UPDATED 2010
Old Guide Found Here
Fairyland Mage/Archmage Guide
Version 1.0, 9/8/2009
By SonozakiMion (Modified for easy reading ^^)
::Forewords::
I'm writing this guide for people who have been playing for some time and already know the basics. But if you're ever confused with something I said, or if you feel like stat-hoaring and want exact formulas, I'm writing down a few of the sites I use a lot. I'll refer to Fairyland Wiki within this guide, and the other referred websites are listed at the bottom of this page.
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Table of Contents
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1: Stats
--- 1.1: Stats option 1
--- 1.2: Stats option 2
--- 1.3: Other thoughts
2: Pets
--- 2.1: Magic, Armor and Arms Pets
--- 2.2: Combat Pets
--- 2.3: Resetting Pets
3: Temple Faith
4: Training
--- 4.1: Training EXP
--- 4.2: Training EC
5: Side Characters that you should consider getting
--- 5:1: You definitely want an AoD
--- 5.2: You probably want a Trader
--- 5.3: You could want an AoL
6: Fame
--- 6.1: It's good to be famous. No, it's absolutely necesary to be famous.
--- 6.2: Ways to get fame
7: Rebirth
--- 7.1: What it does
--- 7.2: A list of things you should have before being reborn
--- 7.3: Practical times of rebirth
8: How strong is Mage?
9: Finally have a good mage. Now what?
10: Author clarification

Before we begin:
The most important advice in this game that I can give is: Don’t do things alone. The thing I love most about this game is how wonderfully nice people are. Just ask, and people will help you with almost anything, such as advice, power-leveling, boss killing, sometimes quests.

1. STATS

To put it very simply, all mages need at least 250 DEX to be faster than Pwar wood mobs. Even though you only need low 100’s to be faster than wiki monsters, you still need 250. Trust me for now. I will explain in more detail in section 7.2a why you want to be faster than wood mobs in Pwar.

1.1 Stats option 1
Option 1 for getting good stats is based on using regems and dreamlike lvl 60 -70 -80 equipments. Then what if you have some and regmemmed them to lvl 3 or higher? You can put ZERO points into DEX and be perfectly fine. Here’s why: A level 60 or 70 dreamlike hat will give you around 45-48 DEX when reinforced to level 6. Same with the book, the level 40 or 50 fantastic ring/necklace. If you have all of those, your DEX will be easily over 250 even if you don’t put any points in. If your equipment is all reinforced to level 8 or above, your DEX will be over 450 without anything put in, and you’ll be faster than Pwar water monsters.

1.2 Stats option 2
What if you don’t have any dreamlike equipments? Unfortunately, you still need 250 DEX. Assuming, 1/6 of your random rolls will fall onto DEX, and that you’re level 71, a calculation shows that if you go pure DEX, you will have just enough. If you a some point do get high-DEX equipment, you can always reborn and go pure-INT. See section 7 for reborn.

1.3 Other Thoughts
Of course, this 250+ DEX business is not the only build. For example, there are archmages who have 700+ DEX, and I’d assume that they did it for two reasons: to be extremely fast at PK, and to avoid missing when powerleveling at wiki. On the other hand, some people might be satisfied with just 130-ish DEX if they never plan on Pwarring. The 250+ DEX build will suit most people though. Also it helps if you make your own equipment at low levels already and make sure they boost a decent +3 - +8 dex (and pref. con and int) This will help raising your dex a little (if not as much as dreamlike gear) and help you get a little bit more HP and MP leveling up.

2. PETS

Most guides currently available will say things like pie aibo is good for armor, and gem crawler is good for combat. But remember that I’m writing this guide with the assumption that you’re either above level 50 or will find someone to powerlevel you to above level 50.

2.1 Magic, Armor and Arms Pets
For your magic pet, as long as it’s a fire int/int pet, you’re fine. An extra bonus to you if it has goodwill. To get a fire int/int, you have to either buy it at the market, or fuse it with a pet nutrient (look at Pet fusing page).
An example is a fire swallow.

