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Atlas Basic Starter Guide (Tips for Beginners)

The world of Atlas is a huge, dangerous place full of opportunity, conquest, collapse, adventure, friendship, betrayal, struggle, loss and glorious battles. In Atlas you are going to be able to command a massive trade network, see the world, chart its seas: defeat enemies and uncover their secrets in order to rule over a vast empire.

Relative Bearing

While most ship navigations do not follow negative bearings, for the simplicity of this game, this guide will follow the bearings provided in-game.

This is what the bearings look like in game:

You should use this method when the ship you are spotting is far away as simple callouts are not enough to give a precise callout.

Understanding Bearings

What are relative bearings used for?
Relative bearings are used to precisely “callout” ships, islands, … and mosters. This method of calling out is used to give information to your crew.

You may use other types of callouts like clock position or cardinal directions but relative bearings are more precise when referring to long-range targets.

How to use it
To use these bearings, you have to surround the ship with the bearings:

The nose of the ship is 0 and the back of the ship is 180.

When opening your bearings to remember the bearings, make sure to look at the nose of your ship. The bearing 0 should be alligned with the nose of your ship.

It is important to callout from the perspective of the “captain” to prevent innacuracies. In other words, the wheel/helm:

Performing the callout
*Keep note that the following pictures are not in scale and the ships should be interpreted as if they were within long distances from each other.

In the picture above, the bearing to callout would be “between 112.5 and 135”. You may also say 112.5 for the simplicity of it.

This bearings in the picture above is 67.5

Harvesting

Once you spawn, your main goal as a new player should be to walk out of the town you just spawned in and start harvesting resources. You can get Plant Fibers by harvesting bushes, wood by punching trees and stone by punching rocks. Do note that punching trees and rocks will hurt your health so you’d better craft both Axe and Pickaxe as soon as possible.

Crafting

You can access your inventory by pressing the “I” button. As mentioned before, the first things you’ll want to craft are the Stone Pick, the Stone Hatchet and all of the Cloth Armor. In order to do so, you’ll first need to level up — the fastest way to level up and gain experience is just to kill an animal on the shore (avoid birds if you don’t have a weapon) or if you prefer the slow way, harvest resources. After leveling up head over to the skill tree and put a point into “The Basics” skill which will let you build the tools essential for your survival. Although the Cloth Armor keeps your temperature up for longer, you should really consider crafting a torch and campfire in order to stay warm, cook meat and see during the night-time.

Important crafting recipes

  • Stone Pick – 2 Fibers, 6 Stone, 6 Wood
  • Stone Hatchet – 15 Fibers, 3 Flint, 1 Stone and 3 Wood
  • Spear – 14 Fibers, 3 Flint, 12 Wood

Note that items have durability, you’ll often find yourself in need of repairing Picks and Hatchets — you can do so in your inventory by right clicking the item and pressing repair. Repairing will cost you resources, but less than if you crafted the item from scratch. Spears tend to brake really quick (after killing 1 monster) so make sure it’s durability is always filled.

Basic Materials

There is going to be quite a few very important basic resources that you’ll want to acquire on the first island you spawn: Wood, Thatch, Stone, Flint, Hide, Meat, Fruit, Fish and Coal.

Wood can be gathered by punching Trees with either your hands or a tool such as Pick or Hatchet. Harvesting from Trees using a Hatchet will provide you with more resources. Wood is used in a high percentage of recipes so make sure you’ve always got a lot of it.

Thatch can be gathered from Trees by using a Pick or Hatchet.

Stone can be gathered by punching Rocks with your hands or a Pick/Hatchet. Harvesting Stone with a Pick will net you more Stone so always use your Pickaxe if you have one. Stone is a much needed resource so always have enough of it stored in your inventory.

Flint can be gathered from Rocks only by using a tool.

Coal can be gathered from Rocks only by harvesting with a Stone Pick.

Meat can be harvested from dead animals — you will need lots of it in order to keep your Protein vitamins up.

Hide is a much needed crafting resource for items and some gear or even structures, you can get it from animals.

