Mabinogi (video game)

Mabinogi
Developer(s)	devCAT (Nexon)
Publisher(s)	Nexon
Engine	Pleione Engine
Platform(s)	Windows(98/ME/2K/XP)
Release	June 22, 2004 April 26, 2005 May 6, 2005 January 30, 2008 (closed beta)
Genre(s)	Fantasy MMORPG
Mode(s)	MMO

Mabinogi (Hangul:마비노기) is an online role-playing game released by South Korean Game Distributing Company Nexon, developed by devCAT studio, one of several development teams in Nexon Inc. inspired by Celtic mythology. The Welsh word mabinogi is found in the original manuscripts of the Mabinogion.

Summary

Mabinogi is a role-playing game set in a fantasy world. Mabinogi offers a multitude of skills to develop and a generally high level of diversity among players, skills, and environments.

The game engine features cell-shaded graphics, which enhance the anime-looking characters. The game world is developed continuously, through the release of important patches (referred to as "Generations" and "Chapters") that introduce new areas, features and advance the storyline. The user interface is familiarly simple and designed in the likeness of Microsoft Windows' task bar, allowing the player to access most game panels with ease (experienced players can also make use of keyboard shortcuts, to simplify certain tasks).

Commercially, Mabinogi is built on a hybrid Value Added Services model (which varies slightly on each game localization), that allows free but limited gameplay and the subscription of paid packages, purchased through the game service shop, which unlock the full game experience. The game service is currently available in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. The North America beta version has been released by Nexon on January 30, 2008 at 2pm PST and January 30, 2008 at 5pm EST, only Americans are allowed to play.

Gameplay

Mabinogi's gameplay is like most other MMORPGs . It does, however, offer some interesting options uncommon to most games. The player is not limited by any class (except the character's race), but is instead free to level up any of the different skills available. The combination of skill choice, age, items and other variables such as user title and physical constitution is what indeed makes up the character. Users can also use amusing facial expressions as emotes. Also you can do other things that are basically mini games such as fishing, herding, apply for a part time job, exercising if you get over weight, and sit around campfires and sharing food.

Character creation and development

File:Character creation.jpg

Character creation screen (japanese version)

Characters are created by using Character Cards (additional cards must be purchased from the game service store). There are two kinds of cards, basic and premium (a newly created account has one free basic card). Premium cards give the player a wider variety of hairstyles, eye and mouth shapes and also come with more elaborate clothes than the basic type. Players can also choose from three available races: human, elf (since Generation 5, Chapter 2) and giant (since Generation 6, Chapter 2). When creating a character, one may choose an age between 10 and 17 years-old. The character will advance one year in age every (real) Saturday. Different ages yield different initial stats and affect the amount of stats raised when levelling up.

Rebirthing is one important factor of the game. Unused Character Cards can be purchased to rebirth existing characters instead of creating new ones. Rebirthing allows the player to change the character's age, gender, appearance, and reset the character's level back to 1 while keeping all previously learned skills. When a character reaches the age of 25, aging will not be rewarded with Ability Points and levelling-up gradually becomes more difficult as the character's level becomes higher. Since all skills require a great amount of Ability Points at a higher rank, there's a limit to character development if players don't take advantage of rebirthing.

While engaging in most activities, the player must keep an eye on the three major status bars: health, mana and stamina. When health reaches zero the player dies (if fatally wounded, the player may still recover health or get healed), while mana is used for magic skills. Stamina is important because without it tasks cannot be performed. The player may use the rest skill, use stamina potions or eat food to recover stamina.

The player's eating habits will affect the character's build, that is, eating certain foods in large quantities will increase their weight (it may also raise/lower some of their stats). Eating berries has a slimming effect, gradually reducing the character's weight. These transformations happen over time, so the player may also watch how the character's body starts to change.

Each (real world) day of the week grants players specific bonuses, such as getting a higher experience rate for certain skills, higher item creation success, aging, gaining AP, etc. Players can take advantage of these bonuses to quickly advance their character builds.

Combat system

The combat system has a tactical side to it. Predicting the enemy's next move and making use of different offensive and defensive skills is crucial. However, the game features an automatic combat mode if the player wishes to choose this option. Enemies have different ranks and come in all sorts of species, some of them being very large in size. The player can usually see the strength of the enemy before attacking it by pressing the Alt key. Some monsters are aggressive and will attack and pursuit on sight. The high artificial intelligence of the enemies makes combat more engaging and reduces the existence of bots.

