Beginner's Guide

For other progression guides, see Progression Guides.

For other guides, see Guides.

Auranogi Beginner's Guide

The VERY Basics of Mabinogi

If you have never played Mabinogi, have never played Mabinogi before the Dynamic Combat update, or just need a refresher, this section is for you.

Character Creation / Racial Differences

The very first choice you make when creating a character is your choice of race. There are 3 races in Mabinogi, each with their respective pros and cons. Though you can shape your character into anything you like, each race has some skills unique to them, As well as limitations to consider.

Human

Humans are the all-rounder. They have equal access to all styles of play, and are well-suited for new players due to this. Humans are capable of using most equipment, barring a few giant and elf only weaponry. Though they lack certain perks that elves and giants have, they can fufill all roles effectively.

Giant

Giants are melee specialists, featuring increased damage scaling on several close combat skills, as well as being able to wield 2-handed weaponry with a shield. Their early game is comparatively easier than other races and when focusing on melee skills can easily grow stronger faster than other races. They are incapable of wielding bows, and their magic spells have a higher mana cost than humans and elves. Be wary that of the three races, giants are the most limited, as they are entirely restricted from the archery skillset.

Elf

Elves are ranged specialists, featuring a multitude of benefits to the archery skillset and reduced mana costs on spells. Note, however, that both archery and magic have heavy drawbacks that come into play especially in the early game, including gear prices, Ability Point costs, and a more fragile style of play. Elves cannot use most two-handed weaponry, and their melee skills are weakened compared to humans. While elves become incredibly strong with good gear, they can suffer in early game.

Combat System

Mabinogi features a rock-paper-scissor's style combat system, with certain skills beating out other skills. Each skill or spell has a load time, meaning that must either play defensively or react quickly to enemies to survive.

Rock Paper Scissors!

Listed below are the primary skill interactions seen in melee combat.

• Normal Attacks: Clicking on an enemy automatically uses one of these. They can be blocked with the Defense skill or countered with the Counterattack skill. Higher level enemies may also automatically defend against these mid-combo, so be careful.
• Smash: This skill deals high damage to one target, knocking them down instantly and ignoring the Defense skill. It is vulnerable to the Counterattack skill, and can be interrupted by normal attacks.
• Defense: This skill protects you and reduces damage taken partially. It is effective against normal attacks, some AoE attacks, and most ranged attacks. It can be circumvented with strong attacks like Smash.
• Counter: This skill protects you against normal attacks, smash, and other single-target melee skills, avoiding damage entirely in the proccess.
• Windmill: The crown jewel of melee combat. This skill deals damage to all enemies around you and grants you invulnerability for the duration, but also consumes some of your own HP. It can be blocked by the Defense skill, but will ignore the Counterattack skill, and will intercept enemies attempting to use normal attacks or Smash on you.

The RPS system is mainly interfaced with using close combat skills — archery and magic focuses on attacking the enemy before they can get to you. However, you are vulnerable if your arrows miss or you're attacked while casting a spell.

Stun and Stability

Bounce Animation

Another very important part of the combat system are these mechanics:

• Stun: Most attacks will cause a stun on the target, where they will be unable to attack or move, different attacks cause different amounts of stun.
• Stability: Causes creatures to get knocked-back/knocked-down, most attacks cause some amount of stability damage, and when the stability of a creature goes below 0 they get knocked-back. A creature's stability damage can be seen via their "stability meter", which shows below an enemy you have targeted.

For example, normal attacks with a short sword will cause a short stun on the enemy while lowering their stability, after 3 hits the enemy will get knocked back, at this point you'll likely want to avoid just going for more normal attacks (recommendations may vary depending on enemy you are fighting), as if they go at you with normal attacks you could be attacked instead.

If a creature receives another knock-back while they are already knocked-back they will "bounce", you will notice this because they will do the knockdown animation, but will not move.

If this same creatures gets another knock-back while in this "bounced" state, their knocked-back state will be nullified, and they will be able to attack you immediately, which is why you should be careful when you are spam attacking creatures, specially in parties.

