Aion 2 · Guides
Aion 2 beginner guide: your first days, level 1 to 45
NCSOFT / AION 2 game art
TL;DR
- Follow the yellow main story quests to level 45. Around levels 22 and 32 the story stops until you fill the Daeva Gauge with side content.
- Do not spend Kina enhancing leveling gear. Your Noble Belt and Revelation Amulet are the exception, because you keep them for the whole game.
- Clear Sealed Dungeons, Strongholds and Empyrean Traces at some point. They give Skill Points, belt and amulet upgrades, Daevanion points and Hidden Cube keys.
- At 45, use your limited entries before they cap: five Duties a day, Nightmare, the Daily Dungeon, the Ascension Trial and your Odyle Energy.
- Leave Arcana, pets, wings and the Closet until later. They add power over months, and you meet them through normal play.
How progression works
Grobs describes Aion 2 as a PvE grinder. You run dungeons, spend the rewards on your character, unlock harder dungeons and repeat. FRESHY splits that power into two parts. Gear is your vertical progression and decides which content you can enter. Systems like Arcana, Daevanion, pets, wings and the Closet are permanent progression that keeps adding stats alongside it.
Two numbers measure your character. Grobs explains that item level comes mostly from gear and is the entry requirement for content. Combat power adds up everything, including skills, pets and wings, and it is the number groups look at when they accept you.
Creator tip
If you're new, your first objective is simply get good enough gear to enter the next piece of content. Don't worry about having the perfect item immediately.
Settings to change before you start
Several creators open their guides with the same few settings:
| Setting | Why | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Camera shake off, teleport effect color dark (graphics) | Less screen noise | SywoGG, Aragon; aLuckyRO starts with the camera shake |
| Sprint on a comfortable key | Sprint is also your dash and your dodge | SywoGG |
| A macro key | Bind it to right click in the key settings, then build the macro from the skill window. See the macros guide | SywoGG, Aragon |
| Boss orientation indicator (info display, combat) | Shows which way a boss faces, for classes that hit from behind or the front | |
| Auto target upon skill use | You never end up without a target while farming | NoBS Game Guides |
Leveling to 45
Follow the main story, marked in yellow. Kanon calls 45 the max level on global and says you can do the story all the way there. Green markers are Regional quests, and the gold question marks on the map are Sealed Dungeons and Strongholds.
Creator tip
When you start the game, you're introduced to the main story quest, indicated by the yellow icon. You quite literally just do this all the way to level 45, which is the max.
The story stops twice. The game data has Ascension quests at levels 22 and 32, and each one waits until your Daeva Gauge reaches 100%. Fill it with Regional quests, Sealed Dungeons and other map content. Kanon says any mix works, since you will clear the map eventually anyway.
At level 22 you also unlock Expeditions, the five-player dungeons, and the story sends you into Krao Cave. Kanon and SywoGG both say you can solo it. Kanon recommends not opening the reward cube at the end. In the data, the Krao Cave Exploration cube costs 20 Odyle Energy and pays Kina (Bound), and you will want that energy for better dungeons at 45.
Side content now or later?
Creators disagree here. Either way, you are expected to finish it.
| Creator | Order | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| aLuckyRO | Rush to 45, clear the map after | Nightmare and the Shugo Festival only pay well at the cap |
| Aragon | Clear one-time content while leveling | He finds the open world gets tougher once you are 45 |
| Kanon | Either | The order does not matter much |
Skills while leveling
Skill Points raise a skill to level 10 at most. The game data records no higher level from points. Above that, each Daevanion board adds a rank, and Soul Binding lines on gear can add more. Aragon's advice is to spend points on the skills that do your damage, and to compare every new skill against your second skill, the one with no cooldown. If a new skill hits for less, it may not belong on your bar.
Specialties unlock at skill levels 8, 12 and 20, but they do nothing until you equip them. Kanon's Handbook explains the system in its skills chapter.
Gear while leveling
Leveling gear is replaced quickly. SywoGG and Society Of Gaming say to stop enhancing it until 45, and Kanon would only bother with your weapon and guard.
Creator tip
Never enhance your questing gear. You're going to replace it so fast and this is basically just wasting your Kina.
Kanon and Aragon point out that dismantling gives the Enhance Stones back. The data agrees: at every enhancement level we checked, the dismantle yield covers the Enhance Stones that level cost. The Kina fee is not returned, so enhancing still costs you money.
Belt and amulet
Your belt and amulet are the gear you keep. You enhance them with scrolls, and the item text says each can move up a rarity through Substance Morph after you enhance it 10 times. Noble Belt Enhance Scrolls come from Strongholds. Revelation Amulet Enhance Scrolls come from Monolith Resonance, which uses the Empyrean Traces you find around the map.
The belt and amulet you keep all game
Noble BeltRare, enhance to +10 then morphItem level 13
Noble BeltEpic, enhance to +10 then morphItem level 36
Noble BeltUniqueItem level 65
Noble Belt Enhance Scroll (Bound)From Strongholds
Revelation AmuletRare, enhance to +10 then morphItem level 13
Revelation AmuletEpic, enhance to +10 then morphItem level 36
Revelation AmuletUniqueItem level 65
Revelation Amulet Enhance Scroll (Bound)From Monolith Resonance
SywoGG warns that the Unique versions are expensive to enhance, so reaching Unique is the realistic early goal. Most enhancement steps also cost Enhance Stones and Kina.
