Aion 2: how to increase your combat power — the five levers and the order to invest in them

Seven weeks from the September 30 early access and eight from the general launch on October 5, the question future Western players of Aion 2 are asking has changed in nature. The class choice is settled, the economic model is documented, the PC configuration is published. What remains is the topic almost no one talks about in French: where to put your resources once the main quest is finished, when five progression systems open up at the same time and compete for the same Kina.

Korea has been playing since November 19, 2025. Nine months of hindsight are enough to draw out a clear hierarchy, and it's counterintuitive: the lever most MMO players reach for first by reflex — enchanting gear — is the one that returns the least per unit of currency spent. The one that pays off the most, Arcanas, is also the one discovered latest.

A warning is in order. Everything that follows describes the Korean service: the Western build is a PC-first version developed in parallel, and NCSOFT has communicated nothing about the exact state of its progression systems at launch. Furthermore, no wording from the French client is public as of today. All the French names given here are working translations, accompanied by the original Korean term.

The number that opens doors

Two values coexist in Korea. Item level (아이템 레벨) aggregates the power of worn gear; combat power (전투력, combat power on the English-speaking community side) is a broader synthesis, added to the interface on March 25, 2026 under the internal name "Atul" and viewable via a toggle in the interface. It deliberately excludes the effects of blessing items, precisely to avoid artificially inflated scores.

These two numbers serve as an entry threshold for dungeons and as a recruitment criterion in groups: below the displayed tier, you simply don't get through the door. The whole logic described below consists of raising that number as fast as possible with as little Kina as possible.

Lever 1 — Arcanas, the best return in the game

The Transcendence dungeons (초월) distribute Arcanas (아르카나), and this is the category that moves the item level the most strongly — more than enchanting and stone engraving combined, according to the progression guide published by Gametoc on November 24, 2025.

Arcanas come in five items: chalice (성배), scroll (양피지), compass (나침반), bell (종) and mirror (거울). The first three raise the level of active skills, the last two that of passives. So you choose based on your rotation, not at random.

Two Transcendence dungeons existed at the Korean launch, the Deus Research Base (데우스 연구기지) and the Shattered Arcanis (조각난 아르카니스), each with its own loot table. The point to remember: the difficulty tier determines the rank of the item obtained, and you need to aim for at least tier 3 to hope for rare items. Below that, you're burning runs for Arcanas you'll end up replacing.

Lever 2 — gear, and why Expeditions come first

Expeditions (원정) are instanced dungeons that drop weapons, armor, and accessories. They come in two difficulty levels already identified in the August 7 global livestream: exploration and conquest.

The distinction isn't just about difficulty, it's mainly economic. In exploration mode, opening the reward cube only consumes Ode energy (오드), which regenerates on its own regularly. In conquest mode, you also need a passage token that recharges very slowly. In other words: conquest passages are the scarce resource of the week, and spending them on a dungeon whose pieces you don't need is the costliest mistake of the early game.

The drop rate for a unique-rank piece in conquest mode hovered around 7.5% at the Korean launch — a low figure, but offset by a guarantee mechanism: each run of the final named boss advances a counter that, eventually, delivers the desired piece for certain. So you need to think in terms of number of runs until the guaranteed threshold, not in terms of the odds.

Lever 3 — non-equipment gear, the blind spot for newcomers

This is the category that players coming from other MMOs systematically neglect, and it's the one that unlocks the early-game entry thresholds the fastest. The Korean term for it is hard to translate, 내실, which we'll render as "foundations." Three components make up most of it.

• The Devanion (데바니온) and its nodes, powered by Devanion crystals (데바니온 결정). Each point spent gave one point of combat power at launch. The crystals come from zone quests (marked by a green star on the map), sealed dungeons (봉인 던전), and garrisons (주둔지) marked by a question mark.
• The Amulet of Revelation (계시의 아뮬렛), which only levels up with dedicated scrolls, obtained one at a time by advancing the resonance level of the Monolith in Altgard. A slow progression, best started early and maintained as a background task.
• The Belt of Nobility (고결의 허리띠), whose scrolls drop in garrisons.

