What is this page about?
This blog is on hold for the foreseeable future. See here for the reasons.
Basic guides:
Total Beginner’s Guide (< level 50)
Miscellaneous Tidbits (all you never wanted to know)
Videos:
Guild Wars 2: Review
Warning! This is a very long article!
Guild Wars 2 – The Final Verdict
In the meantime I have played Guild Wars diligently. My character, Claudia Skullburn, a Norn Elementalist, has reached level 80 for weeks now. Time to do the final review for Guild Wars 2.
The difference to other reviews of GW2 is of course my Atlantian perspective: I will compare every now and then Atlantica Online to Guild Wars 2. Now, I know, there are some people who find that not fair. How can I compare a five year old game with a brand new one like GW2? Personally, I follow another school of thought: I live now, I have now to decide which game to play, I have not a lot of free time, and so I choose the best game out there. There is no grace for old games which did not have move along, at least not from me. And this argument could also be turned around: There is an even older MMORPG out there which is by far the most wide-spread one, and there are a lot of GW2 fans who argue that it is not fair to a new game to compare it with an old one which had time to mature. For me it is not a matter of fairness. I invest money and time where I think I get the best value for it. I am a customer, not a judge.
That out of the way, here is my review:
Guild Wars 2: Top 10 Favourite Things
I have played Guild Wars 2 for some days now. I chose a female Norn Elementalist, Claudia Skullburn, who plays on the Desolation server. At the time of writing she is at level 26.
Here is my top ten list of things I currently like better in GW2 than in AO:
The End…
or not?
As I explained here I am experiencing a certain grumpiness. This grumpy feeling is not so much targetted at the game itself (and especially not at the community of course) but at Nexon. I find the behavior of this company more and more disgusting.
State Of The Blog
As I wrote in another article I am starting to get annoyed by Nexon because of their bad, bad service. But there is now a new danger lurking around the corner: a better game. Or not, many games are said to become Atlantica Online’s doom, and then they weren’t. But it is the first time (for me) that I am actually thinking about going over to another game. And this game is: Guild Wars 2. So from August 25th onward I will take a break, and it depends from the quality of GW2, how long this break will be. After all, I still do play mmorpgs for fun and not as a duty :)
You may or may not remember my old guide about the level 120 upgrade quest. It was written in a time of awe, when bosses were bosses, grass was greener, women prettier and the air cleaner than today (at least that thing with the air is true). Now the developers have changed and tweaked the quest thoroughly, making it fairly easy. I wrote this article after I finished the upgrade quest on 2012-07-29 with Claudiana, my staff main, alt. She was in level 120 then, which is not that surprising if you think about it.
This is an article which won’t let you enjoy the game. It is aimed at those who want to storm through the lower levels. That can be useful if it is your second character. Otherwise I recommend to do at least the main quest because the story behind it is interesting enough to bother with it. And while it is a very effective way it will spoil your fun and sense of achievement. You are warned!
Before you do anything here, read my basic guide first. I won’t repeat things I mentioned there.
That said, here a short list of hints how to level very fast. I tested that with a referral of mine.
Miscellaneous Tidbits
This is a collection of questions/problems and answers/solutions. It is not sorted in any way yet and of course far from complete. The last weeks I have jotted down questions newer players asked in my guild/nation – these notes are the main source of this. Over time I may or may not expand this article.
Update 2012-07-25: New sections about graphic resolution, windowed mode and windows who won’t stay where you have them moved to.
Update 2012-07-06: Crafting costs for phoenix powersaw and freezing spear added (you can take them as prices for all weapons of the same tier, they use the same materials). Changed section 7 (finding wandering NPC). Added section 10 (fake “my homes”).
What’s wrong with Atlantica?
I still like playing Atlantica Online a lot. There were always problems with the game and huge problems with the company running that game, but all in all it was a satisfying experience. But lately I grew angrier and angrier about it and watched myself groaning about the remaining TBS points – which forced me to play. Or at least I thought they would.
Here are some random thoughts. This article is a rant article and contains a lot of FUD.
Box Contents
In Atlantica Online you get a lot of random boxes as rewards for dungeons, quests, missions and so on. In this article I will list the item sets such boxes contain.
I start with some of the newer boxes. Later updates will contain more of these lists.
