YMMV / Mabinogi

• Alt-itis: Some players (usually the less frugal ones) may fall under this, especially if they create extra characters for the following reasons.
  • Extra inventory space when the extra bank space provided by premium service.
  • Event item farming for non-repeatable quests.
  • To dress-up and look pretty. However, this is not as common as it is in other MMORPGs, as the creation of a new character costs money. Those people are there, though.
  • If one counts the player-controllable pets, then the amount is almost innumerable; they are bought for various reasons such as their usefulness toward their actual humanoid characters, their appealing appearances, or... for their extra inventory space (see above).
  • Though as of the recent update, inventory space isn't THAT hard to get, since the new system allows one to have extra bank space and the ability to use Inventory Bags for more inventory space. Alts were also used for their free ability to open up personal shops, said new system allows normal players to open shops as well. There's really almost no reason for one to have many alts, except for maybe events where you can only do it once per day.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Cichol? Yeah, he's the closest thing to "a good guy" the world has. In fact, it's even canon that Morrighan was the one to screw up the Soul Stream in the first place, which prompts Cichol to take it upon himself to fix everything... no matter what it takes. Later on in the game's storyline, you actually manage to fix the Soul Stream yourself, whereupon Cichol promptly gets out of your face.
• Angst? What Angst?: Poor Nao would have a lot to cry about, but is normally cheerful unless painful events in her past are directly brought up.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Esras is pathetic. The only real challenge is her Skeletons. Though her patheticness is slightly lessened by the fact that Tabhartas is a real challenge.
  • Any Generation boss can become this if you can bring another player to do the job.
• Awesome Music:
  • The background music playing during the final battles of Generation 1, 9, 10, 11, and 12.
    • Dungeon Theme 8 - Which plays as you run through the final dungeon of G1, I believe. Absolutely dripping with epic.
  • Also, music from G9 onward is a leap up in quality from previous music, due to a change of composers.
  • The opening title song. As one YouTube user states: "I stayed at the login screen for 30 mins to listen to this." (a.k.a "An Old Story from Grandma")
  • Generation 13 adds Avon's background music to this list.
  • My Life Led By Him, Comgan's theme, deserves a mention as well. It's beautifully sweet and just a little sad, fitting Comgan perfectly.
    • Actually, pretty much all of the character themes are spot on. Friendly innkeeper Piaras gets the cheerful, welcoming "Man on the Moon", devout Kristell gets classically hymn-like "The Bell That Never Tolls", gentle and classically feminine twins Del and Delen get the quietly upbeat "Twin Stars", and the list just goes on.
• Breather Level: A whole Breather Campaign! G12 is considerably easier than G11, though not without difficulty. In particular, where G11 was stuffed full of Marathon Levels, G12's missions tend to be short and decisive.
• Broken Base: A lot of changes and updates over the years have helped create this for the Mabinogi community. The Dynamic Combat system is particularly divisive. You either appreciate it for making battles easier...or detest it for that exact same reason.
  • It's undeniable however that the new system is MUCH less lag affected then the old one. A 100+ MS was nearly unplayable in the old system for most combat styles, where as in the new one even 150-200 latency is playable though some tactics are still much harder to pull off (such as a Windmill counter, even with R1's range increase due to the server and clients tracking of the enemy not always being properly sync'd).
  • Is it too hard? Chapter 5 started a trend where enemies starts to appear with HP ranging in the 5 or 6 digit numbers, making reforges and endgame equipment mandatory in order to progress through content. It's not too common for old retired players that the difficulty is what set them off.
  • Is Magic Craft and Hillwen Engineering skills worth it or is an attempt to skill gate players and throw off blacksmith and tailoring players into investing a new skill instead of making many of the recipes it introduced being created by them? It's a controversial skills that you can only obtain the best magic equipment for the former and the only way to obtain dual guns and better ammo outside of the store bought ones. Later updates shifts some recipes back to the basic smithing and tailoring skills and even introduced a new talent to train the two skills easier, but still hasn't solved a main issue: Drop rate.
  • Giants. The community that doesn't run a Giant and the ones that hate them has many reasons, ranging from limited customization, ugly choices of customization, various fixes across the lifetime of Mabi, and being a poor substitute for another humanoid model race. The community can agree on one thing about the Giants: they are hogging the spotlight for race updates. The last race updates affected the Giants- for the most part, and have left little to no balance updates for the other races. Elves even got it worse when they have no major update since their introduction into the game.
