Re: Dragons, the inventory is pretty sizable and the AOE summon is always a plus. Of course, $16... it really is a tough choice. My favorite personally is the bone dragon, but I'm biased because I got one a long time ago.
To make this post a little more useful, here's the promised "class"/talent overview, now up to date. I might go back here and update this post as new talents are released, or I could just make new posts as they come out. I'll start on combat talents first because crafting ones are a little more involved and aren't really the best choice for a beginner. Note that I haven't yet used every single talent out there, so I might not be 100% familiar with how they all work. These little descriptions are based off what experience I have and observations of other members using them. Talents that have vastly different names from the title that appears over your head will have the talent name first and the title second. Also note that I'll be making liberal use of the [abbr] tag to describe skills and clean up all my parentheses. The tag lets you mouse over things and see a little description like alt-text. Try it on this whole paragraph!Close Combat/Warrior, obviously a close range combat talent, is likely the easiest and cheapest to get started. Basically, you just run up to enemies and attack them at close range. This does some good damage early on and isn't that hard to pick up, but also has a high potential for you to get hurt because you're right in enemies' faces. 1 on 1 combat is simple enough especially with the instaload alterations from the Genesis patch back in 2012, but it quickly gets dangerous when you have to fend off more than one enemy. It gets especially ugly when an enemy archer/mage is also shooting you. Basically, if more than one thing targets you, close combat will get a lot tougher. There are three different weapon types: swords, axes, and maces/blunts. Swords are by far the most common with higher balance, while axes and maces have little diversity but come packing high crit and damage, respectively. I'd recommend at least learning some skills and how they interact before moving onto other talents.
Windmill,
Counterattack, and
Defense are essentials, while
Smash is kind of nice. Damage is based on strength.
Archery is a long range attacking talent. It's rather unique for archery in an MMO: to attack, you have to click on your target once, wait for an aiming gauge over your head to reach 100%, and then click again to fire. You can shoot before it hits 100%, but there's a chance you'll miss, wasting an arrow, stamina, and time. Bows and crossbows have high wound rate in general, meaning that any damage you do is going to stay there and not be healed. Archery can get frustrating when things rush at you, you aim at them (aim goes up faster the closer the target is!), fail to hit, and you end up getting wrecked. The talent as a whole is a little weaker than most, but is by no means bad. There are two weapon types: the diverse bows and the
sorely-lacking-variety crossbows with differing stats and some small gameplay effects. For example, humans are forced to walk with ranged attacks loaded using a bow, but can run using a crossbow. Based on dexterity.
Magic is my chosen field of expertise, a mid-long range attack talent. Magic is notable in that it uses mana (MP), unlike pretty much everything else which uses Stamina. Mana regenerates very slowly during the day, so unless you use Meditation, drink potions, or
wait until Eweca rises, that blue bar isn't going anywhere. Divided into tiers: bolt magic, intermediate, and advanced. Note that intermediate and advanced magic require wands and staves respectively, which are pretty expensive to get and repair. You also have to go on lengthy quests to unlock intermediate magic and above, which can be difficult. The vast majority of these quests come from one NPC, Stewart the magic teacher in Dunbarton. Bolt magic is fairly weak at first but fast, whereas intermediate and advanced magic do extreme damage but are time and mana consuming to cast.
All magic skills eat up a lot of AP, so beware! Based on intelligence.
Alchemy is an all-range attack and support talent. Well, there are actually two talents, Battle Alchemy for battling and Construct Alchemy for more out of combat support stuff. Alchemists use cylinders and various elemental alchemy crystals for all their skills. There are several diverse skills, such as the AoE multihit Flame Burst, the single target powerful Water Cannon, the defensive barricade Barrier Spikes, the AoE crowd control Shock, and the
almighty Hydra Transmutation. The main alchemy weapon is the cylinder, which can be buffed by an offhand guard cylinder to boost effects. Alchemists don't use stats in the way other talents do; instead, the alchemy skills' damage is increased by the skill rank and your bars (HP, MP, and Stamina) depending on the skill.
Fighter/Martial Arts is a single-target melee talent. With some cool knuckles, you punch and kick enemies with Chain Skills to make combos. It's very good at locking down single enemies and can do amazing damage . However, its weaknesses start to show up when Heavy Stander and multiaggro come into play, though it's still workable. Knuckles have shorter range than even Close Combat/Warrior, which can be dangerous. Most Close Combat/Warrior skills can still be used, like Smash, Counter, and Windmill (note that Windmill's radius is reduced greatly so it's basically unusable). There are only a few types of knuckles. Based on will.
Music/Bard is a melee/support talent. You can play music and give your party buffs. Notable in that you can write your own music onto score scrolls using Music Markup Language (MML). You'll hear anime openings, anime endings, plenty of Vocaloid music, and video game songs. Programs such as 3ML Editor are very helpful and can convert midi files to MML for score scroll use. Bards have only one direct damage skill, and instruments do rather weak damage. Skills range from
boosting recovery speed to putting enemies to sleep to buffing damage and crit. There are plenty of instruments with a variety of sound ranges. Damage is based on strength, but playing music without making mistakes is based on dexterity.
Lance Combat/Knight is a close-midrange attacking talent. Lances play like an extension to Close Combat/Warrior, using some of the same skills like Smash but having others disabled like
Counterattack and Defense. Lances have a unique Piercing Level stat that ignores a set amount of defense and protection on the enemy. However, they have a minimum range unlike all other weapons, meaning if an enemy gets too close there's not much you can do. They also attack slowly and have terrible balance. There are very few lances. Based on strength.
Puppetry is a close to mid-range attacking talent. The unique gimmick that puppets bring is.. well, the puppet. It acts like a summon that you control using control bars. When Control Marionette is active, you control the puppet and your character follows it around. However, puppets can't be healed or revived like players and pets can, needing special recovery potions and repair kits. Puppetry has some very powerful AoE and positioning attacks, like Act 6: Crisis' suction effect and Act 7: Climactic Crash's huge whirlwind area. There are very few control bar choices. Based on strength and dexterity.
Dual Guns/Gunslinger is another mid-range attack talent. First off, all guns in this game to date are dual handguns. Sorry, no rifles or shotguns or anything. Dual guns use mana bullets, but unlike archery and alchemy, each mana bullet acts as a cartridge or magazine. The different guns have different clip sizes, and each mana bullet item fills it up entirely, so if your gun can load 64 shots and you have 100 mana bullets, that's the equivalent of 6400 shots (but all attacks use more than 1). Dual guns can do both high AoE and single target damage, with skills like
Shooting Rush and
Bullet Storm covering huge areas and
Flash Launcher and even normal attacks being able to dish out damage to one enemy. Single-target normal attacks have NO knockback except on critical hits so if you shoot someone running at you, they won't be dissuaded much. There are 4 kinds of normal guns, which I'll talk about later. Based on strength and intelligence.
Then there's the upcoming mid-range
Ninja, as described by Seriyu. Looks like many crowd control and misdirection-style attacks just like a real ninja, such as smokescreens and traps. Since it's not out at the time of this writing
and I don't want to research it I'll leave it at that for now.
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Topic: Mabinogi-On Steam! Close combat revamp! (Read 379878 times)