Atlantica Online: A Strategic MMO

I enjoyed my time in Atlantica. The strategic elements require some thought, planning, and reaction, so you aren't only button-mashing.

The world is beautiful. In the early levels you're playing in Asia and India, passing well-known names from history on the road, and fighting unusual mythic and hybrid creatures. You play through a variety of environments, even underwater.

The world's fairly open, allowing for roaming and exploring, while the quests ensure you have a lot to do to help you level. I didn't run into any need for mindless grinding.

There's an extensive crafting system, and other players who already have the skills you want will often teach you for free.

The armor sets are unusual, complex, and unique, with different looks for each fighting style: melee, ranged, magic. The level fifteen set, for example, is ocean-themed, using underwater colors and shell and fin style decoration. To see thumbnails of each style (currently up to the level 60 set), check this equipment list on the Wikia wiki.

From a parent's viewpoint, I didn't see anything I'd object to for a young teen, or worry about my little kids seeing as they walked by the computer. There's a little magic, which is to be expected in a fantasy game, but no mature content. Battles aren't gory at all.

As a matter of personal taste, I didn't much care for the newbie outfits for female characters (you can see them in the class screenshots), but the armor sets were nowhere near as skimpy.

All in all, it's a well-developed, unusual game that I had a lot of fun playing.

Crafting NPCs teach the skills you need, for a fee. Or you can learn from other players, who will often teach for free because teaching gives them experience.

There are over 30 skills you can learn, and no limit to how many you can have at once. You can make your own armor, weapons, and ammunition, and more unique crafts like "Machine" (which you learn from an NPC named Tesla) are also available.

Crafting materials are enemy drops, or can be bought in any town.

Armor upgrades are created without crafting skills, and involve using materials to combine two of the same type of armor into a more powerful version. There's no risk of failure, so no penalties. Occasionally, you'll get a success bonus that upgrades the armor a little more than expected.

Typical of MMOs, the way to get rich is:

* pick up all your drops
* sell the drops that aren't worth much to the NPC merchants
* sell the useful drops to other players
* don't buy anything you can get for free
* don't pay full price for something you can buy from another player at a discount

Atlantica offers an auction system that is free to use. Access it through the Market button in any town. The auction system allows you to easily check the going rates of items, and set your own prices accordingly. This also makes it easy to find any gear or items you need at the lowest price available at that moment.

You will have a limited number of auction slots available to use, which clear as something sells and you can restock. Like items are stacked, and players can buy any number out of the stack, they don't have to take the whole thing. Some items will cost a fee to list, which you have to have enough money on hand to cover. The money you make from sales goes into your bank account (also accessible through a button in any town). You're notified of sales through the messaging system, which works wherever you are, and even if you're no longer in town.

Many items are permanent fixtures in the market, sold by the system and available in endless supply. These are marked, so it's easy to see which ones they are. Don't set your price higher than the system price unless you want to waste a market slot for some reason. (You'd be amazed how many people do this.)

Gold-making tips:

The town hospitals pay 10 gold for just about anything, so if a common material is less than that in the auction house, sell yours to the hospital. If you want to spend the time on it, you can even make gold off people who don't bother to do this by buying up the materials they price at 1g or similar, too-low prices, in the market and then selling them to the hospital.

Compare the prices of the boxes you get as drops (containing armor, materials, etc), that you may not need so are considering selling, to the prices you'd get for the items if you opened them. I made a lot more gold selling rare or more desirable spellbooks by opening up all my book boxes than I would have if I'd just sold the boxes unopened. Other boxes can be similarly profitable, depending on how the market's going.

It's very common for rare or cash shop items to be given away to all logged-in players, for events and whatnot. When this happens, if it's a trade-able item and one that you do plan to sell, don't rush to the market with it and try to compete with everyone else to sell at the lowest possible price. Wait a bit until the price starts climbing up again, or has gone back to normal, and price it then.