Hi guys

I've been interested in this game for a long time now, since it was only released in europe in english, and i had tried it then but the lag was unbearable. So when the NA version came out I had gotten my hopes up again and came here to see what people thought of the NA version.

What I found was that people are turned off because of the need to pay to get the most out of the game, this might be true but there is a way to have a fulfulling experience with just the free character card given to each account and never have to pay for rebirth- it just takes a little forward planning.

Anyway without further ado here is the information I've found that should give some hope to those who would like to get a nice character without paying for services.

(The following information was extracted from this thread- please check it out for full information

http://forum.nexon.net/Mabinogi/forums/1/1443412/ShowThread.aspx

and is the hard work of a person named "Konril")

/ begin copy paste

The basic skill plan & it's cost.
In order to handle what the world of Erin and its enemies will throw at you, Mabinogi's experts have identified the following skills as required:

• Combat Mastery rank F, 0 AP (It's free!)
• Smash rank F, 1 AP
• Windmill rank F, 3 AP
• Defense rank F, 0 AP
• Sharp Mind rank F, 0 AP
• Critical Hit rank F, 3 AP
• Icebolt rank F, 3 AP (Used to pull enemies and break a counterattack stance)
• Fire bolt rank F, 3 AP (Used to push and delay enemies)
• First Aid rank F, 1 AP
• Heal rank F, 2 AP (Much cheaper than potions).
• Rest rank F, 0 AP
• Campfire rank F, 0 AP
• Ranged mastery rank F, 0 AP (+2 dex free!)
• Support Shot rank F, 0 AP (if only because it's a free +1 dex)
• Total AP spent: 16

I also strongly recommend the following two skills for anybody who isn't a pure mage, simply for convenience.

• Rest rank E, 5 AP. This doubles wound recovery for resting in the field or town. It's nice for stamina recovery as well.
• Production Mastery rank A, 9 AP. +60 stamina makes it all the easier to avoid running out in combat, even when one is at 50% food.
• AP for package: 14. Total AP spent: 30

Production mastery may sound a little odd without another life skill attached. However activities such as harvesting barley, wheat, eggs, potatoes, corn, and wood all give just enough skill training to advance until rank A. If you get in the habit of doing church volunteer service and keeping your equipment blessed to avoid accidents and reduce wear and tear, then the training takes care of itself.

100 AP plans
Here are some samples of what you can do with a little under 100 AP to spend.

He-Man
• Required package: 16 AP
• Convenience: 14 AP
• Windmill rank 9: 33 AP. Loads faster and hits 150% harder than windmill F.
• Combat Mastery rank 9: 34 AP. +4-6 damage, +20 strength, + 70 HP.
• Total AP spent: 97

This is the kind of "forever free" build I was talking about in the stat section. To be honest, most people actually consider Combat Mastery over rank B to be a turn-off because a certain special enchantment (Raven) starts penalizing people with Combat Mastery A or higher. But if you don't use Raven enchants, you'll be fine.

Smashmill
• Required package: 16 AP
• Convenience: 14 AP
• Windmill rank 9: 33 AP. Loads faster and hits 150% harder than windmill F.
• Smash rank 9: 31 AP. 300% damage smash. (Improved 150% from rank F.)
• Total AP spent: 94

Although not really as sturdy as He-Man. This is just the type of warrior who, as part of a team, will steamroll golems into a corner to smashmill them to death at record speed. (Little brown girls punting golems is serious business, at least to some guilds out there.)

Archer
• Required package: 16 AP
• Convenience: 14 AP
• Ranged Attack rank 7: 55 AP. Grants 180% faster aim speed, +26 dex, +2-9 damage.
• Magnum Shot rank F: 1 AP
• Arrow Revolver rank F: 3 AP (plus a really difficult quest)
• Total AP spent: 89

By focusing specifically on the one skill Range Attack, the "free forever" archer is quite capable of matching the aiming speed of multiple-rebirthed master archers (at least, until the skill cap is lifted). Rebirthers can load faster by investing more in Magnum and Arrow Revolver, but this archer should be able to hit harder just through high dexterity. A good team is strongly recommended.

Sniper
• Required package: 16 AP
• Convenience: 14 AP
• Ranged Attack rank A: 24 AP. 150% aim speed
• Magnum Shot rank 9: 48 AP. 300% damage (150% improvement) and load time drops to 1.5
• Total AP spent: 102

One shot. One kill. This is pushing the budget. However I don't think it's possible to build a better archer on a "forever free" plan. Until the skill cap gets lifted, Magnum shot really doesn't get much better than it does at rank 9, and aiming speed isn't that bad with Magnum's reduced load time. Normal archery suffers, and this kind of character still needs a teammate to act as bodyguard. However, this archer can push a lot of damage into a single arrow, and take on targets normal archers would shy away from. Production mastery from the Convenience package becomes more important, as sniping like this takes a lot of stamina.

Blacksmith
• Required package: 16 AP
• Rest rank E: 5 AP
• Weaving rank A: 3 AP after refund (Simon's quest). +12 dex
• Refining rank 8: 19 AP. +10 dex
• Blacksmithing rank 9: 21 AP. +7 dex & +7 int.
• Production Mastery rank 6: 29 AP. +100 stamina & +10% success rate.
• Total AP spent: 93

Didn't think a producer was possible on a free account? With the required skills in place, it is very possible to tackle any of the game's challenges just focusing on stats. So while a blacksmith like this might not be the best of the best for a long time, they do get by just fine. And honestly, the best of the best will be coming to a blacksmith just like this to purchase their plate mail, super-daggers, and fancy helmets. That should get a few grins. Blacksmith 9 is the current cap since the really high ranked armor sets aren't released yet. So this free character is every bit as good as a frequently rebirthed character in actual production.

