Grinding for Pandora Ultimates... Am I foolish at this point to even start?

[Gorokai-DN]

I have been a longtime casual player in this game since launch. I'm not usually doing PvP and because I've grown up and taken in more IRL responsibilities (work/wife/kids) I don't really participate in a legion much anymore so most of the things I do are PvE PUP stuff. Got my full set of the free Risiel gear which replaced my Frostspark and Voidsoul stuff, and while I was screwing around in Lakrum yesterday I saw that Pandora people now give Ultimate gear instead of the Legendary Pandora stuff that I used to grind a few patches back.

 

I did a full set of five runs in the Stigrik Village and spent around 40 million leveling my Aetherforging from 87 to 200. It's now a new day and looking back...am I wasting my time at going after this free Ultimate PvE gear?

 

Thanks for reading my long-winded question.

[The Secret Cow Level]

Pandora gear have the same physical/magical attack/defense stats as the free Risel gear given at the start of the Windstream guide quests.

Get the Red Katalam gear instead. Red Katalam is accessible from Stellusia Demaha from 09:00 to 05:00 (next day) server time. They have 98% of the stats of the best gears (instead of Pandora's 88%). In PvE, they are stronger than +15 Risel/Pandora/Legendary Skyflame equipment.

[Gorokai-DN]

5 hours ago, TheSecretCowLeve-KT said:

Pandora gear have the same physical/magical attack/defense stats as the free Risel gear given at the start of the Windstream guide quests.

Get the Red Katalam gear instead. Red Katalam is accessible from Stellusia Demaha from 09:00 to 05:00 (next day) server time. They have 98% of the stats of the best gears (instead of Pandora's 88%). In PvE, they are stronger than +15 Risel/Pandora/Legendary Skyflame equipment.

I'm assuming by the Red Katalam gear you mean the Ultimate Aureate gear?  The NPC that exhanges Marks for gear has the <Ultimate Aureate Sky Jacket Box> costing 55 <Legendary Blood Mark> but it's PvP gear though... I already bought the <Ultimate Aureate Sky Shoes> and they don't have PvE stats on them.

[Arhangelos]

5 hours ago, Gorokai-DN said:

I have been a longtime casual player in this game since launch. I'm not usually doing PvP and because I've grown up and taken in more IRL responsibilities (work/wife/kids) I don't really participate in a legion much anymore so most of the things I do are PvE PUP stuff. Got my full set of the free Risiel gear which replaced my Frostspark and Voidsoul stuff, and while I was screwing around in Lakrum yesterday I saw that Pandora people now give Ultimate gear instead of the Legendary Pandora stuff that I used to grind a few patches back.

 

I did a full set of five runs in the Stigrik Village and spent around 40 million leveling my Aetherforging from 87 to 200. It's now a new day and looking back...am I wasting my time at going after this free Ultimate PvE gear?

 

Thanks for reading my long-winded question.

People usually get the pandora wings, and accessories and also a pandora weapon to armsfuse it with a bloodmark weapon to take advantage of a little bit of the pve bonus you can get with armsfusion. The main armor and plume/bracelet can easily be bloodmark items since when enchanted they give more defensive stats and in pve you do not really care that much for them.

Wings and accessories give a ton of pve offense bonus when enchanted to +15, so if you can get those in pandora instead of bloodmarks you will see a slight benefit over bloodmark wings/accessories.

As for the weapon, you get a bloodmark which has far more main p.attack/m.attack, so if you armsfuse a pandora weapon below, the base pve bonus of that weapon will carry and you will benefit a little bit.

[Ereliya-KT]

I have checked this for a few newbies we had joining the game. The Bloodmark weapon is a MUST no matter if you play 1h class, and cant fuse, get it. Just to balance, get Pandora wings you need the PVE stats here same with the plume and bracelet it'll make up for the pve def you lose from armor and also the stats dont make a huge difference from pandora to kata on feather. All pandora accessories. The armor you can do full Kata because you don't want to get pandora because you will swap out for pf,idd,slez too quick for it to be worth it. So in short Kata weapon, helm, armor. Pandora wing, plume, bracelet, accessories. It will balance out your pve atk/def and pvp atk/def so when youre using for pve you're not that squishy. We had one person with this run SLNM with us his dps was a bit low but wasn't horrendous. his dps was similar to us when we first started doing SLNM in 7.0 with 6.X gear. Hope this helped and cleared up what the other advice was

