History VideoGame / Mabinogi

*** Except for taking out the aforesaid enemy archers - the simplest way for new players to disrupt the monster's aim is with a bow of their own. Basic spells don't always have the range to safely snipe archers and charging can aggro their companions. And fairly unskilled player archers are ''still'' superior to the first enemy bow-wielders encountered.

*** The broad stick is JUST awesome. While out of the box it's only OK due to the poor balance, with upgrading it's a fine little weapon that will out-perform nearly anything else readily available to players. And these upgrades come fast (most needing a mere 5 proficiency) and cheap (a fully tricked out Broad Stick will only set a player back a mere 2,800 gold). A 35-50 weapon, with 25% crit, within 15-20 minutes of proficiency grinding is ridiculous. Those are numbers you find a 40,000 gold two-handed sword, not a cheap to repair glorified piece of firewood.
*** You can find weapons whose minimum damage is ''0''. Pretty reliable in the right hands, though, as damage isn't a linear range but a bell curve whose apex is stat- and skill-dependent.

** The Commerce Airship (Not to be confused with the Skiff) is this in spades:

*** One of the encounters, however is a Red Dragon. This encounter forces players to hit the dragon a certain amount of times before time runs out, which is just a few seconds. Failing that causes the Red Dragon to take a HUGE amount of HP. Did I mention that the party has to split from using Ballistas and fast Dual Guns to even have a chance to complete this?
*** What's worse, you can encounter TWO Red Dragons in a row. Good luck if the party exhausted their Way of the Gun or Ballistas.

* BagOfSharing: One of the most complex examples of [[BagOfSharing this trope]]. Each player has their own personal inventory, as well as a bank inventory (banks are available in every city, village, and camp). Players with paid subscriptions can share bank inventories between all the characters on their accounts; players with free accounts cannot. However, pets have individual inventories and are available to all characters on the account, so can be used to share items between all characters on the account, even for free accounts. Currency is shared between all characters on an account via the bank system, regardless of account type. This is further complicated by certain items, some of which cannot be shared through pets, but can be shared via the bank for those with paid subscriptions, and some of which cannot be shared at all.
** As of the 1st of may 2013 inventory plus is now part of free play, every play can now use extra bags in their inventory, some of which don't have a limit of 1 per character which sometimes leads to royal alchemists being strapped with more belts from crystal pouches then a Yu Gi Oh main character and use the enlarged bank taps of all their characters on the same server.

* TheBeastmaster: If you've got several pets with on-summon attacks, some mercenary scrolls, and a control bar, this is a perfectly valid way to fight.

*** The Saga:Iria 2: [[spoiler:The Cessair have been stopped once and for all, but Rurari managed to open a gate to another world in order to summon it's god to fight Eirin's gods, leading to the events of Chapter 6.]]

* BowAndSwordInAccord: You can have it this way through the use of the two weapon slot system.

** As of the Ultimate Anime Summer event and the new beginnings patch,paid rebirths have been scrapped, everyone can now rebirth for free after 6 days since last rebirth and only a ace talent which required a card rebirth before now costs 39 pons or 3.900 NX instead of the 7.400 nx for a card it costed before. This removed a major Paywall from the game as players now rebirth at the same speed instead of 3 times as fast for the people with enough cash lying around.
** Even pets have been refined, with every account receiving a free horse and eagle (without the inventory the cash shop versions have) to use as mounts or help in combat. Multiple content updates throughout Mabinogi's gamelife made various pets that can be obtained with inventory by doing the story such as the Pegasus mount [[Note]][=AoE=] attack on summon- which can be repeated for each character[[/Note]]for clearing Saga I, or clearing certain dungeons for useful pets such as a Nimbus[[Note]][=AoE=] quick healing on summon[[/Note]], or a Bone Dragon [[Note]]Debuff on summon[[/Note]]. Heck, most events even have pets as rewards for participating.

** There is also an [=EXP=] penalty for dying, but where you revive affects how much you take.

** CutsceneIncompetence: There are unfortunately a good number of cutscenes that do not take into account how strong the player is. The player in question may be more then powerful enough to easily kill a certain enemy and all of his mooks in one fell swoop, yet the cutscene shows the player's easily finding their opponents mopping the floor with their face without a chance to retaliate or a reason not to. Not helped that it occasionally [[HopelessBossFight throws the player into a fight with at least one enemy that is given invincibility.]] Very rarely the enemy is just that strong, and more often, it's a bad case of PlotArmor.

