Mabinogi Trading System Guide

Mabinogi Trading System Guide by Majikaru

(Names used will be Japanese-English translations. I’ll change them to the NA names as people see what they are; please let me know of these changes!)

The System

Introduction

What is the trading system? In G15, a new currency (the Ducat) will be added to the game. These are not physical objects in the same way that gold is. The amount of ducats you have will be listed right below where the amount of gold is listed in your inventory. There is no limit to how many ducats you may hold (which, of course, is expected, as there isn’t any way to “deposit” ducats into a bank of some sort). The trading system is the only “real” method by which one can obtain ducats (exchanging robber scalps the other, but I’ll elaborate more on that later in this guide).

Starting Out

To begin your journey in the trading system, you must first know exactly where the trading posts are! These are marked clearly on the mini-map of every town. If, for whatever reason, you can’t find them based on this, then their locations are as follows:
Tir Chonaill – South near the moongate; just slightly northeast of the entrance to dugald
Dunbarton- A few steps northeast of the north gate
Port Cobh- Almost directly to your right as soon as you enter the map (from Dunbarton)
Tailteann- East of the east gate
Tara- Slightly northwest of the mission board
Emain Macha- Slightly north of the north gate
Bangor- It’s right there as soon as you enter the map (from Gairech)
Belfast- Southeast of the garden.

You are given 300 ducats with which to start trading.
Before you begin trading, though, there are some things you should know:

1. The price of the item (28395 ducats, in this case)
2. The weight of the item (180 weight)
3. How much the item stacks (In this case, this item is a 1-stack, so only one of these skeleton ogre armors will be able to fit in each slot.)
4. How many of the item is available for sale (795 skeleton ogre armors are in stock in this image). This number is a factor influencing the prices at which you can buy the item for, which in turn determines how much profit you can make from the item. Generally, as this number decreases, you must buy the item with more ducats, reducing the profit you can make (simple supply and demand here).
5. Self-explanatory here. The profit you gain per item at a particular town.
6. How much the item sells for at a particular town.
7. From top to bottom: How many of the item you are buying (7), how many ducats they cost in total (198765), how much weight the items take up in total (1260), and how many slots the items take up (7).
8. Your method of transportation (Backpack, handcart, horse [and cart], and elephant). You can click on the drop-down menu and select other modes of transportation as you see fit (Though, only the ones you’ve purchased already will be selectable).
9. Your weight capacity.
10. Your slots.
11. Your ducats.

To begin, simply go to ANY trading post that is convenient to you, and talk to the goblin NPC (Always the one in the middle). There are no limitations to where you must start or where you must end, other than that you may not sell items you buy back to the same trading post from which you bought it from.
Every trading post in each town has its own list of items. Each town typically specializes in one “type” of item:
Tir Chonaill- Potions
Dunbarton- Clothing
Port Cobh- Marine animals
Tailteann- Alchemy-related items
Tara- Furniture
Emain Macha- Food
Bangor- Mining-related items
Belfast- Weapons and armor

And no, these items are strictly trade-only. You can’t use them (unfortunately). In general, the types of items correspond with their stacking ability, their profit margin, and their weight (so, Tara and Bangor have furniture and ores. As you’d expect, these items tend to take up a lot of weight, stack in low numbers, but have a relatively high profit margin.)

When picking your items and towns, I’d suggest you have a calculator available to you (or absolutely amazing mental math skills). Even if an item seems to have a high profit margin, it may have a low stack limit and a ridiculous weight that will ultimately make it less profitable than if you were to choose another item to trade. Your expected profit for an item is simply its profit per item at your desired destination town multiplied by the quantity of the item you plan on buying. So, rather than buying the most expensive and highest-leveled items you can possibly buy, do the math first and see which items give you the best profit. Also be sure to consider how many slots your mode of transportation has – For some items (most notably, those of Tir Chonaill), it is in your best interest to carry them with a horse as opposed to elephant. This is because horses have 8 slots while elephants have only 7. If you are ever using an elephant and you realize that the total weight of the items you have is under 900 (the weight capacity of a horse), you should consider switching over to a horse.

