Mabinogi: Magic Explained!

Playing as a mage in Mabinogi is tons of fun. You can do very high AOE damage and thanks to Mabi’s classless system you can actually take a hit without it spelling the end of your career. Just like with any skillset you’ll hit walls in quite a few ways and sometimes magic in general can be very confusing since there are still a bunch of things about it that work differently than other skillsets. There’s much to teach about magic and many secrets and tricks for breaking past the many walls you’ll run into sooner or later. This is by no means an all inclusive guide to magic, but it will cover a large array of topics and questions about magic. This guide is meant for every mage from beginner to advanced. Feel free to skip back and forth through the guide as you see fit.

Primary Stats: INT

Intelligence is the easiest stat to get to the 1500 stat cap and will provide you with a ton of benefits to your magical abilities. You’ll generally always reach the cap with no need to bother worrying about enchants or artisan upgrades so get this stat capped as soon as you can because it’s free real estate!

The list of effects of the Int Stat as they pertain to magic specifically are as follows:

• Every 5 INT → + 1 Magic Attack
• Every 20 INT → + 1 Magic Protection
• Every 4 INT → +1% Magic Balance
• Every 100 INT → +2% Cast Speed Reduction (Int Magic/Hail Storm)

Primary Stats: Magic Attack

Magic Attack is quite naturally a large factor in how hard you can hit with your spells as the name implies. INT alone will supply a large portion of your Magic Attack just from capping it, but you’ll need more than just INT to reach 900+ Magic Attack. Magic Attack does a little more than the name would suggest. It also effects your Mana Shield’s effective damage reduction and increases the effect of your Healing and Party Healing Spells. Magic attack provides the following flat bonuses to your spells per point of Magic Attack:

• Icebolt: +0.4 Max Damage
• Firebolt: +0.5 Max Damage
• Lightning Bolt: +0.6 Max Damage
• Ice Spear: +2.3 Max Damage (As of Reflections, might have increased)
• Fireball: +21 Max Damage (As of Dark Arts, decreased 15%)
• Thunder: +3.5 Max Damage (As of Reflections, might have increased)
• Hail Storm: +3.2 Max Damage
• Meteor Strike: +160 Max Damage (As of Reflections, might have increased)
• Lightning Rod: +12 Max Damage
• Shockwave: +5 Max Damage
• Healing: +0.04 HP/Charge
• Party Healing: +0.05 HP/Charge

Your First Spells: Icebolt

Icebolt is usually one of the first bolt spells you learn. For additional charges beyond the first, it costs less mp to charge. In the past, MP management was a constant struggle making the less mp for additional charges property kind of helpful. The spell now also restores MP on hit and applies a slow effect on hit, unless you hit something using defense. Unlike the other two bolt spells it expends only 1 charge per use rather than all charges allowing you to hit separate targets or pelt the same target repeatedly. It does the lowest damage of all 3 bolt spells.

Your First Spells: Firebolt

Next up on the list of bolt spells is Firebolt. In terms of damage, this spell is your big heavy hitter for single targets. This spell does more damage the more it’s charged. At full charge, the spell receives an additional +30% dmg bonus. It charges the slowest of all 3 bolt spells and all charges are used at once when fired but it forces a knockdown even on targets that have mana deflector. It’s a really good spell for burning down a single target quickly and getting things off of you early on or just when you need a bit of distance between you and whatever you’re fighting.

Your First Spells: Lightning Bolt

As the last of your bolt spells, lightning bolt is your first venture into AOE spells. Each charge after the first allows you to hit 1 additional enemy within range. The target you select is often the only one that will aggro. Similar to firebolt, you gain a full charge bonus for maximum charges with the actual amount depending on your rank. Your overall damage decreases by around 10% per target down to a minimum of 60%. So the first target will be hit with up to 100% of your dmg, the 2nd target up to 90%, the third up to 80% and so on. All charges are used up at once when cast. A single target hit with 2 charges of lightning bolt will be pushed back and 3+ charges will knockdown unless Mana Deflector is active on your target. Lightning bolt also has a neat trick that allows you to use the charges of nearby party members/pets to increase the number of targets you can hit. For each charge of lightning bolt a party member/pet nearby your target has you can hit one additional target. The limit to this is +10 additional targets for a cap of 15 targets hit with lightning bolt at once. It’s an often ignored property of lightning bolt but still something you should know about.

