Making Money Before 120

So your level 120 upgrade quest is coming up, and you're checking out the items you'll need on the market: a Rainbow Soul Stone, a Shiny Soul Stone and... oh boy, a Colorful Soul Stone. This is what you were warned about by guildmates - maybe you've even seen several of them reach the dreaded level 120 and find themselves unable to do the quest because they can't afford the necessary items. Well, this won't be you.

First, the level 120 upgrade is the biggest and most expensive one you'll have to do. Do you remember the Sea of Clouds level 100 upgrade quest? Well, it's nothing like that. It doesn't give you a book to unlock new skills, and it's definitely going to cost you more than 5 multi-hued jewels. Nowadays, the cost of the level 120 upgrade ranges between 3 and 4 billion gold. However, it raises the max level of your skills by 10 (70 instead of 60) along with the max level limit for active skills (from 90 to 100 for most skills). It also allows you to upgrade your mercenaries and raise their skills as well. And of course, as with any upgrade, your stats and skills get a little better.

After your 120 upgrade, you have access to several better TBS missions (The Shaman Returns, Hidden Power, Spy Hunt) and money will come much easier. Obviously, you can still do these missions at 120 regardless of your upgrade status, but they are a lot easier to solo with your upgrade (level 70 Electron Field kicks a**). But before 120, your money-making options are limited... or are they? In fact, there are several things you can do pre-120 to earn some decent gold for equipment, mercenary upgrades and saving for your upgrade quest.

1. Goncourt. You can find this wandering NPC by speaking to Livingstone near Bucharest. For a reasonable fee of 1000 gold, he will let you in on the location of Goncourt, one of the most popular lowbie money-making strategies. Stock up on really cheap skill books (Mana Drain I is at a fixed price of 5000 gold) or Commodity Boxes I. The boxes are cheaper but more tedious since you have to open them all first. They also count towards your daily box opening allowance.

Next, find Goncourt and trade up to 400 books per day. This will cost you 1000 gold per transaction, and you will receive a book box. The Ancient Book Boxes are what you're after. Open up the Medieval and Modern, re-trade all the trash to Goncourt and sell the good stuff (Toxic Sword I and II, War Cry, Flame Blow, Flame Spear, etc.) You can either open or sell the Ancient boxes; selling will yield pure profit, opening is a gamble. You can get total crap, or you can score a book worth 30 million gold. Repeat every day for some decent money.

2. Treasure Hunting. Buy a stack of Ornate Treasure Maps from the market. When you click these maps, a treasure chest will spawn somewhere in the world. You have to find it within 5 minutes, kill it and loot your reward. I recommend that you go around and visit as many towns as possible before you start doing treasure maps. The closer you can teleport to your treasure chest, the less likely you are to lose it, because if you don't find it within the alloted time it will vanish into oblivion.

Many things inside the Ornate Treasure Chest are kind of crappy, but you can get lucky and find a 7-day mercenary room license worth approximately 1 billion gold. From experience, Insignia Licenses sell really well at a decent price. You may need to loot between 20 and 40 or more chests to get a merc room license. They are kind of rare, but if you (sort of) enjoy treasure hunting it's a good way to make a large chunk of money.

3. Crafting. I'm not talking about equipment crafting here. In the current state of the game, it's a total waste of gold. However, some crafted items are in high demand: fabrics, thread, various papers, tools, vials and crystals. Making the low-tier items in the Stationery, Crystal, Tool, Medicine and Sewing categories can earn you some decent gold. Many people won't waste time making 20,000 Colorful Thread for a crafting project. They will just buy it off the market, and that's where you come in: you become the supplier. These items are dirt cheap to make, but very annoying and time-consuming. Profit is almost always guaranteed. Generally, good items to craft include Mysterious Vials, Antidotes (sometimes), Parchment and other papers, Colorful Thread, Colorful Fabric, Animal Replicas, Multi-Hued Crystal Shards, etc. Always check how much a batch costs, and how much you can expect to make from it. Market prices on mats and low-tier items vary greatly.