Also since I'm here the armor doesn't matter which version you get you can use it all the same then do what you want when you get the pve pieces to change but for the weapon MUST get the firece because the combine on Kata is lvl 79 or lower so you need to fuse with your PVE Risiel weapon if you are a combiner and not 1h. Kata top legendary bot. if you want fierce armor for later pvp keep the reg if you get in a box til you get the firece version then get rid of the old

[Horuz-DN]

18 minutes ago, Ereliya-KT said:

I have checked this for a few newbies we had joining the game. The Bloodmark weapon is a MUST no matter if you play 1h class, and cant fuse, get it. Just to balance, get Pandora wings you need the PVE stats here same with the plume and bracelet it'll make up for the pve def you lose from armor and also the stats dont make a huge difference from pandora to kata on feather. All pandora accessories. The armor you can do full Kata because you don't want to get pandora because you will swap out for pf,idd,slez too quick for it to be worth it. So in short Kata weapon, helm, armor. Pandora wing, plume, bracelet, accessories. It will balance out your pve atk/def and pvp atk/def so when youre using for pve you're not that squishy. We had one person with this run SLNM with us his dps was a bit low but wasn't horrendous. his dps was similar to us when we first started doing SLNM in 7.0 with 6.X gear. Hope this helped and cleared up what the other advice was

Also since I'm here the armor doesn't matter which version you get you can use it all the same then do what you want when you get the pve pieces to change but for the weapon MUST get the firece because the combine on Kata is lvl 79 or lower so you need to fuse with your PVE Risiel weapon if you are a combiner and not 1h. Kata top legendary bot. if you want fierce armor for later pvp keep the reg if you get in a box til you get the firece version then get rid of the old

 

Talking about accessories:

I've gotten all fierce bloodmarks because im mainly PVPer. I got 85~100% physical attack, and some decent Crit/ACC in all of them. If you take P/M Attack 1:1 PVE Attack, you'll need Pandora Accessories +13/+15 to equal to the BM accessories in a good retuning.

 

If you're going to focus on PVE, i would say to you go for BM+Risiel till you get/buy an Noble Soldusk from this event since its tradeable and you can use your alts to make it easier +15. Put your old BM on botton for decent extra status, get your BM accessories (you dont need the fierce ones since your focus is pve) before the armor cuz Risiel can help you at the beggining, rush some quests for Pandora feather (wings/brac/plume) and you can easily run IDD/SL/PF till you get your Ultimate Sovereing/Skyflame armour.

 

Im not that good at PVE, but i've returned less than a month ago and thats what I did. Helped me a lot.

 

Also, you must look for a casual/friendly legion to help you. Even if you dont take the game too  seriously it is still very important to join a good legion, my old friends took me to a great legion that is helping me a lot to gear up and take the right decisions since i'm always taking BIG MISTAKES, right guys?!

 

Good luck and have some fun bud!

[Vantheria-DN]

I started working on Pandora accessories for my alt, but then I realized that the purple IDD accessories have a higher retune possibility than the red Pandora accessories. Just something to keep in mind. You will have higher defensive stats on Pandora, but lower offensive stats -- and that's not ideal for most classes.

[The Secret Cow Level]

Also, legendary equipment have higher enchantment success rates than ultimate equipment, and only cost 1/4 as much to retune compared to ultimate equipment.

Enchantment Success Rates

 

[MiphaBae-DN]

Pandora is a very poor investment of time and resources, you're better off with purple IDD accessories and ulti pvp/risel gear until you start getting ulti pve.

[Camalus-KT]

19 hours ago, Gorokai-DN said:

I have been a longtime casual player in this game since launch. I'm not usually doing PvP and because I've grown up and taken in more IRL responsibilities (work/wife/kids) I don't really participate in a legion much anymore so most of the things I do are PvE PUP stuff. Got my full set of the free Risiel gear which replaced my Frostspark and Voidsoul stuff, and while I was screwing around in Lakrum yesterday I saw that Pandora people now give Ultimate gear instead of the Legendary Pandora stuff that I used to grind a few patches back.

 

I did a full set of five runs in the Stigrik Village and spent around 40 million leveling my Aetherforging from 87 to 200. It's now a new day and looking back...am I wasting my time at going after this free Ultimate PvE gear?

 

Thanks for reading my long-winded question.

I got my full Pandora, cuz its easier to get then IDD/PF/SL set. if you had craft(100) and gather(140), you can easy get the ultimate pandora in 7 weeks. its not that you are going to be 8 hours a day playing during 7 weeks, the problem is that you received 6 quest(that u can repeat 5 time each).. so it will be 30 quest per 5 crown = 150 crowns a week. So you can get the weapon first, and get the other items as you want. I went weapon, shoes(running speed), accesories(Ring, Earings, Belt, and neck) cuz that give you better PVE attack, and after that i went with gear and the rest of accesories.

