AION 2 PvE Gear Progression Guide: From First Dungeon Drops to Endgame Crafting

 

 

AION 2 gear progression is a loop: clear harder PvE, improve the pieces that matter, and use those upgrades to unlock the next tier of content.

AION 2 does not have one single “gear system.” It has several systems stacked on top of the same equipment, and the expensive mistakes usually happen when players treat every new drop as if it deserves full investment. The efficient route is simpler: get a stable PvE baseline, invest first in the pieces that improve your farming speed, and preserve as much of that investment as possible when you move into crafted endgame gear. This guide walks through that path from your first serious Expedition drops to Dragon Lord crafting and late-game transfer decisions.

Global launch note: some screenshots show systems from the established live service, while the Global build has already changed several values and crafting rules. Our Global vs Korea breakdown covers those differences in detail. Use the progression logic in this guide as the roadmap, but expect exact item levels, caps and material costs to move with Global balance patches.

The Short Version: Your PvE Gear Route

For most players, the clean progression path is: story and leveling gear → Expeditions → stable Unique dungeon pieces → enhancement and stat layers → Potential on gear you expect to keep → Dragon Lord crafting → Transfer Crafting into higher tiers. The goal is not to max every item you touch. The goal is to spend heavily only when the item will either stay with you for a while or feed directly into the next upgrade.

 

Stage	Main focus	What not to waste
Leveling	Equip clear upgrades and unlock systems	Rare reroll materials on gear you will replace quickly
Early Expeditions	Build a full, usable dungeon set	Chasing perfect secondary rolls before you can farm consistently
Stable PvE set	Enhance weapon first, then key armor/accessories	Spreading expensive materials evenly across disposable slots
Optimization	Soul Binding, stones and Potential	Potential on an item you are about to replace
Crafted progression	Move into Dragon Lord gear and higher transfer tiers	Assuming normal Gear Transfer preserves every upgrade layer

1. Expeditions Are the Foundation of PvE Gearing

Once your character reaches the point where the campaign is no longer replacing every slot every few quests, Expeditions become the backbone of PvE gear progression. AION 2’s dungeon structure moves from easier entry content into increasingly demanding Conquest tiers, with item-level requirements acting as the gate between one step and the next. If you need the wider PvE map first, our AION 2 dungeon guide explains the solo, five-player and larger-group structure.

Expeditions show entry requirements, weekly play limits, guaranteed rewards and the reward pools you are working toward.

Your first objective is not a perfect set. It is a complete functional set that lets you enter the next difficulty and farm it reliably. Check the reward pools before spending entries. A higher-tier dungeon can offer stronger equipment, but a lower-tier dungeon that fills three empty or outdated slots may move your character forward faster. The weekly cumulative rewards also matter because they turn repeated runs into guaranteed progress even when individual boss drops are uncooperative.

2. Learn to Read the Reward Pool Before You Farm

AION 2 lets you inspect obtainable rewards and compare them with your equipped pieces before committing to a farm. Use that information. The best drop is not always the item with the largest number in one line; Soul Binding rate, sockets, useful secondary stats and whether the item fits your next crafting step can make a nominally similar piece much more valuable.

The reward preview lets you inspect specific dungeon pieces, their Soul Binding information and secondary stat structure before you start farming them.

During early gearing, however, do not let perfect rolls become a trap. A mediocre Unique piece that raises your survivability or damage enough to unlock the next Expedition is often more useful than spending three days waiting for the theoretical best version of a lower-tier drop. Progress first, optimize second. The optimization systems become much more expensive later, which is exactly why saving premium materials now matters.

3. Selection Chests and Gear Change Vouchers Reduce Bad RNG

Not every upgrade has to come from a lucky boss roll. AION 2 also uses selection chests and conversion routes that let dungeon participation become targeted gear. In the live system, Gear Change Vouchers and specific equipment can be converted through Substance Morph into dungeon selection chests, giving you a controlled route toward the slot you actually need.

Substance Morph can turn dungeon-related materials into targeted selection chests, reducing the pain of repeatedly missing the weapon or slot you need.

This is especially important for your weapon. Damage drives clear speed, and clear speed drives everything else: faster dungeon runs, easier solo progression and more efficient material farming. If a selection route can replace an outdated weapon, that is usually a stronger use of your guaranteed resources than completing a cosmetic-looking set bonus on minor armor slots.

4. Enhancement: Invest in the Weapon First

The Growth tab is your basic enhancement track. It raises an item’s raw power and contributes directly to the item level you need for harder content. The exact caps differ by grade and have already been adjusted for the Global build, so avoid memorizing old Korean numbers as permanent law. The principle survives every patch: enhance the pieces you are confident you will keep long enough to repay the cost. For most damage-focused PvE characters, the weapon is the obvious first priority.

A practical order is weapon first, then the armor pieces needed to survive current bosses, then offensive accessories, and finally the smaller defensive slots. Do not spread every Enhancement Stone evenly just because every item has a plus sign available. A stronger weapon can shorten every farm run you do afterward; +1 on six temporary boots cannot.