Dying implies the loss of experience points (depending on whether the player respawns in a town or on the same spot the death occurred) and sometimes the loss of equipment (these lost items can be retrieved at a lost and found NPC, but at a cost, usually, half of the item's actual price). Fallen players can be revived if another player uses a Phoenix Feather on them. If the player has purchased the Nao Support package, then Nao can be summoned to revive the player. If the player has zero experience points and suffers a death penalty, negative experience points will accumulate and the experience bar will turn red on the Character panel.

Fantasy Life

There is a wide range of Life skills which give the player the chance to experience a different side of the "fantasy life". Players can perform tasks such as tending to the wheat and potato fields, making flour, gathering wool from sheep and eggs from hens, weaving and making garments, mining for minerals and crafting weapons, playing and composing music, cooking dishes, etc.

Using a system called Music Markup Language, players may compose their own arrangements or use music scrolls created by other players. Different musical instruments, such as lutes and flutes, can be used to play these compositions in-game. Naturally, there are legal implications of playing copyrighted music, and while Nexon officially discourages such actions, there are many players who choose to do so.

NPC interaction is very important in the game. As the player talks to different non-player characters, keywords will become available to use in dialog with other NPC's. These conversations will reveal plot points and NPC backgrounds, unlock quests or skills, etc. NPC's also offer a variety of services such as shops, item repair and upgrade, skill apprenticeships and more. Players can also request arbeits from some of the NPC's, which can be useful to get items or quickly earn some gold (the in-game currency). By interacting frequently with the NPC's, they will be able to remember the player's character.

Other game systems

Players can set up stores to sell their items. Incidentally, items cannot be looted, as it frequently happens in other games, since any item dropped from a monster cannot, as a rule, be picked up by another player for a short time. Items can be safely traded through the trading panels.

Generation 3, in later updates, added housing areas between Tir Chonaill and Dunbarton and also between Bangor and Emain Macha. Through this housing system, players can bid for a house and pay rent for it afterwards, in order to keep it. Houses may be used as stores and players can purchase items to decorate their homes.

As in many other MMORPG's, player characters can get married in-game, by requesting this to a marriage NPC. A pet system is also available. Players may purchase Pet Cards from the game store and summon them in-game. Pets can help in combat or, in some cases, even be used as transportation, allowing the player to travel at a greater speed than on foot.

Other features worth mentioning are the friend, party and guild systems. Guild creation requires the purchase of an extended play package from the game store. Guilds can expand/level up by meeting an increasing quota of points (called Guild Points, or GP), which are earned by the guild's members by staying in-game. PvP combat is also possible in special arenas.

Skills

Within Mabinogi, each character can develop a large number of skills, though it is recommended that one should focus on a few particular skills at the beginning. Skills are divided into three categories: Life, Combat and Magic. By practicing different skills, such as cooking, fighting or playing instruments, the experience for these skills (and also for character level) will go up.

However, Ability Points (obtained when the player levels up, ages or has completed important quests) are required to take each skill up a level. Each skill is ranked from F to A and then from 9 to 1 (F being the lowest and 1 being the highest possible rank of a given skill). Skill levels cannot be lowered once they are advanced, unless a Skill Untrain Capsule is used (only available to subscribers who have purchased the Advanced Play or the Fantasy Life Club packages).

Additionally, the AP required for ranking up may differ between Humans and Elves in certain skills.

Some Life skills (e.g. fishing, cooking, etc.) are also mini-games.

Below is a partial list of skills available in Mabinogi.

Life Skills

File:Mabinogi fishing.jpg

In-game screenshot: a player catches a fish.

This group contains trade skills and all other skills that don't fit the two categories below.

• Fishing
• Cooking
• Handicraft
• First Aid
• Smithing
• Tailoring
• Weaving
• Herbalism
• Campfire
• Rest
• Refine
• Potion Making
• Making Mastery (raises the success rate for all trade skills and increases character's maximum amount of stamina)
• Playing instrument
• Composing (through use of Music Markup Language)
• Musical Knowledge

Battle Skills

File:Mabinogi melee combat.jpg

Melee combat: a critical finish.

This group includes melee and ranged combat skills and their more advanced forms.

