Aeon of Atavus Fight Guide


Included in the Wizard101 Fall 2022 Update was an upgrade to Merciless gear, Aeon, alongside the initial release of the Pin items and system. However, with all these excellent new items there of course needs to be a place to farm for them. The Aeon of Atavus is the final boss in the world of Novus, and is the best source of Sword, Pins, and Pixel reagents. Additionally, this nightmarish creature drops the Aeon Hat, Robe, and Wand, alongside the Masterpiece variants as well.

The name Aeon of Atavus means “Time of Ancestors”, and canonically resembles the Manticore’s perspective on what First World life looks like. Throughout the world of Novus, the concept of “blended magic”, otherwise known as dual school spells and pips, is tossed around as a property of the Novus creatures. This same notion applies at a much larger magnitude to this fight – you will encounter 4 “Atavus” bosses, each of a different school combination (except for balance, just being balance). As such, the fight is a full implementation of Rhoshambo utilities and counterplay.

This guide will explain to you the conventions of the fight; what the spells you get in polymorph form mean, their patterns, and how to effectively use them to defeat the boss!

Take me to the Strategies, I already know the spells and cheats!


The Polymorph Cheats


Immediately upon beginning the Aeon of Atavus fight, no matter what cards the players pick, they will be forced to pass. Then, the Aeon will subsequently “devour” all players, removing them from the battle and revoking their turn. Afterwards, all players will be transformed into either an Atavus Dog (Balance), Atavus Unicorn (Storm-Life), Atavus Monquistan (Fire-Myth), or Atavus Pingouin (Ice-Death). In order to tranform back, you must kill a boss. These polymorph forms come with 30,000 health, 170% damage, 70% resist, and cards unique to this fight. You’ll notice the polymorph spells have one thing in common – Rhoshambo.

Referring to the Rhoshambo Wheel present in both the 5th Age PvP Initiative and the Beastmoon gamemodes, each school “hard” counters one school and “soft counters” as well as synergizes with another. Each Atavus form follows these rules as well. The schools of the form you receive determine which boss resists you, is neutral to you, and which boss you boost against. Each form receives Rhoshambo “Ramp” spells that convert an enemy’s beneficial hanging effect into a hanging effect beneficial for yourself. These spells are used to set up your conditional hits, provided by your polymorph form. Here are the boosts and resists for each polymorph form:

  • Dog Polymorph (Balance) – You will boost against the Atavus Dog. No bosses will resist your spells (with the exception of the 4 school pip spells).
  • Unicorn Polymorph (Storm/Life) – You will boost against the Atavus Monquistan. The Atavus Pingouin will resist your spells.
  • Monquistan Polymorph (Fire/Myth) – You will boost against the Atavus Pingouin. The Atavus Unicorn will resist your spells.
  • Pingouin Polymorph (Ice/Death) – You will boost against the Atavus Unicorn. The Atavus Monquistan will resist your spells.

 

What are my Polymorph Spells?

Helpful Terminology:

  • “Mono” refers to mono-school, or only 1 school of pips required.
  • “Dual” refers to dual-school, or multiple different school pips required.
  • “Weak” is short for Weakness.
  • “DoT” & “HoT” are short for Damage and Healing Overtimes respectively.
  • “Ramp” spells convert hanging effect(s) each into a different hanging effect. A “Trap-Blade Ramp” will convert Traps (quantity specified on the spell) each into a Blade.
  • Hits that mention a hanging effect (ex. “Blade Hit”) are conditionals. They deal extra damage if you have that hanging effect.

As mentioned above, each polymorph comes with a unique set of spells! These unique spells have the same animations as pre-existing ones, but with new utilities! Here is a chart of the spells each polymorph receives:

DogUnicornMonquistanPingouin

Here are the spells and how many copies you will receive with the Atavus Dog Polymorph form.

Utility
Spells

4x Damage Aura

18x Random Effect

6x Pip Utility

Small Conditionals

2x HoT Hit

2x Trap Hit

2x Weakness Hit

Small Conditionals

2x Shield Hit

2x Blade Hit

2x DoT Hit

Medium Conditionals

2x HoT-Shield Hit

2x DoT-Weak Hit

2x Trap-Blade Hit

Large Conditionals

2x Spiritual Hit

2x Elemental Hit

Here are the spells and how many copies you will receive with the Atavus Unicorn Polymorph form.

