Fresh Start, A Tad Overwhelmed; Can Use Some Assistance

• Kozisurf wrote on 2010-08-25 11:10
  Hey guys,
  
  I have recently been interested in getting back into Mabinogi after a long hiatus from it, and plan to start fresh. For the past 2 or 3 days, I have been looking into all the changes made to Mabinogi, particularly the addtion of new Combat-related, and Life Skills.
  
  What I want to do is play the Elven Race, and specialize exclusively as possible in Ranged Combat. I dabbled with Pure Ranged back in the Closed Beta ~ G1/2 Days, and it seemed to work out, but with Mabinogi much more expanded, how viable is Pure Range now-a-days? I've been having trouble/no-luck finding much in relation to Pure Range. Most Ranged Guidelines tend to bring up dabbling in Melee or Magicks/Alchemy, something I would prefer to avoid.
  
  Perhaps the thing I'm feeling most overwhelmed about--and haven't even started yet--is my skill prioritization. I want to churn out skills like Windmill and Refinery ASAP, but I fear if I focus just on those, skills like Critical or Range Attack will come back to bite me in the backside if left undermaintained. Refinery in particular, it is Time Consuming, potentially bank breaking, and like Windmill, if left alone for a time, will only become increasingly more difficult.
  
  Reading about individuals spending 50,000~1,000,000+ Gold, and needing a number of DEX decreasing enchants made my heart sink. I'm thinking of using my Free Card to make a Metallurgy dedicated character, and spend time doing just that for sometime before starting up my Main...which sucks. Refinery has both Failure, and Success goals to Rank it up, if there is one, what would be a "Sweet Spot" for one's DEX to be at?
  
  How would a fresh start character/account go about juggling these sorts of things? I can't seem to come up with a goal list and priority to get me started. The current skills I plan to focus on in the early stages are:
  
  Windmill, Critical, Range Attack, Refinery, Magnum Shot.
  
  Should I focus on any additional skills this early on? What would be a good Mental Cap for skills like Critical or Range Attack, so I don't spread out my AP too thin too fast for when I want/need to get a few Ranks into Refinery?
  
  Oh boy, what a wall. Hope some of you can answer a question or two to help me out. I would really appreciate it.
  
  TL;DR
  Is Pure Range (still) Viable ?
  How To Handle Refinery Early On ? DEX Sweet Spot ?
  Mental Caps, and Skill Prioritization Suggestions For:
  

  Windmill, Critical, Range Attack, Refinery, Magnum Shot.

• Kaeporo wrote on 2010-08-25 11:18
  Range doesn't have much end-game potential considering the lack of effective area of effect skills. Crash shot in G12S2 remedies this problem somewhat. Whatever path you choose, max windmill and refine.
• Fumy wrote on 2010-08-25 11:25
  Rank Refine and Metallurgy on your elf the dex from Metallurgy won't make Refine harder since you can still easily reach 0 dex with it I wouldn't suggest it but getting Range/Mag r9 shouldn't be too much of a problem too since Range r9 is 8 and Mag r9 is 2 dex. Critical you should rank from beginning and about Windmill it's nice to have but not necessary only reason it's useful to me is the Will :S I'd personally rank other skills first and get back to Windmill later with couple of -cp items but that's up to you.
  
  Well you won't stay pure range sooner or later you'll start something else like Alchemy or Magic. Barrier Spikes is a nice to have skill if you're mostly range.
  
  Oh and also you don't have to spend money on refine really^^ When ranking Metallurgy from F to 1 I got enough Ores to get Refine r1 on 2 chars and another friend to a higher rank like r6? and ranked metal conversion to r4.
  For Refine sucesses just goto Bangor when it's raining or monday and trans. For fails goto Filia and wear scarecrow(-6-9 dex) 8 scarecrow items are -48-72 dex, enchant equip with a -30 dex title that's -78-102 dex then you can also get another -30 dex with food making it -108-132 dex
• Kaeporo wrote on 2010-08-25 12:00
  The reason why windmill is essential in a ranged build is the added will. It makes a huge difference later on.
• Fumy wrote on 2010-08-25 12:03
  You can always rank it later you won't need much crit in the beginning anyway :S Actually 120%(For Hard Missions except there is a monster with more than 45% protection but I didn't find one) is easy to get w/o high ranked Will skills
• Rose wrote on 2010-08-25 12:11
  Refine wasn't that hard for me, and i had about 130 Dex, i think... (Rank 1 Range R9 Production)
  