Pandora is not better than IDD/PF/SL but its the best option for some1 that want to play few hours a week.

[Gorokai-DN]

2 hours ago, MiphaBae-DN said:

Pandora is a very poor investment of time and resources, you're better off with purple IDD accessories and ulti pvp/risel gear until you start getting ulti pve.

No legion and PUPs are few and far between and not always reliable....

[Arhangelos]

3 hours ago, Camalus-KT said:

I got my full Pandora, cuz its easier to get then IDD/PF/SL set. if you had craft(100) and gather(140), you can easy get the ultimate pandora in 7 weeks. its not that you are going to be 8 hours a day playing during 7 weeks, the problem is that you received 6 quest(that u can repeat 5 time each).. so it will be 30 quest per 5 crown = 150 crowns a week. So you can get the weapon first, and get the other items as you want. I went weapon, shoes(running speed), accesories(Ring, Earings, Belt, and neck) cuz that give you better PVE attack, and after that i went with gear and the rest of accesories.

Pandora is not better than IDD/PF/SL but its the best option for some1 that want to play few hours a week.

This is exactly the purpose of pandora, and it is also a good way to simply gear your toon to make it compatible with end game pve instances without the RNG that involves doing lower grade instances to get the legendary items and then try to do the ultimate sets. It is pretty straightforward and also the end game pve items are almost impossible to get, so having pandora accessories and wings is almost a must.

[DevilNest-KT]

  Pandora Gear Pros and Cons

Pros: 

- Mindless and relaxing Autopilot farming, good for killing time at quarentine.
-Sense of achievement and game progression
-Ego Boost (i'm full ultimate now biatches!)
-Cool Skins

Cons:

-Pandora gear sucks dirty shugo balls.
-High time consuming.
-Big investment needed (time, retune kinah & enchantments) for little to no real improvement.

 

Examples

Risiel earring attack stats: 
         33 + 27 + 143 = 203

Pandora earring stats:
Min:  33 + 49 + 67 = 149
Max: 33 + 49 +112 = 194

 

Legendary Skyflame Wings (acquirable for free doing Risiel follow up quests)

attack stats: 
Min: 1263 + 53 + 137 = 1453
Max: 1263 +53 + 229 = 1545

Divine Pandora Ultimate Wings 

attack stats: 
Min: 1238 + 76 + 134 = 1448
Max: 1238 + 76 + 224 = 1538

From Pandora you will get higher secondary stats, Block, Evasion, Parry, Magic Resist, and Accuracy, wich are not that game changer for PvE, as core stats are, Attack, Defence & HP.

But take into consideration that Pandora being ultimate is a lot more Expensive to Enchant & Retune, and also have lower enchating succes rate than legendary. While with risiel you don't have to retune or invest time farming, so you could use that time to farm more useful things. (Like Aureate gear)

In my humble opinion a mix of Risiel accesories & wings and Aureate weapon and Armor is the way to go for new players, you get huge benefits with zero cost of enchanting or retuning.

here i quote some old post regarding this topic

On 16/3/2020 at 1:15 PM, DevilNest-KT said:

Pandora was viable until patch 7.0 but now at 7.3 with the free set legendary Risiel there is no point at all to invest that heavy grind time on Pandora as the Core stats atk and defence are the same.

Also Aureate (blood mark) Armor and Weapon are better for PvE than Pandora +15

Pandora Orb: Base atk 4228 + bonus PvE 114 + 371 pve from max enchanted = 4713 atk

Aureate orb base damage= 4698  + 126 PvE from armfusion with a risiel orb = 4824 atk

(this is a comparission of a +15 item vs a +0 item note the big investment u need to do for Pandora to be almost as good as new +0 item)

And for single hand weapons the difference is greater.

 

On 17/3/2020 at 0:38 PM, DevilNest-KT said:

After the free set a quest chain opens, its pretty easy do BoS, FM, IDD and PF, you get full Risiel accesories 2 rings, 2 earrings, 1 belt, 1 necklace, and Legendary Skyflame Wings.

ofc pandora accesories and wings can be better overall with Perfect retunes but its expensive for new players a 500k per retune, when Risiel just gives you the core stats directly.

could be usefull for healing classes to get pandora if they want atk & healing boost at the same time, but then again its just way cheaper to get some ancient accesories with healing boost and switch when u need heals.

