Recent journeys in search of the lost Atlantis

After a few days off from playing Atlantica Online owing to OS crashes, I'm back in the MMO saddle again. Typically this means doing quests - typical quests mean killing mobs - and at the end of it you have to kill one more thing, the boss mob.

So here's the most recent boss fight I did.



Meet the Machine Goddess, the final boss of the Sunken Machine Shrine dungeon. Recommended levels for these maps are late 7x-early 8x. Although, if you peer closely at the top screenshot, you might be able to see that the boss has an orange name.

In AO as in many other MMOs the color of a monster's name in the field changes according to the level of the person fighting it. The color chart in AO runs something like this (this is a personal estimate):

Red - you're in way over your head. Mob is at least ten levels above you.
Orange - manageable in a party or if you have a good formation. Mob is at least five levels above you.
Yellow - can be done, but you still have a chance of getting owned. Mob is at least three levels above you.
White - equilibrium achieved. Mob is just about at the same level as you.
Green - easily killed. Mob is at least five levels below you.
Blue - don't bother, unless for a quest or for leveling new mercenaries. Mob is at least ten levels below you.

The colors adjust in shade according to the relative level of the monster. If you're at my level or so, for example, beginner mobs are dark blue; 10x mobs are dark red.

I like my build to be more geared towards fighting mobs instead of other players, so I was able to take out this boss and finish the quest line, though not without incident as you can see in the bottom screenshot: got two front-line mercs killed in the process. Statuses on the boss include Freeze.

Now that I've almost made 8x I need to spend a lot of money to upgrade armors and mercs themselves. Oi. *facepalm* That's going to be a lot of gold down the drains.