5. Soul Binding Is Powerful, but Treat It as an Investment Layer

Soul Binding adds another layer of stats to equipment. The interface shows a Soul Binding rate and the effects attached to the item, and later rerolls can change the selected effect. That makes Soul Binding valuable, but it also means you should think about item lifespan before spending heavily on it. Strong rolls on a stable dungeon weapon are meaningful. Chasing a perfect result on a piece you will replace during the next tier is an excellent way to turn expensive materials into nostalgia.

Soul Binding can add substantial offensive and utility stats. The interface makes the binding rate and the current fixed effects visible before you commit more resources.

This is also where the difference between the various transfer systems starts to matter. Normal Gear Transfer and crafting-based inheritance do not necessarily carry the same layers forward. Keep that in mind before you treat a perfect Soul Binding result as something you can move forever.

6. Potential Is a Dedicated PvE Power Layer

Potential Enhancement is one of the most important systems for serious PvE because it adds dedicated PvE-focused power to eligible equipment. We already have a full Potential Enhancement guide, but the gearing rule is simple: use Potential Stones on dungeon pieces you expect to keep, not on whatever happened to drop five minutes ago.

Potential Stones can be created through Substance Morph from eligible Soul Bound equipment, turning unwanted drops into targeted PvE progression materials.

The reason to be conservative is that Potential is its own progression layer and is not something you should assume survives every replacement path. If a better weapon is only one dungeon tier away, bank the stones. If you have reached a stable weapon that will carry you through several progression gates, that is the moment Potential starts making sense.

7. Substance Morph Turns Spare Drops Into Progression

Substance Morph is easy to underestimate because the menu looks like a giant warehouse of unrelated recipes. In practice, it is one of the systems that keeps bad drops from being completely dead. Spare equipment and materials can become selection chests, Potential Stones, Stigma Shards, Amplify materials, Sync Stones, Transfer fragments and other progression resources.

The Gear section of Substance Morph contains far more than replacement equipment: Stigma, Amplify, Sync, Transfer and Potential materials all feed the broader progression loop.

Before selling, discarding or blindly feeding an unwanted high-grade item into another system, check whether it has a useful Morph route. That matters even more in Global because direct player-to-player trading is being disabled. Our direct trading and anti-bot breakdown explains why the Market and internal conversion systems will carry more of the economy than many MMO players are used to.

8. Crafted Dragon Lord Gear Is the Long-Term PvE Route

Dungeon gear gets you into the system. Crafted Dragon Lord gear is where the long-term PvE path becomes more deliberate. Weapons and armor move through named Dragon Lord tiers, and higher stages demand profession levels, rare materials and a previous investment path rather than simply hoping for a random boss drop.

Dragon Lord crafting compares the crafted result with an existing dungeon weapon and shows the materials required to move into the next PvE gear tier.

Global players need to be particularly careful with older crafting guides. The Launch Scale Test showed a changed structure where only the first Dragon Lord tier was directly craftable and higher tiers used Transfer Crafting. That is one of the largest differences covered in our Global vs Korea gear and crafting comparison. The important idea is that your early crafted piece becomes part of a ladder rather than a disposable item you abandon when the next recipe appears.

9. Gear Transfer and Transfer Crafting Are Not the Same Thing

This is the part worth remembering before clicking anything expensive. Normal Gear Transfer is a separate enhancement function. The transfer screen can move the enhancement level from a source item to a target item, consuming the source if the transfer succeeds. The interface explicitly warns that fixed Soul Binding effects are not transferred in that process.

Normal Gear Transfer can move enhancement progression, but the screen explicitly warns that fixed Soul Binding effects do not transfer with it.

Transfer Crafting is different. In the Global test build, the higher Dragon Lord crafting ladder was designed to carry important investment from the previous crafted tier forward. Enhancement, amplification and Soul Binding were shown as part of that inherited progression, while other layers such as sockets or Potential can follow different rules. Never assume the word “transfer” means every system comes with you. Check the preview before committing the source item.

System	Main job	Key caution
Gear Transfer	Move enhancement level to another item	Do not assume fixed Soul Binding effects come with it
Transfer Crafting	Upgrade through the crafted gear ladder	Preview exactly which progression layers carry forward
Potential	Add dedicated PvE power to eligible gear	Avoid spending it on pieces close to replacement
Substance Morph	Convert spare gear/materials into useful resources	Check recipes before selling or destroying valuable drops

10. A Sensible Upgrade Priority for PvE

If you want a simple spending order, use this as the default and adjust only when a boss or item-level gate tells you otherwise:

·         Main weapon: enhancement first because faster kills accelerate the entire farm loop.

·         Core armor: invest enough to survive the highest content you can enter reliably.

·         Offensive accessories: strengthen damage once survivability is comfortable.

·         Soul Binding and stone rolls: push them on gear with a meaningful lifespan.

·         Potential: reserve it for stable dungeon pieces that will not be replaced immediately.