About armors with Blood Mark Gear (Aureate gear) +0 you gain more atk than with Pandora +15 and, same defence as Pandora +5

Pandora Tunic: Base atk 1371 + 98 Bonus PvE atk + 36 from max enchant =  1505 atk

Blood Marck Tunic: Base atk 1523

 

Pandora tunic: Base Physical defense 1182 + 98 Bonus PvE def + 32 def from +5 enchant =  1312

Blood Marck Tunic: Base phy def 1310

 

A mix of Risiel accesories & wings and Aureate weapon and Armor is the way to go for new players, you get huge benefits with zero cost of enchanting or retuning,

 

[Vantheria-DN]

1 hour ago, DevilNest-KT said:

snip

Very solid post, thank you! A+

[Vessttemona-KT]

Here are two images so we can make a better comparison, everything that DevilNest says is true, Skyflame has better stats than Pandora regarding magic attack, hp physical and magical defense which are important stats, but he forgot to mention the most important stat, the pve one and of which Pandora has better stat than Skyflame, and any Pandora +10 will give you better results than Skyflame +15 and it really easy to get any Pandora part to +10, or at least that was for me.

In the end, as Arhangelos said, pandora is a gear for casual players (as my self at least in the pve part),It won't make you carry the whole group, but it also wont make you be the carried one.

[DevilNest-KT]

well... no i didn't forget about it, I omitted it for 3 reasons!

First: i'm lazy
Second: The point of my post is for new players to avoid wasting the little few resources they can gather in this patch with Vendor NPC and instances drop nerfs.
Third: The point of Cost/Benefits  and not obtaining a Real improvement in DPS with Pandora over Risiel still stands.

as you can see there is no difference in damage when both items are +15 either

Examples

Risiel earring attack stats: 
         33 + 27 + 143 +131 = 334

Pandora earring stats:
Min:  33 + 49 + 67 +145 = 294
Max: 33 + 49 +112 +145 = 339

The only real advantage of Pandora (if you are willing to spend lot of time and kinah) over Risiel is that you can get Attack and Crit together,while Risiel with fixed stats you can get only Attack, HP and Acc. But this advantage disappear when u compare it with Skyflame accesories. 

[Arhangelos]

Pandora is also kinda alt-friendly. It is the most basic way to get gear, you go kill mobs old-school style, you give the quests back and you get the marks, if you also make it in a group it goes really fast except for the drops that after the 6.+ came, auto loot in pets and minions doesn't work on group (unless they fixed it). Most importantly you can buy the exact piece you are asking for instead of RNGing through instances.

I am glad it exists because it is an option and it might suit some people.

Side note: In 6.x patch it was so hard to get them and in 7.x patch they became super easy to get. In 7.5 they totally remove the pandora gear system (quests for marks and the gear)

[Michelli-DN]

All Pandora quests and raids will be removed in upcoming 7.5 patch.
Currently all legendary pandora gear set in 7.3 is equal as Windstream Quests gears basically, as you already received when reaching level 80.

 

Aion 7.7 patchnotes (recently translated from korean into english). Here's what we have learnt so far:

The New Accessory Enchantment System will be added, called Odian
New Rune Enchantment System will be added.
New armor slot & equipment called Glyph
Accessories can now be contaminated. If so, they cannot be enchanted any more.
New Purification System added to the game.
Many instances and dungeons will be removed including Besh Temple and Holy Tower (Frozen Monolith) for example.
New 6 players-level 80 dungeons will be added.
More Arena PVP, and instanced tournaments will be added.
Classic Rifts will be returning into Aion. Both sides asmo and elyos.
New Set Armor will be added, called Extreme or Supreme for n.a. server translations, and its parts will be tradeable.
New Fame System will be added into the game. The more fame the player has, more access to items he/she can buy.
New Regions and maps will be added into the game.
Players can earn fame points by killing mobs and doing pvp activities in several regions.
Many 7.0 dungeons difficulties will be reduced.
New types of enchament stones will be added into the game.
New Minions will be also be added into the game.

[Melodiosa-KT]

How nice that they are taking off the pandora quests! I won't be able to finish my quests and my armour set or accessories will be lost because I won't have time to finish! That's so upsetting I tried to level up my collecting over 100 in Oriel wasting lots of time and in Inggison to collect blooming not to talk about the other quests and now I can say bye-bye to the pandora.

I finally liked to have the possibility to have some good items for my characters, because I only play PvE solo and I do not have the advantage of a legion that can help with instances and being so low geared I am not able to join groups.

