Atlantica Online - Nation Dungeons for Dummies

Mob: Enemy.

Friendly Gate: Each ND has a friendly gate on each floor. In Babel and GS it appears like a circular floating object, something like a gyroscope. In Alcatraz it looks like a furnace. The friendly gate must be protected. It can be engaged like a mob by other monsters and if they do so, and kill the gate via battle the ND will fail.

Enemy Tower: Enemy towers look like obelisks, that is to say they are mostly statue like in appearance. There are two gates, one is physical and one is magical. While these two towers stand the enemy gate is much stronger, dealing 10-15k per physical attack.

Enemy Gate: The enemy gate looks similar to the friendly gate. While an enemy gate is alive it will spawn mobs at a set rate. This gate hits extremely hard when the towers are still alive. It can use two attacks a magical and a physical attack. The magical attack does roughly 1-5k damage to your party depending on your level/mdef. The physical will do less than 1k if the towers are down and greater than 10k if they are still up (depending on def). The physical attack hits a row, much like the freezing axe skill.

Mimics: Mimics are unique to Ghost Ship (in terms of NDs). After two turns a mimic can use a skill that freezes an entire party so it is important to kill them quickly.

MiniBosses: Minibosses have no inherent value in terms of the ND except that they have a better loot table. They do not impact the ND except they are another mob to kill.



Original vs. Reinforcing Mobs & Death in an ND:

You've probably heard a lot of people say "Stop stealing/killing reinforcements". If you don't know what that means pay attention.
Each floor of a nation dungeon begins with a set number of mobs. In addition to that number enemy gates will spawn more original mobs as well. When an original mob is engaged it will spawn a reinforcement. These mobs will immediately appear outside the original mob and attack the player. This occurs in shadow dungeons as well.
When a player engages a mob that is trying to reinforce another player, we call this stealing a reinforcement. THe reason this is significant is that when that reinforcement is engaged it will spawn ANOTHER TWO reinforcements.

Example:

1. Player engages a mob.
2. Two reinforcements spawn to help the mob.
3. Players defeats three mobs in combat.
Total Mobs: 1 Original + 2 Reinforcements. = 3 mobs.

Example 2:

1. Player engages a mob.
2. Two reinforcements spawn to help the mob.
3. A second player engages one of those reinforcements.
4. That second mob that is engaged now spawns 2 more reinforcements.
5. In most cases the original mob on player one will also spawn a 3rd reinforcement.
Total Mobs: 1 Original + 5 reinforcements = 6 mobs.

Why is death in NDs so detrimental to the completion of the ND?

When a player dies, the mobs that were in his/her battle become original mobs in thier own right. This means they have to be defeated and, when engaged, will spawn additional reinforcements.

If a group of players die to a group of three mobs, those three mobs will all spawn 2 reinforcements when engaged. So, instead of killing those 3 mobs, the nation dungeon now has an additional burden of 9 mobs (3 originals and their 6 reinforcements)

The power of multiple mimics:

Getting more than one mimic in a battle is extremely good for Ghost Ship time. However, it can also be deadly so only do so if you and your group can handle more than one. If you understand the above, you will notice that getting more than one original mob (and in GS all original mobs have mimics) into battle will limit the number of reinforcements that spawn and thus the total mobs that require killing.
The technique to getting multiple mimics is quite simple. Simply run around the mobs until they begin to run at you. If one mob is running at you, aggro another mob that is close to it. It will join your battle. If two or more at running at you, have your team run into the middle of them and aggro any. You should get 2-3 mimics and save the dungeon 4-6 extra mobs.

Gate Defense Strategy:

Defending the gate is easy, but it has a surprising strategy to it if you havent done it before. The trick is to avoid, if at all possible, aggroing any mobs. You want to remain out of battle so if you need to, you can enter the friendly gate's battle to defend it. This is why when a gate defender gets aggro he/she should announce to the nation that he/she has been aggroed so another can watch the gate.