·         Dragon Lord crafting: start the long-term ladder once your dungeon set can farm the required materials efficiently.

This approach also helps with AION 2’s monetization and economy. Spending Kina efficiently matters whether you are completely free-to-play or using Special Quai Membership and the Market. The Global build already looks less aggressive than Korea in several money-to-power paths, but our Global pay-to-win analysis explains why resource discipline still matters.

11. Your Daily and Weekly PvE Loop

Once the game stops handing you obvious upgrades, PvE progression becomes a routine rather than a mystery. Start with the highest Expedition you can clear consistently. Use limited entries and weekly cumulative rewards before spending time on lower-value farming. Check every important drop against your current piece, but do not reroll everything immediately. Convert useless eligible drops through Substance Morph, enhance the weapon and the slots blocking your next content threshold, and then push the crafted ladder when you have enough materials to make the upgrade meaningful.

The key word is consistently. A dungeon you can barely finish once with a perfect group is not always a better farm than the tier below that you can clear cleanly every run. Gear progression accelerates when your clears become repeatable, because repeatable clears produce the materials that pay for the next round of upgrades.

Common PvE Gearing Mistakes to Avoid

·         Enhancing every leveling item simply because the button is available.

·         Spending rare reroll resources before you know the item will stay in your build.

·         Using Potential on a dungeon piece you are already planning to replace.

·         Ignoring guaranteed reward and selection-chest routes while farming one lucky drop forever.

·         Selling spare equipment before checking Substance Morph recipes.

·         Confusing normal Gear Transfer with Transfer Crafting and assuming all stat layers are preserved.

·         Following old Korea/Taiwan crafting numbers without checking the modified Global progression rules.

The Gear Progression Mindset That Saves the Most Resources

AION 2 rewards long-term investment, but it punishes random investment. The best players will not necessarily be the ones who click Enhance most often. They will be the ones who know which item is worth enhancing, which drop should become a material, and which upgrade can be carried into the next tier. Build a functional dungeon set first. Put your heaviest early investment into the weapon. Optimize Soul Binding and Potential only when the item has earned that investment. Then use crafting and transfer systems to turn yesterday’s work into tomorrow’s equipment instead of starting from zero every time.

That is the real PvE gear loop in AION 2: farm smarter, invest selectively, and preserve progression whenever the system allows it. Once that clicks, the intimidating collection of enhancement tabs starts looking much less like nine unrelated currencies and much more like one connected road toward endgame power.

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Did AION 2 Global Actually Remove Most of the Pay-to-Win Problem?

AION 2 has spent much of the run-up to its global launch carrying around one particularly heavy piece of baggage: pay-to-win concerns. The Korean and Taiwanese versions demonstrated that the game itself could attract a substantial audience, but they also created a reputation for progression systems where players willing to spend heavily could accelerate their way toward powerful gear. After the global Launch Scale Test, however, something unexpected has happened. Players comparing the Western build with Korea and Taiwan are finding that several of the most obvious money-to-power routes appear to have been significantly reduced or removed.

That has produced a new argument across the AION 2 community: did NC actually listen and rebuild Global to be substantially less pay-to-win?

The answer right now is encouraging, but not quite as simple as “yes.” The test build contains meaningful progression changes, crafting restrictions and lower percentage bonuses that should make it harder to simply buy your way directly into top-end equipment. NC has also disabled direct player-to-player trading for the global service in an effort to fight bots and real-money trading. But the official Kina-Quna Exchange, paid Membership and Market restrictions still mean real money remains connected to AION 2's economy.

So Global certainly looks different. Whether it has genuinely solved the pay-to-win problem is something we will only know once the permanent economy is running.

You Cannot Simply Buy the Same Endgame Gear Path

The biggest reason for the sudden optimism comes from the progression differences discovered during the Launch Scale Test.

As we covered in our detailed comparison of AION 2 Global versus Korea and Taiwan, the Western build is not simply Season 1 translated into English. Gear stats, enhancement caps, crafting progression, Daevanion bonuses, dungeon requirements and several other systems have been reworked.

Crafting is particularly important to the monetization discussion.

In the test build, higher Dragon Lord gear tiers were reached through transfer crafting rather than simply crafting the final item directly, and those higher-tier results appeared to be bound. If that structure survives into launch, it becomes considerably harder for a wealthy player to simply convert money into currency and purchase someone else's completed high-end crafted equipment from the Market.

You still gain an advantage by having resources. This is an MMO, and having more currency has rarely made life harder. But there is a meaningful difference between buying materials that help progression and opening the auction house on launch week to purchase a finished best-in-slot item somebody else created.

Global Is Reducing the Number of Percentage Power Bonuses

The Launch Scale Test also showed a broader reduction in percentage-based character power.

Global gear can have higher raw base stats than equivalent Taiwan equipment, but many of the percentage bonuses surrounding that equipment are lower. Soul-binding bonuses are reduced, Daevanion nodes provide smaller increases, pet and title bonuses have been adjusted, and built-in PvE damage bonuses found on some Korean and Taiwanese gear were missing from the global test build.

