This guide is aimed at people who have not played Mabinogi before and want to get started, or people who have not played Mabinogi in a long time and want to start over with the updated newbie mechanics. This guide will cover the most basic mistakes a new player can make, and will explain some important concepts and ways Mabinogi differs from other games that seem similar. Part 1 will cover account and character creation information and stuff to consider, while Part 2 will cover the rest.
- Part 1
Do Not Share Accounts
Do not share your Nexon/Mabinogi account with somebody else.
There's almost no benefits to doing this, but plenty of downsides.
- You can only log into one character on an account at a time. If you share accounts, you cannot play at the same time as somebody else. Mabinogi is a long game with a lot of content, and even beyond gameplay there's actually multiple situations in which you'd want to leave your character logged in for a period of time.
- Many events reward staying logged in. Some of these events will only reward one character on an account.
- You need to stay logged in to actively run a shop or kiosk.
- Sometimes there's login/activity events which only give an item once at a set time.
- Many events reward staying logged in. Some of these events will only reward one character on an account.
- It's hard to protect your items. Characters on an account share pets and thus the pet inventories, and can access each other's bank accounts. There's only a few ways to protect items, and they tend to be either temporary or only protect a small subset of them.
- Newbie accounts get some strong benefits that established accounts don't get. The benefits stop at total level 1000. These benefits are per-account, so even if you start a new character on an existing account, it will never get these benefits!
Consider Picking Human First
Even if you prefer the idea of elves or giants it may be better to start a human character first, at least until you learn how to play and get some experience with various skillsets.
- The human home town is relatively closer to the popular areas and is more traveled than the elf or giant hometowns (which have little of interest to established players outside of quests), so you'll see other players more often which may help you out when you're first starting. The human newbie quests also involve less running around areas you might get lost in and tend to focus on the important game concepts.
- Humans are not restricted in any major skillset. They're not the best at everything, but they can do almost everything which is important. Giants cannot used bows or crossbows, elves cannot use lances or dual-wield, etc.
Gender
Most popular clothing is gender-locked so it's best to pick a gender and stick with it unless you want a lot of extra clothing taking up space. You can change your gender when you do your weekly rebirth in case you change your mind though (explained further lower down). If you're female and scared of playing a female character (or male and want to play a female character because they're nicer to look at), don't worry. You'll see a large amount of female characters/players, perhaps surprisingly-large depending on which other MMOs you've played. I very rarely see anybody being hit on in a serious manner, unlike other games. The issue of gender-locked clothing is a way bigger concern for most people.
Talent
Your selected talent may seem to you like the class of other games, but talents actually work differently to classes in multiple ways, and give different types of benefits.
- Talents are not restrictive.
You can choose the magic talent and then go out and be an archer if you want. Talent is not class and does not restrict the skills you can use/learn or what you can do. In fact you get asked which talent you want to pick again every time you rebirth (again, explained below) so most characters have had multiple talents before.
- Talents are bonuses.
Your selected talent determines which stats get the biggest boosts to while leveling up, and you also get 2x training speed for the skills that talent controls. Sometimes people will choose a different talent than their usual focus to speed up training on a specific skill or gain certain stat boost temporarily.
- Don't restrict yourself to just the skills your talent lists.
Even if you're a magic user, you will need to rank up the Critical Hit skill in the basic combat tab to raise critical hit damage, and Combat Mastery is still one of the biggest boosts to HP. Going further on the magic example, some music skills give intelligence so a lot of mages work on some specific music skills in order to get even more intelligence for magic damage. Your skills add to your base stats so the more skills you work on and raise the stronger you'll be. This is due to the fact that earning AP in Mabinogi is unlimited, unlike other games where characters get a fixed amount and so have to carefully choose which skills to raise.
- Reset your skills at Duncan if needed.
As long as your account is a beginner, you can reset your skills (derank them to F and get the AP back) by talking to Duncan, the Tir leader. So until you hit total level 1000, you should explore different skills and skillsets to see what you like to do best, or focus on the ones that are hard to rank while you're still weak.
- Don't try to be a pure support class.
This may be an MMO, but there's a number of things you need to solo, including most parts of many generation (main storyline) quests. The game heavily encourages group play, but you will need to have basic fighting skills of your own and be able to go through a dungeon or mission by yourself if you want to make any serious progress in Mabinogi.
- Do not throw away the beginner weapon your talent gives you.
Your first selected talent gives you a "beginner" weapon that matches it. They actually give you standard equipment, not weak equipment. The "beginner" tag makes it extremely cheap to repair, which is especially important for something like magic where wand/staff repair costs are usually far too much for newbies to be able to afford. You will only be given a beginner weapon once.
Mabinogi is not a game where you progress through tiers of equipment as you level up. There's no such thing as a level 10 sword versus a level 20 sword. Equipment choices are often based on the ability to obtain them, cost of repairing, and personal preference. Most weapons and armor can be upgraded, changing or improving their stats as you gain proficiency with them.
Focus On One Character
As explained above, talent is not class, and is not permanent. If you already started a character as a mage but want to take up swordplay then just grab some swords and start killing stuff, if you already started as a ranger but want to try magic then go get the basic magic skillbooks and start using the skills, etc. Spreading your effort around multiple characters right when you start will actually mean very little progress made on any of then, since character growth in Mabinogi is relatively slow compared to other games.
The Rebirth System Explained
The rebirth system is a core component of Mabinogi, and a lot of player decisions and capabilities revolve around it. Unlike other games where your character eventually hits the level cap and then stops progressing, Mabinogi allows for almost infinite character progression. When you rebirth, your character is, as the lore goes, reborn into a new body.
