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Guide
Joined: 5/31/08
Posts: 52
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The ULTIMATE AION FAQ
Last Revised 06/09/2008
General info
What is AION?
AION: The Tower of Eternity is a fantasy/sci-fi MMORPG chronicling an epic conflict between three factions: the player-controlled Elyos and Asmodians, and a server-controlled NPC faction, the warlike Balaur.
What is the current status of Aion? / Beta status
Aion has finished the closed beta stage in Korea. And they are awaiting open korean beta, which aint announced yet
There will be a NA/EU beta (closed/open) probably during q3 2008. This beta won't be only a stress test (localization problems, hardware/servers test...) but also the occasion to get feedback from western players.
When will it get released?
It will likely get released the first quarter of 2009
Basic Storyline (Lore)
In AION, players must choose a side between two warring factions: the Elyos or the Asmodians. Once their world was whole; a perfect union joined at the center by The Tower of Eternity. When a great catastrophe shattered The Tower of Eternity, it split the world into two halves - and awoke the Balaur, a warring race exiled within the extra-dimensional Abyss. The Balaur now seek revenge on both of these new worlds, sparking an epic conflict. The conflict between those 3 races is about Aether, a substance needed for flying, and the Abyss is the only region where you can find this material in huge quantities. The part you play, the side you choose and the decisions you make will help determine the ultimate fate of AION.
Key Features
- Interactive gameplay systems
The actions of each faction on each individual server will eventually trigger consequences, which will then change each server's live environment. No two servers should ever be the same (except maybe at the start).
- PvPvE (Player vs Player vs Environment)
Aion: The Tower of Eternity features an evolving conflict system, which manages the complex relationships and alliances between realms, races and guilds. The system also controls a third NPC faction, the Balaur, who may act as the enemy - or the ally - of players.
- Free flying and flying combat
Take to the skies and soar over the landscape, with wings that allow your character to access remote areas, travel to different parts of the world - and to engage enemies in aerial combat!
- Beautiful and detailed graphics
Created using a modified version of the Crytek engine (as used in Far Cry), AION: The Tower of Eternity is the most graphically beautiful MMORPG yet released. Astounding levels of detail on characters and in environments immerse you in the world of AION.
Is Aion free? P2P?
- No pricing has been officially announced yet, but it has been strongly hinted at that AION will be P2P. The industry standard of $15 USD per month is the predicted monthly fee. The actual box will probably cost $50 for a regular edition and $70 for a "Collector's" edition.
- Every region has the right to change it's subscription type so NcSoft Austin may differ from NcSoft Korea and NcSoft Europe
Factions & leveling:
- Elyos and Asmodians are the playable races. Elyos are 'Angelic' and Asmodians 'Demonic' in appearance. Neither is necessarily good or evil.
- The basic class tree of the Asmodians is the same as the Elyos. There will however be some important differences in skills. This means that fighting a class of the same faction and one of the opposing faction will be quite different experiences.
- AION's current proposed level cap is 50, just like Dark Age of Camelot.
Wings and flying:
- You can fly!
- The quest for becoming a Daeva earns you your wings at level 10. You can only fly for few minutes, with a cooldown period ( probably around 2 or 3 mins ). Some items and skills can increase the flying time.
- Both Elyos and Asmodians get wings.
- You can fly freely or follow a flight path (like WoW's in Gryffons), depending on the area. Using a flight path to get to an area doesn't seem to exhaust your flight skill.
- Wings can be personalized or upgraded through PvP. We are unsure of the specifics.
- Some skills act differently or are available only when you are flying. That makes the flight system more of a strategic element than a transportation mechanic.
- Flying timer and cooldown don't change with character level.
- There isnt a flying timer in the abyss
Asmodians' Base Wings
Elyos' (perhaps upgraded) Wings
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Differences between Elyos and Asmodians
- DP skills aren't the same, List of DP skills
- Wings,Amors look different
- They don't speak the same langage, so you won't be able to speak to enemies with the chat.
- You can't group with the opposite faction and you can't do the quest of the opposite faction.
- Different area of leveling (in the begining, you will probably quest in the same area of the opposite faction in higher level)
Classes
Names will be the same for both Elyos and Asmodians.
4 "schools" of classes, names are unofficial, except for Spiritmaster (formerly Elementalist) see this thread for more info.
At the begining, you choose a school, and later you can specialize by picking a class within that school.