For your armor pet, you will can use an earth pet (con /luck) to increase both your defence and dodging.
Examples: earth bomb (aibo), earth slug (they have hp transfer and fullheal), guardian angel and others.
The reason you want earth instead of wood is that in Pwar, golden needle and Hephaestus (Metal and Fire based attacks) will wipe you out for 5-7k damage. Another smaller reason is that once you’re reasonably strong, nothing (not even wiki monsters) will do significant damage to you. You will want more dodge instead of defence to save the durability on your items.
Of course if you don't plan on doing Pwar you can also go for a con/con pet. Example: wood baby.
For your weapon you don't need any pet, it has no effect on Magical attacks (and you really do not want to hit monsters to death, mages are not suited for the job.).

2.2 Combat Pets
Try to get a beastlord to catch a coin skunk or golden mushroom for you (level 4 Capsule). Here’s why: they’re the most useful pet in Pwar with golden needles. (To understand why, see the Pwar section in the Fairy Wiki website).
Outside of Pwar a mage doesn't really need a combat pet, but you can always go for one that can heal (white cat, light owl), or one that can use curse, sacrifice, full heal, transfer HP, or just do mass damage

2.3 Resetting Pets
You may want to consider resetting your fire int/int magic pet, to obtain bonus statpoints.
Of course the first option is fusing 2 equal pets together at a higher level (40+, both) and then raise it again from lvl 1 up
When your pet is level 70+, use a Pet Coffee, downgrade soda or cola to reset the pet and obtain bonus statpoints. Wiki will get your pet to 7X pretty easily if that’s the only pet you have out when training.
If you coffee with a mythyst gem, your pet will be level 1 with around 65-70 int. The higher the pet level, the better the starting stat is.
If you already have good equipment and can still afford cola, then do so. I coffeed my pet at level 72, then cola-ed it at level 80. It started at level 1 with 123 int.

About pet toys, it’s worth it if you can find some easy way of getting those dolls (SOD friends). Have either a friend help to hunt them with you, or get a luck trader and hunt. Incidentally, the best places to hunt for obsidian ores is either Castle B3, or Ancient Ruins B10.

2.4 Fusing Pets Into Equipment
Make sure you fuse your pets into your equipment before reinforcing them. Also, before you fuse, make sure you’ve named your pet whatever name you want your equipment to have.
If you find that the wiki mobs are doing way more damage than they should be doing, you probably would want to fuse a CON/CON pet into your armor. If wiki mobs don’t do any damage to you, you would probably want to fuse a LUCK pet in for dodge. You could also fuse in whatever element you want more resistance against. For example, Fusing a flame tiger into your armor won’t give you much defense or AC, but it still will give you the fire resistance that can be magnified by reinforcing the armor afterwards.
As for your wand, there is no need, unless you want to become the first mage to one hit KO monsters. ;-)

3. TEMPLE FAITH

To learn meteor blast, you need 15,000 fire faith points. A lot of people (including me), wonder exactly how much the points increase damage by. It seems like if you have barely any points, it’s easy to increase your power with faith points. But if you have a high amount (like over 100k), it’s very hard to keep raising your power with faith points.

The best advice I can offer you on faith points is to get around 50-70k. Anything past that and you’re much better off spending your time training EC, pet level, and character level.

If you’re like me and want to get onto the fire faith ranking list, here’s a tip: The more LUK you have, the more points each quest is going to give you.

4. TRAINING

4.1 Training EXP
This game actually has a really friendly EXP system. The more members there are in your party, the more exp each person gets. That’s why everybody wants to train in maxed parties.
The ideal thing to do is to have friends or nice strangers power level you until 60. After that, you may either choose to have a very patient friend powerlevel you to 71, or you can train EC, learn Hephaestus, and power level yourself to 71. After that, using Pwar points to get to level 80 is pretty easy.

As a mage, you will be power leveling a LOT of people after you get meteor blast. Of course this means lots of exp for yourself too. In my opinion, it is very much worth it to invest in a EXP set. For example, my gloves gives +25% exp, necklace gives +21% exp, and ring gives +17% exp. (I refuse to wear exp shoes because meteor costs 250 MP and I must have my regen boots to avoid using expensive potions.)
On a side note, the Rat King has a chance to drop a ring that gives + 18% exp. Wisteria points out that if you reinforce the Rat King exp ring, it'll actually DECREASE the exp on it, because it will turn the ring back into a regular drop.