Mix & Match: Fusion Bolt

Make your bolt spells even more powerful and expand your attack options with the Fusion Bolt skill. In the past you needed two players to pull this off, but now with this skill you can just do it yourself. This means you no longer need to fret about syncing your casts with a party member or having to worry about what element wand you or your party member is using. Now that the old ‘chaincast’ restriction has been removed, you can even use Fusion Bolt with chaincast upgraded wands! To use the skill, you simply cast one bolt spell and then another of a different element and fire away. You may only fuse two bolt spells of different elements. The slow and mp recovery of Icebolt do not transfer over to the fused bolt nor does the up to 15 targets ability of lightning bolt. Each bolt is governed by it’s own damage calculation and then added together to determine your final dmg and the fused bolt works as if you had a charge of each bolt (because you do!) to make it a bit more intuitive to understand.

Intermediate Magic: Ice Spear

Ice Spear is a spell best suited to situations where there are lots of enemies or crowd control for breathing room is needed. It has the shortest range of all intermediate level spells but it has a linear AOE and a chain explosion effect. Any enemies that die will automatically spread the freezing effect of the spell to any nearby enemies. The chain explosion effect can happen up to 16 times off a single use of the spell. The spell increases in damage the more you charge it, receiving a full charge bonus of +30% at 5 charges. You can now also attack the frozen enemies now at a -50% damage penalty which can make it easier to spread the chain explosion effect. The main cons to this skill are it’s short range, the sharp damage drop of the 2nd explosion, the gradual damage reduction of additional explosions, and the fairly high MP cost that can drain your MP if you don’t have a means to restore it. Be careful to not bite off more than you can chew as all enemies affected will aggro should they survive. It does the least damage overall of all intermediate magic but can still pack a punch and be quite useful in certain situations.

Intermediate Magic: Fireball

Fireball needs little explanation. Charge it up, fire it and don’t forget your megumin explosion or your DnD fireball jokes. It’s got decent range, explodes in a radius around the point you fired at, hits pretty hard, and forces a knockdown even if enemies have Mana Deflector. It can now be used with any number of charges unlike the days when you had to full charge it to even use the spell. It recently got a 15% damage coefficient nerf as of the Dark Arts update. With the Dark Diviner Arcana talent at link 9 and a lvl 63+ spirit wand you can full charge it or any of the other int magics in one go. At that point, it becomes your bread and butter long range spam skill.

Intermediate Magic: Thunder

Thunder is very fun spell with handful of utilities and features. Like Icebolt, each subsequent charge uses less MP than the previous. Similar to Firebolt, the damage increases per charge but in a slightly different manner. Similar to Lightning Bolt, more charges while allow you to hit more targets however each charge allows for 2 additional targets. In addition to those traits the skill has the same range as fireball, it stuns enemies on hit unless Mana Deflector enters the picture, and the first charge can hit 2 to 4 enemies by itself depending on your rank in the skill. This first charge hitting 2 to 4 targets is part of what makes this skill so MP efficient early on until you get your MP restoration skills and gear.

Advanced Magic

Finally we have the ‘advanced’ magic skills. These are some of your heaviest hitting spells in terms of how much damage they can output. Meteor Strike is a 3 part skill. The meteor itself does a combination of melee and magical damage and the flames left behind deal ranged damage so it’s a good skill if you run into the occasional monster who nerfs your magic damage to 1s but is vulnerable to melee. It’s got a long cooldown so it’s not as usable as the other two magic skills without techniques, bachram boosts, or cooldown reduction. Hailstorm is the main go-to advanced magic you’ll be using quite often due to how much of a boost to DPS a spirit upgraded staff is. Lightning Rod is also a very useful burst skill. It takes a while to charge but if your grouping is on point you can easily increase the damage output of the skill significantly before it goes on cooldown and it also has access to an Echostone reforge to make it more spammable and other gear that increases it’s charge speed significantly.

