MU Online Season 1 Guide

Season 1 is where classic Mu Online took its final shape: the Lost Tower and Balrog, the Dragon Raid event, the Magic Gladiator, the account warehouse, Atlans, wings and Chaos weapons, the Tarkan desert with the Black Dragon set, the Jewel of Life, Excellent items, and finally Kundun's Counterattack with the level 380 class sets and the Minus Stat Fruit.

What Season 1 covers

Season 1 is not a single patch. It is the run of updates that turned early Mu Online into the game most private servers still run today — everything from the Lost Tower and the first Dragon Raid to the level 380 class items that closed the era. This guide walks through all of it in the order it arrived, with the stats exactly as the original patch notes printed them.

Lost Tower — the resurrection of Balrog

Balrog was Kundun's right hand — intelligent, a powerful spellcaster, and violent enough that even dragons would not face him. He turned on Kundun, started a war, lost it, and was sealed underground together with the Tower, leaving fields of dragon corpses behind. Thousands of years later the seal broke.

The Lost Tower has eight floors. Every floor holds high-level monsters stronger than those in Dungeon — the patch note used Gorgon as the benchmark — and the tower's guardian Balrog, described as the most powerful monster added to Mu up to that point, waits on the final floor.

Raid of the Summoned Dragon

The Dragon Raid began on 18 December 2001 as a winter event for the continent of MU, and it became the longest-running event in the game's history. Beast Dragons and Virgi Dragons appear at random anywhere on the continent. Killing a Beast Dragon yields a Jewel of Bless or Zen; killing a Golden Virgi Dragon yields a Lucky Box.

It was meant to end on 20 January, but the Beast Dragon and the Golden Virgi Dragon were so popular in screenshot contests that Webzen kept bringing them back.

Where the dragons came from

The Verge Dragon had always existed on the continent — a dragon in name and shape only, weak enough that Sir Drodnwell wrote it off as "a chicken that learned magic". Kundun's resurrection disrupted the flow of mana, the condensed energy stimulated the Dragon Hearts inside the Verge Dragons, and the mutated ones began to glow gold. The Golden Verge Dragon is roughly ten times stronger than the original.

Then herds of Red Dragons appeared over Lorencia, Noria and Devias. They were not the world-ending Red Dragons of prophecy, so scholars named them Red Dercons — still strong enough that villages formed their own defence units. Raids hit Lorencia, Devias and Noria three times a day, and a killed dragon can drop a Jewel of Bless or a Jewel of Soul.

Lucky Box contents

Drop a Lucky Box from your inventory onto the ground and one of the items below appears at a set probability.

The Magic Gladiator — MU's fourth class

The Magic Gladiator — the Dark Swordsman — was hidden on the character creation screen until one character on the account cleared the requirement. Once a Dark Knight, Dark Wizard or Elf on the same account passes level 220, the class unlocks.

The patch note closes by promising Magic Gladiator-only items and skills later — those arrived in the seasons that followed.

The Warehouse

Storage arrived on the test server on 22 January and moved to the live servers a few days later. It is reached through a warehouse NPC standing in every town — in Lorencia at (147, 145).

Fairy summoning magic

Summoning needs a summon orb. Which monster answers depends on the Elf's Energy, and the list mixes existing MU monsters with new summon-only creatures. The summon hovers near the player, attacks whatever the player attacks, and defends itself when nothing is targeted. The Elf's Heal, Greater Damage and Greater Defense all work on it.

Rules worth knowing

• Only one summon can be out at a time, whatever your Energy allows.
• It disappears when you die, when its own energy reaches 0, or when you summon something else.
• Ctrl-attack a player and the summon joins in — and if the summon lands the kill, you are recorded as the killer.
• If another player attacks your summon, self-defence applies to you.

The patch note lists these Energy values as test-server figures that could change before the live release.

Atlans — the underwater world

Atlans was the home of the ancient Atlanteans, forgotten by the surface world until Kundun's return. Learning that one of the broken sealing stones lay there, Kundun sent the Hydra to destroy it. Some Atlanteans fled to the surface; others escaped to the underground city of Kanturu and tried to rebuild.

