The Basics of Mabinogi - A guide by someone who shouldn't write guides

Basically a sort of basic guide about the basics of the not so basic game Mabinogi.

Introduction

Good day to the lovely people of Steam!

This is your guide writer whom are currently speaking to you.
I see that you've come to this guide to know about how you play the MMORPG Mabinogi!
HOW LOVELY! You've come to just the right place then!

You may call me whatever you want, but because this is a Mabinogi guide you may call me by the name I go by in the game.
Which is Khamael. Or actually you may call my Inty too, everyone else sort of calls me that.
I have been playing Mabinogi since the Closed Beta of the European version of the game, which according to Wikipedia might have been around late 2009. I actually would have played it back in 2008 when it got released in North America, but then I discovered that Europeans weren't allowed to play.
Eventually due to poor decision of the european branch of Nexon the european Mabinogi had to shut down 18th July 2012, but instead the european players were finally allowed to play on the North American version.

Thus, here I am to explain the basics of this game so called Mabinogi.
I had to abandon my total leveled 800 kinda crappy "Warrior" (R.I.P. Internet. Good night sweet Prince) to do a complete restart at the North American version of the game.
I have thanks to that gotten familiar to being a newbie all over again, a bit more knowledgable compaired to when I first started the game but nonetheless a newbie.
This guide will be pretty long, because there is quite alot to go through. I will however divide it in sections so you can happily jump around to the part you want help with.

Lets get this party started!

Character creation 1: The beginning of all beginnings

Yes I do need to explain this part because there is important stuff here that I need to address.

Once you've installed the game and managed to log in you will be greeted to a circle with a card floating.
That is your character selection screen. I don't think I need to really explain what it does, but if you feel like playing on another one of your characters or maybe one of your pets, you merely press log out in the in game menu and *poof* you'll get to this screen.

Anyway just double click on the card to get to the character creation.
You will be greeted to this:


This is the server list. They are all named after important characters in the Mabinogi story, except for maybe Alexina who's named after an regular ol' NPC standing around doing nothing but shoving you around and telling you to get your lazy ass moving.
Anyway, this is where I say that this is your problem.
I really can't give you my opinion on which server is better and whatnot. Where you play is completely up to you. Each server has their fair share of angels and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, so have fun choosing!

After that you get to choose your name and again that ain't my problem.

Now comes the fun part and where I have to explain some thing! Woho!

You'll have the excuse the not so quality screenshot, but they've sort of change the character creation thing so that I can't have fun messing with it without a character card.
So some screenshot might be a bit not-so-quality because I have to dig around in google image search and so on.
Anyway, Now it's time for you to choose Race, Gender and Age.
Gender is the only one that I really don't need to talk about so lets skip that one.

RACE

There is three kinds of races in Mabinogi.
Human, Elf and Giant.
They all have advantages and disadvantages in some places and "classes", but they're all good in their own way.

Something I DO have to say is that I really recommend that you go human if you're new to this.
This is mostly because the human is a very balanced character and that if you managed to shuffle yourself to the hometown of the giants and the elves you will get a free character card for each race, WHICH NORMALLY COSTS REAL LIFE MONEY.
But if you really want to go giant/elf then be my guest, do however remember that you will miss out on two free characters.

Update: Whataah~ A good while ago Nexon updated the game SO that if you start the game you'll have around 6 free character cards to do whatever with. Whether or not you can pick premium stuff on them I do not know, sorry.
In short, the above paragraph doesn't really apply anymore(maybe), except for the human recommendation part.

Humans: Your everyday guy at your service

Humans is the most balanced character and works well with every class/talent/whatever.

Advantages:

• They're the only race that can learn Final Hit and Arrow Revolver. Two great skills.
  
• They can Ally with either Elves or Giants and recive store discounts in each of their respective towns. (Giants - Vales and Elves - Filia) If Giant allied they can sit on a Giant's shoulder.
  
• They can use nearly every weapon in the game.
  
• They're avarage!

Disadvantages:

• They're the slowest at running. MANY monsters can and will outspeed humans.
  
• According to some, their transformations aren't that super compaired to Elves and Giants.
  
• They don't gain as much stats in certian skills compaired to giants and elves.
  
• They're avarage...

The hard thing about humans that they're not really bad, but they're not overly good either...
They're good for beginners though.

Elves: They could fly with those ears

Elves are a races that mainly focuses on Magic and Archery.

• Unlike humans elves will shoot TWO arrows instead of one when using a bow. Let me just tell you that THAT is really good. They also have a few skills that are only available for them and most of them are really really useful. They can run while having Ranged attack loaded(Unlike humans) and can shoot while riding a pet.
  
• When it comes to magic they have the pontential to have a higher mana pool compaired to the other races and some magic skills may take less mana to cast.
  
• They're also really fast runners and are faster than both Human and Giants.
  
• They can hide from monsters with their hide skill. It cannot be used in the middle of combat though.

If we're going to talk about disadvantages... Weeellll....

• While they're not all that terrible with combat, their skills will be less effective. For example, Counter. For a giant and a human counter will return 200% of the enemy's damage. While the elves' counter will only return 150%.
  
• Some combat skills will also give less stat boosts.
  
• Elves also cannot dual wield any kind of weapon and cannot use Two-handed weapons. With exceptions of a few things, but the game will tell you weither or not you can or cannot weild it. They also cannot wear heavy armor.
  
• Their Ranged attack has a slower aim speed compaired to humans. (At rank 1 Elves has 200% while humans has 300%.)
  
• Some archer and magic skills costs more to rank, but at the same time Combat skills uses less AP to rank.
  
