A regular question I am often asked by fleshies is where can someone get certain things. Most things can be found in one of the various stores, or currency exchange markets. There is also a number of different currencies that you can purchase various items with. There are also a few things of note with some of these outlets. Let’s start with the most common and easily accessible store, the one behind your items list.

Personally, I find not many people are prepared to serve a dragon, except this one guy in Transylvania. Lovel shy guy with a massive gothic style warehouse. I keep telling him he needs a little more sun, but I guess he’s just the indoors type.

General Stores

I would hope that by now most, if not all, are familiar with the Items view. If not, this is where items collected from killings beasts, through to rewards for achievements, will be held until you use them. You get to it by selecting Items from the main view.

This is your inventory view and it lists all the items you currently have for your immediate use. Up the top there is also a Store option. This will take you to the general store available to all players at all times.

You will use your accumulated in-game gold to purchase required items here. Things you can buy include VIP activation vouchers and points, Books of War, resources and resource buffs, sooth and tarot stones, speed ups, shields (including 24 hour shields), various buffs for your castle, and design fragments for your lord. It’s worth getting familiar with what is here.

The Exchange

Next on our list is the Market Stall where you may purchase from a select range of items in more a bartering system, where you may exchange resources instead of gold. If you don’t know where the Markets are, have a look at the top image and note the building in the centre. “Bargains Galore!” This is the Exchange building. There are three sections to it; Market Stall, Auction House, and Black Markets.

The Market Stall doesn’t have a vast range of products at six items at a time, but you may find items vastly discounted for gold, or exchangeable for resources such as wood, and if you don’t like whats on display, selecting refresh will provide you six new options. While I was testing this, I was offered a Lord Rename voucher for 50 gold, which is normally 200.

The two remaining sections to the Exchange would be for players with too much gold then brains. First there is the Auction House.

Here players can bid on various items that would usually be difficult to obtain such as specific design fragments, rare gems, large collections of Airship Gear, and so on. You can see the most recent bid made, and how much time remains for the item. If you wish to bid on an item, you must commit to the current bid plus at least the minimum bid value. If a bid is made within the last five minutes, the timer is reset for a further five minutes. The highest bid wins, and losing bids are refunded.

Then there are Special Auctions which are very high value and even rare items. The amounts being bid here are massive and are well beyond my reach. I haven’t participated in these auctions and don’t have any short-term plans to do so, but if you have a bit of gold sitting around, then this may of interest to you.

Then there is the Black Markets. This is basically the same as the Auction House, except you pay a non-refundable fee to keep your bid secret, and if you happen to win the auction, you will actually pay the second highest bid. At the time I saw this, it consisted of materials I could get in-game. Admittedly in large volumes and without the effort required to collect fragments, but I’m not finding the grind all that much of a challenge, but I guess if you’re an impatient fleshie, this would be the place for you.

Alliance Store

Now being a member of an alliance, you may have access to two additional stores. The Alliance Store and the Hero Store, the latter being available when your alliance has a Hall of Heros building up and running. From the main screen, select Alliance, and you should see this screen below. You can see the Alliance Store top right, and the Hero Store down below.

The Alliance Store operates just like a private business for the alliance. You have the Store front end, where items can be purchased by players for their own personal use, and the Item List which acts as a sort of store-room. R4 and 5s can use Alliance Funds to purchase stock for the store. These purchases are then made available in the store screen for individuals to purchase.

Players use a currency called Alliance Honor to make purchases. Alliance Honor is based upon your donations made to the alliance. The more donations you have made, the more honour you will have, so not only will you help your alliance grow the more you donate, you will also be improving your ability to buy teleports, 8 hour shields, speed-ups, and buffs.

Now if a player can see an item in the Items List that isn’t in the store, they should be able to submit a request to an R4/5 to have said item made available. R4/5s only need to be aware of the drain this will have on Alliance Funds. Now here is an interesting point to note, donating may earn the individual Alliance Honor, but for each point of honor a player gets, the Alliance gets a point in funds. Donating is clearly very important, not only to the strength of the alliance in that various research and achievements made through donations, but through the availability of items in the Alliance Store.

Hero Store

Only available to alliance members once the Hall of Heros is built, this acts in a similar manner as the alliance store but deals largely in materials for Lord Equipment crafting, gem refining stones, guard fragments, Airship intensity gear and components, and glory banners. The currency being traded here is Hero Coins, which can also be use in raising bounties, something I will cover later. You can get extra Hero Coins by trading in various items. By selecting the plus next to your balance (top left) you will be taken to a screen where you can do this. I will cover this in more detail when talking about Bounties.

Again, the Items List is where and R4/5 can purchase items using Hero Gems that then become available in the store. Hero Gems are accumulated through the raising of bounties, so there is a close link between the Hero Store and Personal Bounties. The more bounties raised by players, the more Gems will be made to keep Store stocks up.

Catacombs, Spirit Mining, and Expeditions

Three areas of your castle grounds that become available as your castle increases levels are the Catacombs, Spirit Mines, and Expeditions. These will also introduce three new stores of sorts, and three new currencies specific to each facility; Ancient Coins, Spirit Crystals, and Expedition Coins. These are earned by playing through the various levels of each area. I may cover the actually activities of each later.

Ancient Coins can be traded with the Catacombs Trader to get Resources, Airship Parts, Coat or Arms for your buildings that provide additional bonuses for your troops, and temporary accolades. As you progress through the various levels in the catacombs, additional items will be become available in the store.

Spirit Crystals can be exchanged for Mining Loot which includes Noble Gemstones, Airship XP and components, VIP Points, Resources, Material Chests, Lord XP, Glory Banners, design fragments, Aristocrat badges, and Rare Material Fragments need to make the most rarest of materials such as Green Crystals and Viper Fangs. At first, you will only have a few items available. Once you have manage to push beyond levels 5 and 10 in the mines, the rest of the items will become available. At the time of writing this, I haven’t yet made it past level ten, so some important items are locked to me as you can see here.

This is of course rather frustrating as Rare Frags would be soooo useful to me right now.

On to the last of our three side game stores, the Expedition Shop.

By going on expeditions, which is for another time, you will earn coins that can be traded here for Guard Fragments, various XP bonuses, crafting components, speed-ups, and intensity gear. There is no level locks here but expeditions can be difficult to get through.

Well, that about covers it with regards the various ways and places where you can purchase various items. I have deliberately not covered real-money purchasing in this post because I think that is fairly obvious, and most of the time, the question is “Where can I get such-and-sush without spending money?” so this is it.

Now there are still a number of items that you cannot necessarily buy, that you will have to accumulate the fragments to synthesise, but what can be bought, you will find in one of the services above.

Now, this has taken me longer than I expected so I’m off to hunt for dinner. Until next time.