• Melee Combat Mastery (passively increases melee weapon damage)
• Defense (blocks some attacks)
• Smash (breaks the Defense skill)
• Melee Counter Attack (counters normal attack and Smash skill; damage applied to the attacker)
• Windmill (emergency-move which attacks all nearby enemies at the loss of 10% of the character's HP)
• Critical Hit (increases damage done by critical attacks)
• Ranged Combat Mastery (increases bow loading speed)
• Magnum Shot
• Support Shot
• Sharp Mind (allows the player to predict the enemies' next move - not available in the JP version due to game balance reasons)
• Arrow Revolver (Human Only Skill - enables the user to load five consecutive bow shots)
• Final Hit (Human Only Skill)
• Mirage Missile (Elf Only Skill)
• Stomp (Giant Only Skill)
• Throw Attack (Giant Only Skill)
• Assault

Magic Skills

This group contains 3 lines of elemental magic that each perform differently, other non-elemental magic and their more advanced forms.

• Magic Mastery (increases the character's maximum amount of mana and intelligence)
• Ice Bolt
• Fire Bolt
• Lightning Bolt
• Healing
• Enchant
• Meditation (increases the character's mana regeneration rate when used, but stops stamina recovery)
• Fireball
• Thunder
• Party Healing
• Ice Spear

Special Paladin Skills

File:Mabinogi 2007 03 01 001.jpg

In-game screenshot: A player transforming into a Paladin.

Players can acquire the following Paladin skills after completing the Generation 2 mainstream plots.

• Spirit of Order (transforms the player into a Paladin; can only be used once a day (game time) and increases the health points, mana points, stamina points, defense points and protection rate)
• Power of Order (increases the strength and will of player during the Paladin transformation)
• Eye of Order (increases the dexterity and balance rate of the player during the Paladin transformation)
• Sword of Order (increase the maximum and minimum damage and wounding rate of the player towards the enemy during the Paladin transformation)

To acquire the 3 Paladin skills (the Real Power of Paladin) below, players are required to fill in the pages of the Book of Paladin Quest. (These quests are available in Generation 3, Season 3).

• Paladin Mana Refractor
• Paladin Heavy Stander
• Paladin Natural Shield

Special Dark Knight Skills

If the player has already solved the Generation 2 mainstream plots (meaning that they are a Paladin), they can convert into a Dark Knight by solving the quests available in Generation 3, Season 4. Dark Knights and Paladins strongly oppose each other. The previously acquired Paladin skills are converted into the following ones:

• Spirit of Order → Soul Of Chaos (transforms the player into a Dark Knight; can only be used once a day (game time) and increases the health points, mana points and stamina points; applies passive defense)
• Power of Order → Body Of Chaos (increases the strength and balance rate of the player during the Dark Knight transformation)
• Eye of Order → Hands Of Chaos (increases the dexterity and wounding rate of the player during the Dark Knight transformation)
• Sword of Order → Brian Of Chaos (increase the intelligence and critical hit rate of the player towards the enemy during the Dark Knight transformation)
• Paladin Mana Refractor → Dark Mana Refractor
• Paladin Heavy Stander → Dark Heavy Stander
• Paladin Natural Shield → Dark Natural Shield

Dark Knights also have the following additional skill:

• Control Of Darkness (allows the player to control monsters; the success rate is affected by the strength of both the player and the target; requires a black scroll)

Titles

Achieving certain conditions will reward the character with a title. Titles, when applied, can change the character's stats, with the potential to be beneficial or detrimental. Some examples "Lucky Guy/Girl", "Defeated a bear with bare hands", "Defeated by a fox when 17 years old", and "Elementary Elemental Master" (awarded when the character has learned all 3 kinds of elementary elemental magic - fire bolt, ice bolt, and lightning bolt).

Unique titles are unique in the realm and only one character in a realm can be awarded with the title, usually by breaking down a Seal Stone.

The Mabinogi World

In the Mabinogi world, there are three beginning towns in Generation 1, named:

• Tir Chonaill (often called "Newbie Town")
• Dunbarton
• Bangor

Generation 2 added a new town to the world of Erinn:

• Emain Macha

There is also a wide variety of other maps, such as the fields which connect the towns, dungeons and quest maps, the "Soulstream" (where Nao appears) and "the Gate".

Generation 4 added a new region, Rano, which belongs to a whole new continent, named Iria. This continent is quite large (when fully implemented, it is about three times larger than the size of the Urla mainland, where Generations 1 to 3 took place).

Generation 5 revealed another region of Iria called Connus and introduced a new race of characters, the Desert Elves. It also added the elven town of 'Philia'.

Generation 6 introduced yet a new kind of race, the Giants. A new area called Physis (a place eternally covered in snow) and a town called Vales were added at this point.

