Atlantica Online – Jelune’s Guide for New Players

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1: Create your character. Blademaster(DS, Dual Sword), Battlemage(BM), Stormcaller(Whip) and Huntress(CH/TH, Celestial/Tribal Huntress) are nice and quick to level with, but pick whatever you want. You can always change to another main later on in the game, but be aware that it’s not free to do so. If you don’t want to cough up the gold to switch main character later on, pick the one you want to use end-game. Leveling might be slower, but you won’t have to buy a Vial of Amnesia or Class Change Card later on to switch your main to the class you really want.

Blademaster is fast to level with because basic attack hits up to 4 targets, Static Shield will kill/hurt enemies that attack your main and Blademasters Waltz of the Blade is one of the most powerful AoE spells in the game, which makes up for the fact that Blademasters can’t hit flying mobs/bosses with basic attack. A specialization which gives action power and speed isn’t bad either. End-game, a blademaster is extremly nice to play with and/or use as an AFK-mule for fun and profit.

Battlemage is fast to level with because her basic attack hits up to 3 targets including flying mobs/bosses, her Electron Field is great in TBS and she can learn Blazing Earth after 120, which gives her a very powerful spell against melee enemies. The old Staff main is better later on, but while leveling, the Battlemage basic attack which can hit up to 3 targets instead of just 1 makes her faster to level with. But after the level 120 upgrade, the old Staff mains ability to cast Blazing Earth on 1st turn instead of 2nd turn like Battlemage, quickly makes the battlemage a less attractive option. But up to level 120, Battlemage is the way to go and her specialization which gives +10 magic levels to all mercs in her formation is useful as well. It’s not that BM is bad in end-game either, it’s just that the regular mage is so much better because of the ability to use 1st turn Blazing Earth, Meditation passive and Quantum Leap spell, that BM seems weak and uninteresting by comparison.

Stormcaller is fast to level with because her basic attack hits up to 3 targets including flying mobs/bosses and her attacks just get more powerful the higher leveled she becomes thanks to passive spells and talents. As a whip, she can also attack anywhere in an enemy formation which makes it easier to take out mobs/bosses with nasty special abilities. Her specialization on multi-hit and critical gives some extra oumph to attacks as well. Her ability to enter Apotheosis is also interesting and she is certainly a viable option to end-game playing as well as quick to level with. So if you like how she plays while leveling, you probably won’t want to class change later on as you will probably just like her more and more the more you level with her and the more points you spend in her talents after 130.

Huntress is fast to level with because her basic attack hits up to 3 targets including flying mobs/bosses, she starts as a level 30 instead of a level 1 and she gets a permanent mount. Specialization is attack power and vitality, which gives a boost to attacks and survivability. After level 120 upgrade quest, she can learn a passive spell that boosts melee mercs in her formation, a passive spell that boosts range characters, an active spell that puts a holy guard-like protection over up to 3 characters at a time or a full formation AoE spell which does very nice damage but sadly has a 3 turn cooldown. End-game, Huntress looses out slightly to the classic bow main which has better single-target damage then a huntress, but her ability to hit up to 3 targets with her basic attack still makes huntress a viable option to play with even end-game, although you will probably find yourself glancing at and feeling slighty envious about bow mains ability to dish out incredible single-target damage from time to time.

But while I mention these 4 because they are a tiny bit quicker to level with, pick the main you prefer and have the most fun playing with. There’s little point to forcing yourself to pick something you don’t want just because it’s a tiny bit faster to level with. Always prioritize fun over efficiency or you’ll likely grow bored with the game and quit sooner rather then later. All of the mains probably have something that makes them interesting to play with ( Although I’ve never found it with sword+shield main, but perhaps that’s just me. ), so no matter what main you take, you can level just fine with any of them.

Try to pick a nice non-offensive easy-to-use and easy-to-remember name for your character, while the immature brat might find it fun to run around with a character named RapeMan666 or BuggerJehova, it might not be quite as funny if someone takes offence and you get yourself banned. It’s also nice if a name is easy to use if/when you find yourself doing squad dungeons/guild dungeons/nation dungeons/raids later on with others.

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2: Find a mentor by using the Mentor button on your right. Party with your mentor. If your mentor goes offline, cancel your mentorship and find another, then party with your new mentor. Being in a party with your mentor gives you twice the quest experience and more experience for every battle you fight, so not only should you have a mentor, you should always be in a party with one. Finishing quests while in a party with your mentor also gives you some pretty nice rewards, the mentor button lets you see what current reward you are working towards and what rewards are comming later.

You do not have to participate in the same fights, so you can be off doing your own thing while your mentor is off doing his own thing, you will still get the x2 quest and increased battle experience. But always be in a party with your mentor. Even after all the mentee/mentor rewards have been finished once you’ve quested enough, you still get the quest x2 and increased battle experience by being in a party with your mentor. So don’t stop doing that just because there’s no more rewards for finishing quests, the extra battle experience and permanent quest x2 experience is enough of a reward of it’s own while leveling. If your mentor doesn’t want to put up with you while not getting the extra rewards, cancel your mentorship and find a new one. Even if you can’t get more rewards, your new mentor can and will likely be happy to accept a new mentee who wants faster leveling.