This resets you back to level 1, but you keep all of your skills, skill ranks, items, quest progressions, and everything else other than the stat gains from leveling up. This means that you can start leveling again from level 1, which is easier than trying to level once you're higher, and gets you more AP to spend in ranking up your skills. This means Mabinogi has no total level cap.
Ranking up your skills gives you stats. These stat boosts are permanent, so while you may be immediately weaker right after a rebirth, by the time you get back up to your previous level you'll be stronger than you were the last time due to the extra permanent stats gained from ranking up more skills with the additional AP you gained.
You can rebirth once it's been ~6 days since your last rebirth (~24 hours for newbies under total level 1000). Since rebirthing is a stepping stone to progression, you'll generally want to be able to rebirth as quickly as possible.
- You can only log into one character on an account at a time. If you share accounts, you cannot play at the same time as somebody else. Mabinogi is a long game with a lot of content, and even beyond gameplay there's actually multiple situations in which you'd want to leave your character logged in for a period of time.
- Part 2
Quests
Unlike some other games, in Mabinogi the system and NPCs will give you all sorts of quests (in your normal quest tab) without asking, and you aren't always ready to complete them when you get them. Some of the quests you'll be given are brief introductions to certain areas or excuses to go try something, but a lot of quests are long-term goals, or may simply involve things you don't care about. Most players are walking around with a lot of uncompleted quests in their quest tabs for various reasons, so don't stress about it. If you're curious about something, ask somebody! Chances are plenty of people around you got that same quest before and can tell you what it's about and what to do.
Daily Quests
Mabinogi has a number of quests you can complete once each (real-life) day. These quests show up in the normal quest tab. They give EXP and sometimes they give gold, but they also give other items that it may be worthwhile to collect. Notably once you hit total level 50 there's two daily Shadow Missions that give 3 AP total each day if you can find somebody willing to take you through them if they're difficult. Outside of AP, many of the daily quests give Adventurer Seals, which you can trade in with the Seal Merchant for various items, some of which are valuable or very helpful.
Dungeons
In the first few areas of the game, and especially when running some of the quests you'll be getting, you'll be introduced to Dungeons. These are randomly-generated underground structures you work your way through, either to get a chance of an item at the end, for a quest that wants you to run the dungeon, or just for fun/training.
They're semi-instanced, you drop/sacrifice an item to enter them, and if somebody else drops the same item as you (say, the same type of potion or dagger or gold if you dropped gold) then they'll end up in the dungeon instance you created. There's two exceptions to this rule, one is dungeon passes always make isolated instances, and the second is the Daily Effect making it so that dungeons are always separate instances on Tuesday.
The different dungeons have different looks and contents, and even within the same dungeon, you can encounter different monsters in the different dungeon pass versions, so there's a variety of stuff to see in them. At the end of each dungeon is a big boss room with a boss, and beyond that a treasure room, which will spawn one chest for each player in the party/dungeon.
Shadow Missions
Shadow Missions are another important part of Mabinogi. Introduced later than dungeons, shadow missions take place mainly in Tailteann and Tara. These resemble dungeons somewhat, but no item sacrifice is needed to enter the different difficulties, though the higher difficulties just have the same monsters with higher stats. In addition many shadow missions take place outside rather than underground.
Shadow missions are time-limited, unlike dungeons, but they give a static gold and EXP reward that's generally higher than what dungeons give, though they lack the prize pool and monster variety that dungeons have.
Making Gold
Of course, this is important to making progress in any MMO, right? So here's a few methods you can use.
- Some daily quests gives a few thousand gold at a time.
- Dungeons drop gold at the end, though most shadow missions are better for gold for the time spent since they give a bigger fixed reward at the end, and often take place in smaller areas so they can be finished quicker.
- If you collect enough Adventurer Seals with the daily quests (generally 80+), you can buy some items to resell to other players for a large amount of gold. Prices vary depending on the server of course, and this will take time to do.
- Sometimes you'll see a monster with "The Ancient" as it's title, after the name. These rare monsters tend to be visually larger, and about 10x as tough as the normal ones... but they also have a second drop table that can drop some valuable items. It may be worth hunting these to collect gems, upgrade stones, and equipment to sell to other players, as even high-level players can want to buy a really lucky drop from an ancient fox.
Do Your Generation (Storyline) Quests
The quests that show up in the additional tabs (beyond "Event" and "Normal") are "Generation" quests, roughly divided into 3-4 sections. These are mainstream storyline quests which usually come in quest lines, that is you'll get quest after quest in that tab as you complete them. Some storyline quests give very important rewards and unlock things so the sooner you get these rewards, the more power your character has. In addition some of the generation quests attempt to scale to your level, so if you wait too long they'll jump up in difficulty. Generation quests assume that you have a basic understanding of the game though, so wait until you're familiar enough with combat to be able to handle normal things.
- Some daily quests gives a few thousand gold at a time.
[SPOILER="Updates"]7/4/2015
- Added the bit about skill resetting.
6/24/2015
- Updated some of the talent selection info based on the new categorization.
- Added the bit about equipment selection.
7/8/2014:
-Added the "Some of these events will only reward one character on an account." text to why you shouldn't share accounts.
-Changed the "start human" section since new accounts get 6 character cards now, the focus is on race selection opposed to other benefits.
-Removed the "Start Old, Not Young" section as the rebirth changes made it not apply.
-Changed the gender section according to rebirth changes.
-Changed the Rebirth section to account for all the changes.
5/2/2014: Finished the placeholders for part 2.
4/30/2014: Worked on part 2, left some placeholders.
4/20/2014: Fixed a grammar mistake, edited the bank issue to mention gold storage, edited alchemy thing to specify Vate, added the note on generations, clarified that there's no level cap.
[/SPOILER]