• Crap-tier HP

Sort of like humans, after clearing a certian generation quest they will be able to Transform into a Falcon. Not a LITERAL falcon but you'll see why they're called that once you get there.
Either that or you'll just google it or look it up on the Mabinogi Wiki.

Giants: They look like 20 when they're 10.

Giants has great Strenght and will, which makes them great Warriors and Fighters.

• They can wield two-handed weapons with one hand and they can only dual wield blunt weapons.
  
• They have several giant-only skills that more or less makes them the ultimate tank and majority of the basic combat skills deals more damage compaired to humans. (A Human Smash deals 500% at Rank 1 while a Giant Smash deals 600%)
  
• They can use charge without a shield, which is really good. There also is a few giant only shields that are way better than the shields humans and elves gets. (Adding to their tankness)
  
• Some fighter skills gives them generally better stats than humans and elves.
  
• They're slighly faster at running than humans, but not as fast as elves.
  
• Their HP also has the pontential to be super good, compaired to humans and elves.

Their disadvantages is...

• They can't use bows. They are however able to use magic and Alchemy as ranged attack. They also have their giant-only ranged attack, Throwing attack, which makes the able to throw around javelins.
  
• They use more mana than any other race to cast certian spells and will gain less mana and Int from skills that gives them those stats.
  
• Their mana is crap-tier compaired to Elves and Humans.
  
• They cannot play dead and they cannot use the Throw rock action. This can be a bit of a problem but giants has a few skills to counter the play dead issue at least. Somewhat.

Character Creation 2: A new age of rebirths

Now that we've gotten over the whole race thing it's time to talk about the AGE!

Believe it or not this is more important than it looks like.
In mabinogi we have this system called "Rebirth", which is pretty much what it says.
Every once in a while you will be able to rebirth, this makes you able to go back to level 1 and earn more AP to rank your skills with. You will keep the skills you currently have. The only thing that will change when you rebirth is your level, exploration level and age.
The game will keep track on how many times you've leveled in total and also how many times you've rebirthed. The rebirth counter is relevant to something later and the total level was relevant to something else. They've sort of change that though, but I'll talk about that later.

Now, the age is important because it counts how long it is until you get to rebirth. Every saturday(Real life time) you will grow one year older, gain stats, and some AP. Each saturday brings you closer to the day you rebirth at the age of 20.
If you for example rebirth yourself to the age of 17, you will have to wait 3 weeks before you can rebirth. If you however rebirth yourself to the age of 10 you will have to wait 10 weeks.
Another thing about age is the stats you gain upon leveling up.
At the age of 10 you gain quite alot of stats as you level up, including some Luck stat that you normally won't gain when you level up at the age of 15 and up.
Rebirthing is pretty important, because once you reach a certian age(25+ in this case) you will not gain stats anymore when you level up and age. You will still get AP when you level up, but after age 25 you will not gain AP from aging.

Now, I recommend that you start at the Age of 17 if you're new to this.
In the beginning you will be able to rebirth once everyday until you reach a total level of 100. This is really good, but I think it's better if you choose age of 17 if you're going to do this.
Because if you choose... For example... age 13, you will only be able to rebirth to the age of 13 or lower.
So yeah.

Now that we've discussed age and race, it's time to make your character pretty.

Character Creation 3: Maybe you're born with it

Believe it or not there is something I need to explain here.
When you create your character there are certian things that have * and some that don't.
The ones that has * are PREMIUM STUFF. This, however, is not something you currently need to worry about.

When you create your first character you are able to choose every single face type, hair, eyes and mouth(Including colours) there is on that list.

The game will tell you that "it's only for premium users" but disregard that. On your first character you are able to choose every single thing the character creator has.
I'm pushing this because this is something first time players might miss.
This however is, again, only for you first character.
If you, for example, make a human and then get the free giant and elf card you are only able to give you human character the * things while the elf and giant will be forced to take the ones without a *.

Are we clear on this?
Good.

By now your new character should be created and you're ready to log in!

Introduction to Talents & Skills: Not the ones you would first think of

Due to the fact that there is 19 different Talents I will not explain each and every talent and their skills here. Because that would be painful for my soul and for you readers because ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the amount of images I would have to upload coupled by the current amount. LET'S NOT EVEN TALK ABOUT THE AMOUNT OF CHAPTERS THERE WOULD BE.
So I will only explain what and how talents work in this chapter.

Something a mabinogi user could sort of brag about to their unknowing comrades during a lunch break would be that Mabinogi doesn't have any classes.
Now this might sound a bit weird to you but hold on and let me explain.

A normal MMO has a set amount of classes that have their set amout of skills.
Mabinogi is a bit different from that. There is a set amount of skills each "class", you are however free to pick and choose whatever skills you want from each "class". (You might have to work to get most of the skills though.)
For example:
You're a person who mainly focuses on Warrior skills, but on the side you have a few magic skills to back you up in case it gets too risky to stay close to the enemy or if the enemy is immune to your melee attacks.

A few updates ago however they added a small "Talent system". Which made you able to choose 17 different Talents, with 10 of them being Combat based.
A "Talent" is as close as to a "class" you can come in Mabinogi.
A Talents is what skills you want to focus on. Like I said you are not restricted to only those skills in that Talent, but the skills in that class gets more EXP from training and you get some extra stats for having that talent.
You could say you that it helps you a bit to the direction you want to go.


[Disclaimer: This image is old but if I were to update it I would be forced to take three different screenshot so nah.]

The first thing you do after creating your character is choosing a Talent and you can change it whenever you rebirth, so you're not stuck with that talent forever!