All quests seem to work towards the count needed to get the rewards, so as you are out questing, look for Solicitors, Dispatchers and Historia NPC’s nearby. They will often have quests that match with the main questline, so where the main questline might have you killing 20 of Mob X1, then 15 of Mob X2 after that, there might be another NPC nearby which also has quests for killing Mob X1 and X2 or looting something from them, so you can complete 2 or 3 quests by killing the same mob.

The quests for getting a home in Rome Bazaar are also a nice and quick way to boost your quest count, most of them take less then 10-15 seconds to complete. Some of the legion quests available from level 10 and 70 can also be a nice’n profitable little diversion from the main questline. Mr. Camaraderie in Rome has very nice quests for you that resets daily and are fast or can be completed while doing other quests, so visit him every day to pick up new ones.

You can be a mentee to a mentor from level 1 to 159, after that, you yourself can be a mentor to some low-level character. Once you make the switch from mentee to mentor, you get a different set of rewards as your mentee quests along. Sadly you as a mentor can’t quest to speed up the reward process, so an active mentee is good to have if you find yourself wanting those gems, dragon trial boxes and whatnot faster. The rewards do not reset if you change mentor/mentee and once you’ve completed all the rewards, you get no more. But you can get both the mentee and mentor rewards on a single character.

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3: Guilds. You can use the guild button on the right side of the screen to find yourself a guild to join. Try to find one with some nice and helpful people that can answer questions, help you out with monster information and that does guild and nation dungeons. High level guilds also give a small boost to your attack and defence, so you will hit harder and take less damage. It’s not a lot, but every little bit helps. Some quests asks you to get information on certain monsters, you can get that information by fighting those monsters over and over again ( research racoon license, which you get in some of your helper boxes, speeds this process up a bit. ). But your friends, guildmates and nation members can also share that information with you if they have it, so find a nice’n active guild with friendly people in it to get monster information when you need it for quests rather then having to fight monsters over and over for it.

In a guild, there is also guild crafts. If you have a skill, say Armor crafting for instance and your guild has an Armor craft going on, you contribute to this craft by fighting stuff and generating workload that goes towards completing that craft. Once the craft is finished, a portion of the workload you contributed towards that craft will turn into skill experience in that craft. This way, you can level up your skills even without crafting anything yourself. If you find yourself in need of better gear, you can also register whatever you need as a guild craft and have your guildies help you craft it as they too will generate workload when fighting that goes towards completing your craft. You do not even need to have the skill needed for the craft, as long as somebody in the guild has that skill and is present to start the craft. Whenever you aren’t crafting something yourself, all your battles will contribute workload towards any guild craft in progress. If you register a personal craft, your workload will go towards that until it is done, then any workload after that will go towards guild craft again. This part is not essential to leveling, but if you find yourself in need of more/better gear, a good guild can contribute towards that in this way.

A good guild should also do Guild Dungeons. Newer Guild Dungeons have mobs that auto-level to your main characters level ( or to the highest-leveled main if 2+ mains are in a party and fighting together in the dungeon ) and are generally aggressive enough that there will probably be a lot of times where you have to fight 2 or 3 packs at once. Before your level 120 upgrade, I recommend trying to find someone in the guild at or close to your own level and party with them, to avoid unnecessary deaths. If you can afford gearing up afterwards, party with a higher level character and enjoy the extra experience you will be getting. Same with Training Center, which is a 1-room Guild Dungeon with endless mobs that come in stages.

A good guild should be in a good nation with 9 other guilds and the nation should do Nation Dungeons. Nation Dungeons have mobs that auto-level like in GDs, so party before your level 120 upgrade, after it you should be able to go on your own. Mobs in Nation Dungeons drop Nation Tokens and you can also get those tokens from the reward boxes the ND provides when successfully completed. Those tokens can be traded with Manager Nimrod in Rome Bazaar for some very nice things. A ring your main character can wear from level 120 is available and likely much better then whatever ring you do have when you get to that level. Soul Stones, which you will sometimes need for upgrade or recruitment quests. 1 day quest x2 licenses for when you don’t have a mentor or have leveled enough that you can’t have a mentor. Honey Jar keys, which gives you access to a dungeon with decent exp, nice drops and that is fast and easy to do. Or you can sell Honey Jar runs to high-levels too lazy to farm the tokens themselves who want the enchant stones and other drops from that dungeon. The ring and soul stones are the most appealing when leveling and doing upgrade/recruitment quests, but there are some other interesting things to trade for, so find a guild in a nation that does plenty of dungeons and join them whenever you can.

Depending on your AO region, GDs and NDs can give you star stones, which are another nice way to get some extra gold by selling to other players or buff your own equipment ( Though I do not recommend putting star stones in equipment lower then 140 as you will outlevel that equipment pretty fast, unless it’s something special like Immortal Bow, Wratheater Axe or whatever. ).

Don’t just join the first guild you see or get an offer from, ask some questions first. It should be a guild/nation that runs GDs/NDs/TC at times when you can join them, not a guild/nation that runs dungeons when you are asleep, at work, at school or whatever.