Utility
Spells

4x Damage Aura

6x Stormblade

6x Heal Overtime

Storm Mono
Spells

4x Storm Hit

4x HoT Ramp

4x DoT-Weak Ramp

Life Mono
Spells

4x Life Hit

4x DoT Ramp

4x Trap-Blade Ramp

Storm Dual
Spells

2x HoT Hit

2x Weakness Hit

2x Blade-HoT-Weak Hit

Life Dual
Spells

2x Blade Hit

2x DoT Hit

2x Blade-HoT-DoT Hit

Here are the spells and how many copies you will receive with the Atavus Monquistan Polymorph form.

Utility
Spells

4x Damage Aura

6x Damage Overtimes

6x Myth Traps

Fire Mono
Spells

4x Fire Hit

4x Trap Ramp

4x Shield-HoT Ramp

Myth Mono
Spells

4x Myth Hit

4x Shield Ramp

4x Weak-DoT Ramp

Fire Dual
Spells

2x Trap Hit

2x HoT Hit

2x Trap-DoT-HoT Hit

Myth Dual
Spells

2x DoT Hit

2x Shield Hit

2x Trap-DoT-Shield Hit

Here are the spells and how many copies you will receive with the Atavus Pingouin Polymorph form.

Utility
Spells

4x Damage Aura

6x Storm Shield

6x Infection (Weak)

Ice Mono
Spells

4x Ice Hit

4x Weakness Ramp

4x Blade-Trap Ramp

Death Mono
Spells

4x Death Hit

4x Blade Ramp

4x HoT-Shield Ramp

Ice Dual
Spells

2x Weakness Hit

2x Trap Hit

2x Weak-Trap-Shield Hit

Death Dual
Spells

2x Shield Hit

2x Blade Hit

2x Shield-Blade-Weak Hit

The Aeon of Atavus also has a minor cheat that deals damage to all wizards every few rounds. This can be ignored for the most part; it has little significance in the overall fight given augmented player health and resist.

So many spells… is there a way to organize them?

Additionally, here is a chart of the primary and secondary hanging effects each Aeon of Atavus polymorph form receives, and the main spells that apply them. You will also notice that the recommended boss to target is listed under each polymorph name. The forms will provide you with 0-pip spells for the primary hanging effects, while the secondary and tertiary hanging effects must be applied using the Ramp spells.

 Aeon of Atavus
Primary Hanging Effects Secondary Hanging Effect Tertiary Hanging Effect
Dog

Balance

(Hit Dog)

All

n/a n/a
Unicorn

Storm-Life

(Hit Monkey)

Blades, HoT’s
Fire – DoT’s

Death – Weaknesses
Monquistan

Fire-Myth

(Hit Pingouin)

DoT’s, Traps

Ice – Shields
Life – HoT’s

Pingouin

Ice-Death

(Hit Unicorn)

Shields, Weaknesses

Storm – Blades

Myth – Traps

So… what does this mean?

Like many consistent Rhoshambo applications do, these Aeon of Atavus forms have patterns in their spells.

First of all, every form will receive a 1-pip 4-round Star spell – a damage aura that boosts the damage of the 2 schools of your form by 25%. All of these spells are shown above! This spell does not help set up any conditionals, but is a nice damage supplement. You will want to keep one in your hand the entire fight, saving it for the brief period before you use your highest damage conditional.

You will notice each form comes with 2-pip “clear” spells – these are called Rhoshambo Ramps, as mentioned before. They will clear up to as many of the designated hanging effect as specified, in exchange for one of the resultant hanging effect per cleared item. As an example, the Monquistan polymorph’s spell “Mine!” will clear up to 2 shields on the target, and provide 1 shield on self per shield cleared on enemy.

Take keen notice of  your Secondary and Tertiary hanging effects – using these Ramp spells will be the only way to apply those hanging effects. The only ones of these spells that you should be using are shown above. Save one of each in your hand, you will need them for your highest damage conditional! I highly recommend discarding the ramps that focus on your polymorph’s primary school effects, as you have easy 0-pip nonconditional ways to apply these hanging effects.

Furthermore, each form has two damage+utility spells that cost one school pip. These spells will hit and then perform the direct convert of the school of the spell. For example, Death specializes in weaknesses and hard counters heal overtimes. As a result, the spell “Fell the Walrusks”, which is on the Pingouin polymorph and costs 1 death pip, will deal damage and then remove a heal overtime in exchange for an infection on the enemy. This pattern remains consistent for every 1-school pip spell the polymorphs have. They deal damage and then remove the hanging effect the school hard counters in exchange for their own hanging effect. Although useful for counterplay, these are useless in the fight for a quick and simple strategy. Discarding them is the best course of action.