4. TBS. While you don't have access to the better TBS yet, you can still farm Fleeing Betrayer (105), Alishan in Ruins (110) and Reclaiming Alishan (115) for some easy and quick coins. These are the most profitable pre-120 missions. Reclaiming Alishan even gives you gold coins worth 3.5 million gold each. Other missions are good too but these 3 were my personal favorites.

5. Recruitment quests. Buy some Secrets of Time and reset mercenary recruitment quests to make some extra gold. Good ones to repeat are Witch, Exorcist, Oracle and Lady Knight for their orbs, Canoneer for the Vials of Potential and Hwarang for the quest reward money. Witch sells very well and can be done fairly quickly, making her a favorite among those who repeat quests for money.

6. Dismantling cheap gear. This requires a bit of market-savviness (as do many money-making tactics I suppose). Check out this page for an overview of different gear levels and their average element yield when dismantled. Then, look at the current price of various elements and find pieces of gear that you can buy for less than the average value of elements. I used to make good money buying Phoenix items under 3 million gold and selling the resulting Flame Elements for about 5 millions. If you're patient, buy the boxes instead (cheaper than average element value of course), open them, sell the higher value items (chest armors, melee gauntlets and such items tend to be worth more than others) and dismantle the rest for crafting experience and elements.

7. Events. Many events have tradeable rewards, whether it's mercenary skill books, Atlas Outfit Stones, various reward tokens, jewels and other items. Participate in the events and sell the rewards you are not using. Events in general also give some nice no-trade rewards that can save you money on stuff (consumables such as Ambrosia and Water of Life, various licenses, Lucky Chain Letters, mercenary summons, scrolls, accessories and mounts). Make sure to check out the events!

8. Occupied Coast.  This 113 individual dungeon can be a decent money-maker before 120. Mobs inside drop some Deep Sea Pearls and Emerald Fragments. The latter usually sells for several million gold. The end reward includes some Goddess books and additional Emerald Fragments, jewels and Abyssal Marble (worth a few billions). The final boss can drop a key to the second floor, worth 50-70 million gold. You can buy the Occupied Shoreline Map (key) on the market or through Pointry for some battle points.

9. Empress Dungeon. The Haunted Tatami Room is a good money-making opportunity if you are above level 100. Gather a squad of people together, buy an Old Kendama (key) and enter the dungeon. Inside, someone will be protecting the NPC and the rest need to kill some monsters. Make sure you grab Daka's quests at the entrance for some Evil-Slaying Arrows and various Buddha statues that can contain items for the Empress quest. If you're lucky, you can make several hundred millions in a single Tatami run.

General Tips to Make Your Life Easier on Atlantica

I don't know about you, but my journey through Atlantica has been marked with several instances of "Crap, I wish I'd known that sooner". If this sounds like you, you've come to the right place.

I'll cut the useless babbling and jump straight into the heart of the topic: a list of things that I think (I hope) you will find useful. Enjoy!

Blessing

1. Don't buy a Blessing License from the market. You can extend your license for far less gold using Atlas Ore. As of late 2014, a 30-day Blessing License costs between 13 and 15 billion gold on the market. Extending your Blessing License with Atlas Ore (for 30 days) costs 150 Ore valued at an average of 63 to 65 million gold each, for a total of between 9.5 and 10 billion gold, saving you about 4 billion gold. Also, Atlas Ore is frequently on sale in the Item Mall, and if you can snatch some at a 50% discount you basically get your Blessing License for $7.50 instead of $15.

2. If you can't afford Blessing either with in-game gold or Item Mall credit, there's an alternative: the Momotaro quest. Each time you run the quest, you will receive a Mini Blessing Potion with 20 uses of Blessing. You need to use 2 charges to finish the quest, leaving you with 18 charges for your weekly TBS missions and difficult boss fights. Just reset the mission using Secrets of Time: Momotaro and you can get several Mini Blessing Potions.