This matters because pay-to-win problems rarely come from one enormous button labelled “Buy 50% More Damage.” They usually emerge from several smaller systems stacking together.

A little more power from equipment. Another percentage from pets. Another from titles. Another progression board. Another upgrade system. Individually, each looks manageable. Together, they can create a very large gap between somebody progressing normally and somebody aggressively spending to accelerate every system simultaneously.

Global appears to be flattening that curve before launch.

That does not remove monetization, but it may reduce the amount of raw combat power available through accelerated progression.

Early Enhancement Has Been Limited Too

NC also appears to be reducing how aggressively early equipment can be upgraded.

During the test, green gear capped at +5 and blue gear at +10, below the corresponding limits found on the existing Asian versions. That makes spending heavily on temporary equipment less useful because there is simply less room to push it before moving onto the next tier.

That is a small change with potentially useful consequences.

One of the easiest ways for monetized progression to become ugly is when players can pour huge quantities of purchased resources into every intermediate gear tier. Lower enhancement caps encourage players to move through early equipment rather than financially adopting a blue sword and raising it as one of the family.

Direct Trading Has Been Removed Completely

There is also a major economic change that arrived after the test.

NC has confirmed that direct player-to-player trading is disabled for AION 2 Global. The company explicitly describes this as an anti-bot measure, with the Market becoming the central hub for trading between players.

This matters enormously for real-money trading.

Traditional gold sellers rely on being able to move currency or valuable items from farming accounts to customers. Removing the ability to simply meet another character and hand over a pile of Kina closes one of the easiest routes for that economy.

It will not magically eliminate bots. Nothing ever does. But it creates more friction and forces legitimate Market transactions into a system NC can monitor.

There is a price for ordinary players too. You cannot simply hand useful gear or materials to a friend, and guilds lose one of the most basic forms of direct economic cooperation.

Still, if the goal is reducing third-party RMT and the whale economy surrounding it, this is one of the strongest changes NC has made.

So Is AION 2 Global No Longer Pay-to-Win?

This is where we need to slow down.

The Launch Scale Test deliberately disabled the Shop, Quna purchases, passes, Membership, the Market, Quna Exchange and every payment portal. In other words, we have tested the gameplay and progression structure without being able to test how the monetization interacts with that structure.

That is a fairly important missing ingredient in a discussion about pay-to-win.

AION 2 still has Special Quai Membership, which costs roughly $15 per month and provides access to important economic systems including the Market and Quna Exchange.

The global business model also retains an official exchange between Kina and Quna. Quna is the premium currency associated with real-money purchases, while Kina is the main currency earned through gameplay. The exchange is player-driven rather than NC simply selling fixed bundles of Kina, but it still creates an official route where a player spending real money can ultimately acquire in-game purchasing power.

That is precisely why reasonable people will continue disagreeing over the pay-to-win label.

The Quna Exchange Is Still the Big Question

Imagine two players.

Player A farms for hours, earns Kina and buys materials from the Market.

Player B purchases Quna with real money, exchanges it through the official economy and uses the resulting purchasing power to obtain those same materials faster.

If both eventually reach the same gear and the difference is primarily time, some players will describe that as pay-for-convenience or pay-to-progress.

Others will point out that in a competitive MMO with PvP, arriving at that power weeks earlier is itself an advantage and therefore fits their definition of pay-to-win.

There is no universally agreed definition that magically resolves that argument.

What matters more is how much meaningful power money can actually accelerate.

If Global's bound crafting, lower enhancement caps and reduced percentage stacking prevent players from turning currency directly into top-end power, the Quna Exchange becomes considerably less dangerous than it was under a system where completed best-in-slot equipment could simply be purchased.

That is the real reason the test changes matter.

Membership Is Still Difficult to Ignore

The $15 Membership creates a separate issue.

Market access is currently listed as a Membership feature. With direct player trading removed, the Market becomes even more important because NC has deliberately made it the main route for economic interaction between players.

That makes Membership feel considerably less like a collection of optional convenience bonuses for anyone planning to participate seriously in crafting and the economy.

This is not necessarily pay-to-win in the traditional sense. Paying $15 for access to an MMO economy is closer to a subscription model than purchasing a +25 sword from a cash shop.

But calling AION 2 simply “completely free with optional cosmetics” would be equally misleading.

The game is free to enter. Full economic participation is more complicated.

The Community Mood Has Changed Quite Dramatically

The interesting thing is how quickly the conversation has changed since the Launch Scale Test.

Before global players got their hands on the client, much of the discussion simply assumed NC would reproduce the Korean and Taiwanese monetization model with a few Western-friendly labels attached.

After the test, multiple community comparisons have highlighted bound progression, reduced stat stacking and the apparent removal of some of the easiest routes for purchasing immediate power. One widely discussed community analysis argues that the Global build has effectively removed several of the systems whales used to accelerate directly into top-tier gear on the existing Asian versions.

That interpretation may prove correct.