The highest leveled items in each town are “limited” items. What this means is, there are VERY FEW of them in stock relative to the other items available, and these only restock once every two hours. So, for a server as populated as NA, you’d probably be very lucky if you can even catch these on sale. The only exception to this rule is in Belfast. Dark swords are only a level 1 item, and they are NOT limited items. But, they do have very low stock (Usually less than 200 immediately after they do restock). Unlike true limited items, dark swords in Belfast restock approximately every 5 minutes.

Once you have selected and purchased your goods, your character will enter “trading mode”. In this mode,ALL damage you do is cut in half, you are unable to summon pets, you may not enter housing channels (though you can still change channels), you may not use any sort of teleports (continent warping, goddess wings, beeswax wings) and bandit spawns will become visible to you.
Changing channels or relogging will not cause you to suffer any penalties. Your load will remain fully intact and you can continue your trading as usual, unless you are in ambush mode.
Under normal circumstances, once you have been ambushed, changing channels, relogging, or otherwise “fleeing” the scene somehow will give you a 25% item penalty (as if you had been robbed). There are some strange exceptions to this rule that may happen under extreme lag.
In addition, an imp will “talk” to you along your journey. His dialogue doesn’t really serve much of a purpose, but, for the first few days it’s… amusing.

“kokkurikokkuri (Laughter, maybe? Or maybe it’s snoring?). Imp final hit! Imp meteor! Imp windbreaker!”

Your goal is simple- to reach the trading post of your destination town without getting robbed. This is actually quite easy, as all this requires is for you to:
Either completely avoid all bandit spawns, or,
Kill any bandits that do spawn.

The first option is very very easy in most situations. The bandits are ridiculously easy to spot visually, and you are further aided by a big CAUTION warning and heartbeat sound effects. The heartbeats work in a similar way L-rods do- the closer you are to the bandit spawn, the faster and louder the heartbeats are, the closer you are to the spawn. So, upon receiving any of these cues, you can simply look for the VERY obvious bandit spawn and move around it. You can get pretty close to the spawn without having the bandits appear, so this isn’t really all that difficult (unless you’re traveling through a very narrow map where you can’t exactly go around the spawn… Osna Sail, mainly).

I’m PRETTY SURE that’s an authentic rock!

But, inevitably, you’ll get bored and you’ll stop paying attention, or you’ll pass through Osna Sail a few times. So then the bandits will spawn and you’ll have no choice but to fight them, unless you want to lose 25% of your goods.
25% of your goods is huuuuuuge! If you’re carrying THE expensive stuff, you could lose hours of mindless ducat grind in that 25%. I guess 50k ducats isn’t really hours, but it’s still a pretty substantial amount of time.
So, in this case, you’d better be able to kill these bandits. The strength and quantity of the bandits depends on your current distance from your starting town, and the value of the items you are carrying. Generally, an increase in either will result in stronger bandits, and a higher quantity of bandits.
Bandit strengths, from weakest to strongest, are: THE weakest (an imp with literally about 10 hp that ALWAYS spawns alone), to novice bandits, 2nd-year bandits, experienced bandits, veteran bandits, and first-class bandits.

Excluding the weakest bandits, the hp values for the others increases in a style similar to that of shadow missions (that is, the next-strongest bandit type will usually have about 2x the hp).
So, the weakest bandits will have 10 hp. Novice bandits have around 200 hp. 2nd-year bandits have around 400 hp. Experienced bandits have around 800 hp. Veteran bandits have around 1600 hp. Finally, first-class bandits have 3200 hp.