Fruit – there are a lot of variants of fruits, it doesn’t matter which ones you get as long as you can keep your Fruit vitamins up.

Fish meat can be acquired from killing Fish which roam the seas. Kill the fish under water, bring it to the surface and harvest ingredients from it by punching it with a tool. Fish meat is a little bit hard to get because you can get attacked by Sharks whilst you’re diving under water in search for food.

Health

Like in other games similar to Atlas, the Character Health system is bound to give you a lot of troubles. There are a lot of Health issues to look out for but the basic Health Stats are Vitamins, Load, Hydration, Hungriness, Stamina and Health Points.

Vitamins are divided into four types: Fruit (Orange bar), Vegetables (Light Green bar), Fish (Teal bar) and Proteins (Purple bar). You can fill up your Vitamin bar by eating one of the respective foods but remember that overfilling any of your Vitamin bars will make you sick and you will start to take Health Point damage so be careful and be efficient with food consumption. Fruits can be acquired from harvesting bushes, Vegetables from little plants (most common is Rice), Proteins from dead island Animals and Fish meat from dead fish — which you can hunt under water.

Load – nothing special about this one, it just indicates how much stuff you are carrying in your inventory.

Hydration is very important as water can be hard to get early on. You can get water by digging in moist dirt with your hands or a Shovel or by drinking it from a FRESHWATER lake.

Hungriness is also a crucial indicator because if you become too hungry you are going to start losing HP. Counteract this by eating any of the previously mentioned Vitamin foods.

Stamina indicates how much energy you have for doing actions such as running.

Health Points – if these go down to 0 you’re dead, you can lose these by getting hit, having any of the previously mentioned indicators at low.

There are also a variety of Health related issues you are most certainly going to run into such as losing oxygen (when you’re diving) or sunburnsfrom being on the sun for too long (if this happens just run into a shade).

Meat can be cooked by placing raw meat in the Campfire along with some wood and then pressing the light up campfire button.

Skills

Arguably the most important part of the Atlas game. The Atlas Skill tree will provide you with essentials for survival but beware, there are lots of different Skills one can specialize in, so you will have to be careful with choosing which ones to take. The Atlas skill tree is truly massive, full of special feats that give you new powers, skills, a huge number of craftable items: swords and shields, firearms, cannons, ships, food and recipes, structures, ammo and many more and this Atlas MMO Game Ultimate Beginner Guide will help you choose the strongest skill tree keypoints.

The best way to start an Atlas skill build for beginners is definitely by placing points into the Survivability tab — The Basics, Tools of the Trade and Construction. These will provide you with all of the most important early game recipes. After that, focus on Advanced tools and Archery or Hand to Hand Combat depending on which type of playstyle you like. Water Keeper and Basic Water Swimming are also really good so if you have enough points, grab them. When you do take a certain survivability perk you will unlock different types of Skill Trees and because there are so many you will not be able to take all of them so it’s wise to play in a group and let certain players specialize in certain fields so you have dedicated people for cooking, fighting and constructing for example.

If you want to build your very own Ship, you’ll need the Shipwright Skill under the Seamanship Skill Tree.

Remember

You can reset your stats and skills using an icon in the inventory, so don’t be afraid to experiment in order to find the strongest Atlas MMO build for your character.

Character Stats

There is a total of 8 Character stats: Health, Stamina, Food, Water, Oxygen, Fortitude, Weight and Intelligence.

Health is in my opinion the most important Character Stat and you should lots of points into it — especially if you intend to do PvP Ship raids.

Stamina is situational, meaning it depends on what kind of content you’re aiming to do.

Food I would advise against placing a lot of stat points into it because if you’re a serious player you MUST have consumption-ready food in your inventory at all times.

Water is a good thing to stat into because you might sometimes find yourself dehydrated.

Oxygen only good if you plan on diving a lot.

Fortitude grants you more defense.

Intelligence – self explanatory.

Weight – lets you carry more items in your inventory (Load stat).

The best character stat build is obviously to put a good amount of points into all of the stats that you think are necessary depending on your playstyle (PvP or PvE) and then max out your Health.