More on Combat

• See the Combat Guide for a more in-depth introduction to combat.
• See the Combat Tactics page to familiarize yourself with some useful strategies to use in combat.

Skill Archetypes

In Mabinogi you are not limited to a specific skill set, all skills are equally available at any time to any player. It is, however, beneficial when starting out to focus on a particular archetype until you are proficient enough to clear more difficult content while pulling your own weight. Skills will never lose their benefits unless you de-rank them yourself using a reset capsule, and even provide benefits to other archetypes.

Melee Skills

• Windmill: A strong defensive and offensive skill that hits enemies in a 360° radius around the player, growing in range as you rank up. Useful to protect yourself from multiple mobs attacking at once, defend yourself from approaching enemies, or simply to dispatch a large group. Successfully landing this skill on a mob will also reset its AI aggro state, which in most cases will provide the user enough time to retaliate accordingly after execution. The skill retains its defensive properties even if you are a ranged or magic user, making it a useful skill regardless of your preference. If you are focusing on melee combat, it is recommended to not neglect ranking this skill.
• Smash: The best defense is a good offense. Melee combat is a lot easier if you rank Smash, as it will allow you to one-shot enemies and prevent them from retaliating entirely. It is recommended you get this to at least Rank C in order to unlock Assault Slash.
• Assault Slash: Speaking with Trefor (the knight in black armour on the path to Alby Dungeon) with Rank C smash gets you this skill. It allows you to jump to an enemy that has been knocked down, attacking it one additional time. It provides some much needed mobility for close combat.
• Combat Mastery / Weapon Masteries: Combat Mastery and the various weapon masteries provide a significant amount of health and damage for very few Ability Points. While you shouldn't use all your Ability Points on passive skills immediately, they are an easy way to increase your damage and survivability. Sword mastery is especially helpful for new players with low Dexterity who may suffer from low weapon balance.

Archery Skills

• Ranged Attack: This determines your aim speed, load times and damage when using ranged weapons. There is big difference from rank F and rank 1, thus it is recommended to rank this before other ranged skills. Elves will loose 2 arrows per shot, and can fire while moving or mounted.
• Magnum Shot: The smash-equivalent for archery. It has a slower aim time, but the high damage more than offsets this drawback. Massively important for elves especially, as their load time is very shot.
• Bow/Crossbow Masteries: More damage. Less important than standard Ranged Attack since it does not affect aim speed or load time.
• Support Shot: Applies a de-buff to enemies that marks them with blue smoke and stuns them for a short period. If the next source of damage on the enemy is a melee attack, they will receive increased damage from that attack according to your support shot rank. Humans have the added benefit of increased aim speed from standard ranged attack.
• Urgent Shot: If you miss a shot, urgent shot allows you to immediately loose an arrow that has 100% chance to hit and has increased damage and knockback, and will increase the aim speed of your next ranged skill.
• (Humans only) Arrow Revolver: This skill essentially replaces Ranged Attack for humans once you have it fully ranked. It allows you to loose 5 arrows one after the other with no load time in-between, with increased damage and aim speed. If you wish to be an archer as a human, it is imperative you pick up this skill.

Magic Skills

Warning to beginners: Using magic, especially early on is very costly. Ice and Fire bolts require use of a chaincast wand to be effective, and burn through costly durability very quickly, not to mention the large amount of gold or time you will spend buy/crafting mana potions. While bolt spells CAN be an effective option starting out, they are very costly. Consider using an alternative play style when starting out unless you are more experienced.

• Firebolt: The smash-equivalent for magic, a fully charged firebolt will launch all 5 bolts at once and deal a large amount of damage and knock-down most targets.

• Icebolt: A quick-fire bolt. Charging more bolts simply allows one to quickly cast them one after another. A chaincast (CC) +2 to +4 wand will allow you to eliminate early dungeon mobs quickly and with relative ease. It becomes less useful in harder content, but is still a great tool early on.

