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Voting closed: January 14, 2012, 06:17:21 pm

[Seriyu]

Yeah, that brings up a point, mabinogi is a very slow burning game, don't get toooooo obsessed with getting way up there really fast, as long as you keep spending AP, you'll usually reach a managable state. There are ways to excel of course, like any game, but don't worry about ruining your character forever, I doubt it's possible, frankly.

[Girlinhat]

Mabi makes itself unique by being a very long-term game.  You can casually play a character for years.  There's just so many combat styles and so many crafting areas, so many AP sinks that you'll run out of patience before you run out of content.  And if you ever get tired of an area, just go into another.  With no AP limit, no level cap, and no classes, this isn't a game where you can roll a character and be done in a month (looking at you, WoW) but instead you can take your existing character and keep going.  Put a few points into carpentry and regret it?  That's alright, just keep going, there's more AP to earn!

[Seriyu]

Okay, time for the second half of that crafting skill overview thingado.

First off, Carpentry, which is kind've half and half, which is my excuse for putting it in this half and not the first one. I didn't forget it made bows, no, not at all. ANyway the primary use of carpentry is to make better firewood, for use in campfires. Higher grade firewood makes higher grade campfires which heal wounds faster, which is very nice.

Second, Handicraft which uhh, isnt' a primary skill because uhhh, okay I forgot. Handicraft makes a ton of random junk, like better bandages, and better arrows, and is also used for a LOT of quest items. It can also make a load of tools for other crafting skills, like potion making, handicraft, oddly enough, etc. You can also make handmade ballista bolts for wyvern hunting, and magic powder out of small gems. Handicraft just generally makes a ton of random shit, and it's pretty useful if you want to make something useful without going through sixteen steps to do it. No one'll turn down some nice bandages, and better arrows, while typically limited in use to humans, are also nice. (Elves shoot two arrows per normal attack so 100 arrow quivers is nothing to em. They get 500 arrow quivers by default for a reason, but you can only craft handmade arrows into 100 arrow quivers, so.)

Now, we move on to the first step in the crafting process, gathering materials. Often, if you're a cheapo like me you'll take up a production skill (Like blacksmithing or tailoring) and take up the gathering skill associated with it (Like Weaving or refining).

First up, Refining. For use with blacksmithing, refining refines ores into bars. Higher ranks raises your chance to refine stuff, and the ores you can refine. NOTE: You need to fail refining for later ranks to even level up the skill, so if you're interested in it, I'd do it early to make it easier on yourself. It won't make it impossible by any means, but the longer you wait the longer later rank ups are gonna take.

Second, Weaving. For use with tailoring mostly, and a little with blacksmithing. Weaving takes wool and cobwebs and leather and such and makes them into yarn balls, leather straps, braids, silk, cloth, etc. Well known for being very irritating as it randomly picks the quality of your cloth. So if you need cheap cloth, and you get common from that 5 wool you spent several minutes running downto the sheep field for, too bad! Gotta sell it for the measly 3 GP and try again. Another note is later light armor recipes require a lot of leather, so this actually entails a lot of monster hunting. Math dungeon is a great place to find leather, but I'd bring a party if you're a rookie.

Third, Fishing. I suppose fishing could be used with mainly cooking, in hindsight. Fishing is pretty basic, you catch a fish, type is random. You can also catch various random items, although it's rarely anything too valuble. Fish are used for cooking.

That's it for skills. We'll go over the minigames for the crafting skills now. No pictures will be provided because I'm lazy, and also because none of them are terribly complicated. I've linked the wiki pages for each crafting skill, as they tend to have a picture on them.

Tailoring

You're looking at the seam of two sheets of cloth. Move the point of the needle (not the point of the square, the needle that's in the foreground "above" the square), aim it as close to the center of the X as possible, then click and hold. You can click and reclick if the thread isn't as close as you want, then drag it to the right, to the next in the line, and release. Move the mouse to the next one on the left again, hold down, to the right, release, etc. You're always aiming for the center of the X, or inside the circle. There is variance on where it'll land, and this variance will decrease as you level tailoring. The variance is the size of the box under the needle. It can be threaded into anywhere in that box. Also, side note, the reason I said tailoring gets started much earlier? Right out of the gate past novice, you can make a male magic school uniform, which has a set bonus. And not a terrible one for magic users, either! With blacksmithing, you'll be making tools no one wants for at least a single rank until you get to daggers, which very few people will want.

