Aion – A Beginner’s Guide?
MMOs are interesting to me now, having played them for 11 years or so. I think most games would be much better understood if you started at level cap and experienced the level grind in a flashback that you could stop whenever you wanted, but which earned you your skills as you did it (otherwise you could just PvP or do end game with no skills, not great, but at least you saw the game!)
My point being, Aion is a PvPvE game and it’s important (in my opinion) to get a feel for the primary part of the game (the PvP part) if you want to get a feel for the game as a whole. That doesn’t start until 20 (if you want to Rift or fight Rifters), or 25 if you want to see the Abyss. The Abyss is unarguably the coolest part of Aion, so for the sake of the review, at least experience it.
In terms of how to get there in a short amount of /played time here’s my advice. Most people I know hate “the grind” which seems to refer to everything nowadays beyond WoW’s ADD-esque “Run here, run there, run here, run there, kill kill kill!” but there’s a good trick I’ve learned to both get the xp you need and not grind — on your way to the next quest area (the den of wolves, the village of Mau, the slime pit, whatever) kill everything you encounter on the way. There is a caveat here: often what you encounter on the way to your questing area is lower level than what you “should” be killing (all quests nowadays are simply a method of placing players where they should be fighting after all, based on their level), so be smart! A good guide is -3/+1, anything that’s 3 levels below your level or 1 level above it will die quickly enough to earn you decent xp and not take you so long to kill that by the time you reach your destination you’ve outleveled it, or forgotten where you were going. Often I’ve even found tiny quest hubs that aren’t led to by the pointer quests, which is a nice little bonus of this method. Finally do the same on the way back to turn in your quests. I’m amazed how many people (myself included) rush past dozens upon dozens of mobs only to complain an hour later that they ran out of quests and are forced to grind.
As far as Aion specific suggestions, I’m no master of Aion by any means (my highest character is 37 which I quit a few months after the game came out to go back to WoW or FFXI before recently returning to try out 1.9 and 2.0) but I have learned a few things that helped me level faster:
1) I’m not surprised in one of your posts that you found quests harder than you thought they should be as you leveled. As you figured out, socketing your gear with Magic Boost, HP, MP or Evasion will greatly assist you in kill speed. Obviously one or two won’t make the difference, but a full suit of magic boost can easily double your primary stat at this level. This isn’t to say go out of your way to buy manastones, but smartly socketing your gear with the manastones that you get will add up over time and help.
1a) Magic Boost is the only stat you care about at this point. Prioritize it over all other gear (yes, even MP).
2) Enchanting. This is rather complicated (not to mention difficult) but the short version is that green armor & weapons or above (anything other than white) can be Disenchanted into an Enchantment stone, which boosts your items in a manner very similar to manastones. You can disenchant by buying Extraction Tools at any General Store vendor for a (relatively) cheap amount. If you have the kinah, I’d recommend carrying a stack of Extraction tools and disenchanting any greens you come across that you can’t use. Use the stones to upgrade your weapon until you hit +10 on the weapon or get a better weapon. Enchanting is much more complicated than this, but it’s a good tool to make leveling faster! And to be honest, with the amount of kinah that you make in later levels, saving your greens and putting them on the auction house is a waste if you can trade them in now for faster leveling.
2b) Sell any blues you get on the broker if you’re fantastically lucky enough to see one drop (and win the roll). Don’t disenchant if you can sell them on the broker.
3) Stop crafting! It’s an impediment to leveling. Crafting is better when you’ve got bigger bags (speaking of, buy bigger bags (expand your cube) when you go to Pandemonium if you have money left over after buying skills).
4) Group quests are your friend for leveling. Stack the quests with the missions and when you’re 17/18 join a “BC” group in Altgard. It’s fun, will introduce you to group mechanics a bit, and get you a bunch of XP to boot. As a newbie you’ll have to hope your leader knows what he’s doing. A good way to gauge a party is to ask before you head out to the staging area if anyone can lead the group. Being nice goes a long way obviously.
There’s a bunch of other things to say about PvP balance (it’s way better than most people think in the early levels, but Rifting-twinks and other prepared Rifters give a bad impression when they run into an unprepared Rifting noob) but it’s beyond the scope of your article I think. Don’t be surprised when your Rifting experience goes bad in the 20s though (especially the early 20s). I personally don’t think Aion “starts” until 25 (the Abyss) as a result of Rifting depending so much on being prepared (which involves gearing, prepping (food, potions, Kisks, etc), and most importantly, bringing a friend).
Aion is by no means a great game, yet. But as a guy who’s played EQ1, experienced WoW from vanilla to today and most everything in between, it’s got a lot going for it. Plus as you said, it’s beautiful, that’s always a plus if your computer can handle it. It’s hard to judge (WoW has changed so much..) but I think this game compares favorably to vanilla WoW from a PvE perspective. From a PvP perspective with flight mechanics being what they are, it compares favorably to any modern MMO though the balance is certainly not perfect (1.9 supposedly is an improvement in that regard, but we’ll see, some classes just don’t work well in the air without gear, and to be fair, most classes don’t have the toolbox of skills they need to get the job done in the air until 40+, often 45+).
Boy that was long, sorry! Feel free to look me up on Lumiel, my name is Talisien.
PS It’s worth stating that the gold standard of MMOs (WoW) can’t really compare its level grind to other games anymore, as the grind is supposed to be minimized via heirlooms and built in changes to questing, not to mention Refer-a-Friend. You can compare WoW’s current expansion’s (whatever it is) leveling grind to new games if you’d like, but you’re leveling as a (previously) max level character. That means you have access to a myriad of skills that you wouldn’t have as a level 1.
In short, it’s a flawed comparison no matter what you do. Vanilla WoW is, in my opinion, the best standard by which to compare new games on the basis of leveling curve and [leveling] mechanics. After all, it got millions of people to max level didn’t it?
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