The bandits have a generally straightforward AI. No more than two bandits will attempt stealing from your load at a time, and no more than two bandits will aggro you at a time. Bandit goblins sometimes love spamming normal attacks, so if you are stuck in this situation, windmill them away. Treat them like regular goblins. Bandit archers are just like goblin archers. Bandit giants and humans have a simple AI, similar to skeletons, in that windmilling them away causes their AI to reset. Bandit imps tend to spam various bolts, and will run around you in very annoying ways.
Asides from these normal bandits, sometimes, a boss bandit will spawn with them. These boss bandits have greatly increased hp compared to the other bandits, but otherwise are essentially the same. There are two types of bosses- one which is a human, and one which is an ogre. Both are easily killed with windmill spam, as most of the regular bandits are.

Other players may assist you in defeating these bandits, regardless of whether they themselves are trading, or if they are not. However, players who are not in trading mode will not have their damage cut in half.

While you are fighting the bandits, you should still be wary of bandits stealing from your load. You can easily tell which bandits are stealing from your load, as they will load a skill (you’ll even be able to SEE the skill bubble), run to your load, then execute the skill as if they were “gathering” (that is, their skill bubble will shrink and expand). After a few seconds, they will “succeed”. Each successful “gather” will add one star to the bandit that successfully “gathered”. After a bandit reaches 5 stars, they will load another skill (which, again, you can see), after which they will attempt to run away. They will start out walking very slowly, so if you are in the unfortunate position of having a bandit reach 5 stars, THIS is your final chance to save your load. After a while, the bandit will begin to speed up, then disappear along with 25% of your load. Thankfully, this 25% reduction only applies once; if two bandits reach 5 stars and both get away, your load will only suffer a 25% reduction, rather than a 50% reduction.

Upon killing a bandit, there is a chance for them (except for that nubby 10hp imp) to drop robber scalps. These can be exchanged for ducats at the imp NPCs at any trading post.
Novice and 2nd-year bandits will drop the generic regular robber scalps, exchangeable for 10 ducats.
Experienced and Veteran bandits will drop middle-grade robber scalps, exchangeable for 100 ducats.
First-class bandits will drop high-grade robber scalps, exchangeable for 1000 ducats.
For reasons I’ll state later in the guide, I would suggest that you pick up all the scalps you get, and that you DO NOT exchange these scalps for ducats.

Once you reach your destination, simply talk to the goblin NPC there and sell your goods.
Once you do so, this little thing at the right will appear:

In order from top to bottom, they are:
How many ducats you sold your goods for.
How much exp you got. (For REAL levels! As you can see, it’s truly substantial as… well, I’m lv 116 right now)
The exp formula is:
Exp = (single item profit * single item weight)^0.5[rounded down] * item quantity * 30

How much gold you got (which, is equal to your profit, in ducats)
How much trust level experience you got for your initial town (which, is equal to your profit in gold, and ducats)
This exp goes towards your town trust levels.

As you gain trust levels for a particular town, you unlock higher-leveled items for that town. In all cases, by the time you obtain level 7 trust in a particular town, you will have unlocked all of the available items on the town’s item list. For many towns, you can achieve this at just level 6. At level 5 trust, you get a 1% discount on items bought from that particular town. At level 7 trust, you get a 2% discount. Finally, at level 9 trust, you get a 3% discount. (These discounts are not cumulative- that is, you do not get a 3% discount at lv7, and a 6% discount at lv9.)
Level 9 trust is effectively the maximum trust level.

Once you’ve obtained enough ducats, you can buy another mode of transportation. These are available at the ogre NPC at any trading post. Of course, don’t buy them the moment you can- buy them once you have earned enough to ducats to pay for it, AND have enough ducats left over to continue trading unhindered (since, you need to spend ducats to make ducats!). The same idea applies when you decide to buy anything that requires ducats.

And that’s all you’ll need to know to get started.

Transportation

It’s annoying, right? Carrying goods on your back is just SO slow, with just 4 slots and a 400 weight limit.
Well, when you earn enough ducats, you’ll be able to buy new modes of transportation from the ogre NPC at any trading post.