Defensive Magic: Shield Spells

The shield spells come in various flavors allowing you to shield allies or yourself in emergency situations. The common theme among the shield spells is they will allow you to shield yourself and allies from the knockdown effects and damage of one damage type. Stacking shields of the same element adds their individdamage reduction percentages - determined by individual skill ranks - together when determining the total damage reduction. Your basic defensive stats then reduce the remaining damage even further. The downside is you’re immobile while maintaining the shields. Mana shield on the other hand, is your general purpose version of the shield spells that allows you to reduce all damage types and move and can be toggled however your damage reduction is based off your Mana Shield’s Efficiency factor and ignores your defensive stats other than the hidden defensive stats of any equipped shield. Mana Shield also gives you more survivability in general since your MP now doubles as HP. As of the Dark Arts Update, Mana Shield received a nerf limiting it’s defensive capability so that it has a max coefficent of 10. Despite this, you basically receive close to 90% damage reduction.

Patch 'Em Up: Healing Spells

Healing spells are pretty straightforward and there’s not much out of the ordinary to say about them. Healing spells don’t heal wounds under normal conditions. Healing begins to heal wounds if it’s Dan 1 or higher. Having the “Master of Party Healing” title equipped allows both Healing and Party Healing to heal an additional 20% and permits both spells to heal wounds at 10% of the amount healed. The only other caveat is that using Healing on yourself drains stamina equal to the amount healed. This doesn’t apply to Party Healing of course. Healing spells are capable of ‘criticals.’ These crit heals will restore 1.5x as much HP as normal. With Arcana, you have some extra healing spells and expanded healing options available to you should you decide to go the path of Harmonic Saint.

More MP Please!: Meditation and Inspiration

As a mage, MP is your lifeblood. To that end, you have two skills in your tab to assist with the regeneration and recovery of this precious resource. The first of these skills is Meditation which is a toggleable skill that increases your natural MP regeneration by a rank dependent percentage. Ideally you’d want this skill active as much as possible but sometimes that’s not always possible. While active, it has the additional effect of tripling the rate at which you get hungry, slowing you to a walk when not using wands or a staff and halting your natural regeneration of Stamina which can actually become a potential issue with skills like Blaze and Spellwalk. Fortunately, any additional boosts and buffs to your stamina regen will allow you to continue to generate stamina while Meditation is up. Inspiration is a bit more simple and of the two skills is more likely the one you’ll use all the time. Just use the skill and you’ll regen a percentage of your Max MP all at once instead of over time. The only caveat is just don’t get hit while using Inspiration or it will halt your MP regen short and the skill will remain on cooldown as normal.

Other Spells

From left to right we have: Blaze, Snap Cast, Shockwave, Spellwalk, Spirit Wand/Staff Awakening. Snap Cast is an instant full charge of whatever spell is used after with a cooldown that decreases faster the more magic you use. It works for any spell that can be charged multiple times and party healing. Shockwave is an AOE knockdown with a rank-dependent chance to reset the cooldown on being hit with melee. It can be used in the middle of being attack but you have to be mindful about spamming it since it’s base MP cost scales to 10% of your max MP. Spellwalk allows you to walk while charging spells at the cost of stamina drained per second when you ordinarily would not be able to move, doubled MP cost, and a movement speed reduction if you’re not rank 1 in the skill. The Spirit Wand/Staff Awakenings are spirit weapon summoning skills that not only produces a large attack with some temporary advanced heavy stander but also gives a ‘bonus damage’ buff after for a base of 75 seconds. Finally, Blaze is a melee to mid range spell it has some of the shortest range of any magic skill but it gives invincibility frames when used properly and does increased damage to enemies with high knockdown meter.

Smart 'Em Harder!!!: Magic Masteries

Each mastery augments your magic in one of 3 ways: Either they increase your cast speed, reduce your MP cost to use magic or increase the damage of your magic. It’s a no-brainer that you want to max your masteries whenever you can. The effect of each mastery on your magic is listed below.

