Combat Time

How to See your Combat Time

Before we begin you should understand combat time.  You can access this at any time by clicking on the More [1] button, then clicking on Settings [2] will show you your settings which contains your account's combat time for the day. 

How to access combat time

Settings screen that shows your combat time

What is Combat Time?

Think of this as a stamina bar when it comes to obtaining loot and experience.  Combat time starts counting down the moment you strike a mob and lasts for 12 seconds no matter how many more mobs you hit.  If you only struck once and walked away you just wasted 12 seconds.  This means the more mobs you can kill in this time frame the better.  If you kill a mob every 8 seconds then you're wasting combat time.

While your combat time is green (such as below, where I've used 0 minutes) you're in what I call normal combat time.  During this time you receive drops and experience at a normal rate of 100%.  This time is shared across your account so you get to choose if you want to use this on a single character or split it between the others.  

Every day you're given a certain amount of time and that time may carry over for a couple days until reaching a cap.  This varies depending on the higher base level on your account as follows:


This means getting a character to base level 160 directly impacts the amount of zeny and experience you gain every day.  

0 mins used today, 909 minutes stocked up

Daily Combat Time Increases

You may also increase daily combat time temporarily by doing one of the following tasks: 

Mentor medals are not available until level 120 so new players only get the extra ninety minutes at the jukebox every day.

Note that this bonus time does not carry over to the next day so use it or lose it!

South Prontera Jukebox

Finding your Accumulated Jukebox Time

3 Extra minutes earned from the Jukebox

Be warned, additional combat time obtained from the Jukebox and Mentor Medals does not carry over to the next day.  This means you should either farm to use up those extra minutes or send your character on pet adventures, otherwise this time will be lost after the daily reset.

Adjusted Combat Time

Once normal combat time is used up the color of the number on the left changes from green to yellow, signifying the start of adjusted combat time.  You may farm for another 150 minutes of adjusted combat time before the combat time numbers turn red.  During this adjusted time drop rates start with a small penalty but as time increases the penalty grows.  Once time turns red your 150 minutes are up and your drop rate has reached the maximum penalty of 99%.

Many people stop farming as soon as time hits the yellow and don’t realize they lose out on quite a bit of zeny.  Farming for at least 90 more minutes into yellow is actually very good.  If you skip doing another 90 minutes for an entire month you’ve given up quite a bit of extra loot.  I’ve also lucked out on several card drops in yellow time and have personally witnessed two in the red which is extremely rare considering I’ve been playing since February ‘19.  Don’t farm in the red time unless you literally have nothing else to do.

If you're hardcore into this game it is extremely beneficial to use up all of your combat time every day, including another 90-150 minutes of adjusted combat time.  This really does add up to a lot of extra zeny in the long run but boy is this a lot of work.  You do not need to do this, but if your hardcore into this game then go for it, it helps!

Game Mode Time

Another type of time has been added recently called Game Mode Time.  This time is only used when running Cake Battle, Rift Challenges, or extra runs of Oracle Dungeon.  This was recently added and prior to this you had to consume your combat time to run these instances so this is a great addition that provides us with a pool to pull time from other than our combat time.

0 of 180 minutes used this week

Every month this time is reset to 180 minutes.  The time does not carry over and is shared across your account.  If you run out of Game Mode Time then your combat time will be used instead when running these instances.  

Time Adventure Potions may be used to increase your weekly Game Mode Time by 60 minutes each, up to a ridiculous limit of 4500 minutes per week.  This time does not carry over so only use these right before you run something so you don't accidentally waste them.

These are obtained rarely from events or purchased for BCC in the cash shop.

Drop Rates

While spending your combat time be aware of the drop rate range to obtain the maximum amount of zeny and loot for your time.  Once your 31 levels higher than the monster you're farming a penalty kicks in and gets larger every ten levels until a cap of 50% when 71 levels over your target.

This is much more lenient than the drop rate penalties that we dealt with when the game was first launched so use this to stay at weaker mobs if you cannot move onward.  It's much more important that you focus on zeny farming to get strong enough to fight the tougher mobs you want to so don't worry about losing out on too much, the penalties are very relaxed these days.

Experience and drop rate adjustments based on your level difference from the target mob

Chains

There are two items that help use up your combat time faster while increasing the number of drops and exp gain.

Lightning Chain

Meteoric Chain

Limitations

The following things never drop extra loot when using these chains

Using either of these adds a stacking 30 minute buff that increase drops received while increasing the rate at which you consume combat time.  This allows you to use up your combat time faster though there is a better reason to use these.  Also these buffs only count down in combat, during normal combat time.   When time goes into the yellow/red these chains pause, saving them for tomorrow so don't worry if you don't have an hour to farm or enough time left, they won't just expire on you.  This is very surprising since most games don't allow this and your buffs simply fall off.

Furthermore, if both are active these buffs do not stack, lightning chains will be paused while meteor chains are used up first.  That said, main reason to use chains is because extra drops received applies to cards.  This means the best time to use them is when you're able to one shot enemies to maximize the amount of kills.  More kills means more chances at getting card drops so AoE classes get the most out of using these.

This last patch added a feature where you can disable chains during combat time.  Tap on your buff list under your character portrait and select the Off button to turn off chains.  This is useful if you need to do some quests in low level areas or events where you would otherwise waste your chains.

Offline Farming

An offline farming feature was added that allows you to set your character to farm when you close the game out.  Unfortunately you need to purchase premium with real cash to get the item that you use to unlock this feature for 31 days.  The value here is great not only for convenience, but you're not subject to emulator and phone lag so your character farms on the server at full speed while you're gone.  Many people have tested this and this testing suggests that you farm much more zeny using offline farming.

Generally this is not something you'll get to use much as a F2P player since the game very rarely hands out a 15 day "sample" to use.  You'll still farm just fine without it so don't fret, it's mostly convenience.

For more information on this feature see the Premium & Offline Farming page.