But the enthusiasm needs the same caution we apply to criticism.

The build we played was capped at level 37. The economy was turned off. Monetization was turned off. Some progression systems were incomplete or hidden. And NC has not yet published complete launch patch notes documenting every difference between Global, Korea and Taiwan.

There are still too many unknowns for victory laps.

The Good News Is That NC Clearly Changed Something

What we can say with reasonable confidence is that NC has not simply ignored the Western criticism.

The Global progression structure is meaningfully different. Direct trading has been removed. Several percentage bonuses have been reduced. Crafting looks less compatible with immediately purchasing completed high-end gear. Early enhancement is more restrained.

Those are not cosmetic changes.

They directly affect how quickly money can potentially turn into character power.

That is good news.

But October 5 Is the Real Monetization Test

The real answer arrives when the permanent economy turns on.

Advanced Access begins September 30, followed by the full free-to-play launch on October 5. At that point, Market trading becomes real, Quna has real monetary value, Membership matters and players begin pushing progression systems far beyond the level 37 test cap.

Only then will we see how much faster a heavy spender can actually progress than somebody paying nothing beyond perhaps Membership.

For now, the fairest conclusion is probably this:

AION 2 Global looks significantly less pay-to-win than many players expected, and several of the most worrying Korea/Taiwan progression routes appear to have been deliberately restricted.

That is not the same thing as saying the problem has disappeared.

But considering where expectations were a month ago, it is a much more encouraging place to start.

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AION 2 Global Is More Different From Korea Than We Thought: What the Test Build Changed

When NC said AION 2 Global would launch with a modified version of Season 1, the obvious assumption was fairly simple. Global players would start earlier in the content timeline than Korea and Taiwan, but receive a year's worth of balance work, progression improvements and quality-of-life changes layered on top. After the Launch Scale Test, it looks like the word "modified" may be doing considerably more work than we realised.

Players comparing the global test client directly with the current Taiwan and Korean versions have uncovered changes across gear stats, enhancement limits, crafting, dungeon requirements, Daevanion progression, pets, Genus Insight and several other systems. Some numbers are higher. Many percentage-based bonuses are lower. Entire progression routes appear to have been rearranged.

Before going any further, there is one very important warning: this was the Launch Scale Test build, not the final September 30 Advance Access client. NC has not published official global patch notes documenting these differences, and several systems were deliberately disabled during the test. Anything discussed below can therefore change before launch.

With that caveat firmly attached, the test still gives us our clearest look yet at what NC actually means when it says the global version of AION 2 is not simply the Korean game arriving one year late.

Global Season 1 Is Being Rebuilt, Not Simply Replayed

NC already confirmed during Gamescom that the global version will begin with Season 1 rather than jumping straight to Korea's current content. Executive Publishing Producer Merv Lee Kwai described it as a modified Season 1 incorporating later quality-of-life and balance improvements. We covered that broader strategy in our breakdown of why AION 2 Global launches behind Korea while benefiting from its first year of development.

What the Launch Scale Test reveals is that these changes appear to reach much deeper into progression itself.

A detailed side-by-side comparison published by AION2 Hub, based largely on testing by Taiwan player Madsin and comparisons with Korean game data, found that global gear does not simply use the same numbers as the existing Asian versions. Base stats, percentage bonuses, enhancement caps and crafting paths have all been altered in the test build.

That makes this much closer to a rebalanced progression model than a localization exercise.

Global Gear Has Higher Base Attack but Lower Percentage Bonuses

One of the clearest differences appears on equipment.

Higher-tier crafted weapons in the global test can have larger raw Attack values than comparable Taiwan equipment. One example shown in the comparison is the Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Longsword, called Splendent Wise Dragon Lord for Elyos. In the Launch Scale Test it appeared at Item Level 102 with 485 to 606 Attack, compared with Item Level 92 and 372 to 465 Attack on Taiwan.

That sounds like straightforward power inflation until you look at everything surrounding it.

Percentage-based stats have generally been reduced. Soul-binding rolls provide smaller bonuses, and the built-in PvE damage percentages found on Korean and Taiwanese crafted gear are absent from the global test equipment.

On Korea and Taiwan, Dragon Lord weapons can carry a flat PvE Damage Boost while armour and accessories include their own PvE-related bonuses. In the global test build, those built-in lines were missing from both crafted and dungeon gear.

Instead, the equipment interface shows the Potential system as available across more gear types. That suggests NC may be moving a larger share of PvE specialization away from automatically granted percentages and into progression systems players develop over time.

The important point is not simply that one version has bigger numbers. The entire distribution of those numbers appears to be changing.

Enhancement Caps Are Much Lower During Early Progression

The test also revealed significantly lower enhancement caps on early equipment.

In the Launch Scale Test:

• Green Rare gear capped at +5
• Blue gear capped at +10

On Korea and Taiwan, those same grades can currently reach +10 and +15 respectively.

