Overview
A quick guide to get you started, and possibly persuade you to download, Mabinogi! Ill explain the basics of gameplay, what sets it apart from other MMOs, and hopefully i can clear up any confusion when you first start!
Introduction
First things first: I am by no means a pro! In fact, it would probably be stretching it if you called me an intermediate. I am a beginner who started playing about 3 or 4 weeks ago!
This means that this guide is not going to teach you how to earn 500k in the current state of the Mabingogi economy, the quickest ways to max your skills, or how to solo the high level dungeons. Im simply going to teach you about the game and how to take your first steps. Lets get started!
How is Mabinogi different?
The big thing that attracts (and sometimes repels) people to Mabinogi is that it encourages players to live a virtual life rather than fight mobs 100% of the time. In Mabinogi you can be a very successful player and never kill a single mob by being a
- merchant
- potion maker
- fisherman
- explorer
- musician
- chef
- blacksmith
- or a tailer!
These “Life skills” are a major part of Mabinogi!
Jobs
While we’re talking about the job system i should probably explain that there actually is no job system!
When you first create your character you’re going to be asked to choose a “talent“. This is not a class or job, this simply speeds up EXP gain for certain skills and decides what you get when you first spawn. I would explain all of these, but i haven’t actually touched many of them besides music and fishing.
Now because the talents don’t limit you to one job, a single player can be an expert at blacksmithing and also be a proficient chef!
The Level System
Another huge difference that seperates Mabinogi from the rest of the MMO crowd is that (as far as i’ve heard) there is no level cap!! About a year ago the highest leveled Mabinogi player was named 유즈댕 who was level 15,318!
But it isn’t quite that simple. A character has two levels (three if you count exploration, but i wont get into that.) Their Current Level and their Total Level. The current level is your level since your last “rebirth” (ill talk about that next) and only goes up to 200, and your total level includes every level you’ve earned including after each time you are reborn and is infinite.
Rebirthing gives players the opportunity to change their characters appearance without reseting skills or losing items! When your character reaches age 20 (Thanks banndsand) you can rebirth your character from the character selection screen.
AP is what you use to rank up your skills, and you get one each time you level up. To rank up skills, you need to train it to the point that you can “advance” it using your AP.
Now lets dig into the meat of the gameplay!
Combat
Now even though Mabinogi isn’t 100% based around combat, your most likely going to want to fight a lot of the time. One thing I definitely want to get across to you is that Mabinogi isn’t a button masher!
Close Quarters
Close quarters combat uses a very Rock-Paper-Scissorsish system. Some of the basic skills include
- smash
- defense
- counter
- and windmill
It goes like this: Defense blocks a basic attack (an attack not using a skill) which stuns them for just long enough to start wailing on them. Smash will break through an enemy using defense and generally does much more damage than a basic attack. Counter will completely negate any damage from a basic attack or smash and will attack the enemy with your damage PLUS a percentage of any damage that would have been recieved, and windmill is an area of effect skill that damages any enemies within a short radius of the player and can damage an enemy even if they are countering.
Now here is a short video of me fighting some low level enemies in the first dungeon. I show of a few of the basic skills, and loot a little bit. :3
Archery
Now I don’t use bows very often at all so this probably isn’t a very quality explanation, but i’ve messed around with it enough to know how it generally works. In mabinogi, when you ready an archery skill, a slowly increasing percentage will show up indicating the chance that you will hit the target. The distance from your target influences the rate in which the percentage increases.
If you want to be an archer, you should either carry around a melee weapon set in your secondary slot (i forgot to mention that you can have two sets of weapons that you can switch between using the ` key) or get friends to go dungeoneering with you, as your skills are rather slow and enemies will most likely overwhelm you.
Magic
Magic combat in mabinogi is pretty simple. You charge up a spell which will require you to stand still for a moment and once its finished you can move freely and fire it at an enemy. Spells generaly pertain to one of three elements: Fire, Electricity, and ice (at least from what ive seen).
Other forms of combat include
- Martial Arts
- Alchemy
- Lance Combat
- and puppetering
I’ve barely touched these forms of combat, and therefore i can only tell you this:
Martial arts uses the basic CQ skills but also incorporates combo skills and high speed attacks
Alchemy involves shooting elemental attacks out of small cannons attached to your arms and i think high-level alchemists can even summon golems!
Lance Combat Is all about long range melee. You can charge and stab from long distances, but are rendered useless up close.
Puppetering allows you to summon small and “colossal” marionettes to control
Being a Bard
Music is a talent that comes with both life skills and supportive combat skills! A good party should always have a good bard.
Basics & Learning the skills
To learn the skills needed to be a bard all you need to do is equip an instrument. Unless you’re willing to spend a few thousand gold right off the bat, you’re probably going to buy a Lute for 1,000g at the Tir Chonail General Store. The clerk has 3 different color schemes to choose from.
Now when you first equip it and start playing, you’re character will play a few random preset tunes. If you wan’t to play some really cool stuff, like the opening to your favorite anime or something. You need to buy a Score Scroll from at the general store and use the Composition skill! (ill get into this in a second)
Performing and composing
Bards can use the “Performance” action (action window can be opened via hotkey “N”) which spawns a donation box infront of them whenever they use the “Playing Istrument”. Other players can donate money if they enjoy the music you play for them! But you can’t do that with the dinky default tunes! You need to compose something! One thing to note about composition: You compose music with MML. MML (or Music Macro Language) is basically writing music through code.
