Aion will during the next maintenance period receive a new update addressing a couple of common game and localization issues. We are right now focusing on getting rid of critical game bugs and polishing our French and German versions of the game. Keep reporting issues and bugs as you encounter them through the appropriate channels, and we will track them down and squash them as quickly as possible.

The patch is available for download via the NCsoft Launcher, and the patch size is at 5.3 MB. Head on over to the Aion PowerWiki if you want to get the complete rundown of improvements and fixes.

By the time I was level 20, my cube was expanded 3 times and warehouse 2 times. As you quest and level, you pick up lots of vendor trash that can be sold for a good amount. Think of expanding your inventory an investment. The cost becomes larger and larger after each upgrade, but the amount of Kinah you are making should be able to keep up. The extra income from having this extra space can help pay for all your new spells and various reagents you may need. If you pick everything up that you see, you end up with very full bags. So the more storage space the better. Sometimes going into town to vendor, sell, and store these items may not be very convenient when you are questing in the middle of nowhere. In addition to all these drops clogging our inventory, you may also have all the items you are extracting/gathering. From what I have seen, a lot of players are gathering nodes since certain quests requires you to. Leveling extracting can be a pain since you have to sometimes farm a bit just so you meet the level requirement for the next item. I believe that the last skill level requirement for gathering before I hit 20 was 90 extracting skill.

Expand Cube

You can expand your cube a row at a time. Each row has 9 slots. So far these are the prices we have seen, we will up date this as we progress. It looks like the price/tax rates affect the cost of these expansions.

Starting: 27 cubes

Expand 1: 36 cubes. Cost: 1,000 Kinah

Expand 2: 45 cubes. Cost: 12,100

Expand 3: 54 cubes. Cost: 60,500

Expand 4: 63 cubes. Cost: 188,760

Expand Quest: 72 cubes: Cost: FREE

Expand 5: 81 cubes Cost: 363,000

Expand 6: 90 cubes Cost: ??? (Quest)

Expand Warehouse

Starting: 32 cubes

Expand 1: 40 cubes. Cost: 1,200 Kinah

Expand 2: 48 cubes. Cost: 24,200

Expand 3: 56 cubes. Cost: 72,600

Expand 4: 64 cubes. Cost: 179,685

Expand 5: 72 cubes. Cost: ??? (Quest?)

Expand 6: 80 cubes. Cost: ??? (Master Crafting Quest?)

Account Warehouse

You get these 16 slots for free and this can not be expanded. This part of the Warehouse can be accessed by any of your characters on the server.

Tags: Inventory, Warehouse

[West]Fregion is live! [West]Fregion is the first server to be added after our very successful launch of Aion. A European server and an East Coast North American server are also on the way.

The name “Fregion” has its origin in ancient Atreian lore, taken from the one Drakan that sparked history-altering pretension in the Balaur Empire, eventually leading to the Epic Cataclysm.

[West]Fregion has been set to North American West Coast time and is only the first in a line of servers we are rolling out. Aion has enjoyed tremendous popularity during these first couple of days, and we are aware of the queues on the most populated servers. We hope that our addition of fresh servers to choose from and conquer, for new and old players alike, will help in making these queues shorter and allow even more players to enjoy the game.

We will continue to monitor the situation and maintain the delicate balance between managing busy servers versus overcompensating by adding new servers that may become underpopulated.

Enjoy [West]Fregion, and stay tuned to future information about the upcoming servers additions.

So I decided to play a Spiritmaster when Aion went live. They are considered one of the best farming/grinding classes in the game. I had even tried one out on the beta and it felt like leveling was so much easier than the other classes. So for the purpose of an Econ blog, what better class to play than the farmbot machine that is the Spiritmaster! At this time, my SM is level 20.

Hopefully by now you have leveled at least to level 10 since it is pretty straight forward on what to do there. One tip though, once you hit level 9, you will be given the Ascension quest in your campaign log. Start doing this right away since the final part gives you a full bar of XP almost right till level 10. The next step takes you into your respective major city’s and you will hit level 10 when you turn it in. This is also when you receive your wings and also don’t forget to pick up your new spells! Now port back to the starting areas to finish up the left over quests for some easy XP. You may be tempted to get started in the new questing hub but in Aion you may have to do a bit of grinding in between quests and levels. So every bit of XP counts if you want to reduce the amount of farming and focus on quests more.