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4: Start questing. When you finish the quests of one character/computer/whatever, they will send you on to the next one you should go to. This is the main questline and you should follow that at least until level 100 ( though by partying with a mentor and doing the extra quests I will mention down below, you will probably be closer to level 120-130 then level 100 at that point. ). After that, you can use the quest log or leveling guide in the in-game help to find level-appropriate quests, or just abandon questing alltogether and level with Olympus Tower, Training Center, Nation Dungeons, Guild Dungeons, events, diary completion or whatever.

Sometimes a quest needs you to write down an answer to progress and they tend to fall into three categories. 1, the NPC actually tells you in the quest text what the answer is, so just write that down. 2, the NPC told you the answer in the previous quest, so use the quest log to look it up in case you can’t remember. 3, it’s the name of the place you just visited, the NPC you just spoke to or the mobs you were just killing. There are some exceptions, but in general the answers to these quest questions are so ridiculously simple that they feel utterly pointless. In case you really can’t provide the correct answer, then remember that google is your friend.

Sometimes enemies will have a “+” in a yellow circle above their heads, these mobs give more exp and can drop extra loot, so try and kill them right away, If you don’t manage to kill them before your turn is over, the “+” will vanish.

Sometimes dead mobs/bosses will spawn lucky loot. The hearts ( looks more like apples then hearts to me… ), gives you 50, 100, 200, 300 or 500% extra experience for 10m, different buffs stack, so if you get 50% + 200%, you will have 250%. The same % does not stack, so if you loot 100% + 100% again, you will not get 200%, the 10m timer on your first 100% buff will refresh however.

Sometimes the lucky loot looks like a chest. These can contain experience books, water of life, quest x2 licenses and concentration licenses. Experience books give as much exp as their tooltip tells you they do, but take 10% willpower to use. Quest x2 license gives you twice the quest experience for 1 hour, which is handy for when you can’t find a mentor to party with or can be saved for later on in the game. Water of Life revives any dead mercenaries and gives full health and mana to your entire formation. Concentration licenses can be used to give your main or one of your mercenaries all the battle experience generated for 1 hour, so instead of the battle experience for every battle being shared between your main and your active mercenaries, one character will get all of it. There are quest x2 and concentration licenses that have different times they last or that only work on mercenaries and whatnot, but the ones you get from lucky loot are 1h and work on both main and mercs.

Sometimes the lucky loot looks like a piece of gear. This is usually level-appropriate to the mob that generated the lucky loot, so if you kill level 50 mobs, chances are that the lucky loot they generate will be level 50 or lower. It can be +0 -> +10 ( Not sure if it can be +L, I’ve never seen it happen at least. But it can be up to +10, that I know and have seen happen myself. ) But there is a small chance that it is something else, like an Immortal Bow, Fire Dragon’s Long Spear, Faust’s Violin or something else that you usually wouldn’t get from that kind of mob/boss. Count yourself lucky if it happens, use or sell, depending on if you need the gear or the gold more.

When you have been fighting monsters for a bit, you will probably start getting information on them. There are 4 levels of information, Basic, Loccation, Item and Origin. Some quests will require you to have information on specific monsters, but there are other uses for it as well. If you have Item information on a monster you are fighting, you have a chance to get more loot from that monster. If you have Origin information on a monster you are fighting, you will get 10% extra experience for killing it. The Research Racoon licenses you can get from the helper boxes will increase the chance of you getting information on monsters you kill, you can also receive information from ( and share information with ) friends, guild members and nation members. With a bit of planning and help from friends/guild/nation, you can try to have as much information about monsters as possible before entering a new quest area, to increase your loot and experience gain. Sadly, it’s only possible to have people share 2 monster origin information a day with you, or it would be possible to have the 10% increased experience from origin information for everything you fight while leveling.

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5: You will get a helper box from one of the first quests, open it. It contains a Merc Summon Marble, a mount and gear boxes. Save the merc summon marble for later, equip the mount ( unless you level as a huntress, in which case your Komodo will probably be a lot better then your temporary mounts ) and equip the gear. It also contains another helper box that you can open at a later level. More on these later.

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6: When you get a bunch of blue/red/yellow mercenaries, use alt+F to put 3 of them as inactive. This gives your active mercs and your main a bigger chance of getting to attack in the first turn of every fight, which means you will finish fights faster and hopefully kill your enemies before they can attack you, which means less of a need to heal/resurrect anyone in your team after a fight. The active mercs gets xp for every battle, but your inactive mercs does not, but they do get xp from completed quests. Your guardians ( red/blue/yellow mercs ) will autolevel to your main characters level up to level 60, so I suggest that you disable 3 of them instead of your gunner/swordsman or other mercs you will get from the main questline later on. Once your main character starts leveling past level 60, the guardians will remain at level 60. Check what kind of magic the guardian has and put the ones with the most useless spells ( Blessing of Life, Deadly Shot, Silence, Flame Sword ) as inactive.

Since I know the game and don’t really need to learn how my mercs spells/attack work, I have my mercs on autobattle so I don’t need to control them in battle. I’ve also disabled some of their spells that are more or less useless, so they always use their basic attacks or actual decent spells to attack. If it’s your first time playing or it’s been a long time since you played, I do not recommend this, have them set to manual control so you can experiment and learn what their skills do and when to use them. But if you know the game and how the mercs and their skills work, disable useless skills so they always attack. For boss fights, spells like Awakening, Oceans blessing, Silence and the like can be useful, but for boss battles you can put the mercs on manual and use the spells more wisely then autobattle will most likely do.

