Mabinogi: An Extraordinary MMO

Mabinogi has a house system, a marriage system, and the most perfect professions system I've seen in a game. You can take as many professions as you like, whichever ones you like. The creative parts, when you're actually blacksmithing or tailoring, for example, have mini games that duplicate the feel of actually blacksmithing or tailoring the best I've seen of any game. The activities your character does to harvest materials is actually like harvesting those materials and makes sense.

If I seem overly impressed by this, it's because some games really don't even try to make it realistic, and others attempt, but miss the mark. This one nailed it.

The professions are: Blacksmithing, Refining, Cooking, Tailoring, Weaving, Playing an Instrument, Composing, Fishing, Handicrafts, Herbalism, and Potion Making.

They've given us so much to do with these fantasy life skills, it's easy to spend your game time on these simpler pleasures rather than combat or dungeoning. It's all wide open, you're free to do what you want, when you want.

As mentioned in the introduction, skills typically thought of as class skills are open to everyone. If you want to be a primary melee fighter with a few points in spell casting and archery, you can do that. If you prefer archery but want a few points in melee skills you can do that. Powerful mages can still use bows, swords, and other weapons and skills. The professions are just as open. Your only limitation is how many ability points you can earn, as ability points are how you increase the ranks of your skills.

Ability points are earned as you level, and you get bonus ability points as you age. Both age and level eventually hit a plateau, where you're not leveling often and you stop getting bonus AP for aging. The answer to this, for the player who is really feeling that lack of AP, is rebirthing. After you reach age twenty you can rebirth for free if you want, allowing you to reset your level to level 1 and get ability points all over again for leveling up. There's also a cash shop version of rebirth that you can use as often as weekly if you like. Your character's skills and ability points are kept when you rebirth.

Skills are leveled through use, until they reach a point their rank can be increased by spending AP. It's your choice at that point whether to move into the next rank. If you make a mistake, there is a cash shop item called a skill reset capsule that allows you to decrease rank in a skill and recover that AP.

Experience points are gained through completing quests, combat, and completing part time jobs. You can also get a small amount of exp by burning items in a campfire.

The gameworld is vast. It's possible to walk almost anywhere but it can take a long time. To make travel easier, they have Moongates and Mana Tunnels (aka Sungates). Moongates are only operational at night and all go to the same preset location that changes each in-game night. Mana Tunnels are found on the continent of Iria and are operational during the day. They go to whatever other Mana Tunnels you've unlocked by touching them.

You can also buy mounts from the cash shop to speed travel time. Once you've bought one, it's permanently yours, but has a time limit of how long it can be used each day. This timer resets at 7am PST.

All pets are available through the cash shop. There's an amazing variety; not only can you have many different types of dogs and cats, but also snakes, bears, birds, spiders, and more. Each pet has different abilities, and comes with a different sized storage space. Some offer extra abilities, like finding hidden treasures. For example, the crow will "fetch" things for you. Others offer useful abilities for professions, like the ability to harvest their wool.

You can set their AI to match the combat you expect to face, changing it at will. If you're into coding you can even plug in your own specialized AI rather than using one of the standard presets. Even if you only use the preset AIs they're a more powerful battle companion than you see in most games.

You can also play as your pet, even going into dungeons on your own. They can't deal with NPCs, including an inability to purchase from NPC shops, but you're able to put whatever you need into their backpack as your normal character. They can pick up drops and you can retrieve those items as your normal character.

Each pet is permanently yours after purchase, but can only be out a certain amount of time per real-life day. This timer resets at 7 am PST. You are able to have multiple pets, but only one can be summoned at a time.

You can see all the pets currently available in the North American version on this page of the official website.

All images are © Nexon Corporation and are used for promotional purposes.