• Lightning Bolt: A high damage bolt that will chain to more targets the more bolt charges you have. A CC+2 lightning wand is also effective at clearing low level dungeons.

• Magic Mastery: The magic-equivalent to Combat Mastery, providing a large amount of extra mana for relatively low AP. However, you will not be able to fully rank this skill until you have access to intermediate magic.

• Meditation: After learning all 3 bolt spells, talk to Stewart in the school in Dunbarton with the "Skills" keyword, and you'll get Meditation. This skill is trained by reading books rather than using the skill itself. It increases the regeneration speed of mana, allowing you save some mana potions.

Alchemy Skills

Alchemy is a cheaper alternative to Magic early on, and extremely effective. However, ranking Alchemy provides little to no extra stats that benefit other combat styles, and in order to increase effectiveness in Alchemy, you will need to branch out to other combat styles.

• Water Cannon: The ultimate newbie-friendly skill, however it requires rank 1 in order to be effective. Once fully ranked, you will find that you can clear all beginner and some intermediate content with this skill alone. Watercannon loads up to 5 charges, and fires them at your target, dealing increased damage with more charges. Damage output scales with MP and water alchemy mastery.

• Chain Cylinder: Provides the user with a chance to receive extra charges immediately when loading Watercannon or Flameburst. If you are planning on using alchemy, it is necessary to get this skill to rank 1 and even obtain the mastery title for use, as having the extra chance for extra charges is a huge benefit.

• Wind Blast: A quick loading skill that can push 1 selected target back with a stun, or if you target the ground instead of an enemy, push back enemies in an AOE. Learning and leaving this skill at rank F is good as it retains its usefulness even if the damage is low. It takes some practice to get used to using Wind Blast effectively, but once learned can be extremely handy.

• Flame Burst: While less effective early on than Water Cannon, Flame Burst is very handy when used in conjunction with Wind Blast. Flame Burst is a line AOE that hits targets 3 to 5 times based on rank, and ignores protection, allowing for consistent damage. Use Wind Blast to move enemies into a pile, and execute Flame Burst to whittle them all down at once. Damage scales with HP and fire alchemy mastery.

Dungeons

One of the best dungeons to start out with once you have your footing and have decided what your main damage dealing source will be, is to run Rabbie normal / basic for fomor scrolls.
One can quickly amass a sufficient amount of gold to carry them throughout the early game from there.

See Dungeon Progression Guide for more!

Growing Stronger

Age

• When starting out, base stats are higher at age 17 than age 10, however an age 10 character generally will gain more stats from leveling up than an age 17 character. For new players, starting your first character at age 17 is a safe choice.

Rebirth / Ability Points

Unlike most MMOs, the main way of increasing your strength in Mabinogi is to level up to obtain Ability Points, spend them on unlocking/ranking up skills, and then Rebirthing to reset your level to 1 in order to obtain more Ability Points. Your level does not indicate your power, but merely your potential.

Skills can be trained by using them, with the training requirements being shown in the skill menu. After the training requirements are met, you can spend your Ability Points to increase it by one rank, going from F to A, and then 9 to 1. Higher rank skills are more effective and provide permanent stat boosts to your character.

Every 6 days, you are able to Rebirth, resetting your level to 1 while retaining all your skills and Ability Points. Rebirthing temporarily weaknes you, as you lose your stats gained from levelling up, but each time you rebirth, you'll become a little stronger as you spend your Ability Points on skills to, which permanently strengthen you. Below is a list of skills you may want to focus on, depending on which of the 3 basic skillsets you find most engaging.

Auranogi tip: Use the >rebirthtimer command to see when your next rebirth will be available!

Leveling

• Increasing your level will increase your stats based on what age you are, as well as provide Ability Points to upgrade your skills. Your "current level" can be considered temporary, however your "total level" and ability points generally governs how capeable your character is.
  • Exploration levels are important for more easy stat gains and ability points each week before you rebirth as well.