Unfortunately, the one thing a "forever free" smith is not going to do well is sell her goods. It would be a good idea to get into a nice producer guild that has merchant characters with Extra Storage Service to set up shop. (If you don't purchase the service yourself.)

Magic
Unfortunately, the one thing a free character is never really going to be good at is magic use. The minimum and maximum of any particular combat spell is determined directly by the rank of the skill itself. High dexterity and intelligence serve only as sources of balance, and very little extra damage can be obtained from your stat scores. This means that while warriors and archers can upgrade their damage indefinitely without using AP, magic users have no choice but to spend AP to improve the power of their magic. This not only puts a severe limit on how strong magic can get, but it gives a huge advantage to people willing to pay in money & stats for AP through rebirth.

Even with that said. Magic is still one of the safest ways to fight opponents, even in spite being the slowest. While magic users don't get all that powerful compared to others, they do develop an uncanny ability to be the last one standing when things start going wrong. So it can still be lots of fun

Basic Mage
• Required package: 16 AP
• Ice bolt rank A: 15 AP beyond required package. 1 MP for a 21-30 damage bolt.
• Magic Mastery rank A: 12 AP. +60 MP
• Lightning Bolt rank F: 5 AP. (For prerequisite to meditation.)
• Meditation rank F: 2 AP. 150% MP recovery while meditating.
• Counterattack rank A: 31 AP. 100% damage returned on use & reduced stamina costs.
• Fire bolt rank E: 3 AP beyond required. 2 MP for a 8-27 damage push bolt.
• Total AP spent: 84

This package needs a little explaining. First, I've skipped the convenience of improved rest and production mastery. Instead I opted to improve counterattack to save stamina, as this is the only skill one would be using stamina with (usually). But counterattack actually turns out to be the real kill-skill of this plan.

It works using a tactic called Fire-Ice-Counter. The mage starts with a fire bolt to send the opponent flying at maximum range. It works even if the opponent is defending of mana-shielded. Next up is the ice bolt, which is bait. The ice bolt pings, and that big bad fomor is going to try to whack you with a normal attack to take advantage of your "mistake." Except, he isn't close enough to. By the time he's reached you, you've loaded counterattack and he practically kills himself. One more fire bolt to send him away again, and the cycle continues.

If the opponent isn't shielded then the pattern can be shortened to just ice-counter most of the time, and ice can do a nice chunk of damage in these situations. Each of the skill ranks is set so that it does as much as it can without spending extra SP or MP to do so. So the mage can last a long time before needing to recharge.

1337 haxx0r (aka. Ice Bolter)
(Bad joke. Sorry!)
• Required package: 16 AP
• Ice bolt rank 6: 38 AP. 2 MP for a 37-48 ice bolt. Loads in 1.5 seconds.
• Magic Mastery rank A: 12 AP. +60 MP
• Critical Hit rank 9: 27 AP. 190% damage on critical hit (compared to 150% for F rank).
• Total AP spent: 93

Starting out is a bit hard. A new player would have to build up a good melee weapon and use just the basic skills until he or she builds up enough for Ice bolt 9 and the magic mastery needed to keep it going. But one somebody does, watch out. The 1.5 second load time is just about the same as the 1.5 second stun time the target gets for being hit with an ice bolt. It's also about the same as the 1.5 seconds defense takes to load. That means the Ice Bolter connects once, and the only thing the opponent can do to break the stun is a perfectly timed defense. Or more accurately, five perfectly timed defenses. If the Ice Bolter has pre-charged the 5 bolts possible before starting to toss and reload them one at a time, then he has a stock of 4 bolts to make an extra strike and keep the opponent stunned if he hears a defense ping. Now that's just plain cheap. And it costs so little AP that even a "forever free" player can do it.
 

/ end copy paste

And that's some of the builds that can be accomplished with the free character card, as you can see it is definitely possible- I myself am going with a windmill rank 9 and icebolt rank 9 build which is discussed further down in the aforementioned thread.

It is definitely possible to get the full experience from this game including all the dungeons and such without having the highest level skills- it just takes a bit more skill- and that's why I am enjoying this game so much, the grind is actually minimal if you find out effective means to increase stats.

I hope this will inspire some of you who were deterred from the game to try it out, I think it's a great mmorpg.

Good luck and have fun.

PS: here are two ways to reduce lag, I live in australia and playing on NA server was quite hard with a half second skill delay, applying the fix in this thread has reduced the lag delay to negligible- which is amazing!

Nagle algorithm fix:

http://mabinogiworld.com/forums/index.php?topic=1831.0

MTU optimisation: (348 MTU worked very well but limited my internet d/l speeds so I am staying on 1500)

http://mabinogiworld.com/forums/index.php?topic=610.0

This is a really bad way to play a game, especially one advertised as free. If you want to play it for free, here's a better way:

Wait for it.

I mean literally wait for it. As of two days ago, Generation 1 is open to all players for free. Nexon is planning to release all the generations as free eventually, although you'll still have to pay for pets and Nao's Support Service and the like.

Originally posted by Winterfresh

This is a really bad way to play a game, especially one advertised as free. If you want to play it for free, here's a better way:

Wait for it.

I mean literally wait for it. As of two days ago, Generation 1 is open to all players for free. Nexon is planning to release all the generations as free eventually, although you'll still have to pay for pets and Nao's Support Service and the like.

I with you there, just wait, go find another game to play