Crew

Atlas MMO is a party focused game. Everyone loves playing in a party and you should too! A party (named company in Atlas) can be made by inviting a player to your Company. Having lots of friends in your Company will let you have different people specialized in different Skill Tree fields which allows you to easily claim lands and destroy your opponents. Whilst commanding a ship is possible with only yourself (you can hire A.I. bots on your ship) it’s always preferable to have friends who will have your back and it’ll be much more fun for everyone.

When you assemble a party, find an island and make it your own. You can do so by pressing the F1 key and placing a Flag which will start claiming the land around you. As long as nobody owns the land you’re trying to claim the process will be automatic (otherwise you have to kill them) and you just have to be in the area around the flag while it captures the land. Claiming an area will allow you and your crew to build whatever you want on it.

The main goal for you and your crew should be to build a small base — shipyard so you can build a ship and having friends to help speed up the process is neat.

How to Get a Raft

Wondering how to get your first boat in Atlas so you can go out onto the seas? Check out this guide to find out how to get a raft in Atlas. Now you can leave noob island and set sail to your own private paradise.

A Raft is going to be your main way of searching for new Islands for a long time before you can afford to get a Ship.

In order to build (craft) a Raft you’ll need to find the Shipyardsman on the Docks of the Town that is situated on the coast of the Island you spawned on.

The Raft Blueprint for Raft crafting will cost you 75 Fibers, 20 Hide and 80 Wood so a good strategy to get a Raft as quick as possible is to stock up on a lot of Fibers and Wood early on.

When you acquire a Raft, the first thing to do is put a Campfire and Bed on it so that you can save your position, if you die you will respawn on the Raft– near the bed.

It is recommended that every person who boards your Raft carries at least 20 Fish and Animal Meat, 50 Fruit, 50 Wild Vegetables and 5 Full Waterskins and has at least level 5.

In case you want to make Storage Boxes to save supplies and items in one place, you can do so by unlocking Construction Mercantilism discipline from your Skill Tree.

To start sailing with the Raft, you’ll need to press “E” to open the Sail control menu. There are five options: Rotate Sails (you can pick at which degree to open the sail, this controls your movement rotation), Fully open All Sails, Open All Sails, Close All Sails and Fully Close All Sails.

When you’re controlling a Raft you will notice the boat icon in the top right of your screen. The green is positioning of the Raft sails and direction your Raft is heading and the white arrow is wind direction.

Sailing via a Raft is going to be very dangerous for you because any Pirates that might be near you will just annihilate your Raft with cannons so a good tip is to always be cautious and avoid Pirate Ships when you can.

Pirate Ships

After you get far away from your starting island and travel into the open sea you’ll start to see many Pirate Ships. These are really dangerous because if they decide to hit you and you’re on a Raft — you are dead. You can craft and command you own ship but it takes a lot of resources to craft a Ship, especially Wood.

Pirate Ships always have a commander, a set of people who do things around the Ship and fighters that control the Cannons. If you do not have other people, you can also hire A.I. players to control the Cannons for you.

When Ships get destroyed they will drop item crates into the Sea which you can then claim. These crates can often have things such as Gold and resources so they are a great thing to pick up if you’ve just started out sailing on your Raft and have nothing.

1 thought on “Atlas Basic Starter Guide (Tips for Beginners)”

  1. Note for stats you can only place stats in Health, Stamina, Fortitude, Weight, and Intelligence.

    With this Fortitude decreases the decay or rate of Hunger, thirst, thermal damage, stamina drain, and vitamin depletion and does not increase resistance to cold or warmth such as if you live in the artic it will not make you warm just take longer to die from it.

    In a battle situation a 3hp 1fort leveling meta will make you resistant to most things and fight longer before becoming hungry or thirsty, for a crafter 1weight 2 intelligence will allow you to craft the highest of quality (durability) objects with benefit to being able to carry a lot of resources to make them. For the scouts of the party/claimers 2hp, 1stam, 1 fort will allow you to take some incoming hits as well as have the stamina pool and decay to clime most walls and out run most enemies to plant explosives to allow team members into the fortifications.

    When posting a guide please make sure you understand the basic skills/mechanics of the game.

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