Eden Eternal’s Cash Shop: Free to Play With a Side of Gambling
So I’ve been getting back into the swing of things with Eden Eternal over this past week, and while I surely don’t know everything, I feel like I am starting to get a handle on some aspects of the game.
I’ve mostly been focusing on my character that was already 39; once I hit 40, I swapped her from her previous Thief class to the Martial Arts class that unlocks at level 40. Since I finally achieved that goal (I’ve had my eye on Martial Arts since the moment I created her), I’ve mostly been working on leveling up her new class, getting her to 43 so that I could craft her some new gear, and doing my best to play the market enough that I could score her some decent cash shop gear as well. Today, I’m going to talk exclusively about the cash shop goodies – what they are, and the different ways to obtain them, and what I think about the whole setup (spoilers: just read the post topic).
So basically, there are special AP (Aeria Points) costumes, pets, and mounts. Now, when I say ‘costumes’, I’m going to be referring to all of the looks-changing items that cover up your basic, in-game gear. So “costumes” = AP boosting items that work in tandem with, not replacing, your in-game weapons and armors.
For costumes, it seems that most items are one of three ranks – basic (ie, just the costume – it will change your looks but nothing else), Alpha (will give a small boost, for example +5% critical damage from a certain Alpha rank back item), and the coveted Prime (the highest boost, so continuing the example that I gave for the alpha, it would be +10% crit damage for the same back item with a Prime rank). Since, as you can probably guess, the Prime rank items are the most in demand, they’re also the hardest to obtain as well as the priciest.
Now, as a note, if you’re solely interested in the looks and don’t really care about getting an alpha or prime version of a costume, then I’d suggest that you look into the Alpaca Capsule Machines in Tranquil Hill. It’s slightly more labor intensive than just AP spending your way to fashion victory, but the quests that give you the Alpaca Tokens do also reward you with Experience, Class Points, and money, so it’s not a bad deal at all. The rewards are random, of course, but you can end up with plenty of other handy things, like pet food or safety stones, even if you don’t get the costume you wanted on your very first try. You can read more about the Alpaca Capsule Machines & Tokens here, since I don’t really see the need to just reiterate what’s already a perfectly good guide.
In regards to pets, each type of pet has its basic form that can’t participate in combat, but can still pick up loot for you… but there are also many other forms of each “base” pet that give a wide range of combat abilities and player boosts. For example, if you look in the Pets/Mounts section of the current Item Mall, you can see the differences (in both abilities and price points) illustrated very clearly. The basic Himalayan Cat, at 499 AP, does nothing beyond pick up your drops and follow you around looking cute. The “Brave” Himalayan Cat’s cost jumps up to 2999 AP, and it gives the player a +10% Crit Dmg boost as well as giving the pet the ability to join in combat with basic attacks. The “Robust” Himalayan Cat, at a whopping 4999 AP, gives the same boosts as the Brave as well as having a higher durability (100/100 as opposed to the 50/50 – when the pet’s dura reaches 1, you either have to feed it or it can no longer be used in combat) and some special skills of its own (Ambush and Swift Attack, in this specific case). So as you can see, differences in abilities translate to VERY large price jumps in this game.
It’s the same with mounts. Various mounts have different movement speeds – the basic alpaca freebie mount that the game gives you only has a 15% movement boost, as opposed to cash shop mounts like the Stalwart Sabretooth, while will run you 6999 AP (yes, that’s $69.99 in USD) in exchange for a 50% movement boost. There are also rarer mounts – things like dragons that can carry multiple people or seasonally-themed mounts like pumpkin stagecoaches for Halloween – that command very high in-game prices due to their ‘rarity whore’ appeal.
It’s worth noting that most of the desirable or limited-time weapons and costumes and such can’t actually be purchased straight from the Item Mall: to get what you want, you’re going to need either a lot of a luck or a lot of AP, since obtaining the newest items requires a whole lot of gambling.














