/vg/ Windmill Guide 1.045

	== Windmill Ranking Guide- Written for /mabigen/ ==
	== We're Fucking Back From the Grave (again!) Edition==


** Since a lot has changed when I first wrote the guide two years ago I'm just going to grind a mule on a new account to rank 1 windmill as though I had no funds or gear to see best what should be in this guide. Until then some of these things might be out of date but I don't think any grinding location has beaten Saga Episode 5 as of yet. Have fun in the world of Erinn!



== Table of Contents (a gamefaqs veteran will know what to do here: use ctrl+f if you're too lazy to scroll down) ==
[A111]: Introduction
[A112]: List of Must-Haves
[A113]: Gear
[A114]: Skill Management
[A115]: The Training
[A116]: Alternatives
[A117]: Footnotes (or just ctrl+f the footnote number you want)


	-A111-	== INTRODUCTION ==


This guide, oriented towards both beginners and established players in need of quickly preparing a character, will acquaint the reader with the fastest currently known method of training Windmill to date: Saga Episode 4 penultimate SM spam. Expect to spend less than twenty hours to get Windmill to Rank 1; perhaps a week of normal play for the average player will suffice, thus freeing one to pursue any style of combat desired.

Unfortunately, many resources on the internet currently available are outdated, coming from websites with communities that have since become inactive. Because of this, outdated information about where Windmill training should take place[1] continues to circulate even today. Having to grind past noobtraps is a turnoff to new players, so it is best the confusion is cleared up, especially as Windmill is still considered of high importance today[2].

Additionally, this guide focuses on how to acquire a large number of boss/strong/awful kills for the advanced ranks of windmill, as most beginners unaccustomed to heavy grinding find these the hardest. If you need help on other training requirements from early ranks, particularly counterattack with windmill, please refer to the wiki and then the thread.



	-A112-	== YOU WILL NEED ==

- A character that needs to train Windmill.

- Mod installation, such as Tiara + Abyss, provides you with the most hassle-free method of knowing your CP without having to constantly recalculate every time you rank a skill. Nexon has started to crackdown on the usage of mods, making them slightly less user-friendly, but the knowledgeable volunteers at mabimods.net work extremely hard to make their use available to the community, and there are plenty of writeups on how to install them and bypass NGS. Mods from reputable sources, such as mabimods.net, will not compromise your computer with malware or anything else.

- Total level of 1-99 on said character so Saga missions are set to Basic difficulty for as long as possible. If you do end up needing to go past total level 99, Intermediate mobs may boast higher CP, and you will likely have better gear and/or base stats than a beginner. I recognize that not everyone has had the opportunity to plan their characters out in such a thorough manner, so even Advanced is still viable (and still far better than the old spots; see footnote 1).

- Plenty of potions and holy waters. Comgan's church PTJ can be spammed for HW without needing any mats at all in less than three in-game hours - you have no excuse for being unsupplied[4]. A hint: Use Wings of the Goddess to get back to town quickly without changing channel and dropping out of your part-time job.

- A flying mount to unlock Mana Tunnels for Saga Episode 4 for Human characters (Elves and Giants get all the Mana tunnels during their Beginner quests). Use the beginner Eagle if you have nothing else.


	-A113- == GEAR ==

A lot of people dislike the prospect of getting CP gear (which is part of the strategy I suggest) and would argue that a beginner shouldn't have/need any. I still disagree (It speeds things up tremendously, and you could always resell it!) but if you're an elf/really don't want to, see footnote [7] for a link to mabinoger's monster CP calculator, which will handily let you figure out where you can train at any CP with gear and other toys factored in.

If you're willing to work hard or have friends that can help you, there's a still-relevant CP gear guide that was written by Zyrus of Mabination many years ago. It's possible to get some basic CP equips (-100 on Light Armor, -100 on Gauntlets, etc.) with some modestly difficult (to a beginner) Iria dungeons.

http://mabination.com/threads/16088-CP-Gear-the-key-to-Mabinogi!

Giants won't need the -CP gear. Why are you reading this guide? Just train it casually alongside doing things like daily SMs and be happy you don't have to grind.

