Gear you equip in Aion 2 is a big part of overall progression. Better gear improves your overall item level, which you need for most endgame activities. It’s also a way to showcase your character’s strength and the ultimate endgame grind you’ll be chasing. However, you can’t simply increase your item level just by stacking better gear.
While your gear contributes to a decent amount of item level, many other factors affect the final numbers. Here’s everything you need to know about gear progression in Aion 2, including item rarity, upgrades, and stats.
Basic gear progression and rarity in Aion 2
Every piece of gear you equip adds a certain amount of item level, so the first thing to do is fill every slot. Completing the main and regional quests will grant you plenty of items over time, and in the endgame, you’ll be farming dungeons. You can check an item’s level by hovering over or clicking it.
For most players with limited time, dungeon gear is largely what you are playing for in the endgame, but on the KR/TW servers, crafted items (a whole other rabbit hole) produce clearly superior gear. That’s one reason Aion 2 is labeled pay-to-win, since players can buy those on the market and swipe to wipe. We don’t know how true that is for the global version, so let’s stick with what we’ve got right now.
After covering up with the initial items you get, the next step is to find higher-rarity gear. It offers more enhancement options, which is crucial for improving your build, and we’ll cover every aspect of it in this guide.
Every gear rarity in Aion 2 (and how it affects stats)
There are five different item rarities in Aion 2:
- Common (white)
- Rare (green)
- Epic (blue)
- Unique (yellow)
- Heroic (red)
When you compare items with different rarities side by side, you may not see any difference, but rarity affects how many stats you can have. Here’s a breakdown of the number of stats each item with different rarities can have:
Also Read: Aion 2 daily and weekly activities checklist (global launch).
Gear Enhancement basics in Aion 2
Now that you know how rarity affects an item in Aion 2, you can start enhancing gear accordingly. What does it do, you ask? For starters, it can add more stats to an item using Kina and Enhance Stones. Once again, the rarity will affect how much you can level them, so here is a breakdown of it:
- Common gear goes up to +5 levels.
- Rare gear goes up to +5 levels.
- Epic gear goes up to +10 levels.
- Unique gear goes up to +15 levels.
- Heroic gear goes up to +20 levels.
The only exceptions are the Belt and Amulet for every class because they are the only items that can increase in rarity. Getting both to +10 lets you use Substance Morph and change their rarity to a higher tier.
As you can guess, Unique and Heroic gear are the best rarities to enhance, but there is another thing to look out for. You also want an item to be at least level 43 at base before using any form of enhancement. The materials you need are hard to come by early on, and wasting them on low-rarity items will slow progression significantly.
To sum it up, if you aren’t level 45, don’t enhance any gear. You can complete the main story quest with the mission rewards, and by the end, you will get a few Unique pieces of gear. Here are all the enhancement materials in the game you should start saving early on:
- Enhance Stones
- Refining Stones
- Manastones
- Soulstones
- Theostones (if you get one)
In addition to item levels, enhancements can also add additional skill levels. The default max skill level is 10, but to unlock all slots, you need to reach 16, and enhancing your gear can help you do so. Here are all the gear enhancement types in Aion 2.
Soul Binding and what it does
Soul Binding is the most extensive gear enhancement system in Aion 2, which we have covered in a separate topic. But for now, all you need to know is that it rolls a certain number of stats from a list. The higher the rarity of your gear, the more Soul Bound stats it can have.
- Common gear can have one stat line
- Rare gear can have two stat lines
- Epic gear can have three stat lines
- Unique gear can have five stat lines
- Heroic gear can have six stat lines
There’s also a percentage bar above the stat lines which increases as you improve the stats added through Soul Binding in Aion 2. Once it reaches 100%, you can’t modify them. However, depending on the gear and its enhancement level, you can use Philosopher’s Stones to add a new stat.
Adding substats to gear using Manastone in Aion 2
The next enhancement feature is Manastone and Soulstones. Both of them add substats that mainly roll attack and defense options to a piece of gear.
- Common gear can have one substat
- Rare gear can have two substats
- Epic gear can have three substats
- Unique gear can have four substats
- Heroic gear can have up to five substats
Both Manastones and Soulstones come in different rarities, which affects how good of a substat you get on an item. You can use the Substance Morph feature to combine lesser stones for a better one. Find out more about Manastones in our dedicated guide.
Enchanting gear using Theostones in Aion 2
The last enhancement option you have is Theostones. These are enchantments that can trigger based on chance to deal a lot of damage. They are viable in PvE, but shine in PvP with effects like Blind and Stun that can give you an advantage over other players.
This special item can only be equipped on your weapon and guard, so you can have at most two at a time. Additionally, having the same one in both slots doesn’t increase the chance of triggering the effect. Theostones are difficult to come by, and you likely won’t find them while doing the story quests in Aion 2. Here’s our dedicated guide to farming and using them.
How to raise item level in Aion 2
One of the most common things everyone struggles with is increasing your item power in Aion 2. You can check the current value under your character level, and 1000 is the baseline to start doing endgame activities in Aion 2. So how do you increase it? Well, everything we learned about gear progression helps increase your overall item level.
Every piece of gear has a base item level value, similar to its level requirement, but the enhancements you add increase it further. Here’s everything you need to do:
- Increasing an item’s enhancement is the most straightforward way. So if you upgrade an item to +15, that amount also adds to your overall item level. That’s why you chase Unique or Heroic items.
- Next, add substats using Manastones/Soulstones. Depending on the substat rarity, you can get +1, +2, +3, or +4 item power.
- Lastly, adding a Theostone to your weapon and guard also increases item level.
That’s everything you can do to increase item level on the gear enhancement side. Besides that, you can collect Daevonion Crystals and fill up the Board. White passive nodes grant +1, blue nodes grant +3, and yellow nodes grant +4 to item level.
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Edited by Mayank Singh Rathour