Welcome to the Beginner's Guide to Farming City of Aeterna. You'll learn how to encounter the Aeterna Kin within your Netherrealm maps, progress your Psalms of Aeterna and plunder the City's riches. The City rewards many things including rare Legendary Items, Flame Elementium and Soul Candles.
The Infinite City of Aeterna scales both difficulty and rewards with each depth. You should aim for a depth where you can farm quickly without failing the boss or Double Candlelight of Sacrifice encounters.
To begin farming the City of Aeterna you need Aeterna Reverberation - Fleeting and Aeterna Reverberation - Eternal. These can be farmed in the Netherrealm or purchased from other players via the Trade House.
For more information about the City of Aeterna mechanic check out our guide here!
Obtaining Reverberations
Several Trait Cards are required to farm Reverberations in the Netherrealm. Here's a short explanation of how to set your Trait Deck up. After you finish adding the relevant Aeterna cards you can fill the remaining slots with your favorite mechanic.
- First, you either need to use the Shiny Aeterna Compass or Diligent - Aeterna to cause the Kin of Aeterna to appear in your map.
- Second, add Elite or Boss Aeterna enemies, these have a high chance of dropping Aeterna Reverberation - Fleeting.
- The Blade of Aeterna's Obsession from Aloof - Aeterna has the highest chance to drop a Reverberation.
- Use Cheerful - Aeterna to add additional Aeterna Kin.
- Next, you need enhance the Reverberation drops.
- Selfless - Aeterna gives a chance to double the Reverberations.
- Using Benevolent - Aeterna upgrades a Aeterna Reverberation - Fleeting to Aeterna Reverberation - Eternal.
- During your early progression the Psalms of Aeterna use the additional pages from Optimistic - Aeterna to accelerate your progress.
Unlocking the Psalms
The Psalms of Aeterna is your meta-progression within the city. It controls key features like the number of tiles which can be placed and frequency of rare rewards. Without the Psalms of Aeterna, you won't find the city to be a rewarding experience. To progress your Psalms of Aeterna, collect Pages of Aeterna by defeating the Kin of Aeterna within the Netherrealm or clearing cities. The fastest way to collect Pages is using Aeterna Reverberation - Fleeting to enter the level 83 City of Aeterna. Select the 6 tile option every time, try to place tiles on as many reward tiles as possible then rush to the boss.
Key Features
There are several key features you need to unlock while progressing your Psalms of Aeterna. They're scattered around the Psalms, requiring a significant number of pages to progress. This includes unlocking areas within the City of Aeterna, the ability to generate a 4 tile segment, spare tiles to fill in spaces and the ability to block undesirable Soul Candle Modifiers.
Begin by unlocking all 5 Expansion Nodes. These expand the base area for your City of Aeterna from 4 zones up to 9 greatly increasing the rewards available.
As you progress to each Expansion node you unlock the following key features:
- Fertile Soil - unlocks the option to generate a 4 tile piece of the City which doubles the rewards from any reward tile it overlaps.
- The King's Rose - adds a 0.13% chance for a reward room to contain an Ultimate reward.
- King's Boon x2 - increases the number of Aeterna Tiles you can place after assembling your City from 1 to 3 allowing you to fix mistakes and optimize rewards.
- Serenade of Time - gives a chance for your City to become Unusual presenting more rewards such as turning all reward tiles into Commodity rooms.
- Passage of Time - allows the bosses to drop Queen's Wick - Imprisoned which can be sold.
Picking a Strategy
Next you have a choice, you can make the City of Aeterna more rewarding, enhance the Ruins of Aeterna, or focus on obtaining more Soul Candles. There isn't necessarily a correct answer here as the economy is constantly changing. However, if you're feeling lost you can use the following to get a rough idea of what to expect from progressing each zone.
- The left area focusing on nodes like Foreign Desire to add Shackles of Aeterna will be the least rewarding but help you progress the city faster.
- Unlocking nodes like Blooming Heart or Gold and Jewels on the right side are the best way to directly enhance the rewards from plundering the City of Aeterna.
