How To: Atma Farming

A guide for the somewhat confusing and mistranslated Atma farm zones.

Getting started

The absolute first step is to to have completed "A Relic Reborn" for the weapon your planning to upgrade and have it upgraded to Zenith grade. If not dont head to North Shroud(Fallgourd Float for Fast travel), and head north to Hyrstmill from FF and talk to Gerolt and he'll start you on the chain.

Now that thats out of the way, talk to our friend Gerolt and he'll point you to a NPC near him , talk to this NPC and back to Gerolt. He will now give you Locations of Atma stones.

Atma Farm Locations

Now you'll be given a huge list of Atma Stone locations, PLEASE NOTE: there seems to be a mistranslation and the quest tells you there are two atmas in Central Thanalan, this is not true. Central Thanalan drops "Atma of the Scales", "Atma of the Maiden" drops from Central Shroud.
The following Is the Corrected list:

Southern Thanalan- Atma Of the Scorpion
Eastern Thanalan- Atma of the Bull
Western Thanalan- Atma of the Twins
Central Thanalan-Atma of Scales (only one atma here)

Central Shroud- Atma of the Maiden (mistranslation said it dropped in CT, it in fact drops here)
East Shroud- Atma of the Goat
North Shroud- Atma of the Archer

Upper La Nocea- Atma of the Water Bearer
Middle La Nocea- Atma of the Ram
Outer La Nocea- Atma of the Lion
Lower La Nocea- Atma of the Fish
Western La Nocea- Atma of the Crab

Things to Know:
-In order to get Atma stones to drop simply participate in fates in the zones stated with(and this is very important) the Zenith you're trying to UPGRADE.
--Participation is exactly as it sounds, you can acquire Atma from any medal(bronze,silver and gold) just so long as it is completed.
-Atma drops are stated to be around 2-3%*, so if your grinding for a while and dont get one dont lose hope, its just RNG at its worse, also the drop chance isn't decreased by leaving a zone so feel free to bounce around if your not getting a certain Atma.
-this is the window you get when an Atma is obtained, cheers and champagne should follow

*Since Patch 2.4 Atma drop chances have greatly increased, while the current percentage is unknown it has become far more frequent for atmas to drop, making it easier to farm in general.

After the farm

After you've farmed your 12 stones, head back to Hyrstmill and talk to the NPC near Gerolt( make sure to have a weapon stand-in equipped, your Zenith will need to be unequipped for this), he'll throw you into a cutscene and you'll have your newly upgraded weapon...(to qoute Billy Mays) THERES MORE!!! He'll tell you that although he just upgraded you weapon, he can further the process by selling you Tomes for 1500 Tomes of Poetics each. Theres a total of 9,and as stated each cost 1500 poetics and have several pages of things like Duties, Kill logs, and other fun activities and each book is different. You can only have a total of one book on you at a time and you turn them into the NPC when you're done.

TL;DR

so to wrap up you need the following:
-A relic weapon that is upgraded to "Zenith".
-see Gerolt and the NPC near him.
-Farm in the places listed above with said Zenith.
-gather 12 stones from each zone, see the Gerolt and friend.
-Farm poetics, get get books, complete books and hand back in.
-?????.
-Profit.

[Waver WX]

Tomes cost 100 Poetics.

[Kronenscheldt]

-edit various spelling errors fixed and changed soldiery to poetics to reflect changes

[Kronenscheldt]

edit: Changed myth to Sold as Agent Pointed out.

[King]

btw "After the farm" section still references Mythology. Books are now 500 Soldiery.

[Tazeps]

well I've been doing fates in souther thanalan for hours and nothing :/ musta done more than 30
made me think i'm doing something wrong but according to this guide all is in order......oh god mercy -.-

[Smiggels]

haha yeah 2.4 that's the one. Thanks for the guide! Perfect and simple go to page! :)

[Kronenscheldt]

Edit: made to include info about the 2.4 Atma drop increase.

[Smiggels]

Much easier as of patch 4.2 :)

[Geralt]

The update has made this far, far easier.

[PastaPillows]

Keep in mind: you can use another zenith from another class to still get Atma.

For example: I initiated the Atma quest with my White Mage, but I use my Black Mage to actually obtain the Atma.