Blacksmithing

You look at a sheet of metal, wait for a bit for the markings to "settle" then you try to hit the markings as precisely as you can. Also, wait as long as possible, but DON'T LET THE BAR AT THE BOTTOM RUN OVER. Again, variance depends on the square, it lowers with rank ups. Much simpler and easier a minigame then tailoring. So I guess while tailoring takes no time at all to get started, the minigame means, unless you're just amazing at it out of the gate for whatever reason, you'll probably be getting worse bonuses.

Cooking(The page doesn't have a picture of the minigame, but it's easy)

Kay, each recipe has a certain amount of this ingredient, another ingredient, and a third, in certain percentages. You click and hold the add button below one ingredient, and try to make it match that percentage as much as possible. Again, variance, it lowers with dexterity, making elves, crafters, and archers excellent cooks. Go fig.

Fishing

Fishing minigame is basically, "keep the fish shadow in the box". Very basic. If you're more the afk fishing type, you can just let the game fish automatically.

Annnd there are no other minigames, unless I forgot something like before.

[Girlinhat]

There's a winemaking minigame, but that's not exactly a skill.

Worth noting that Refining and Weaving are very useful to other skills as well.  Especially Weaving.  Producing bows requires string, as you might expect, which is usually made from wool, but some require silk strands, and the very good bows need "tough string" - that's made from 5x "thick string" and is a high-ranked weaving item.  So you take 25 bundles of wool, weave those into 5 thick string, and weave that into 1 tough string.  It's a high-ranked item, so it's a pain to produce.

And many weaving items are used in blacksmithing as well, with plenty of leather, leather straps, and thick string going into a lot of different recipes.  Particularly very difficult items, like "fine leather straps" which are not easy to get, much less get enough to produce many items.

Fortunately there's homestead options for weaving and blacksmithing.  Using metal plates (high rate refining) and tough string/thread (high ranked weaving) you can make your own private furnace, anvil, spinning wheel, and loom.  You can't gather ore or wool at your homestead, but you can do mining runs and then whisk away to your homestead to refine them, and you can sit out in the sheep field and whisk away to loom them.  The sheep pet may also be helpful - it's terrible at combat, but you can sheer it, and providing it with MP can increase the amount of wool you can harvest.

There's a trick too.  There's certain varieties of magic music you can play, which increase MP regen rate.  It costs stamina to play this music though.  If you make magic music that lasts for hours by using a slow tempo and full stops, then you use a tent kit you can play music infinitely.  The tent lets you restore stamina even while standing - you can play music and regain stamina faster than you lose it by playing.  So if you have two players, one can play music while the other harvests from the sheep.  Normal wool gathering is very terrible, they move around A LOT and it's a pain to gather wool.  A sheep pet would be helpful because you can make the damn thing sit still!

[Seriyu]

MORE DUNGEON RUNS. And this one's a doozy. These three rather, I guess.

The first run, a Math dungeon run, features MaxYeskly (ElfEater), Myself(Mobliz), Kyunoko(alexwazer), and ozythesage(Ozymandias). We originally set out to get some leather, as I'm working on weaving lately, and need it.



As you may notice here, Math is populated by KOBOLDS. Lots and lots of kobolds. Welsh mythology kobolds as well, not them tiny mostly harmless ones in DF. Honestly this screenshot is most of the dungeon. Kobolds main gimmick is they're... well, they're goblins, but harder. Archers will attack you while a melee guy attacks you, pretty basic stuff, although a big hurdle for a new player.



At any rate, we bash through it, as always, and prepare for the boss fight. Nothing quite as iconic this time...



Hellhounds! Currently pictured: One getting the hell kicked out of him by three people at once. The general strategy with hellhounds is offense, the only nasty nasty thing they can do to you, firebolt, has a cast time. If you keep the pressure on, you'll probably be fine.



Here is a perhaps more dignified picture of the monsters. After we'd taken out the first one, we moved on to the second. The third didn't take kindly to this, and aggroed on to me, and nailed me with a firebolt. Even through savage beast, this did a pretty nice slice of damage. MaxYeskly, threw himself into the fray, and managed to hold the third off long enough for us to finish the second, and end the third as well.