- The bottom nodes focus on obtaining and enhancing Soul Candle drops. Rain of Tears and Endless Tears are especially important because they allow you to use Falling Candlelight nodes to prevent Soul Candles from dropping with up to 19 undesireable modifiers. This greatly increases your odds of obtaining a useful Soul Candle!
Remember, as you continue to run the City of Aeterna more Pages of Aeterna drop allowing you to eventually unlock all the nodes. In the short term pick a strategy you enjoy while farming more pages in the City of Aeterna.
For more details on Soul Candles check out our Guide here.
Halved Taboo
Halved Taboo is the second Soul Candle node, find it by traveling down from the starting point. This doesn't help progress your City of Aeterna but provides a significant amount of character power in the form of a second Soul Candle. If you don't plan to farm the City this should be your first unlock, otherwise it can wait until later provided your build is strong enough to quickly clear the level 83 and level 85 zones in the City of Aeterna.
If you have spare pages and don't intend to run the City frequently, we recommend investing into the Passage of Time node by pathing left through Fertile Soil then down towards Expansion. This gives City bosses a chance to drop Queen's Wick - Imprisoned which is required to challenge the Lone King of Aeterna.
Infinite City Nodes
There are 4 large Legendary nodes on the Psalms of Aeterna which control the progression and difficulty for the Infinite City of Aeterna. These are the endgame of your meta-progression, so don't invest in them until you have all the key features unlocked and are generally happy with the state of your Psalms.
- Aeterna's Renewal increases the City's upper limit. As you go deeper you gain Quantity and Soul Candle Duplication bonuses, but monsters become more dangerous.
- Nowehere to Run increases the player's movement speed in the City of Aeterna making it easier to clear the area quickly.
- The following 2 nodes to aid your progression into the infinite depths of the city:
- Inescapable reduces monster damage in the City of Aeterna.
- No Burnout reduces monster life in the City of Aeterna.
Ruins of Aeterna
Once you've unlocked all of the Expansion nodes you need to run 9 Ruins of Aeterna to assemble the City of Aeterna you wish to farm. You want to use 4 Aeterna Reverberation - Fleeting and 5 Aeterna Reverberation - Eternal so that the resulting city is level 85.
When entering the Ruins of Aeterna you are prompted to choose one of the following:
- Random 4 - More difficult to connect, but doubles any reward tiles it overlaps.
- Random 6 - Easier to connect, but less rewarding.
It can be tempting to go for Random 4 every time, but most of the time you're better off with random 6. Only select random 4 when you have multiple placement options which could overlap or when trying to double a Legendary reward. If you fail to connect to the boss, your city is ruined as you lose a majority of the rewards including the 100+ Pages of Aeterna.
Challenges
The Ruins of Aeterna contain Monsters, Bosses, and Challenges for you to complete. Interact with the Candelabrum to begin a challenge, complete all of the challenges and kill the boss in time to obtain a piece of Aeterna. Before farming the City of Aeterna you first need to assemble it by completing Challenges.
- Waves of Monsters spawn while trapping you in a Blue arena, while Blue DoT puddles form at the arena's outskirts and flow inwards.
- Defeat all waves of Monsters to complete the Challenge and free yourself.
- Waves of Monsters spawn while trapping you in a Red arena, the Candle emits a powerful Red laser that rotates around the Arena.
- Defeat all waves of Monsters to complete the Challenge and free yourself.
- A Boss spawns while trapping you in a Purple arena.
- Defeat the Boss to complete the Challenge and free yourself.
- A White circle appears on ground nearby, standing in it for long enough completes the Challenge.
- Monsters spawn nearby while you do this.
- While extremely rare, a cluster of highly rewarding Chests spawn nearby.
- These chests have a small chance to duplicate themselves when opened.
- There is no Challenge.
For more details on Challenges or the Ruins of Aeterna check out our Seasonal Guide.
City of Aeterna
After completing the Ruins of Aeterna you obtain a Mark of the Ruins. Normally, this has 4 or 6 tiles depending on your choice. However, if you fail any of the candelabrum this reduces the number of available tiles on your Mark of the Ruins. If you find yourself failing Challenges, improve your build before continuing to progress.
Initial Placement
In this example the Mark of Ruins overlaps with the Rare Aeterna Reward tile. The Adjacent areas are then revealed allowing you to continue building the City of Aeterna. Placing the first Mark of the Ruins is easy, but as you progress each previous choice shapes your future options.