"Moon gates" in Urla connect remote areas and allow players to teleport through them. The destination of moon gates changes every (in-game) day. At a particular night, all moon gates teleport to one place. "Mana tunnels" in Iria connect different points across the continent. These, however, work differently from Moon gates. Mana tunnels can only teleport players to a mana tunnel that the character has used before. The light cycles are important to these portals: Moon gates are active only at night, while mana tunnels can only be used during the day. Players can also move from one continent to another by boat or by selecting "Continent move" from the main menu.

Dungeons

File:Mabinogi giant spider boss.jpg

The giant spider in Alby dungeon is one of the easiest boss monsters.

There are several dungeons in Mabinogi. When a player enters a dungeon, they will find a lobby with a statue of a goddess, and a platform before it. A separate dungeon instance is created for every unique type of item thrown on the platform (this way, the dungeon maps are randomized).

Incidentally, depending on what the player drops, they might end up in a dungeon instance with players already in it. However, that does not affect the use of Evil Passes, which will create a harder dungeon compared to other items. Evil Passes are available as drops from normal dungeons. Beginner passes, which create easier versions of dungeons, are only available to select dungeons.

Dungeons maps consist of rooms and corridors of the same size connected to each other. Along the way, the player will encounter chests or other devices which will, if opened or activated, summon monsters that must be defeated in order to progress in the dungeon path (keys that unlock dungeon doors must also be found this way). At the end of each dungeon, there is a room four times as large as the regular ones, dubbed the "boss room", which will usually have the boss enemy of the dungeon (sometimes escorted by a number of other enemies).

Once the boss is defeated, the next room, a treasury, will be opened, inside of which there will be several treasure chests and a statue of the goddess to allow players to warp back to the entrance. The number of treasure chests inside the treasury will be equal to the number of characters in the dungeon (at the time of opening the door). Players can thus explore the dungeons in teams.

When a player is killed inside a dungeon and if they cannot wait for rescue, they can choose to be revived at one of three possible locations: in a town, at the previous dungeon statue or at the dungeon lobby. If the player revives at the previous statue, they might pick up their dungeon progress where they left off, that is, the chests they have opened and the monsters they have already killed will not be reset. However, there is a big penalty for this and their status (health, mana and stamina) will not be reset either. If the player decides to revive at the dungeon lobby there is a lesser penalty and a new item must be dropped to enter the dungeon again (in which case, a new dungeon instance will be created).

Mainstream plots

Mabinogi has mainstream story campaigns which are playable only when a person is a game service subscriber. These quests have connected story lines that reveal the background story of Erinn and several important characters.

There are 3 stories in sequential order, each implemented at their corresponding Generation updates.

• Generation 1: Advent of the Goddess
• Generation 2: Paladin
• Generation 3: Dark Knight
• Generation 8: The Drake of Iria

Generations 4~7 don't have any story campaign, which is reason of complaint among part of the player base.

Quests, exploration and arbeits

There are many different quests that players can complete throughout the game. Different types of quests exist, some are party quests, others involve monster hunting, item collecting or other tasks, for instance, skill-based quests like cooking or tailoring.

Some of them are received by the player at specific points or after certain quests are completed, others are given by the NPC's, some can be purchased as quest scrolls and, finally, there are also exploration quests that the player can enroll in through the Quest Boards.

Quest rewards may consist of experience points, Ability Points, gold, items or a combination of these rewards. Quests help the player to discover the game's regions and to find out about the many available NPC's, as they require travelling to different parts of the game world and talking to all the different non-player characters.

Exploration quests typically involve finding certain hidden objects using a pair of L-shaped rods or by finding landmarks or animals and making a sketch of these. Different exploration quests are available according to the player's exploration level. Sometimes, when a player is using the L-rods, they may encounter chests with rewards (some of these chests are guarded by enemies which characters must defeat to open the chests).

There is also a player rank for the completion of each quest, which can be viewed on the Exploration Chronicle panel. When a character completes exploration quests or simply come across these hidden landmarks, the character's exploration level will increase and as they level up the character will gain Ability Points and access to new exploration quests.

Another type of special quests are arbeits, which are part-time jobs given by the NPC's that the players can complete. Arbeits are only available at a specific time of the day for each NPC and have a time limit to be completed. The player must complete the requested tasks (i.e.: delivering an item to another NPC, crafting a certain number of items, collecting objects, doing farming chores, etc.) and report back to the NPC to choose their reward. If the player completes the task only partially, the reward will be smaller.