Wings

Three wing items arrive together. Every value below scales with the wing's upgrade level.

Chaos weapons and the Chaos Machine

All three Chaos weapons share the same line of stats — the difference is which class can hold them.

The Chaos Machine

The Chaos NPC stands next to the warehouse in Noria and its storage window is 8 x 4.

The same window makes wings: the recipe is identical, and a success produces one wing item (Satan's, Heaven or Fairy). Options and skills on a Chaos result are rolled randomly, exactly as they are when an item drops from a monster.

Tarkan — the Desert of Death

Tarkan links the Atlanteans' underground city of Kanturu to Atlans itself. Kanturu is a strict class society, and it dumps its mutants and its failed biological experiments out into the desert. What lives there is what Kanturu threw away — starving monsters roaming the sand while Kanturu's guards watch the border.

Zaikan is the spirit of the desert, woken by the power of a sealing stone falling into Tarkan; he forges a giant sword out of darkness and carries it. The Death Beam Knight is built from the souls of everything that has died in Tarkan — nothing remains of it but hatred, burning as a fire that never goes out, and the patch note calls it more dangerous than Zaikan himself.

The Black Dragon set and Tarkan weapons

The Black Dragon set is the tier above Dragon armour, made from the bones of a black dragon and forged by condensing the power of darkness. It resists dark energy strongly, so its defence is high, and the golden pattern etched into it burns brighter the stronger that energy becomes. It is Dark Knight equipment.

The Sword of Destruction was hidden deep underground, forged from Tarkan's iron and tempered in eternal flame. The Staff of Destruction is Zaikan's own work, made with the underworld's darkness, and gives off a strong light in the dark. The Saint Cross Crossbow was built from the last light remaining in the ancient underworld.

Inferno, Blast and the Summon Soldier

Inferno and Blast are Dark Wizard skills learned from their spell books. Inferno is the upgrade to Hellfire — the same area of effect, faster to cast, and much more expensive in mana. Blast is a single-target spell that lands heavy damage on one enemy, casts quickly and also drains mana.

The Summon Soldier is the Elf's, learned from the Soldier Summon Orb.

The Jewel of Life

One of the eight sealing stones, carrying the energy of life itself. It raises an item's additional option by one step, up to +16, and it drops only in Tarkan.

The success rate is a flat 50% regardless of the current option level, and a failure drops the item straight back to +0. It is completely independent of the Luck option.

Excellent items

Excellent items arrive with Tarkan and reset the ceiling on gear. An Excellent version of an item drops from monsters roughly 25 levels above the ones that drop the normal version — a Double Blade comes off a Dark Knight, an Excellent Double Blade off a Hydra or higher.

Excellent options — armour, shields and rings

Up to eight can be worn at once.

Excellent options — weapons and necklaces

Up to three can be worn at once.

Kundun's Counterattack — the level 380 items

Until this update, weapons and armour were gated by stats alone — reach the strength and agility and you could wear anything. The Kundun's Counterattack items broke that rule: they are high-level exclusive and can only be equipped by a character at level 380 or higher.

The armours are written as tests rather than purchases. Lutra lends its power only to a Dark Knight who has mastered the class; Bergen's magic cannot be worn by anyone short of a complete black magician; Nornen's armour went only to the greatest warriors of the fairy race; the Volcano Armour answers to a Magic Gladiator who has passed Letos's test; and the Sunlight Armour was refined for seven days and seven nights in Lugard's sacred light so that it never dims, even in darkness.

The Minus Stat Fruit

The stat fruit lets a character move points between stats: Create adds points to a stat, Reduce takes them away. What it cannot do is push a base stat below the class's floor, and each class has its own floors.

Success probability

The chance is worked out from the points left in reserve after the base 10, and it is the same whether you are creating or reducing.

• A failure changes nothing, but the fruit is consumed.
• Creation and reduction are applied with values from 0 to 3, as before.
• The default 10 points of creation or reduction apply at 100%.
• On success: creation gives +1 to +3, reduction gives -1 to -9.
• The fruit can only be used with no items equipped.

The patch note states that all of these probabilities and formulas come from the test server and could change during development.