Elves are difficult to acquire CP gear for. Richer and more established players can simply opt for a Jackal (I have one to borrow out to for new players on Mari) if training a new character, or Raccoon Cub if a character averages 2k~ cp per RB. New players that still want to sit through the pain of grinding an Elf's WM could try running Karu Normal (which has other valuable skillbook drops for money) for Difficult (rank A, no sequence needed) to put on Light Armor, or possibly get a Broken Arrow (>300k) to switch to when using the "Anyone in the Party" finish party trick. If CP gear isn't your thing, there are alternatives to the primary strategy recommended here; read below that.

In terms of weaponry and gear, I am unable to make specific recommendations to a broad range of people with different financial situations. There are also guides for beginner earlygame equipment[6] which cover this topic more effectively. However, a beginning Human player will likely use dual-wielded swords. These would include Gladii if you haven't already started refine/have low balance, and Battleswords for those with more balance; remember that Sword Mastery and Combat Mastery will add at least 17% balance to the ranks suggested in this guide. If you choose to use special upgrades (not recommended so early in the game!), go with Blue. Yes, Blue: There's absolutely no way you have enough maximum damage at this point for Red to break even or be better, and Blue is more affordable for a beginner anyway, which fits the dichotomy.

At a passing glance, 140 Gladii (this notation for an upgrade path indicates the amount of proficiency total required for it) strike me as particularly effective as one budget option for this situation due to having 25% crit, not demanding over 150 dex, having 51% balance, and retaining an agreeable max durability for long periods of grinding and heavy usage- you will be hitting many, many times with these weapons. You may or may not choose to spend money special upgrading them (again, not recommended earlygame), or hold out for Battleswords instead and then hunt for good Artisan rolls (they're on par with market-modded falcatas until you hit 1500+ str). Battleswords upgraded in this way are a decent investment and highly cost-effective when compared to Royal Knight Swords, which are intended for endgame or rich midgame players.

	= Performance et cetera =

At a bare minimum to reduce lag, I strongly recommend having Mini Effects checked (SYSTEM -> PERFORMANCE), as well as using CTRL+N to disable names as well as prevent dialogue from obstructing enemy skills. Many computers will also freeze (even good ones, blame bad optimization) when you critmill a big mob and the effect is turned on, so you may also want to disable the critical hit effect.

If you experience network-related lag, google "Mabinogi Nagle Algorithm" and "Mabinogi MTU lag" respectively for two fixes that will greatly assist your skill loading lag and improve your overall game experience.

Note that the above will only go so far if your setup consists of a Raspberry Pi breadboarded into a toaster, and your computer's graphics capabilities are another prime suspect for lag. Mabi is old and has a tendency to run well on older drivers, but anyone with the integrated graphics you see on office machines and the like will shortly discover the Pleione engine's inability to play nicely with such configurations.




	-A114-	== SKILL MANAGEMENT ==

As a beginner you can abuse your resets to perfectly plan out your AP expenditure, and also completely reset any silliness you indulged in while you were frolicking around as a wide-eyed newbie (so relax!).

You will be training and ranking up the following along with Windmill:

- Critical Hit is the classic training companion of Windmill, because the latter ignores protection when calculating chance and thus will crit 30% of the time if you have at least 30% critical regardless of whatever protection the mobs you're fighting have. This should be your second AP priority right after Windmill, because training it by itself is tedious, and advancement alongside other skills is highly recommended.

Remember that the only factors that affect your CP are enchants that -directly- modify it, your base stats given from skills (the numbers in parentheses to the right of your stats in the character window), and your two highest-ranked CP skills, the second of which has half as much of an effect. You can exploit the fact that enchants and titles that give stats do not contribute to CP when trying to manage yours.


*Often Windmill will be finished before Critical Hit, and a reasonable estimate puts the latter's ending rank at around 4. Some natural variation is to be expected.

†If you choose to take advantage of an event that multiplies AP given or more, you will enjoy greatly improved ease of AP management and have less stress about staying under total level 1k in general.

