Last word on that garbage Atelier Online game

You’ve got to know when to hold em,
Know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away,
Know when to delete that useless Atelier Online game and run~🎵

My third and final post on the miserable experience known as Atelier Online: Alchemists of Braceir. I’ve mentioned before that the game likes to throw arbitrary roadblocks in your way so you don’t progress too fast. It’s somewhat understandable because the game doesn’t have a lot of content even after 18 whole months of operation. But a roadblock should still offer some sense of progress and some measure of enjoyment, right? Wrong, say Koei-Tecmo and Gust.

I got stuck after chapter 21. To progress to chapter 22, you have to defeat a certain level 45 golem. Yes, this uncute blighter right here.

His level is not the problem, because my party is over level 60. His defence is through the roof, but it’s not an issue as long as you slowly chip away at him with the wind attacks he’s weak against. The problem is that he has a massive heal spell that far out-heals any damage you can do. And he’s not afraid to use it either.

Now normally there are a few ways to deal with this kind of boss. In some games he will eventually run out of MP and stop healing, but not this one. Your other reasonable options are:

*Grind and upgrade till you can outdamage his heal. This will take FOREVER, because after level 60, leveling up slows to a crawl and it gets harder to strengthen your party members by feeding them. It’s evident that this challenge isn’t meant to be cleared that way anyway, because the golem’s level is already so low.

*Get carried by a stronger user. In a more sensible game, this would be plausible. But Atelier Online has no co-op lobby, guild system or quest recruitment board in the game, so finding help is a crapshoot. You either have to beg stronger players to be your friend and then beg them to help beat the golem, or you turn on multiplayer, hope someone strong shows up in the same vicinity, beg them to help and hope they will. What kind of game quest relies on “hoping and begging” as a strategy?

*Poison him to reduce his HP. This is what the game suggests in the golem’s flavor text. Okay, fair enough. It’s a check to make sure you’re taking advantage of item properties and ingredient quality and all that, I reasoned with myself. So I spent ages gathering enough ingredients to make Poison Unis. Wasted a ton of Fairy Powder and Fairy Gloves gathering only the best items to make the strongest Poison Unis possible.

In the end I had 27 top tier items. Used them all in the third battle against this blighted accursed golem. Do you know how many times I managed to poison him? ZERO. Zero times. 0. A big fat zero, oval like my head.

After that, I just quietly deleted the Nox emulator and said goodbye to Atelier Online. Sure it might be possible to beg, grind or farm my way to the next level, but what happens with the next nasty roadblock? And the one after that, and the one after that? Is this all I have to look forward to in this game?

I’m not sticking around to find out. In keeping with my gaming policy for 2019-2020, “it is enough to play a little bit of Atelier Online.” I’ve seen what it has to offer, and I don’t like what I saw. There are many other games in my backlog that demand attention and promise better rewards. Time to move on!

Minor update: Turns out I was overthinking things, and the battle is just a DPS check. Are you strong enough to do over 9300 damage every 5 turns or not? In practice it will have to be much more than 9300 because you will miss some turns due to the golem’s incurable charm attack. I discovered all this when I went to delete the smartphone app and decided I might as well waste all the EXP potions and Golden Spoons I had while I was at it. Then I went back to give the golem one last try and almost beat him. But eventually he healed himself almost back to full. Which made me hate the game even more. Anyway, in case anyone ever gets stuck there like me, the answer is “Git gud.”

Update 2: Managed to beat the little rotter last night (05/18). You need to be able to do a ton of damage AND you need to poison it. Git gud and git lucky. This time I set 19 Poison Unis to Auto-Item (less stressful than manual spamming) and ONE managed to proc when its HP was low, allowing me to deal the finishing blow. Hmph, I wasn’t even happy. I’m up to chapter 24 now, I think? Still dealing with more ridiculous roadblocks.

This is still the last word on Atelier Online for the forseeable future though. Unless something unusual or earth-shaking happens, I think I’ve said all that needs to be said for now. I just didn’t want to slink away in defeat at the hands of some smug, excrement-consuming ursine.

Four important tips for anyone ill-advisedly starting Atelier Online:

– Don’t do anything with the Fairy powders, gloves, fishing rods, etc. until you know what you’re doing. Later quests will require you to provide very high-quality items that you will rarely be able to get naturally. Actually “don’t use any items until you know what you’re doing” is a good maxim for any gacha game.

– Wait till you can beat the level 60 Hobgoblins before you start using Spoon, EXP potion and Item Strengthening tickets. You’ll get more bang for your buck that way. You can still do the free quests every day.

– Don’t waste Ether carelessly. You’ll start out with like 700,000 and think it will last forever, but it’s very easy to blow through it when trying to strengthen ingredients and imbue weapons with skills. Neither of which you should do until you know what you’re doing.

-Instead of trying to raise gacha characters equally, focus on getting one at a time to level 50. Once you have three of them at that level, they’ll be able to hunt for treasure (high-quality ingredients) while you’re out doing other stuff. I learned this the hard way, and now I have a bunch of characters stuck at level 20-30, picking up garbage every 10 minutes.