Teleport

3.You can teleport right to the entrance of a TBS mission. Just type the mission's name in the search box in the Field section of your encyclopedia, hit Teleport and voilà! Right to the NPC.

4. The Allied Teleport License allows you to "simulate" a regular Teleportation License for far less gold, but it comes with a few inconvenients (mostly, you need a buddy in a convenient location).. It is on sale at a fixed price on the market; for a few million gold, you can enjoy unlimited teleporting to your friends, party members and nation members for a period of 7 or 14 days. It carries the same restriction as regular teleportation: you need to have been on the map before, and you need enough will. With the new remote quest turn-in, this becomes a viable option for Warrior Pack-less players. Just ask in nation chat if someone is in a certain area and you can teleport right to them.

Auto-Battle

5. In skirmish areas, your mercs will keep auto-battling even if they run out of mana! They won't use active or passive skills with no mana though.

Looting

6. You can have up to 3 different search robots at once, which means faster looting. I find this useful in dungeons where I struggle to kill fast and lose my loot, especially if it's an event dungeon or an item looting quest. There are currently 5 types of search robots, and some of them have different abilities:

• Search Robot : Regular search robot that comes with the Warrior Package and Event Package
• Search Song-i: Loots behind enemy lines (found in some Item Mall random boxes)
• Research Raccoon: Increases your chance of receiving monster info (found in some Item Mall random boxes)
• Assault Search Soldier: Helps you fight enemies and loots (found in some Item Mall random boxes)
• Mr. Turkey: No special ability besides looting (special Thanksgiving item)

Daily Quests

7. The Legion patch introduced a new set of daily quests, the Legion Storage Expansion quests. Each quest can be done daily and rewards you with a Comrade Emblem that can be used to upgrade your Legion storage room. However, unlike other daily quests, it counts towards your diary for TBS points! If you're feeling lazy (as I often do), just do 3 quick quests from NPC Mr. Camaraderie and you've cleared your dailies for TBS points. I like any 3 of:

• Sharing the News - Share Monster Info x5: Can be done at any time
• Magical Exploits - Use Any Magic x25: Can be done during your daily competitions
• The Nearness of You - Observe Other's Battle x1: Can be done between your 2 daily competitions
• The Empty Spaces - Fight with 2 Mercenaries Disabled x5: Can be done during your daily individual dungeon

Jackpot: Shield Bash [I]

Result: 142+1 Book: Shield Bash [I]

Should I Buy A Home?

If you're wondering whether or not you should buy a MyHome in Atlantica, this post is for you. I remember having a hard time convincing my friend to buy a home, since he thought 500 million gold was too expensive for a purely decorative feature of the game. That's where he was wrong: your Atlantica MyHome has some interesting and useful functions besides making you feel like you're playing The Sims: Atlantica Edition.

Here is a screenshot that captures most of the useful features of MyHome. They are numbered in order of usefulness in my personal opinion. A short description of each point follows the picture, allowing you to get a better idea whether MyHome is worth it to you or not.

Click the image for a full version.



1. Feasts! Feasts come in handy when you are about to run some more difficult content such as TBS, raids and higher level ind. dungeons. I really enjoy this aspect of the game; it allows you to host a gourmet feast, sharing some powerful buffs with your friends, guild and nation. There are currently eight types of feasts: four common and four guild feasts, along with some occasional event feasts as well. Different types of feasts will stack (a guild feast stacks with a common feast for example).

You need an active Chef to be able to host a feast, as well as a dinner table such as the awesome Kiwi Dinner Table displayed in all its glory on the screenshot, or a plain table if that's your thing :). You can hold one common and one guild feast per day. You can also leech an unlimited amount of feasts from your nation mates, but they may not always be held at the most convenient times for you.

