Saturday, March 28, 2009

Part 3: Atlantica Online Gold - Columbus


Columbus in Atlantica Online


Here is the third installment for my Atlantica Online Gold Guide. The first guide is all about how to make gold by turning your useless books to skill boxes. The second one is how to earn more gold by selling books we get from ancient, medieval and modern book boxes. This guide will cover on how to make quick gold by selling armors and weapons to the NPC named Columbus.

Let me start by by identifying Columbus. Historically Christopher Columbus was a Genoese navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean—funded by Queen Isabella of Spain—led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere.

Columbus in Atlantica Online though plays a different role. He is a merchant that buys all equipments above rank zero at 50% of market price. He is located west of Madrid and north of Lisbon. Below is a picture of his general location.



The easiest way to get to him is to teleport to Madrid, use the NPC search function and auto-move to his location.


I talked to Columbus but his shop is close.

That is more likely correct. Unlike the tireless Goncourt who is working 24x7, Columbus has limited work hours. I think the devs put this as a balance for the game. His shop is only open between 9am to 6pm game time or 9 game hours.

Since 1 game day is around 48 minutes. This means that you can sell to him for 18 minutes and he will be idle for 30 minutes after that and the cycle goes on. Having this information will give you a good estimate when it is a good time to sell to Columbus.

I hope the image below will provide you a better understanding of Columbus time cycle.



Now that we have the information on Columbus work hours, we can now proceed to the selling process.


What should I sell to Columbus?

There are tons of equipments that we can sell to this guy but the simplest answer to this question is we sell something that can give us most profit. Luckily finding someting profitable in Atlantica's Marketplace is easy if you know your math :).

Let us study the 3 items below and anaylze if we can make a profit or not. Remember, that Columbus only pays 50% of Marketplace price. He won't also pay if the item's price is more than 100,000 gold.



Item 1: Destroyer Axe (Buy price = 1,400 gold)
  • Market Rate = 28,760 gold
  • Columbus Buy Price = Market Rate x 50% = 14,380 gold
  • Profit = Columbus Buy Price - Buy Price = 12,980 gold
Item 2: Anu Warrior Leggings (Buy price = 44,000 gold)
  • Market Rate = 130,711 gold
  • Columbus Buy Price = Market Rate x 50% = 65,355 gold
  • Profit = Columbus Buy Price - Buy Price = 21,355 gold
Item 3: Ghost Gunner Rifle (Buy price = 150,000 gold)
  • Market Rate = 1,086,911 gold
  • Columbus Buy Price = Market Rate x 50% =543,455 gold
  • Profit = ZERO. Columbus won't buy it because price is more than 100,000 gold.
The image below shows the actual price that Columbus paid for the items above. There is a very slight variance on the prices since they are dynamic and changes often the more players participate with Columbus farming.



If you cannot find items you need to sell to Columbus you can always buy Equipment Boxes. This is more practical because you don't need a lot of inventory space. However, it counts though to your allowable boxes opened per day and it won't be helpful if you are opening boxes you get from Goncourt.

Let us sample out the following Babyblon and Pyramid Equipment boxes. The 5 Babylon Boxes cost us 69,995 gold while the 5 Pyramid boxes cost us 246,500 gold.



The total sale for selling the 5 equipments coming from Babylon Boxes is 282,849 gold which gives us a profit of 212,854 gold. While the sale from Pyramid Boxes is 396,801 gold which gives us a profit of 149,301 gold. The result shows that expensive boxes does not mean always better profit. You need to constantly look for items that will sell better.

If you have noticed, the Amon's Leggings and Amon's Gauntlets sells at 103,319 gold each. Columbus only pays a maximum of 100,000 gold per item. For some strange reason, he accepted this. I'm not sure if this is a bug or the devs have increased the selling cap but it is best to contact an Atlantica Online Game Master about this or you might end up getting banned for exploiting a bug.


Columbus and your WILL

Every item you sell to Columbus takes 10% Will. I think this has been placed so that we cannot fully exploit this mechanic and it serves as an economic balance for the game. Ideally, the max number of items we can sell to Columbus in one game hour (48 mins cycle), is 28 items. If the start of the selling cycle you have 100% Will which means you can sell 10 items. You can sell 1 additional item for each 1 minute (1 minute = 10% Will) for 18 minutes.

If you can find items that gives you a constant profit of 30,000 gold per item, this means that you can have a profit of 840,000 gold every 1 game hour.

