Guide:Beginner's Guide

So, you want to become the most fearsome force in Atlantis? Well, everybody has to begin somewhere, and you've come to the right place. The following is a brief summary of how to get started, and where to go from there for new players to Dragons of Atlantis! The blue text is links to other relevant pages in this wiki!

Although the quests given to new players in Dragons of Atlantis will teach you to play the game, they go about it in a very inefficient way. If you're looking for more effective information, find an alliance that has veteran members and READ THIS PAGE!

Common Acronyms and Initialisms

First, some basic acronyms and initialisms that you may see in World Chat(WC) to help you get started in DoA:

• LBM - Longbowmen
• AT - Armored Transport
• SSD - Swift Strike Dragon
• BD - Battle Dragon
• OP - Outpost
• FT - Fangtooth
• GO - Granite Ogre
• LJ - Lava Jaw
• Ban - Banshee
• SR - Soul Reaper
• WC - Weapons Calibration/ World Chat
• AC - Aerial Combat/ Alliance Chat
• Med - Medicine
• Met- Metalurgy
• SC- Science Center

The Very Basics

Here is a list of basic topics to get someone started.

Click the BLUE links for more information.

• Resources
• Taxes and Population
• Rubies

Fortuna's Games

Every day that you log into Dragons of Atlantis, you are awarded a ticket to play Fortuna's Chance, a lottery game where you will win one of a variety of prizes. You can close the screen by clicking the "X" and reopening Fortuna's Chance to refresh. This will change the prizes and give you a better chance to win something you want, just keep doing this until good odds are displayed. It is a good idea to refresh until a Completion Grant appears on the page. If you have logged on five out of the last seven days, you are instead awarded a Medallion which allows you to play Fortuna's Vault, a game of the same type, but with better prizes.

Power

Power is a measurement of how much strength your empire has. You gain power by building and upgrading buildings, starting Outposts, and training Troops. It is possible to have a high Power, but have virtually no military strength. This is sometimes called "Fake Power".

Your First Twenty-Four Hours On Dragons Of Atlantis

The first thing you need to get a handle on in Dragons of Atlantis is resource management. You need your resources to build anything and everything, from a humble farm, to a new Outpost once you find your Dragon Eggs. Your first twenty-four hours in Atlantis should be dedicated to maximizing your resource production as fast as possible. I advise you to upgrade your Fortress to level 2 and then build 1 farm and 3 each of the other fields to level 9 as soon as resources become available. More fields is not advised because this will hinder your ability to produce troops later as described in detail here. Your food being negative is NOT a bad thing, this means you have troops. There is absolutely no reason to try to stay in the positive because food is easy to get from Anthropus Camps,+ To rely on food from Anthropus camps might work in the bengining BUT when you got more/better troops that take more food you wont be able to sustain it for long.

In order to produce resources, you also have to have enough population to work the fields. You should build between 4-6 houses, but NO MORE than that. I suggest upgrading these as resources become available until they are all level 6. This will give you enough population to produce resources and some extra to train troops.

4-6 houses are recommended but not more because you have to buildother buildings. The most important ones are garrisons. These allow you to train troops and decrease your training time. You should build a total of 13 garrisons.

Time Management

Dragons of Atlantis is a real-time strategy, in which everything is measured in a number of seconds, minutes, and hours. Although managing your time to the second isn't crucial to enjoying yourself, if you're looking to build your power as fast as you can, managing your time efficiently (so you have nerly zero downtime) is a must. Perform tasks that take several hours overnight, and leave the smaller ones for when you have time to watch the game. You can get a lot done on DoA while doing housework or school work and returning to the game every few mins to set more builds, troops, or researches. I would recomend if you want power, upgrade your Great Dragon. Then you will be safer and it gives heaps of power!

Building an Army

Once your resource production is underway, it's time to start building your army. Armies require a few things. First, they require Garrison, next, they require idle population, and finally, your army will consume food at an hourly rate, detracting from your production. The first thing you want to train are Longbowmen, who excel at taking out level 1-5 Wildernesses and Anthropus Camps with few to no losses. Once you are able to conquer these camps, you now have a quick and easy way to procure large amounts of food for training your troops. Longbowmen require a Garrison of Level 4, and Weapons Calibration researched to level 1. You'll want to get on this ASAP.