School of Warriors
- Gladiator:
Gladiators are flexible in their choice of weaponry. They're able to wield many kinds of close-combat weapons depending on the situation. Their combat style is relatively easy to learn. This isn't to say that it is an easy class to master. With some flair they can outshine even the fanciest damage-dealing classes.
- Templar
It's unfortunate that in most MMO games the tank is conceptually attractive but not so fun to actually play. The classes in Aion are classic in some ways, but they all have their quirks that make them stand out from the archetype. With the Templar, players will see different shades of the class as it absorbs more and more damage. It's truly a different sort of tank melee class.
School of Scouts
- Ranger
Ranger is a utility class with many tricks up its sleeve, such as laying traps and sniping from afar. It's a well-rounded class with both melee and ranged skills as well as an ability to heal itself. Careful assessment of the situation is needed for a ranger to shine, for its many abilities can as easily get in the way for an unskilled player. Can stealth !
- Assassin
We can more or less sum up the assassin class with the words: watch your back! Big damage within a short span of time - that's what the assassin is all about. However to get that proper use out of an assassin, swift positioning is extremely important. Can stealth too ! but assassin will probably use more skills based on it 
School of Mages
- Sorcerer
A powerful magic class with deadly nuking skills, but also extremely fragile up close. A sorcerer might prefer to be in a party for survivability, but with some skill it could also be a fast solo class.
- Spiritmaster
A Spiritmaster is not your ordinary summoner. As their previous name suggested, their tool of trade are the elementals that they manipulate at will. Get intimate enough with the elementals and you might very well become one.
School of Priests
- Cleric
Clerics are, of course, the masters of recovery. They posess many healing skills to aid their kin, but that's not all. With a solid set of skill combinations and a number of melee skills they may surprise you in the right situation.
- Chanter
As a priest, chanters can also heal to a certain extent, but their specialty is in mysterious chants that boost the morale of nearby players. They're also known for effective melee skill combinations and all-around usefulness. It should be an attractive class for those that like to do it all.
Class switching? :
- We haven't heard anything about it.
Hero classes ? :
Gender affecting stats/skills ? :
List of skills/video :
Combos & Divine Power
Combos
- Certain active attack skills/spells only become available after you successfully land a particular skill/spell. This way you're able to chain 2-3(maybe more) skills in succession which may result in extra damage inflicted.
- For instance, fighters should be able to use the skills Explosive stike(attack skill) -> Stun strike(knocks enemy over) -> chance strike(attacks fallen enemy)
- Those 3 skills have to be chained in that order because Stun strike won't open up untill explosive strike has successfully landed.
- Rangers also get a similar 3 hit combo attack similar to the fighter. Priests have an AOE spell combo that knocks all enemies over followed by an attack spell. But you get the basic idea now.. its just chaining certain skills to inflict lots of damage in a short amount of time and watching the cool flashy animations.
Divine Power
- It is said that Divine Power(DP) is a powerful skill that is able to turn the tides of a pvp battle.
- The DP gauge located under the character's HP and MP bar fills up as you hunt regular monsters and must be at 100% to activate the skill.
- When you release the DP skill(the skill is called DP explosion or something like that), it will do large amounts of damage to multiple monsters around you.
- The skill has a slow casting time so you may be exposed to incoming attacks during this time.
- You should also be careful as the skill will hit any monsters within a certain range and any monsters that get hit will aggro you.
- The DP gauge doesn't decrease if you dont hunt, so you'll be able to conserve it as you move around hunting zones.
- As the DP gauge fills up, the amount of damage you do to monsters also increases.
- DP gauge reset when you disconnect, but you can transfer it to another char.
Party combinations?:
PvP
- PvP in Aion will have a focus on control-oriented and reactive skills. Skills have clear relationships with each other where some are used in combinations and others to counter combinations.
- PvP-specific skills will be available for usage around level 40. The player can, however, still choose not to participate in PvP unless he/she wants to.
- The time required to reach maximum level has been reduced since the last Friends and Family Test. The level progression will be similar and comparable to that of many western-developed games in the genre. After reaching the level cap (currently 50), players will be able to improve their characters on a more horizontal plane by using something called “Stigma”. More on this later.
- For players who don’t enjoy PvP, there will be various PvE activities to take part in such as raids, instanced dungeons and so on – All connected to the great war. An example would be PvE players collecting items for big siege weapons to support their faction.
