.

By this point, you may be strong enough to snipe both Newties in the mid platform, and you should freeze them first so you don’t get hit by either Newtie. Don’t be discouraged if you’re still only killing the first middle Newtie though.

After this, get Flamethrower maxed out. You won’t be using it to train because the capsules are bugged, but it’s just in case they ever get fixed. Flamethrower won’t really be used on Royals, but nothing else is worth getting before it. Octopus may be good for Newtie sniping, but unfortunately, it’s also bugged on this server. Sometimes you’ll try and cast another octopus and you get nothing coming out, so you just waste your cooldown as well as have to watch a long animation that hurts your overall dps.

Next, you max Octopus, even though you won’t be using it because the skill is bugged.

Finally max out Homing Beacon as a precursor to Bullseye in 4th job.

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4th Job Skills

First of all, congratulations on finally making it here! As a Corsair, you’ll finally be rewarded for the fruits of your labor. However, something to note is that, at first, your Battleship will have barely any health. Corsairs aren’t like bishops or mages where once they get to 120 they peak extremely fast. The good thing is that with every level-up, your ship will gain more health so in reality, you’ll be getting stronger every single level up regardless of whether you’re leveling up to 121 or to 200! Battleship health will be explained further in the next section.

For 4th job skills, I’m not going to put the level by level breakdown as before as 4th job is a bit different, though I put a sample up to level 140 on what I would do. I will, however, tell you what I think you should prioritize and what you should put points into first.

At level 120, it is imperative that you do the quest for Battleship, as well as Battleship Cannon and Battleship Torpedo. I would recommend putting a point in each of these 3 skills as they’ll be core to you. Also, NEVER PUT MORE THAN 1 POINT IN BATTLESHIP. I detailed the reasons why in the Battleship mechanics section right below, but in this section i’ll just say TL; DR: Battleship level 1 forever.

You may put one point in Elemental Boost, as well, since it increases your freeze time by one second. I didn’t particularly care for it, though, since I wasn’t really freezing that many monsters at this point.

Some people prefer a build where you max your mobbing abilities early (Torpedo and Air Strike) which I have never agreed with even since I played GMS pre-bigbang. Battleship Cannon is much more versatile and will let you both train and boss compared to just training with Torpedo. Getting Cannon to 2 shot KO on Skeles will also mean you’ll train at basically the same rate as you did with max Torpedo.

After maxing Cannon, you’ll want to max Bullseye. This further increases your damage on the marked target by 20%! This skill is amazing for any sort of bossing whatsoever. Bossing will be one of your main forms of training and I recommend doing bosses whenever they’re up rather than grinding. You’ll be hitting like a truck once both Battleship Cannon and Bullseye are maxed.

Next, you’ll want to get Rapid Fire 30 to increase your damage when your boat is broken. This will help vastly at bosses like Zak where you’re bound to lose your boat at least a few times.

NOTE: If the v.75 skill changes or v.86 skill changes ever get implemented into MapleRoyals, it’s more beneficial to max Battleship here than max Rapid Fire. I explain the reasons why in the next section, but ATM BATTLESHIP 1 FOREVER.

After Rapid Fire 30, your core is basically maxed, I would pick up 9 Maple Warrior here as it gives the same stat bonus as level 10 Maple Warrior. This will help you if you’re doing anything solo without a class that gets early MW. After that, most of your skills are basically just dumped into whatever is left.

You can pick either Air Strike or Battleship Torpedo to max. Both are fine skills, although remember that Air Strike isn’t spammable like the Mage ultimates and it only hits 6 monsters, as well. Both are good moves, but aren’t necessary, and you can pick whether you want a more spammable mob skill that shoots in a linear fashion, or a screen-wide mini ultimate with a 3-second cooldown.

After that, just max the other and from now on dump your points in whatever you want.

ONE MORE TIME: BATTLESHIP AT 1 FOREVER.


120: +1 Battleship (1) & +1 Battleship Cannon (1) & +1 Battleship Torpedo (1)
121-129: Battleship Cannon
130: +2 Battleship Cannon [MAX], +1 Bullseye (1)
131-136: Bullseye
137: +1 Bullseye [MAX], +2 Rapid Fire (1)
138-146: Rapid Fire
147: +1 Rapid Fire [MAX], +1 Maple Warrior
147-148: Maple Warrior
149: +2 Maple Warrior (9), +1 point in Battleship Torpedo or Air Strike

Core Complete!