Base Construction

At this point in time, once you are producing a respectable amount of resources, you may want to consider filling out the rest of the slots in your city! The general thoughts on this are to build 1 of each of your main buildings (Muster Point, Officer Quarters...), 4-6 houses, and the rest should be filled with Garrisons. The Storage Vault is optional, but it is useful through out the game. The Theater is typically ill advised because it is only useful during the first week or so of game play.

Quest Optimization

During your first 24 hours, you may be approaching a bottle neck in terms of production.

At this point, rather than continuing to build to optimize resources (which can cause a building stall) you should instead build or upgrade something that has a net gain of resources or at least no net loss.

How this works (example: 1 House)

1 House costs 100W, 500L, 50M, 100S. But there is a quest reward for building your first house of 200W, 1000L, 100M, and 200S. As a result, building your first house actually has a net gain overall and the only cost is that of the time needed to build it. Note that this is only for the first house you build, as the quest reward can only be claimed once.

Example Net Gains:

1 House = 100W, 500L, 50M, 100S

3 Houses = 400W, 1500L, 450M, 400S

Build Sentinal Watch = 150W, 1000L, 300M, 3000S

Upgrade Fortress to Level 2 = 2100W, 11400L, 2300M, 500S

Example Net Neutral:

Building a Rookery.

Wildernesses

Wildernesses can be conquered by your troops, and will yield increases to resource production. They are essential to keeping your resource production high, and can be read about in more detail on the Wilderness page.

Great Dragon

So, as you've no doubt noticed, there is a rather prominent building in the middle of your city! This is your Dragon's Keep, where your great dragon will be born and raised. To "raise" your dragon, you must upgrade the keep. Your Great Dragon is the focus of the first week or two of your stay in Atlantis, namely, getting your Great Dragon Armor, and teaching him Aerial Combat. Getting there isn't hard, but it does take some patience! In order to get your Great Dragon armored up and ready for combat, you'll need a few things...

• Research Dragonry and Aerial Combat

• Great Dragon Armor

Starting Your First Outpost

So, you've attacked dozens of Anthropus Camps, researched for days, and finally, your Great Dragon is ready for battle! He wouldn't be of much use if all he did was stand around looking tough, so let's make him earn his keep! In order to start your first Outpost, you need now is your Water Dragon Egg, which is easy enough to find! But before you start your search, there are some things you need to know...

Dragon Healing

Your Great Dragon is tough, but not invulnerable. Every time you send your Great Dragon on an attack, he will take damage, even if there are no Anthropus in the wilderness to hurt him, although the damage will be significantly less than if he were overwhelmed and defeated. He must heal after every fight. In order to minimize healing time, you should send two waves of troops before your dragon, to catch any stragglers. The number of attacks your dragon can make depends on how much damage he takes, the level of your Keep, and your level of Aerial Combat. Click here to read more about Great Dragons.

Starting Your Outpost

Now you have your egg, visit this link to start your Outpost and find advice about how it should be built. I advise not building fields in any of your OPs because this lowers your idle population and doesn't provide much benefit.

DO NOT PLACE YOUR OPS NEXT TO YOUR CITY! Always space OPs out so they are more difficult to find!

The Military

Arguably, the most important part of your Empire will be your Military, so it warrants some basic discussion here. If you want more details on how the combat system itself works, visit the page here.

Idle Population can sometimes present the biggest obstacle for training your troops. Your Idle Population = Current Population - laborers - troops currently in training. If your Idle Population is 0, you cannot train any new troops. However, it is important to note that Idle Population repleneshes itself. Every time a group of troops is finished training, the Idle Population returns to you. After you have the troops to begin attacking other players for gold, I suggest dropping and leaving the tax rate at 0% so you can use your full idle population for training.

Troops

For detailed information about troops, visit the Troops and for information of how they work together during battles, visit the Battle page.

The Breakdown

This is a general guide as to how to get your city from 0 to 1 million power as quickly as possible, roughly 3-4 wks of dedicated game play.

Keep in mind that you should be researching, building, and training concurrently! In order to get built up quickly, you must ALWAYS have things upgrading!

JOIN A HELPFUL ALLIANCE IMMEDIATELY! If yours can not answer your questions and assist in some way with resources, leave them and join another... it will only go downhill from there. Make sure you are accepting the Quest rewards as they are completed, this resource boost will really help you early on. Just don't put too much effort into completing the quests as they pop up. If you complete 1 (even if it is not shown on the list) the button at the top will show it as completed.

