General

Error 38 is exactly data length too short (not talking about wz data, talking about server to client and client to server data). There's an error code 0x80003000 or something (-214xxxxxxx, no not minimum integer, that's 0x80000000) that's for corrupted wz files (usually caused by positions that don't exist). EOF is just something that means no more data can be read.

[quote=Kirbys]This is a server issue. Error 38: reached end of file means that the bytes of data sent to the client was shorter than expected...[/quote]

I believe the "files" they're referring to are the wz files -- the server said something along the lines of "This character has effect #X" but effect X doesn't exist, so your maple client can't deal with it and crashes.

Your conclusion is correct though -- there's no way for you to fix this issue, except for complaining about it on the Maple forums and providing as much detail as possible about when / where it happens.

There's a slim chance your WZ files are corrupt (though I'm pretty sure the client does a checksum to guard against this) so it might be worth reinstalling Maple if it seems like this issue is only happening for you personally.

This is a server issue. Error 38: reached end of file means that the bytes of data sent to the client was shorter than expected. The good thing is you don't even have to report this error. They have a tracker for this already (when the client gets this error, it also automatically sends some other data with all the relevant info including the data sent, data opcode, etc). Someone might have done something bad though and caused the map to crash by sending invalid data (such as bad pet movement or something, summon movement). An example of what would cause this is: Let's say we have something like [13 00][byte 0][int 0] (something sent back in the day with cash shop, haven't touched this stuff for years). This has an opcode of 0x13 and expects 5 other bytes after. If the server somehow sends 4 and not 5 bytes, the user(s) that is receiving the info will crash with error 38.

I haven't heard of anything currently going on like this, but Error 38 is what you get when someone uses a "Map Crash" hack to crash everyone's client program in a given map.
It's caused by a bug Nexon has known about for years, and years and has never done anything about fixing.

I don't know for certain that's the -only- thing that results in Error 38, but it's the most common reason anyway.
And if that's it, there's no way to prevent it other than by staying out of areas where little kids are giggling about crashing people.