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4th Job Skill Quests/Book Locations

Battleship
Talk to Kyrin. Then select the second option to fight her. Survive for 2 minutes and you will be given the skill. Easy!

Cannon/Torpedo
Defeat 150 (Gigantic) Spirit Vikings and collect 50 of their drops. Gigantic Spirit Vikings for Torpedo and normal Spirit Vikings for cannon.

Hypnotize
Talk to the girl in the Training Room. You then pick the second option to be transported to a special area. There are 3 mini jump quests here.

The jumping isn’t difficult but rather there are the pink and blue Mu Lung snakes here. If you touch one, you start from the very beginning of the entire thing. When you get to the end, click the NPC and you will be transported to another special map where you must protect the NPC much like HPQ and EPQ from Sage Cats, Book Ghosts, and Peach Monkeys (I forgot if you actually have to do this part in Royals. The JQ part you definitely have to do). Afterwards, you are given the skill!

Air Strike
Collect 100 Flyeye Wings (Flyeye) , Stirge Wings (Stirges), Red Wyvern Wings (Red Wyverns), and Destroyed Dragon Nests (Nest Golems). Talk to Lord Jonathon in the room right next to Kyrin’s room. Pick the last option!

Battleship Mechanics

Here I’ll finally expand on why you want to keep Battleship at level 1. In V.62, leveling up Battleship actually increases the cooldown of it when it breaks.In exchange for this cooldown increase, you gain 4,000 paltry health to your Battleship. I don’t remember the exact amount of cooldown increase but I know that at max, it’s close to 5 minutes of cooldown while at level 1 the cooldown is only 90 seconds.

This is changed in the v.75 skill changes that occurred in GMS and there have been talks and I think plans to implement them into current Royals. However, I don’t know how long it’ll take or if it’ll even happen, but rest assured I’ll update the guide the instant we learn about confirmation about whether this is actually happening or not. The change is that leveling up Battleship does not increase the cooldown, which means that leveling up Battleship is purely beneficial and will be more important than Rapid Fire.

AS OF CURRENT ROYALS, the formula for the health of the Battleship is:

[(Skill Level) * 4000)] + [(Character Level - 120) * 2000]

This means that every level you gain over 120 is an increase to your Battleship’s health by 2000. The Battleship health will also start at 4000 due to having one point in Battleship. We’ll use my current level (roughly level 185, although I’m not quite there yet!) as an example for the health calculation. Skill Level and Character Level are the two variables that will change although you will keep skill level at 1 so it should be a constant. This is the math for a level 185 Corsair.

Battleship Health = [(Skill Level) * 4000)] + [(Character Level - 120) * 2000]
Battleship Health = [1 * 4000] + [(185-120) * 2000]
Battleship Health = [4000] + [(65) * 2000 ]
Battleship Health = [4000] + [130,000]
Battleship Health = 134,000



Wow, you only have 134,000 Battleship health and you’re all the way at level 185? How can I do anything as a level 135 Corsair? Not to worry, my dear fellow sea-plunderer, there are tricks you can do that prolong the life of your boat! Well, it’s really only one trick, but it’s applicable in a myriad of situations. I show examples of the technique in video in the Corsair bossing section.

The technique is simply dismounting your boat before an attack hits you and then remounting afterwards. You will tank the damage while you’re not on your boat so your boat does not suffer any damage at all. At Zakum, your boat can last an insane amount of time if you’re on the body due to Zak telegraphing all of its attacks basically, except the lightning seal attack. There is an animation for the dismounting, but the animation doesn’t matter. Once you press the button to dismount, even if it looks like you’re still in the animation for the dismount, your boat will not have taken damage. There’s an example where I cut it extremely close in my zak video and it looks like I’m totally on my boat, but my boat does not receive any damage because I barely dismounted in time.

This boat mechanic is the reason why Corsairs have to be so much more active than other classes in Zak and bosses in general. You have to dodge 1/1s or else say goodbye to your boat in no time. If you’re too distracted, then your DPS will be a fraction of what it could be, because you’re taking unnecessary damage on your boat, which DIRECTLY lowers your DPS by increasing the amount of time that you’re not on your boat.
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HP Washing

Many people seem to think that HP washing is a good idea on a Corsair. This is far from the case. You want to minimize the amount of washes that you do, but don’t fret if you washed too much. It doesn’t really matter TOO much, but if you want maximum efficiency then you want your health to be the lowest I can possibly be.

Now the question is, why do you want this?

