February 23rd, 2008

It's finally NA Mabinogi Pre-Open Beta! I had previous met some new friends during closed beta 3 weeks ago, so the plan was to meet up with them and do some more exploring and getting used to skills and party strategies.

Without further ado, my fantasy life begins...

Again, I get to see Nao. <3 Nao

Walking into Tir Chonaill. There's my friend SPARE in the background.

Here I am goofing around with Yoshiyuki. 8D

I had a lot of problems making gold early on. So of course, I had to do lots of back-breaking work in the fields. Sigh.

Our first Ciar Dungeon run. We found a female swordsmanship uniform and I'm the lucky recipient. Looks pretty nice!

I died to a rat. Sigh.

Fighting the golem boss and metal skeletons. It was a tough battle, but we did it!

There's a lot more people in Tir Chonaill Town Square now. And half of them are playing songs off-key. It was so bad I had to turn off my bard song volume.

I decided to go try to kill a bear solo. Ya, that meanie over there; he's no pushover. I ended up dying down to -100% exp, but I managed to get both the "Who almost slew a bear at age 10" and "The bear slayer with bare hands" titles. Yay :)

After finishing some lessons at the school, I decided to train a bit more in Alby Dungeon before heading off to explore the world since we're not limited to Tir Chonaill, Alby Dungeon and Ciar Dungeon anymore!

Solo Alby Dungeon run. The boss is a giant spider. I ended up not finishing since I was totally out of potions. *sob*

On my way south to the nearest town, Dunbarton, I found out that some giant grizzly bears had taken over the logging camp. I had to sneak my way past them. Scary... *w*

Entering Dunbarton for the first time...

Heading to the mining town, Bangor, to meet up with our party member, Izuna.

Here's our 4-man party! SPARE and Artoria are vets from open beta KR Mabinogi waaaaaaaaay back. So they basically know everything about the game. Izuna and I were taken under their wing and we've been graced by their knowledge and kindness. I love them so much!

We decided to look for the troll nearby. There he is!

We killed him and dumped him in a hole. Time to relax~

Curious if the fourth town, coastal town Emain Macha, is open, we headed west to Sen Meg Plateau. Along the way, we met some ogres. It was a bit difficult....

But in the end, we killed them. Artoria also got her ogre slayer title too!

Now on Sen Meg Plateau, the battleground between humans and Fomors (monsters), SPARE wanted to go find the roaming girl NPC, Plaeta. She only appears a few hours per day and is hard to find, but she has a lot of goodies to sell. Unfortunately, we couldn't find her, so we continued west towards Emain Macha, passing Peaca Dungeon's entrance along the way.

Entering Emain Macha, I was astounded by the beauty of it all...

However, since it's so far from everything, there's basically no one here but us. In fact, the developers didn't even translate the text here. LOL.

I found the auditorium where the concerts and plays I saw before in videos were held. Maybe I'll come perform here later....

Awww cute! Cut-outs!

At the restaurant. It seems like they forgot to put clothes on the NPC. They sell really high quality food here though! Yummy!

Exiting Emain Macha, we decided to take the shorter, but much more dangerous, route back to Dunbarton. This is through Osna Sail.

I'm lost. So far away from home...

Uh oh. The infamous sheep wolf. They prey on unsuspecting travellers. We can't get through!

We did manage to kill two of them. Then we watched a pro take care of the little cute (but very mean) bear with lightning bolt and counter. It was very impressive.

Back safe in Dunbarton. We settle down to take a breather and restock on supplies. I also picked up some info on builds, skills, equips and general knowledge. This is when I decided to be a pure archer when open beta comes around. I know I can do it with my friends' help!

Night rolls around and it's time for storytelling! SPARE and Artoria decided to tell us stories from KR Mabinogi about Peaca Dungeon and Osna Sail. When Peaca Dungeon was first implemented, 100 warriors entered the dungeon. However, none of them made it back out alive since they were caught off-guard by the monsters' ability to teleport. It was a slaughter. But legend has it that on the same day that this massacre occured, a party of 4 actually beat the dungeon. They were said to be over level 700 and over 100 years old. Mabi legend or truth? Who knows....

The other story is about Osna Sail. It was the only path to Emain Macha, so people tried to navigate through the mountainous path to see the new town. However, it was infested with sheep wolves, which attacks people on sight. They also band together and are strong enough to take down anyone. SPARE and Artoria were part of the group that tried to go through. It was a death march. All the party members died one by one, picked off by the wolves. However, they could not stop running, even with the cries of their fallen members pleading for help. It was every man and woman for themselves. It was a tragedy. They were two of the few that made it. *sniff*

Wandering the fields looking for goblins to slay!

Here we are, practicing our strategies. It worked out really well.

End of the day. Taking a breather before a new day of exploration and challenges!

- Ari

Back