With the update of October 21, Krao Cave and Draupnir have a Hard mode, NC's patch notes say: it opens from item level 2,600, its bosses' Frenzy timer is 4 minutes, and each player has 3 revives. It also brings the game's new Daevanion board, Ariel, whose points come from the Ariel Fragments that Hard mode gives. On October 15, only 12 of the 1,592 level-45 characters of our sample of NC's armory had the item level to enter; read again on October 21, after the maintenance, 38 of 1,546 had it, 2.5%. Here is what Hard mode asks and gives, how the Ariel board fills, and the rest of the update.
What Hard mode asks
|
Hard mode |
| Expeditions |
Krao Cave and Draupnir |
| Item level to enter |
2,600 |
| Boss Frenzy timer |
4 minutes |
| Revives |
3 per player |
- Above every Conquest tier. Conquest tiers open at 700, 1,400 and 2,100 (our leveling guide): Hard mode starts 500 item levels above the highest.
- The revives count on the last boss. NC's English notes give 3 revives per player in Hard mode; its Japanese notes specify that the limit applies to the final boss fight.
Who can enter today
Item level is the gate, and our data says how high it stands. In the sample of NC's armory we read on October 15, 1,592 level-45 characters, about 200 per class, found through NC's own character search, this is how many had each threshold:
| Item level |
October 15 |
October 21 |
| 700 |
1,479 (95.7%) |
1,534 (99.2%) |
| 1,400 |
614 (39.7%) |
869 (56.2%) |
| 2,100 |
135 (8.7%) |
272 (17.6%) |
| 2,600 |
11 (0.7%) |
38 (2.5%) |
Both columns count the 1,546 characters NC's armory still answered for on October 21. 700 and 2,100 are the first and the highest Conquest tiers; 2,600 is Hard mode.
On October 15, the median character of the whole sample stood at 1,253, and one in ten above 2,025. The 12 who could enter were spread over six classes: four Rangers, three Templars, two Assassins, and one Chanter, one Spiritmaster and one Sorcerer.
Read again on October 21, after the maintenance, 38 of those 1,546 had 2,600 (2.5%), against 11 six days earlier, and their median had risen from 1,243 to 1,464.
Each Daevanion point a character spends also adds one item level (Corpus, AION 2 Meta): the boards are part of the climb to 2,600.
What Hard mode gives
- Ariel Fragment (Bound), on every clear: NC's Japanese notes say it is guaranteed. Krao Cave and Draupnir each give a fragment of their own.
- Philosopher's Stone: Revelation (Bound), at a chance, or as the guaranteed reward you choose.
- Expedition Hero Artwork, at a chance, with an achievement for collecting them.
- More Kina than the other difficulties.
- Every Unique crafting material in both dungeons: Wrathful Mind, Wrathful Will and Wrathful Ego.
- New achievements for Expedition (Hard), whose rewards include Unique skins.
The Ariel board
Ariel is the sixth Daevanion board of every class. On October 21, after the maintenance, NC's armory listed it on none of the 1,546 character sheets we read again, so its nodes are not known on Global yet: our class pages draw the five other boards node by node from NC's data, and add Ariel's as soon as NC's armory lists it.
Its points come another way than the other boards' (NC):
- Clear Krao Cave or Draupnir in Hard mode for Ariel Fragments.
- At Substance Morph, under Special > Daevanion, 100 fragments make one Daevanion Crystal: Ariel (Bound), up to 30 times per character: 3,000 fragments for all 30.
- The crystals give the Ariel Daevanion points. NC doesn't say how many points a crystal gives, and the number you can morph is capped for each dungeon, without NC giving the caps.
A spare fragment also makes 5 Enhance Stones, under Special > Consumables, as many times as you like.
Resurrection Spiritstones for Kina
From the update until the start of the maintenance of December 16 (December 15 in Pacific time), NC's event Rise to the Challenge sells Resurrection Spiritstones for Kina, under Shop > Wind Breeze Merchants > Special:
| Step |
Price |
Resurrection Spiritstones |
| 1 |
25,000 Kina |
30 |
| 2 |
50,000 Kina |
30 more |
The limit is counted per server and per week. The stones arrive with the update that caps Hard mode at 3 revives per player; what else money and Kina buy is in our article on whether AION 2 is pay to win.
Also in the October 21 update
- Abyss. More players can be in the Abyss at once. The Dimensional Core of the Lower Abyss and every boss that appears in the Abyss have more HP, and the bosses Kaira and Argo slightly larger hitboxes.
- Market. The restriction on listing gathered materials, added on October 14, is adjusted: some of the players it held back can trade normally again, while it stays for others.
- Class fixes. The Chanter's Spinning Strike shows its effects correctly. The Sorcerer's Cold Storm now deals its extra damage to targets with Frostbite stacks, its Frostbite matches the skill's level, and with Specialty 1 it no longer applies Frostbite one more time once the effect has ended; Fire Wall no longer deals extra damage to targets without Embers. Our builds article shows how many Sorcerers run each.
- Other fixes. Empyrean Traces that Halloween decorations made unreachable at the Dawn Legion Base and in Zumion Village, in Verteron, move to places you can reach; the Movement Controls option no longer appears several times under Settings > Key Settings; a title's effect matches its tooltip again.
The update came with the maintenance of October 21, from 06:30 UTC. Our maintenance and patch notes page follows NC's notices, and our timers count down to the next maintenance in your time zone.