The reason is because in 4th job your Battleship has health, which gets affected by 1/1 attacks. If you’re on your ship while you get hit by an attack, your ship loses HP, and once it reaches 0 HP left your ship will break. This causes your ship to go on cooldown for 90 seconds, if Battleship is level 1 (which it better be!) and you’ll be forced to use Rapid Fire until the cooldown is gone. There are ways to dodge attacks by dismounting right before the attack hits you and then getting back on, but this will be explained in the bossing section. So if you have 30,000 health and get hit by a 1/1 attack, expect your ship to take 29,999 damage to its health causing your ship to go on cooldown that much faster than if you’re at 6,000 health and only take 5,999 damage to your boat.

However, adding a few washes will not hurt you much in the long term. Many people want to wash to 5.5k health to be able to tank Anego by 125, which is totally fine, as long as you stop washing by that point. I do know that even the former top Corsair in the server (GorkyParked) has 2.5k more health than me and he’s just as successful as me so don’t be too deterred by having high health.

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Corsair Bossing

As a Corsair, you’re one of the best bossing classes in the game. On a personal note, I can solo Anego in 8 minutes with heartstoppers (attack potion that gives 60 attack) and bigfoot in 3 heartstoppers and less than 30 seconds of a green Cider. Is that crazy? Yes, yes it is. Corsairs DESTROY bosses. In this section, I’ll detail my method on killing all the various types of bosses in Royals.

By the way, there’s another method to killing Bigfoot called the corner method, but I don’t personally do it. I’m currently waiting on either GorkyParked or Zyrcophynt to make a video on how to do it because they’re the only two Corsairs on the server at the moment I think that do it exclusively, compared to the way that me and Kaizoku do it.

Zakum


Ah yes, Zakum is a classic boss that almost everyone remembers. Corsairs do insane amounts of damage to Zakum and are not limited by the mobs as other ranged classes are. Bullseye allows your Cannon shots to go right through the mobs and hit Zakum even on a solo run! A lot of people tend to think that Corsairs do best starting on the top right of Zak. I would only start there if there weren’t very many ranged attackers. Corsairs actually SUCK at the top right for Zak and should only be there if you’re one of the only ranged attackers.

This is due to the fact that Corsairs are incredibly immobile and Zak knockbacks to the left. If you stand on the top right, getting KB’d twice will send you off the edge and you’ll have to waste tons of time running back up. That means after getting KB’d once, you have to walk to right (I usually jump to the right since while you’re on your boat you’re at 80% speed), which is SLOW with your boat. Yes, you can dismount, but the animations for dismounting and remounting takes just as much time as jumping over that it doesn’t even help you. You do not have the mobility that either NLs or even Archers have, which makes top right a grueling fit of frustration. Obviously, if you’re one of the only ranged attackers, suck it up.

Instead, it’s better to start on the bottom left and just Bullseye the bottom left arm and hold down the Battleship Cannon button. You’ll be doing high damage and I almost always kill this arm extremely fast. Zak knocking you back to the left doesn’t even hamper you due to you still being in range to hit the arm all the way from the wall. I don’t really think doing arms warrants a video since you just mindlessly shoot the arms, because it’s impossible to dismount the instant cast arms attacks. Make sure you remember to use Bullseye before hitting a new arm!

Once the arms are dead is when the Corsair really gets to shine. While all the other ranged classes are getting bombarded by mobs, you’re shooting right through them as if they weren’t there. You can dodge almost all of Zak’s attacks and your ship can last an extremely long amount of time during the body phase. Here is a video of my mounting and dismounting (if you watch the whole video… 17step + Lobster suck):



Anego (Female Boss)



Anego is a very straightforward boss. You get on the right side of it, then use Rapid Fire to shoot it into the left wall before mounting on your ship and beating it up with Battleship Cannon. It’s extremely easy once you have 5.5k hp, but pinning Anego before that happens is a bit complicated. The method I used is the same one I used to use in GMS since HP washing wasn’t as prevalent there. It’s not 100%, but it’s honestly probably the best solo Corsair method out there. If you don’t have 5.5k HP, though, and you have a duo partner, please just let the duo partner pin. It’s not worth the chance of death.

The method for doing it with less than 5.5k HP is that you aggro Anego. Then make sure you have Dash activate and then jump and Recoil Shot onto the bar-stool and with the momentum from Recoil Shot, use your Wings -> Recoil Shot macro, which will allow you to Wings over the Anego and Recoil Shot to safety. It’s kind of hard to visualize without a video, which I’ve luckily included for you!