At level 20, all classes will receive a quest to unlock the ability to use Stigmas. The quest was easy to do and involved mostly going back to the starting areas and talking to a few people. You will get a one of your Stigmas through this quest and your other level 20 ones are either purchased from a vendor for a very high price or another player. Luckily they are pretty common so you may find some on the Trade Broker. So now with my 2 new Stigmas, we headed off to the next major questing hub. In beta we remembered we had to be level 20 just to pick up the quests over there, so we made sure we hit this level before heading over. An easy quest to grind out is the repeatable coin quests that requires you to kill some mobs and turn them in for these coins. The quest can be repeated 100 times and you can trade the coins in for green quality items. We chose to save up 4 coins before trading them in. The item that it gave was a level 16 green quality Orb.

For those that play a SM, there are two skill book drops you may want to pick up. One is the summon for the Wind Spirit and the other is for the summon Water Spirit. They are dirt cheap on the Trade Broker if you can’t get one to drop for you. The Wind Spirit summon requires level 16 and is more suited for PvP and the Water Spirit summon requires level 19 and is geared towards ranged DPS for PvE in groups.

At this time we have over 100,000 Kinah. This was from selling white/green quality gear on the Trade Broker as well as picking up everything we came across. We did however saved all crafting materials we came across. Our cube was expanded 3 times and warehouse 2 times. Since leveling goes by fairly quick at the lower levels, we decided not to purchase any gear, manastones, or enchantments to save money. Tune in next time as we provide you with a update at level 25.

We are bringing the servers down at 6:00AM PST (more), September 25^th,  for maintenance. The purpose of this downtime is to tweak the way Private Stores work. A timer of 30 minutes will be implemented to prevent these shops from being abused as a means to prevent disconnection and alleviate queues.

The maintenance is expected to run no longer than 1 hour.

Thank you for your patience!

Source: AionOnline.com

Queue Times and Waiting to Play

The popularity of specific servers has caused queues to be necessary. These queues are based on the given server load. The wait times for our more populated servers will be longer than the wait time for less populated servers. You can use the tracking tools on the Aion website to determine which servers are most populated and which ones will have the longest or shortest wait times in the login queue. Login queues will shorten (and disappear) over the next several days as players spread out across our currently available servers. We are also working on several ways to alleviate the wait time in the queues.

Faction Balance

We will only be allowing players to create characters of one faction on each server. For example, if you create an Elyos character on Siel,you will only be able to create Elyos characters on that server. Because of this, we will be closely monitoring the faction balance on each server during launch and after. If we see a particular server is starting to become unbalanced in favor of one faction, we will temporarily disable character creation of that particular faction on the server. Please be aware this temporary character creation block could change every few hours. If you find you are unable to create a character of your preferred faction choice, please wait a while and try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience this maycause, but we feel this is a necessary step to maintain a well balanced server.

Special Items (Preorder/collectors)

 In order to claim either or both the Preorder and Collector’s Edition in-game items, you will need to first make sure the appropriate codes have been applied to your Aion game account, and then claim the items for your character(s) through our website. After you have claimed the item packs for your character(s) on our website, you may need to wait a while (possibly up to 12hours) before the items become available in-game. Your item packs will be available when you see a small box icon appear in the bottom-right corner of your screen next to your compass. You can click the box and a Black Cloud Trader will appear to deliver your items. You can click on this NPC to retrieve your items. If you don’t retrieve all of the items before dismissing the Black Cloud Trader, the items will remain in your normal mailbox.

Cosmetic Surgery NPCs

The Gender Switch and Appearance NPCs are available in game,however, the ability to purchase the tickets used at these vendors is not yetavailable.  Please keep an eye on the Aion home page for any information regarding the furtherimplementation of these NPCs. 

I am trying to enter my Aion Serial Code from my Aion game box, and it asks me to upgrade a Guild Wars account? WHY?

You are using the wrong code. There are two codes in yourAion game box:

There is a 25-digit Aion Wings Guild Wars promo code, whichis for a Guild Wars account. That code gives you an “Aion Wings”emote for your Guild Wars characters. That’s the one you are currently tryingto use, and it is not for your Aion account.

Your Aion retail serial code is a 20-digit serial code,which is also in your game box. It is on the third page of your “QuickReference Card” at the bottom. It is titled “Activation Code”.That is the code you need to use to activate/create your Aion game account.

Related Article: Aion Standard and Collector’s Edition Game Box Serial Code Locations.

I pre-ordered Aion and played in Head Start, but I can nolonger play. Why not?

Aion has now officially lanched in North America. In order to continue playing Aion after the pre-order Head Start Event, the retail version of Aion will need to be registered to your existing account.

