What to Do at Level 45 in Aion 2: The Gearing Loop

• Sealed Dungeons. Each home region (Verteron for Elyos, Altgard for Asmodians) has 60 solo Sealed Dungeons with no level lock. Your first clear of each pays 2Wisdom Stone (Bound)×2 (2 skill points), 2Daevanion Crystal (Bound)×2, 15,000 Kina, 1,250 Enhance Stones and a title.
• The level-45 Sealed Dungeon. Ruins of the Ancient City of Ru (Elyos) or Ruins of the Ancient City of Ru (Asmodian) needs 3 earlier Sealed Dungeons and pays 2 more skill points and 2 more crystals.
• Regional quests, the green quests on the map. 7 of them only unlock at 45, and in each faction 58 Regional quests pay 1 Wisdom Stone and 1 Daevanion Crystal each.

Here's what one character can collect from those one-time sources:

That isn't enough to max everything. The four PvE Daevanion boards cost 570 crystals together (Nezekan 134, Zikel 134, Vaizel 134, Triniel 168). The shops add at most 100 crystals per character, and those purchases never reset: 50 in the Shugo Festival shop for Centuryroot Token and 50 in the Nightmare shop. That's 416 at most, so you'll leave some nodes empty. Skill points run short the same way: a Gladiator needs 462 to put all 22 of its skills at 10.

Advice: spend crystals where they pay the most. That means the gold corner nodes (+1.5% stats each) and the blue nodes that raise the skills you actually press. Plan the route in the Daevanion Planner before you commit; a reset costs 500 Kina per node. The fifth board, Azphel, opens at 45 and has only PvP and status-effect nodes. It uses its own currency, Daevanion Crystal: Azphel (Bound).

The level-45 Ascension quest

The level-45 Episode quest and its Ascension quest are locked behind the Ascension Gauge. The Episode quest is Witness to a Nightmare for Elyos or Daeva Trapped in a Nightmare for Asmodians. The Ascension quest is The One Who Witnesses the Nightmare (Elyos) or The One Who Witnesses the Nightmare (Asmodian). The pair needs a gauge score of 1,490 (Elyos) or 1,500 (Asmodians), and until then the game shows "Unlocked when Ascension Gauge reaches 100%". The story alone can't get you there. Regional quests, Sealed Dungeons and Stronghold sweeps all add to the gauge, so the free-points list above also clears this lock.

It's worth it. That Ascension quest is where the Ascension Bracelet and the Fierce Battle Amulet come from. The amulet grows with Abyss Points (see Step 6).

A quick win: Power Shards

Power Shard (Bound) sells for 10 Kina in the General Shop and adds 5% damage to your attacks. Open the Power Shard settings, click the slot and drag a shard down to enable it, then toggle it with its key (G by default). You need a weapon equipped.

The crafted Dragon Lord line covers weapons, armor and accessories. It climbs in six steps: True/Star (62) → Splendent (70) → White/Dark (78) → Splendent (86) → Wise/Ebony (94) → Splendent (102). Elyos craft the first name of each pair and Asmodians the second. Each normal craft has a 25% combo chance to give the Splendent version instead, which is 8 item levels higher. Each crafted step is above the Unique drop of the matching Conquest tier. A few drops are worse than they look: the item-level-86 Fire Temple weapons, such as Enraged Kromede Claymore, roll only 3 sub-stats.

The first crafted step needs a pre-45 Unique piece plus endgame materials. Here's the Elyos greatsword as an example, True Dragon Lord Greatsword:

• Artisan's Splendent Orichalcum Greatsword
• 4Artisan's Ultimate Refining Stone×4
• 22Fine Thick Balaur Horn×22
• 10Wrathful Mind×10
• 9Radiant Orichalcum Ore×9
• 5Radiant Odyle×5

Wrathful Mind and the Artisan's Ultimate Refining Stone come from Conquest cubes. A refining-stone roll gives the Artisan's Ultimate version only 0.75% of the time, so those 4 stones are the slow part. The Crafting Calculator expands the full chain and subtracts what you already own.

Advice:

• Wear the Conquest drops you get on the way. Tier 1 drops alone can't reach 1,400, even at +15, so plan crafted pieces too; the 1,400 Item Level guide does the sums. Take the drops through the free +1 to +10 steps, since each level also adds item level. Don't spend risky attempts or Soul Binding on a piece you'll replace. Each item's database page shows whether Gear Transfer can carry its progress over.
• Craft the slot with the biggest item-level gap first, often the weapon. Then work through armor and accessories as Wrathful Minds come in.
• The Upgrade Priority tool ranks your next steps by stats gained per Kina. The Soul Binding guide explains what the extra sub-stat is worth.

Each Arcana enhance level adds +1 item level. Arcana enhancing uses EXP from Training Arcana and can't fail; a Unique card takes 93,000 EXP to reach +5.