• Demonic Spiders: There are many of these, including Goblin Archers and just about anything that attacks in groups.
  • Any monster that multi-aggros and it outnumbers the party. This rarely happens in a full party, but when it happens, it becomes a race of time before the party is overwhelmed and a wipe occurs.
  • Any enemy that attacks in range can become this. Range attack? Often paired with melee enemies and often multi-aggro. Magnum shot instantly knocks you back with huge damage. Magic? Icebolt stuns and disrupts you, enabling you to be comboed. Firebolt knocks you back. Lightning bolt, while can stun and disrupt, if it is set to multiple charges, you and other close allies can be hit if you are not the target! Fireball? Dodge-able, but you have to pay attention if you are attacking or if another enemy is casting another fireball. Ice Spear? Freezes you temporary, opening you up to attacks after a delayed knockback. Thunder? Like lightning bolt, there's a chance that you may get hit. Oh, and you're getting hit for a total of six times with stuns.
  • Imps for earlier players. They're so bad that a later-released species of enemies complain about them.
  • Light Gargoyles for new players in Generation 1's Albey Dungeon, assuming their two partymates aren't totally overleveled. The fact that the dungeon forbids all but one form of revival adds to the frustration with them.
  • Blinkers. They're immune to knockback (in a game where stun is the best way to dispose/disrupt an opponent) and their main attack is to fly out of harm's way and rapidly sap your HP away. This even goes through obstacles, such as walls. They can only be countered with Sand Burst or Frozen Blast- with both of them only working at certain ranks, the former being a situational skill, and the former with a HUGE failure rate.
  • Ghasts are actually the toughest foes in the game. They have a good 15,000 hit points each, soak up the first 300 points of damage dealt to them, and don't flinch from any attack whatsoever. They also spawn in packs of six. The only real way to defeat them is to surround them with Windmill attacks while mages bombard them with high-level Fireball and Thunder spells. And then there's Shock, which one would think would be the perfect counter to them... except that it completely ignores Ghasts for some strange reason.
  • Unknown Men give Ghasts a run for their money, and exhibit a very simple combination of abilities that make them one of the dangerous regular enemies in the game. They have the aforementioned complete stun immunity, they dual wield swords, they have Final Hit and love to spam it, (naturally, their version lacks Final Hit's four minute minimum cooldown), they have extremely wide and very persistent multi aggro, and high damage and high hp to top it off. If two or more of them gang up on you and start spamming Final Hit, you will die, and there won't be a thing you can do to stop it, no matter how many Rank 1 skills you have. As of this writing, the only saving grace about facing them in the missions they appear in, is that there are usually NPCs aiding you that can take the heat off.
  • Every mob that exists in Tech Duinn- They either have a gimmick or a specific weakness. All their skills has no cooldown, some of them cannot be knocked down, and the Illusion Zombie, on the other hand, requires a one hit kill to defeat.
  • Similarly, mobs in Rabbie Phantasm also. Ice and Poison Succubus tends to spam Ice Spear, Succubus fiends tends to shoot unlimited bullets to annoy and disrupts players, and Wraiths who loves to cancel out Pets and disrupts players with a stun that cannot be negated.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • G3 in Chapter 1 and G11 in Chapter 3. G3 is reduced somewhat in that it doesn't really get hard until near the end, but G11 is pain and misery the whole way through. Even worse, you're forced solo for nearly all of G11, while in G3 you can almost always bring backup. G14 includes another difficulty spike for Chapter 4, bumping up the Mooks considerably.
  • Most of the harder G11 missions allow the player to bring one Royal Alchemist to help, which depending on his/her power and skill level can greatly alleviate the difficulty of these missions. Buchanan Inside the Castle and Location of Destiny, however, do NOT allow Royal Alchemist assistance; Buchanan Inside the Castle is particularly infamous because its difficulty certainly warrants Royal Alchemist assistance.
