So often people ask what they should get for their gear, and since I usually repeat a lot of the same things, I decided to make a forum post about it so I can refer them to here. This page will be mainly for melee (human), since that is what I am most experienced with, and will also mainly follow how I progressed my character so far. I provided links to most stuff as to where you can obtain them. These aren't 2011 links, but most information is accurate (for completely accurate information, go to history). This guide doesn't cover every single piece you should wear, but covers the main things.
I've divided the guide in some sections, to give indications when you are roughly looking at which enchants to get.
Before I mention the stuff you should be gunning for, you should consider your possibility of obtaining one or more
Oblivion enchants. Every piece where I suggest you to get some kind of max damage enchant like quartz, fox, corundum, diamond etc., you can consider putting Oblivion there instead. I'm not talking about it much in the guide since Oblivion is something that requires a decent amount of luck and time wasted camping gnus to obtain, and a lot of people don't obtain many. Personally I value any max damage enchant that gives 8 or more max dmg, or that gives max damage and a lot of min damage/crit to be more valuable than oblivion, since oblivion reduces crit by 3% (because of -15 luck) and crit is important if you want to be able to crit with your smashes.
Another thing I'd like to mention is that I mainly value getting crit and balanced max damage in this guide. Every 4 points of minimum damage is equal to 1 max damage, and I personally value 1 point of crit to be worth roughly 0.8-1 max damage worth.
Part 1: You just started off. (lvl 0)
Welcome to your new career in the world of mabinogi (pro). To start your mabinogi career off, I'd recommend your first weapon that you upgrade, to get some blacksmithed
broadswords from one of our server blacksmiths. Usually people say to just upgrade some gladiusses untill you get enough dex for broads, but personally I think it is better to go straight broads, since you will then quicker have them proffed/upgraded, and waste less money on tools you will dispose off after like 2-4 weeks. Of course, go with the traditional 222 upgrade path, as can be seen on the 2011 version of the broadsword wiki page.
As for enchants to put on your broadswords, if possible, try to get
goddess caliburn. You can get one goddess caliburn enchant on your own from the generation quests, so one sword should be getting its enchants. The other sword, you have to obtain the scrolls from other people.
Obsidian from G3 can act as a solid replacement for one of the caliburns, meaning you only need to get 1 goddess. These enchants are one of the few enchants someone can get early on, that are really powerful, which is why they will last you a long time. The downside, is the 10x repair cost. I recommend only repairing at 95%, with smithed broads that have 16 dura, upgrading them reduces them to 11 dura. That should last you a very long time, even at 95% repair (not mentioning the possible dura upgrade from gem upgrade).
If you are really against the idea of getting goddess caliburn broadswords, you can perhaps use one of the following enchants instead.
For prefix, stuff like 4 max
fox, a
wolf hunter,
quartz,
topaz,
diamond or
corundum.
For suffix, going for
giant,
wild boar with 3 max or a high roll
raven works quite well.
For the rest of your gear, any
fox/
giant you find, slap it on anything you wear. Also wear clothing and accessories, heavy armor is damage wise never worth it in this generation without the future masteries (which allow wearing of accessories).
Part 2: You start to get stronger (100+ ish)
At this point, hopefully you have your refining/windmill r1 under the belt (or your gameplan set if you want to skip out on refining), and you can start worrying about the life of a millitian who can do intermediate shadow missions.
The easiest thing to upgrade from the starter fox/giant set (or something you could immediately go for if you kindly ask some people that can run int/adv SMs) is
sacrifical on boots/gloves. Now be warned, the wiki page I linked says you need smash rC or LOWER, but on our version it is rC or HIGHER, making it an excellent starting point for any new character. Furthermore, it drops quite frequently from one of our custom SMs, Cleanse the graveyard, on int/adv so do try to obtain it somehow if you can, it will last you a long time.
The next thing that is relatively easy to upgrade is your hat to a
delusional cap. Requirements aren't hard to fulfill. A good prefix to put on it is
quartz until you go for the late game stuff.
For clothing (your main body piece), using fox or quartz with giant at the start, and when you can, upgrade it with
Extraordinary from the auction for 1m, or from peaca normal/g11 peaca. For the suffix,
Shard will serve you very well, although takes a while to obtain (drop rate is rather low, talking about one chest in every... 100 chests or perhaps even more rare. Bringing more people for more chests helps). Eventually, the dream is to upgrade the suffix to
White horse, although this takes a lot of preparation and is MUCH WORSE to get.
For boots, once you start getting higher total/get more cash, get some
Hard peaca boots from auction. Slap some decent prefix on them (quartz, corundum, or if you are lucky and managed to get an ES, oblivion) and you are sorted for a while.
Part 3: You got the before mentioned stuff, and feel ready to keep going (or just like to work towards even better stuff)
You want to be preparing
Burgundy bear Wood plate cannon to upgrade them to
Wooden needle. For the suffix, you can go for stuff like
elegant,
Swarming or some other str enchant.
At the same time, you want to be gathering high grade monsterdrop/crafted Battle swords, and put
Stamp
on them, after which you overwrite Stamp with
Spike. For prefix, go for
Cypress , burns from auction cost 1m, or get them as a drop from Metus.
Now we are going to put the icing on the cake. Most of the follow stuff is to get the maximum out of your gear, and most of them require a lot of time and/or money to obtain.
For your gloves, if you are feeling daring, start looking at
Steel needle
For your boots, you can start looking at stuff like max roll
fleet/
viscount.
For your hat, start looking at
vine/
dexterity, or if you want more damage get
Cold as a prefix from auction/drop and slap dexterity on that.
For your outfit, look at the before mentioned
White horse as a suffix, and
Restored as a prefix.