Feast	Duration	Atk %	Def %	Exp %	Guild Craft Workload %	Proc Effect
[Common] Afternoon Tea Party	60 min	15	5			Vital Force
[Common] Sushi Feast	80 min	20	5			Vital Force
[Common] Royal Supper Feast	60 min	30	5			Vital Force
[Common] Nouvelle Cuisine Feast	100 min	35	10			Vital Force
[Guild] Feast of Unity	60 min	20	10
[Guild] Feast with Friends	120 min		20
[Guild] Feast of Growth	120 min		15	30
[Guild] Feast of Craftsmanship	120 min				30

2. Statue. Statues are decorative items that you can put in your home, but they have a special function: they trigger aoe damage effects at a set rate (it's actually pretty high, I'd estimate around 30%). At low levels it pretty much one-shots everything, and still does with good buffs in some higher level skirmishes. Definitely awesome in TBS.

Remember that only one statue effect can proc at a time, and the rate is not increased by multiple statues. Temporary Minotaur King statues are cheap and as effective as the fancier (and expensive) Urd or Verdandi ones. The only inconvenience is having to replace them every 3, 10 or 30 days.

3. Rest Experience. Depending on the value of your home, you can get an additional experience buff twice a day as part of your diary assignments. The bonus experience rate is 1/50 of your home value. As an example, a home with a value of 2500 will grant you a 50% bonus experience for 60 minutes, up to twice a day. Perfect for grinding. All you need to do is sleep in your bed for a few seconds. I've heard of people with a 200% rest experience bonus!

4. Mercenary Yard. Store your extra mercs in your garden. If you want, you can even feed them elements and they gain experience based on the value of the items you gave them. They will ask for such a gift every two hours.

5. Mercenary Training Hall. Previously, this was an expedition room. They changed it in November 2014 with the addition of the Legion patch. However, its functionality as 9 (house) or 18 (mansion) extra free merc slots is still usable. As you can see on the screen shot, a mansion gets you two merc training hall rooms with nine slots each. You can use those to store mercs that you'd like to keep, don't want to bother leveling and can't bring yourself to fire. Its main purpose is to level your mercs, but the option is very expensive and slow.

6. Home Facilities. You can grow a garden or a farm, or have a mining or sawmill facility on your property. Regular houses can build one facility, mansions get up to two. The purpose of these facilities is to gather mats to use for feast and furniture crafting. If you don't craft either of these items, you can sell the mats on the market for some extra gold. Higher level facilities paired with a higher level skill yields more/better mats.

Ultimately, you don't NEED a home to do well in Atlantica. However, in my opinion, buying a home is definitely worth it, especially for the statue, rest experience, extra mercenary storage and the ability to host feasts yourself.

Dungeon Timer Display Error

This dungeon timer display error is one of the oldest bugs in Atlantica, and somehow it never got fixed. It is also not something new players are likely to realize until much later, or until they are told by a veteran. So here is a quick explanation of the visual bug so you can enjoy your dungeons more regularly, especially event dungeons.

It appears that the "true" dungeon timer will only be valid for the Pacific timezone (GMT -8) and each timezone ahead (to the East) will see an extra "fictional" hour added to their timer. In my case for example, this means that my ind timers always display 24h 00m remaining when I come out of a 20-hour cooldown dungeon - it basically "adds" 4 hours to the regular timer because I am located in the Atlantic (GMT -4) timezone, which is 4 hours ahead of GMT -8.

However, these extra hours are "fictional" in the sense that you can re-enter the dungeon after the true cooldown (20 hours for most ind dungeons). If I do a Honey Jar at 6pm, the next day I can still do my Honey Jar at 2pm despite the fact that there is still a cooldown of 4 hours showing on my dungeon timer. With the Hidden Repositorium event currently active, this chart can come in handy if your dungeon timer is displaying more hours than it should before you can re-enter.

The following chart shows how many hours are added to your true dungeon timer (time after which you can re-enter):

If you are in:	GMT	Fictional hours	Subtract this many hours from your displayed timer
Pacific time	GMT -8	0	0 hour
Mountain time	GMT -7	1	-1 hour
Central time	GMT -6	2	-2 hours
Eastern time	GMT -5	3	-3 hours
Atlantic time	GMT -4	4	-4 hours

*NOTE: Chart was created for North America, as I have not tested it elsewhere. It seems to be true for Europe also, since my guildy from France has even more hours added to her timer than I do.