4.2 Training EC (element control)
Every mage’s nightmare. There isn’t really any easy way to do this. There are however a few options:
Option1) Find a SOD just for dark ritual
Head into the Gion newbie dungeon. The main reason is that the dungeon has a healer there so you can train at maximum speed without poisoning yourself with potions (both expensive).
When you (finally) reach level 50 EC, do the exact same thing, except with Hephaestus.
After a month, (I’m not kidding. It really does take a month of DR-ing in the newbie dungeon to get EC to 65. Two weeks if you have fighting dolls) you’ll finally enjoy the most powerful spell in the game.

Option 2) Don't bother on leveling EC, get yourself from lvl 50 to lvl 60 (and be sure you have lots of FAME to reduce leveling costs! Then get yourself some nice gear (dreamlike gear) with medicine and food effect. (not really necessary, but this will increase the leveling speed).
Now find a lvl 70 AOL with Rain of Grace. Go to a place with lvl 70 mobs (e.g. lotus pond) and let the AOL kill all, except one (we are assuming here the AOL misses once in a while). Now with only 1 standing and an AOL beside you to heal when necessary, WOTL away! Drain your mana, then let the AOL kill the last standing oppponent. This will get you a steady flow of EC points. Using fighting dolls will speed up the proces, as will the combination of medicine / food effect and using MP food and potions in between battles.
NoteThis method is bad for any gear you and the Aol are wearing.

Option 3) Use either one of previous options to get your EC to 56, then go to Castle Pernot together with you SOD friend with Paralysis. Use ARES to kill all but 1 of the Mimics, then use Iceworm on it, while the Sod uses Paralysis every few turns.
Note: Disabling your INT INT fire pet will result in dealing 1 dmg (or very low).
Advantage: Does not ruin gear, both you and Sod level their skill (although Sod much less).
Disadvantage: Need of many high level potions (or 60fb) while using AFD/FD, and Antidote Ex, or you won't make the full hour (out of mana). Without Med gear, you will depend on your Regenboots, which takes too much time (so use med gear and boots and pots and antidote).

5. SIDE CHARACTERS

5.1 AOD
Dark Ritual! The best thing ever! If you take an AoD into the Gion newbie dungeon to train dark magic in, it will take you approximately 10-12 hours to get level 40 dark magic. But I urge you to do it. It’s just that good. It shortens the time you need to train EC and EXP. Wiki parties will love you.
You will want a transfer hp/fullheal pet on your aod for healing. Since mine is purely for DR and will never become an actual char, I had him go pure con for survivability in case I misclick at wiki. He stays at level 50 forever for two reasons: 1) He has no fame. 2) Lower level party members means more exp for you.

5.2 Trader
The Bargaining skill is how I earn a lot of my money. Ivory charms usually sell for 1125 each. With bargaining, it sells for 1800. I have my trader buy ivory and gold sand, metalwork some gilded gold, then make ivory charms to sell. Every 60 gilded gold I make will result in 54k money earned. Since gilded gold is a level 25 product, it doesn’t take very long to make. Not bad, right?

To get bargaining, prepare 300k on your trader and have your friend or a nice stranger take your trader to wiki. Every time he misses a monster, you get to cast bribe on it and instantly level your trading skill. The higher level the monster, the more exp bribe will give you. It’ll take around half an hour to get to level 30 trading.
Credits to Sylvari for teaching me this method of earning money.
Another reason to have a trader is to item-find. When leveling up the trader, put everything into luk, give it a cheap goodwill pet (black sheep), and learn looting. If you’re dedicated, you can turn the trader into a merchant prince with magnet and level 60 dreamlike luk equipment. (Your mage will be able to wear most of those for faith questing as well). You can easily find rare items like the dolls you need to complete your pet toy, the cards you need to help upgrade your clan, and little grey kitties for more money.

5.3 AOL
This is really just for rainbow bridge. Set one at wiki, one at fire temple if you’re doing faith quests, and one wherever else is useful. Training light magic is relatively easy compared to EC and even DM, so you’ll be fine there. It will still take like 8-10 hours.