You are probably wondering too why you should sell to Columbus when you can get better profit selling directly to the Marketplace at a higher price. While this statement holds true, in some situation it is not always practical. My main reason for doing Columbus instead of marketplace is that I want my gold NOW. Marketplace slots are limited and your item takes time to sell.


Columbus is Newbie Friendly

The Columbus proceeds seems small compared to the explosive profits you get from opening Goncourt's boxes but Columbus method is consistent. It is ideal for newbie players and only cost around 5,000 gold to start. The moment you are out of tutorial, try to buy a Bran Castle Equipment box, open it and run to Columbus. You can use the proceeds after the first sale to buy 2-3 additional Bran boxes and repeat the cycle.


Parting words...

I do hope you learned something from this blog that will enhance your playing style. I will try to find more ways on how a casual player can earn gold in Atlantica Online because I truly believe that if a player has gold, he won't have a need to buy gold from gold spammers and that will cost the spam to stop. I do sound idealistic but you can't blame me I guess since I am receiving an average of 25 spams per day.

If you have questions or comments, please feel free to post them. Stay tune for my next Atlantica Online Gold Guide blog. I promise, you won't be disappointed.


Copyright © 2008-2009 Gaiaplay Blogs. If you see this blog elsewhere it has been copied or stolen.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Part 2: Atlantica Online Gold - Ancient Boxes

Analayzing Gold Profits for Ancient Book Boxes

Last time I showed you how to make Atlantica Online Gold by trading with the NPC Goncourt. You can trade crap books to him and in return he will give you back a Book Box with 3 types of rarity (modern, medieval and ancient). If you missed that blog, you can visit Part 1: Atlantica Online Gold.

This time we are going to analyze if it is worth opening those skill books and sell the books we get from them for a higher profit. Or is it safer to just sell the book boxes directly on the market. Hopefully, after reading this blog, you will have a a better understanding on how to market Ancient Boxes and Skill books.

Let's start by assuming we have around 300 Ancient Book Boxes which is priced at 189,000 per box (base on the figure we got from previous blog). If all these boxes sells, you will have a gross sale of 56.7 million gold.




That 56.7 million gold is tempting but based on my experiences, Ancient Book Boxes does not sell that fast. If you are lucky it will sell in 24 hours but it usually takes 48-72 hours for it to sell out. This might vary depending on how active your server. Another problem is that once you put a tag price on it in the market in such large quantities, the small sellers will definitely undercut you, making it harder to sell them. You can sell them though in bunch of 10s or 20s and list it as the lowest price and they might sell faster. Selling in small chunks or selling ancient book boxes is not my style though unless I don't have enough playing time to open them.

One of the main reasons you want to open the Ancient Book Boxes is to have higher proceeds. There is also a good chance that you can get the Big 3 advance skill books, namely War Cry (30m), Freezing Atmosphere (20m) and Requiem (20m). All these 3 averages more than 20 million gold each in my server. Another book to watch out is Chaos Edge.




I decided to open the 300 Ancient Book Box and the results are listed below. It does not look promising and I did not get any of the BIG 3 but I am confident enough that they will yield more than 56.7 million gold.

Out of the 300 books I got, only 20 types are sellable and 115 pieces. See the pretty pictures below. Let's analyze them further.



TIP: Be sure you have enough inventory space when you do this, otherwise your mailbox can get lots of mails and you can lose the books. I advice that you have at least 60 inventory slots.

I provided the pictures below so you can have an idea on how much these books sells. The prices varies from server to server but this seems pretty standard as of this date. The staple stuff are Meteor Strike, Beast Summon, Concentrate, Light Slash and Evanescent Scud. These sells at least for 500k gold to more than 1 million. Others ranges from 100k gold to 600k gold.




To sum up the results, I provided another illustration below.



If these books will sell at lowest price possible during the time I made this blog, I would have only earned 57.8m gold. Just more than a million gold higher than selling the Ancient Book Box.

You might be wondering why should I waste more than 30 minutes opening these books for a mere million profit. It seems unnecessary but you want to do it because of the BIG 3. If I get one of the big 3 in this batch, I would have earned at least 20 million more gold.

Another reason for opening the boxes is that skill books sells faster and the prices is much stable compared to selling Ancient Book Box alone. For example, if the price Ancient Book Box dropped by 15,000 gold, you already lost more than 4 million gold. Unlike skill books, a drop price for example in Meteor Strike [Adv] does not necessarily mean a drop price in Beast Summon [Adv].