Now imma tell you something personal: Im a fairly decent clarinet player (Im a guy, thought i’d clear that up.) and i could probably compose if i was given sheet paper, but i can’t do jack squat with MML.
What you can do though is you can google “Mabinogi Scores” and you can find some good sources of pre-written music that you can copy-paste into the UI when you’re composing! But being able to play the full song is another story… If you want to play really long songs you’re going to have to level up your composition skill, and the only way to do that is to buy books that are sold by multiple NPCs throughout the world. But the closest one to Tir Chonail is Aeira who is found in Dunbarton. You can get to Dunbarton VIA moongate or by following the trail to the south of Tir Chonail. Each of the composition skill books allow the skill to be advanced by one rank, and must be used in order (which means you can’t buy the last book and instantly go from rank E to max.).
Bards in the combat setting
Bards are supportive, therefore if you are mostly a solo player you should also put some time into combat skills if you want to be a bard. However bards are valuable assets when partying. I haven’t aquired all of the bard skills myself, after you level up your life skills to a certain point you’ll recieve a quest that requires you to go to Abb Neagh Lake and learn the Lullaby Skill. Once you complete it you’ll earn 3 skills: Enduring Melody, Lullaby, and Battlefield Overture.
- Lullaby is used to temporarily put enemies to sleep, or “down” them. This gives allys the opportunity to heal if in a pinch, or to dish out some damage. Downed enemies take more damage when attacked.
- Enduring melody buffs nearby teammates’ defense, protection, and increases the rate that their magic and stamina recharges.
- Battlefield Overture buffs ally’s attack and chance to get a critical hit.
Character Customization
The character customization is a very alluring aspect of Mabinogi, the game is practically designed around making your character as unique as possible!
Different aspects of character personalization include
- Age
- Facial features
- Clothing/armor & Clothing/armor color
- Weapon color (both the metal and otherwise)
- and weight!
One of the things that I love about Mabinogi and something that is a large part of the economy is the coloring system! A huge variety of items in Mabinogi have aspects of them that are randomly colored upon spawn, and can be dyed! From clothing to unexpected things like books! Dyes allow you to change the color of certain parts on items and are a huge commodity in the Mabinogi Market! The only way that you can recieve them is through “Dye Gachapon” which costs 300 NX (Nexon’s cash-shop currency). Or by buying them from personal shops set up by players for large amounts of gold. Update: Actually, you can also purchase “Regular dyes” from players from much lower prices. Plus, you can warp to the elf and giant continents and do a set of quests for their respective leaders to recieve free player cards! When you use these cards you can talk to an NPC to recieve a free regular dye!
One thing to keep in mind:
Nexon has a reputation for being extra greedy with their cash shops and “premium services”. If you want your character to look really nice you’re going to have to be willing to put a few bucks (or your entire savings account) into buying Pons (the currency used to buy items and facial features from the beauty shop, purchased with NX.)
Speaking of the beauty shop, you can buy some pretty neat clothing from there. But if you want to really stick out i wouldn’t advise buying them, as a ton of people run around in those sets.
Gaining Weight!
No joke, in Mabinogi you’re character can get fat by eating too much! Eating is a necessity because as time goes on your max stamina will decrease and eating will refill it (don’t confuse food with stamina potions!). If you eat fatty foods such as meat your character will get chubby! If you want to stay slim you should stick to eating berries, apples, strawberries, etc.
“But what can I do if i’m already fat?”
I asked this question not to long ago when i first discoverd to weight system (I ate two to many meat slices!). One thing you can do is to rebirth! Even if you only choose to reset your age and level your weight doesn’t cross over. However, if for some reason you don’t want to rebirth, you can always buy Weight loss potions for a hefty price OR you can recieve tickets to the Hot Springs.
Earning Gold!
At a glance, it looks rather difficult for a begginer to earn even a slightly decent pocket of gold. But there are some easy ways that you might not see your first time around.
Hunting Quests
Duncan is the first NPC you’ll talk to (besides Nao) he’s part of the storyline quests, but what you might not know is that he sells “Hunting quests”. Once bought these add a quest to your quest menu that require you to collect “Fomor Scrolls” which are occasionally dropped by the enemy they’re named after. If you make it a point to pick up each one you find while fighting, you can earn some quick gold.
Ciar beginner dungeon
If you’ve ever been to the Ciar dungeon you know that if you’re just starting its pretty tough if you’re solo-ing it. But don’t worry! You aren’t stuck with the Alby dungeon where you don’t get much of a profit from clearing over and over again!
If you talk to Ranald at the Tir Chonail School, you can ask him for a Ciar Beginner pass. If you drop one of these at the Ciar dungeon goddess, you’ll be taken to an easier version of the dungeon that gives much more gold than the Alby dungeon.
Conclusion
That’s all for now folks… I hope you guys accept and enjoy my guide and give me feedback on what i should add and if i’ve skipped over anything important. I’ve never written a guide, walkthrough, FAQ, or anything like this so this is a first for me.
I hope I’ve helped you out in some way and maybe I opened the shiny golden door that leads to you enjoying mabinogi! Perhaps I helped you make the decision to download it! If thats so, give me a shout if you see me in game (im on alexina!)!