* EarnYourFun: Many skills require epic amounts of [[LevelGrinding grinding to advance to useful levels]], others require extensive and/or difficult quests, and a few require both. Advanced skills typically involve a BrutalBonusLevel as part of a collection or story quest. [[EmpathicWeapon Spirit Weapons]] have to be fed large amounts of expensive or hard-to-obtain items to achieve useful stats. The best enchanted gear is typically found via [[NintendoHard extremely difficult dungeons]], extensive Exploration grinding, or [[RevenueEnhancingDevices through the cash shop gachapons]].
** Or abusing the Beginner benefits (namely the ability to reset all your AP at will when your account has never had a character of level 1000 or higher) to effortlessly rank 1/master all CP-required skills on joke enemies that normally couldn't be used by someone playing normally due to how quickly Combat Power raises as you stack the benefits of raising multiple skills at once. By focusing on only 1 skill at a time, you can build your skills off of enemies that are effortless to kill in large numbers as opposed to the terrible slogging grind it can become if you become too strong too fast, and then mix and match the ranks depending on how much AP you have to spend to tailor yourself to whatever challenge you're facing since you keep any mastery titles or full ranks you earned and simply need the AP necessary to re-purchase them again. You can also save up adventurer seals from doing dailies across all characters (you get up to 8 slots for free) to purchase medals that give Skill xp directly, allowing you to get through production professions without crafting a single item or even skip some ability quests completely if they give you a novice version of the ability first but require the quest to advance it (like Shock does). It even works on skills that require specific books for (like the higher ranks of cooking which are a bear due to the Cooking Dungeon being horrible).

* [[ElvesVsDwarves Elves vs Giants]]: The interracial war plays a large part of the Chapter 2 story. Even players can get in on the action by enabling the Elf vs Giant PlayerVersusPlayer option, although that turns into camping fairly quickly. In G9, [[spoiler:the war is finally resolved by...[[AntiClimax sketching the Artifact Of Doom the two sides were fighting over.]]]]
* EmoteAnimation: In addition to emotes that change your facial expression, there are emotes for greeting, laughing, crying, and now even saluting or doing Film/NapoleonDynamite's dance!

** Deliberately having a low age allows you to get titles such as "<name>, who killed a bear/{{golem}}/etc at 10 years old". One of the {{NPC}}s [[LampshadeHanging makes note of this]], saying that sure it's impressive for a kid to kill a bear with their bare hands, but isn't it kinda mean to the bears?
*** It's not mean to the bears because some bears have the title "who knocked out a person at [age] 10"

** The newly added boss, Girgashiy, has a quest objective associated with it to kill one of them at age 10.

* InexplicableTreasureChests: These are typically only found in dungeons. However, during certain events, they can drop from just about every animal and monster in the game.
** Usually though, this trope is an indication that you're looking at a Mimic monster instead of a treasure box. Load your windmill skill to determine what has a key and what will try to eat you.

* KidHero: You will see a lot of these. [[PintsizedPowerhouse They can probably still kick your ass.]]

* LethalChef: Aeira, the bookstore owner, tries to make a bag lunch for another NPC. The picture depicts some kind of oatmeal explosion, with Aeira cowering behind the counter.

* MundaneMadeAwesome: In G11, you can cook food by going into a giant pot and ''beating walking ingredients to death.''
** See ImpossiblyDeliciousFood, above.

* NumericalHard: Higher-ranked Shadow Missions usually work this way; higher difficulty ranks just have enemies with higher stats, although on Basic rank important areas will appear as blips on the minimap.

* PatchworkMap: Iria at first appears to be this. On closer examination, the layout does make climatological sense, with forests and plains seperated from desert by huge mountain ranges creating rain shadows. The north is a frozen waste, with the a small, arid zone consisting of a volcanic island laden with hot springs similar to parts of Iceland. Although Karu Forest appears to be sandwiched between two deserts (Muyu and Nares Plateau), it's at the very southern tip of Iria beside the mouth of the Rutra river. This enables it to benefit from the rain shadow created by the mountains on other side, which channel moisture from the ocean into a narrow river valley.
** It's also worth noting that neither the frozen wastes of Physis nor the second desert that is Connous were naturally formed; they're the result of The Irinid's curse on those regions.

* PurelyAestheticGender: Besides G3.
** Becomes OtherworldlyAndSexuallyAmbiguous occasionally in NPC reaction when the subject happens to come up. For the most part [=NPCs=] know that a Milletian's gender is changeable and mostly cosmetic, and that while Milletians evidently have concepts of romance and marriage these things might not be really relatable to normal experience and understanding. You'll see a variety of reactions: deliberate emotional distancing, being drawn to confide in relationship matters to the outsider, suspicion or vague creeped-outedness, or blatantly unconcerned flirtation - but saying the same thing to males and female [=PCs=] is made deliberate.