But we weren't done there, my no. We moved on to Rundal, although MaxYeskly sadly had to leave us for it Meaning it's down to Me, Kyunoko, and ozythesage. 



The gimmick of Rundal is SKELETONS. Pirate skeletons to be precise. They're not terribly hard, but later rundal difficulties can be pretty nasty.



We rest before the boss, as per usual. I lost my screenshot of the boss, but it was a cyclops. The strategy here was Kyunoko and ozy would provide ranged support from behind me, while I use windmill, an AoE attack that always knocks enemies back, regardless of passive defenses, to keep him from slipping by and killing them. I got nailed by a stomp halfway through but otherwise, went off without a hitch.

And did you think the train would end there? If you answered no, YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT!

Ya see, Kyunoko got a Rundal Basic pass in the rundal normal run. (Normal is the generic dungeon you run through when you drop a random item. Basic is a step above that.) We called in Laur for a bit of extra firepower, and it proved to be a wise decision, as Basic was pretty nasty. We all died at least once, even, a first, as far as these summaries are concerned.



Our party again. Laur is in the back, and is an elf. Now, don't reach for the torches and whatnot just yet, elves are actually very deadly and honestly probably the best race in mabinogi, unless you want to go melee. I'll go over elves and giants more in depth in the next tech update. Anyway, Rundal had a lot of one thing, and that was oddly, animal men. We had Sahugains, or however you spell that, Gnolls, of two varieties, Flying swords, and archer saguhain. Now, a little thing about multiple monster types in the same room in mabinogi. Each monster type, even if they will only single aggro you, will have one attacking a charecter at one time. So basically, in the worst case scenario, I could have a Doberman GNoll, a Pug Gnoll, a Saguhain archer, and a normal saguhain warrior on me at a single time. Thankfully it never came to this, thanks to the fantastic work by Ozymandias, who saved my ass at least once during this. Shot an enemy that had knocked me back and was moving in for the kill, and managed to kill it. Laur was also an amazing help with Crash Shot, a ranged AoE attack that packs quite a punch, and Thunder which will just murder anything nearby. Another note about this, Flying swords? They have magic. So, if you can imagine dealing with a melee creature, an arrow firing creature, and a magic creature at the same time, that's what you have to deal with here. It is not a kind place ,and I was very impressed with how Ozy handled himself. Had two deaths early on, which if I recall were mostly due to trying to get one last shot off, and missing, which happens.



We pulled through however, primarily due to all the ranged firepower we had at the time. (Kyunoko is an alt of Alexwazers that uses alchemy, which is a ranged hand cannon kinda thing, it's pretty awesome.) We moved into the enemy chamber to reveal the foulest foe we had yet to face....



AN IMMINENT CATSPLOSION. MY GOD. Also cat men. I was serious about the animal person thing. I didn't get a better picture because I was clearly too horrified to approach. Despite this, one managed to combo me and take off most of my health, leaving me to millwall duty, which was the tactic I previously described in the first rundal boss. Now, there are about 9 cat knights I believe, and most of them were taken out by Laur and Ozy, with some support from Kyunoko from the side. He managed to die at one point, but since laur and ozy were holdin off the foes well enough on their own, I snuck over and revived him. He provided supporting fire in the battle with the final cat knight, and distracted it long enough to let me prep windmill one last time, when the final barrage of arrows felled the things.

So yeah, three dungeon runs tonight. Mostly just got a shit ton of gold, but that's not a bad thing at all. Notable drops for other people were, Arish Ashuvain boots, I think they were male, and Laur managed to net a female bohemian hat. Both fine equips, particularly for laur, as the bohemian set is an archer set. She already had one, but hey.

That's that! Don't be afraid to stop by the steam chat and ask questions if you haven't yet. We're all pretty chill. And personally I'm a know it all, so I love answering questions. The link is in the OP, again.

[Aoi]

I think I tried Mabinogi back when it was in OB in the US, and again maybe... two years ago? I remember there being lag issues that made anything combat that involved anything more than trading blows impossible and, the second time, it felt very grindy and showing signs of abandonment. Would you say that things have changed since then and it's okay for a semi-casual MMOer?

[Skyrunner]

Watching this thread keeps making me want to play Mabinogi again D:

How can I unsubscribe? T_T (looks at updated topics list) There's no way~

[Seriyu]

I think I tried Mabinogi back when it was in OB in the US, and again maybe... two years ago? I remember there being lag issues that made anything combat that involved anything more than trading blows impossible and, the second time, it felt very grindy and showing signs of abandonment. Would you say that things have changed since then and it's okay for a semi-casual MMOer?