‡Saga dailies also award +2.5 AP in coupons per day, but you have to constantly go through Saga 4 every day you want to train Windmill. Your call. Episode 7 spam is generally nice, but try episode 10 at least once (and again when you level up to change difficulties) to see if it actually is faster for you or not. It involves less moving around on mounts.

¶The easiest way for a complete beginner with no combat stats to get exploration exp is to L-Rod around Cor and look for chests (some spawn monsters and require you to kill them to unlock them, but you can ignore these) that will drop artifacts that you can restore, appraise, then exchange with Voight.

An even more insanely cheap way of getting fast Exploration exp is (with mods installed and Demigod available) to demigod, then follow a straight line of hidden artifacts that runs from Quilla Base Camp and bends around a few times to end in Muyu Desert. Otherwise, the Rafting and Hot-Air ballooning dailies award 6k Exploration exp each.


	== GETTING THERE ==

- Rush through all of Saga Episode 4 however you want *up until the last shadow mission*, Proceed with the Ritual.
- Look up the wiki page for a general guide on the Saga; a repost of that information here would be a waste of time.
- Go to Lelach at the Dragon Mark if you aren't there already.
- Take off all unnecessary equipment to avoid unneccessary holy water loss (anticipate many deaths). Unfortunately, stuck mobs were fixed and are no longer use
- Enter the mission.



	-A115-	== THE TRAINING ==

Enormous clusterfucks of enemies will constantly spawn under the dragon, Bhafel. Your objective here is to abuse the density of limitless mob waves to grind as many kills as you need in as short of an amount of time as possible. The monsters from the Vales missions (bandits and Snowfield Slayers) have ~900 CP each (basic) and the Demonics have 2k CP each at the same difficulty.

Ideally, you will be able to quickly setup a Windmill-friendly environment ripe for abuse for a whopping hour and a half (the time given to you to "complete" the mission) every run. Four mobs will prove difficult: Unknown Men will try to fuck you up with their Final Hit, Korsek Raptors will ruin your damage output and disrupt your attacks with their Stomp (watch for their flight animation), Wyverns will use their Bite attack to tie you down + deal sizable damage, and the Demonic Poets' Dischord can get around your Windmill, which then debuffs you with an annoying slow effect and poison (they can be countered out of this). As stated on the wikipage, Unknown Men and Wyverns do not respawn; the Unknown Men in particular usually become irrelevant quickly, but the Wyverns are constantly in Flight unless using their Bite attack, often avoiding pressure from your allies and persisting on the battlefield a lot longer; you can try attacking them when they Bite your allies.

Inevitably, you'll allow a few mobs to slip by alive, and collect more and more multiaggro from unfinished enemies chasing you down. Your allies will soak up aggro and damage for you, but you'll likely end up taking stray hits and dying sometimes; this latter point goes double for new players who may not have pets with an on-summon effect. Respawning in town will spawn you at the Dragon Mark, fortunately, where you can walk up to Lelach to try again. Powerfully damaging on-summons have the added benefit of wiping out large groups for you to FINISH off with a Windmill (make sure "summons finish automatically" under GAME->ETC is unchecked, which it is by default). Consider finishing Saga for the above reason of having the Perseus (~400 damage on-summon) as it will one-hit almost everything on Basic with the summon effect alone and save you much, much trouble.



- Take your CP gear off and on as required by whatever you have left to do for that rank; after multiple hits/kills, do all Boss kill counts before resorting to Awfuls, and then Strongs, etc.

- If you find yourself going through the mission over and over, finishing the entire Episode will allow you to skip the opening cutscene so you won't have to view it. This requires a repeat of the episode to get back to the SM itself. Mashing Space and left click together lets you get through conversations quickly.

- At all ranks, particularly the lower-numbered, "multiple strong hit/finish" counts are the quickest training and should be taken care of first. Sometimes, however, many of the enemies in the mission still appear as Awful, which ruins your ability to get Strong kills exclusively and satisfy the requirement. For these situations, use common sense and go somewhere else[7] to get these done.