As you can see from the videos, kills come in fast and easy when you can do more in your 1st turn of combat even if you have shit gear. My main and mercs are still using the +4/+7 level 1 spirit gear from the first helper boxes to kill level 53 mobs, except for the main who replaced her +7 level 1 staff with a +0 dark crystal staff. Most of the time, you will be able to kill the entire enemy pack before they can do anything at all, which means you take no/less damage and are unlikely to have any mercs killed, which removes the need to heal/resurrect between fights or have mercs wasting their turn on heal/awakening rather then killing something.

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7: Enjoy fast questing and leveling for a bit. Be flexible however, if there is some event going on or your guild/nation runs a dungeon, you might be better served doing that rather then questing as that can be a faster way to level, depending on what sort of event/dungeon it is.

If there is a special event field/dungeon, be aware however that mobs autolevel to your main characters level and monster packs tend to be heavy on melee enemies rather then range or magic enemies. This means that having quested enough to get your free Elementalist and having skilled her Blazing Earth as much as you can afford will likely make the event a lot easier. It differs from event to event however and some don’t have special event fields and you may be participating in one just by following the main questline and fighting the mobs the quests you take direct you to fight.

Valofe happily seems to enjoy sharing information in as many different places as possible. Unhappily sometimes not on all of them at once. Their homepage will generally have most of it, but sometimes you can find a bit of information on their facebook, sometimes on twitter, sometimes on twitch streams, sometimes on a GMs facebook, sometimes in the official discord, sometimes the unofficial discord. In a best case scenario, all of these places would have all information and have it published within minutes of each other. But sadly you will sometimes find something important on facebook, that isn’t stated on their homepage or that takes a day or two before it makes it onto their homepage or the other way around. So if you want to be kept up to date with what events are going on, what current bugs/issues there are, be prepared to look around for information in a lot of places or you might miss something.

The official and/or unofficial discord tends to work out well as the sole source of information however, as we players to tend to bitch, whine and ask each other about the stuff we come across, so if there is something of interest going on, chances are that someone will be happy and will want to spread the happy news with everyone, someone else will be dissapointed and will want to share how furious they are with everyone, someone will datamine the shit out of the game files to find out the exact numbers behind what is going on and several someones will just post emotes of cows or trashcans. Between the cows and trashcans, you can usually glean enough information to know how to get the most out of whatever event might be currently going on. A nice guild in a nice nation can also help you out here without having to scroll past pages of trolling and emotes.

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8: As you level, you can open the higher level helper boxes. Some contain scrolls, some contain mounts, some contain decorations, some contain licenses. You can equip the gear and decorations if you want, but you shouldn’t need most of it. The spirit gear from the first helper box should be enough until you are around level 50 or so. Most gear, clothes and decorations from the helper boxes are temporary, so once you unseal them by right-clicking on them, they will stop working in 7 days, 14 days or 30 days. So if you’re not planning on using them right away, don’t unseal them or they will slowly expire even if you don’t equip them. You can get them out of the helper boxes and just store them in your inventory or warehouse for future needs however, as long as you don’t unseal them.

After Level 20, you will also see daily exploration rewards start comming in ( In the months when daily exploration is available. It’s usually turned on, but not always. But when it is, you get one of the rewards on the chart for that month every day you log into the game. If you don’t log in, you will get that days reward the next time you log in, but will be one reward behind. If you miss several days, you will be missing out on the last rewards on the chart, which are usually pretty nice. ). This can be everything from licenses, upgrade crystals/jewels, mounts, decorations, skill books or other nice items. Even if you don’t have time to play at all, if you can spend just 1 minute to log in, collect your daily reward and log out, it can help out in the long run.

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9: Commodity boxes I should be in your inventory from enemy drops during your leveling. When opened, they give skill books for D grade mercenaries, growth vials and skill books for some mains. If all the skills you can get out of those boxes have been leveled to 20 or higher, they will give growth vials only. So if you open enough of them to level the skills of your mercs/main to 20, you will only get growth vials when you open more boxes later on, which can be handy to beef up your main/mercs a bit.

Higher grade Commodity boxes exist and you will come across them as you progress, but they are more random in nature. They can give you skill books for mercs you don’t have or mains you don’t play with. But you can also get higher grade skill books and growth vials for your main or the mercs you do have. There are also material boxes, which gives out random materials for crafting. Sell, throw away or save unneeded skill books for later use. Check prices before throwing stuff away however, some skill books can actually be worth a bit of money and until you have a nice and regular source of income, every little bit of gold helps.

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Your elementalist is the most valuable for leveling however and you should make sure that she has all the upgrades and skill in Blazing Earth you can afford at all times. Blazing Earth is a spell that hits melee enemies very hard and since you will be facing many melee mobs and bosses as you play on, she is extremly useful. Battlemages and Staff Mains will be able to learn this spell themselves after having done the level 120 upgrade quest, but until then, even they will find Elementalist a very useful addition to their team. Elementalist also has the spell Freezing Atmosphere, that also works on melee enemies and does a bit of damage ( but a LOT less then Blazing Earth ), but the most important part of that skill is that it prevents melee enemies from using their own spells which can be useful in boss fights and PvP.