* RainbowPimpGear: Averted. For the most part, all gear of the same class (light, medium, and heavy) has the same stats and upgrades (aside from durability), and gear obtained from [=NPC=] shops changes colour every in-game day. There are also dyes available from the [[RevenueEnhancingDevices cash shop]] that will let you change the colours. So, generally speaking, you can usually find some sort of attractive outfit combination that will be no weaker than any other in its class. Or you can just equip a cloak, which obscures your character if you end up making them look hideous.

** Also, Nao. Nao is exactly as old as she appears, but consider she looks much different then she did 10 years ago when she was 14.
* RepeatableQuest: The game allows the players to perform part time jobs with the game's vendors, and allows them one in-game day to complete them. This is a useful means of accruing monetary wealth, especially for characters who are primarily crafters.

* ShieldBash: When using the Charge skill, the player rams the enemy from a distance (Higher the rank, the longer the distance is), while lessening the damage from arrows. Once the player reaches foe, they slam the shield at them and stun them for 2.5 seconds. Giants can use Charge without a shield though.

* SquishyWizard: Tarlach is this, which makes his solo Rabbie Dungeon run a test of patience. Mores would be one too, if he weren't so damn powerful. For player characters, this is completely and totally averted.

** Canine pets are capable of detecting mimics, and will attack them if their AI is set to allow auto-attack.
*** ''Any'' pet can find them in auto-attack mode. Dogs can just do it without ''activating'' them.

* TacticalRockPaperScissors: The basic melee skills form an intricate little net of weakness and advantage: The Smash skill wins over Defense, but Basic attacks beat Smash, and Defense blocks basic attacks but not Smash. The Counter Skill protects against Basic Attacks and Smash, but Windmill beats it, while Defend blocks Windmill. The problem, of course, is that Counter and Windmill look exactly the same between charging and execution, and so does Defend and Smash if the user chooses not to run. [[TakeAThirdOption Of course, you could just use a ranged attack - only Defend with a Shield equipped will beat those.]]

** Or you could just not bother for 50 in-game years, who cares. It's not like the [=NPC=]s are getting older or anything.
** Inverted with part time jobs; if you run out of time, you've failed your task. It's better to report a partially-complete job (when possible) than not reporting at all. This results in the odd situation where you're more desperate to deliver clothing to the bookstore than to go save the world.
** Also inverted with Shadow Missions. Many of these also have deadlines, and missing the deadline results in a complete failure of the mission.

* UselessUsefulSpell: The magic music scrolls sometimes gives stats, but only 1~10 of str/dex/int which isn't that much.

* WeakButSkilled: Assuming half-decent skill ranks, a low-level player can [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomp]] opponents that vastly outclass them in terms of raw power.

* WithThisHerring: Partially averted. The starting armor is just plain clothing, which is effectively worthless (although, like all clothing, it can be upgraded a bit). However, the beginner's EmpathicWeapon (always named Eiry, regardless of race and weapon type) is actually the most effective weapon available for new players, since it compensates for the new player's low stats (other weapons need higher stats to be more than minimally effective).

*** the game is also a notorious liar about a lot of things and it's better to actually check your character sheet and decide for yourself which is more effective. However gathering/profession tools lose durability at 4x the normal rate when used for combat, or vice-versa for weapons that can be used for gathering.
* WizardNeedsFoodBadly: Your characters have a stamina meter, which decreases whenever you do something like fighting or gathering. However, there's a part of it that decreases from hunger. You replenish this by eating food. Your characters can't actually die from hunger, though.

* {{Yandere}}: [[spoiler:Kristell]] used to be a minor example, as she attempted to invoke [[DefeatMeansFriendship defeat means love]] on [[spoiler:Tarlach]] at least ''five'' times before she realized it wasn't working. She's grown out of most of the negative aspects of {{Yandere}}, but she's still somewhat obsessive over [[spoiler:Tarlach]], though not as much.
** Then there's also Elsie, the always scared knight squire of the group [[spoiler: Until you get her affection level up that you find out that her acting very scared is a front for her domineering attitude. Which includes you. She is not happy when you get closer to the other squires, especially female squires.]]

** Even pets have been refined, with every account receiving a free horse and eagle (without the inventory the cash shop versions have) to use as mounts or help in combat. Multiple content updates throughout Mabinogi's gamelife made various pets that can be obtained with inventory by doing the story such as the Pegasus mount [[Note]]AoE attack on summon- which can be repeated for each character[[/Note]]for clearing Saga I, or clearing certain dungeons for useful pets such as a Nimbus[[Note]]AoE quick healing on summon[[/Note]], or a Bone Dragon [[Note]]Debuff on summon[[/Note]]. Heck, most events even have pets as rewards for participating.