  • Tech Duinn's Feth Fiada. At one point, players are required to kill Illusion Zombies in a confined space within a short time limit. Fail, the sequence restart. Did we mention that the Illusion Zombies require to be killed in One hit? Did we also mention that the mission is on a hidden time limit that is influenced by a hidden factor? In higher difficulties, the sequence's time limit is shorter, and on elite, the spawn pattern is random.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Some players declare and accepts that Chapter 4 (G13-G16 and Shakespeare) never happening and existing, mainly how lackluster the rewards are in today's game meta^note Personas, which gives mediocre temporary stat boosts but gives invincibility frames, Avon Shield, and the ability to grab the Sword of Elsinore, which is a problem of it's own.
  • Another set of players agrees that Vindictus never existed despite being a prequel to Mabinogi. Mainly because several plot elements in the later patches introduces multiple plot holes.
  • Ruairi is just hiding, not dead after his encounter in Saga.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: What is that fur around Morgant's neck?
• Fetish Retardant: Witch Scathach.
• Flanderization: Ruairi had always been somewhat prone to rash decisions, but even when he pulled a short-lived Face–Heel Turn in G3 he implied he had some ulterior motive behind his actions. G18 sees him go completely off the deep end after learning of Triona's death.
• Fridge Horror: All Elves eventually become Desert Ghosts. Portia will too. What will happen between her and Bassanio when she does? It would certainly lead to the death of one or the other. As of Chapter 6, however, this particular issue is rendered moot with the breaking of the Irinid's curse on Iria.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Mainly enemies that appear in swarms, especially if ranged or magical attackers are thrown into the mix. Made worse if these enemy exhibit multiaggro (usually) behavior. Subverted with early game bats themselves. Played straight with several bats that appears in Peaca Abyss, Tech Duinn, and veteran dungeons.
  • Succubus Fiends. They often spawn with more dangerous mobs (Poison Succubuses and wraiths), use gun skills (With no load time and cooldown time) to disrupt you and ensure you get hit with a Fireball, and only exist to ensure a quick death after hitting deadly from a critical intermiate magic attack.
  • The wraiths in Phantasm in general. They desummon pets and stun players (which can KO deadly players and kick them out of crisis escape, unless you're on a pet or on a partner's mount, which ignores the desummoning), spam fireball, and in later parts of Phantasm, ALWAYS respawn as an add for the Queen and Skelemancer encounter.
  • Bandits. They spawn all over while trading in the form of Inescapable Ambush if you come too close to them on the field, and can appear in groups of up to eight. Two of them will do their damnedest to keep you busy (and god help you if it's the local archers or mages that do it) while the rest beeline to steal your trade goods. In some areas you can't go more than five steps without tripping over them.
  • Mob/Add spawning bosses such as the Duke and Succubus Queen are guilty of this. These adds will always multi-aggro and will always respawn after a certain number of them are killed. And they only despawn once the Mob/Add spawner is killed.
• Good Bad Bugs: There are many bugs, but a few notable ones in Mabinogi's history. Often crosses with Game-Breaking Bug.
  • On March 15th-17th, for the 2011 Quiz Show update, there was a glitch that made it so the effects of your title stacked every time a new item was added to your inventory. Every time you picked up, say, a gem or dungeon key, and had a title that increases your Strength by 10, you would gain 10 Strength (temporarily until you logged off or changed channels) every time that item was picked up. Cue people running around for 2 days with a 999 or higher in at least 1 stat, if not all of them, running dungeons or missions they shouldn't be able to do yet.
  • A now patched glitch involving the Mercenary scrolls, namely Lions from Basic to Hard, has the scroll having unlimited uses, and due to the unlimited uses, allows players to breeze through various That One Level Shadow missions with ease as the Lion spam ensues.
  • By using an item that interrupts your walking animation, you can desync yourself from the game and activate location triggers, such as the sacrifice circles in Revived Illusion.
  • While starting a commerce run in Iria, entering an Iria region loadscreen causes the bandits to be downgraded to their weakest spawn. This obviously does not work if your goods are from the Main land.
  • The adds the Succubus Queen summons cannot detect you if you are on a Partner's mount. Even the Wraith Roar can't affect you for some reason! The Succubus Queen's sweet illusion still can target you though.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Play through the entirety of Generation 15, then go back and read the cutscenes in Chapter 1, where you see Morrighan and Cichol get at each other's throats. The meaning of those cutscenes change significantly, once you realize the true context.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Nao used to be jealous of other girls who "matured" (read:grew breasts) faster than she did. She certainly matured since then. Doubly so, since she's actually sensitive now about the size of her breasts.
