Beginner's Guide

Auranogi Beginner's Guide (Unofficial) Work In Progress

Contributions welcome!

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 two-handed weaponry, and their melee skills are heavily weakened compared to humans. While elves become incredibly strong with good gear, they suffer heavily 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. Enemies can kill you as fast, if not faster, than you can kill them, so facetanking isn't an option!

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. You
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, ignoring Defense and normal attacks entirely. However, you are vulnerable if your arrows miss or you're attacked while casting a spell.

Stun and Stability

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.

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 deal more damage 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!

Melee Skills

Windmill: While it is recommended to rank this ASAP (even as an archer or a mage), it is also an immense pain to do so, especially if you're not a giant, as humans and elves have even higher training requirements than giants do. Nonetheless, its difficulty is exactly why you should try to rank it as soon as possible, and if your main/starting combat style is melee, windmill is one of the strongest skills available.
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. Dead enemies deal no damage. 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 Mastery: 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 the easiest way to increase your damage once Windmill and Smash have been ranked up.

Archery Skills

Ranged Attack: Your bread n' butter attack. This is effectively your normal attack, so it'd be bad not to rank it.
Magnum Shot: The smash-equivalent for archery. It has a slower aim time, but the high damage more than offsets this drawback.
Weapon Masteries: More damage. The damage bonus on the Combat Mastery skill does not affect bows, so ranking up bow or crossbow mastery skill is much more important.

Magic Skills

Firebolt: The smash-equivalent for magic. As a mage, you want to kill stuff before it can kill you, so damage is key.
Icebolt/Lightningbolt: While each bolt spell has their use case, ice and lightning are less important. Nonetheless, you'll want to rank them up for the stats and for defeating multiple weak enemies, as their cast time is shorter than firebolt.
Magic Mastery: The magic-equivalent to Combat Mastery.
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 increase the regeneration speed of mana, letting you save some mana potions.

Combat Tactics

See the Combat Tactics page to familiarize yourself with some useful strategies to use in combat.

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

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

As a few tips on your 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.