The alternative is to change your computer's internal clock to the Pacific timezone, which I personnally find inconvenient.

Event: Legion Events

Event runs from November 20 to December 11, 2014.

Event highlights:

• Celebrates the introduction of the Shaolin Legion mercs
• Attendance event
• Hidden Repositorium
• New User event

Attendance Event

The event runs for three weeks, so if you log in every day you should be able to get three copies of each login reward. After two weeks, you will have received 2 Forgotten Heart, which you can combine with the Life of the Forgotten One you received in your inventory at the start of the event in order to summon Bai Xian, one of the new Shaolin mercs. Every day, make sure you click the Check button in the menu on the right of your screen to claim your daily reward, which will appear in your mailbox.

Login rewards:

• Day 1: Growth Vial (No Trade) - This is equivalent to a Growth Vial VI, usable by characters will less than 850 bonus stat points. I suggest saving it until you have all your Growth Vial V up to date.
• Day 2: Purified Enhance Stone
• Day 3: Merc Room License (7 Days/No Trade)
• Day 4: Purified Enchant Stone
• Day 5: Search Robot License Box (7 Days/No Trade) - Contains your choice of:
• Search Song-i License (7 Days/No Trade) - Loots behind enemy lines
• Research Raccoon License (7 Days/No Trade) - Increases your chance of receiving monster info
• Assault Search Soldier License (7 Days/No Trade) - Helps you fight enemies and loots
• Day 6: Blessing License (7 Day/No Trade)
• Day 7: Forgotten Heart (No Trade) - Use two of these with your Life of the Forgotten One to summon your Bai Xian

Hidden Repositorium

You can get up to 2 Hidden Repositorium Keys per day. The Hidden Repositorium is an instance dungeon and allows you to take 5 mercs with you. I recommend axe users, gunners and mercs that hit several targets at once. The goal is to kill as many treasure chests as you can in 10 minutes. You receive [Event] Treasure Chests according to your level for each chest that you successfully kill.

After you come out of the Hidden Repositorium, you need to wait 4 hours until you can enter again with your second key. Note that the timer in Character info has a display error. Mine said 8 hours once I came out but I was able to re-enter after 4 hours, even if the timer wasn't done.

[Event] Treasure Chest IV contents (that I know of):

Item	Amount	Notes
Atlas Outfit Stone	2
Blessing License (No Trade)	30 Days
Blessing License (No Trade)	7 Days
Blessing License (No Trade)	1 Day
Exp. Concentration License (No Trade)	1 Day
Scroll of the Hero Pack (No Trade)	1 Day	Equivalent to a Warrior Package
Scroll of Enchantment (No Trade)	1~3	Works like a Bewitching Scroll with some limitations
Restroom Set Box	1	Contains one random Bathroom decoration for your home
Announcement Ticket	1~5	Allows you to make 1 server-wide announcement (yellow letters)
Ancient Book of Knowledge	1~3	5 million experience
Supreme Evil Equipment Box	1
Heavenly Crystal	2
Growth Vial IV	1~10
Growth Vial V	1~10
Ambrosia (No Trade)	30
Water of Life (No Trade)	7~10
Van Gogh's Soul Stone	3
Enchant Stone V	1~10
Enchant Stone VI	1~10
Soul Crystal	1	Redemption, Dragon, Phoenix or Giant
Mysterious Vial	5	Valor, Wisdom or Death

I can't be sure about any of the other treasure chests, because I am currently in the 120-139 bracket. However, here's the info I have:

• I heard from a friend that his [Event] Treasure Chest V (level 140+) contained, among others: Miracle Potion x50 and (Common) Nouvelle Cuisine Feast x1.
• My level 96 alt gets [Event] Treasure Chest II, and the contents is pretty similar. Soul Crystals are replaced with 5 regular crystals of their respective kinds, Ancient Books of Knowledge are Ancient Skill Books (1 million experience). There are some Lucky Chain Letters in there too.

