White Mage Guide by Valvette

Foreword

This guide is meant to contain my lessons learned throughout playing White mage on horizon. I don't claim superior experience or expertise and you absolutely don't have to listen to me. Instead, treat this as the collection of notes it is. This game is old and therefore quite "solved", but I'm aware of this and the intention is to help those few who are still trying new things. Besides being a collection of my own notes.

Valvette, August 29th, 2026

About the job

You've come here expecting to learn about healing. And learn about healing you shall. As a White Mage, you'll heal. And heal. And heal some more. And you'll like it. But, the developers did give the White mage more tools than just restoring HP. Any White mage worth their salt will cast party-encompassing protective spells, enfeeble, deal substantial damage with divine spells and even, rarely but still notably, provide MP.

Other perks with this job include: free Sneak and Invisible which are tremendous for questing and just clearing content in general and Teleport-spells which can make you quite a bit of cash once quested.

And besides, the cloth armor in this game looks awesome. Let's get into it!

Magic Skills

We are a mage job, and here is what we have to work with on the magic front.

Magic Skill	Rank
Healing	A+
Divine	A-
Enhancing	C+
Enfeebling	C

See Skill caps for a per level breakdown.

What this table tells us is that we are as good as it's possible to be at healing. A+. Juicy. We're also the best at Divine Magic among all jobs with our A-, just not quite as good as we are at healing. At enhancing we are second to the Red mage with a somewhat poor C+ and at enfeebling we are tied with the Dark knight at last place with a measly C. And this is important because enfeebling is arguably half your job in a party. The other half being healing.

Abridged version

Will be added once the main guide has enough meat to just copy over. Highlight everything by level so a person can know what level they should look for what thing.

Race

This is the least impactful of all choices pertaining to your White mage. Can you play it as Galka and Elvaan, the two races with worst MP pool? Yes, is the answer. What about Hume and Mithra? The ones that get slightly more? Yes. Will a Tarutaru outshine you in the MP pool department before factoring in gear? Also yes, but not by much. The end result is: play whichever race you want.

If you want to optimize everything, get a Tarutaru, but don't assume you can slack off on any other aspect of your character just because of your race: It doesn't matter that much.

For what it's worth, Race Specific Equipment will make up for this. Find them here:

Hume RSE - Legs piece stands out as a +32MP piece.

Galka RSE - Every piece gives substantial MP with Body and Hands giving +32MP each. Crazy.

Elvaan RSE - Body and Hands pieces give +24MP, with Head +20MP.

Mithra RSE - Legs piece stands out as a +32MP piece, like for Hume.

Tarutaru RSE - Pfft. You thought you'd get more MP down here. No. You get +MND on the Legs piece and be happy.

A personal note: I can't stress enough how much I like my +32MP from Savage loincloth.

Let's have us a stat breakdown of all races as a level 1 White mage now that we know how we are going to beat each obstacle in our way.

Hume

HP: 27 MP: 22
STR	DEX	VIT	AGI	INT	MND	CHR
6	5	6	6	6	8	7

Mithra

HP: 27 MP: 22
STR	DEX	VIT	AGI	INT	MND	CHR
6	7	6	7	6	8	6

Elvaan

HP: 29 MP: 20
STR	DEX	VIT	AGI	INT	MND	CHR
7	5	7	5	5	9	7

Galka

HP: 32 MP: 16
STR	DEX	VIT	AGI	INT	MND	CHR
7	5	8	6	6	8	6

Tarutaru

HP: 23 MP: 28
STR	DEX	VIT	AGI	INT	MND	CHR
5	5	6	7	8	8	7

Very interesting stuff. What this tells us is that in the MP-race, the pecking order is as follows:

Tarutaru >> Hume = Mithra > Elvaan >> Galka

Poor galka.

Another important race is, and you'll see why later, the MND race. Which gives us:

Elvaan > Tarutaru = Mithra = Huma = Galka

Huh. Interesting. HP and MND are the two most important numbers, with the MND race being very even and MP cancelled out by gear acquired in the late 20s / early 30s. Okay. What about the other stats? Well, STR, DEX and CHR count for basically nothing. A quick secondary analysis of the other stats gives us:

HP - Useful. You will take hate and suffer damage. Galka > Elvaan > Hume = Mithra >> Tarutaru.

Tarutaru, get some RSE to fight this.

INT - Useful. There are enfeebles (looking at you, Blind) that use INT in their calculation. Tarutaru wins here.