Well, there is nothing I can do, this game is coming every day more strange/complicated to me than ever, every updated it just only confuses me.

I think it is time for me to find a new game, but after more than 10 years of AION is hard to leave, all my legion mates and friends have left long ago and only me resisted. It is so very sad tho.

 

[Gorokai-DN]

On 4/23/2020 at 10:58 AM, DevilNest-KT said:

In my humble opinion a mix of Risiel accesories & wings and Aureate weapon and Armor is the way to go for new players, you get huge benefits with zero cost of enchanting or retuning.

Everything so far had been great info, but here's the problem I ran into this week following this post. I got 2 Pandora accessories (yay) and also grinded in Katalam and ended up getting my 20 Ultimate Bloodmarks flipping camps. I promptly went to the NPC and bought my Katalam chest.

First roll offered kinah...

Buy the xp extractors, grind more Pandora xp. Get 4 XP marks. Reroll the chest. 

Second roll offered an Ancient manastone.

Grind 4 more xp marks. Go to reroll. Phuck me I find out the 2nd reroll is 8 marks... Grind more Pandora and Damaha for xp. Finally get my 8 marks. Reroll the chest.

Third roll offered Ultimate Alcemium, which is absolutely worthless.

 ?

Bloodmark gear acquisition is complete and utter bullshit.

[Yehosh-DN]

51 minutes ago, Gorokai-DN said:

Everything so far had been great info, but here's the problem I ran into this week following this post. I got 2 Pandora accessories (yay) and also grinded in Katalam and ended up getting my 20 Ultimate Bloodmarks flipping camps. I promptly went to the NPC and bought my Katalam chest.

First roll offered kinah...

Buy the xp extractors, grind more Pandora xp. Get 4 XP marks. Reroll the chest. 

Second roll offered an Ancient manastone.

Grind 4 more xp marks. Go to reroll. Phuck me I find out the 2nd reroll is 8 marks... Grind more Pandora and Damaha for xp. Finally get my 8 marks. Reroll the chest.

Third roll offered Ultimate Alcemium, which is absolutely worthless.

 ?

Bloodmark gear acquisition is complete and utter bullshit.

There's one problem with your rant: that's not how you get Ultimate Aureate gears...

[Arhangelos]

1 hour ago, Gorokai-DN said:

Everything so far had been great info, but here's the problem I ran into this week following this post. I got 2 Pandora accessories (yay) and also grinded in Katalam and ended up getting my 20 Ultimate Bloodmarks flipping camps. I promptly went to the NPC and bought my Katalam chest.

First roll offered kinah...

Buy the xp extractors, grind more Pandora xp. Get 4 XP marks. Reroll the chest. 

Second roll offered an Ancient manastone.

Grind 4 more xp marks. Go to reroll. Phuck me I find out the 2nd reroll is 8 marks... Grind more Pandora and Damaha for xp. Finally get my 8 marks. Reroll the chest.

Third roll offered Ultimate Alcemium, which is absolutely worthless.

 ?

Bloodmark gear acquisition is complete and utter bullshit.

You get the pvp real gear with legendary bloodmarks. with ultimate bloodmarks you get the skins that give passive skill on the items.

You can get a ton of legendary bloodmarks in camps, and when you have more than 1 end gear characters you can do the bloodmark quests on them too and buy the item boxes (with legendary bloodmarks) these boxes are accoung wh storable so you can give them to your main.

Effectively I think you can fully gear your main char in 1 day if you have enough characters to do the legendary bloodmark quests in many of them.

[Vantheria-DN]

2 hours ago, Gorokai-DN said:

snip

 

2 hours ago, Yehosh-DN said:

There's one problem with your rant: that's not how you get Ultimate Aureate gears...

 

Lol right? I was like OH NO.... 

[Arhangelos]

Forget about anything, you can now get sovereign main gear and weapons (no accessories) from the FM/BoS event.

[Lad-DN]

On 4/22/2020 at 9:02 AM, Vantheria-DN said:

I started working on Pandora accessories for my alt, but then I realized that the purple IDD accessories have a higher retune possibility than the red Pandora accessories. Just something to keep in mind. You will have higher defensive stats on Pandora, but lower offensive stats -- and that's not ideal for most classes.

I'd just like to point out the big gap in retune stats is (for some reason) specific to ONLY the earrings.

For the other accessories the difference in stats like magic attack and heal boost is only around 2-5 points lower than skyflame. And the crit is higher on all the other pandora accessories/feathers. (As well as higher PvE attack at +15, earrings included)