If you are planning on getting your character a house/mansion ( which you should, they are awesome ), you might also want to consider the fact that you could use at least one employee for your house. You can hire chefs and artisans as employees, I will briefly mention chef here as they are needed to hold feasts in your home. Feast gives nice buffs that can help your leveling and/or give you that extra little bit of attack/defence to handle some hard boss later on. Archers and Vikings can be chefs, sadly you will get the upgraded versions of both ( dark archer / northern viking ) as free mercs while questing, but the upgraded versions can’t be chefs, so you need the regular archer or the regular viking. You can recruit either one by persuading a wandering archer or viking, which you can sometimes encounter in towns or between towns when out and about in the game world. Or you can visit one of the mercenary vendors and buy an archer, there’s quite a few merc vendors around in various places, one is loccated in Antillia near the entrance and after level 60, you can teleport to Antillia gate/artisan district from everywhere in the world, even without a teleport license, by using the “Go to city” button on the right.

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11: When you have summoned your new mercs, geared them with equipment from your helper boxes and used alt+F to set up a formation you are happy with, use the Go to City button on your right to go to Rome Plaza. There you will find Master Simon NPC, accept his quest. Then you go to Mr Camraderie NPC between plaza and gate, take his sparring quest. Select an opponent from the Sparring Hall button on the town menu. Turn in your quests at Mr Camraderie and pick a new one. Turn in your quest to Master Simon and use the Overdrive token he gives you.

As you fight enemies near your own level, you will notice after finishing Master Simons first quest that there’s a meter on the lower right side of the screen that fills up as you fight those enemies. When that meter is full, you can press J and then click the mobs/boss you are fighting to unleash a very powerful spell. At this level and for a long time onwards, this spell will oneshot almost all your enemies and most bosses, so make sure that this meter is full before you start a boss fight as it will be very helpful to get rid of all the extra enemies so you can just focus your energy on the boss ( if the boss survives at all ).

This part is optional and you can do it later on if you prefer. It will give a lot of levels at this point, but leave you unable to charge your overdrive/ancient fury until you start fighting mobs near your own level. Go to Dimension Strider Amarieneju near gate in Rome. Accept her quest and talk to her, this gives you a LOT of exp, so make sure you are in a party with your mentor before turning it in. Congratulations, you are now severely overleveled ( or will be after a while, as it takes the game some time to notice you have excess XP and actually gives you and your mercs the levels you now have the experience for ), your shitty mercs will have gained a few levels and you will have a very easy time fighting stuff for a good while. Because you gained so many extra levels from the Dimension Strider quest, the enemies you fight now are probably too low for the overdrive/ancient fury meter to fill up, so it might not fill up at all until you are fighting mobs closer to your new level.

Go back to Baghdad/Athens and quest away. When you have finished your current quest from Mr Camraderie, turn that in and pick up a new one. Most of them are easy things to do while questing and they give a LOT of exp at this point. These quests reset every day, so you can pick up the same quests again after they have reset. They also give tokens that you can use to trade for more “free” permanent merc rooms for your legion mercenaries, so even when the exp for those quests isn’t very good after you’re level 100+, it can still be useful to keep on doing them in case you are planning on getting a lot of legion mercenaries.

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12: As you level, you can open more of your helper boxes. You get temporary mounts, more licenses, more gear boxes and merc summon marbles. When you stop getting helper boxes at level 100, you should have 3 merc summon marbles saved away. These marbles contain a variety of mercs to choose from, but there’s really only four that are of some interest. Warlord Khun Phaen, Puppeteer Rin, Necromancer Riva Faust and Centaur Archer Chironia, the rest are easily obtainable by questing or buying from market.

Warlord, Rin and Riva does not have recruitment quests and can only be obtained through certain events or through spending real life money in item mall ( or by buying from those who spend real life money in item mall, but it tends to cost a lot of gold to do so ). Centaur can be quested for at higher levels or bought off market from those who has done her quest, but she tends to be quite expensive. I would suggest using the marbles to get Warlord, Rin and Centaur, as those are useful in more situations then Necromancer is.

When the marbles are used, the mercs summoned will autolevel to your main characters level ( up to 120, so if your main is 135 when you use the marbles, the mercs summoned will only be 120 ). So preferably save these marbles until your main is level 120 to avoid having to level them. The warlord can be insanely handy for boss fights if you are leveling with one of the less hard-hitting main characters, so if you find yourself struggling in boss fights, you might want to use 1 of them a bit early to get a warlord to help you out. The spell that makes Warlord so good against bosses is Demoralize, so if you do summon your Warlord early, you need gold to buy at least one skill book or 2 atlas ores if none are available to learn that skill. So if you don’t have enough gold to do that, it’s more or less pointless to do an early summon of Warlord. Find some other and cheaper way to defeat the boss you are having issues with until you have the gold for his skill and at least a few upgrades.