Buildings

1. Get 1 Farm, 3 Quarries, 3 Mines, and 3 Lumbermills to level 5 ASAP
2. Build 4-6 Homes to level 5 ASAP
   • ​You will not be able to do all this at one time due to lack of resources, continue as you can.
3. ​As resources become available, build 1 each of your main City buildings including storage vault.
   • ​I recommend not building a theater, if you do not like the vault... it can be destroyed later.
   • ​You should build your Science Center first so you can begin researching.
4. Next you will fill the remaining slots in your City with garrisons... should be 14 total.
5. Level 1 garrison to level 6 as resources become available, you will be able to train ATs soon.
6. Now, upgrade buildings as you need to in order to research and train specific troops.

For detailed information about buildings and suggested City Builds, click the blue link.

Researching

Different people play differently, my intent is get decent troops as quick as possible to begin farming.

For detailed information about researches and a suggested sequence of researches, click here and scroll to the bottom for a table that has the researches and buildings needed for the researches.

​I suggest focusing on Weapon Calibration up as soon as possible because lvl 10 takes 15 days and it improves your ranged troops performance and is needed for Lava Jaws. Also Metatullagy is extremely useful when attempting GD armor lvl 8 is required for giants. All of the researches are important but few need more time than others.

Troops

Troops are another thing that people have varying opinions on, but the starter troops are generally the same.

1. Train 200 LBM with this you can hit level 1 and 2 wilds and level 1 camps.
2. Train 200 Porters you will need these to carry the loot home from the camps.
3. Train LBM until you have 1k total.
4. You should be able to train ATs now, if so train them until you get 200.
5. Continue training LBM until you have 15k and ATs until you have 2k.
   • You can now hit lvl 5 camps to get GD armor without risk of losing all your troops on 1 attack and this will be enough to send 2-3 waves at a time which double or triples your chance of getting a piece.
   • You should also get your eggs (all of them) ASAP after getting your GD armor, don't bother trying to get WD, SD, FD, or WiD armor right now. It takes forever and you have plenty of time to do it later.
6. You should be able to train SSDs now, train these until you get 50k.
   • These are beasts at farming for resources, getting eggs, and armor. {but may later be replaced for BDs it depends on preference}
7. You should be able to fend for yourself and continue with the help of your alliance from this point.

Outposts

After you get your GD armor, you should immediately begin looking for your WD egg. As you get that one, search for the next... and so on until you have all 4 inital OPs.

If you are having problems getting eggs due to your GD's long healing times, research higher levels of Aerial Combat. But do NOT bother for even a second with getting armor for your Elemental Dragons, the armor takes much longer to retrieve than the eggs do. You could spend wks trying to get it, therefore get the all the eggs and then worry with armor in your free time. By the time you start on armor, you will have plenty of troops to send several waves to keep the wilds cleared of enemies.

It is not only possible, but easy to get all of your OPs in less than a week.

For more information on Outposts and some suggested Outpost Builds, click the blue link.

Walkthrough Example

This is NOT the only way to begin, but this is a decent example of a walkthrough for the 1st week or 2:

From Beginning to Battle Dragons in 1-2 weeks. The Researches and Buildings towards the end become a matter of option, but if you get all of the buildings listed, you will be able to complete the researches listed.

Also the buildings I build early on are listed, if it is not on this table then I don't build it ASAP... I wait until either towards the end of week 1 or week 2 to worry with those. And don't put resources into the Wall under any circumstances, its just a drain early on and should be done later when you are well established.