NOTE: Use up your Keys and Chests because they will be DELETED.

New User Event

All new accounts created while the event is active receive a free Heart of Gigas item, which summons the A-class cannon merc Gigas.

Event Dungeon: Honey Jar

Type of dungeon: Ind. dungeon, classic combat
Party size: 3 max
Number of mercs: 5 + Main
Minimum level: Not sure, probably 20
Objective: Kill as many mobs as you can in 30 minutes, max possible: 312 mobs
Why you want to run this: Excellent experience, mobs are easy, good rate of boxes from mobs, plenty of consumables such as ambrosia, Water of Life and enchant stones, lots of Atlantis coins

Key: Honey Jar Key

• Reward for logging in on Atlantica Day for at least 4 cumulative hours

Reward: Water of Life based on the number of kills (max: Water of Life (No Trade) x30 for 301+ kills)

Comments

The mobs are extremely easy, and they auto-scale to your main character's level. There really isn't much to say in terms of strategy; if you duo, each person can start on opposite sides and work their way towards the middle, unless you're trying to powerlevel. The cannon horses are probably the strongest mobs, so if your gear isn't great you can take them out first. The boss is weak, but his AoE can be a problem if you're undergeared. Make sure to be prepared for it.

Loot

Unlike other dungeons, the Honey Jar's loot scales with your level. Here is what I know about the loot pattern:

Level	Boxes	Crafting Mats	Atlantis Coin	Enchant Stone
90-99	Osiris', Volcano Valley, Conqueror's	None	Silver	III
100-109	Volcano Valley, Conqueror's, Freezing, Divine	???	Silver	IV
110-119	Conqueror's, Freezing, Divine, Phoenix's	Phoenix's Feather	Silver	IV
120-129	Freezing, Divine, Phoenix's, Dragon God's	Depraved Seed	Gold	V
130-139	Divine, Phoenix's, Dragon God's, Evil	Evil Imprint	Gold	V
140-149	???	???	Gold	VI
150-159	???	Pegasus Tear	Gold	VI

No matter what level you are, you can also ALWAYS drop, in addition to the level-specific loot:

• Water of Life (No Trade)
• Ambrosia (No Trade)

As far as I know, the boss always drops Atlantis gold coins, usually 1, 2 or 3 without item info depending on your level. 

Tips

• If you want to take full advantage of the Honey Jar dungeon, make sure to ask someone for all the item info of the monsters inside:
• Rebellious Cannon Horse
• Forgotten Horse Rider
• Patronizing Blue Mushroom
• Patronizing Raccoon
• Rebellious Song-i Hat
• Crazed Cannon Horse
• Patronizing Giant Raccoon
• Patronizing Giant Mushroom (Boss, can be hard to obtain its info)
• The Honey Jar is a great place to get powerleveled by a high level, it's very possible to go from level 30 to almost level 100 in half an hour by grouping with a lvl 160, especially if you run it on Atlantica Day
• Duoing is probably the best setup if your gear is average; you should be able to finish all the mobs with a few minutes left on the counter. If you three-man you will probably run out of mobs quickly, and if you solo you will waste a lot of mobs
• Avoid sniping the boss; you will lose the loot from his minions that run away. Just kill all the minions first then go for the boss
• Each player receives an equal amount of Water of Life (No Trade) when the timer expires based on the total number of kills
• The dungeon doesn't end when you kill all monsters; make sure to stay in until the timer expires to receive your Water of Life (No Trade) reward
• The only reliable way to receive Honey Jar keys is on Atlantica Day; however, they will sometimes give away extra keys as part of other events. Even if it is an event dungeon related to Atlantica Day, it is accessible at any time on a cooldown of 20 hours as long as you or a party member owns a key