  • When asked that why White herbs can't be added in Homesteads in a Q&A Session, the devs wanted to keep it rare. Cue major patches later, White Herbs and the rest of the missing herbs becomes available to be grown in homesteads.
• It Was His Sled: Neamhain is a villain.
  • Since now it is shown in the opening cinematic and all but said, The Reveal that Mari is Nao could be seen as this as well.
• Memetic Mutation: In a more meta sense, the aptly-named "Mohawk Guy" in the background during one of Mabinogi's videos which showed their actual office environment.
• Never Live It Down:
  • One of the previous directors of Mabinogi only cared of money and never the state of the game. Players never let Nexon live it down, even though later directors are starting to fix the game back to shape.
  • It's no surprise that Mabinogi is usually a wreck after a patch update. These updates may not translate well to the Oversea version, and often introduces several bugs and errors. The community responded with the "Nexon Quality" meme.
  • The Soluna Blade Incident and the Tech Duinn Time Gating patch. See Overshadowed by Controversy for both.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • This infamous NA "Soluna Blade" incident. To those who are not aware, in Early 2017, a user obtained the Soluna Blade and the community exploded with amazement. However, after several investigations from various players, it turned out the Soluna Blade was GM generated and the user was a known friend of a GM. The community revolted and it took Nexon to delete the offending item from the user's inventory to calm down the community. The GM/CM suspected of the incident was let go on their terms.
  • In Korea, during Chapter 4's lifetime, after Generation 14 rolled out, the director was replaced with another director to take their place. One can see the impact by noting that Generation 15 and 16 has little to no interactions with Avon and the last major patch update for Avon was the Chronicles update- January 2024. The last major content patch was Generation 14 when they added Lanier to the area.
  • The Korean version time gating Tech Duinn to limited runs per week. While it's not implemented in the NA/EU server, when this patch was shown in Korea, the NA/EU Community exploded. Many players argued that Nexon and the Devs never fixed Drop rate issues for their server (Korea had one) and the low population compared to Korea's population of the game is different. The NA/EU Nexon branch however is listening to the community, time would tell if this feature would be implemented or not...
  • When it was announced that NA/EU's Tech Duinn would be time gated, the community exploded and called for the firing of the current Director. Nexon tried to limit damage control with an apology letter and their reasons, but it did not slow down the flames. Many players gave out their own reason: Their trust were broken when complains and reasons were ignored from a Q&A session weeks earlier.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: This is not as universal as most examples of the trope, but a portion of the player base does think like this. A common story involves a party leader wanting to watch the storyline cutscenes while being pestered by party members to skip. Not playing the story, however causes you to miss key items and skills only obtained by doing the story.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Luck as a stat was universally considered worthless outside of increasing the chance of Lucky Gathers or Critical, since otherwise it was near useless in any other aspect of the word. However, the introduction of the Chain Slash talent, alongside the chain blade weapons, the Luck Stat has a new purpose and many skills available now which can massively increase the player's base value of the stat. In addition, since chain blades run off of Luck to determine their minimum and maximum damage when equipped, investing in Luck suddenly becomes more necessary as to ultimately increase DPS when utilizing the chain blade weaponry, and is vital to advancing the skills due to many of the skills requiring critical hits to train, which Luck boosts more quickly than Will does alone.
  • For the longest time, the skills involving Hillwen (Hillwen Engineering and Rare Mineralogy) and Shyllien (Magic Crafting and Shyllien Ecology) were not tied to any talent, making it an absolute slog to train up without skill seals as the training points you would get through training them normally without any talent bonus was downright pitiful. Thankfully, they were finally associated with the Pet Trainer talent in 2020, making it easier to train all four skills.
  • Before the Re:Life update, weaving was this- You weave Silks and Fabrics with a random quality. While Silks can fragment to get some items back, Fabrics cannot. After the RE:Life update, they finally made the option to create which quality of Silks and Fabrics wanted.
  • Alts were only used to store clothing and items and rarely used outside of a "Main" character. Come the NEXT: New Beast update, skill training was simplified and training alt to become equal with a main character becomes possible.
• The Scrappy:
  • Oh, Ferghus. Widely known, widely reviled.
    • Take That, Scrappy!: Nexon once held a "Photoshop Ferghus" contest on the Mabinogi forums, inviting members to get their revenge on Ferghus by making him look ridiculous. Dialogue in later generations poke fun at him as well.
