Atlantica-db USA forums

The Druid (Korean name: 드루이드) is the first Grade-A mercenary that Ndoors is releasing on Atlantica Online.

This new mercenary is inspired by "Naruk" (Korean name: 나루크), who sounds like a native american name (the recruitment quest occurs in a new dungeon: Coyote Valley). Not sure about who he is, but the 3D model looks like a child protected by a white bear.

Contrary to the Empress who is quite specialized, this new axe mercenary is a very versatile character who can fit in almost all formations.
It's a "perfect" melee, with high damage, high defense, interesting buff and enemy's control.

As the first Grade A mercenary, his stats and attack abilities are at top - much higher than the Northern Viking or the Beast Trainer (both Grade C).
Here a table comparing the axes' stats (last upgrade), with Spartan added:

Name	Str	Dex	Vit	Int	Def	Magic Defense	Action Power	Recruit Level
Beast Trainer	453	236	419	266	1600	175	60~90 (+10%)	44
Northern Viking	506	165	461	266	848	120	50~65 (+10%)	100
Druid	699	401	500	253	1655	200	70~90 (+8%)	100
Spartan	679	373	397	253	1231	100	70~80 (+8%)	100

His stats are so huge that it was rumored as the first A-grade merc:

• Best raw strength (but Spartan's spears & Pirate's swords add more Str than the axes)
• Best melee dexterity, useful for criticals
• Best vitality -by far- and it still is better with the axe. Only the Lady Knight with a good sword + shield can have an equivalent one.
• Second melee magic defense after the exorcist (who is particular, as a "magic" melee)
• Second Action Power (average: 80) after the Pirate (average: 85), but he can hit 3 enemies at the same time

In short, it's the most powerful melee mercenary in Atlantica Online, and he is flawless (I know, I wrote the same while positioning the Empress among bow mercenaries, but isn't it true?).

By the way, his physical stats are not his unique asset.
He also has very useful skills, both for PvE and PvP :

(note: numbers are given for the level 120 upgrade, skill level 70)

Forest (or Tree) Prison (Korean name: 나무 감옥)
His secondary skill is an enhanced version of the Northern Viking's skill Ice Ridge Axe, itself an improvement of the basic Freezing Axe (haha).
The main effect is the same: the "prisoned" enemy's row cannot move. Duration (2 turns) and cooldown (3 turns) are the same too.
But debuffs and damage are more interesting:

stats	Tree Prison (PvE)	Ice Ridge Axe (PvE)	Tree Prison (PvP)	Ice Ridge Axe (PvP)
Damage*	1266	1141	1128	751
Physical defense	-	-290	-	-1049
Magical defense	-434	-448	-153	-110
Action Power	-22	-	-22	-

*damage given without intelligence bonus

The most noticeable difference is the AP drain. Contrary to Toxic Sword and poisoned projectiles, and like Lightning Spear, the success rate is 100%.


Beast's Soul (Korean name: 대자연의 손길)
His first skill is a very strong physical attack buff, which increases the targets' (row) attack power (+955) ; accuracy (+39) ; probability of multi-hits (+6) and critical rate (+37). Cast Seth's Will on the same row and bosses should die pretty fast.
Duration is 4 turns ; cooldown is 3 turns.

It seems these bonus are the same in PvE and PvP, but I can't guarantee.


Enraged Beast's Soul (combo)
This last skill is a combo, activated when mercenaries under Beast's Soul are affected by War Cry.

Effects are the same as Beast's Soul, but improved (better attack power / accuracy / multi-hits / critical). We can call it Berserk mode
Comparison with Beast's Soul:

• Attack power : 955 -> 1103
• Accuracy : 39 -> 46
• Probability of multi-hits : 6 -> 7
• Critical rate : 37 -> 48

It's a very interesting feature during Free League.
Some players may try Seth's Will + Beast's Soul on their middle line, and if the enemy counters with War Cry, the middle line will hit harder (even a single hit with very high attack / accuracy / critical is nice!).
People who use to protect their lines with Holy Guard won't enjoy these new buffs.

With the Empress, Ndoors reinforces the paper-scissor system with more Silence / Holy Guard.
With the Druid, they also added a kind of counter (at least a reaction) to War Cry (itself a counter for Brutal/Seth's Will).


Upgrade crystals:

• Upgrade 1: Multi-Hued Soul Crystal x50
• Upgrade 2: Multi-Hued Soul Crystal x100
• Upgrade 3: Multi-Hued Soul Jewel x20
• Upgrade 5: Multi-Hued Soul Jewel x40 (level 100: 290,887,200 experience points)
• Upgrade 5: Multi-Hued Soul Jewel x60 (level 120: 2,205,000,000 experience points)

Multi-Hued Soul Crystal, crafting info:
Requires Crystal level 48 ; 15,000,000 workload ; 10 items per batch.
Materials:

• Depraved Seed (Misc.) x2
• Multi-Hued Jewel (Crystal) x20
• Mysterious Vial: Death (Medicine) x6
• Phoenix's Feather (Misc.) x2
• Sky Crystal (Misc.) x4

Note: sky crystals will loot in a new dungeon

Multi-Hued Soul Jewel, crafting info:
Requires Crystal level 50 ; 18,000,000 workload ; 5 items per batch.
Materials:

• Depraved Seed (Misc.) x1
• Multi-Hued Soul Crystal (Crystal) x10
• Mysterious Vial: Death (Medicine) x3
• Phoenix's Feather (Misc.) x1
• Sky Crystal (Misc.) x3

Note: sky crystals will loot in a new dungeon


With this Druid, the "perfect" melee mercenary is introduced to Atlantica Online.
Except specialized DoT / AoE teams maybe, he can -greatly- improve any formations, not only for PvE but also PvP.
Obviously, such a mercenary will be very costly to obtain (even if level 100 is enough to recruit him) then to upgrade, and he might be reserved to an elite for a long time.