If you prepurchased Aion from the NCsoft Store or one of our other digital online retailers (Steam®, Direct2Drive®, etc…), your account is all set! You should be able to log into Aion after the game officially launches with no issues.

If you have pre-ordered the actual game box from a local or online retailer you will need to pick up your retail copy from them, or if the retailer is shipping it to you in the mail, you’ll need to wait until the game box is shipped to you. Please contact them regarding your full retail box if you have not received it yet.

Once you get your game box, you will use the following instructions to activate your pre-order account: How do I activate my beta or pre-order game account? Once you activate your account with your retail code/billing information, you can continue playing after launch.

The game box says, “First month of game playincluded,” so why am I being asked for billing information?

All game accounts must be activated using a valid credit card, PayPal, or prepaid game time card in order to gain access to the game. For more informaion, please see: Will I be be billed the first time I activate my game account? 

Where is the serial code located in my North American AionStandard or Collector’s Edition game box?

In the North American Aion Starndard (SteelBook) Edition or Collector’s Edition game boxes is a folded paper booklet titled “Quick Reference Card”. Your 20-digit Aion Serial Code is on the third page of that Quick Reference Card fold-out, at the bottom. It is titled “Activation Code”.

Source: AionOnline.com

The ”Tales of Aion” continue in this fifth fan-fiction rendition of a storyline bringing the Atreians Esala’ayni and Korasai from mere humanity to ascendance. Read on to catch the exciting conclusion.

“Tales of Aion is a five-part fictional story written by Michael Lafferty at GameZone. It traces the stories of two characters, one Elyos and one Asmodian as they move through the world and into a battlefield where the races collide.. It is a personal journey for each – Esala’ayni, the Elyos ranger, and Korasai, the Asmodian spiritmaster – from their re-awakening in the world to their acceptance of who they are and what their place is in the torn land.”

• “Tales of Aion,” Part 1
• “Tales of Aion,” Part 2
• “Tales of Aion,” Part 3
• “Tales of Aion,” Part 4
• “Tales of Aion,” Part 5

Source: AionOnline.com

At NCsoft our commitment is to making the MMO player experience the best it can be. And while Aion has seen a very successful launch that has exceeded our expectations in many ways, we are aware of the longer than usual queue times that players have experienced on some of the servers. This is due to the initial rush of players that we’ve seen in the early days of the game’s launch in Europe and North America.

Since the opening of Head Start this past weekend, we’ve have been heavily focused on striking the delicate balance between managing busy servers with queue times versus overcompensating by adding new servers too quickly that are then underpopulated and don’t deliver a fun experience for players. We did indeed see an initial rush on the first days of Head Start which resulted in longer than desired queue times for some of our servers, and we are working around the clock to alleviate this. In fact, we are happy to confirm we have increased our server caps and are adding an additional server in both North America and Europe by this weekend, and we will continue to evaluate adding additional servers.

That said, we do have alternate servers where players are experiencing lower queue times. People can get a real-time update and select that choice on our website at: http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/server/

We continue to monitor issues closely and strive to address player feedback quickly to ensure the best possible experience.

Source: AionOnline.com

These items can be claimed by logging into your account. They will be sent to you via mail and you can use them during the Headstart as well. The 20% XP giving item is not what most people thought it was. It has 5 charges and lasts for only 1 hour. There is also a 9 hour cooldown on it. I think it is safe to say that these charges should be saved for later levels where the leveling process really slows down. Just look at the early 20′s questing areas, there aren’t too many quests which forces you to farm for XP a bit and do the repeatable coin quests.

The benefits are many to be had if you have preordered Aion or are the owner of a rare and much coveted Limited Collector’s Edition. Notable among these is an array of in-game items you can give to your characters.

To assign them to your characters, please follow these instructions.

NOTE: You will need to follow these steps for each new character you create in order for it to receive the items. You will not be able to do this right now, but the feature will be enabled shortly.

1. Log into NCsoft Account Management.
2. Click the Game Accounts link.
3. Choose your Aion game account listed on the Game Accounts page.
4. Click the Apply In-Game Items link in the Actions section.
5. Select the server your preferred character is on and click the Next button.
6. Select the character you wish to receive the items and click the Next button.
7. You will then see a list of all the items or item packs that may be applied to that character. Click the checkbox next to the item pack(s) you wish to apply to that character and then click the Next button.
8. Review the confirmation page and then click the Apply the Items/Item Packs to this Character button.

You will then get a message saying that the items/item packs were successfully given to that character. You should have these items when you log into the game – simply pay a visit to your in-game mail box.

Source: AionOnline.com