AGI - Arguably useful. A monster might miss you when they otherwise should've hit. If you're evasion-capped. If you accidentally took hate. Might, if, if. Slim chances. Mithra along with Tarutaru win here.

Stats

MP

Basic. Simple. Get more of this. Many of your gear pieces will lead to more MP.

MND

Good for enfeebles. There's mathematics involved.

INT

Good for one enfeeble in particular.

Cure Potency

Just best stat available for a White mage.

Auto-Refresh

Second best stat, and is more readily available than Cure Potency. The engine of Good Stuff.

MP Recovered While Healing

The smaller cousing of Auto-Refresh. It's good, it helps out, it has impact. You still have to rest to get it though.

Subjobs

Main line

We are talking mostly about the other mage jobs here. Why? Because the MP of the subjob adds to yours. MP being one of the most sought after stats for you as a White mage as explained above.

Black mage

Pros	Large MP pool.
	Conserve MP. Occasionally saves you MP when casting.
	Sleep. One of the best disables. Elemental seal nearly guarantees a hit.
	Clear mind. More MP when resting.
	Warp, Escape and Tractor. Yum.
	Good INT for that one enfeeble.
	Dark magic Aspir. Requires a bit of skilling, but it's one more tool in the toolbox.
	Elemental enfeebles. If you decide to use them.
Cons	No obvious ones. No additional HP I guess? What, you want everything?

Red mage

Pros	Large MP pool.
	Fast Cast. You'll occasionally toss out an otherwise long casting Regen very quickly. Yay.
	Dispel. Situational, but invaluable when required.
	Sleep. But later than Black mage. No Elemental seal.
	Clear mind. But later and worse than Black mage.
	Good INT for that one enfeeble.
	Dark magic Aspir. But worse than Black mage.
	I guess Phalanx for more defense? A bit late, but... sure?
Cons	Isn't black mage. There are a lot of things Black mage just does better. I wish I could type Enfeebling Magic as a pro, but it doesn't help since Red Mage can't buff White Mage past its limit.

Summoner

Pros	Large MP pool. The largest, in fact. Max MP Boost is the formal name for this.
	Auto-refresh at level 50. Yum. Yummy yum. This is enough to put Summoner in the discussion against Red mage. That's how good this is.
	Blood pacts with summoned Avatars. They'll take a long time and cost quite a bit of MP. But, might be your style, you know?
Cons	Isn't Black mage. No sleep. No Warp. No Conserve MP. No Dispel. No plethora of enfeebles. You become the whitest of White mages.

My conclusion is that Black mage rules. It just does. Red mage has a place, but you're choosing Dispel over a lot of good stuff. And Summoner arguably has a spot after level 50 with its Auto-refresh. I personally value Summoner slightly over Red mage, but I've never been in the situation where Dispel was sought after.

Off-beat

Situational things that you can do for more solo-oriented things and a small analysis of what it gives you. I wouldn't seek a party with any of these as my sub job.

Ninja

Pros	Survivability like no other. Utsusemi: Ichi and Ni are just... Unbelievable. Your solo-potential just went up by a factor of a few thousand. It is useful for Black mage-esque soloing.
	Dual wield. Equip two wands. No grip or staff, but there has to be some situation where this is useful. There always is.
	Second highest evasion in the game second to Thief.
Cons	Isn't any of the mage jobs. So no extra MP. Or extra spells. Nothing substantial to cover up for it.

Blue mage

Pros	Large MP pool. It's a mage job, yay!
	Resist Sleep for... resisting some sleeps? Properly situational. You can play 1-75 and never encounter a situation where this would've had impact.
Cons	Doesn't do anything that overlaps with what you do as a White mage. Pollen and Wild Carrot do not outperform Cure.

If you're soloing and want to just survive forever and fight forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever... Have Ninja as your subjob. I bet it can take down surprisingly large things. After a while. Bursting down pet monsters like this ought to work as well. Blue mage is... well. It gives you extra mana. And that's it. What, you leveled that instead of the normal mages and you don't have a better subjob ready?

What are you doing?

Okay, we've gone through the sensible options. Here is what you might expect from really far-fetched ones. We don't level with these. At all. We do some strange other content and hopefully have a blast doing it.

Thief

Pros	Okay, you're obviously farming. Make sure to be 30 for Treasure Hunter.
	Best evasion in the game. It should help out a little at least.
Cons	Not a mage job. Don't party as this. Solo effort stuff.