Something else that is important to note about talents is that it decides which difficulty you're allowed to do when you do Shadow missons.
There are four different difficulties that the shadow missions (and generations quests but their difficulty depends on your total level) can be is:
Basic, Intermediate, Advanced and Hard. Also known as Alright, uhhh, No and Nope
(There are two more difficulties but they are not level based and thus gets not mentioned here.)
You're allowed to do a certian difficulty once you've reached a certian rank on your talent.

Rank level	Rank name	Difficulty
0	-	Basic
1	Fledgling	^
2	Novice	^
3	Amateur	^
4	Green	^
5	Naive	Intermediate
6	Apprentice	^
7	Senior	^
8	Advanced	Advanced
9	Seasoned	^
10	Skilled	^
11	Expert	Hard
12	Great	^
13	Champion	^
14	Wise	^
15	Master	^
16	Grandmaster	^

The way you rank up your talent is by ranking your skills.
Each skill gives the talent they belong to a set amount of points. After they've reached a certian amount of points, the talent will rank up.
Talents also gives stats used by that the class they represent and the higher rank they are the more stats you gain.

Lets talk about skills now.

Skills are also a bit different from normal MMORPGs.
In Mabinogi each skills has a small EXP bar that fills up everytime you use it in a certian way. Like "Finish an enemy with a critical hit!" or something like that.
For example:

Each requirement gives a certian amount of EXP to your skill and it give less and less EXP for each requirement the higher rank the skill is.
Might also add that the skill ranking system goes like this:
The first stage of the skill is Novice, it's more or less the beginner form of the skill and it doesn't give you any stat boosts. It isn't until you get it to F you get stats.
After that it goes:
F→A
And after A:
9→1
1 is the max rank, once you get there your only option is to master the skill. This will gain you a title that gives a bunch of stats that may or may not be useful for the skill you mastered or you in general.

I think I've mentioned the basic things of talents and skills,
so lets talk about how combat works

How 2 combat: A not so basic introduction

Believe it or not in the early days of Mabinogi you were litterly just thrown into the game without getting told what to do or how everything work. So you better be grateful I'm writing this for you.
Anyway, When you plop into the game you will get a few quests that are suppost to get you familiar to how the game works.
You will also have a book in your inventory that will give you some basic idea on how some things work. It doesn't really go really that deep into stuff, so I will explain some thing the book won't. I still recommend taking a look into the book at least, and maybe make it into a paper hat once you're done with it.


I'm getting off track here, we're here for the combat.
You WILL actually get some combat lessons at the start, but I will try to tell you some things the game don't.

The combat in mabinogi is a bit different than any other MMORPG. It isn't really just a button press and bada bom bada bing woopdie do you killed a monster. You need to plan how you fight depending on what monster you fight.
Every monster in Mabinogi has a specific AI they follow, which you need to figure out in order to defeat them.
Some monsters have other skills that sort of back them up. Like heavy stander, which makes it nearly impossible to make them fall on to the ground(depending on what skill you use that is.) and Mana deflector, which makes magic attacks less effective. You need to work your way around these to finally defeat your enemy, earn half the princess and the whole kingdom.

Luckly, you won't meet these monsters with those skills just yet! But it's important to tell you about it so you know what will come to you.

For now you will fight enemies, or fomors as they are called in this game, which are rather simple to take out once you know what you're doing.
They mostly use the basic combat skills that are Smash, Defense, Counterattack and maybe Windmill. Some might have ranged attack or magic that they use but you won't really meet them just yet.
To combat these monster you need to know how these skills works and how to work around them.
I will tell you the basics of how to work around the basic combat skills with Close Combat, Magic and Archery.
I won't go through how all the classes work because they basicly work the same Close combat, magic and Archery does. Mostly Close combat and archery...

Close Combat in a nutshell

I'm mearly giving these thing their own section so that it's easier to reach them.
I write alot deal with it.

We're here to fight fire with fire, which is suprisingly effective, believe it or not.
The whole combat deal pretty much works like rock paper and scissors, only a lot more awesome and deadly. All the skills has their advantage and disadvatage of another skill.
I'd like to remind you that I'm only taking up the basic combat skills. There are MANY MORE combat skills but this is a basic guide and I am not going to explain what every single skill is weak and good against. I'm only here to help you start up.
Anyway, I will try to make the whole thing as simple as possible and what isn't more simple than a picture chart?

...I'm honestly not sure if I made this easier or harder to understand.
But just to make sure I'll write down how they work too.
It works something like this:

• A Normal Attack can stop a smash, but will get stopped by defense and counter.
  
• Smash goes through defence, but cannot cannot go through an counter attack. It can also be stopped by a normal attack.
  
• Defense protects you from a normal attack and windmill. A smash will however go through your defense.
  
• Counter protects you from a normal attack and a smash. A windmill will however send you flying. You are also unable to move when you use this skill.
  
• A windmill will send things using counter flying and other things coming right at you, if the character however is using defense you will most likely get hit before you get to react again. You are also unable to move once you've loaded this skill.

Just keep these things in mind when fighting monsters. As long as you know the basics on what skill has dis/advantage over what skill, you're good to go.
Did that make it easier?
Good, now onto the Archery.

Archery for dummies, sort of.

I could in all honesty explain archery together with close combat, but lets make it easier for you.
Archery is a risky class, because you need to keep your distance and if you accidently miss a shot you will most likely get hit. The really basic archery skills are Ranged Attack, Magnum Shot and Support shot.
There are more skills of course but we're going basic here.