Additional note: obviously, any information above can be considerate as official until the official US release, especially the translations.

Edit 11/29: fixed some buff values ; Enraged Beast's Soul effects added ; Upgrade crystals added. Some translations fixed.
Edit 12/02: Grade B -> Grade A
Edit 12/05: Experience points values for level 100 and 120

Good, I can replace my BT, finally.

Well this is all really interesting info but I think it should be pointed out that since a Spartan, LK and Swordsman can use shields, they all actually have higher Mdef than the druid at levels above 97 (+100 Mdef from dragon god shield) (LK and swordsman Mdef especially effective against fire type skills). So I think the Mdef should normally go more like Exo > LK > Sword > Spartan and then Druid as the 5th in mdef. That being said the Druid still looks mega powerful and probably still easily has more tanking ability than a spartan (at least 100 more vit). Its also nice to see that they thought up a counter for war cry, I always thought it was ridiculous that the only counter for it was to use holy guard or just not attack with the merc.
However, I'm a little disappointed at the way they seemed to try to balance tree prison vs ice ridge axe. It seems the developers still don't see how useless -def is in PvP (when was the last time you saw someone use deep insight to do more damage in pvp? -_-) and a -290 Def advantage in PvE is like nothing. On the other hand it looks like the damage of tree prison is not nerfed nearly as much as ice ridge, and the -mdef effect from it is nerfed less than ice ridge to the point that it decreases more Mdef in PvP than ice ridge even though in ve ice ridge decreases more. And to top it all off, they still give it -20 AP (albeit thats a fairly weak poison considering mercs will be getting at least 50 AP every turn). This isn't even taking into account his really good AP gain. I hope they at least fix the PvP component, so that it gives some incentive to think about which merc to use, but considering previous mercs, that seems unlikely so all people who want to be truly competetive in PvP will be shoehorned into using this merc -_-. (its also sad for those poor axe mains... not one, but TWO mercs are going to outshine them now lol)

^ Problem with your analysis. Equipment Mdef values are halved in PvP while base Mdef is at full power.

The only thing the Sword mercs and Spartan have going for them is the Vit boost on Shields and, for LK and Sword, the Flame resist for the really heavy hitting attacks.

Also, the Druids pretty much kills off the Spartan and promotes mindless gear-based Seth teams. It's pretty much back to pre-spartan days once many players get their hands on Druid.

sounds like a 100% direct upgrade from Nviking.. with added seths will, sounds perfect for melee based builds ;d

do we know if his 'Nature's Touch' skill will make the affected targets unable to be controlled like with seths/brutal will?

and, what kind of crystals will he use to upgrade?

Ahh, you're right I forgot about that, but considering that LK and swordsman would still have around the same Mdef as the druid so it'd still be roughly 3rd-4th place (of course this requires DG gear for swordsman). Although LK and swordsman usefulness is extremely limited compared to it I suppose so you'd never see them used...

I fixed some values regarding the buff. The biggest mistake was the Critical rate bonus, given for skill level 1 (+10) instead of level 70 (+37!).

I also added the Enraged Beast's Soul (combination) effects, so you can see the difference with Beast's Soul.

And to finish: all information regarding the upgrade crystals.

i dont like it when a new merc comes and causes to forget older ones...
i think all mercs should be balanced(unique) and the player should chose a merc according to his battle system.
with a merc with these bonuses, i cant think a man who uses melees in front line, doesnt chose this druid as a merc.for an example think pirate; i like her so much: very nice attack, action power, abilities but because of her low defence ability i dont use her; she doesnt fits my formation.but think this druid; all ppl will want to use him...and this is what i dont like...
ty

Atlantica Online is a MMORPG, what implies new challenges regularly. Better items/characters to get, stronger enemies/dungeons to fight.
Even "pure" strategic multi-players games use to have extensions which propose new units, more upgrades/levels etc (example: Heroes of Might & Magic).
It's the way to keep the game alive, and make money.

However, old mercenaries are not so obsolete.

• Most of them remain fine for PvE, and cheaper (for casual gamers). Sure they are much less efficient for intensive grinding, but OK for questing and guild/nation dungeons.
• The Tactical Battle System will propose new skills, new strategies for all mercenaries.
• Free League (I mean: the true competition and its championships) only concerns a small part of the player base. It's like professional sport: many watch it on TV and enjoy the "amateur" practice, but only a minority can pretend to fight the best competitors (DIV 1 ; Titan) and win.

By the way, Ndoors might decide not to stack Seth's Will and (Enraged) Beast's Soul, who knows?
Some points can change til the Druid is introduced to Atlantica US.

thanks muchly for the updates.. looks like its time to start saving up.