Fastest way to gain AP

My fifth Mabinogi lesson! To find what other classes are available please see the binding post. :)

Ability Points are the most prized numbers you need and will almost always be short of. You spend them to rank up skills and if you want everything at Rank 1 you will literally need thousands of them; and more with each new skill introduced into the game. There are four ways to earn AP:

Quests
Some quests give AP on completion. Of note are the Generation 1 quests give 70 odd all up so if given a choice do NOT skip it. Furthermore all quests give Gold and exp so they are usually all worth doing! Maybe not so much the timed daily ones like harvest wheat or gather eggs though.

Leveling Up
Each level you gain gives you 1 AP. As you level up this begins to slow down as more and more exp is required to level. For a newbie, your fastest EXP gain outside of quests will come from one of two places. First one is shadow Missions - Which one becomes a time vs effort decision on your part as "Defeat the Shadow Warrior" is not particularly fast to complete. If you are solo and are confident in windmill you may want to try the Tara shadow mission - "Their Method" to chop up zombies instead. Alternatively if you can handle them, the black mongeese (especially angry ones) at the human mark at Rano in Iria provide one of the best risk vs exp reward outside a dungeon. They can be tough customers though so I hope you've practiced up against those wolves from my last post before trying to fight them. Faster still is if you get someone to train you (probably on black mongeese again) by letting you into their party and giving all the exp to finish. They knock em down, you finish. Need to be very good friends or very persuasive for this to happen though.

Each week there is also a banquet at the Tara Castle that just spits out EXP for as long as you are inside the hall (for 1 hour). It's easy gain if you are going to be AFK but later on you will be able to make much more than it gives if you are actively killing stuff. Ideally, you should try aim to reach level 40-50 before having to rebirth.

Exploration
Each exploration level you gain gives you 1 AP. It is just as good as normal leveling up. The safest way for a beginner to level these up is to venture to Cor (or get a lift there) and do the circuit around the village. You will need an L-Rod and space in your pack to dig up some artifacts. Generally they spawn in "lines" everywhere so if you find 2 you can probably find a few more. This also means if you find one you should circle it and listen for beeps. Eventually you'll know where all the spots are by memory anyway if you do it very often. Be warned that the Giant Millipede does pose a threat to low level characters, and if he spawns DO NOT use smash on it.

Keep an eye on your exploration level too because there are some levels where you -MUST- do an exploration cap quest. Your exploration level will cease to advance and all excess exploration experience will be lost until you complete it! It's a good idea to get these out of the way as each character only needs to do them once. The maximum exploration level you can reach is 25 and you should aim to reach somewhere between 15-20 per rebirth.

Colombus got a lot of AP from it.

Aging and Rebirth
Every week you gain some AP based on your age. The younger you are, the more AP you gain. However, unless you are planning on paying real money for character cards to rebirth,  you will only be able to use the free rebirth given when your characters reaches an age of 20. If you started at age 17 thats three weeks before you can rebirth again. Why is rebirthing good? Because it resets your level and exploration level back to 1, making it easy to gain again, while keeping your already accumulated AP. If you can reach the ideal levels (or better) above within three weeks then you probably should be rebirthing to age 17. Otherwise adjust it accordingly to maximize your age/rebirth cycle.