If you read the close combat part(WHICH I HOPE YOU DID) you will know what and what not a normal attack and a smash are good against. Lets just say that Ranged Attack is pretty much a Normal attack and that a Magnum Shot is a smash, with a few changes. Ranged attack can hit anything as long as it doesn't use Defense and Magnum shot can hit ANYTHING. Support shot is a bit special, because it's there to aid warriors or other melee users.
Now this sounds all overpowered and what not, but the turning point comes here.


When you use an archery attack a small procent meter will pop up above the little skill cloud above your head. That's your accuracy meter, so to say. Your life more or less depends on this little thing. You will have to wait until that meter fills up to a decent amount of procent before you can shoot. You can shoot at any time of course but the higher the procent the bigger is the chance that you'll actually hit the monster. The closer to the monster you are, the faster that meter will fill up.

This is what makes Archery so risky, you have to stand close enough so that the procent bar goes up fast enough but at the same time stand far enough so that you have time to load the skill and actually hit the monster in case it starts to run towards you.

Basic Magic usage: Puer/Puella Magi Mabi Magica

Aw yessss, this is my forte!

The Magic skills are mostly ranged based combat. What makes it different from Archery(besides the abvious lack of bow and arrows) is that when you use magic you have to charge and stack your skill. Which means that using magic will be a lot slower.
Magic however makes up with this by dealing a ♥♥♥♥-ton of damage if used right(And ranked high enough.).

There are three basic magic attack skills.
Ice Bolt, Lightning Bolt and Firebolt.

Ice bolt

• Ice Bolt can be charged 5 times and shot 5 times.
  
• It charges fast and costs the least amount of mana to use.
  
• It's not as strong as the other bolts. But the min. and max. damage isn't that far apart from eachother, so the damage is alot more consistant compared to the other two.
  
• After 3 shots it will knock the enemy back,

Lightning Bolt

• Lightning bolt can be charged 5 times, but the whole stack will be used in one shot.
  
• It will also disappear after around 15 secounds.
  
• It charges just as fast as an Ice bolt, but takes a bit more mana.
  
• It can hit many enemies at once, the amount increases with the charges.
  
• It has the highest max damage of all the bolts, but also the lowest min damage. Which means that the damage will vary from high to low alot. You'd need a pretty good balance to use this bolt well.

FireBolt

• Firebolt can be charged 5 times and the charges will be all used at once.
  
• It's the most time consuming bolt to charge and will eventually be the bolt that costs most mana to charge.
  
• The damage will however get higher with the amount of charges you charge.
  
• While it's not as strong as Lightning bolt at the first charge, it will be the strongest bolt when fully charged.
  
• It will always knock down the enemy, unless they have Advanced Heavy stander.

As you can see charging takes time if you want to make a good amount of damage, which means you're really slow and will be completely vulnerable to any and all attacks while charging.
So, in the beginning at least, you need to take help from the basic combat skills. Mainly Defense and Counter.
You also need to keep your distance, much like archery.

An important thing to note is that if you use lightning bolt or Ice bolt on a monster with defense up they'll only take little damage and will most likely run up to hit you while you load another bolt. Firebolt will send them flying though.
Basicly:
Firebolt > Defense > Icebolt & Lightning Bolt

So if you're going to use Lightning bolt or Ice bolt when a monster has defense up, I suggest that you know you're in a safe distance from them(When using Lightning bolt) or have a few other bolts loaded already(When using Ice Bolt).

Things I mention alot but didn't really get to talk about

READ THIS CHAPTER NO MATTER WHAT BECAUSE IT'S IMPORTANT

I mention a lot of small stuff here and there that I really don't get to mention anywhere else because it doesn't really fit to the subject I'm talking about.
So I'm going to write them all down here.

Leveling

It might seem a bit odd for me to talk about leveling but hear me out.

Leveling in Mabinogi is a bit different from normal MMOs and like I said in the rebirth section; You're able to rebirth and start your character on level 1 again. This is really great and keeps the game pretty fresh, but I'm telling you now that you should be careful on how high you level your character.
At least if you're new to the game and don't really know what you're doing....

I made a big small mistake when I first wrote this guide and said that the difficulty of your generation quests depended on your talent rank.

TTHHAT'S NOT REALLY TRUE. FORGIVE ME, I MADE A MISTAKE!

The difficulty of your generations quests still depends on your level, like it always have been.

Total level	Difficulty
0	Basic
100	Intermediate
300	Advanced
1000	Hard

Therefor I am here to tell you to be careful when you level.
Passing basic can be really easy if you're new to this game. If you're good at leveling you might go past total level 100 after only two rebirths.
Intermediate quests aren't actually that bad, but at some quests it will become tricky if you're new to this game.
I'm not telling you to avoid leveling, only that you should keep an small eye on your total level so that you don't go past a difficulty you can't take on~!

Stats

There are five basic stats in Mabinogi, if you count out HP, Mana and Stamina but we get to them later:

Strenght, Intelligence, Dexterity, Will and Luck.

Strenght/STR is what determine you're Physical damage. ...Obviously. Also you defense.

Intelligence/INT is what determine your magical damage. It also contributes to your magical defense.

Dexterity/DEX is what determines your damage for ranged attacks, control bars, your wound rate, contributes to your balance and affects the success rate for some Life skills.

Will determine the damage of your knuckles, your chance of going into deadly and also your critical and wound rate.