Repeating these arbeits helps to raise the intimacy level between the player and the NPC (giving certain items to the NPC may also help). When a friendship has been established between them, certain merchant NPC's will reveal a secret store to the player with special items to purchase.

Game time and real time

The game has its own internal clock (36 minutes of the real time corresponds to 1 day of the game), as day gradually turns into night (a dynamic weather system is also in place, with effects such as rain, thunder and sand storms). However, each real time day of the week offers players the opportunity to take advantage of specific gameplay bonuses. Weekday names used in-game reflect the Celtic mythology that the game evokes. The day of the week bonuses are:

• Imbolic (Sunday)
  • Critical hit rate increases.
  • Probability of getting a lucky finish increases.
  • Battle skill rank up bonus increases by 110%.
  • Music skill rank up bonus increases by 110%.
• Alban Eiler (Monday)
  • Production skill success rate becomes high.
  • Life skills rank up bonus increases.
  • Dresses are made of beautiful colors.
• Beltane (Tuesday)
  • Arbeit rewards become higher.
  • Dungeon maps change, even if the same item is dropped.
  • Dungeon item drop rate increases.
• Alban Heruin (Wednesday)
  • Experience penalty decreases.
  • Magic skill rank up bonus increases.
  • Potion effects become high.
• Lughnasadh (Thursday)
  • Enchant scroll success rate becomes high.
  • Item drop rate from monsters and structures becomes high.
  • Chance of learning a skill from a seal book becomes high.
• Alban Elved (Friday)
  • NPC store prices are lowered by 5%.
  • Storage commission is lowered by 5%.
  • Cooking skill success rate becomes high.
  • Cooking skill rank up bonus increases.
• Samhain (Saturday)
  • Characters age one year.
  • Bonus Ability Points are earned from aging.
  • Food effects increase.
  • Perfect skill training bonus increases.

Mabinogi Heroes

Mabinogi Heroes
Developer(s)	devCAT (Nexon)
Publisher(s)	Nexon
Engine	Source engine
Platform(s)	Windows(98/ME/2K/XP/Vista)
Release	spring ~ summer 2008
Genre(s)	Fantasy MMORPG
Mode(s)	MMO

"Mabinogi Heroes" was announced on April, a teaser site for "Mabinogi Heroes" has been opened, its currently being developed by the Devcat studio. this game's genre is an action role playing game that has the improved graphics of "Mabinogi" they have the same world stories, though there are style and gameplay differences.

Devcat studio chose Valve Corporation's Source engine and has modified many things to optimize the Performance of "Mabinogi Heroes" that is a 3rd grammatical person action game, due to this method "Mabinogi" heroes has materialized a high level of hitting sensibility, they have provided an interactive physical action environment that is considered to be impossible in an online game.

In the backgrounds the natural features/grounds are destroyed during battle. The player may pick broken fragments or properties and use it as a weapon. There are many sub weapons ready to make a battle realistic. You can throw a spear to stop an enemy from coming to you, hold your enemy on the wall or on the floor, and you are allowed to work with your team mates to perform actions such as using a chain with your allies to seize a gigantic monster's legs making it collapse.

This game will be released in year 2008 around spring ~ summer, they may delay it. "Mabinogi Hero" will be playable on a demo version and a promotion video will be view to the public on the South Korea Game show "Gstar 2007". "Korea game website". Nexon.

Footnotes

• These features do not have clear analogies in the original mythology.

• The icon for the game program is a Celtic knot. The knot pattern also appears in other parts of the game.

• The game is available in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Mainland China.

• According to this article published on Gamespot Korea, an English version of Mabinogi is coming out for global market by Nexon. A closed beta of the English version run by Nexon America has started on January 30, 2008.

• It is confirmed that Xbox 360 version is currently in development. Detailed info will be out sometimes in 2007. "Korea game-show report". Gameshot.

• The 3D version of the game entitled "Mabinogi Heroes" is currently under development be released around spring ~ summer 2008 develop by Devcat studio and runs on Valve Corporation's Source engine, publish by Nexon.

External links

Worldwide official game sites

• Official site of Mabinogi in South Korea
• Official site of Mabinogi in Japan
• Official site of Mabinogi in Taiwan
• Official site of Mabinogi in Mainland China
• Official site of Mabinogi in North America
• Official site of Mabinogi Heroes in South Korea

Fansite/Database sites

• Mabinogi Wiki*, a japanese fansite/database
• Mabinogi World, an English database