Building the City
In this example there are 3 locations for the Mark of the Ruins. The first option up top overlaps with the Rare Dark Surge reward, but does not overlap the Rare Gear Reward and this choice leaves the tiles unconnected making it a poor choice. The second option in the middle overlaps the Magic Dark Surge Reward but misses the Magic Cube of Rapacity Reward. This isn't a bad choice because it gives you a lot of options to continue your progression and both rewards are low priority. Finally, the bottom-right tile choice overlaps both the Magic Gear reward and Legendary City of Aeterna Reward. This gets you the Legendary node, but you miss out on the double reward from using a 4 tile Mark of the Ruins making it an undesirable option. Correctly placing your Mark of the Ruins is crucial to farming the City of Aeterna.
Always prioritize Soul Candle and Commodity rewards. When you have a Legendary Soul Candle, or Legendary Commodity Reward available try to place a 4 tile Mark of the Ruins over it to double the outcome. Gear is the least desirable reward, and other Seasonal Mechanics fall somewhere in between depending on the economy.
Assembled City
Your goal is to connect the Boss (located in the center of the far-right section) to the starting zone. Along the way you want your tiles to overlap with as many rewards as you can. Use the 3 spare tiles at the end to fix mistakes, grab rewards or connect isolated areas.
In this example the Unusual City has 13 Magic Commodity Rewards, 3 Rare Commodity Rewards, and 2 Legendary Commodity Rewards. There were 6 Six tile Mark of the Ruins used, and 3 Four tile Mark of the Ruins. The best way to maximize your profits while farming City of Aeterna is by not being too greedy.
Warning: The level 6 City of Aeterna pet, Monument Knight provides a significant advantage. City of Aeterna is still profitable without the pet, but unfortunately you will be at a significant disadvantage in comparison to someone who has one.
Running the City
While it's difficult to assemble a city, running them is straightforward. You need to kill enemies to collect keys, use these keys to unlock the reward chests. After you unlock all the rewards, a portal to the boss appears. Enter it and defeat the boss to complete the city! The boss drops a generous amount of Pages of Aeterna, along with some Soul Candles. Like with maps you have 6 attempts, fail all of them and the city is lost. If you're confused on where to go within the city, consult your minimap or click the 3x3 grid of Golden squares on your screen.
With the right Psalm nodes, killing enemies within the City of Aeterna also grants Tears of Aeterna which are used to fuse Soul Candles. If you plan to farm Soul Candles it's worth killing extra enemies while clearing the city. When farming City of Aeterna, a majority of your profits come from collecting and fusing Soul Candles then selling them to other players on the trade house.
After you complete a level 84+ City of Aeterna, the Infinite city unlocks. Each time you complete the highest Infinite City 5 additional tiers unlock. This provides a quantity bonus and a chance to duplicate Soul Candles, however the difficulty significantly increases as you progress. If you're just starting out don't worry about farming the infinite City of Aeterna, instead focus on progressing though level 83 zones quickly to complete your Psalms.
Video Guide
Summary
- To begin farming the City of Aeterna you need reverberations.
- Aeterna Reverberation - Fleeting generates a level 83 zone.
- Aeterna Reverberation - Eternal generates a level 85 zone.
- Use Trait Cards and Aeterna Compasses to add Aeterna Kin to your maps.
- To farm the City of Aeterna you need to complete the meta-progression system, Psalms of Aeterna.
- Defeat bosses to obtain Pages of Aeterna.
- Use these to unlock important nodes like Expansion and Fertile Soil.
- The Psalms are divided into 3 regions.
- The left enhances rewards from the Ruins of Aeterna.
- Nodes on the right side increase your rewards from the City of Aeterna.
- The bottom nodes enhance your ability to farm Soul Candles in the City of Aeterna.
- Complete Challenges in the Ruins of Aeterna to obtain a Mark of the Ruins.
- Place the mark to assemble your city.
- Kill monsters within the city to obtain keys.
- Use the keys to open all of the reward chests.
- Enter the portal and defeat the boss.
Credits
Written by Tenkiei
Reviewed by Dredscythe, Zen_M