Luck also determine your critical rate, increases the chance of getting a Lucky Finish(When you kill a monster and it drop a ton of money) and a Lucky Gather(Same as the Lucky Finish, only with items. Unlike the other stats you don't earn Luck as you level up. The only way to add to your luck is by having a title on that gives you luck, by having the Merchant Talent as your main talent, leveling up at the age of 15 & down and by skills that give you luck. They are however few and far between.

Balance isn't really like the other five but quite important anyway. Balance is what determine how much damage you'll deal. You have a certian amount of Min. and Max. damage. The higher your balance is, the more damage you'll do. The max is around 80% I believe.
I'd like to note that a magic attack's balance is affected by a hidden stat and not by the balance stat you see. Magic balance is affected by your INT and Magic Mastery. (Thanks Spades!)

Injury Rate is what determine how much you will wound your target. Wounds makes your HP bar go black and it will not heal unless you rest(Which is slow and doesn't work in dungeons), use bandages or sit by a campfire.

Defense is what determines how much damage you absorb, obviously. Magic Defense is pretty much the same thing, only ~*magic*~. The only way you can get defense is by wearing clothes, armor and by ranking the Defense skill.

Protection reduces the amount of wounds and critical hits you get, it also reduces the damage you take by the amount of procent it is.

AP

Ap, or Ability Points, is what you use to rank up your skills.
You get AP by doing Leveling up, leveling up your exploration level, some Generation quests, and some "Rank this skill to this rank" quests,
But you mainly get it from Leveling up normally and leveling up your Exploration level (Which you do by going to Iria and well... explore. Clear dungeons, Scetch animals, hunt Wyverns and raft.).

CP

CP or Combat Power is what more or less tells you how strong you are.
It is however an invisable stat and the only way you can see how strong you are is by pressing Alt and looking at a nearby monster. Because CP is your only way to tell how strong a monster is compaired to you and it's only visable on them. It is, however, not shown as actual numbers. Basicly, beside every monster's name there will say something that will tell you how strong they are.
It goes like this:

• Boss
  
• Awful
  
• Strong
  
• [Nothing. As in LITERAL nothing]
  
• Weak
  
• Weakest

Boss is, obviously, the strongest while Weakest is.. well.. the weakest.
These little "titles" are really important and it's more or less the only thing that tell you what level the monster is. This si really important for skill training and combat in general.
For example:
Some skills wants you, for example, kill several strong enemies in one go. Sometimes just simply kill one Boss leveled enemy.
Something else important to remember is that Weak monsters and below won't give you EXP if you kill them. So you can walk around stomping on spiders all day, because eventually you will get too strong for them.

The main way you gain CP is from your skills. Every skill in the game will give you a certian amount of CP, some more and some less.
It's important that you don't go overboard and only rank skills that gives a ♥♥♥♥ ton of CP. Because if you do you will most likely have a really hard time to rank skills.
A very good example is Windmill and Combat Mastery.
Windmill is a very good combat skill that gets really hard to rank the more CP you have, because you have to kill ALOT of monster that has a Strong, Awful and boss title.
Combat mastery is a skill that is super easy to rank, gives HP and STR(Which is just what a Warrior need), but a ♥♥♥♥ ton of CP.
So warrior mostly refrain from ranking Combat Mastery until they've managed to rank Windmill to Rank 1, which is HARD. (Some may rank Combat Mastery when they've reached to Rank 5 though!)

Generation Quests

Generation quests is the main story line of Mabinogi.
They are a long line of quests that will give you lots of EXP, some AP and cool skills that will help you alot.
For example, The price for completeing Gen2 quests is the ability to transform into a Paladin(if you're human.), which make so ALOT stronger. Gen 3 grants you the ability to become a Dark Knight(Again, Human only.), you however lose the ability to transform into a Paladin if you choose to become a Dark Knight.
Other rewards is a few titles, enchants, "Personas" and other skills I won't mentions because hush hush some things needs to be suprises!

Shadow Missions

Shadow Missions are sort of like mission based dungeons. Unlike dungeons they give a set amount of EXP and gold once you clear the mission, depending on what difficulty you did the mission on. Shadow Missions(Or SMs) are a great way to get money and exp!
You can do these missions in Taillteann and Tara by getting the missions from the Shadow Mission boards and then go to the stonehenge.

Transformations: Aka 'Lets get dangerous'

This was originally this was going to be a part of the chapter of things I mention alot but I sort of discovered that I had alot more to write than I thought I had from the beginning.
Might as well write a small introduction.

There are four different transformations:

• Paladin
  
• Dark Knight
  
• Falcon
  
• Savage Beast

Paladin and Dark Knight is human only.
Falcon is Elf only while Beast is Giant only.
They more or less work the same, with a few minor differences.

Paladin vs Dark Knight

After clearing G2 you gain the ability to transform into a Paladin.
As a paladin all your stats goes up significantly, which makes you stronger and able to last longer on the battlefield compaired to when you're not transformed.

The Paladin skill(aka Spirit of Order) is trained by leveling up, you can either choose to level up until Spirit of Order is maxed and rank it up, or you can use the skill EXP Spirit of Order has earned and level up one of the passive skills.
The Passive skills are Power of Order(STR & Will), Eye of Order(DEX & Balance) and Sword of Order(Damage & Wound precentage). There's also a few shield you will earn(Heavy Stander, Natural Shield & Mana Deflector).

I do however recommend that you rank up Spirit of Order a few times before starting on the passive skills.
Spirit of Order gives you HP, Mana, Stamina, Defence and Protection.
I think it's better to be able to survive rather than only being strong.
Gotto be able to take hits to deal hits, no?

