This post was created as part of NEXON PEAK activities.

Hey! It's 곤류찡! 🤨 This is my emoji!

Seen this emoji somewhere before? Yep.
It's the same one 아이찡 from A2O LITE used.
But I've got my own reason for picking it!

When I play games,

I'm not one to jump straight into someone else's guide or recommended build.
I'd rather dive in and experiment for myself.
Even when everyone says there's a right way to do something, I can't help wondering until I've tried it myself...

So here are two stories that pretty much sum up my playstyle.

🤨 Guides can wait! Going in blind is the best part

Whenever Mabinogi Mobile adds new combat content, I do my best to tackle it without looking up a guide.
You only get one chance to experience something new knowing absolutely nothing about it, after all.
Getting caught off guard by unfamiliar patterns and figuring things out through party wipes? That's an important part of gaming, too!

The problem is, dodging spoilers on release day is really hard.
Twitter, community forums, YouTube—even the in-game world chat is flooded with strategy talk.
Sometimes the party members I get matched with explain the mechanics to me, too.

But... I don't want to know yet ㅠㅠ
That's why I tend to get up early and look for a blind-run party whenever new content drops.
On update days, I'll sometimes log in the moment the servers open and jump straight into the combat content.
That's how I tackled the recently added '적월의 스카스' raid, too.

🌙 Wait, skipping the guide made the boss harder?

적월의 스카스 brings back 스카스, the boss from Season 0's Math Abyss dungeon, as a raid encounter.
Math Abyss got a lot of praise for its fun, challenging mechanics,
but when the news broke that 스카스 was returning as a raid boss,
plenty of people worried we'd just get the same patterns with more HP and attack power.
Then I actually faced it. Well, surprise!
It was using several of those Math Abyss mechanics all at once.

In a lot of Mabinogi Mobile's recent combat content, you can take a fair few boss hits and still survive.
Not with 적월의 스카스. Its attacks hit so hard that even with a healer, staying alive was a struggle.
With multiple patterns happening at once, we had to focus more on dodging than attacking to get the clear.
After about two wipes, our blind-run party finally scraped through.

Then I checked other players' guides after the clear—and got quite a shock.
During 스카스's Soul Absorption mechanic, snake, knight, and ogre souls appear at the three corners of the triangular arena.
If the party focuses fire on a soul and defeats it, you can make the boss absorb only that soul.
If you don't defeat any of them, though, 스카스 absorbs all the souls and starts using new attack patterns.

· Ogre: Fires red orbs in succession, applying a debuff on hit that increases damage taken
· Knight: Pulls players into the center, then attacks with straight-line waves, circular sword energy, and more
· Snake: Uses a rotating area attack, followed by snakes that chase players

The scarier part? Those absorbed souls' patterns keep coming back for the rest of the fight.
Soul Absorption happens up to three times as the boss loses HP,
but if it absorbs all three souls the first time, you're stuck dealing with three extra sets of patterns right from the start.

Since our party hadn't read a guide, we didn't realize Soul Absorption was something we could counter.
Coordinating which soul to attack mid-fight was tricky, too, so we ended up facing 스카스 with all three souls' patterns mixed together.
Still, no regrets. Sure, a guide would have made the clear much easier,
but I'll never get that same experience of going in blind and dodging every pattern under the sun again!

⚖ 9 out of 10 Monks use this rune. But me?

I love figuring out strategies for myself, and tinkering with my character's gear and rune setups is no different.
The go-to Monk build in Mabinogi Mobile right now uses the accessory rune Causality to make the skill Rush count as a basic attack,
then boosts extra hits from basic attacks and attack speed.
The key runes are Platinum Scales for the emblem, plus Zeal and Scorch for armor.

Rune	Usage rate
Zeal	92.2%
Platinum Scales	90.8%
Scorch	89.8%

Those are the Monk rune usage rates I found in the in-game Adventurer Opinions section.
Me? Instead of Platinum Scales, I use Liberation, which sits in the 2% range.

I didn't set out determined to run a different build from everyone else.
When Season 2 started and I looked through the rune list, I thought Platinum Scales had plenty of potential, too.
But of all 10 emblem runes I collected, guess which one showed up last? Platinum Scales...
That left me using Liberation in the meantime, and I naturally got used to playing around it.
When I finally got Platinum Scales, I figured I could switch to the standard build—but weirdly enough, I preferred Liberation.

🔬 My own results matter more than the go-to build

Platinum Scales increases the chance of extra hits from basic attacks, along with their damage.
Liberation, meanwhile, boosts multi-hit damage and grants an additional effect while Night's Blessing is active.

I switched back and forth between the two runes in solo raid mode and compared my clear times.
I tested them several times, taking cues from other Monks' builds along the way,
but on my character, Liberation came out about 10 seconds faster on average.
The times varied a bit, but across all those comparisons, Platinum Scales never beat Liberation.

My Liberation build is all about timing Night's Blessing.
Monks can keep fighting reasonably well without using the skills that trigger Night's Blessing,
so I can save those two skills for Break Extend and activate the blessing then.
Fighting with two skills off-limits does feel a little frustrating,
but triggering Night's Blessing when it's time to focus my damage lets me benefit from Liberation and runes like 'First Oath' together.

Of course, I'm not saying Liberation is always better than Platinum Scales.
The extra hits from Platinum Scales are chance-based, so results can change from fight to fight.
Or maybe I've just used Liberation for so long that its playstyle feels more natural to me.
Honestly, I do wonder if I'm simply not getting the most out of Platinum Scales.

Every character has different stats and rune combinations, and every player has their own choice of skills and approach to combat.
Someone else's best build isn't guaranteed to give my character the best results!
So even when I draw on other players' research, I still like to test things myself in the end.

🤨 In the end, I just have to try it myself

When a new raid drops, I jump in blind before reading any guides.
Even if a rune has a usage rate above 90%, I'll experiment to see if another combination works better for my character.
Thinking about it, maybe I do make gaming a little more exhausting for myself.
A guide could make the clear easy, and copying a build someone else has researched could save me time...

But I can't quite give up the fun of figuring out new content for myself,
or the satisfaction of getting a better time with a build I've worked on.
So when new content comes out, I'll probably still look for a blind-run party before I look for a guide.