Two structural tips here. First, the Rift of Space and Time (시공의 균열) allows you to cross into the opposing faction's territory and farm its sealed dungeons and garrisons there: this mechanically doubles the accessible pool, and it's essential for gathering the quantities required by unique-rank recipes. Second, Shugo Festa (슈고 페스타), a mini-game that opens several times an hour, drops unique equipment much more often than its lighthearted packaging suggests, and its shop sells Devanion crystals in exchange for tokens earned there.

Lever 4 — stone engraving, and the beginner's trap

Engraving (각인) is the equivalent of mana stone socketing from the original Aion: mana stones (마석) go on weapons and armor, spirit stones (영석, spiritstones in English) go on accessories. They add attack, critical hit, health points, defense, or evasion.

The trap, and it's an expensive one: a single stone is enough per piece. It fills all available slots at once, with randomly assigned stats. Many players use several per item, believing they're feeding one line at a time.

The rank of the stone caps the quality of the lines obtained: low-rank stones only produce white and green, mid-tier ranks unlock blue, high ranks remove white and unlock yellow. Each color carries a different number of power points. The immediate practical consequence: you engrave everything you're wearing with low-rank stones from the start, because they rain down, and you save the high-quality ones for pieces you'll be keeping for several weeks. Higher-rank stones can't be picked up: they're crafted through alchemy, which means you need to have leveled up that profession beforehand — one more reason to get started early. Finally, two slots are exempt from engraving, the belt and the amulet: no point spending stones on those.

Lever 5 — Enchantment, the one you need to know how to hold back on

Enchantment (강화) upgrades equipment from +1 to +15 and consumes enchantment stones as well as Kina. Two structural features make it less scary than it looks, and less profitable than you'd think.

Less scary, because progression up to +10 is guaranteed: no risk of failure. Beyond that, from +11 to +15, it becomes probability-based, but a failure doesn't destroy the item — instead, it adds a success bonus that stacks with every failed attempt. So +15 is achievable through persistence, not luck. Once you've secured +15 on a unique-rank or higher piece, a second tier called breakthrough (돌파) takes over.

Less profitable, because the power gain per tier is small compared to what the process eats up. Feedback from Korean players is clear: below the mid-tier power thresholds, you just push the weapon and the protector to +10 and save your stones. Above all, you never enchant a transitional piece meant to be replaced in the coming days, except to barely clear a dungeon entry threshold.

One reassuring point rounds out the picture: extraction (추출) of a piece returns all invested enchantment stones in full, immediately transferable to the new item. The Kina spent, however, does not come back — and that's precisely why Kina, not stones, is the real constraint in the early game.

Why you shouldn't copy any Korean numbers

Guides circulating in English often reproduce tables dating from the Korean launch as-is. But the game's structure has shifted at least three times since then. On March 25, 2026, NCSOFT carried out a class overhaul, introduced the "Abyss of Chaos" PvP mode and a linked Kina currency. On May 27, an update raised the progression cap with a new Sanctuary, the Chalice of Muspell, a brand-new equipment slot — brooches (브로치) — and an additional equipment transfer chain. Korean high-level content is now played at four-digit item levels that no longer have anything in common with those at launch.

What has remained stable, however, is the order of importance of the levers and the rules governing how they work: guaranteed up to +10, a single stone per piece, refund on extraction, limited conquest tokens, Devanion crystals from the open world. That's what you should carry into the global launch, not numerical values.

Seven reflexes to have on September 30

• Finish the main quest before spending anything: it provides the basic gear for free.
• Push the weapon and the protector to +10, then stop.
• Engrave all worn pieces with low-tier stones as soon as you get them — only one per item.
• Save conquest-difficulty runs for the dungeons whose pieces you actually want.
• Systematically pick up the zone quests, sealed dungeons, and garrisons: gear-independent content is the fastest catch-up when you hit an entry threshold.
• Use the spatiotemporal rift to go raid the opposing camp's objectives.
• Level up alchemy early, or you'll cap out on stone quality.

Two unknowns remain, and it would be dishonest to hide them: NCSOFT has confirmed neither the presence of the "Atul" combat power metric nor that of the Arcanes in the Western build of October 5, nor the ninth class for that matter. The August 7 livestream talked about roles, regions, and dungeons, never progression systems. The next information window is gamescom's Opening Night Live, on Tuesday, August 25 at 8 p.m. Paris time — with NC's press release promising a trailer for Cinder City, but nothing of the sort for Aion 2.