- The main conflict within Aion: The Tower of Eternity is a great conflict raging between the Elyos, Asmodians and the Balaur. This is also where the content focus will be.
- A feature that is currently on a planning stage is to randomly open teleportation portals in the Elyos and Asmodian lands.
Where?
- You can PVP in the Abyss and there will be some zones outside the Abyss where the Elyos and Asmodians will be able to interact.
- You can only duel your own faction.
- You can raid city (maybe siege...).
- You can PvP into enemies instances... That means if the Elyos guild named "blabla" is doing an instanced dungeon, the Asmodian guild named "grrrrr" can enter the same instance as "blabla" and kill them.
- You can PVP in an arena, although this is currently just for fun, with no ranking systems etc.
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- Thread about pvp outside of the abyss
Abyss
PvE
- There will be two types of raids in Aion. The first type is similar to that of Lineage, with huge amounts of players participating. The second type requires more strategy and class-specific skills (perhaps more comparable to that of “Everquest”).
- A Raid NPC/Monster for the Elyos might be an important NPC for the Asmodians which leads to the possibility of raids influencing the faction war.
Abyss & Castles :
- The Abyss will consist of two distinct parts. The first part is aimed at beginners and is meant to introduce players to the Abyss concept. The second part is connected to the real war and meant for more experienced characters.
- The Abyss will be home to 8 to 10 castles that can be captured by either faction. The advantages will have extreme consequences. Your faction will be able to gather crafting materials easily. Besides that, traders live around the castle and will sell special weapons only to your faction. Finally, the ruling guild will receive taxes from the land. The rest of the faction won't get any money from it. Only when the enemy retakes the castle, another guild will have the chance to benefit from the many advantages of the castle.
- You can lvl in Abyss, killing balaurs and receiving XP, and you can get PVP points to buy PVP equipment.
Leveling in the abyss seems more effective than leveling in the outside (due to the greater risk of getting killed, the XP reward from mobs will be greater...)
- You can upgrade your castle with force field or recrut some NPCs to guard and defend it.
- Siege weapons can be obtained through PvE (raid boss drop)
- You can either build siege wepons when attacking a castle, or buy it with the Auction House (once a PvE guild/party has placed them there)
- This way, PVE players help the war opposing faction, without doing PVP, but the idea is to bring people doing PVE to start PVP and PVP players to do some PVE
- Abyss thread #1 - translation
- Abyss Thread #2 - translation
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Items, Armors, Tradeskills
Items & Armor
- The types of items in Aion are divided in to three categories: Normal items, Abyssal items and “Drakonic items” (names are still to be determined).
Abyssal items are received via PvP and “Drakonic items” will be available through crafting of items acquired from hunting the Balaur.
- There will be some “Soulbound” items, meaning that once equipped, they can not be traded anymore (as made famous by “Everquest”).
- You can costumize armors with dye
- When some sets are full/complete, they will glow around the character.
- item uniqueness : Let's take your situation as an example; at high levels, everyone will be wearing the equipment that provides the most stat benefits. In Aion, there is a system where you can transfer the stat bonuses from one piece of equipment to another. Let's say you have the an awesome sword by the name of Zariche which looks absolutely awesome, but an even better sword looks pretty dull (in your opinion anyway). Through Aion's system you can upgrade to the better sword while keeping the awesome looks of Zariche.
Slots for equipment :
- head, necklace, 2 earings, shoulder, chest, legs, cloak, waist, boots, 2 rings, 2 weapon sets
- Some Pics
Characteristics & Stigma :
- The developers do not want players to have to worry about character attributes (such as Strength, Dexterity, Constitution…), which is why attributes are automated and controlled by the game.
- One of the things differentiating characters is the “Stigma” system. Stigma is a sort of stone containing the memories of a Daeva. A Stigma stone will, in a nutshell, allow players to, by the use of different slots, create unique characters with skills or equipment from other classes. Examples of the combinations that can be acquired by utilizing this system are Wizards wearing heavy armour or maybe Assassins knowing how to teleport.
Stigma is available from around level 20. There are limitations which will be revealed at a later point.
- 5 Stats given by armour : Magical defence, Physical defence, Focus, Evasion & Mana.
- Pics - Translation
Tradeskills, professions & crafting :
Armor at lvl20
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Currently playing:
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