The developers working on Atlantica Online are back with a new dev journal focused on the D-class Monk.

The weekly dev journal from the Atlantica Online developers has arrived! This week, ZAM.com takes a look at the Monk, one of the most wizened mercenaries in Ndoors' turn-based strategy MMO. The developers give us some hints on proficient strategies with the Monk while also letting us know why they're so popular in the current game. If you haven't check out Atlantica Online, make sure you keep on reading!

How can a mercenary with low vitality and attack power be so powerful in Atlantica?

This mercenary doesn’t tank, nor does it heal. But demand for this mercenary is so great that some players are running around with two in their formations—but why?

This next mercenary we’re about to feature is none other than the D-Class Monk, another staff-wielding, magic-type mercenary. So why is this mercenary so popular? That’s because he is the ultimate support class.

The Monk has four powerful support skills that can ward off even the gravest of threats. His primary skill, Protect, is a passive skill that not only increases your main character’s resistance to physical attacks, but it also regenerates some of his health every turn. But maybe your main character doesn’t get attacked very often—if that’s the case, it wouldn’t be very practical, because you would be wasting a lot of mana. So in that case, you might want to use the Monk’s Shield of Protection, a passive skill that only restores the health to your main character each time it takes damage.

However, the Monk’s strengths go beyond protecting just your main character. And in PvP, the Monk has two skills that are nearly essential for victory—Holy Guard and Awakening. Holy Guard is a skill that protects your team from all magic, but this also means that even support and healing spells will not work on the Holy Guarded row. As AoE builds have become increasingly popular (due to high damage potential), the importance of Holy Guard have also increased.

Then there are the many stun builds in Atlantica. When your mercenary gets struck with a physical attack in three consecutive turns, it will get rendered immobile for two turns. Players will commonly utilize gun or cannon mercenaries to stun a whole slew of mercenaries at once. When this happens, the Monk can cast Awakening, a skill that can not only wake up stunned allies, but remove a stun counter from waking allies.

Because of the Monk’s effectiveness, the top players began utilizing two Monks in their formations. Some players even chose to remove their healers from their parties because the heal from Holy Guard was sufficient for their makeup. As a result, the heal from Holy Guard was lessened to balance gameplay. Still, most of the Monk’s appeal comes from the magic and stun resistant spells. So in efforts to encourage diversity of formations, two new mercenaries, the Minstrel and Punisher, have been introduced in the past couple of months to diversify PvP.

To recruit the Monk, you must be at least level 18. You can initiate the recruitment quest by engaging the NPC Huike, who can be found near Beijing. The chain of quests focuses around the Ruins of the Yellow River dungeon across the NPCs Huilin and Yuan Hao. Upon completion, you will be rewarded with the service of a powerful new ally to join you in your adventure, the Monk!

Please check back next week as we feature the axe-wielding Viking!