Map content worth clearing
Three kinds of one-time content give permanent power, and NoBS Game Guides says to clear all of them eventually:
| Content | On the map | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Sealed Dungeons | Question marks away from camps | A Wisdom Stone, worth 1 Skill Point, says the game |
| Strongholds | Question marks next to camps | Belt scrolls |
| Empyrean Traces | The feathers creators talk about | Resonate at your town's Monolith for amulet scrolls, Daevanion points and Hidden Cube keys |
One-time map rewards
The keys open the cubes on the Hidden Cube map.
You only collect Empyrean Traces once. SywoGG and Aragon both point to the Monolith's Sync Empyrean Traces button, which gives later characters the traces your first character already found.
Some of this content is on the other faction's continent. Spacetime Rifts open every three hours, according to the community timetable on our timers page, and take you there for a limited time. The Elyos or Asmodian guide explains what is on each side.
What to do at level 45
From 45, most rewards come from limited entries. Kanon's rule is simple: you do not need to clear everything every day, but do not let anything sit at its cap. These are the limits in the game data:
| Content | Entries | Shared by |
|---|---|---|
| Duties | 5 a day | Every character on the server |
| Daily Dungeon | 14 a week | Every character on the server |
| Ascension Trial | 3 a week | One character |
| Nightmare | 2 a day, up to 14 stored | One character |
| Shugo Festival | 3 a day, up to 12 stored (21 with a subscription) | Every character on the server |
| Odyle Energy | 15 every 3 hours, up to 560 (840 with a subscription) | One character |
Weekly limits refill on Wednesday in the data. Despite its name, the Daily Dungeon is weekly. SywoGG and aLuckyRO both hold the weekly entries until late in the week, so they run them with a little more power.
A few habits from the creators:
| Topic | Habit |
|---|---|
| Duties | Only the first reward is guaranteed; the rest are chances. Kanon picks Duties whose first reward he wants, and suggests Soul Crystals if you are unsure |
| Commands | Kanon and SywoGG buy the weekly Command scrolls from the merchant in your city and in the Abyss base before the reset. You can finish them later |
| Odyle Energy | Opens the reward cube after an Expedition, Transcendence or Sanctuary clear. SywoGG runs a dungeon whenever it nears the cap |
| Main story weapon | SywoGG says finishing the story gives a weapon good for some time, so do not skip the last chapters |
The daily and weekly checklist goes through this routine in more detail.
Systems you can learn later
FRESHY's advice is that you do not need to learn every system before you play. You will meet each one naturally, and none of them is urgent in your first days:
| System | What it is | Read more |
|---|---|---|
| Arcana | Card-like relics from Transcendence that add stats and skill levels | Arcana chapter |
| Daevanion boards | A passive tree that adds stats and skill ranks. Resetting is easy, says FRESHY, so take the skill nodes you need first | Daevanion chapter, planner |
| Pets and Genus | Pet Souls drop from monsters and build permanent stats | Pet Genus chapter |
| Wings, Closet and Pantheon | Collections that also give stats | Wings, Closet |
FRESHY also warns against copying a maxed-out Korean build. Global does not have the same content and items yet, so use other players' builds as a reference only.
Creator tip
Aion 2 is a marathon, not a sprint. If it takes you 3 days to find the class that you actually want to play, that is okay.
Next steps
- Beginner mistakes: the common traps creators warn about, checked against the game data.
- Elyos or Asmodian?: what your faction changes and what it does not.
- Should you level alts?: what extra characters give you, and when to start one.
- Which class should you play?: all eight classes compared.
Explore the encyclopedia
Sources
- Kanon: Here's your Aion 2 starter launch guide in 8 minutes
- FRESHY: AION 2 ultimate beginners guide, everything you should know before playing
- SywoGG: AION 2, everything I wish I knew when I started
- NoBS Game Guides: Aion 2 beginners guide, global launch
- Aragon: Aion 2, 10 essential beginner tips
- aLuckyRO: 15 most common beginner mistakes in AION 2 global
- Society Of Gaming: AION 2 global launch, 10 top mistakes that will ruin your start
- Grobs: AION 2 beginner guide, monetization, servers, classes and progression
- Corpus: Aion 2 dungeons
Related articles
- Aion 2 alts: do you need them, and how to level them
Do you need alts in Aion 2? What an extra character adds, which limits are per character and which are shared across your server, how alts send Kina to your main, and how to level one quickly.
- Aion 2 beginner mistakes: what veterans say to avoid
The Aion 2 mistakes Korean and Taiwanese server veterans see new players make, from enhancing leveling gear to wasting Odyle Energy and locking Genus lines too early, checked against the global game data.
- Aion 2 Krao Cave: entry, bosses and rewards
Aion 2 Krao Cave Expedition guide: the level 22 story entry, Ultimate Berk and the mini-bosses, Odyle Energy costs, Rupture and Berk gear and alt farming.