This may be one of the more sensible global changes. MMO players have a remarkable ability to spend enormous quantities of resources upgrading an item they replace forty-five minutes later. Lower caps on early equipment reduce the temptation to over-invest in temporary gear while still preserving the enhancement system for items worth keeping.

Per-level stat gains appear to remain broadly similar, and Amplification still exists, so NC is not removing equipment progression. It appears to be controlling how aggressively players can push lower-grade gear.

Again, that is exactly the sort of thing a developer might change after watching an MMO operate live for a year.

Crafting Progression Has Been Reworked

Crafting may have received one of the larger structural changes.

In the global test build, only the first Dragon Lord equipment tier could be directly crafted. For Asmodians that is Star Dragon Lord gear, while Elyos receive the equivalent True Dragon Lord set.

Higher tiers were instead reached through transfer crafting, moving progressively from one tier to the next. According to the test findings, those higher-tier results were also bound rather than freely tradeable.

That is a significant economic difference from the current Taiwan structure.

If it survives into launch, the system appears designed to make high-level crafted equipment something players develop themselves rather than simply purchase from somebody who completed the entire crafting ladder first.

That has obvious implications for the economy and makes our earlier look at AION 2's Membership, Market and trading restrictions even more interesting. The importance of Market access depends heavily on which endgame items can actually move through that Market.

Dungeon Entry Requirements Are Lower

The global test also makes several early Conquest dungeons easier to enter from an item-level perspective.

Krao Cave and Draupnir reportedly required Item Level 700 in the test build compared with 1,000 on the live Asian versions. Urugugu Canyon dropped from 1,600 to 1,400, while Fire Temple and Ferocious Horn Den were reduced from 2,200 to 2,100.

Those are not enormous philosophical changes, but together they suggest NC wants the early PvE progression path to connect more smoothly.

That matches what Game Director Namjoon Kim told press before launch. One of the major lessons from Korea was that item progression initially felt disconnected, with large jumps between meaningful upgrades. NC says global is intended to provide a smoother progression curve where earlier investment continues naturally into later systems.

Lower dungeon entry requirements make sense inside that philosophy.

Players interested in the wider PvE structure can also see our guide to AION 2's solo, 5-player and 10-player dungeon content.

Dungeon Rewards Are Changing Too

It is not only the doorway that has changed.

The Ferocious Horn Den final boss showed a 7.5 percent Unique gear pool during the test compared with 10 percent on Taiwan. That should not be interpreted as proof that all global dungeon drops have simply been nerfed. Drop rates vary between bosses even in the existing Asian version, and we only have detailed comparisons for certain encounters.

Other reward systems may actually be becoming less frustrating.

Gear Change Vouchers appeared as guaranteed rewards across more Conquest content, and weapon conversion required fewer vouchers. Some fragment-style drops also appear to have been replaced with finished items, potentially reducing the amount of inventory clutter players accumulate while farming.

The broad direction appears to be familiar: slightly tighter numerical progression, but fewer awkward hoops around actually using the rewards you earn.

Daevanion Bonuses Are Considerably Smaller

One of the most dramatic differences appears in Daevanion progression.

Major nodes that currently provide bonuses such as 2.5 percent Combat Speed, 2.5 percent Cooldown Reduction or 5 percent Damage Boost on Korea and Taiwan were shown at roughly 1.5 percent, 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent respectively in the global test.

Minor numerical nodes are lower too. Attack and Critical Hit bonuses have been reduced, and the PvE-focused Ariel board was apparently absent entirely from the Launch Scale Test client.

This supports a wider pattern visible throughout the test: global seems to be reducing how quickly percentage bonuses accumulate across multiple progression systems.

That matters because MMOs often develop stat inflation not from one outrageous item but from twenty perfectly reasonable 3 percent bonuses multiplying together until the character sheet begins behaving like a financial derivative.

NC appears to be trying to keep that curve flatter from the beginning.

Pets Cap Earlier and Provide Different Stats

Pet progression is another example.

The global test used a pet level cap of 3 rather than 5, a change NC had previously discussed publicly. Individual pet stat packages also differ from the current Taiwan version.

Some offensive bonuses have been replaced or redistributed, again suggesting that NC is deliberately reducing the number of independent percentage modifiers available across the entire progression ecosystem.

Titles show a similar pattern, with generally smaller stat bonuses and certain specialized damage bonuses disappearing altogether.

Viewed individually, none of these changes seems enormous. Viewed together, they begin to look very deliberate.

Genus Insight Has Been Rebalanced

Genus Insight, another long-term character progression system, also appears to have received significant changes.

Smite bonuses that can currently reach 4.8 percent per enemy genus on Korea and Taiwan were limited to lower values in the test build, while several stat categories were reorganized. New options such as status-effect chance, resistance and percentage HP appeared, while offensive and defensive stats were more clearly separated.

If those values survive to launch, reaching certain accuracy, critical or damage thresholds may require more deliberate build choices than simply stacking every progression system in the same direction.

That could be particularly important later in PvE, where encounter tuning inevitably begins assuming players have accumulated whatever bonuses the progression system allows.