Research/Building concurrently	Level	Time Needed	Buildings/Research Needed	Troops
Build 3 Homes	1	10s each	----
Change Tax Rate to 50%	----	----	----
Build 3 Mines	1	15s each	----
Build 3 Quarries	1	15s each	----
Build 3 Lumbermills	1	15s each	----
Build 1 Farm	1	15s each	----
Build Science Center	1	8m 0s	----
Masonry	1	8m 49s	Equal lvl SC + Quarry
Upgrade All Lumbermills	2	30s each	----
Upgrade All Quarries	2	30s each	----
Upgrade All Mines	2	30s each	----
Upgrade Farm	3	30s; 1m 1s	----
Woodcraft	1	8m 11s	Equal lvl SC + Lumbermill
Build 2 Homes	1	10s each	----
Upgrade 3 Homes	2	20s each	----
Upgrade Science Center	2	16m 12s	----
Upgrade All Lumbermills	3	1m 1s each	----
Upgrade All Quarries	3	1m 1s each	----
Alloys	1	9m 58s	Equal lvl SC + Mine
Upgrade All Mines	3	1m 1s each	----
Upgrade All Lumbermills	4	2m 4s each	----
Woodcraft	2	16m 34s
Upgrade 2 Homes	2	20s each	----
Upgrade All Quarries	4	2m 4s each	----
Upgrade 2 Homes	3	41s each	----
Masonry	2	17m 51s
Science Building	3	32m 48s	----
Build Muster Point	1	1m 23s	----
Build Officers' Quarters	1	6m 0s	----
Build Sentinel	1	5m 0s	----
Build Rookery	1	2m 4s	----
Alloys	2	20m 10s
Metalsmith	1	3m 0s	----
Factory	1	9m 0s	----
Woodcraft	3	33m 33s
Build Storage Vault	1	10m 0s	----
Science Center	5	2h 14m 31s
Build 15 Garrisons	1	5m each	----
Woodcraft	4	1h 7m 57s
Weapons Calibration	1	39m 44s	Level 4 Woodcraft	LBM
Woodcraft	5	2h 17m 36s
Levitation	1	29m 36s	Level 5 Woodcraft + Lvl 5 SC
Levitation	2	59m 56s
Levitation	3	2hrs 1m 22s		AT
Metallurgy	1	22m 17s	Lvl 2 Gar+ Alloys & Metalsmith equal lvl	Mino
Rookery	2	4m 11s	----
Rookery	3	8m 28s	----
Metalsmith	2	6m 4s	----
Factory	2	18m 13s	----
Metalsmith	3	12m 18s	----
Rookery	4	17m 9s	----
Metalsmith	4	24m 54s	----
Factory	3	36m 54s	----
Metalsmith	5	50m 26s	----
Rookery	5	34m 54s	----
Science Center	6	4hr 32m 24s	----
Medicine	1	29m 36s	Lvl 6 SC
Merchantilism	1	22m 17s	Factory + Levitation equal lvl
Dragonry	1	37m 2s	Lvl 3 SC + Rookery equal lvl
Dragonry	2	1hr 14m 59s		SSD
Weapons Calibration	2	1h 20m 27s
Metallurgy	2	45m 7s
Medicine	2	59m 56s
Rapid Deployment	1	29m 36s	Lvl 4 SC
Weapons Calibration	3	2h 42m 55s
Metallurgy	3	1h 31m 22s
Medicine	3	2h 1m 22s
Rapid Deployment	2	59m 56s
Dragonry	3	2hr 31m 51s		BD

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Sources of Resources for Beginners

Starting out can be difficult because resources are limited. So here are some places to get enough resources to keep buildings, troops, and researches going at all times! Even if you are waving un-regenerated wildernesses, it will still give you a decent amount of resources per hit. Just make sure its close to your city.

Researches - Metallurgy 2, Med 0, Wep Cal 2

Wildernesses

• Lakes
  • Give 1000 food x level of lake
    • (Ex. lvl 5 lakes = 5k food)

​

• Forests
  • Give 1000 wood x level of forest

• Hills
  • Give 1000 stone x level of hill

• Mountains
  • Give 1000 ore x level of mountain

Later in the game 10k wood is practically nothing, but during the first week or 2 of the game... it can keep your city and troops moving forward.

Camps

Lower level camps drop small speeds which can be helpful after you gather a few. I suggest saving them for longer distance attacks other than buildings, but this is just preference.

• Level 1
  • Food - 112,500
  • Wood - 5,000
  • Ore - 500
  • Stone - 500
  • Gold - 2,500

• Level 2
  • Food - 225,000
  • Wood - 10,000
  • Ore - 1,000
  • Stone - 1,000
  • Gold - 5,000

• Level 3
  • Food - 337,500
  • Wood - 15,000
  • Ore - 1,500
  • Stone - 1,500
  • Gold - 7,500
• All Levels

• • Food - 112,500 x Level #
  • Wood - 5,000 x Level #
  • Ore - 500 x Level #
  • Stone - 500 x Level #
  • Gold - 2,500 x Level #

These are the only three you should worry about until you have at least 10k LBM, 200 Minos, and 1k ATs. Reasoning is that these give plenty of resources for beginners and you will not risk losing all your troops by sending them all to 1 level 5 camp.

Usually I jump lvl 4 and go straight to lvl 5 to get armor as soon as I have the troops listed above, this way you get armor + resources you need in 1 hit.