Weapons

• Starting weapons aren't very strong so you might want to look at NPC shops for ones with more damage, player blacksmiths are also able to craft weapons with slightly higher stats. If you are human or giant, dual-wielding is recommended as it will usually do more damage than 2-handed weapons, exceptions can apply, but as a general rule of thumb, dual-wielding will generally be more damage.
  • Humans, dual gladiī are great for beginners, but are a tad costly. Dual Broadswords are good once you have fully ranked Sword Mastery and Combat Mastery, and battle swords are the best option for humans to dual weild albeit potentially extremely expensive to upgrade.
  • Highlander claymores are fairly easy to obtain and a good balanced option for those who like 2 handed-weapons, or a Dragon Fang or Glory Sword if you are able to obtain one.
  • Leather long bows are the best start for humans looking to get into archery, or regular crossbow with range+ upgrades. It is not reccomended to use any range- upgrades. Afterwards you can swap to a Highlander Long bow.
  • Giants will want to make use of dual iron maces (potentially a spirit iron mace for maximum potential), and they are cheap to repair early on. A better option once you are able to clear Maiz Glowing Gargoyle is the Mace of Mercy.
  • A highlander claymore again is a good balanced option for 2 handed-weapon enthusiasts and can be replaced with a Dragon Fang or Glory Sword, this also allows use of a shield or guard cylinder.
  • Elves are limited to one handed weapons mainly for close combat. Solid options for them are the standard maces, or a Francsisca if you can find one. Mysterious Phoenix Feather sword is also a good option, however very expensive to repair.
  • Leather long bows are still a great starter bow for elves, later to be upgraded by the Highlander Long bow.

Repairing

An overlooked but absolutely necessary aspect of Mabinogi is keeping your equipment repaired. Using your equipment will reduce its durability, and you will have to repair at the corresponding NPC to regain lost durability. Depending on the type of equipment you are repairing, you will need to visit a specific NPC who can repair it I.E a blacksmith will repair regular weapons and armor while a general shop will repair tools and musical instruments.

• Ensure that you always bless your items using Holy Water of Lymilark, this not only increases its repair chance, but also decreases durability loss, resulting in having to repair less often.
• Repairing at a blacksmith with 97% repair rate (e.g Akihiro) with a blessed item bumps up the success rate to 99% (the maximum achievable).

Upgrades

• Equipment can be upgraded with Proficiency (gained each time durability is lost on the item) by talking to the appropriate NPC, a fully upgraded weapon is usually much stronger.

Skills

• Ranking up skills will make them more effective, and some skills will even grant permanent stat bonuses that will provide you with more power. You should try ranking up weapon masteries (for whichever is the weapon of your choice) a few ranks (until the AP cost starts getting too high for the gains) for an easy initial boost to damage.

See Stats and Skills for a breakdown on skill scaling and AP efficiency. This can give you a good outline of what skills you might want to rank depending on your play style.

Enchants

• A fully enchanted equipment set grants a large amount of damage, see the Enchanting Guide for more info on enchanting.

Gold

• As stated in the Dungeon section, running Rabbie normal/basic once you are able to do so will help rack in the gold you need in order to keep your gear repaired, and buy that fancy item you saw in a player shop.
• Ensure that you are picking up every fomor scroll you see drop, as the additional gold earned from these items will eventually add up. The fomor scrolls can easily be turned in at Eavan in Dunbarton or various other NPCs.

First steps

• Make sure to complete any Skill Quests, Hunting Quests, Beginner Quests (Rano) or Beginner Quests (Uladh), and Beginner Quests (Aura).
  • Completing those as they become available will be a big boon to your early game, grating experience, and useful items to get started.

• Try to replace your starting weapon as soon as possible, the Blacksmith in Dunbarton sells better weapons than the one in Tir.

• Complete Church Part-Time Jobs to obtain Holy Water of Lymilark, an item used to bless your equipment, which has 2 main benefits, durability loss on the item is halved, and increasing repair chance.

Custom Content

Familiarize yourself with Aura's Custom Content early, such as the Custom Dungeons.
User Commands are also there for your benefit, make sure to use them often as they can help reduce travel time and provide useful information like your current CP level.