NoAbbey for returned players?

[LadySparks-KT]

I am a returned player who made a new character and I can see there is nothing in the game to keep me playing. How come there is no more Fatebound Abbey teleport, practically nothing to help to level up. There are returning players with lots of items to help them, like armour sets, weapons, experience, mounts and more.

Was that an only once event? If yes why there is no more Abbey now which was not an event to my knowledge.

Ho well if this the way that the game is now...it's not for me, I did not see anybody posting about the Abby, you must all be happy and I was late returning.

 

[GlutenFree-DN]

It certainly seems that way. They sneakily got rid of the purple abbey return stone in the 5.6 update that enables you to even enter the abbey. It's true that it was in the patch notes, but it wasn't actually stated that this meant you couldn't enter the abbey anymore. Just that the stone was being removed. So even though the portal is still there, no one could enter after the update. I've been a returning player a few times, so I've accumulated quite a few abbey coins...had several hundred between all my alts. Completely useless now.

 

And even if you did have the stone before the update, the quests to get more coins were removed, so you were stuck with whatever you had.

 

The abbey armor had a 60% AC discount on remodeled eternal gear, which you could then morph into mythic AC gear, using more AC and chronos stones. On my server, the chronos stones have gone down significantly, from 4m to around 2m, and you need over 70 iirc for a full set. It gets pretty expensive for returning players with little to no funds, especially if you've got more than one alt like me. And the events lately haven't been all that profitable, at least for me, anyway. I'm sure it's even worse for new players who didn't use the recent homebound event that ended.

 

I guess what most do is get some cheap adma set off the broker or something until you get enough AC/chronos stones for one set.

 

Yeah, it was a bit of a crutch, but it eased you back into the game after being away for a while. Maybe they figured that it was too easily exploitable. But what gets me is that there was absolutely no word on its removal. There have been 3 threads on this so far, since the new forums went up, and still no word from anyone official.

[Disregard-DN]

I thought it was a win-win even if you did exploit. new players could get AC sets for cheaper than the normal cost to produce, so you could sell them splitting the difference on the broker, make a profit, and be a better deal for other players than trying to morph it up themselves. It helped new/returning players get geared and earn some pocket change, and gave long-time players a chance to gear their alts for less than normal. I guess now that all players get a free lv 68 pre-socketed +10 full gearset upon finishing the level 55 campaign quest in cygnea/enshar, and since Archives gear is easy to earn, and available cheap on broker, there's not really much need for mythic AC gear outside of some niche cases like a physical mace for templars and dw gladiator offhands.

 

The part i'm most salty about is that there's no longer any way to get the Elementis Forest hat skins across classes. Sealed Argent Manor does drop the hats, but only for the class you play, and they have that pesky combination of "untradable" and "can only be used to remodel once" that prevents you from getting the cute flowers of the leather hat on a mage, healer, or tank ever again.

[Cheesecake-DN]

So, supposedly, I heard there were supposed to be new/returning player NPCs that exist outside the abbey as the replacement to the Abbey, but we don't seem to have those yet. Not sure if bug or later patch that we don't have yet. : X

I don't know what those NPCs entail either. It was something mentioned pretty much in passing by another player on the old forums, so don't take all this as gospel.

[Violeta-KT]

You can google translate this page to get the general idea of the replacement for the new/returning player abbey.

*My old forum post*

Quote

With the release of Omens of Ice the New/Returning player abbey was removed. You may have noticed there are new banners in Pandaemonium/Sanctum and Norsvold/Illuma (they are white with a green image of hands holding a seedling). This is where the NPCs for New/Returning players will stand.

We don't know when they will be releasing this updated content but I'd like to bring up a concern before it's released. In Korea New/Returning players would receive a stone similar to the Abbey stone. The stone gave players access to exclusive Merchants and Quests. You also gain new tokens used to purchase the items from the merchants every hour you are logged in, this lasted for 30 days.

There was also another item released that turned the New/Returning player stone into a noble version. The noble version extended the duration to 60 days, doubled the number of tokens you could receive and opened access to 3 exclusive repeatable quests for Archdaevas. You would also open two quests that gave you a set of Gear/Weapon at level 66 and 70. The level 70 set is pre-enchanted to +15 and socketed. The set is the equivalent of the level 72 Boundless gear with the pvp stats removed. The repeatable quests give 2.9 Billion exp per day.

Going through the Aion Database I noticed that all these mentioned items/quests are part of our current version. Given the appearance of the banners in the main cities it's safe to say this will be coming soon. So what is my concern? Well the Noble version of the stone was a cash shop exclusive in Korea link.

I'm curious if this would be a concern for the rest of the player base. It would also be greatly appreciated if the Devs could give us a heads up on the release of this content.

 

[Bryos-DN]

For us, it will be called the Growth Support system.

[Matsukamy-KT]

Not only certain npx for events like Jelta and edandos are not appearing in the FTS, but also some of NCsoft prestigies NPCs are bugged in the new map of ishalgen they made. I'm not sure they know what they are doing.