The reason to save these marbles is that these mercs are good, but expensive to upgrade and get skills for. If you don’t have the gold to do so, you might just as well go with the mercs you get for free from questing anyway. When your main gets to 120, you can probably at least afford the first couple of upgrades and the necessary skills to make them useful. For warlord, you want level 1 in all his skills, get more when you can afford it. For Rin, you want Empowering Control, level 1 is enough, but upgrade if/when you can afford it. For centaur, you want level 1 in all 3, upgrade Gift of Prometheus when/if you can afford it. Later on in the game, you can upgrade Chione’s Fury as well, but don’t worry about that for a long time, as it’s a skill with limited use due to it’s long cooldown. But Gift of Prometheus is extremly good as a well-geared centaur with high skill in Gift of Prometheus will hit like a freight train! Depending on what main you are, chances are that she will do more damage to a single target then your main does if you keep her skilled, geared and upgraded.

The licenses and scrolls are worth keeping an eye on. The ones that have a level limit should be used before your main character hits that level, after that they become useless. ( Some can be traded/sold, I don’t imagine they sell very fast or for a lot however. I usually just throw them away, but you can try to sell them. Perhaps people actually buy them, I’m not sure. ) While leveling, some licenses are automatically applied during certain levels, but eventually you won’t get them for free and will have to manually apply the ones you want. Blessing License, Teleport and Patrol are the interesting ones for leveling purposes.

Blessing gives you more exp, makes you attacks hit harder, makes you and your team harder to damage. It also saves you from loosing gold and exp if your main character dies, so I would consider this one a priority for fast and easy leveling.

Teleport saves you a lot of time moving around while questing, but it’s more of a time-saver then a necessity. If it runs out and you don’t have another to use, it’s not the end of the world. You can use Travel Agencies in town to move between towns you’ve already visisted and if you need to visit a town you’ve never been in, travel to the closest town you have been in and walk to the town you want while going to the bathroom, fetching a glass of water or whatever.

Patrol is sometimes needed as there are some low-level quests that will have you check the details of a pack of monsters or another player. I cannot for the life of me recall any higher-leveled quests where it’s needed, so for leveling purposes, this is only needed for a few quests and you will likely have this license applied for free when doing those quests. There are other uses for it, but for leveling, it’s not really necessary except for a few early quests.

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13: It’s number 13 on this list, but it’s applicable earlier then that. From time to time after as you level on, you will see a button pop up on the right side of the screen that says Free League/Colloseum League. This is a Player vs Player tournament that goes on for 1 hour. When they happen, you might want to leave the party with your mentor and join in, as fighting gives Fame/Battle Points, more points for wins, but still some even if you loose. These points are needed for some quests later on and for when your main character does upgrade quests at level 100 and 120, some recruitment quests for mercs also needs you to have a certain number of fame/battle points.

You will want at least 100 points before you get to level 100 and have to do your first upgrade quest. At level 150, there’s a quest that needs you to have 5000 fame/battle points, I can’t recall any current quest that needs you to have more then that, but there might be one or two I’ve forgotten about. You can also get fame/battle points by Sparring with opponents close to your own level in Rome Sparring Hall, but you get a lot less doing that then you do in the tournaments. So to avoid getting stuck on an upgrade quest and having to wait for a tournament or do 100 sparring matches in a row, you might want to join a few tournaments to get at least 100 battle/fame points early on, even if that temporarily slows down your leveling.

You should do this pretty early on, as that means fighting easier opponents and wins means more fame/battle points for you per fight. If you wait too long and level too much, you might run into a bunch of alts with +10/+L gear, expensive mercs and have to suffer through a loosing streak which gives you less fame/battle points when you finally do join a tournament.

Remember to party with your mentor again after you are done with the tournament(s), as you can’t join them if you are in a party. Also make sure to activate your full party before applying to the tournament and turn 3 mercs inactive again after it, so you do PvP with your full formation.

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14: Mentee rewards. As you quest away in a party with your mentor, you will get mentee rewards in your mailbox. Most of them are self-explanatory, but I will mention two of them. Dark Crystal Equipment Boxes and Dark Crystal Enhance Stones.

The boxes contain weapons that you can use on your main and/or your mercs. These special weapons can be used from level 1, but have the stats of level 150 weapons. This means that they are extremly powerful when you first get your hands on them and they will be useful for a long time. The Elementalist you have gotten from questing is a good option to give one of these weapons. Her blazing earth is extremly useful and this weapon will probably boost her damage with that spell a fair amount. General Guan Yu which you can quest for at level 110 ( or buy off market ), is also a good option to put a dark crystal spear on, as he also has a very powerful spell ( Green Dragon’s Glaive ) that will likely see a nice boost from a dark crystal weapon. Your main character should get the third dark crystal weapon you will get from your mentee rewards, as that will raise your main characters damage and health by a fair amount compared to anything else you have access to while leveling, which will speed things up quite a bit and make your main more likely to survive hard-hitting attacks.

Dark Crystal Enhance Stones can be used to upgrade the dark crystal weapons. It costs 10xthe weapons current level + 10 stones to attempt to upgrade them, so a +0 weapon costs 10 stones to try and upgrade, a +4 weapon costs 50 stones to try and upgrade. Upgrades can fail, in which case your weapon looses a + ( unless it’s +0 ) and you loose the stones needed for the attempt. More powerful weapons means that you will hit harder, that your spells will do more damage and that your character will have more health.