The method for having more than 5.5k HP is easy as pie. You aggro Anego and you just run forward until it shoots you with its gun then during the invincibility frames, you Recoil Shot over it. I’ve also included a video of this method, although you should be able to do it on your first try, honestly.

[I've captured all the footage for this video, just have to make it. Give me a day or two! It'll be up soon.]

Bigfoot



This is the boss that almost everybody comes to me with questions about. It’s probably the hardest boss for Corsairs to learn, but I guarantee you that Corsairs are better at doing Bigfoot than any other ranged class, and are better than basically every melee class with the possible exception of heroes. I learned how to Bigfoot just by going to it and trying, and eventually I had figured out that there are some specific techniques that make it easy. I’m not sure if its the most efficient method, because I didn’t have any help learning the way I did it, so if you know a better method, PLEASE TELL ME. Without further ado, let me explain how I do it! This will be extremely convoluted, but I want to try and explain every single aspect since it’s very meticulous in comparison to the other bosses.

You should use Booster.

Bigfoot is based COMPLETELY on spacing between you and the Bigfoot. If you’re too close, you will not be able to knockback Bigfoot into the wall. The distance between you and Bigfoot is everything. First, you’ll want to aggro Bigfoot and get your Bullseye on him. I also recommend having someone kill the Jr. Wraiths that are about to hit you if you’re at twisted paths.

Go to either the right wall or the left wall and wait until Bigfoot is about to run into you, and then Jump + Recoil Shot over him. Once you land jump once more in the direction away from Bigfoot, turn around in mid air, shoot Burst Fire to keep it in the corner and then when you land mount your boat.

Bigfoot will either follow one of two paths: He’ll either be facing towards you or facing towards the wall. If he’s facing towards the wall, which happens fairly often, you got a perfect pin! Just switch into Battleship Cannon and start wailing on him and he should stay in the corner.

If he is running towards you, you MUST be near the max range of Battleship Cannon for him to get pushed back by it. If you aren’t near max range, you’ll hit him twice and then he’ll run towards you slowly. You keep pushing him back and he’ll eventually get to the wall and then turn around and face the wall. Perfect pin achieved!

Some people I taught the way can’t space it at all when he’s running towards you, (*cough* Tommy the ex-GM that quit *cough*) and just keep on trying until the first path happens. This is perfectly acceptable, as well, and honestly, if Bigfoot is running towards me, I don’t space it right about half the time and have to try again, anyway.

So now, you have your pin. What now? Well there is a certain spacing between Bigfoot and yourself where almost every single cast of Battleship Cannon will hit. This is the sweet spot and you will adjust your character until you get there. You must watch your Cannon shots and watch where they fly past or don’t make it to Bigfoot. If every other shot the shot flies past Bigfoot, adjust yourself backwards a little until it no longer is doing that. At that point you should be hitting it basically 6/7 casts and murdering Bigfoot. The opposite is also true, if the shot isn’t getting to Bigfoot, adjust yourself forward until you’ve hit that sweet spot.

When you hit the sweet spot for the first time voluntarily, you’ll feel accomplished, but now you have to deal with the attack limit and rebuffing. You can only shoot 100 times in the same spot before you have to move. This is an anti-botting feature that has been in MapleStory since forever. When you feel like you’re getting close to that limit after you shoot Bigfoot, he goes into this frame where he’s injured and hurt. At this point you will walk up one step and shoot him again. After that shot he’ll be in that injured and hurt frame again and you’ll walk back to your original position and continue holding down your Battleship Cannon key.

To use Booster, you do the same thing, except instead of moving you press down Booster. Recasting Maple Warrior is THE HARDEST buff to recast. It’s also entirely possible, but the window of leniency is tight. BF must be in the neutral run into the wall mode and then you will press Battleship Cannon and IMMEDIATELY press MW. Bigfoot should stop flinching at almost the same time your animation ends and you wanna shoot out a Battleship Cannon before he runs out of the wall.

Everything seems extremely tight and, honestly, it really is. However, if Bigfoot gets un-pinned, you can just repin it the way you did originally, but killing it will take up that much more time if it takes a while to pin it. Sometimes it takes me 2 seconds to pin, sometimes up to a minute. At least, I’ve included a video of me doing everything I’ve described here! Watch over it and try to emulate it to the best of your ability. Bigfooting takes some time to learn, but once you learn it, it becomes simple as pie.