Next up on the spell list are the two school pip damage spells. These are the first sets of conditionals – you will notice that their condition has relations to the two school pips they require. The Monquistan polymorph’s spell “Life is Unfair!” is a heal overtime conditional, dealing extra damage if you have a heal overtime on yourself. The reason that it costs a Fire and Life pip is because those two schools synergize with Heal Overtimes. Furthermore, the Unicorn polymorph gets a similar storm spell titled “Creations Rebelled”, which has the same exact conditional.

Once you are able to distinguish and determine the uses for these spells, they will begin to make much more sense and your ease of card reading in the fight will improve drastically. Although an excellent learning curve, these two school pip spells, just like the single school pip spells, are fairly useless for an efficient farming strategy. You will want to discard them as well.

So, now that you are starting to get the hang of these spells and what they do, you probably also wonder what spells you should actually be using. Well, luckily enough, the final damage spells are the triple-school pip conditionals (with the exception of the Dog polymorph, which will be explained briefly later). These spells are very similar to gambits, which you may or may not know from the PvP Rhoshambo Initiative. All of these spells are shown above. You will receive the bonus damage just for having these hanging effects when you cast the spell. These are the main hits you will be using.  If you pull multiple of the same one, you can discard the spares. Each form has two different attacks, so make sure you don’t discard all of one!

Both of these large hits will always require your two primary hanging effects (referring to the table above), alongside either your secondary or tertiary. Notice how the school pips the spell requires correspond to the hanging effects. A spell that requires a dot for its conditional will always cost a fire pip, a blade a storm pip, and so on. The premise of these spells is simple enough – get all 3 hanging effects on simultaneously, and then send the hit!

Uh oh… I got the Dog Polymorph!

What if you get the Dog polymorph? This is by far the most tricky one to manage, as there can be a lot going on. The most optimal boss to target is the Dog. Explanations for this form will be found in the tabs for each group of spells!

The Dog form’s auras is fairly simple. Just like the other forms, save it for use before hitting! It will ONLY boost outgoing damage for spells that deal balance damage.

Considering how the most efficient strategy is to use your smaller conditionals (see next tab), you will want to keep your “For Science… Etc” handy! You should virtually spam it, allowing you to apply all the hanging effects you need. While doing so, you will need to manage your school pips. Every hit in this form requires a Balance pip and at least one other. “Pip, Pip, Cheerio” is a lifesaver if you accidentally mess up your pips and softlock yourself. However, you’ll want to minimize reliance on it by keeping an eye on your archmastery! You should start off with Balance pips, and then branch out to the pips corresponding to the hanging effects you apply.

These are the spells you will be using the most! Notice how the school pips of the spells coordinate with your conditional. Even if you have trouble reading the text, just remember that if costs a storm pip for example, it should be a blade conditional! Spamming these conditional hits on the balance boss should be simple enough to kill him quick. Use “For Science… Etc” (see previous tab) to meet these conditions.

Occasionally, you may find yourself with appropriate conditions to cast these larger conditionals. As opposed to only requiring one school’s condition, these spells require conditions of schools opposite each other on the rhoshambo wheel. They deal significantly more damage; if you can meet both conditions, make sure you use these spells!

These are the most useless conditional spells in the entire Aeon of Atavus fight. Your highest school pip hit suffers from the fact that it doesn’t have that juicy 50% boost against the balance boss (being either elemental or spirit). It really is not worth using.

How do I farm the Aeon of Atavus?


There are a few things you must consider to optimize your farming!

1. ALWAYS target the boss you boost on! You only need to kill ONE boss while polymorphed in order to transform back with your original stats and cards. Then it is simple to blade stack and AoE hit to kill the remaining bosses. Refer to the table above to see what form boosts what boss.

2. The best and most efficient farming method is to use a coordinated team. Working together to set up a tri-school pip conditional as quickly as possible will always lead to fast kills!

3. Abstain from using enemy-target hanging effects. These include traps, dots, and weaknesses, which all hang on the enemy. Because one player can apply this and allow for all allies to meet spell conditions, just let your fellow wizards do it for you, while you set up other parts of your conditionals.

