Beginner's Guide: Your First Days in Atreia
How your first days in Aion 2 actually play out: faction choice, the Poeta and Ishalgen starter zones, earning your wings, and the systems that unlock on the way to the Abyss.
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Your first hours in Aion 2 are a guided ascent — literally. You start as a mortal, you end as a winged Daeva, and everything in between teaches you a system you'll use for the next thousand hours. This guide walks the route using the real zone, quest and system data from the current build, so nothing here is vibes: every name links to the database entry.
Step 0: Pick a faction
Atreia is split between two playable factions:
- Elyos — children of light from the lower half of the shattered world. Their journey runs Poeta → Verteron → Eltnen (next chapter, from level 46).
- Asmodians — the hardened people of the dark upper half. Their route is Ishalgen → Altgard → Morheim (next chapter, from level 46).
Mechanically the factions are mirrors: all eight launch classes are available to both (the Brawler comes to EU/NA later), gear progression is identical, and each faction has its own complete quest campaign. Choose by aesthetics and by where your friends are — you cannot group cross-faction, and in the Abyss you will be shooting at the other side.
Your class choice matters far more than faction. If you haven't decided, read
the class overview first — queues are kindest to the
Templar and the
Cleric.
This guide explains the systems; the leveling guide series walks the actual route — four level brackets per faction up to the EU/NA launch cap of 45 (Elyos 1–10, Asmodian 1–10, and onward to 45) with every campaign quest linked in order, then a level-45 endgame guide.
The starter zone (levels 1–10)
Elyos begin in Poeta, Asmodians in Ishalgen. These are compact, story-dense zones — the Elyos campaign literally opens with the quest Poeta (infiltrating Ishtar Castle) and hands you to the Dawn Legion Forward Base with The Approaching Dawn.
Advice for this stretch is simple: follow the main quest. Aion 2's campaign (the "Episode" quest line) is the spine of the leveling experience — it routes you through every mechanic tutorial, pays the bulk of your XP, and gates several systems. Side objectives are dessert, not dinner.
Along the way the campaign detours into small solo story instances — places like Daminu Forest, tied to the memorable quest Withered Tree Daminu. These are private layers of the world: no competition for spawns, no danger of other players, just story.
Ascension: earning your wings
The emotional peak of the early game is Ascension — the moment your mortal becomes a Daeva. For Elyos this lands around level 5 with the quest Fledgling Wings, and from that point on gliding is a permanent part of your movement kit (Glide is an actual skill your character learns, with full Flight following later).
Two immediate consequences:
- Think in three dimensions. Cliffs stop being walls and start being shortcuts. Glide off everything; falling with style is free travel.
- Watch your Flight Power (FP). Airtime is a resource. Later, wings become an equippable gear slot that raises your FP maximum and adds combat stats.
The first real zone (levels 10–20)
After the starter zone you graduate to your faction's first full region — Verteron for Elyos, Altgard for Asmodians. This is where Aion 2 opens up:
- Level 12 — Daevanion boards unlock. In the EU client each class has five stat/skill boards named after the Empyrean Lords; the first, Nezekan's, opens at 12. This is your primary long-term stat sink — read Daevanion Boards Explained before you spend anything.
- First party dungeons. The 5-player instances start appearing on the map: Krao Cave opens its Easy difficulty at level 20, Urugugu Canyon at 28 and Fire Temple at 35, with Normal difficulties from level 45. See the dungeon overview for the full ladder.
- The zone Monolith. Each major region has a Monolith (the Verteron Monolith for Elyos, Altgard's for Asmodians) — a collection structure you level by gathering Monolith tokens from achievements around the zone. It is a reason to actually explore rather than sprint down the quest chain.
- Gathering and crafting. Ore veins, herbs and other nodes start mattering — materials like
Orichalcum Ore feed the five crafting disciplines. Details in Crafting & Conversion Explained.
Gear: what to care about early (and what to ignore)
Early levels shower you with equipment. The rules that matter:
- Item level first, then grade. The equipment grades run Common → Rare → Epic → Unique (Unique is the top equipment grade in the EU client); a good Rare with two Soul Binding stats outperforms a plain Common of the same level. Full system: Gear Grades & Enhancing Explained.
- Enhance cheaply, early. Low-grade enhancing always succeeds and costs pocket change: the
Rare
Vagabond Bow (item level 30) goes from +0 to +5 with no failure chance. Don't hoard
Enhance Stone at level 15.
- Don't buy gear. The campaign and early dungeons replace everything you're wearing every few levels. Spend Kina on nothing until the replacement rate slows around the level cap.
Onward: level 45 and the Abyss
Verteron and Altgard carry the campaign all the way to level 45, the level cap of the EU/NA launch version. At 45 Reshanta — the Abyss opens: the three-layered faction-war region (Chaotic Lower Reshanta, Chaotic Middle Reshanta and Chaotic Upper Reshanta) where Elyos and Asmodians finally meet, with item level deciding how deep you can go. That is where open-world PvPvE, Abyss gear and the endgame proper begin — and where this beginner guide hands you off to the level-45 endgame guides (Elyos, Asmodian). The next story chapter, Eltnen / Morheim, starts at level 46 and opens when the level cap rises.
Until then: follow the campaign, glide off things, and check any item, monster or quest you meet against the database — it is all in there.
Zone, quest, dungeon and item names come straight from the EU/NA client, in your site language where the client has it, and so do the unlock levels. A client patch can rename or retune content; we re-check after every patch.
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Try it
The tools that do what this guide explains, with the game client's own numbers.