  • Nearly as reviled but not as known outside the community is Nerys, the Blacksmith in Dunbarton. She has a supposed 95% repair rate as opposed to Fergus's 90% repair rate... but still manages to botch almost every repair job given to her. Sometimes worse than Fergus.
  • Caravan Joe is a minor example; since he's the host for many of the luck-based events, he serves as the target for many players' frustration.
  • Ferghus isn't so bad if you're one of the rare few who got the Friend of Ferghus title before it was made unavailable (after they realized how ridiculously it was to have a potentially 97% repair at 90% prices...but people who got it still have it), which gives +5 hp, +5 luck, and boosts his repair rate by +6%, and since it's an extra bonus you still only pay 90% prices (total of 97% if on a blessed item), making him the 2nd best blacksmith after Edern. (Unlike the other friend of X titles, Npcs don't give you items in-game daily, but instead gripe about Ferghus or give you dirty looks for being showing it off. Which means the cheaper, decent rate repairs is the only bonus you get).
  • For those who are into Artifacts, there is Voight, nicknamed by the community, "The Son of Ferghus". Being the only Artifact restorer besides the player, he tends to break almost all artifacts he sees. Oh what's worst of all? He doesn't give refunds.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Tarlach is frequently spoken to for Generations one and three, but you can't speak to him while he's a Bear. The frequent result of this is sitting around and waiting until Night to fall.
  • A majority of the content from Chapter 4 tends to get this treatment, particularly the mainstream storyline missions. Reenacting scenes from Shakespearean plays many have probably already read as School Study Media (i.e. Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet) was considered by some to be boring and tedious storywise and mechanics-wise. The last two generations of the chapter involving The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth are generally perceived as a step up from the previous two in both respects due to breaking away from the Theatre Mission format and only using their respective plays as a framework for the game's story.
  • How Artifacts are handled- Mainly Voight and that the ruins where you obtain such artifacts vanish on a single timer, as in if you reveal two separate ruins, they BOTH will disappear in after that timer runs out.
  • Weaving, mainly Silk and Fabrics. While Silk weaving isn't that bad (An Alchemist can return used ingredients), Fabric weaving can be considered the worst- Players can make the Cheap and Common Fabrics, ones that are sold in the shop. An Alchemist CANNOT return these ingredients. As of the RE:Life update however, you can now select which quality type to make.
  • Several crafting materials can fall into this. Besides the obvious materials for the Rosemary Gloves, Several late ranks require Tough String and Tough Thread- which is a problem if your Weaving rank is too low. More of a problem since Blacksmith talent doesn't cover Weaving as one of their own.
  • Demonic Equipment in general. Requiring Master and above talent levels to equip, they are seriously outclassed by content update equipment. The Demonic Dream Catcher, which was a must in easing Transformation Mastery training is now redundant by the introduction of the Dream Catcher of Blossoming Memories, a starter item that you can get it in a couple of hours into the game.
  • Magic craft and Hillwen Engineering in general. When the two skills first came out, it threw off any Blacksmith and Tailoring players who was expecting to craft the various endgame equipment with ease. Some of the materials were almost impossible to gather, due to the placement of multi-aggro mobs. Worse, all equipment created from these two skills has stat bonuses, making it either a worse or perfect weapon. Somewhat mitigated when they released the new Pet Mastery talent that associated with the two.
  • Speaking of Pet Mastery, All of skills barring the gathering related skills are behind a huge skill gate. Fynni Sync is hard to train to those who cannot do the Mag Mell missions- those who uses Brionac and AP training find out they cannot train some skill training. Fynni Blossoming requires real life time to train. Fynni Bead Burnishing requires you to have a Champion Talent Rank for Pet Training, and worst of all, the Beads needed for the skill are locked behind Mag Mell drops. Able to do Mag Mell? Think again. These drops are can drop ranks too high for you to use.
  • Recent content patches requires players to use rare item drops to craft endgame equipment instead of using more common crafting materials. While some items are common, others are so rare that it can command a whopping 50 million on such items.
  • Mission/Dungeon Item drops in general. Any item that is not in the guaranteed drop list will have random number rolls to determine if you're going to get extra drops or not. If it is a number that rolls you the bonus drop, it runs ANOTHER number to determine what item would it be. This unfortunately frustrates players and forces another run, but chances are, other players' morale is down or exhausted from the fight.