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Recommended Equipment

This is the gear I recommend you get from level 64 onwards, since gear before then doesn’t honestly matter at all. Remember to try your best to get stuff that comes with MapleRoyals’ godly system!

Before Concerto: This is the time period that you’ll be acting as a STR-less Gunslinger! You’ll look like a stereotypical DEX-less Sin, except you hold a gun so you’re instantly not a bandwagoning sheep… (Right? Right? I’m unique, right?)

Zhelm - TRY TO GET ONE ASAP - This provides the most bang for your buck!
DEX Earrings - Doesn’t matter how good they are, just try and get a pair.
Any PGC/PAC or DEX Cape - Once again it doesn’t really matter how good these things are.
Any shoe - Can’t be barefoot out there, ya know?
Any Atk WG - Try and go for 8 attack if you can afford it. It’s only like 40 mil tops.
70 Attack + Maple Cannon Shooter - The Cannon shooter is where you want to spend your money. Try and get a really good one that’ll last you until Concerto.
100%d DEX Bathrobe - This is decent unless you have the funding to scroll yourself one. 20 DEX+ bathrobes aren’t too expensive on this server, either.
Deputy Star- Not even close to necessary.
Level 10 Bullets forever!

Corsair Equipment: This is what you should strive for to be a good middle of the line Corsair. Remember it’s better to have a decent EVERYTHING than it is to have one godly item and extremely lackluster items for the rest of your equipment

Clean or Scrolled Zhelm
8-10 DEX Earrings
3-4 Attack+ Pink Gaia Cape or Pink Adventurer Cape
2 Attack+ Facestompers or 8 STR+ Shoes scrolled for jump (DEX really)
10 Attack+ Workglove
90 Attack+ Concerto
20 STR + Overall
Deputy Star
20 Sets of Eternal Bullets

End Game Equipment: This is the gear that you want to have at the very end of your lifespan. Most people won’t reach this level of gear, but it’s what you dream of and want. Do not be discouraged if you can’t get gear of this level as it’s very expensive, but it’s the ideal equipment for you to use at level 200. Even I don’t have everything (not that I’m someone you should look up to,I suk) on this list even though they’re my goal.

35 DEX+ Zhelm
10 DEX+ Earrings
10 Attack+ Pink Gaia Cape or Pink Adventurer Cape
10 Attack+ Facestompers
15 Attack+ Stormcaster Gloves
100 Attack+ Concerto
7 DEX Face Accessory
30 str+ Overall
Chaos’d Deputy Star or Maple Scarf
25 Sets of Eternal Bullets

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Damage Formulae and Useful Knowledge

Gunslinger Damage Formulae
Max = [(DEX * 3.6 + str) / 100] * Weapon Attack
Min = (DEX * 0.9 * 3.6 * Skill Mastery + str) / 100 * Weapon Attack

Formula for Battleship Endurance [HP]
[(Skill Level * 4000)] + [(Character Level - 120) * 2000]
Level 01 Battleship is the best in terms of (endurance:cooldown) ratio.


Tested Attack Speeds
Double Fire = 144 shots/minute
Invisible Shot = 87 shots/minute
Triple Fire = 87 shots/minute
Rapid Fire = 500 shots/minute (approx. 8 bullets/second)
Battleship Cannon = 95 shots/minute
Battleship Torpedo = 77 shots/minute


Miscellaneous Numbers - OCTOPUS IS BUGGED ON ROYALS, DOES NOT APPLY
Standard Octopus Summoning Limit [Lvl 1-10] = 1 at a time
Standard Octopus Summoning Limit [Lvl 11-20]= 2 at a time
Standard Octopus Summoning Limit [Lvl 21-30] = 2 at a time
Support Octopus Summoning Limit [Lvl 1+] = 3 at a time


Single-target
Burst Fire 20 = (210% * 3) / .69 = 913.043%/sec
Rapid 1 = 102% / .12 = 850%/sec
Rapid 05 = 110% / .12 = 916.667%/sec
Rapid 30 = 160% / .12 = 1333.333%/sec

You need level 5 Rapid Fire to out damage max Burst Fire.
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Tips and Tricks

There are a few nifty tricks that will help you in your life as a Corsair. Most are really simple and all are used at some point in time. As I come up with more tricks, I’ll put them into this section.

