Who can be a merchant?
Anyone. Personal shops and party advertisements*, your main forms of merching, can be done while dungeoning, life skilling, PvPing and most importantly, AFKing.
*Party advertising- Open the Party interface (hotkey P), select Dungeon, type your text and press Enter. For about 15 minutes, you will broadcast to the entire channel, at which point you must open the party interface and reselect Members Wanted.
When should I start?
The moment you begin the game. This game uses party advertisements which broadcast to the whole channel to buy and sell items. To start out, simply observe what is being bought/sold often.
To participate, ensure you have >200k and start merching the items that will be explained in this guide.
There are 5 main methods: direct trading, mail, personal shop, kiosk and housing. Read their respective wiki pages for further details.
Trading
Pros
- Snag great deals
- Meet new people
- Trade in checks
Cons
- Slow
- Inconvenient for active players
- Must be online to trade
Trading is done by meeting the player and trading, often with money in checks. This is convenient as checks can then be reused without any additional fees. When trading non-consumables, this is the preferred method of trading.
Pros
- Nearly instantaneous
- Accessible from any major town
- Sent mail can be left overnight
- Convenient for active players
-
Cons
- Large processing fees
- Must be used in conjunction with a party ad, requires you to be active
Mail allows one to send an item to another player whilst requesting a sum of money. Mail is used mostly for high quantities of consumable items as it allows the buyer to AFK with an ad, then buy large amounts of goods mailed to them. Mailing has large fees if you cannot hold enough gold (not in checks) in your inventory, making this the preferred method for smaller items.
Shops and Kiosks
Pros
- Once set up, can be left alone
- Instant transaction for buyers
- Good positioning can allow overpriced items to sell
- Kiosks have a search function for buyers
Cons
- Fixed fees for setting up shop, bad for new merchants
- Cannot change channels or log out without closing
- Max trading limits for shops
- Max individual item price for kiosks
- Must click shops individually to view items, no search function
Personal shops and kiosks tie together in a similar way, but with different restrictions. Personal shops require a license and can only sell up to a limit, 2.25m for Dunbarton, 20m for Belvast, whilst kiosks have a 1m restriction on individual item price. The benefit of shops is that they can be left alone and are extremely easy to buy from, meaning consumers are more likely to buy at higher prices. Only downside is that changing channel or logging out closes the shop. Kiosks have the added benefit of having a search function on the Housing Board to allow buyers to find items quickly.
Housing
Pros
- Can be left overnight
- Overpriced items will still sell relatively quickly
- Has a search function for buyers
Cons
- High setting up cost
- Requires Premium Service (costs real money)
- Max individual price limit (albeit higher than kiosks)
Housing requires Premium Service, but is nonetheless a very popular way of selling items. The initial cost of setting up a housing sale is large, but it allows the player to sell items offline. For this reason, housing is typically overpriced. Houses also act as a bank with a 5m gold limit, meaning any items that are over 5m cannot be sold in a house.
Cycle of convenience
When buying items to merch, party advertisements combined with mail is the easiest way to reach a large audience. You can do this any time, anywhere, just make sure you go to your mail to collect any goods people sell to you. This is time consuming, however, and only allows you to advertise 1 item at a time in most cases. Try formatting your party ad like "B>Ancient Magic Powders 300k mail".
When selling items, personal shops are the most convenient for buyers. After you set up a shop, it only takes a click for the buyer to instantly receive their item. This is the cycle of convenience. You spend many hours advertising to gather many items, and sell them in a convenient manner. Make sure to change the title of your personal shop to reflect what is being sold.
This also applies to browsing many player shops and buying underpriced items. The process of browsing many shops is time consuming, and more often than not, you will come across cheap items. Buy them and sell them in your shop, but always be wary of how much inventory space the item takes up. Often, visiting channels other than Channel 1 give a good chance of finding a deal.
First, some tips.
There are many cheap consumables that can be bought low extremely frequently. Always have a party ad up buying one of these when you have a bit of spare cash and are not using your party ad for anything else.
Have spare cash as much as you can. You never know when an item will be drastically underpriced in a shop which happens more often than you think after a new gacha is on sale. Check channels other than CH 1 for a higher chance of snagging a deal.
A tip on browsing shops/kiosks; click beyond the shop closest to you towards the next shop. As you are walking, click the shop as you pass. As the shop interface opens, you will continue walking towards the next shop. After you browse and close the shop, you will find yourself adjacent to the next shop and can open it without any extra walking.
Put simply, the things that are valued in Mabinogi are:
Damage
Damage for dungeons, bossing etc.
Durability
Mabi runs on a durability system which affects nearly all equipment, slowing or outright nullifying durability loss costs money.
Convenience
Mabi is Tetris 2.0 with a limited inventory system and items taking varying amounts of inventory. Bags increase inventory. Also includes items which speed general activities up.
Fashion
Mabi has hundreds of different outfits, wings and weapons to try on. The Style Tab acts as an equipment covering slot which takes normal equipment and allows you to wear it over
your normal equipment. Equipment in the Style Tab do not lose durability.
Character development
The major difference between Mabi and other MMORPGs is that you can theoretically max every skill in the game. This is a long term goal and will take years to achieve, also requires
a lot of gold.