MabiPro: The Authentic Old-School Mabinogi Experience

Hello, and Welcome to A Beginner's Guide to Life the World and Everything
Part 1: A Race and Class Struggle Choosing a Race and a Class

Important note: For anyone who already plays and hasn't reached near end game, you can still probably learn a thing or two from this guide but you'll want to skip to part 3 to learn the strengths and weaknesses of your class and others.

Let me start out by explaining what this guide is supposed to be. I'm making this because I've been seeing people confused and frustrated by their class often asking for game balance to be changed in order to make their lives easier. Please note: this is not so much a knock on those people, but rather a guide to help people better select their class originally so they dont run into those frustrations after hundreds of hours of play. So without further adieu, lets get right into it.

Section 1: Choosing a race

The first thing you are prompted do when you get into character creation is to pick a race. Always pick human as it allows you to get the other two races for free, but beyond that how do you figure out which race you should play? This is a difficult decision to explain properly but an expedited summary would be as follows:

Elves are best at archery, but bad at melee
Humans are good at versatility, but bad at specialization
Giants are very strong at melee, but lack ranged damage

If you want to pick a character now then feel free, but I Highly recommend selecting a class before you set your choice in stone.

Section 2: Introduction to classes

Now the first thing I should say is that this game utilizes a classless skill system in which you can use every skill in the game at any time. When people refer to a class, usually they're referring to a player-defined set of skills used to specialize in a given style of killing enemies. The game has 4 pre-defined categories, but they aren't 1-1 related to how players refer to classes. Instead players generally use the terms Melee, Archer, Mage, and Alchemist with alchemist being split based on which school of alchemy you choose.

So now in a Classless system why would people specialize into a single school, especially since you said humans are supposed to be versatile? Two main reasons: AP and Gear.

AP is a major throttle early as you can only get around 200 per week without really pushing yourself and it has to be spent wisely, while gear on the other hand becomes a problem later as in order to do damage with a certain class you need to equip gear that increases relevant stats and a weapon that enables the class skills which makes it harder to do similar damage numbers with an offhand secondary skill set, with only one exception: Human Melee/Archery, but we'll get into that later. So how do I pick a class? Easy. I've laid out the strengths and benefits of each class below, just choose the one you like the most and get started.

Section 3: Class Descriptions

The metrics I'm using to give base lines are as follows:
Damage per Second: Sustained damage of the build given peak conditions to attack monsters
Teamplay: The ability to use the skillset to assist others by either providing AoE hit stuns, providing buffs to party members, or hitting large groups for massive amounts of damage
Reactiveness: How well you can play when faced with unexpected events
Survivability: How well the class can either avoid getting hit or survive should they be hit
Ease of Access: How easy it is to get into the skillset from nothing
Quality of life: A more subjective score about how clean gameplay generally feels (Do I have to farm rare crystals? Mana potions? Do I have to offhand cypress or otherwise chug stamina potions? so on and so forth.



Basic Skills
Melee excels at dealing the most damage up front with a decent amount of sustained damage. It has one of the most balanced skill sets that allows players to learn the basics such as knockdowns and the rock paper scissors elements of the game while being heavily punished for mistakes. The core damage skills of this skillset are Windmill (WM) and Smash. Smash is a single target high damage skill that instantly knocks back enemies while WM is an area of effect skill that does a considerable amount of damage while granting temporary invulnerability to damage. These two together make up the bread and butter of melee.

Playstyle
In end game Windmill's short load time and instant activation allows melee players to clear rooms at the highest speeds giving them the fastest clear time in dungeons and tightly knit shadow missions so long as they can instantly kill all the mobs in the pack. Otherwise melee players often alternate between windmill and smashing as hitstuns allow in order to pump out maximum damage.

Scaling
Damage comes primarily from weapons, strength, max damage enchants, and crit, although WM doesn't need much crit smash needs it to get its full damage out
Stamina allows for some quality of life.

Drawbacks
Melee is one of the more dangerous skillsets with windmill costing you a large portion of your life while without it you're losing a large portion of your damage.
Desync can get you hit more often than other classes since you need to be directly next to enemies to damage them.
Strength, the primary attribute scaling, isn't common in skill rewards so most of your damage will come from your gear or current level.
Party members hitting your target often results in your death as you have to manage knockdowns very carefully.

