Is there a way I can gear myself (going from nothing to ultimately fafnir) without buying any items at all?

It's possible, but know it's extremely hard without real life cash. Huge emphasis extremely hard. You know some items you see in FM for 10b? Some of those are worth 40~50b. This is only 1 item. You're going to need either 5 characters to pay for 1 item [extremely risky since the seller can just take all money and leave, leaving you 50b short] or you pay the equivalent NX to meso ratio which is 1:200 at the moment.

To start, you can get yourself some stats, it won't be anything significant but it's a good base layer to start off. First off, which server are you on? If it's Broa, Windia, Bera or Scania, you're probably good. Otherwise you're more than likely fucked since prices in those servers are insane.

  1. Link skills are you friend. Abuse the shit out of them. If you're main concern isn't leveling, forget about a Mercedes and get damage boosts from link skills. Here is a guide to the most useful link skills available. Try to use the absolute best ones according to how many character slots you have. It's not mentioned in the guide, but I suggest getting a Cygnus Knight to level 120 also since it gives +24atk at level 120.

  2. Use the crafting system. There are plenty of ways the crafting system will help create a nice base layer for you. Most players like to use ToT's equipment up until level 60. I like to use it to level 30, and at level 40 I make my own level 40 set of armor, hoping to get a good potential according to my class. If I remember correctly, you can get 6% on level 40 equips. That's already a lot. Use other characters for different crafting pieces such as accessories. Have an alchemy mule to fuse shitty equips for a chance at new potential.

  3. Maple occasionally has profitable events. The last good one was the recent Christmas event with Santa Box drops. They dropped EXP coupons and DROP RATE coupons. If you by any chance collected any of those, save them. The price will spike in a few months. Every time there is an event, try to profit from them. This is the easiest way to start making money but isn't the most consistent since events don't last forever.

  4. If you don't feel motivated enough to make level 40 equips, have no fear. Monster Park Extreme drops a ton of level 60 equips that always comes with potential. Try to get some good potentials. If you're a warrior or thief, if you happen to find a second set with good potential, sell them. Mage, Bowman, and Pirate aren't worth anything.

  5. Hopefully you have a good base layer by now. Depending on the amount of characters you have, go solo Normal Zakum 2x per day with each of those characters. 20k range should take maybe 2 minutes. 2 runs net's me about 1.5m so just multiply that by the amount of characters you have and round down, and you'll see how much profit you can make from Zakum, per day.

  6. Merching. I'll tell you right now, this shit isn't easy. It takes some getting used to and you're almost guaranteed to fail at first if you have no idea what you're flipping. You should only do this if you have 100m minimum. The easiest way to is find stable items that people are selling relatively cheap. Maple.FM does a great job of giving you % of items and tells you if they are over market price or under.

The more profitable but harder method is to sell unstable items. Ex. Protection Scrolls in Bera went from 200m to 65m then back up. You can see where I'm going with this. The problem is it's very risky.

  1. Bossing. Find a guild that likes to boss. This is the most stable way to make cash without any risk, the only problem is that you need to be funded. If you ever get to this point where you can solo bosses, you pretty much achieved the goal in your comment section.

Hope this helps.

/r/Maplestory Thread