When you start out, you must carry goods on your back. This mode of transportation, as mentioned, has 4 slots and a 400 weight limit. Its speed is approximately 80~88% that of your regular running speed.

Once you get 3k ducats, you’ll be able to buy a handcart. This increases your slot count to 6, and your weight limit to 800. Its speed is about the same as your running speed.

Once you get 100k ducats, you’ll be able to buy a horse (and cart). You get 8 slots and a 900 weight limit. Its speed is comparable to that of a shire.

Once you get 350k ducats, you’ll be able to buy the last mode of transportation- the Elephant. These have only 7 slots, and move slower than the horse (about the same speed as an elf), but their weight capacity is a sizable 1700.

Transportation options are a one-time purchase. Once you have bought one, you do not need to pay ducats afterwards to use the purchased mode of transportation.

Routes

You are free to choose to go to any town you wish from any town you wish, but there are some towns that I feel are worth being in EVERYONE’S main trade route.

These towns are Belfast, Tailteann, and Bangor.

Although Belfast does not turn up that great of a profit at the start, once you reach level 5, you will gain access to skeleton ogre armors. Although these are expensive, weigh a lot, and have a stack number of only 1, their profit margin is quite sizable. I’d suggest you reach this benchmark as soon as possible. When the trading system is first released, these things will get you about 2.5k ducats profit each, assuming your destination is Tailteann. At 5 of these (with a horse), and 7 of these (with an elephant), that’s about 12.5~17.5k profit. To put this into perspective, a “high” profit can be considered anything above 10k in a single stop.

Now, what if you don’t have a horse, nor an elephant? That shouldn’t be a problem, because by the time you get level 5 in Belfast, you should have earned more than enough ducats for at least a horse. Another incentive to level Belfast as fast as possible- once you reach level 7, you gain access to Morgant Helms. These are limited items. Yet, despite this, if you ever see these on stock, you will want to buy these. Even though you can only carry 42 of them at most (with an elephant!), they have SUCH a good profit margin that it is possible to get over 19k ducats in profit.

Tailteann follows a similar trend. It does not turn up that great of a profit at the start. However, once you reach level 4 trust in Tailteann, you will gain access to Palala crystals. They weigh little, and stack high. Despite their significantly lower profit margin (15~25 profit per crystal), the fact that you can carry so many of them ends up getting you quite sizable profits. On an elephant, a full load of these can get you at least 10k profit at Emain Macha.

Bangor, once again, starts off slowly. Bangor items have a high weight and low stack, but not quite to the extent that Belfast items do. The profit margins for each of Bangor’s items are quite good (excluding Lead). Items of interest in Bangor are marble, yellow quartz, and highlander ores. With an elephant, all three of these items can quite easily net you 10k profit or more at Belfast.

As you could probably figure out from the above, a Belfast-Tailteann-Bangor route is suitable. But, the journeys from Belfast to Tailteann and Tailteann to Bangor are quite long!

So, if you so choose to, you can stop by Tir Chonaill and Emain Macha along the way:
Belfast-Tir Chonaill-Tailteann-Emain Macha-Bangor.

Both Tir Chonaill and Emain Macha offer items that will offer you reasonable profit. But, how would you know when it would be okay to stop by these towns?

Simply put- if your expected profit from Belfast-Tailteann is similar to that from Belfast-Tir Chonaill, then you wouldn’t take more time nor lose more profit if you chose to stop by Tir Chonaill. Under similar conditions, you could stop by Emain Macha.

To get from Tailteann to Emain Macha, I suggest going back to Dunbarton, then passing through Osna Sail. To get from Emain Macha to Bangor, either passing through Osna Sail, then Dunbarton, then Gairech, or passing through Senmag, then Gairech, would be fine. The difference between either path is a few seconds, and passing through Senmag eliminates the looming danger of bandits in Osna Sail.