Reasons for Scores

Damage per Second: Smash does a hefty amount of damage, and when paired with windmill or another skill to set it up it can be a very solid and reliable skill to use.
Teamplay: Relies heavily on combos, which when interrupted by an ally can lead to taking hits if uncoordinated. Usually does best 1v1.
Reactiveness: Between windmill, charge, and evasion melee fighters are suited to handle most problems if they time their skills properly, however multi-aggro can get the best of them like any other class.
Survivability: While survivability is low here, its almost entirely because of windmill draining life, which many players have found ways around. Additionally getting combos interrupted or having multi-aggro can lead to death more often than other classes due to the distance you have to hold to the enemies and lack of a long stun on any one enemy.
Ease of Access: For humans all you need to start dealing damage is some easy to get enchants and a dual pair of battle swords with high artisan upgrades. Since artisan upgrades are cheap to repeal, this isn't even that difficult to get and after which you can start farming for actual gear fairly quick off the bat. For giants you just need 2 maces fully upgraded and a broad axe, which isn't difficult to get. Eventually you'll upgrade this gear, but at the start its pretty easy to achieve and start pumping out damage. Additionally the only life skill required to rank is Carpentry.
Quality of life: They've added many weapons and a few enchants in easier to access locations over the last two years making it easier to gear as a melee fighter. Additionally using hp 30s to fix dk disarm can allow permanent trans, which hasn't yet been fixed on this server. Potion poisoning removes int, which DKs dont need for damage.

Basic Skills
Archery is an RNG based system that rewards luck more than skill. Archers rely primarily on Magnum for single target damage and crash shot for area clearing. Human archers also have a unique skill that can allow them to juggle enemies and react better to unexpected situations, while elves get reduced load times on magnum and mounted archery.

Playstyle
Archers excel at hitting things that cant hit them back, and have the highest single target damage in the game when properly equipped. They are one of the better classes at clearing rooms quickly as they have much faster load times than mages and alchemists, and can often notch and fully aim their first arrow before a single charge can be readied. Archers really shine in groups when they can hit things that others will handle stuns or knockdowns for should they miss so they can maximize damage without being at risk of dying. When playing solo they rely more heavily on pets than any other class as otherwise they would die much more often than other classes.

Scaling
Archery scales with Weapons, Dex, and Max Damage Enchants, and crit
Stamina allows for some quality of life

Drawbacks
Since your damage and survivability are largely decided by your RNG you will often die with little reason on your part, wasting revivals more quickly than other classes
Added weapons have all been downgrades of existing weapons with little room for allowing unique modifiers without simply buffing the skill
While not as bad as melee, desync will often kill you by representing incorrect aim numbers or having monsters teleport next to you and instantly hit you
Solo play is much less viable than other classes for extended periods of time

Reasons for Scores

Damage per Second: When they're in their peak condition and are able to aim at unmoving targets to 99% without fear of dying archers have the highest single target damage per second. This realistically never happens however, and often they'll fall behind melee and mage in dps in fights, being outperformed by mages in longer fights and losing to warriors' damage off the bat.
Teamplay: They rely very heavily on others assisting them and often have a pet out or available to summon due to their inability to prevent damage after missing a shot. They can also provide allied melee fighters with a damage boosting debuff on enemies that has a long duration stun to set people up for smash.
Reactiveness: Archers have very good ability to react to changing situations due to low load times on skills. This does not mean however that their reaction will work necessarily, as they'll probably still die if and when their arrows miss.
Survivability: Extraordinarily low. If they miss they get shit on, simple as that. You dont have complete control over your ability to survive, and if you cant handle that then this class isn't for you
Ease of Access: Very hard. This class requires most of the life skills (Weaving, Tailoring, Blacksmithing, Refining, Enchanting, and so on) as they all give dex. These skills are notoriously grindy and unfun. Their first good starter weapon is fairly easy to obtain as its store bought, however they also need the same enchants warriors get as all bows have low base damage.
Quality of life: They've gotten a few new bows since server start, however most of these are exorbitantly expensive to repair sidegrades that are almost as hard to get as the original best in slot items (IE wingbow/HLB/Ring Ego). AR buffs have been asked for since server start and they still haven't been added so human archery is pretty bad, and elves have bugs with their damage formula on mirage missile while their ego skill is much worse than the giant counterpart.


Basic Skills
Magic has a plethora of skills, however most of them are unlocked later on. Early game Firebolt, a high damage single target fire element magic skill, is the best to use. Later on most people use Fireball, Thunder, or Hailstorm primarily, however they take a while to unlock and fully empower

Playstyle
Magic takes time to load in this game, a long time to load that is. If you're hit while loading you can lose anywhere from a single charge to the entire spell so you have to choose where and how to load very carefully. That said when a mage is properly set up and isn't interrupted, their area damage potential is the highest in the game and they can easily dispatch mobs much faster than second place, archery, due to their lack of aim times.

