Antz Colony

If you have never played Breath of Fire 3 or 4, that's probably the first time you hear about the Antz Colony. Some people also call it the Fairy Colony, but for a matter of consistency, I'll just use the former term. That being said, I was totally clueless about this whole thing myself, so you'll find here a very detailed explanation on how it all works. It is also nicely explained in the game, in case you don't feel like reading this entire page (that'd be YOUR loss, though >:E).

How? What? Why?
(Not necessarily answered in this order)

You can only access the Colony after meeting the Fairy in the CorpLab Entrance. She'll give you the Fairy Drops, an item that allows you to access the Colony at all time, assuming all the enemies in the room are defeated. The main point of the thing is to use antz (not ants) to build a huge underground city, with jobs and shops to get more money. This will be an important source of income, as long as you'll keep killing enemies in the game. Nothing will change in the Colony if you don't actually do anything in-game. In any case, use it because you've probably noticed that zennys are hard to come by... Even by doing the minimum, you'll get satisfying financial results, so there's really no reason to ignore the Colony.

What To Do First?

On your first visit there, you'll probably talk to the Fairy before doing anything else, right? Good. She'll then propose you a variety of actions to take, as illustrated here, but with a better quality. I suggest you read the Information section. This is where you'll learn how the colony works. You'll need to recruit antz first to make it grow, but you didn't need the chug down a 24-pack of beer to know that, eh? Three or two antz are usually hanging around the "Hiring" area close to the Fairy, so talk to them to start making your own crew. Note that each time you'll kill a monster while playing the game, you'll have to pay each of them the amount of money written on their Info chart (that will be done automatically, though).

Orders? Stats?
(AKA "Can Antz Really Have Good Taste?")

Antz stats are not ultimately important at the beginning and therefore, you shouldn't refuse to hire any of them even if you think they seem weak and/or stupid. Once you've hired a couple of workers, that's pretty obvious you have to give them orders if you want to get things started. Let's take a look at the Orders screen (shown on the left):

When you hire new antz, they'll be waiting in the FREE area to receive your orders. You can grab them (by the neck only) and form up to 3 teams, cleverly represented by red, blue and green flags, in the TEAM area. You will be given the choice to send each team out to explore the vast map of the Colony. This is a fairly simple step, as you'll see when playing, so no more explanation is needed about this topic. Before going any further, let's take a closer look at a random ant's stats to explain all there is to know about them. For example, Merlyn, located to your right, has big muscles, but nothing in the head and fairly poor taste. Consequently, he would only be good at jobs requiring strength and/or endurance. Let's note that he'll also cost you 8 zennys each time you'll kill an enemy. Jobs and appropriate antz's stats are specified in the Jobs Section of this page.

Map of the Colony

Click on the room on the map you want to get more information about the corresponding job. Or! You can click on one of the links below:

Bank + Cafeteria + Concert Hall + Excavation + Explorers + Kokon-Horay + Laboratory + Main Room + Market + Review Board + Stockhouse + The Daily + Training Center

(Note that the Stockhouse isn't actually on the map since there are only 9 rooms for 10 jobs.)

Jobs

As already stated, there's a total of 10 jobs in the Colony, excluding Excavating. You can choose which ones you prefer and set up as many of them as there are rooms. Silly, but I hadn't noticed I could change my Cafeteria into a second Bank when I started playing. :P

Bank

	Stats

Type	Description + What to do with those
Checking	This is just like a normal bank account. You can leave money in there and it will grow based on a certain interest rate. Obviously, you will get more money in the end if you leave a large amount...
Savings	You need to leave a certain amount of money (100 or 500z), then go on a gorey rampage to kill a fixed number of enemies. Just so you know, this set number of monsters is your account #.
Foreign Accounts	Foreign accounts are just like buying/selling stock options. You can buy either Dals or Mils. You buy them when the market's low and sell them when it's high. As simple as that. You just need to be careful and check the market often.

Cafeteria

	Stats

Concert Hall

	Stats

Excavation

	Stats
	(preferably)

Explorers

	Stats

Kokon-Horay

Not a job, but this dungeon is too important not to have its own page.

Laboratory

	Stats

Main Room

Yeah, this isn't a job, but in case you're confused and don't know what this room is, this is where:

• You come from and where you can leave the Colony;
• The Fairy is standing flying, waiting for you, or giving you more information about how the Colony works;
• You can hire new Antz;
• You can check the board for important news. I lied, mwahaha. They're not important news.

Market

	Stats
	(preferably)

Review Board

	Stats
	(preferably)

Stockhouse

	Stats
	(preferably)

There's nothing much to say about the art of raising nuggets. You first have to buy one when the market's low, so you might need to come back often to the Colony to check on that. The higher it is ranked, the more expensive it will be, but you can supposedly make more profit if you buy a higher-ranked one. Once you've started feeding it, you will need to come back often to the Colony to follow its growth. Many hours of joy and happiness, much more easier to raise than a teenager. Make sure to read the board in the Main Room to know when your nugget is mature. When it is, your next task will be to follow the market and sell it when it will be high. Just be careful not to wait too long, though, because nuggets are like hamsters; they die fast. Have fun.

The Daily

	Stats
	Desk Ant	Designer Ant	Writer Ant

This is where the newspaper The Daily is printed. All you need to do to increase the circulation is hiring a top-class fancy staff with stats ass described above. You might have to spend a bit of time on training antz properly for that job.

Training Center

	Stats
	(preferably)