Hidden Cubes Suddenly Give Far More Soul Crystals

Not every change slows progression.

One of the stranger differences discovered during testing concerns hidden cubes. On Korea and Taiwan these provide 100 Soul Crystals. During the global Launch Scale Test, they reportedly provided 1,000 Soul Crystals each.

That is a tenfold increase.

Whether that is a deliberate global progression adjustment or simply accelerated test tuning is impossible to say without official patch notes. It is exactly the sort of number we should therefore avoid treating as guaranteed for September 30.

But it also demonstrates why comparing only individual nerfs is misleading. NC appears to be moving rewards and power around rather than simply reducing everything.

The Test Build Even Contains Systems Korea Does Not Have

Players also found signs of systems that do not currently exist in Korea or Taiwan.

One was a reported trust system briefly visible during Day 1, apparently increasing through normal gameplay and potentially restricting access to trading and the Market until sufficient trust had been established. That sounds like an anti-bot measure, although NC has not officially documented it.

The currency interface also contained something called Pending Quna, with a tooltip saying it converts into Paid Quna after a 72-hour waiting period. Again, NC has not explained how the currency is earned or whether it will appear in the final launch client.

Both systems are therefore interesting clues rather than confirmed launch features.

They do, however, reinforce one central point: the global client is not simply a translated copy of another region's build.

This Does Not Mean Global Is “Nerfed Korea”

That is probably the easiest mistake to make when looking at these numbers.

Many percentage bonuses are lower. Enhancement caps are lower. Certain progression boards are missing. Some dungeon drops appear reduced.

It would therefore be easy to conclude that the global version is simply weaker or more restrictive.

But base equipment stats can be higher. Dungeon entry requirements are lower. Guaranteed reward systems have been improved. Crafting progression is different. Some rewards are dramatically larger. And NC has already confirmed that one of its primary goals for global is making item progression smoother and reducing unnecessary daily and weekly pressure.

The actual question is not whether a global character has 5 percent where a Korean character has 8 percent.

The question is how all of these systems fit together.

A lower percentage bonus is meaningless in isolation if enemy health, base Attack, progression rates and encounter tuning have all changed alongside it.

Do Not Build Your Launch Spreadsheet Yet

Perhaps the most important lesson from all of this is patience.

The Launch Scale Test was exactly that: a test. Steam players were even told that the Playtest client would be uninstalled afterward and replaced by the separate retail client before Advance Access. We already explained that distinction in our Steam vs PURPLE guide.

The Shop, Market, trading and Membership systems were disabled. Content stopped at level 37. Entire systems may have been hidden because players could not meaningfully use them during twelve hours of disposable progression.

So if the test appears to be missing a recipe, progression board or currency source, that does not necessarily mean it has been permanently removed from global AION 2.

We need final patch notes and the September 30 retail client before treating any of these values as permanent.

AION 2 Global Is Starting to Look Like Its Own Version

What we can say with considerably more confidence is that AION 2 Global appears to be more ambitious than simply starting Korea's content calendar from the beginning.

NC had a year of live data before bringing the game West. It knows where progression accelerated too quickly, which early upgrades players wasted resources on, where dungeon requirements created unnecessary walls and which percentage bonuses eventually stacked beyond their intended value.

The Launch Scale Test suggests the studio is using that information aggressively.

Global AION 2 may start with Season 1, but it increasingly looks like a Season 1 rebuilt with hindsight.

That does not automatically make it better. We will need to see the complete economy, endgame progression and final balance before making that judgment.

But after the Launch Scale Test, one thing is becoming clear: anyone preparing for October 5 by blindly following an old Korean progression guide may be in for a few surprises.

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Aion Excel Crafting Database

For years, several friends and I have made major leaps in the organization and profiteering off the system of morphing Aether into other materials and crafting them into sellable products. We have long thought about making some fancy post detailing our strategy as we rarely play the game anymore. At this point, I may log in once a week or so and the rest of my friends are long gone so I have decided to share a link and possibly outline more of what we did in future posts as my time/effort allows.

The basic concept is this (*Updates have changed how this works): Make a new account Level up all characters to level 10 and buy morphing designs Make a legion for all these characters to join and share TONS of aether (mostly Pure Magical Aether) and DP Jellies Log In/Out of each character and morph 15+ times per hour

Example math below: Let's take "Fine Mana Potions" for example. It costs 6,371 kinah each time to craft, and makes 3 potions, which are worth 9,000 each so that means you get 27,000 worth of potions or you profit 6,876 each potion you sell.

Each time you have 4k DP and morph 20x you make enough Fresh Hintera (has to be right clicked into normal) to craft 180 Fine Mana Potions

So if you profit 6,876 x 180 potions you make 1,208,653 kinah per 4k DP.

Now is where multiplication really helps out. Take the 8 characters all level 10 and load them with aether jellies on a 30 minute cooldown, which means you can morph 16 times every hour.

So 1,208,653 x 16 = 19,338,449 kinah profit per hour of morphing.