Honestly, the 300 Ancient I opened above is not the best run. It's fairly average. Of the 50 batches of 300 I opened (yer right 15,000 boxes), around 70% of that run, I get 20 million more gold compared to selling them straight as Ancient Book Boxes.

Now let me give you some ideas for the other book boxes and book prices.

Medieval Book Box Tips

Opening Medieval Book Box is the same as opening the ancients. I strongly advice you that though to use another character in opening them. If you mix these boxes with your Ancient Book Box opener, it will get very messy and chaotic.

Medieval Book Box averages around 5,000 to 12,000 gold. The question to ask yourself in considering selling INT skill books is - Is it worth opening it? The answer for this varies. If you already have enough gold, it might not be worth your time. If you are just beginning to earn your gold an extra 3 to 5 million gold on average is worth it.

The watch list and approximate prices for INT books are War Cry (15 million), Freezing Atmosphere (6 Million) and Requiem (8 million).

The staples for these set are Concentrate, Beast Summon, Meteor Strike, Light Slash, Scud and Ice Ridge Axe which easily sells for 50k gold or more. Speed Cast, Healing, Break Down, Deadly Strike, Chaos Wind and Deadly Shot averages around 30-60k gold.

Modern Book Box Tips

Proceeds for modern book box is not that good. They average around 800 to 2000 gold each.
At best you can easily sell the rarer BEG books for 3,000 to 8,000 and they would usually sell.

The only good book that comes out of it which is worth more than a million is War Cry [Beg] which sells for an average of 3 to 6 million gold. Requiem sells for around 300k gold. Freezing Atmosphere is dirt cheap.

The staples for these BEG books are Deadly Strike (20,000), Deadly Shot (20,000) and Speed Cast (70,000).


Conclusion

Even though I have an unlucky run illustrating the Ancient Boxes to you, I still am happy that it is worth more than 56.7 million gold. It would have been nice if I got one of the big 3.

I am not convincing you though that you should open every Ancient Boxes you have for higher proceeds since opening them up takes time and saving time is a profit in itself. It is also a gamble and you can get trash books instead.

Open the boxes at your own discretion since after all it is your gold :).

For modern and medieval book boxes, I suggest that you open them on per need basis. As you earn more gold, you will find that opening these boxes is not worth your time.

I'm hoping by a week's time you have already 200m and visit me back for my next blog so we can use your gold to work for you instead of you working for gold.


Copyright © 2008-2009 Gaiaplay Blogs. If you see this blog elsewhere it has been copied or stolen.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Part 1: Atlantica Online Gold - Goncourt

Comprehensive Guide to Goncourt and Boxes

Introduction


As most business entrepreneurs says, "You need to spend money to make money". Same holds true for almost any MMORPG and definitely true for Atlantica Online. In this game you need gold to make gold. You might ask yourself why will I need gold? The simple answer is like most Atlantica players, you need gold to enjoy the game. Gold can buy you equipments, skills, scrolls and XP. You hear me right, XP or experience points.

With high end gears selling for around 300 million gold a piece, its a daunting task to fully equip your 9 initial mercenaries and the 20 more you can acquire later on the game. Giving them 1 high end item per mercenaries will already cost you 8.7 billion gold.

I made this guide primarily to support my LazyGamer Guide to Leveling. In that previous guide I run out of gold which I use to convert to experience points. Hopefully the Atlantica Online Gold Guide can let you players earn gold to support whatever needs you have in the game.

This guide is geared for casual gamer and in fact newbies and veterans alike. You can jump in as soon as you reach level 3 for the market access if you have the gold needed to start the process. The ideal money needed though is around 1.5 million gold and level 10. You can start with a lower amount but if you want to fast track that is my requirement.

Again like my previous guides, its up to you how to get the gold. You can buy it or you can beg for it. The source does not matter as long as you have it.


Commodity Boxes

You might be wondering why we need level 10 and not level 1 or level 3. Level 10 is ideal because you can gain 2 times money making potential compared to level 1 to 9. In fact level 10 can be achieved in an hour or in under 2 minutes if you have Golden Tusk from my other guide.

Let me show you a table on how many boxes you can open and trade to Goncourt.

Level 1-9 can open 100 boxes and trade 100 books to Goncourt per day.
Level 10-19 can open 200 boxes and trade 200 books to Goncourt per day.
Level 20-49 can open 300 boxes and trade 300 books to Goncourt per day.
Level 50+ can open 400 boxes and trade 400 books to Goncourt per day.