  • Field Raid contribution is a system that affects the drop rate quality of loot obtained from defeating raid monsters. Sounds good to prevent people from tagging the monster and receiving a great item right? Wrong. The system has issues (See below) and if another player damages the raid monsters too much, it gives less people time to raise their contribution points to get a better reward. As of the server merge, there is even LESS time getting contributions, due to increased population overkilling the raid boss in a few hits.
  • Field Raids disables and desummons any active pets and partners, making you unable to use them for the fight. However, if you don't know where the raid boss is located, you might end up receiving a participation drop instead of a drop you would really want. Pets and Partner issues aside, upon entering a field raid, you're given a raid quest randomly for Iria raids, while on Avalon raids, you get to select them. One of raid quests requires you to use Smash in order to receive the most points. Unfortunately, Smash is slow and using it instead of Final Hit, magic, or range attacks usually lets you get stomped on for massive damage or be a target of the raid boss' adds.
  • As of recent updates, Raid bosses got their mechanics updated for the better or worse. It's no longer possible to solo them, breaking some older content related to it to impossible levels (Grandmaster). Raid bosses are given new skills that automatically activates during the fight. One of the skills assigned to a number of raid bosses is called "Impending Death", which drains the HP of a random player before killing them if not healed in time. Before the Arcana update, Healing was worthless and slow. What's worse, that most raids were made by people not in parties. What's even more worse that you now require a certain number of points to get a reward. What's even more worse that dying makes you LOSE points. Now combine it with Impending death and the previous sentence.
  • The Drop and reward system is horrible and there's no denying that all players agree on the current system. While the system was originally used because of Korea's massive playerbase, the playerbase is smaller in the English release. There are times when player has to run 100+ times for certain items to drop because the drop rates are so low, they are often guessed at a .01%. The dungeon guide attempted to remedy this by giving items on set clears, it's not enough, as only certain items and dungeons are affected. What's worse, that only a certain number of clears are needed to get the item, and usually has quantity issues, monster drop only rewards, Dead end chest rewards, or not having the actual item a player would want.
  • Failed repairs don't simply not restore an items durability point per failure, but permanently remove a point of max durability per failure. This is why Ferghus, of all the blacksmiths, is so reviled; his repairs lack an option to pay more for a 100% repair chance (what the game calls a "Perfect Repair" is actually just an option to try to repair all missing durability points), unless the one asking for the repair is a victor of the guild guardian tournament in Tir Chonaill.
  • Tech Duinn's Feth Fiada has in one point requires players to One hit a mob multiple times. Did we mention that it's on two time limits, with one with a subtle hint of remaining time?
  • Many content that doesn't involve Dungeons (Crom Bas, Tech Duinn, Rabbie Phantasm, to name a few) does not allow players to revive at a statue to redo a fight if they are K Oed. This forcefully makes everyone to restart the mission, wasting time and resources, unless someone is still alive and have a phoenix feather to revive. Some content runs, however gives you a penalty for being K Oed (Tech Duinn's Revived Illusion, Glenn Bearna, Very Hard Girgashy) or does not allow Soul/Guardian Stone use (Phantasm). It doesn't help that multiple mobs kills a player in one or two hits in these content runs.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys:
  • Ever complain about a feature with a reasonable issue and have a user dismiss it? Congrats! Chances are, that user has better equipment than you and can run said feature with ease or participates in such actions!
  • Everyone picks Merlin ^note  Nets you Fireball, Ice Spear, Thunder- allowing you to skip their lengthy Randomly Drops quests. It also gives you Snap cast, Spellwalk, and Meteor Strike ignoring their quests completely, and sometimes Professor J ^note  Gives you shock, which normally requires a lengthy Randomly Drops quest, Hydra Transmutation, Golden Time, and Elemental Wave- which all requires a lengthy quest as their Hero/Elite Hero creation. Everyone will call out on you if you chose Starlet,^note  Starlet's puppetry combat skills are limited from a VERY limited Control bar selection and the way how Mabinogi's aggro works, while her healing is outdated and wouldn't help in mid to late game content, her music buff skills are easily trainable with patience, and her two out of three of her bonus skills can be obtained easily. Plus, Song is only useful when you become rank 5, as it no longer requires you to equip a microphone. As of the Arcana update, she got a big enough of a use, due to her Bard and Healing skills are needed for the Harmonious Saint Talent, but the question of situation still exists because you're giving up on Merlin or Professor J's skills Culinary Artist,^note  Whose cooking skills are just life skills and can be easily trained or bypassed with enough seals, its medicine bonus doesn't give you any bonus ranks, and the combat bonus ranks can be easily trained. or Treasure Hunter^note Whose Gun skills are the only positive bonus, but you will be stuck using the weakest bullets unless you receive from other players or rank up Magic Craft yourself, and getting better guns has you invest on Hillwen Engineering, unless you buy it off from other players. As of the commerce updates, Way of the Gun is heavily needed for Air commerce, getting some uses.. As of the Arcana update, the attitude of the Ace's bonuses has calmed down a bit, but became relevant again when the New Beast update made skill training easier.