Okay, for the lag? You'll probably have to disable the Nagle Algorithm. Pretty much everybody in our guild has done it, and unless you are on a VERY limited bandwith cap, it's probably not going to do a thing to your internet, except imrpove the speed. A guide is here. I personally have done it, and have reported no ill effects. It's not as vital as it used to be, but it's still a good thing to do. The recent combat update also made combat a little less lag critical, as load times are very quick, so if you briefly lag while something is running at you, you can still get a defensive skill off. It's possible that some of this was also a sign of not being familiar with the depth of the combat system, which is not very well explained at all. I'd be happy to help with that, along with most other people in the steam chat. I'd say it's a decent casual MMO? You can basically leave it alone and still progress, as you get AP, so if you have to go and do something else for a week, you can at least come back toa bit of AP. And more importantly, since the beta, free rebirths are an option, which makes it far less grindy. It resets your level, and allows you to gain more AP from it. My advice in general, however, is to not get too worried about having an amazing character, because that'll just happen once you get familiar with combat, along with over time. It is a grindy game, but it's not like.... agressively grindy I guess? You can get exp doing pretty much anything, so you just go around and... do stuff you wanna do. If you try to min-max the game, yeah, you'll end up bored.

EDIT: Oh also, most dungeons are fairly long, so you should expect that if you wanna do more then one. If you're only gonna be around for a short period of time, you probably should check the length before you jump in. And if you have any more specific questions, hop in the steam  chat, I'm in there a lot of the time, because I spend too much time on the internet.

Watching this thread keeps making me want to play Mabinogi again D:

How can I unsubscribe? T_T (looks at updated topics list) There's no way~

Do iiiiit, ya know you wanna.

[Skyrunner]

I'm not in America anymore, so no can do

Besides, I'm already spoiled >.>
I have a lot of pets, and an at least competent power level.. in Korea. >.>

It looks like fun though. IMO, Mabinogi is one of the few games that are REALLY fun when you band up with friends and tackle a dungeon that isn't "Planned For 5~6 PCs Of Level 60~63". I remember spending many an hour whiling away time sitting in Dunbarten town square chatting with friends :3

[Seriyu]

Yeah it really is an excellent game when you just forget about trying to be decently set up for it and just hop in, and still manage to clear a good chunk of it. And you'd think, with the semi difficult combat it'd pull in all kinds of "I'm better then you pff" jerks, the community is honestly, usually pretty solid, if a bit chatty for my tastes.

[Ibid Straydrink]

Yeah it really is an excellent game when you just forget about trying to be decently set up for it and just hop in, and still manage to clear a good chunk of it. And you'd think, with the semi difficult combat it'd pull in all kinds of "I'm better then you pff" jerks, the community is honestly, usually pretty solid, if a bit chatty for my tastes.

Good words for Alexina abound. Mari, on the other hand...

Ah, but the grass.

[Seriyu]

Yeah, Mari may well be a different beast altogether, as I recall it was the first server released, and originally had the name "Nao". So it's understandable a lot of the old guns are around there and being crotchety. 

[OzyTheSage]

Those cat things were a pain. Regular attacks didn't make them flinch, and it almost seemed like magnum shot didn't always knock them back. Either that or I was missing a lot.

As for lag... it doesn't seem to affect anybody else, but I will sometimes get a 4 or 5 second lag spike, perhaps longer, and during that time I'll most likely be dead =<

When you have a party it's not nearly as bad though, since you have people who can save you.

[Seriyu]

Yep, that's natural shield, the ranged equivelent of heavy stander. Magnum shot still should've been knocking them back though, I think.

[Skyrunner]

Some people, like me, like shot gunning with a crossbow.

As in, you raise Ranged Combat Mastery and Magnum Shot, then get a decent crossbow and (1) run in front of target (2) Use Magnum Shot and aim with shift+click (3) Fire immediately.

Aiming speed is inverse to distance, and crossbows probably aim faster iirc. Sadly, this only works once per enemy xD It's shotgunning because of the distinctive smoke-ring effect and the sound of the crossbow

There's also the possibility of modifying your crossbow to decrease range in favor of attack power or critical chance.