- If you can't two/three-shot everything here, try to get better gear/stats until you can. 30% critical is your goal. Try to hold off on ranking Combat Mastery if you can help it, and remember that the "The Lucky" title awards an easy +4%.

- Repeat the mission again and again as necessary. Don't complete the quest, of course, or you'll have to do it all again.

- Tendering pots a shit.

- Black Scar and Red Scar a shit.



	-A116-     == Alternatives ==

Proceed with the Ritual will always be the fastest WM grinding in the game, period, if you can get everything to show up as BOSS with CP gear, which is so cheap and easy to do (for new human players) that I always recommend this first. However, there are other options for training available, and for those with different CP situations (like Elves).

The Other Alchemists, frequently brought up in discussion about Windmill training, is a non-Saga related mission in Tara where the difficulty system is based on Talent experience levels and allows you to pick any you've unlocked. This makes TOA forgiving to people who can't get CP gear or have to train a late-game character. TOA also allows you, for example, to train with Intermediate Saga 4 until the stat CP from leveling up pushes Demonics into Awful, whereupon you could switch to doing TOA at Advanced courtesy of having a Senior Warrior talent. Keep in mind Demonic enemies always have more CP than their Alchemist/Golem counterparts at each difficulty level.

What holds it back from being the best Windmill training spot (and something many players forget when recommending it) is the fact that a Close Combat beginner playing solo will have much more difficulty with this mission than PwtR, because every enemy has some form of a ranged attack and everything will relentlessly multiaggro. Alchemist enemies have their high-damage Water Cannon and Wind Blast, which hit hard and stun through Defense and Charge/Lance Charge- get Evasion if you plan on coming here at all. Golems tend to all immediately aggro at once, have Heavy Stander Level 2, and can spam Stomp (which crits hard and ignores your protection when calculating crit chance, just like Windmill itself) even if they're not stuck. Everything is likely to one or two-shot crit an ungeared beginner. In short, training Windmill here is still certainly doable, but much more frustrating for beginners, and should play second fiddle to PwtR.

Another option is the very first mission of Saga Episode 5 near Shyllien, which does not require grinding through Saga 4 to get through. It will spawn many clustered mobs that are almost purely Demonic enemies- again, with 2000 CP each at Basic. If your CP situation puts you at a stage where Demonics are boss but the Snowfield enemies aren't and you only want BOSS kills, consider doing this instead. You will have to repeatedly enter the mission again and again and move around more, but it still beats out TNN enormously.





	-A117-     == Footnotes and Additional Information ==

[1]TNN and Their Method are older training spots that are sometimes recommended for Windmill and often suggested in the thread, likely  by older players that trained the skill a long time ago and haven't had to do it since.

Please don't go to either.

Zombies have Level 2 Heavy Stander, and a ridiculous 50% protection that still reduces your damage even though Windmill ignores it while calculating crit. These two factors combined make training on them slow and frustrating. Considering that TNN Zombies' 2090 CP is just 90 CP over Demonic enemies' 2000 CP, which makes the difference between them a tiny 30~ CP window on the behalf of the player, there's literally no reason to go to either training spot now regardless of if you have any CP gear or not. If you can't get Demonics to be Boss for you, you're either past Zombies as well or will quickly level yourself past them with stat CP.

Furthermore, at Advanced Their Method, which is the first difficulty those zombies have enough CP to even be relevant, you're probably beyond Basic Saga difficulty, where Demonics will outperform them by a huge margin again. In short, you're better off staying away completely.


[2]This point is contentious; Windmill is no longer being the endgame skill of choice. However, Windmill is still a great bread-and-butter skill for melee users, is absolutely necessary for Lance users to protect themselves (lag makes intercepting normal attacks unreliable for most), retains AI-resetting abuse capabilities, continues to be effective Will for the AP cost, gives high amounts of Close Combat Talent EXP at an above-average AP/EXP ratio, and has tons of other utility in melee combat that I haven't mentioned. Something some people consider is only ranking Windmill to r5, but I've talked to many people who left theirs this way and came to regret it later.