6. FAME

6.1 Fame Is Necessary
You need a minimum fame of 21k to level to 51 with minimum charge. For every 1000 fame you’re missing, they charge you around 5k extra gold. You can see that if you linger at 0 fame, you’ll have to pay absolutely ridiculous prices by the time you get to level 60.

6.2 Ways To Get Fame
Easy way: Quests will get you up to 20k fame. I recommend starting with Veggie, then Redhood, then RBC, then GB/Illium, then all the random ones scattered in the wilderness.

Good way: Kill bosses. First time killing a boss will give you 500 fame. There’s the rat king, slime king, white kitty, saggy lion, and slug, not to mention 10 or so ancient ruins bosses.

Occasional way: if you have Hephaestus at level 60, you have a very good chance of winning any kingdom war (blue war) you attend. Each will give you around 1000 fame.

Costly way: When the Procurement Officers announce that they’re buying something, go into a warehouse and buy that item from the Logistics Trader, and then give it to the Procurement Officer.

Calculated way: Make loads of some working skill item (not too high level) and when the Procurement Officers announce that they’re buying something, go into the warehouse and supply it.

High-Level Way: After level 71, Attend Pwars for fame. I doubt you’ll need it by then, but still.

Impossibly Hard Way: Kill Little Grey Kitty! The formula for Kitty fame is levelx5, so killing a level 102 kitty will give you 510 fame. The reason I call it the impossibly hard way is that Kitty’s hp is Level x 2000. So a level 102 kitty will have 204k hp. Wonderful.
(Incidentally, I’m one of the few people who can kill kitty by myself. It drops double the gold, gives the amount of fame described above, and a pet lottery card.)

7. Rebirth

7.1 What It Does
Reborning is like resetting your pet with coffee, except you’re resetting yourself with money. Your level goes back to 1, your stats start off based on a formula that can be found on the Fairy Wiki website, and you keep your EC, faith points, and fame. However, you do lose your archmage spells and will have to quest for them again at level 60.
Reborning costs 1 mil the first time, 4 mil the second time, etc. The cost is 3 mil more than previous reborn. I heard from a lot of people that reborn cost used to be a lot cheaper, so people were able to reborn many many times. Now it’s really hard.

7.2 A List of Things You Should Have Before Rebirth

PWAR POINTS: See Fairy Wiki for Everything You Need to Know About Pwar
One of the Pwar rewards is exp given by the formula level x 1600 per point.). If you get enough Pwar points, you could re-level back up to the level you want very quickly. Again, see the Fairy Wiki site to find out how many points you need to re-level back to the level you want.
This section may be a bit confusing to those of you who have never reborn before, so I’ll use myself as an example. When I was reborn, I wanted to relevel back to level 80. I checked Fairy wiki and found out I needed 3450 points if I change class at 70.

Why change class at 70 when you could do it at 60? Turns out that if you level past 60 without turning into an Archmage, you get no stat points. Only HP and MP. When you reach level 70, and then turn into an Archmage, you get down-graded to level 60 again. But, the important part is that you keep all the HP and MP that you gained. It will cost extra money because you have to pay the leveling fee again, and it will cost extra Pwar points, but many people (including me) feel that it’s worth it.
One more thing to note: You can’t actually level up using Pwar points. You can use points until you’re very close to leveling up. The tiny amount of remaining exp you’ll need to get on your own.

(I promised an explanation for section 1 when I said that Archmages need at least 250 DEX. Turns out that Pwar wood mobs can cast all sorts of nasty things on you, such as paralyze, silence, and 456. Nobody will want you in their Pwar parties if you’re slower than the wood monsters. And if nobody wants you in their parties, you can’t get points fast enough to be reborn when you want to.)

CON EQ & POT: Don't Put Points In Con
There are plenty of ways to get con. You should save your precious attribute points on stats that matter. The two main ways of getting con for levelups are CON pots (Millennium Elixir) and CON equipment. Dig around the GB market. CON pots go for around 40-50k each.

As for CON equipment, you can also make an ordinary level 1 conset, and refine a few times. (8 equipments x around 4 con each = +32 con. Pretty good already). If you’re rich, you can buy a dreamlike level 60 hat with con on it, and use armor downgrade enamels to de-level it to under level 5. (For some reason, level 1 characters can wear equipment that have been downgraded to level 5). You can also buy a fantastic starlight staff (level 40), and downgrade that too. Of course, after you downgrade them, you should reinforce them too.