• Recoil Shot -> Wings Macro / Wings -> Recoil Shot Macro

Spoiler

There is a specific way for Corsairs to get around that some people do not know about. Create a macro with Wings first and then Recoil Shot second. Put this somewhere on your keyboard. Now, when you move around, you can Dash and run in the direction you want to move, turn around in mid-air, press Recoil Shot, then press the macro button over and over again. You could also simply put Recoil Shot first then Wings and press that. (Thanks to Teddie for noting that) You’ll notice it heavily in flat areas and it’ll greatly improve your mobility speed.

• ~bosshp Macro

Spoiler

This one is relatively known to basically any class. A quick easy way to find out the health of a boss without typing out ~bosshp is to make a macro for a skill and then make it say ~bosshp whenever used. This lets you have easy access in the middle of Zak or lets you quickly check if a boss is on the map you’re on by seeing if the health gets displayed in the chat.

• Ice Splitter -> Flamethrower Macro

Spoiler

Ice Splitter and Flamethrower are complementary skills. Due to their nature, putting a macro for the skills seems like common sense. This will be your main training technique if you don’t plan on Newtie sniping. Making the macro is easy as pie, just put Ice Splitter first then Flamethrower! Done deal.

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Training Locations:
Work in progress. Will post at a later date.
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Thanks and Acknowledgements

HUGE shoutout to SilaChan(Sila) and Linyah(Marty) for proofreading this entire guide for me. Sometimes my writing isn't the best and I bet them going through it was pure hell! Thanks so so very much for this.

There are so many other people I have to thank as well. Thanks Muffins for helping me with the 4th Job Skill Quests since I had forgotten a lot of them already. Thanks TwoGood (Randy) for telling me to add a Tip and Tricks section. Thanks to Teddie for reminding me that Recoil Shot -> Wings works just as fine as Wings -> Recoil Shot. Thanks to all the people that asked me questions and inspired this guide! Thanks to all the Corsair players out there that I've met and talked about stuff with and special thanks to Zyrcophynt (Annie) for considering me her protege and helping me get started as a Corsair on this server! Thanks to my entire guild and BL for making me want to continue playing to this point and thanks to all the staff for doing so much to help. There's been more than a few occasions where they've had to help me! Finally, thanks to you for reading this guide! Now go make a Corsair!!!!

 

Looks good so far! Very comprehensive! This guide answers a lot of my questions I previously since I'm going to be making a Corsair soon. Looking forward to the training guide section

Of course. there's leeching, but where's the fun in that

 

Surprised you're gonna be choosing Corsair! They're awesome though so I really hope you make it. Ask me if you need anything more ^__^!

 

Awesome guide! Now i feel dumb with some things haha

 

Just read through the entire thing. If you have time, a quick video or comparison rate of training at Newties vs. other locations would be nice. Otherwise, very good addition to our expanding guide section

 

Wait, why is there a picture of a Jett?

 

Nice guide! Maybe I'll start a bucc one (although I exclusively leeched and would have to research 2nd and 3rd job ).

 

Because the other Gunslinger pictures look dumb af. And we can all pretend GMS doesn't exist here right... right?

 

ive considered doing one as I've been training my brawler up Once I get to 4th and get the hang of it all I probably will.

 

Nathan pls lern2capitalise.

This guide is tempting me to make a Corsair.

 

woohoo Corsair guide TY

 

When u have a slight lag its near impossible to pin Bigfoot like u do. Instead of that use Rapid fire, not burst. (you have to be very close to the BF to push him back) When he is pinned you have to mount at a very specific time and spam Cannon. After that u can slowly move back every time it flinches.
I think its easier to master, but it will take you slightly longer to kill since u use less Cannon per minute.
(Thanks go to Kaizoku for teaching me this way and helping me on my BF killing spree<)


Edit*, lets make a Screenshot with all the (Active) Corsairs on Royals (120+) , that would be a nice BottomBanner

 

So basically you, Nathan and Tim...

 

I worked so hard on my corsair equips since the day I started royals then right when I was ready everything got wiped and I got discouraged xD .. Maybe I'll try it again ^^

Nice guide~

 

You should make one! Corsairs aren't as equipment dependent as some other classes so even if your funds aren't too large, you'll still be doing awesome damage!

 

I'll do it! I've always had a soft spot for Corsairs anyway ~ Plus the lack of HP washing means that I can actually enjoy my character without worrying about it ;]

 

n8n this is really hot mmmmmm *slurp*

 

This fact is a huge motivation for me because I was planning on spending an obscene amount of money on AP Resets.

 

I was going to quit but you made this guide so seductive that I'm going to make one

 

What a great guide!