• The Elemental Masteries: Increased damage & reduced MP cost
• Magic Mastery: Increased Max MP & Blaze damage
• Bolt Mastery/Fusion Bolt: Increased damage
• Magic Weapon Mastery: Bolt damage increased & reduced Int magic cast time

Tools of the Trade: Wands and Staves

Wands and Staves are the classic weapons of choice for any mage. They have a few differences between them but you’ll ultimately end up using both of them for whichever situation suits you best at the moment. Healing wands are best used for Healing and Party Heal. Wands boost the range and damage of same element bolt spells, boost same element int magic by 5%, allow running with meditation active and also now allow you to cast int magic of the other elements as well. Tribolt wands allow you to upgrade for chaincast with all bolts, and boost all 3 int magics by 5% damage. Wands are typically used for bolt spells and fusion bolt vs staves being use for int and advanced level magic. Spirit wands and staves both gain access to a fusion bolt and int magic chaincast ultimate respectively.

Other Key Stats: Cast Speed

Cast Speed seems like a bit of a no-brainer but it’s actually a very tricky stat given how it seems to work. Multiple sources of cast speed reduction seem to compound on each other so the more you get from separate sources more diminishing returns you get in terms of overall reduction. On top of that, testing seems to point to the effective hard cap for all spells being 50% of their base cast time even if you would get more than 50%. At present there are 3 known methods to surpass the limit, each of which is listed below and while it’s a bit tricky to confirm the formula seems to most closely match this one below:

[ Max( Base Cast Time / 2 , [Base Cast Time * (1 - [Int/ 5000]) * (1 - Vivace %) * (1 - Weapon Upgrade %) * (1 - Weapon Reforge %) * (1 - Other Source1 %) * (1 - Other Source2 %)) ] * (1- Staff Erg %) * (1- Wand Erg %) * (1- Fateweaver or Relentless Assault %)

Note: In the case of the Int/5000 portion it only applies to int magic, Hailstorm and possibly Meteor Strike. Cast Speed Reforges apply twice on wands. Fateweaver and Relentless Assault do not stack.

Sources of cast speed reduction:

• Int: 2% every 100. (only for int magic/hailstorm & possibly Meteor Strike)
• Magic Speed Potion Effect: 10%
• Wand Upgrades: % Varies
• Vivace: % Varies
• Magic Weapon Mastery: 15% at R1 (Int Magic only)
• Special Voidal Butterfly 2nd Title: 5%
• Cast Speed Reforges: 1.5% per level (Applies Twice for Wands)
• Staff S Rank Erg: 30% at lvl 50 (Int & Adv Magic only) (Exceeds Cast Speed Cap)
• Wand S Rank Erg: 30% at lvl 50 (Bolt Magic only) (Exceeds Cast Speed Cap)
• Fateweaver - Aspect of Swiftness: 5 - 7% (Exceeds Cast Speed Cap)
• Relentless Assault: 7% (Exceeds Cast Speed Cap)

Other Stats: Strength & Max Damage

Strength and Max Damage are excellent secondary stats to focus on for mages. With the way magic works anything that increases max damage contributes a small portion of damage to your bolt spells and intermediate level magic. The effect is reduced but every little bit of damage helps when you consider how many other factors can boost your magic damage. Strength doesn’t directly add to your magic damage but the amount of physical damage boost you gain from a battlefield overture buff is counted as a ‘Max Damage’ enchant in the magic damage formula. So Ideally, you would also boost Strength as well. Also the Physical Power Potion has no effect on magic ordinarily. However, if you have high Strength coupled with max damage enchants, then use a Physical Power Potion and finally receive a Battlefield Overture buff on top of all of this the boost from BFO will be at it’s maximum possible value for increasing your magic damage.

Even More Damage: Limit Breaks

At present, there are three ways to go beyond the first stat cap of 1500 (MP/Stam and HP cap at 2500). They are Echostones, Arcana, and the Shine of Eweca skill.