You won't be a Paladin forever though. The amount of time you'll be a Paladin depends on how many times you've rebirthed and what age you are.
The base time is a bit over 3 minutes, Every Rebirth you've done will add 7 seconds and each age(Up to the age of 25) subtracts 2 seconds. (10 subtracts the least while 25 subtracts the most.)
Fortunately, there is a calculator[mabinoger.com] for this so you don't have to figure it out on your own.

Dark Knight is slightly different.

Much like Paladin you train the skill by leveling up and the skill EXP goes to your Soul of Chaos(Which works just like the Spirit of Order. Only that it only gives HP, Mana & Stamina.) skill. After that they have three passive skills and three shields, much like the Paladin. But the similarity ends there.
A Dark Knight's Passive skills gives slightly different stats. Their Passive skills are Body of Chaos(STR & Balance), Hands of Chaos(DEX & Wound Precentage) and Mind of Chaos(INT & Critical hit rate).

A skill that the Paladin doesn't have, but Dark Knight does is the Control of Darkness skill. With it you can control Monsters and make them fight for you.
It however requiers that you have a Black Fomor Scroll on you, but they can be easly bought from Stewart in Dunbarton for 999g each!

Dark Knight also has the ability to up your stats even more thanks to a small Status roll that will be made when you transform. That roll affects basically every stat from the Dark Knight transformation, albeit the ones you might notice the most are the ones from the main damage stats: Str, Dex and Int. Those rolls can be either multiplied by 60%, 100% or 180%, but no two skills will have the same roll (Dex and Int can't have 180% at the same time, for example), so at least two stats will always be the same or higher than a paladin of the same rank (unless it's Int, that one'll always be slightly higher).

Much like Paladin, you can only stay as a Dark Knight for a certian amount of time and the amount of time also depends on how many times you've rebirthed and what age you are.
HOWEVER, what's different is that once the transformation time have run out, you won't go back to your regular form like the Paladin.
Instead your HP will start draining.
This makes it so that Dark Knights have the potential to stay transformed longer than Paladins. (They also make ideal Healing training partners, ehehe.)

If you want to find out how long you will stay transformed, you can use this calculator[mabinoger.com].

Time to talk about Elves transformation!

Just like humans, Elves will earn their Transformation after G2.
However, before the whole game rewamp the elves(and giants) had to do a special quest line to gain their transformation.
And let me tell you, IT WAS HELL. G2 is easier than it!
So you better thank the MMORPG gods you get to earn your transformation during G2!

Anyway, The Falcon transformation works just like the Paladin one. The skills are a bit different though and unlike the Paladin, you get an attack skill!

The skills are Fury of Connous(HP, Stamina, STR & Damage. This is the skill that earns the EXP when you level.), Armor of Connous(Will & Protection), Mind of Connous(Mana & INT), Sharpness of Connous(DEX, Critical & Balance), the regular ol' shields(Heavy stander, Natural Shield & Mana Deflector) and lastly Elven Magic Missile.

Elven Magic Missile is a powerful attack you can use when you're transformed and if you have a wand or a bow and some arrows on you! With it you can fire a powerful Elemental attack and depending on when you click you can either eletrocute, burn or freeze your enemies.

Now for Giants!

Giant's transformation is pretty much like the elves, just different stats!

Their skills are:
Daemon of Physis(DEX, Damage & Balance), Shield of Physis(HP & Protection), Spell of Physis(Mana, INT & Critical hit rate), Life of Physis(STR, Will & Stamina), the shields(Heavy Stander, Natural Shield & Mana Deflector) and Giant Full Swing.
Giant Full swing is a poweful swing attack, the power of it depends on where you click on the meter that pops up when you use the attack.

Basic Game Mechanics I haven't mentioned at all but is still important

The hard thing about writing a guide for newbies is that you CONSTANTLY remember stuff you need to mention and explain and IT'S NEVER ENDING.
SOMONE SAVE ME FROM THE HELL OF A GUIDE
Though, I'm the one who decided to do this so I have no one but myself to blame.
Anyway, I'm going to try to explain some of game things that are pretty important.

Moon Gates & Mana Tunnels

You could say that Moon Gates and Mana Tunnels are portals. They both work a bit differently compaired to eachother though.
Moon Gates are only open during the night and will only take you around all the towns in Uladha(It's what the landmass you're at is called.). You however need to visit the Moon Gates in those towns before you can teleport there.
Before the Moon Gates would only go to a certian town each night, which was quite the pain and really hard for those who were doing a certian Generation quest.
I get nightmares thinking about it...
Mana Tunnels is a teeny tiny bit different compaired to Moon Gates.
Unlike Moon Gates, Mana Tunnels works during the day and can only be found in Iria.
There are alot more Mana Tunnels than Moon Gates, because Iria is alot bigger than Uladha.
Much like Moon Gates, you have to reach the Mana Tunnel you want to use by foot/whatever you use to get there before you can use it.
Someone might need to correct me...
But Giants and Elves seems to get all the Mana Tunnels during their beginner quests, not sure if Humans get them once they get to Iria.


EDIT: Seems like Moon Gates and Mana Tunnels are open 24/7 now, making this whole section kinda useless. You still need to collect the Moon Gates/Mana Tunnels tho.

Dropping items when you die and Blessing them

When you die there is a chance that you'll get your equipment knocked away from you.
They will mearly drop on the ground(No one but you can pick them up!) and will stay there until you pick them up. However, to pick them up from the ground you need to be revived by someone else or, if you're out in the field, you can revive at the place you're currently in. The back side to reviving to the very place you were at is that you lose alot of EXP.
If you choose to revive by to the last town you were in, your items will go to the Lost and Found.
To get them back you need to talk to a certian NPC in that town(Duncan in Tir Chonaill and Eavan in Dunbarton) and choose the Lost and found option. After that you will have to pay a small fee to get it back. The items your get back from the lost and found will be blessed!