Warrior

Pros	You get to Provoke now! And Warcry! So you can take damage for sure, not just when you occasionally overheal.
	Oh, and you can Double Attack. Maybe cheesy stuff is possible with an Octave Club here?
Cons	Not a mage job. Don't party as this. Be sure to have a really, really good plan.

Dark knight

Pros	Stun. There's likely some occasion where this is needed.
	Absorb spells. Fun? And some Black and Dark magic too. Worse than Black mage.
Cons	Not a mage job. Don't party as this. If it floats your boat then go for it solo, I guess.

Bard

Pros	Songs. But just one. And the Refresh effect comes at the same time as Summoner's Auto-refresh does. Without the MP and Avatars. So no thanks. Paeon does heal for quite a bit in dunes. Maybe give that a go for a few levels?
	Powerful sleep, I suppose. I'm not convinced.
	Resist silence as a trait. Good...? Traits like these usually don't matter much.
Cons	Not a mage job, no MP, illusory goodness with the songs but it won't amount to much.

Paladin

Pros	Undead Killer. Useful if you're doing undead killing in a solo adventure.
	Shield Bash. When meleeing you can stun and interupt things. TP moves usually get used again, but spells don't always.
Cons	Worse at Auto-refresh than Summoner. Worse at surviving than Ninja. It might be possible to do cool things here but I don't see it.

What you might expect from subjobs that are too far away from your main job to matter. The outlier is that Bard might be considered something better than it is. I hope I have dispelled that notion. Honorable mentions:

Puppetmaster - I'm not sure what this would do? I'll be honest and say I don't really understand how the job works, or how it would work as a subjob.

Beastmaster - Similar to Puppetmaster. What would you do with your charmed monster that's quite a bit worse than it needs to be? White mage is a great subjob for Beastmaster. Not the other way around.

Dragoon - Now you hit harder. Okay, and then?

Ranger - Wide scan for when the situation calls for it.

Samurai - Meditate for TP and then run in melee and perform a club weapon skill to restore MP. Convoluted. Maybe fun?

Monk - Dodge to dodge and Chakra to self-heal and remove debuffs. Both things we have spells for in Blink, Curse and Erase.

Addons

I don't use addons much myself, but I figure a bare-bones list ought to be present in a guide that tries to cover everything that I know. You find these in the Addons list in the HorizonXI launcher.

tTimers - Keep track of Regen and Haste buffs on party members.

targetlines - See who in your party is attacking what. Reduces confusion and guesswork.

distance - See the distance between you and your target. Useful for dodging Area of Effect-abilities and knowing whether you're in cast range quickly.

nameplate - Reduce the size of player names to avoid clutter.

There's supposed to be one where you can see time until your next HP/MP tick when resting. Don't know the name of it, but it sounds useful.

Spell acquisition

Buying from vendor, buying from AH or killing monsters for it. Some spells drop in BCNMs or other special events. Vendor buying gets you very far and check prices on both vendor and AH to prevent being bamboozled. People do like to do this.

Food

+MP food vs + MP while healing. There are many possible options with different usefulness and general price.

Gear

General strategy

Cure potency is by far the best stat. It comes in after all other calculations and caps have been done, so it just expands on how much you can cure. Invaluable. It's also rare so grab it when you can take it.

Auto-refresh is a close second. This contributes to you recovering as much as you spend and never needing downtime - where needing downtime is the enemy of fun and progress.

MP while healing is similar to Auto-Refresh, but it only happens when you actively rest and can't do anything else. Still good. Still valuable. Shortens rest time, as one would expect.

MP is a solid choice just about always. You have as much gas in the tank as you have MP. Bigger chain when you don't recover as much as you spend. Bigger margin for big spending when you do recover as much as you spend. You recover more MP when resting the more MP you have - technically, as you can rest for longer accumulating a larger bonus, resulting in more MP per second the longer you sit for. This length is governed by your total MP pool.

MND helps with sticking enfeebles, which is what you do at the start of each fight or when you don't have anyone to heal and have a decent supply of MP.

INT helps with sticking an enfeeble, which helps out.

HP makes you less killable when you're in danger.

AGI and evasion makes you less killable when you're in danger.

We get the following priority.

Cure potency > Auto-Refresh > MP while healing > MP >>> MND > INT >>> HP = AGI

You'll find the above strategy in the item list below. There's also a small comment as needed to evaluate each piece.

Equipment sets

Macro in changing gear quickly to get the most out of the rather large selection of gear available and our big wardrobes.

Melee

It's offbeat. I won't hold myself off for very long.