Scaling
Damage from magic is entirely flat, and damage numbers are entirely enhanced through multipliers. MAttack, which is grown by int, is the one you have to build into your gear and enchants, while others come from passives such as elemental masteries and titles and lastly crit.

Drawbacks
First and foremost Mana Wait, they added mana potions to shops, created insane mana cost reduction items, and buffed meditation?
Hmm, but equipment repairs were costly... oh nevermind this server has double gold and staves dont lose durability so that isn't a problem
Then....then....charge time! ... oh I just heard they gave chaincasting to fireball on staves...
Then that advanced magic has such a short rang...oh hailstorm got its range almost doubled
Hmm I guess the only drawback is if you're trying to melee monsters ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In all seriousness though, they can still be interrupted while channeling their initial casts, and if your spells dont clear a room you'll get multi aggro'd though that almost never happens with a decent amount of investment because the numbers are so overtuned. They also are restricted in movement in order to maximize their damage per second, so they're strongest in places like shadow missions and caverns and weaker in things like dungeons.
Its definitely the strongest real skillset at the moment though for sustained area damage, and has massive areas for that damage unlike most other skillsets with a lot of versatility without changing too much gear.


Reasons for Scores

Damage per Second: Their DPS is the highest in any group larger than 1 or even 1 under non-ideal conditions for archers (IE it can hit them back due to adv heavy, aoe skills, ect.)
Teamplay: They have multiple large aoe knockbacks or stuns, multiple massive aoe damage skills to clean up large mobs, and the ability to change to quick auto-knockback single target damage should it be needed.
Reactiveness: Depending on the arsenal of magic weapons being carried, this can be higher. Some staves that allow fast charging and chaincasting of magic can be used with say, a wand with mana reduction offhanding a spell focus jewel in your side slot if you have mana potions and evap prevention stones. This can allow the mage to regenerate mana while using thunder reactively while throwing out fireballs every once in a while on 2(3) charges to nuke the room. Normally however if a mage gets interrupted while channeling they'll die though if not fully spec'd into preventing that.
Survivability: Usually pretty high if they're not attempting to play solo without barrier spikes or a golem and pet. They have massive aoe damage to clear rooms and can adapt to any situation given the high number of skills available
Ease of Access: Rather high given that the only thing you need to max to get to close to end game is a cc+4 fire wand and mp 10 potions you can buy from a vendor. Alternatively theres an herb pig you can buy and bring to the alby battle arena to abuse it for infinite mana and infinite herbs.
Quality of life: Extraordinarily high. As mentioned before in the shitpost that is downsides, every weakness devcat decided to program into the game has been repealed save cast time.(I hope I didn't just jinx snap cast into existence with that) They've reworked meditation so its more active during the daytime by switching it from a % to a flat amount, but the kicker is that you regenerate more mana at night too because the flat number is so high. Additionally as mentioned above they have easy access to a previously highly limited resource (mana herbs and potions) which can allow for stockpiling for missions to take much less time. They've also added tons of new upgrades (yes direct upgrades, not sidegrades) with either low repair costs, insane special abilities, or otherwise useless but in a niche super strong upgrade paths. Magic has gotten more attention than any other class by far, partially because two of the biggest content developers for the server are mages.


Alright enough with the overpowered skillsets, lets move on to... shit not again.
Basic Skills
Golem is the first of the 4 alchemy types, earth/clay, and is entirely built around using golems. Usually this is used as a bridge to higher level content before switching to another class, however it can also be used alongside another class now that a special someone distributed an ai that allows the Golem to control itself. This results in it almost always being worthwhile to have a golem active if you really care about maintaining PEAK performance read:Metahumping. The summon golem skill creates a golem that essentially uses the combat skillset. For direct playstyle and drawbacks consult that section, this section will focus on the golemancer's life

Playstyle
The manual playstyle is identical to warrior, consult above, however due to how clunky the golem is its slightly slower than an actual warrior in base clear. The upside to playing golem is that while slightly slower it requires nearly no investment. With only maxing 3 skills and getting a single unenchanted weapon a player can compete at a similar if only slightly lower level than someone who has mastered entire classes and has spent hundreds if not thousands of hours grinding gear.

Scaling
Scaling is almost entirely from skills, with the only equipment you need to fully enable your golem is the AI script saved in your data folder and a fully upgraded earthquake cylinder

Drawbacks
If micromanaging the golem, it can feel clunky and the original player can be attacked and damaged ruining the skill. These are both however nullified by the golem AI. It does however fall off in damage eventually when compared to fully enchanted warriors, but again you can use it while also happening to BE a warrior at almost no cost.