But… The stones can sell pretty well and can be worth a decent amount of gold, so if you find yourself in more need of gold then a more powerful team, you might want to sell the stones instead of use them.

If you upgrade your weapons beyond +6, they will gain something very unpleasant called Durability. This means that using them will cause the weapons to slowly break down. If durability reaches 0, the weapons will loose all their stats and just become dead weight until they have been repaired. Repairing dark crystals weapons is very expensive for new players, so it will probably be a lot better for you to avoid + higher then 6 unless you are prepared to get your weapon(s) to +10, where they will loose the unpleasant Durability and become unbreakable. However, upgrading the dark crystal weapons is easy at lower levels, at higher + the chances of failure is higher, so chances are that the stones you get from your mentee rewards won’t be enough for even one +10 weapon. It can be, I’ve seen weapons go from +0 to +10 without a single failure, but it’s extremly rare, so I wouldn’t count on it.

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15: Olympus tower. There is a button on your right after level 60 that says “Oly. Tower”, pressing that brings up a popup window with all the floors in Olympus tower. I will only mention 1, 5 and 6 here.

From level 60, you can enter floor 1 for 30m once a day. Floor 1 or OT1 will place you in a room with enemies ( and likely some other players ), when one pack of mobs die, another will spawn ( unless server has some serious issues ). These mobs give plenty of XP and has a small chance to drop some nice loot ( Very small, so don’t expect it to happen your first or second or possibly not even tenth run, just be happy if it does happen from time to time. ). If you enter here in a party together with your mentor or another high-level player, you can gain a lot of levels in the 30 minutes before the floor kicks you out. But you will be stuck with your old gear and will likely need completely new gear to survive, so I would only suggest doing this if you can afford to buy/craft new gear. Entering alone can be a challenge especially right after hitting level 60. But after your level 100 upgrade quest as long as you have an elementalist with blazing earth in your team, it’s easy to do and this is one of the reasons I would recommend you to always ensure that your elementalist is upgraded, skilled and geared. If you avoid the centaur packs and only attack the others, you will find that all the enemies are melee and your elementalist’s blazing earth will do incredible damage to them. If you attack the centaur packs, the back 3 are ranged and will not be affected by blazing earth. OT1 is free to enter and if you get killed in here, resurrect, heal up and use the same button to enter once again.

From level 120, you can enter floor 5 for 30m once a day. Floor 5 or OT5 will place you in a similar room to OT1 and works pretty much the same. But the mobs in here are agressive, so even if you don’t attack them, they will attack you if you idle for too long next to them. When you are fighting one pack, there’s a chance another pack or even two packs will join your fight. At lower levels, the mobs in here also provide you with a lot of XP. They provide less XP for higher levels however, so it’s better to fight on your own on this floor. But since you will probably find yourself fighting 2 or 3 packs of enemies most of the time, you should have an elementalist and preferably a general in your team ( or be a blademaster having at least level 1 Waltz of the Blade with an elementalist or a battlemage/mage with a general after having done your 120 upgrade quest ), so you are capable of killing lots of enemies in a very short time. These mobs tend to be pretty generous with equipment boxes and also has a small chance of dropping some very nice loot ( once again, small chance, don’t be surprised if you don’t see any drop for a looooOOOooong time ). OT5 cost 20 million gold to enter, but as long as you can kill enemies at a decent rate, you should get much more then that back in loot ( and lots of xp ).

From level 120, you can enter floor 6 for 5m once a day. Floor 6 or OT6 will put you in a room similar to 1 and 5, but it will most likely be completely empty or possibly be empty except for one or more other players. Chances are that you will spend 5 minutes in there and not find a single mob and then be kicked out of there once your time is up. There are 4 mobs that can spawn in there and does at differing times. If you’ve found yourself a nice and helpful guild, you might even be told about how their respawn timers work. They range in size, the biggest one is so big that it’s impossible to miss it if it does spawn ( or spawned before you entered ). The smallest is about the size of your characters foot when your camera is zoomed out to the max, so it can be very easy to miss it. So look around, that “speck of dust” you see on your monitor might be you having a dirty screen or it could actually be something worth attacking. These mobs you can sometimes find in here have a higher chance of dropping the nice stuff, but sometimes they only drop gold. It costs 30 million gold to enter OT6 and most of the time, you will have spent that gold and then spent 5 minutes just sitting/walking around waiting for something to happen. You can get lucky, but most of the time it will be 30 million gold and 5 minutes of wasted time. If you are a gambler, OT6 can be something for you. If you are not inclined to gamble, stay away from OT6 or be prepared to spend 5 minutes a day regretting your decision to enter.

The nice stuff I’ve mentioned a few times now are Jupiter Boxes, boxes that give some very nice level 140 gear with special abilites. Whichever one you get will likely be an upgrade over what you already have or can be sold for a decent amount of money. Keep if you need the gear, sell if you need the gold.