[3]Pake is technically a packet editor and not a mod in and of itself; it is not included in any releases of Abyss, Tiara, or the like. Abuse of it and similar programs contributed to major problems to Mabinogi's overall health at a certain dark point in history. Furthermore, the modding community as a whole regards those who use- and abuse- such tools with distaste, and those found to use it, the majority script-kiddies, are immediately banished.

[4]Take advantage of the fact that the game's clock lets you set alarms. For people who find themselves spending a lot of time on Mabi, this particular church Part-Time Job is excellent: It doesn't require any tedious gathering, and if you make doing it a habit, it has the potential to rocket you up to 100+ completions within a month or so, unlocking the Advanced tier of rewards for it. For the time it takes you to run into Barri and kill three goblins and three imps, you now make 20k-39k every 36 minutes. This is a fantastic way of earning money for beginners, and you might make half a mil a week with this method without even realizing it. Consider this seriously if you're fed up of spamming Saga on alts.

[5]It was not considered necessary in the past to acquire -CP gear for beginners, a point often thrown about on old forums such as Mabination and Mabiguru. Recently, I have noticed a trend of new mules I train acquiring CP extremely quickly due to stat growth from the Talent system, which makes things harder on Elves.

[6]An external link to a somewhat out of date guide on sword equips

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=228477832


[7]External link to mabinogier's Monster CP Calculator: This will help you enormously when you need to find where to get kills of a particular strength relative to you. This is also your only resource if your char was fucked up and has way over 1.5k CP, and will help if you don't want to use Saga 4 and don't have CP gear.

http://mabinoger.com/monster_cp.htm


Edit History:

5/1/2014: Created guide.
5/1/2014: Miscellaneous fixes, typos, clarity, misinformation about enemies due to conflation of Korsek Raptors and Wyverns.
5/2/2014: Added further explanation to Skill Management, as well as miscellaneous fixes. Also altered beginner recommendations for investing in special upgrades due to the lessened time gap between high-balance starter weapons and midgame weapons nowadays. Also removed the out-of-place indenting in the grind section (this isn't an essay, after all) and the inconsistent indenting elsewhere. Added recognition to the opposition. Added footnotes.
5/3/2014: Added additional footnote and moved information about why TNN and Their Method are poor options into the footnote section. Added bit about Beam weapons.
5/5/2014: One-hundred-sixty-nine plus one-hundred-seventy-seven doesn't equal one-hundred-sixty-nine.
5/7/2014: Few minor syntax errors and rewordings.
5/8/2014: More restructure of text, more clarifications. Added footnotes to Table of Contents. Changed indexing codes to also include letters as a precaution.
5/9/2014: Minor errors, such as double spaces, continue to show themselves. Tidbit about Pake was moved into footnotes. I'm continuing to maintain and oversee this guide if at a slower pace than when it was first created.
5/16/2014:  Hurray, finals are over! Removed redundant paragraph from introduction. Also changed Skill Management and the general tone of the section, due to being dumb and forgetting about the other new AP opportunities that are given out nowadays. Fixed a few dumb-sounding redundant sentences. Replaced multiple asterisk system with dagger + double dagger + pilcrow because why the fuck not? Added link to better Sword resource: I didn't realize Google's search result algorithms fuck with guides written on Steam, so here it is in case some of you missed it. I removed the beam swords footnote because it was a disgusting wall of text that the linked guide covered anyway.
5/21/2014: No, you're not screwed over for the rest of your fantasy life.
5/22/2014: Added link to Mabinogier's Monster CP Calculator.
5/26/2014: Made a few more minor edits. Created footnote for Comgan's PTJ. Removed Getting There from ToC because it was too small to warrant having its own section. Any professional editor will be having an autistic fit at my having a separate footnotes system for the Skills and Training section, so I'll smoothly edit those out. One day.
5/27/2014: Fixed broken footnotes. A little bit more miscellaneous editing. Added new section with alternatives that mentioned Ep5 and TOA.
6/17/2014: Been a while. Minor edits and movements. I'll possibly restructure this thing to include an FAQ instead if things get to that point.