• That One Boss: Blame Tethra's enemy version of Life Drain. Or any boss that uses Life Drain.
  • Python Knight's "Shadow Death" move is a One-Hit Kill, and the player can only block it by using an item in their inventory at the exact right time. This has to be done successfully three times in order to move on to the next phase of the battle
  • Glas Ghaibhleann, whose lightning-fast regeneration rate forces you to throw your standard strategies out the window and focus on wounding him instead. The seal scrolls help, but nowhere near enough.
  • Dullahan when fighting solo. It has access to a throwing axe attack while mounted, which when hit, knocks the player into deadly, or worse, death. And it can cast it repeatably.
• That One Level: Baol Dungeon in G3. The first time time you run through it, it combines Useless Useful Stealth with Demonic Spiders with Luck-Based Mission. The second time through, it's a five-floor complex that contains the toughest foes in the game that a character of that level couldn't possibly fight. Of course, they can bring experienced players along, but who wants to go through a two-and-a-half hour dungeon without any promise of a reward? The former is totally averted if you stock a good amount of Ice Mines, or have the ability to go Demigod to throw Spears of Light at your enemies, or have a extremely high level in Golem Summoning.
  • Generation 11. Or, specifically (since most of the time you can rope in a Royal Alchemist to help), a small piece of hell called "Buchanan inside the Castle". You are sent in to check on the status of librarian Buchanan. To "help" you, you are provided with "assistance" from Leymore and Cai, supposedly the best alchemists around, except they have an extremely suicidal AI and their skills are generally not enough to go up to par with the poor attempt at Dynamic Difficulty Shadow Missions give you, since the exponential increase in enemy stats is far more than the Empty Levels you have, turning this into an Escort Mission; one of them dies and you fail the mission. The mission has White Orbs, which basically serve to continue spawning enemies at ridiculous rates before you can deactivate the switches. You also can't bring in a Royal Alchemist to help, and the "suggested" way to beat it according to most players is to actually wait out the time for transformations, making this mission hit at least four hours. You can't bring Royal Alchemists on, either. And Buchanan turns out to be fine anyway, ruining any plot-based pride you might have gotten.
  • Before Generation 1 was reworked not once, but twice, its final act was brutal. First you needed to run a specific version of Barri Dungeon- only accessible on real-life Saturdays- to find the gate from Erinn to Tir Na Nog. Once there, you had to kill 50 zombies to bind in Tir Na Nog. Zombies are Goddamned Bats in Mabinogi since they can only be hurt by Windmill and will beat you bloody if you slip up. Next you run four dungeons in Tir Na Nog to get the Black Orb, and then run the Orb's dungeon to get the Goddess Pendant. Fail in the Orb dungeon, and you have to redo the last four dungeons to get the Orb again. The pendant opens up a triple-length dungeon with five boss rooms that leads you to the Goddess Pass. Finally, use the pass, and you go to fight Glas Ghaibhleann. The worst part? The only way to rez in Tir Na Nog is to get a Pheonix Feather from a party member. So if you wipe on any dungeon, or die while trying to solo it, you have to start that particular dungeon all over again. And if you skipped the 50 zombies quest, wiping gets you kicked all the way back to Errin and you have to wait until next Saturday to pick up where you left off.
• That One Sidequest: You could use Shock anytime after getting it in the G11 storyline, but if you want to level it beyond Novice rank, you will have to collect all ten pages of its skill book. All ten pages are Random Drops from bosses or rewards from Shadow Missions - and the percentage for the drops can be as low as 0.86%. However, you can utilize training seals to rank it up to rank F, skipping a lengthy and ridiculous quest.