Make sure you have all your con equipment and conpots and money ready and in your inventory BEFORE you are reborn, because after you reborn, you will not be allowed to make any trades if you're over your weight limit. You won't even be allowed to receive money from people if you're over your limit.

MONEY: Rebirth Makes You Poor
Rebirth the first time costs 1 mil (1,000,000) the second time costs 4 mil, the third costs 9 mil, and so on (3mils more than previous rebirth). Even if you’re on your first rebirth, there’s still the cost of about 20 CON pots (1 mil), 20 INT pots (1 mil), level-up fees (2-3 mil depending on what level you want to get back up to). You should prepare around 5-6 mil for your first rebirth.

LEECH OFF A FRIEND
Since it’s very inefficient to use Pwar points before level 50, you’ll want your friend to help you powerlevel from 1 to 50. Even after you begin using points, you can’t actually gain the level with the points. You’ll have to have somebody help you with that.
Remember, always be polite when asking for power leveling because you’ll need them to stay for 3 hours to get you back up, and 3 hours is a pretty long time.
The powerleveling process is much easier if you do it during the Angel of Exp hours. See Fairy Wiki website for more information on that. (Type in ‘Token Exp’ in the search box)

7.3 How Many Rebirths Is Practical?
It depends on how much time you want to put into that character. I reborned once at level 78, and once at level 88. Right now, as I’m writing this guide, I’m level 93. It took me way too long to get to this level, and cost me way too much money, so I’m done with rebirths. Two is enough for me. But if you have money, and you want to get stronger pretty badly, you probably will want to be reborn a third time. (If I choose to be reborn again, I’d have approximately 30 more INT at level 1 than I had last time. That’s not enough to make it worth it to me.) Poemer put a very nice rebirth formula for anyone who wants to see what their starting stats would be.

8. HOW STRONG IS A MAGE
Of course. With Meteor costing 250mp and a month worth of EC grinding to get, I would be downright angry if it wasn’t strong. However, there are certain things I’d like to point out about damage. Attackers with physical types of damage (everyone but diviners) can have their damage boosted by molten, holy ghost, damage dolls, and spur for beastlords. This will allow them to do an unbelievable amount of damage (several hundred thousand perhaps). Mages do more damage in general than other classes if those other classes don’t use boosts, but sadly mages do not have any form of damage boost. So we’re pretty much stuck doing our regular damage.

9. FINALLY A GOOD MAGE. NOW WHAT?
First of all I’d like to say grats on making a good mage. I hope all the time and effort you took to train your EC paid off! There are several things you can do at this point. 1) Since you one-shot wiki now, you can pretty much make any character you want and power level it easily. 2) If you love the damage you do and want more, you can keep training EC and character/pet level. You can also build up on your LUK equipment for faith questing.

Here’s something interesting you can do just for fun: Your fire int/int pet could also learn molten, depending on the species. Have it cast molten on a golden hamster, and take a whack. Be amazed. (I’ve done over 30k damage with my staff with my 496-INT pet’s molten and a friend’s holy ghost, which instantly leveled my magic wand skill.)

10. AUTHOR CLARIFICATION
For those of you who don’t know me, my IGN is SonozakiMion, and I’ve been playing starting early June, 2009. During my first two months, I’ve met some great people who have taught me a lot about this game. I was reborn twice and got onto the toplists of level, EC, and fire faith. Now school is picking up pretty quickly, and before I become less active, I’d like to contribute back to the community. This is why I’ve compiled all the knowledge I’ve obtained while getting this far.

All comments are welcome, as long as you don’t swear at me or something. Some of the things I’ve written here are my personal thoughts that I know some people won’t agree with. If you don’t agree with something I’ve said, then chances are that many others probably don’t either. So feel free to contact me or post your thoughts.

CREDITS
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Sylvari - Real-life buddy who started playing about the same time as I did, and helped me in this game all throughout summer.

Warlord2004 - He was the first person I met who knew a lot about this game. I didn’t get very far in the game until I joined his guild.

Original guide by SonozakiMion. Prepared by Midouban. Updated 2010 by Moiraine.