Returning Player Have Questions

[1s16B7CD-KT]

Greetings. No, this isn't another "Is the game good to play right now" topic. Aion is an old game; I know things are not the same. I've been out since... I don't remember the patch; it was right after the archdaeva stuff but I only played for around a week after that. So I just need some information. Here are my questions:

1. Can someone point me to a guide of where I can catch up with everything?

2. Manastones: where to find them (besides online shop and broker, obviously)

3. Instances: I main a templar and I am pretty sure my gear is obsolete nowadays, so a solo instance that could help me would be appreciated.

4. Are Ancient Coins still a thing?

Thanks in advance for your time.

[Vantheria-DN]

2. It depends upon which types of manastones you are looking to socket. For the archdaeva stones (power, precision, knowledge, etc), you can get low level ones from basically all group instances, but those +1, +2, etc are just trash. Anything below +6 is trash tbh. Do your weekly Lunas as doing them for seven weeks will grant you 90 of the +6 manastones in whichever category you want. You can also get +6 or higher sometimes from the boxes in Cradle of Eternity (although your level/gear may not be high/good enough to run that instance yet). Also, you can get a few from doing the solo instance Crucible Spire which you access from Marchutan/Kaisinel. That's archdaeva stones, broadly. For composite stones, aside from the aforementioned broker, you can get those from some of the older instances, such as Linkgate Foundry.

3. I'm not sure what you are asking. Do you mean you are looking to run a solo instance that will get you new gear? If so, there is no such instance. The top three gear "brands" these days are Harvester (1st place) and Apollon and Sophisticated Frigida (tied for 2nd place, depending on your class and the individual gear piece). Aside from outright buying these on the broker, they are dropped from Bastion of Souls (Harvester), Cradle of Eternity and Trials of Eternity (Apollon), and Pandaemonium/Sanctum Defense on Sundays (Sophisticated Frigida). Sophisticated gear is a very rare drop from Panda/Sanctum Defense, and that instance will be going away very soon. So that gear is pretty much obsolete, despite its good stats. Harvester is obviously the best, but you will not have the level or gear to run that instance yet, so you could only get it by purchasing it outright or getting lucky in events. Apollon is very viable to get by playing in-game; make sure you're getting the upgraded Apollon -- it would have conditioning and manastone slots. The basic Apollon cannot be conditioned and manastoned. Cradle of Eternity is runable from around level 71 or higher. You can sometimes run it at a lower level if the group is willing to carry you. Note, most of these groups will be advertised as "2 boss." You can still get the gear from 2 boss. The third boss drops more gear, weapons, and sometimes the wings. Most "all 3 bosses" groups will be level 73+.

4. Meh. Not really. I mean yes and no. The mythic AC gear might be better than what you have since I'm not sure what you have. However, it's not that much better than the free gear you get at level 55 now. (I'm aware you won't have that gear since you're returning.) That said, you need a lot of ancient coins to buy a full set of the mythic AC gear, and by the time you farm all of that, you will be able to run Cradle of Eternity and get Apollon which is much better. Most of us use the ancient coins for consumables, crafting designs, soul unbinding stones, etc. If you have absolute crap gear right now, you might just run a couple of Archives of Eternity and get that gear as a very temporary measure; it's called Labyrinth gear. Note, you will only have this gear for a few days most likely as it is NOT gear that you will want to keep. It would only be intended to carry you through your level 60s until you can get the Apollon gear (or Harvester). It's also purchase-able on the broker for crazy cheap.

tl;dr: Tell us what your current gear is and then we can better assess what you need to be focusing on.

[Aly-DN]

If you already have an eternal ancient coin set, you can quickly and pretty cheaply upgrade it to the mythic ancient coin set. That can be socketed with the new manastones and is going to be better than what you have. Enchanted enough and assuming you are decently skilled, you can tank everything up to Cradle of Eternity, where you can get the Apolon set. Enchant that set and you can run Bastion of Souls and get the Harvester's set.

Though it seems that you are asking what can you solo to get relevant gear. The answer is.. nothing. You are going to have to bite the bullet and play with other people.

Regarding the manastones, you can also combine lower level manastones and create higher level manastones. This gets expensive depending how high you want the new stones to be. 

[Bryos-DN]

2 hours ago, 1s16B7CD-KT said:

1. Can someone point me to a guide of where I can catch up with everything?

If you would like a full explanation of how much has changed, feel free to check previous patch notes. Since 5.0 was the last time you played, this will be easy.

- Second half of 5.0

- 5.1

- 5.3

- 5.5 and 5.6 (Omens of Ice)

- 5.8 (Heart of Frost): Coming soon on the 10th

[Forgotten-DN]

2 hours ago, 1s16B7CD-KT said:

4. Are Ancient Coins still a thing?

Consumables, Designs, Gear, etc.. Every 5000 AC can buy 1 Unbinding Stone from Pinkerunerk (Illuma) or Yogorunerk (Norsvold). You can usually sell the Unbinding Stone to other players for more than you would get selling AC individually.

[GenericUser9401]

Thanks for the replies. Last I checked (As you can see for my name, I haven't even logged in to the game yet), I was on Hyperion mythic gear.