Shine of Eweca is a level based buff and gets stronger the higher your total level. The amount of bonus stats that exceed the cap keeps increasing up to total level 40,000. Shine is only available while at or above current level 50. So you’ll relearn the skill every time you rebirth and it will ‘rank’ up every 10 levels afterward.

After completing the Memento quest line you’ll gain access to Sidhe Finnachaid which will allow you access to Echostones. You’ll have a chance to ‘advance’ these stones at the end of the run with successes increasing the grade of the stone - which caps at 30 - and boosts the stats associated with the stone. Blue Echostones give free extra int for mages, but you can equip up to 3 so you should consider getting other color echostones as well. Awakenining the stone gives an extra reforge with the only cost being an awakening stimulant and some AP. The AP cost increases the more you try to awaken the stone but resets upon re-entering Sidhe and running again. Blue echostones have a few exclusive reforges like Lightning Rod Charge Damage and Cooldown Reduction but also just about any other magic based and some music based reforges as well.

Finally, there’s Arcana which opens up new paths and access to new skills for mages. When fully leveled up to 150 total arcana level, your stat cap increases by another 500. Your MP, Stam and HP cap also increases by up to 1250 at 150 total arcana level.

Hitting them even harder! : Combo Cards

When you find your magic hitting a bit of a wall give it that extra boost with combo cards. This will require you to get Dan 3 in the applicable magic skill but if you can manage it you’ll gain access to the combo card customization system which allows you to put the skill on a combo card. In the context of magic, combo cards work a bit differently. Rather than being a total damage multiplier combo card is counted as it’s own bonus inside the magic damage formula itself. Either way, you get more damage not only from the ranking of the skill to dan rank but also from the combo card bonus itself. All in all, a good investment for all offensive magic.

With certain Arcana, your DPS will also increase certain skills scale based on the damage your base magic skills would already do. So for example, a fireball card would not only power up fireball, but the Shadow Flare Arcana Skill.

Hit 'em where it hurts most: Critical Damage & Critical Chance

There’s hitting them and then there’s showing ’em your crits! Having a high critical chance generally only helps to make sure that you’re critting with your bolt spells. If you’re using int level or higher magic your crit chance is generally always at the base cap of around 30%. This 30% cap can be further increased with Nele Renown and the Spirit Unleashing Ultimate on a spirit weapon for a new crit cap of 42.5%. Critical Damage is the other important stat to increase. Your Critical Hit skill rank determines how much additional damage you do on crit but any gear or other sources that further increase this are always worth the effort it takes to get your hands on it. Almost any weapon can be special upgraded for critical damage with red upgrade stones but there’s also homestead figures and sequel figures, alban knight emblems as well as the special hand of death 2nd title, and the Spirit Attunement upgrade on spirit weapons.

A little extra boost: Bonus Damage

Bonus Damage is exactly what it says on the label. It’s always worth it! Get any and all sources of it that you can. Some notable sources include: Spirit Weapon upgrades, Homestead Figures/Sequel Figures, The Spirit Weapon Awakening Buffs , and the Exploit Weakness Technique.

Note Additional Spirit Weapon Contracts from cash shop or players in the Auction House allow you to increase your max number of spirits by up to 3. With the return of Eiry, you can also have a 7th spirit. With such a large number or spirits you could get more mileage out of the Continuous Awakening Technique if the work of sustaining the bonus damage from awakenings is your jam.

The Magic Damage Formula!

The wiki lists the formula as: {Base Damage + [Wand Bonus x (Charge Multiplier)] + (Spell Constant x Magic Attack) + (Damage Enchants x Damage Constant)} x [1 + (Bolt Mastery Bonus + Elemental Mastery Bonus + Magic Weapon Mastery Bonus + Staff Elemental Level Bonus + Hebona Set Bonus + Rosemary Glove Bonus)] x Charge Multiplier x Full Charge Multiplier x Thunder Multiplier x Distance Multiplier