Reasons for Scores

Damage per Second: Outclassed by a fully skilled fully geared player of any other class, but requires 1/100th the investment for 90% of the value
Teamplay: Low, see Melee. This is however unless you're spec'd into a second class as well
Reactiveness: If your golem isn't down you cant really react. If it is you can, see warrior.
Survivability: High given that if your golem dies you just make another one. The caster shouldn't die unless they're a big ol' dum dum.
Ease of Access: Super super simple. You hit end game on your second rebirth. See above
Quality of life: They haven't nerfed it yet which is close enough to continuously buffing it, so this gets near full marks

Basic Skills
Fire alchemy is the safest skillset. It has area control and lockdown with flame burst with some single target damage from heat buster though it isn't used as often and is more of a finisher.

Playstyle
Flame burst is a very versatile skill that can be used to pump out its damage on as many targets as possible, or lock to an enemy in place while allies attack it effectively preventing it from moving while your team picks off the trapped foes. Heat buster then acts as a finisher after a few flame bursts have gone off. Flame burst takes a while to charge, so often you'll want to do it before entering rooms. This makes their clears slightly slower than other classes while not quite as slow from the get go as mages.

Scaling
Scaling comes entirely from Fire Alchemy Damage on enchants and cylinders as well as base damage from the skill. Since the damage is almost entirely area save heat buster you don't need to worry much about crit either until you really want to maximize your damage.

Downsides
Fire alchemy doesn't do as much damage as other classes due to how safe and easy it is. This alongside the skill load time makes the class a bit undesirable for most, but it is super useful as an aoe cc + slight damage buff.


Reasons for Scores

Damage per Second: The damage per flame burst isn't too bad but it takes a long time to fully charge and activate it
Teamplay: Very very good at picking up slack in an otherwise unorganized group
Reactiveness: Rather low since if they dont have a charge loaded they can be blindsided. This is helped by other alchemy skills like wind blast
Survivability: Extremely high, they usually never die due to ease of controlling enemies movement. Can handle 2x and even sometimes 3x aggro with ease.
Ease of Access: A bit more difficult due to half it's damage being locked behind enchants. It also isn't as good without a volcano cylinder. Additionally you need to do g9-12 to unlock a lot of your skills.
Quality of life: They got an elemental tower cylinder that has a very niche use for massive flame burst range and 50% more damage, and new drop locations for its end-game arm cylinder, so its getting a bit of love.


Basic Skills
Water alchemy is the third of the alchemy schools and primarily uses water cannon, a 5 charge skill that deals high single target damage. Additionally due to the high base damage of heat buster it can also be used even as a water alchemist.

Playstyle
Water alchemy can permanently bounce targets knockbacks so long as they don't ping, allowing for safe gameplay similar to fire alchemy but with slightly less group play potential outside of organized teams. Their charge times are slightly shorter than fire alchemy and their range is much longer, however due to damage falloff based on range, often they try and play in similar ranges to maximize damage. They also have one of the best ranged stuns since it has similar usable distance to archery with a 100% hit chance and no load time. They end up being more of a hybrid between damage and solo survivability than fire alchemists.

Scaling
Water alchemy only scales with water alchemy enhancements and critical strike chance for the more expensive crit variant


Downsides
Their damage relies very highly on either royal alchemist which can drop off over time, or very difficult enchants to get with massive repair costs.
They can't deal with targets that blue ping as well
Their primary supplemental abilities are a skill that will miss on anything you couldn't kill with a water cannon, and an area boost to water cannon which usually your party won't know how to utilize correctly and will knock all the enemies out of it wasting the crystal.

Reasons for Scores

Damage per Second: The damage per water cannon is reasonably high, but again you need to be close range or it'll fall off very fast. Additionally non-crit builds do significantly less damage since they're much easier to get and much cheaper to sustain
Teamplay: They're good at solo 1v1 play with some ability to assist others, but they dont generally want to be assisted do to their ability to usually handle single targets. Gets ruined by multi-aggro though
Reactiveness: rather high, due to shorter skill load time and supplemental skills like wind blast.
Survivability: Extremely high outside of multi-aggro situations
Ease of Access: Getting RA and a water cylinder will get you started, but you still need to do generation quests to get your secondary skills
Quality of life: They got an elemental tower cylinder that has a very niche use for massive water cannon range and 50% more damage, and new drop locations for its end-game arm cylinder, so its getting a bit of love.


Lol tricked~