Quote from Kenero;285068:
Hehe, I'm curious.
When you first started Mabinogi, how did you feel about dying/living and your skills?
Considering when I first started playing Mabi, I was still mostly playing Everquest... it wasn't until I quit Everquest and made Mabi my primary game that I really went around actually doing more than sit around Tir and chat with friends. So I had learned a lot before my first meaningful combat/dungeon experience just soaking on the conversations around me and asking questions from my friends.
As for dying/living, I realized it would happen. I learned the basics of the combat system and how to use defense/counter very early on, and learned the basics of bolt counter watching friends fight. As such I tended not to die much at all unless it was due to lag or interference from other people.
When doing hard dungeons well above what I should have been doing (rundal/basic or /adv for example) with people, I often had to teach them how to conserve Nao revives, and how running back from the statue was often the better choice than sitting around doing nothing with a feather up. As necromancer in Everquest, I specialized in recovering raids from partial/full wipes, so the concept of getting back to the fight as quickly and efficiently as possible in Mabi was something I did well anyway.
I also recall sometimes purposely getting myself killed, just to get an mp refill from Nao. Being able to get back to killing on a full mana bar fast meant more exp than what was lost from the death. Not many others were willing to think like that... and tended to hold the belief that a good player never died, ever.
Quote from Kenero;285068:
When you first hit total level 100, how did you feel about your strength, was the world fun?
Total level 100 had less in-game meaning back when I hit that benchmark, as g9 wasn't even out in KR yet. But I do still remember my friends and myself feeling some significance to getting to that total.
I don't really recall much about my strength. I'm pretty sure I was still honing my icebolting methods at the time, and was gradually becoming free of the need to use counter much if ever. That change in basic strategy was a pretty significant boost in speed and damage output, while marking the first steps of becoming a "pure" mage.
I had a lot of fun competing with some of my melee friends, who were still in the last stages of getting their windmills to rank 1. I spent a lot of time in rabbie/basics, and found I could clear the dungeon at the same speed or faster than they could, since despite the awesome power of WM, they still didn't do much damage. While rk5-1 icebolt did really good damage to fire and lightning element skeletons.
Quote from Kenero;285068:
When you first hit total level 1000, how did you feel about the game?
At that point I had started doing missions and dungeons with my leveling partner already. We had already gotten really good at duoing ciar/adv, and g9 coming out was a pretty exciting time to explore stuff. Hitting 1k total levels meant I could participate in the hard level missions that he was able to do, and working together we could handle them fairly easily (I probably would have stuck to adv missions for awhile at that point had I been soloing).
I had pretty much grown as a mage out of bolt spells completely, and was very firmly focused on Thunder as my primary attack. A lot of my fun involved the little things I could do to make my thunders that much more efficient, like using pets to group things that otherwise would not be all hit by the arcs.
Quote from Kenero;285068:
At your current level, how do you feel about the game, your current strength, and what you lost/gain from your newbie days?
At my current level, over 2k I find myself still enjoying a lot of the same things. I'm still expanding my prowess as a spell-caster. I've dabbled heavily in alchemy (mostly with the intent of finding ways to enhance my magic). I've also spent a lot of time, money, and ap making my character far more durable (some inspiration from Zyrus' mana master guide, though I'd already started work on "tanking up" before he wrote that). It is an interesting direction to explore building up defenses rather than rabid focus on offense and trying to play as a glass cannon.
I've most recently begun to work on efficiency and self-sufficiency. I've gone from my old days of being a mana-starved newbie mage to someone who can make more mana potions than she can use, and I have some backup offensive skills I can use when mana runs out. I've been training golem summoning as a way to fight and do good damage, but keep repair costs/supply costs low. That way I can do my normal grinding more cheaply, while having the money to maintain a nice set of heavy armor and my wands in situations that call for more power.
I can't really say there is anything I miss or feel I've lost from my newbie days. The game has changed around me, but I remain the person behind the controls of my character, finding things to do. Maybe I don't have the same sense of wonder I did the first time I climbed Spiral Hill in Dugald Aisle, but I get a similar sense when new content comes out and I get to visit a new place. I still like to learn about the mechanics of things, I like to learn about the new sets of enchants for different playstyles available, and so on.
Best of all... I still have fun playing Mabi. I know there are a lot of players who have either quit, or are thinking of doing so... out of boredom. I suspect a lot of them have done so because they achieved all their old goals... and have trouble making new ones. I still haven't hit all my goals, even some I made back in g2 (master all offensive magic for example). I don't rush toward them, just enjoy the progress I make when I make it.