  If i you had came later when i finish Final shot, i would of given you all my ores :P
  
  Don't worry too much about life skilling (Right now) nor should you really worry about windmill (If you're a elf)
  
  Combat is always a good way to go, i went Range>Magnum>Combat Mastery (Now going for Rank 1 FS) you'd be surprised how much of a boost R1 Combat Mastery gives.
• paladin wrote on 2010-08-25 12:37
  Max windmill and refine before you do range and you will thank yourself later
  If you really wanna go pure ranged it is viable but its locked to ar and magaum so mostly single targets
  People mix to open more opoions
• Justified wrote on 2010-08-25 13:06
  You can skip WM, but you probably won't want to skip refine.
  
  I don't see the point in playing a game if the first thing you do is grind skills you don't even want. WM is easily accomplished with -CP gear which you can get after your character is an established Archer.
• Juno wrote on 2010-08-25 13:38
  Windmill isn't super critical for an elven archer, you can rank it casually to 9 or 5 if you really want to. Finding boss monsters is easy nowadays so you can put off getting it to 1 or just not do it.
  
  Refine is important for any archer, but if you get a few easily obtained scarecrow enchants then you can still rank elven ranged to 1 and have 0 total dex with your refine set on. Scarecrow being a -7 - -9 dex enchant that goes on anything.
  
  Late game, elven ranged is definitely viable. Like everyone else you'll need to party up in tough dungeons/missions but you'll have a nice set of places you can solo if you so desire.
• Shirayuki wrote on 2010-08-25 13:59
  An elven archer is really easy to grind with, so getting AP won't be much of a problem once you get your basic build down. I'd suggest starting with Refine and rushing it to 1 as soon as possible. Metallurgy and Production mastery should probably be raised on an alt, but you can also raise purely the Metallurgy skill on your elf. If you don't lag much, you should raise WM to R9, but if you know you lag, ranking it to 1 or 5 could save you sometimes. After Refine, go straight into Range, Magnum, and Critical. Also, early on, you might want to invest in cheap damage gear(Sacrificial Kobold on most equips), but once you reach around Lv300, you should start to invest in critical gear, since the monsters you will be fighting will have really high protection. Otherwise, just don't stray from your build, and you should be fine.
• Rose wrote on 2010-08-25 14:23
  Even though i'm reaching 1000, i'm just starting Windmill..
  
  Although, i'm also ranking Final Shot and Defense :D
  
  Another!
  
  Don't forget about the ego bow!
  
  VERY USEFULL!!!
• Fumy wrote on 2010-08-25 14:36
  It's not worth making an ego bow if you don't have money to feed it just get a good enchanted and upgraded bow and don't just decide to get crit/dmg enchants best way is to calculate howmuch crit you need only get as much crit as you need not worth getting more so once you have enough get dmg enchants on everything that isn't enchanted yet
• Rose wrote on 2010-08-25 16:17
  Get a level 30 Str bow, and you're pretty much set, yo
• Shirayuki wrote on 2010-08-25 16:19

  Quote from CableCrook;136659:

  Get a level 30 Str bow, and you're pretty much set, yo

  
  
  Don't forget Lv50 luck.
• EndlessDreams wrote on 2010-08-25 17:15
  @Ego Bows
  
  What? level 30 str/50 luck for a person starting out? Have you guys ever try getting ANY ego stats to level 50?
  
  Anyways, for elves, WM isn't very important at all. You can always just ignore/put it off till later when your range skills are decent. As for refine, it isn't the end of the world if you rank Range to near r1 before starting on refine. There are equipments that gives -dex and furances that gives -5% success rate.
  
  You don't need 0 dex to get from rF to r2 with mythrils fails done although it helps.