4. Following the same reasoning as the above advice, focus on self-centralized hanging effects first. This includes shields, blades, and hots, which all hang on your own wizard. Unless you have highly cooperative teammates, you’d have trouble getting someone else to use it for you.

5. As mentioned prior, always save one star damage aura in your hand. Once you have set up your gambit, go ahead and use it in order to gain that 25% boost before you hit!

6. You won’t be able to use your tri-school pip conditional hits without using at least one secondary or tertiary hanging effect Rhoshambo Ramp spell (refer to the table above). Make sure you heavily discard all unneeded spells to pull for these quickly – you can end up getting a full gambit by the 4th playable round in the fight if you play well and your deck doesn’t fail!

7. Manage your school pips wisely. Obviously you won’t know what polymorph you will get at first, and may end up with a useless school pip on the first round. However, make sure to change this immediately to begin acquiring efficient school pips. You’ll want the school pips of your primary schools first – a Pingouin polymorph will want to get an Ice and Death pip asap, a Unicorn would want Storm and Life, and so on. Once you have at least one of each, branch out to the schools of your secondary and tertiary effects.

8. If you happen to be on a school that has Blades or Traps as a conditional, try to use the tri-school pip hit that is of the school of the blades/traps you apply. This will allow your damage to be boosted by these blades and traps – although the spells do not specify what school of damage they will deal, it will always be the school of the spell itself.

If you follow these guidelines, you should be able to easily complete the Aeon of Atavus fight in about 10-15 minutes. You can reduce this time if you get the hang of the strategies. Let me know your shortest times in the comments below! When using a strong tri-school pip conditional, you should be able to do about 12,000 damage to the boss you boost on. From then on, it should be easy to finish it off! The Dog polymorph (balance) is slightly more difficult to master. However, it should still be possible to deal large amounts of damage with it nonetheless!

Complex Strategies

A bonus strategy you can try for full optimization is a Pet Willcast. A very interesting characteristic of this fight is how you get polymorphed and lose all your cards – but you won’t lose your pet willcast! You have many options to choose from:

1. Frozen Kraken / Earth Walker Trained – Your polymorph grants you universal damage! You don’t even need to be ice/life to make this work. Frozen Kraken is most efficient on the Unicorn boss because you boost, and least efficient on the Monquistan boss because of resist. Earth Walker is most efficient against the Monquistan boss, and least efficient against the Pingouin boss. A full team of 4 with these willcasts can ignore most rules of the fight and hit the boss they boost no matter their form, with the intent to kill as soon as possible.

2. Hex / Curse / Fuel Trained – Not only do these willcasts increase the incoming damage on the enemy, but they can also help set up your trap conditionals!

3. Sword and Shield Trained – This willcast is by far the best for completing the fight in accordance to its cheats. The fact that you can apply both a blade and shield to yourself sets up 2/3 conditionals of the Pingouin’s “We Are Chaos” tri-school pip conditional, and can simply just help you set up any shield or blade conditionals. That random blade can also buff your spells if you get lucky!

4. Link Trained – Just like the others, this can help you set up hanging effects for conditionals. This time, a dot and a hot! That’s 2/3 conditions met for the Monquistan polymorph’s spell “We Are All Life”, and the Unicorn spell “We Are Madness”. It also can remove those pesky weaknesses from Deer Knight.

5. Plague Trained / Cat Thug Trained – While seemingly not as useful as some of the others, this one can help you set up your weakness conditionals. Cat Thug gets the added bonus of being able to deal damage to remove weaknesses.

The BEST Strategy?

But what’s the most efficient farming method for the Aeon of Atavus? Well, there are several options to answer that question. Below will be the most efficient strategies, ranked by their efficiency.

  1. Willcast hit spamming is by far the easiest way to win the fight. A coordinated team of 4 with either the Frozen Kraken or Earth Walker willcast (and NO maycast talents, they activate too often!) can spam-hit the appropriate boost enemy to kill in just a few rounds.
  2. Setting up your tri-school pip hit is by far the next-quickest way to finish the fight. Coupling this strategy with beneficial willcasts like Link as well as Sword and Shield will accelerate the pace of the fight.
  3. Aimlessly hitting like you don’t know what you’re doing (I’m talking to you, teamup wizards!) will score you the slowest run times. I’ve seen people complain about having 30-45 minute runs, and that is because of a lack of cheat awareness and how to use conditionals. Be sure to put this guide to use; it has plenty of valuable information to help you defeat the Aeon of Atavus faster!