If you don't want your item to drop, you'll have to bless them.
To do that you need to used Holy Water, which can be gotten from the Church Part-time job.
The items' blessing won't run out. However, there's a small chance that when you get killed one or more of your times will lose their blessing.
So if you don't want to lose your items I suggest that you try to keep bunch of holy water on you!

EDIT: Once again, this has been changed. You can no longer drop items when you die(FINALLY). HOWEVER, I still suggest that you should bless your items when you can.
It lowers the chance of getting a failure when repairing items and it slows down the durability loss rate to half.

Skill reset

This was only added to the game a while ago and deserves a bit of a highlight.

If you're below total level 100 and not currently happy with whatever skill set you ranked, you're able to go to Duncan in Tir chonaill and he'll reset all your skills for you!
So if you've, for example, tried out archery but discovered that it wasn't really your thing you can just talk to duncan and he'll give you back all the AP you spent.

He will however reset ALL your skills so if you have a life skill you've worked on you will lose all the work you've put down on ranking it.

This was a bit of a heads up because I missed it and newbies are most likely bound to miss it too!

Commercing: The Dangerous life on the road to another town

I was going to mention this when I explained all the Talents, but when I discovered that I really CAN'T explain all the 17 Talents in this guide and I had to scrap it.
Luckly I get to explain it here instead!

Commercing is a small feature in the game where you have the chance to make lots of gold and gain lots of EXP.
It's not easy to commerce though.

The currency you use when you commerce is not gold, It's Ducats. (Unlike gold they take up no room!) When you get introduced into the whole commercing thing you will get to start out with 300 Ducats.
With these 300 Ducats you can buy goods from the goblin in the Trading station. You're then suppost to take these good to a town, the further away you go the more money you'll make.
But you're not safe, because during this journey to the town Bandits may pop up to stop you. They will disguise themselves(Terribly, They're easy to see.) and wait to ambush you. You will be warned when they pop up and you have a good chance to avoid them, but from time to time you might accidently walk into an ambush anyway. If you do, the only option is to fight the bandits.
A back side to it is that your damage gets lowered quite alot when you commerce. So if you're weak it's better if you commerce with a friend.

When you start commercing you will start out with just a backpack. You will then be just as fast as a human(NO MATTER WHAT RACE YOU PLAY). A backpack only has 4 slots and can only carry goods up to 400 in weight.
After you've made around 3000 Ducats, you can buy an Handcart. The Handcart is as fast as a giant, has 6 slots and can carry stuff up to the weight of 800.
When you've made 100,000 Ducats, you can buy a Wagon. A Wagon is as fast as Shire(A horse mount in game), has 8 slots and can carry stuff up to the weight of 900. It's the fastes of all the transportation methods you can obtain.
Once you've made 350,000 Ducats, you can buy an Elephant. The Elephant is slightly faster than an elf and has only 7 slots. It can however carry stuff up to the wieght of 1700. So you're slower but you can carry so much more stuff.

Once you've reached to the town you wanted to go to, you will make a certian amount of gold and Ducats and get a certian amount of EXP depending on how much goods you
brought with you.
Also note that you will always make the same amount of Ducats and Gold.

I'm going to tell you how you know how much gold and ducats you'll get from commercing:

This is the commercing window and we're going to buy some Spider Gloves and bring them to Tara!
I'm going to use my backpack for this journey, so I will only be able to carry 40 Spider Gloves.
Each Spider Glove will give me a 14 Ducat profit. To calculate the amount of Ducats and Gold I will make on this journey, we simply need to do some simple maths.
[Y x X = Z]
['The profit per item of the town I'm going to' x 'The amount I can carry with me' = 'The amount of Gold and Ducats I will make']
In this case it would look like this:
[14 x 40 = 560]
If I go to Tara I will make 560 Ducats and get 560 Gold.
Not a very profitable journey...
So next time I will go to another town further away from Tara and see how much I will make if I go from there!

You however not alone on your journey!
Bandits are lurking and they want your sweet goods!
Where ever you go bandits may(or may not if you're lucky!) will pop up, trying to abush you and steal your trading goods.
They will try to disguise(very badly) in hopes to fool you. They are easly avoidable most of the time, but sometimes they pop up on places where it makes it impossible to avoid them.
If you get ambushed, the "power" of the bandit will depend on how much the trading goods you have are worth.
The bandits comes in six "difficulties":

• Newbie
  
• Rookie
  
• Trained
  
• Hardened
  
• Veteran
  
• Master

There's also five types of bandits:

• Imps
  
• Goblins
  
• Human
  
• Giants
  
• Ogres

Imps are quite easy to defeat, but you need to watch out for their magic.
Goblins can be rather tricky, because sometimes they will have bows and that can be quite dangerous.
Humans are sort of like goblins, but uses only swords. If you're unlucky you might meet a powerful Human Bandit boss. They are stronger than regular human bandits and have ALOT of HP.
Giants can be quite tricky too, because they use knuckles and will most likely combo kill you.
Ogres only pops up as Bandit bosses and are quite tricky to defeat. Like Human Bandit Bosses they are much stronger and they even have more HP than the Human Bandit boss!

The bandits will try to collect as much as they can and then flee, you can however stop them by killing them(obviously). The amount they get is measured in stars, once they get 5 stars they will try to flee.