These are only suggestions for routes, and these are the routes that I use myself, so I have a particular bias towards them. You still have complete freedom over which towns you choose to visit!

Miscellaneous Information

Ducat Shop
The place where you buy stuff with ducats, accessed through the imp NPC. Items of interest include upgrade stones (250k ducats for red, 400k ducats for blue), ALL treasures of falias (Ideal), Dews, Rain, and Storm of Falias (630k, 630k, and 1M ducats, respectively), fomorian weapons, and “special items”. These special items include:
Mercy Mace (1.2M ducats)
White Wing Staff (1.2M ducats)
Metalware Restoration Toolkit (Removes metalware upgrades for “only” 80k ducats!)
Spellbook repair feather (The only way to repair Ladeca/Palala/Eweca spellbooks, for 130k ducats.)
The above items are always available in the shop.
Items that are not always available in the shop (like weapons in Edern’s advanced weapons tab) include…
Various fomor weapon-exclusive enchants
Tethra (The sword Tethra uses, maybe?)
Masterpiece Bow
Tyrfing
Venom Sword

I believe Caladbolg is a G15 S2 item.

There is also a quest scroll tab, containing quest scrolls sold for ducats.
Important ones to note include the quest scrolls for Magma enchant, and Ambush enchant.
The Magma ES quest scroll requirement is 150 Belfast seals, obtained via Belfast daily quests. One of these daily quests involves the trade system, particularly Kinu’s daily in which you must defeat a bandit ogre.
The Belfast seals can also be obtained by increasing your Belfast trust level. By talking to a certain NPC (Next to Admiral Owen), you receive quests to reach the next Belfast trust level, up to level 9, which give some seals as rewards.

The requirements for obtaining the Ambush enchant are 100 high-grade (gold) robber scalps. See, THIS is where saving all your robber scalps comes into play! Even GETTING first-class bandits to spawn is quite a rare situation, so getting these is immensely difficult. However, the imp NPC allows you to trade robber scalps in exchange for higher-grade scalps. Therefore, you are able to convert your regular robber scalps and middle-grade robber scalps into high-grade scalps.
10 regular robber scalps can be exchanged for 1 middle-grade robber scalp, and 10 middle-grade robber scalps can be exchanged for one high-grade scalp.
Alternatively, if you had turned them in for ducats, a regular robber scalp would’ve gotten you 10 ducats, a middle-grade robber scalp would’ve gotten you 100 ducats, and a high-grade scalp would’ve gotten you 1000 ducats.

Ignoring the cost of the Ambush ES quest scroll (400k ducats), 100 high-grade robber scalps for the ES…
Considering how good it is, one would expect it to be worth a great deal of gold (which, it is in foreign servers).
100 high-grade robber scalps can be exchanged for 100k ducats.
100k ducats (500k ducats total, including quest scroll price) is NOT worth millions and millions and millions of gold.
So, it’s in your best interest to hoard up all your robber scalps!

Random Tips
1. Since your character runs with the bag and the cart, using demigod WILL speed up your character, if you are using either the bag or the cart. To do this, simply put down your load (Press the same key as you would to mount/unmount a pet), use demi, then pick up your load.
2. Occasionally, if you lag and your load is “unmounted” for whatever reason (you spawn bandits, or otherwise), the position of your load will desync. That is, you see your load in one place, but the server recognizes it as being in another. Therefore, if you try to pick up your load, you may be unable to do so, as the server does not recognize you as being close enough to your load. To fix this, simply change channels or relog.

Conclusion

So there you have it. A guide to the trading system. As the main method of earning ducats, you’ll probably end up spending a lot of time trading. Even moreso if you’re aiming for Tyrfing or Caladbolg or any of the other special weapons. I hope this guide has helped you in your quest for many many kiloducats!

Constructive criticism and feedback is appreciated. Thank you for reading!