Adding in Combo Bonus and Bonus Damage the formula changes to: [{Base Damage + [Wand Bonus x (Charge Multiplier)] + (Spell Constant x Magic Attack) + (Damage Enchants x Damage Constant)} x [1 + (Bolt Mastery Bonus + Elemental Mastery Bonus + Magic Weapon Mastery Bonus + Staff Elemental Level Bonus + Hebona Set Bonus + Rosemary Glove Bonus + Combo Bonus)] x Charge Multiplier x Full Charge Multiplier x Thunder Multiplier x Distance Multiplier] x Bonus Damage Multiplier

As you can see the formula is pretty lengthy and can be a bit confusing but the general format is Flat Damage x Mastery/Bonus Modifiers x Other Modifiers. Reforges that add to a spell’s damage add directly to the base damage value. Charge Multiplier only applies to Firebolt, Ice Spear, and Hail Storm. Likewise, Full Charge Multiplier applies to those spells but also applies to Lightning Rod’s Full Charge Damage Bonus (ex. 1.6 at rank F and 3.3 at Dan 3). The rest of the variables of note are explained below.

Wand Bonus applies for bolt spells when using a non-spirit wand of the same element.

• Icebolt: 10
• Firebolt: 5
• Lightningbolt: 7

Spell Constant varies depending on the spell

• Icebolt: 0.35 (min), 0.4 (max)
• Firebolt: 0.35 (min), 0.5 (max)
• Lightning Bolt: 0.3 (min), 0.6 (max)
• Ice Spear: 0.45 (min), 1.4 (max)
• Fireball: 8.0 (min), 12.0 (max)
• Thunder: 0.4 (min), 2.1 (max)
• Hail Storm: 1.6 (min), 3.2 (max)
• Meteor Strike: 8.5 (min), 16.0 (max)
• Lightning Rod: 7.0 (min), 12.0 (max)
• Shockwave: 2.0 (min), 5.0 (max)

Damage Enchants is the sum of all bonuses from enchants to minimum and/or maximum damage. As mentioned earlier the bonus min and max damage gained from a Battlefield Overture counts as enchanted damage. The Damage Constant again varies by spell.

• Icebolt: 0.04 (min), 0.08 (max)
• Firebolt: 0.2 (min), 0.4 (max)
• Lightning Bolt: 0.22 (min), 0.44 (max)
• Ice Spear: 0.05 (min), 0.1 (max)
• Fireball: 0.25 (min), 0.5 (max)
• Thunder: 0.25 (min), 0.5 (max)
• Hail Storm: 0
• Meteor Strike: 0
• Lightning Rod: 0
• Shockwave: 0

Staff Elemental Level Bonus is the staff charge level effect for staves that can be ‘charged’ and only affects bolt spells of the same element.

• Level 1: 0.05
• Level 2: 0.1
• Level 3: 0.15

The Full Charge Multipliers are as follows:

• Firebolt: 1.3
• Ice Spear: 1.3
• Hail Storm: 1.25
• Lightning Rod: 1.5 - 3.3 (rank dependent)
• Everything else: 1.0

The Thunder Multiplier is a variable that changes depending on how the number of charges and whether that charge is the final hit.

• All hits before the last : 1
• The final hit when using less than 5 charges: 1.5
• The final hit when fully charged: 2

The Distance Multiplier is a multiplier for reducing the damage of Meteor Strike and Shockwave the farther the target is from the center of the area of effect. For Shockwave, it starts at 1 near the center and scales down to 0.1 linearly. For Meteor Strike, it starts at 1 near the center, 0.75 at the halfway point to the edge and finally stops at 0.5 near the edge.

Note: As of the Reflections update, the Distance Multiplier no longer applies for Meteor Strike.

Arcana: The Three Paths Before You

With the new arcana talents you know have the power to dish out even more damage in new and unique ways. If damage is not your thing, you can also support and lean into the healer path more effectively than ever before.

If you fancy mixing in a little melee combat inbetween your spells you can choose to main the Elemental Knight arcana.

Perhaps you fancy the healer and support combo, or maybe you just love the boosted duration of your music buffs? The Harmonic Saint arcana has you covered.

Or maybe you like new ways to bring the pain with a little bit of dark magic thrown in. The new Dark Diviner Arcana will more than deliver.

For more general information on arcana talents, check out the wiki page here