If you do managed to get robbed, don't worry! You won't lose all your goods and you can continue your journey once the attack is over. You will lose a bit of profit though.
Beside the commercing station there is a so called wanted board. When you get robbed the board will get notified and add you to the list of people who've gotten robbed, depending on what bandit you get robbed by that is.
Once the board has been notified a bounty will be set on the bandit in question and makes it possible for you or any other player to hunt down the bandit.
Once the bandit is caught the person who caught him/her will receive a certian amount of Ducats as an reward and the people who got robbed will get some of the Ducats they lost to the bandit back.
I don't really recommend that you go bandit hunting when you have low-leveled skills, because it can be pretty hard.
The EXP reward is glorious though.

Useful sites that might be to your help.

Mabinoger[mabinoger.com]

Mabinoger is a pretty useful site with different kinds of tools that will help you in your way to becoming a better player.
It has a timer for certian kind of stuff in game(It's really useful I promise.), a monster CP calculator that will help you find monsters in a certian rank for you, a colour simulator for your name and much more!
I really recommend this site!

Mabinogi Wiki[wiki.mabinogiworld.com]

No game is complete without a Wiki.
The Mabinogi Wiki is REALLY useful for when you need to look up how to get a skill or information about missions and other stuff.
I'll give you a few pages I think you will find useful:
Generation 1: Advent of the Godess[wiki.mabinogiworld.com] - A walkthrough on the G1 quest line. It gives you tips on how to do certian things. There are walkthroughs to every generation quests we've had so far.
Solo Battle Tatics[wiki.mabinogiworld.com] - A page with lots and LOTS of battle tatics with ways to defeat all kinds of monsters. Mabinogi is pretty strategic, so you sort of need to think before you go face to face with an enemy.
Some of these tatics are rather tricky to pull off, but once you get the hang of it you'll do fine.
About Combat Power[wiki.mabinogiworld.com] - While I DID talk about CP a little, I couldn't explain every detail about it. So I recommend this page in case you want to read a bit more about it.
The Human[wiki.mabinogiworld.com], Giant[wiki.mabinogiworld.com] and Elf[wiki.mabinogiworld.com] pages - In case you want to know more about the races in Mabinogi.

Mabinogi CP Calculator[mabination.com]

This tool us super useful if you want to calculate your CP.

Another CP Calculator from the Mabinogi Wiki[wiki.mabinogiworld.com]

This one is slightly more up to date and may or may not be a bit better. It's also a bit easier to handle, but it has fewer skills on it.

Lorna & Pan[mabinogi.nexon.net] - Episode 1[nxcache.nexon.net], 2[nxcache.nexon.net], 3[nxcache.nexon.net], 4[nxcache.nexon.net], 5[nxcache.nexon.net], 6[nxcache.nexon.net], 7[nxcache.nexon.net], 8[nxcache.nexon.net].

While this is not a website alone, it's still worth to mention.
'Lorna & Pan' is a series of videos about a girl named Lorna and her sheep friend Pan adventuring in the world of Erinn. This is a fun little series that might be good to watch if you're new to the game, because they tell you about the most basic things in the game in a fun way.
A small back side with this series is that it's a bit outdated. Otherwise it's fine!
I recommend that you watch it if you want to know a little bit of the game~

Graduation Cermony

You've done it! You've reached the end of this guide!
You have now graduated from being a total newbie to a REAL Mabinogian!
(If you read the guide that is which I hope you did because if not then I am disappointed in you.)
I'm so proud of you!

Go out to the world of Mabinogi and wreak H̬͂͐ͪ́̚Ã͖̪V̵̮̳̠̌ͤͤ́Ő̺̰̱̦͔̐ͅC̩̯ͦ̃̾͛ ̑̚W͑͐̈ͥ̽ͥ҉H̫̪̱̒ͨ̿ͣ̊ER͈̣̖E̥ ̺͉͔̣̥ͥ̊ͤ̇Ȩͪ̊̏͌ͩ͌ͣV̟̩͙̰͇ͩ͐́̏ͨ́E̻̬͙̤̰̅̍̃R̦͐́ ̃̑ͮͅY̝͔͇̗̜ͩͭ͗̏̓O̡̍̄̑̈̑U̶̿ ͔͚̗̘̠̜̪̿ͦ̋G͇̫O̺͖̥̻̣͌͐͠ͅ.͇̱̓̉̋̔͛͆.̼̩͈ͦ̓ͨ̀.̛̐̓ͪ͌͒.̝̖̞ͣͅ!̣͍̤!
...Or bring peace if that's your cup of tea.

Go my children!
G̸̩̯͇̻O͟͜͢҉҉̞͙̦͙̱

I want to thank all my friends for putting up with all the questions I constantly asked them.

[lunaboom]

well this should be fun

[YourCrazyDolphin]

A small update to note- Now, you don't have to hit a specific age to rebirth.- beginners (under cumulative level 1000) can rebirth daily, and after that they can rebirth once a week. As a result, even if you play as a 10-year-old you won't have to wait 10 weeks.

[Toshikato]

forgot to mention demigod.

[Yuen]

You forgot to mention that Humans can dual wield 1H swords.

[VmixxD]

Nice guide! Good work.

[ChaosDude23]

Add a Fomor section!

[ChalzZy]

Awesome guide, helped heaps!!! :D

[DJSassySam]

Thanks. This was really helpful

[Kei-Chrono]

.... IMA WRECK HAVOC WHERE I GO MUAHAHAHAHAHA, SCREW PACIFIST!!!!

[Arolust]

Your guide is well done, iv pinned it in a post in the mabinogi steam discussions.