There are 24 hours in each day (before your account is timed out and has to be relogged) so: 24 hours x 19,338,449 per hour = 464,122,794 each day!

This means just from making mana potions, you can make just over 450 million kinah a day PER account.

I actually used two different accounts each with 8 characters level 10 so I was making twice that every single day, from sitting in town buying aether on the trade broker, morphing, crafting, and selling the potions/scrolls!

The excel sheet is available so you can take the numbers and use them for whatever purpose you wish and can multiple by whatever resources you have and it can give you a better estimate of how much kinah you can make with whatever strategy you want to use.

Disclaimer The prices are not updated on the sheet I linked and may not be the same on whatever server you play on. The details on how to morph every hour on the hour for 24 hours are intentionally left out (Sorry!)

Being able to morph in such massive amounts allowed us to use other separate accounts to literally craft 24 hours a day 7 days a week due to the supply of materials. We actually leveled up over 10 characters from level 10 - 65 from the small XP from each craft.

With such massive amounts of materials and crafting, we always thought it would be a great idea to keep track (accurately) of what we were making, how many we had in stock, and how much profit we were making for each morph. To do this, we made a very extremely detailed excel sheet (which remains private) but I have made a copy of one section of the excel sheet in which I am finally wanting to share.

Details on how the excel sheet works:

1) Shows materials/designs for most all (profitable in bulk) cooking and alchemy recipes.

2) Everything is color coded and the colors mean something.

3) Details the cost of certain items from the NPC

4) Only two categories of boxes should be updated in prices: aether (detailed below) and the purple box under each recipe. The purple box is based on in-game Trade Broker pricing and should be updated to current day server based pricing.

5) On the far right there is a legend, this legend is very important. Whenever the prices of aether are updated/changed the ENTIRE excel sheet will update pricing. Aether prices must be changed manually and are based on the in-game Trade Broker prices.

6) The sheet outlines how many products can be made from each single morph (1 morph = 20 morphs = 4k DP). This means when it says 1 jelly = X it is saying how many of that item you'll make each time you morph 20 times. Furthermore, the "Total Profit" which is highlighted in green details the profit of these mentioned 20 morphs if you craft the items and sell at the purple box price on the broker. (This includes broker fees and every detail)

7) The "If you sell x stacks on broker" just multiples this profit to common stack amounts that at one time were posted on the broker. This is somewhat outdated by the now splitable stacks method of posting on the broker but can be changed to see your profit over larger item sells.

There are many more details and reasons for different things/categories on this sheet and if you do ever try to use it for any reason and have questions/suggestions/ideas on both how to use it and/or update it for the better, please feel free to comment below. Maybe in the future I can copy some of the other tabs on my private excel and include them in the public link. Any comments and feedback are greatly appreciated. I apologize for not putting forth more effort/details and outlining these methods years ago.

The link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18j8wd0PEEklQ0VvN9qORXHel0YwdQdi8EDYsmKWYDjA/edit?usp=sharing

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Patch 4.0: Craftable Godstones

The last update in Aion Korea, Songs of the Battlefield, bring to Aion a new way to get Godstones, crafting. The new designs are avaible for Armorsmithing and Tailoring.

In order to acquire the Craft Design, the player must go to Subterrean of Katalam and use your Old Coins (it’s a new coin, you can get it doing the new instances) and also, your crafting skill must be lv 500 and your Lv 60+.



- Crafting

The system to craft Godstones is the same to craft another items, with a chance to craft a Divine Godstone (Fabbled)

Crafting Skill	Craft Result	Proc
Tailoring	Chance of 2% to cause 1012 of Damage -Master of Courage -Master of Wisdom -Master of Knowledge -Master of Marginally	Chance of 1% to cause 4050 of Damage Divine Master of Outraged Divine Master of Regret Divine Master of Opposite Divine Master of Oath
Armorcrafting	Chance of 20% to cause 101 of Damage -Master of Encouragement -Master of Intelligent -Master of Sages -Master of Agility	Chance of 1% to cause 405 of Damage Divine Master of Counter-Attack Divine Master of Selfishness Divine Master of Process Divine Master of Heat

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AionTrick: Quick Crafting Macro

Press: U
Click: New Macro
Make Three Macros called: Master,Mats,Table


Master Macro

Code:

/select x /attack

Mats Macro

Code:

/select y /attack

Table Macro

Code:

/selectBrand z /attack

x= Name of your Crafting Master in which you will obtain work orders from
y= Name of your Materials Master for your craft in which is set for "Master Macro"
z= Use Brand 1 so put in 1 instead of z

Everything is case sensative

Example using Alchemy:
Join a group where you are the leader.
Brand Alchemy table with "Brand 1"

Master Macro

Code:

/select Diana /attack

Mats Macro

Code:

/select Darius /attack

Table

Code:

/selectBrand 1 /attack

make sure the macro 1 is set for hotkey 1
macro 2 is set for hotkey 2
macro 3 is set for hotkey 3

1= Select Master Crafter
2= Select Material Seller
3= Select Table and use it

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