(No) Trap Map: Majapahit 95 (Sumpah Palapa)
| Name | Sumpah Palapa |
| Minimum level | 95 |
| Maximum number of participants | 3 |
| Size of a party | main + 1 |
| Time limit | 60 min |
| Total number of vehicles allowed | none |
| Entry fee | 2 M |
| Total upgrade cost | 0.45 M |
| Catapult cost | ./. |
| Reward | 6 x Majapahit’s Empire Treasure (“6×20 silver coins”) |
| XP victory bonus | 303 M |
(No) Trap Map: Majapahit 85 (Call To Arms)
| Name | Call To Arms |
| Minimum level | 85 |
| Maximum number of participants | 3 |
| Size of a party | main + 1 |
| Time limit | 60 min |
| Total number of vehicles allowed | none |
| Entry fee | 1 M |
| Total upgrade cost | 0.45 M |
| Catapult cost | ./. |
| Reward | 4 x Majapahit’s Empire Treasure (“4×20 silver coins”) |
| XP victory bonus | 218 M |
| Name | Rakrian Kuti’s Rebellion |
| Minimum level | 75 |
| Maximum number of participants | 3 |
| Size of a party | main + 1 |
| Time limit | 60 min |
| Total number of vehicles allowed | none |
| Entry fee | 0.8 M |
| Total upgrade cost | 0.45 M |
| Catapult cost | ./. |
| Reward | 2 x Majapahit’s Empire Treasure (“2×20 silver coins”) |
| XP victory bonus | 147 M |
Trap Map: Dogon Defense (with video link)
| Name | Dogon Defense |
| Minimum level | 136 |
| Maximum number of participants | 4 |
| Size of a party | main + 2 |
| Time limit | 40 min |
| Total number of vehicles allowed | 1 |
| Entry fee | 13.2 M |
| Total upgrade cost | 20 M |
| Catapult cost | 15 M |
| Reward | 14 x Chieftain’s Treasure (“280 gc”) |
| XP victory bonus | 1,575 M |
Trap Map: Spy Hunt (with video link)
This is the trap map for “Spy Hunt”, an easy 3 k mission. The grid in the map below is as always the same grid you see when you press “M” inside of the mission. The traps are updated now (see comments). I included also the location of the 4 spawn points (small red “x”). At these points Zhuge Liang informs you that there are even more mobs inside this missions and spawns them afterwards. It is a good opportunity to heal up, trigger the cut scene and have a free turn afterwards.
| Name | Spy Hunt |
| Minimum level | 120 |
| Maximum number of participants | 3 |
| Size of a party | main + 3 |
| Time limit | 60 minutes |
| Total number of vehicles allowed | 1 |
| Entry fee | 6 M |
| Total upgrade cost | 23.5 M |
| Catapult cost | 5 M |
| Reward | 9 x Commander’s Loot (=90 Atlantica Gold Coins) |
| XP victory bonus | 390 M |
Trap Map: Saving Helen (with video link)
| Name | Saving Helen |
| Minimum level | 115 |
| Maximum number of participants | 4 |
| Size of a party | main + 2 |
| Time limit | 60 minutes |
| Total number of vehicles allowed | 3 |
| Entry fee | 3 M |
| Training 1 | 0.8 M (10% att, 10% def, spd+1) |
| Training 2 | 1.1 M (10% att, 10% def, sight+1) |
| Training 3 | 1.4 M (10% att, 10% def, spd+1) |
| Training 4 | 1.7 M (10% att, 10% def, spd+1, sight+1) |
| Training 5 | 2 M (20% att, 20% def, range+1) |
| Catapult cost | 3 M |
| Boat cost | 1.5 M |
| Reward | 8 x Troy Victorious Treasure (“10 gold”) |
| XP victory bonus | 320 M |
When the talent system was introduced, the first choice was easy. My main’s destination is to be a mean killer machine, so Mighty Offense was the obvious choice for the 130+ talent.
The second choice is somewhat trickier. There are basically two talents sounding good:
Deadly Cannonball (DC): “Basic attacks deal 50% additional damage against buildings. Grants a 50% chance to fire a deadly cannonball that poisons your target and decreases your target’s Attack Power.”
Steady Bombardment (SB): “For every Combo Count the target has, increases damage by 15%.”
The descriptions in quote marks are from Atlantica Online itself, and those for maximized talents (level 10).
This is the last update of my private statistical project to find out how much the boxes are worth (gold boxes in Troy and 3k, Chieftain’s Treasures in Africa). For me it is quite clear, that half of the boxes give coins, half of them other things. These “other things” tend to devaluate for obvious reasons, but it is still quite profitable to do TBS missions.
The box values as of 2012-02-12:
Chieftain’s Treasure: 15.66 Atlantica Gold Coins.
Three Kingdom’s Victorious Treasure: 8.93 Atlantica Gold Coins.
Troy’s Victorious Treasure: 8.53 Atlantica Gold Coins.
The detailed tables with market prices of 2012-02-12:
I have increased the sample of reward boxes opened. On 2012-01-09 I have opened lots of boxes of my favourite three kinds. I have also updated the prices for the drops as of 2012-01-09. Here are the results:
The following boxes were opened on 2011-12-24. The market prices are that from Delphi server (that means: the whole iAO because of the cross-server market we have now) on 2011-12-26 – I was too lazy to jot down the server prices on the same day, sorry. The table indicates that the value of a 3k gold box is roughly the same as the Troy gold box (aka “Troy’s Victorious Treasure”).
The following boxes were opened on 2011-12-19. The prices in the table are the lowest market prices on Delphi on this day. The table indicates that one Troy’s Victorious Treasure is worth about 9 Atlantica Gold Coin in average (that is a nerf of 10% compared to the non-random-age).
secretsofatlantica 