Col

Col is the in-game currency of Echoes of Aincrad. It is the money players earn, spend, and trade across the first two floors of Aincrad, lifted directly from the Sword Art Online canon where Col is the standard currency of the MMO.

Uses

Col is spent on gear, upgrade materials, consumables, and anything merchants sell across Floor 1 - Town of Beginnings and Floor 2 - Urbus. It is the backbone of the player's economy, sitting alongside the Smithy system as the main way builds are shaped outside of combat.

Starter Grant

The Starter Pack, included with the Ultimate Edition, grants 50,000 Col at the start of the game, which is intended to give players room to experiment with loadouts instead of scrimping for early purchases.

How Col Is Earned

Col arrives through ordinary play rather than a dedicated grinding track. Quest rewards, exploration payouts, and defeated enemies all drop Col, and unwanted equipment can be sold back to NPC vendors for additional funds. Since equipment and weapon changes only happen in town, most players fall into a loop of running a floor, clearing encounters, then returning to the hub to convert their haul into Col and usable gear. The overview of the game positions this as the steady background rhythm that keeps the economy turning, rather than a separate farming minigame layered on top of the adventure.

Because drops and materials are frequent across the first two floors, Col tends to flow in at roughly the same rate the player spends it. The balance of the loop sits on what the player chooses to spend on: consumables, respecs, enhancements, and restocks all compete for the same wallet.

Respec Cost for Growth Points

The most load-bearing use of Col that surfaced in the developer showcases is the respec fee. Every time a character levels up, they earn Growth Points to allocate across the stat block, which includes Vitality, Mind, Endurance, Dexterity, and the other core stats. Those allocations shape how a build performs in the field, since each stat pushes different aspects of combat: Vitality raises the health pool and the bonus received from healing crystals, Mind feeds the resource pool used for skills, Endurance supports sustained action, and Dexterity influences sword-skill damage and the window for perfect parries and dodges at milestone thresholds.

To reset an allocation, the player pays a Col fee. Visiting the Smithy and other town services is one half of outfitting a character; spending Col at the respec option is the other half, the one that retunes the character itself rather than their gear. The fee gives the respec a real cost, so it is not a trivial action taken every fight, but it is reachable from normal play funds rather than locked behind a rare drop or late-game unlock.

Switching Between Builds and Weapon Types

Respecs with Col make experimentation across the six confirmed weapon types practical during a single playthrough. A character who started out leaning on a Dexterity-scaling Rapier build can save up Col, reset their Growth Points, and move into a Mind-heavy Mace build that leans on support and status effects instead of clean thrusting damage. The same logic applies to any pair of builds: one-handed-sword into greatsword, dagger into battleaxe, or any other pivot where the new weapon wants a different stat spread than the old one.

This turns Col into the practical cap on how often the player can change identity mid-run. A healthy Col balance means the player can audition a build, notice it does not feel right on a particular floor, and pay to walk it back. A thin Col balance means the player has to commit to their current spread for a while longer and lean on gear changes instead of stat changes to adapt.

The respec cost also interacts with how sword skills feel on a given build. Changing the stat spread changes how hard those skills hit and how quickly their costs are covered, so a respec is effectively a retuning of the skill loop as well as the numerical profile.

Other Confirmed Col Sinks

Alongside respecs, Col pays for a spread of everyday services that keep a run sustainable:

• Smithy services: upgrading weapons, feeding fuel weapons plus Tempered Steel into a keeper piece, and leveling equipment all run through the blacksmith, which draws on Col for the service side of the transaction.

• Consumables: potions, paralysis traps, throwing items, and similar expendables restock through merchants at a Col cost, which shapes how aggressively the player can lean on them during a push.

• NPC shops: town vendors trade in a range of goods that feed preparation for the next floor. Specific stock lists have not been fully detailed yet, but the transactional side of town life runs on Col.

All of these sinks compete with the respec fee for the same funds. A player who burns Col on frequent build pivots will have less available to buy consumables before a tough encounter, and a player who stocks deep on consumables will have less room to experiment with stat allocations. Treating Col as a shared budget across all of these options is part of mid-game planning.

Col and the Loot-Hunt Loop

The developers have described grind-for-perfect-rolls loot hunts as a core late-game loop, since rare weapons arrive with randomized stat rolls and the player who wants a specific build profile is expected to farm for a cleaner copy. Col sits inside that loop rather than next to it. The same floor runs that produce better rolled weapons also fill the wallet, and every experiment with a freshly farmed weapon tends to be paired with a respec to realign the character with that weapon's scaling.

Because every respec attempt costs Col, long-term build optimization ends up being a balance between how often the player wants to retune around a new drop and how much Col they are willing to spend doing it. Over the life of a run this is one of the main reasons Col pressure does not evaporate after the early floors: the late-game activities that produce the best drops also produce the reasons to keep spending to adjust.

Quick Reference

Planning a Col Budget

Players who treat Col as a dedicated respec fund tend to get more out of the weapon roster than those who spend it as it comes in. A simple habit is to set aside a floor's worth of earnings before committing to any experimental build, so that the first disappointing run can be walked back without having to pause and farm for respec money. Another is to bank Col ahead of major drops, since a newly rolled rare weapon is often the moment a player wants to realign stats immediately rather than wait.

Because the economy is grounded in the ordinary flow of quests, exploration, and enemy drops, Col almost never fully dries up. The question is usually one of pacing: how much the player wants to spend now on experimentation versus how much they want to keep in reserve for the next respec, the next restock, or the next smithy upgrade. Col rewards players who look at the full stack of its uses together rather than one sink at a time.