You might be wondering why we need boxes and who is Goncourt and why he needs so many books. The short answer is that we need to open boxes to get books and we need books to get Special Boxes and we sell these special boxes in the market for a profit. There are many types of boxes in Atlantica but the specific boxes that we need for books is called Commodity Boxes [Low], Commodity Boxes [Mid] and Modern Book Box. Below is a picture of boxes what we need and their sample prices in Macedon.



It takes around 12 minutes of non-stop clicking every 3-4 seconds to open 200 Boxes. To some this is acceptable but to others its not. The other way to get 200 books and perhaps the easiest is just to buy them. The best way to do this is buy the FIXED priced books at 5,000 gold each. There are books that are below the fix price too so you can buy them as well to lessen your cost.

A sample of fix price book can be seen in the image below. This book is called Lightning Spear [Beg] valued at 5,000 gold.



I will let you decide what type of method you are going to use in acquiring 200 books but I will share some facts and experiences that might help you manage your inventory since these books requires inventory slots.

  • Fix Price Books are the most expensive for our needs but it only require 1 inventory slot. You need 1 million gold to buy 200 books.
  • Commodity Box [Beg] are cheap. It can spawn around a dozen common [Beg] books and Growth Vial [Low] so you need to open more than 200 boxes to get 200 books. Take note though that you can only open 200 boxes per day.
  • Commodity Box [Mid] are cheap too. It can spawn more than a dozen common [Int] books and Growth Vial [Mid] and Manager Scroll [Int] so you need to open more than 200 boxes of this type. Growth Vial [Mid] cost around 25,000 gold in market place.
  • Modern Book Box are probably the cheapest to open but the messiest too. It will take like 60 inventory slots to accomodate all the different books so some books might be send to your mailbox if you do not have enough inventory slots. Modern Book Box though gives all common, uncommon and rare [Beg] books including the most coveted War Cry [Beg] which cost 3 to 8 million gold.

The Way To Goncourt

Now that you have the 200 books that you need it is time for us to find the NPC Goncourt. Finding him though is not easy since he is constantly on the move. You can find him by asking in the PEERS chat and hope to get some response but the most reliable way to him is through the NPC Livingstone and he is located near Bucharest.



In the image above, Goncourt is in the city of Edinburgh. To get to him you can either use Auto-Move or teleport to him if you have access to that city.

Once you come face to face with Goncourt you can start business. Goncourt charges 1,000 gold per book trade so make sure you have enough gold to cover it. One book traded will result to either Modern Book Box, Medieval Book Box or Ancient Book Box which we need to sell to the Marketplace for profit. Below is a sampling for 200 books traded and the boxes I got from him.



  • 123 Modern Book Box
  • 59 Medieval Book Box
  • 18 Ancient Book Box
The results above is from 200 books traded. It is below average now since usually I get like 20 Ancient boxes. On general you usually get 1 Ancient Book box for every 10 books traded. If you get less than 20 you are below average and more than 20 means you get above average. The results though seems to vary by +25% to -25% for every 200 books traded.

Now that I have some figures, I can do the math. Let me show you the prices of each boxes.



If I am going to sell all the boxes we acquired from Goncourt in the Market, I am going to have the following gross total sale provided that we follow the lowest cost listed as of today

  • (123 Modern Book Boxes) x 700 gold = 86,100 gold
  • (59 Medieval Book Boxes) x 7,800 gold = 460,200 gold
  • (18 Ancient Book Boxes) x 189,000 = 3,402,000 gold
  • Total Sale: 3,948,300 gold
I used fixed price to purchase my 200 books so it cost me 1 million gold. I traded with Goncourt 200 times so that is another 200,000 gold in expenses. To sum it up, the proceeds I get for all these trading and selling around 2.7 million gold.

Net Proceeds = 3.9 million gold minus 1.2 million gold = 2.7 million gold.

Having 3 character doing all this will theoretically triple my income and will make me around 8.1 million gold per day.

The gold seems alot for a day's work but I assure you that it is not enough as your level increases. If you keep doing this, you will eventually earn 100 million gold in a few days time and by the time you reached that financial freedom, I will teach another method on how to even earn more Atlantica Gold to help you in your gaming needs.

Stay tune for my next blog wherein we can gain more profits by opening the boxes we acquired from Goncourt and will give you an in-depth analysis on what books that sell best in the Market.

I hope you learned something from this guide and if you have questions feel free to leave some comments.


Copyright © 2008-2009 Gaiaplay Blogs. If you see this blog elsewhere it has been copied or stolen.