This post was created as part of NEXON PEAK activities.

Part of the fun of playing a game is figuring out its systems one by one.
When I came across useful tips from other Mabinogi Mobile players,
I'd sometimes try them myself. One of those tips was “rune borrowing.”

I thought I'd been pretty careful about planning it out,
but I ended up spending a pile of gold and Rune Fragments
and messing up my gear setup for a while.

Today, I'm sharing the slightly embarrassing story of how rune borrowing caught me off guard.

🎲 What Exactly Is Rune Borrowing?

Mabinogi Mobile has an item called an Unknown Rune.
You can get one by collecting 100 Unknown Rune Fragments.
Using it gives you a random rune you haven't acquired yet.
It's a kind of pity system for when you're struggling to get the rune you want.

You get a set number of Unknown Rune Fragments when an attempt to upgrade an Epic Rune to a Legendary Rune fails,
or when you dismantle a Legendary Rune.

Season 1 also introduced a way to recover Legendary Runes engraved on gear.
If you engrave another rune on a piece of gear, you get the original rune back.
That gave players the idea for rune borrowing.

Once you've collected at least 80 Unknown Rune Fragments,

you recover a Legendary Rune from your gear and dismantle it.
Membership users get 20 fragments from dismantling a Legendary Rune,
which, combined with the fragments you've saved, is enough to make one more Unknown Rune.
“Rune borrowing” isn't an official name, of course—it's just what players call it.

★ Some of the screenshots below were recreated to help illustrate what happened ★

💸 Borrowed Rune, Empty Wallet

At the time, I'd saved up more than 80 Unknown Rune Fragments myself.
Having just learned about rune borrowing, I decided to give it a try.

Here's where I thought I was being clever.
I wanted to save my higher-grade runes to use as upgrade materials later.
So, to get the Legendary Rune back from my gear,
I replaced it with a 0-star rune, the lowest grade available.

I recovered and dismantled the Legendary Rune as planned,
then used the Unknown Rune to get a new rune.
All I had to do now was engrave the new rune on my gear.

Then I checked the engraving cost. That was a problem.
If I remember right, it needed more than 1 million gold.
I think it also required thousands of Rune Fragments.
I had about 800,000 gold at the time.

I couldn't afford to engrave the rune.

The gear I was using was already enhanced to around +15.
My guess is that the higher the gear's enhancement level and the wider the grade gap between the old and new runes,
the more the engraving cost shoots up.
I can't remember the exact cost now, but it was well beyond what I could afford at the time.

So there I was with a new rune I couldn't engrave on my gear.
For a while, I had to keep using my +15 gear with a 0-star rune engraved on it.
I had to save up gold and Rune Fragments again before I could engrave the Legendary Rune as planned.

I'd chosen a 0-star rune to save on upgrade materials,
only to end up spending a while gathering resources to make up for that choice...
Even now, thinking about it makes me sigh.

❓ Question: So How Should You Borrow Runes?

If you're thinking about rune borrowing, check the cost of engraving your new rune first.

Be especially careful if you're recovering a Legendary Rune from gear you actually use.
Higher enhancement levels and wider grade gaps between the runes you're swapping make the cost harder to cover.

Pick a 0-star rune to save on upgrade materials like I did,
and you could find yourself with an unexpected bill.
Rather than getting too caught up in saving runes for upgrades,
you're better off using a replacement rune only a grade or two lower when borrowing.
Check how much gold and how many Rune Fragments you'll need for engraving ahead of time, too.

🤦 Lesson Learned: Only Borrow What You Can Afford to Pay Back

My plan to get one more Unknown Rune worked.
I'd assumed I could engrave the new rune on my gear right away,
not that I'd end up stuck with a 0-star rune for a while because I was short on resources...

When you're new to a game, sometimes you learn how its systems work by stumbling through them yourself.
I certainly learned to account for the grade gap between runes when borrowing them.

If you're about to try rune borrowing, I hope my embarrassing mistake serves as a warning.
Getting your borrowed rune and then realizing you can't afford to engrave it is a pretty awkward spot to be in...