You need both Transcendence dungeons to fill every slot. Deus Research Base drops Chalice, Compass and Bell cards, and Shattered Arkanis drops Chalice, Parchment and Mirror. Average cards from one final boss:

Each mid-boss rolls about a third of that.

Advice: slot any card the moment you get one. Even a Common card carries item level 20 and a skill-level effect. Don't Transmute early: it only creates Unique cards and costs 5Mysterious Crystal (Bound)×5 plus 2,000,000 Kina. Which skill effects you rolled starts to matter at Epic, where a card has 3 of them.

Two sets are live. Primal Vigor uses the "of Vigor" cards, such as Chalice of Vigor. Its 2-piece bonus is +60 PvE Attack and its 4-piece bonus +150, both while your HP is at 70% or more. Magic Armor ("of Magic" cards) is the MP set: its 2-piece bonus restores 1,500 MP when you drop to 20% MP or less, and its 4-piece bonus gives +1,000 PvE Defense while you're at 50% MP or more.

Gear: failures cost materials, never levels

• Epic gear: +1 to +10, all 100%.
• Unique gear: +1 to +10 at 100%, then 5 risky steps up to +15. A failure keeps your level and costs only the materials. Every failure adds 5 percentage points to your next attempt. This bonus resets if the item is traded.

Expected cost on an item-level-102 Unique piece, our calculation from the client odds (it assumes the bonus resets on success, as our Enhancement Planner does):

So +10 to +15 averages about 14 million Kina and 154,000 Enhance Stones for one item.

Amplified Enhancement comes after the normal cap, on Unique gear that's fully enhanced. It uses Amplify Stone (Unique), and Substance Morph turns 4Amplify Stone Fragment (Unique) (Bound)×4 plus 2,500 Enhance Stones into one. The first Amplified step on an item-level-102 weapon takes 6 of them. Items get 1, 3 or 5 Amplified steps depending on their item level (5 from the item-level-86 drops and the 94–102 crafts). The rates are 66%, 50%, 33%, 25% and 20%, with a smaller bonus after each failure (+5, +4, +3, +2 and +1 points). The enhance data has no destruction, but the client contains a warning about items destroyed by a failed Amplified attempt, so read the in-game warning before each try.

Runes: failures drop a level

The only rune in this build is the Clash Rune, and you have 2 rune slots. Each attempt costs 1 Clash Rune Enhance Scroll (Bound), Enhance Stones and Kina. From the +2 attempt on, a failure drops the rune one level. There's no pity bonus, and the data has no destruction.

The last two columns are our calculation from the client odds and costs, including the levels you lose and win back. The lower steps are +1 at 100% and +2 at 80%, then +8 at 15% and +10 at 10%.

Advice: the onboarding "+3 Clash Rune Set Bundle" hands you two +3 runes, so your first real gamble is +3 → +4 at 50%. +5 is the sensible target. It adds Penetration and costs about 16 scrolls per rune on average, which is about two chests' worth. +7 is a long-term project, and +9 and +10 aren't realistic. A Clash Rune Chest (Bound) holds 1 Clash Rune and 9 scrolls, and the Nightmare shop sells it for 500Phantasmal Fragment×500.

You spend them at the Abyss Trade Shop. Its tabs are Consumables, Growth, Skins, Wings and Medal. The picks that make you stronger:

Item	Price in AP	Limit
Lesser Abyssal Manastone (Bound)	1,000	50 per week, per character
Lesser Abyssal Soulstone (Bound)	2,000	50 per week, per character
Stigma Shard (Bound)	10,000 → 15,000 → 20,000 → 25,000	50 at each price, per character, no reset
Daevanion Crystal: Azphel (Bound)	10,000 → 20,000 → 40,000 → 80,000	20, then 30 at each later price, per character, no reset
Fierce Battle Amulet Enhance Scroll (Bound)	10,000 → 25,000 → 50,000 → 75,000 → 100,000 → 150,000	5 at each price, per character, no reset
Potential Stone: Abyss (Unique) (Bound)	25,000 → 50,000 → 75,000 → 100,000	2 / 4 / 6 / 8 per week at those prices, shared by your characters on the server
Rare Theostone Selection Chest (Bound)	35,000	–

Advice:

• Buy the cheapest step of each ladder first. Prices only go up within each ladder, and these limits never reset.
• Stigma Shards come first. One stigma from level 1 to 20 costs 75 shards, but leveling gives only 29 by 45.
• Then the amulet. The Fierce Battle Amulet from your level-45 Ascension quest is Rare. Every enhance level, up to +10, costs one scroll, and the steps can't fail. Substance Morph turns a +10 Rare amulet into the Epic one and a +10 Epic into the Fierce Battle Amulet (item level 65). That's 30 scrolls for a +10 Unique amulet, exactly the 30 the shop sells per character. The first 10 cost 175,000 AP, and all 30 cost 2,050,000.
• Azphel crystals feed the Azphel board, so they matter if you PvP.