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16: Don’t forget the “H” key on your keyboard. I’ve paid money for premium games with less useful help functions then Atlantica has got. You want to know keyboard shortcuts? Help has them. You want to know how to hire employees for your home? Help has it. You want to know what benefits various stats such as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Vitality has? Help has that. You’ve started doing TBS missions and wonder which gives the most/best rewards? Help has that. There’s a Fishing event and you don’t know how to fish? Help will tell you. You see other players with homes holding parties and want to do that yourself, but don’t know how? Help will help you with that. My leveling guide is shit and leaves too much out? Help tells you where you should be at which level. You want to know how much extra invasion loot the 1st ranked person gets? Help has the answer.

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17: Play and enjoy the game. This and the tutorial quests at the start of the game should give you enough knowledge to see you through to level 120 or so and at that point, you shouldn’t really need a guide to keep on playing and leveling.

There is power-leveling with the help of another high-leveled character, in which case most of these 17 pointers can be safely ignored. Just make sure that you can afford to gear up ( and upgrade/skill ) your entire team after you’ve powerleveled, since you will likely be mostly useless without new gear after powerleveling unless you stick to the low-level quest areas you wanted to skip by powerleveling. That’s why I never recommend powerleveling for new players, but it can be handy for old players leveling a new character, since they can get their old character to help them out with gold/gear. By selling all or at least some of the Dark Crystal Stones you get as mentee rewards, even a new player can afford to gear up, upgrade mercs and skill them up after having powerleveled, so if you are prepared to do that, even a new character can power-level. Just be prepared to let go of some of your hard-earned DC stones to bear the cost of having power-leveled.

I’ve also skipped a lot of stuff not directly related to leveling or that can help you level but generally does so in too slow a way for my taste. But like I’ve mentioned, the in-game help is pretty good and if you’ve found yourself a good guild in a good nation and joined the discord(s), your fellow players can be a great help. I’ve also added some stuff not strictly related to leveling, but that can be useful in getting a bit of gold to help you out in case it’s your first character or first after returning to the game.

There are also some things that can speed up your leveling immensly, like events, AO Days, titles, bonus time weekends and other temporary things. I’ve barely mentioned any of those, because they vary and differ over time. If you find yourself starting a character when there is some amazing temporary thing going on, enjoy. If not, keep on leveling and wait for those special times and enjoy even faster leveling then. There are permanent titles available through Item Mall ( or from players who use Item Mall ) and some events, those permanent titles can be used all day long all week long and often increase the amount of experience you get, so one of those can be an extremly wise decision even if it will probably eat away a lot of your gold ( or more likely more gold then you actually have on a new character ). But if you can afford one, it’s probably one of the best investments of gold ( or time if there is an event going on that can give you one ) you can find in this game.

All of my leveling on this character has been done with +15% bonus experience and no help from my other characters other then a guild invite and always having a mentor available, so if you find yourself playing with +200% bonus time instead, well, obviously it’s going to be a lot faster for you. I’m also a smoker and as any good swedish person should, I do my part in keeping Sweden very high up on the list of countries that consume most coffee per capita. So 10m out of every hour online for me goes to smoking and making/drinking coffee rather then playing, so even at 15% bonus time, chances are that you will level faster then I do. Doing stuff like binding frequently used stuff like the Loot All key ( X ) to extra mouse buttons also helps keeping the speed up when leveling.

You get temporary Mounts and Decorations from the helper boxes, but they are usually utter shit compared to what else is available. If you can afford it or there is some event that can get you a mount with a decent AoE or Decorations with some nice damage spell, that will also help immensly and speed leveling up by a great deal. Check for christmas wreath decoration on market/auction, Valofe gave them away like candy for the last christmas event, so prices went down by a lot. While they only have a 30% chance to proc their magic, it is a full-formation AoE and since prices crashed on those things, even a new player should be able to afford them without making too big of a dent in their gold supply.

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Level 120, when you get access to the level 120 upgrade quest and learn another new spell on your main, this upgrade also makes it possible for your mercs to get their 120 upgrades and beyond. Level 125, when you can go to Australia and do some great quests that gives tons of experience. Level 130, when you get yet another upgrade quests which unlocks talents for your main character. Level 135, can access OT8. ( I don’t really recommend it until after 140 unless you party with someone else for it. )

Level 137, Katherine Gorge/Ghera questchain available, resetable questchain that give heaps of exp and that you should do daily. Level 140, legion 140 daily quests. Level 142, Pure Waters, another resetable questchain, not as much exp, but every little bit helps. Level 145, Lucky Coin dailies. Nice bit of exp every day + gets you coins for the Immortalized title. Access to OT10, you should probably go in a party the first few times, but if you have mains/mercs with nice AoE’s, you can probably start to solo it around level 145-150.

Level 150, multiple nice questchains that with quest x2 should get you up to 152 without having to complete them all. Level 152, another resetable questchain that provides you with level 150 rings for main characters and is a great farm area for your jackpots. Level 155, Huaguo, another nice little farm area. Level 156, nice title quests and daily quests in a nice farm area from Indiana Jones+father ripoffs. Level 160, legion 160 daily quests.

Level 163, Empress Consort Isabella quests that gives huge exp and unlock General Varda’s 163 repeatable quests. Level 167, repeatable quests from Yueying. Level 170, Hall of Chaos questchain and dailies. Level 200, current level cap. Have fun grinding your way to this one!