  • This is true for any collection book quest, besides maybe Thunder and Paladin Passive Defense; buying pages often go for 2-3 million gold.
  • Generation 15 has made the Shock collection quest somewhat easier, with the three hardest pages (1, 2, and 10) now able to drop from field monsters with 'the Ancient' title.
  • Three words; Shadow. Realm. Champion. Occasionally popping up as the Tara daily Shadow Mission, this particular mission suffers from an unholy fusion of imbalance and Fake Difficulty. For the former, you're provided with a circle that buffs your damage output, apparently worth limiting the mission to single-player only. However, outside of the circle, that buff turns into a debuff that reduces defense, and it won't take long before you get forced out due to knockback from the horde that quickly descends on you. This is where the former turns into the latter, where you get continually knocked back into a corner until you get eaten alive by the horde of Fomors and spiders. If you get past that? The last foe you need to fight is Dullahan, who brings his Hell Steed and Axe Throwing from his appearance in Ghost of Partholon. Good luck beating this, even with transformations and Demigod, on Basic.
  • Rabbie Phantasm. While there's only two quests involving the dungeon, you have to run it Five times at minimum in one quest, hopefully getting a certain item to drop. What's worse if you're trying to get the Succubus Queen's outfit to drop. There's three versions, with two versions that requires you to succeed a hitting minigame and counter her attack in order to change which version that can potentially drop. Note the emphasis on "Potentially". Oh, and the minigame can be failed by being stunned by a Wraith or the AI from bugging out. Have fun.
  • Players attempting to jump from midgame (Abyss Dungeons, Lord missions, Celtic Weaponry) to the End Game (Tech Duinn, Mag Mell, Iria Raids) are for a nasty surprise when they need to upgrade their weapons to the next tier- or apply with better enchants and reforges. What's worse, these new content is locked by the harder content and requires the better enchants and reforges to work in the first place.
  • For humans only, there's the end of the Dark Knight sidequest to trade in their Paladin state for a Dark Knight transformation at the end of the eponymous generation. The player has to RP as a Dark Knight Ruairi through a version of Barri Normal. Like his previous appearance, he only knows the basic close combat skills, lacking Assault Slash. *Un*like his previous appearance, he lacks his armor and unique sword, but is permanently in Dark Knight form. His inferior equipment doesn't become much of a problem until the end, where he's pitted against the Ogre Warrior quintet. The intended solution was likely to use Control of Darkness on one warrior to turn him against the others, but the skill has a hideously low success rate, meaning the player's time will likely get eaten up by trying to Control one of the ogres without aggroing any of them and getting flattened.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A sizable portion of North American users disliked and were even angered by Nexon's redesigned advanced service, despite having enough time to financially/mentally prepare for it when similar services were announced in the original Korean version long ago. Occasional balancing to certain in-game mechanics have gained this reaction as well. A bit of this is justified, in that the services do vary by localization (although NA is closest to Korea); and the costs of certain features were substantially increased.
  • Users generally use this every time Nexon releases any update; while many of them are justified, as updates often come with a new set of glitches or a need to re-train, it can get to ridiculous levels.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Millia gets this reaction from a lot of players early on in the Saga 1 storyline, at least in the west. While her actions and attitude are understandable given what she's gone through, it's hard to sympathize with her when she does nothing but insult and berate the Milletian, even when they're trying to help her. Throughout the first episode, she's constantly angry and selfishly complaining about the Milletian needing help to create the charm to keep them from being transmogrified, wanting to go back to training despite the gravity of the situation. Not helping matters his her constant animosity towards Shamala, who is something of an Ensemble Dark Horse among players.
• The Woobie: Yoff.
  • Iron Woobie: Andras and Elatha.
  • Triona is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, thanks to being Macha.
• Woolseyism: While the early translation (before G9) fell into "Blind Idiot" Translation, the later generations have a much better thought out translation. For example, the Beepers in the original version became Blinkers, and the G11 script contained references to memes the NA community has. However, the script still has quite a few typoes. In fact, an old newsletter-like page chronicled some of their ventures in translation. They mentioned there were some Korean jokes sprinkled in that they flat out couldn't translate. On the other hand, they were able to kick up some lines that were otherwise plain when directly translated.