Aeon Drops


Okay, after all that – what do you get once you win the fight? The Aeon of Atavus will guarantee you at least 1 piece of gear, and 4 pixels. Whether that is Aeon (tier 1) or Masterpiece (tier 2), the hat, the robe, the wand, is entirely up to chance. But you are guaranteed at least one piece for your troubles. There is a chance to receive a 2nd as well, but no reports of a 3rd yet. Those pixels can help you craft your spare Masterpiece pieces into Aeon. You are also guaranteed 2 level 150-160 Sword pins to aid you on your new pin conquest to further dual school support!

Good luck in your farming the Aeon of Atavus, and may the dual school and Rhoshambo always be with you!

These tips will definitely speed up your run times. Let me know your shortest times in the comments below!

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StormCloud

StormCloud has been a frequent Wizard101 player since 2013, and began playing Pirate101 in 2021. He started his adventures in the game as a Life Wizard, and had always been a fan of using Storm spells in his journeys. If he isn't testing out new Dual School strategies and setups, then you'll find him making custom pets, collecting P101 companions, or participating in the W101 and P101 Twitter community. He is experienced in game mechanics and lore, so feel free to reach out with any questions!

8 COMMENTS

  • For anyone attempting this, if you re-join after being un-polymorphed, you will be polymorphed again. I assumed there were no late cheats after reading this guide but that is something to be aware of.

    • Sorry, I forgot to include that! Yeah, anyone joining late will basically reset you back into the polymorph. I believe it may also break the unpolymorphing cheat if you have already been polymorphed back once before.

  • I have been playing wizard101 since may 2009 and have 2 full membership accounts and 11 wizards. This battle was the most confusing battle I have ever participated in. Somehow, I managed to transmute back to my own wizards (I was running 2 of my wizards on my two accounts, split screen) and I didnt kill any boss in this battle while polymorphed. Then using my own wizards school killed everything quickly. I have absolutely no clue what in the world happened in the first part of that battle. The first half of battle was confusing and a waste of time and NOT fun in the least.

  • Honestly the gambits on the spell cards were extremely difficult and I didn’t even attempt to use them. Made it through the first boss kill without using them. Rest of battle is super easy. Wish KI separated PVP and PVE and did not throw them together in a boss battle like this. Thank you for the guide!

  • This guide helped out a ton, once I got the learning curve down this became my favorite W101 boss fight. The complexity of this fight and how it challenges you in a way forgotten by most boss fights. This guide really helped me understand how to fight and enjoy the boss fight. Thank you so much!

  • The fact that they created dozens of new spells that apply ONLY to this fight is utterly ridiculous. It doesn’t matter if you’re already familiar with the trainable ramp spells because you don’t get them in this fight. You get a bunch of random ones that are slightly similar to the trainable ones, meaning you still have to carefully read all the confusing text and symbols on all seven cards in your hand, every turn, in under 30 seconds. This fight is an abomination and a spectacular failure on KI’s part.

  • This fight is absolutely insane. I have been playing since 2009, and to be thrust into a fight like this, with no ease-in for the unbelievably complex, world-changing nonsensery, is just tremendously disappointing. If you are a PVE-only wiz, this will confuse the ever-loving snot out of you. Nothing is explained, nothing makes any sense. The cards are so poorly hieroglyphed, I could not make any sense out of it. This is NOT how to introduce an entirely new way of spell-casting and strategy. The guide, while friendly and nicely delivered, does not help much, because it assumes a degree of base knowledge that most pve players don’t have. I am completely fed-up with pve being tossed around like a toy while KI endlessly tries to fix PVP. FIGURE IT OUT AND STOP DESTROYING PVE.

  • Honestly, I hope they don’t have any more fights that use this complex system. For a game geared toward kids, I’m a little shocked that they find this to be understandable. Especially for those who don’t do PvP, the fact that this gets stuffed into PvE while putting a ban on regular roshambo spells and just expecting them to know how they work is a very tall order. And yes, I’ve beaten this myself considerably quickly, but figuring out how to set everything up using decks that aren’t even my own is just not really a fair request. I’m not saying the fight should be nerfed, but they should remove the PvP only lock on spells so people can figure out how gambits and such work further in advance. For most of us, it’s just a bunch of new symbols without a clear meaning for us.

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