Drop gear is very important in Maplestory. In AriesMS, drop rate has a max cap of 600%, with everyone starting at 100%. By reaching 600%, items are 6x as likely to drop. This is vital in cutting down time for quests like the VJ pre-quests, and for farming things like MP effectively. As you get pieces of drop gear, you can check your total drop rate by doing @check while in game.
Potential
Potential is the main way of gaining drop rate. For equipment above level 50(?), it has a chance to gain a +20% drop rate line (Keep in mind that this line is only available at legendary rarity) (Rarity goes from Rare -> Epic -> Unique -> Legendary). You should aim for 8 lines; 1 line on each piece of equipment, and 8 pieces of equipment. With that, you should end up with 260/255% drop rate. Before you start cubing, know that only certain kinds of equipment can gain drop rate lines.
Potential is extra stats on your equipment. Occasionally, you'll find an item with a coloured outline. This means that it has potential, which can be unlocked by clicking on the magnifying glass at the bottom of your inventory and clicking on the item.
To change the lines on your potential, you'll have to use red cubes, which can be obtained from the Special Shop in the FM.
Only certain kinds of equipment can gain drop rate lines. Those are earrings, shoulders, face accessories, eye accessories, pendants, rings, and belts. To reach 250%, you'll need to cube 2 rings. The items I recommend cubing are:
- Earrings: Pinnacle, Dea Sidus (Horntail, AH)
- Pendant: Ony Maple Pendant (Belle), Horntail Necklace (Horntail)
- Shoulder: Pinnacle
- Face Accessory: Condensed Power Crystal (Zakum, AH), Onyx Maple Gum (Belle), Mystic Face Accessory (Silent Crusade)
- Eye Accessory: Aquatic Leather Eye Accessory (Zakum, AH), Mystic Eye Accessory (Silent Crusade)
- Belt: Pinnacle
- Rings: Silver Blossom Ring (Horntail, AH), Grand Maple Amethysian Ring* (Belle), Tempest Ring (Gachapon, AH), Golden Flower Ring (Yu Garden Quests), Lightning God Ring (Madman Ranmaru, AH), Cracked Gollux Ring (Gollux), Scarlet Ring (Madman Ranmaru, AH), Ifia's Ring** (Hard Von Leon, AH)
I've bolded the rings you should go for if you're new to the game. They're all decently cheap/free, and they're good items to start off with.
Pinnacle gear is especially nice if you're planning to starforce it for your 5th job advancement.
*The Grand Maple Amethysian Ring is a level 50 ring, so it can only achieve 15% drop rate, which is enough to reach 600% through the simple (Coupon) method, but not enough for other methods.
**You cannot use normal red cubes on Ifia's Ring. That means only premium red cubes and miracle revolutionary cubes work, making it a somewhat expensive option, since NX is required to get it to legendary.
Familiar Note: If you look in old guides, you might see them mention Mutant Ribbon Pigs/Big Spiders. Those have been made obsolete because of the familiar revamp, which you can read about here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19NhxJ0ZP4rINgT1P-S3S6Pny7upWCv89TJhi8E3kNRc/edit
Familiars multiply your current drop rate by 2, including the drop rate you earned from your equipment. With the +150% (or more) from drop rate from 8 pieces of gear, your drop rate skyrockets to 500%. Familiars need to be Epic rarity or higher in order to have the line "Increases Drop Rate by a large amount" or "Increases Item and Meso Drop Rate by a large amount". When you get your first epic familiar, it's likely that it won't have this line. To reroll it, you can buy red familiar cards from the Cash Shop for 3k NX each, and from my experience, you'll need about 30 cards, so 90k NX. Some easy to get familiars are the Erdas from the VJ questline, since even Happy Erdas are Epic rarity (Farming Tranquil/Blazing Erdas are best imo, since they are unique rarity).
Coupon/Other methods
The simplest, cheapest way to get to 600% is through buying a x2 Drop Rate Coupon, which adds a flat 100% drop rate, unaffected by the familiar buff. This will put you at/above 600%, but it does require you to spend 2 VP each time you want to seriously farm, like when doing MP.
There are other ways to reach 600% drop rate without having to spend, but they are not cheap.
The first method is to have 4 rings with 20% drop rate, which is pricy. To start, you should have the Silver Blossom and the Golden Flower rings (Grand Maple Amethysian Ring does NOT work because of its 15% drop rate). These are very easy to get.
The hard part comes with the last two rings. The next two cheapest options, the Tempest and Lightning God rings, are worth about 1 billion mesos each, clean. That's why I don't recommend it if you're just starting out on AriesMS.
This method functions similar to the normal potential, but with bonus potential instead.
To get bonus potential, you'll need bpot scrolls, which you can get from leveling up at 160(?) and from the Cash Shop for 70k NX (for 70%) and 150k NX (for 100%). You'll then simply use green cubes (bpot cubes) to reroll until you get another line of drop rate on your gear.
This method is also expensive, since bpot cubes go for ~850 mill/stack, and the scrolls are not that cheap either.
Meso Rate
Although this is a drop rate guide, it's still worth talking about meso drop rate. Meso drop rate functions exactly the same as item drop rate, now also with a cap of 600%.
You should worry about this only when you've reached max item drop rate first. Afterwards, you should try getting some item drop rate lines on your equipment through bonus potential, so that way you have space to roll for meso% lines on your gear. You'll need 3 lines if you plan to run with a companion and a x2 coupon from Belle, or 5 lines to not need a coupon.
And that should be everything you need to know to get to 600% drop chance. If you have any corrections/if I made a mistake, please feel free to let me know. Hope this helps!
Edit 1 (1/7/2021): Added Scarlet Ring, Blazing Erdas, Silent Crusade Questline gear, Pendant Section (woops!), Large Item and Meso Drop Rate familiar, and meso% section (thanks for the meso% rundown savagestorm and Trueffet!).
Edit 2 (1/23/2021): Changed wording to make it easier to understand/less confusing. Also included the @check command (Thanks savagestorm!).
Edit 3 (2/24/2021): AriesMS has added in Ifia's Ring, and so I've added it to my guide. But, it's a bit of a wonky ring, since normal red cubes don't work on it
Edit 4 (3/8/2021): Max meso rate has been increased to 600% in AriesMS, up from a previous max of 400%.
