I’ve spent most all of my free-time the past week playing Aion, leveling my Chanter to get into the Abyss. And I’ve done it, finally.
*Might add in some screenshots later, I think I have some of the Abyss lying around* — Update: Screens below.
If you’ve played a game like Warhammer Online that has PvP zones you’ll probably be pretty familiar with the Abyss — but it’s also a bit different. The Abyss is three tiers — a lower level, a core and an upper level. all three have numerous floating islands, monsters, and fortresses surrounded by artifacts. You can fly anywhere here and it’s all open to PvP. So, what’s to do here and what makes it special?
Grind: I know it’s an evil word to a lot of western gamers, but grinding here is great — the mobs tend to give a lot more experience then non-abyss varieties. They also tend to be plenty of them around. As a bonus, monsters also grant some Abyss Points — think of it as honor points.
PvP: That’s probably why you’re here in the first place. If rifts aren’t exciting enough for you, you can come here and expect to find plenty to kill or die to. Players tend to give a lot more Abyss Points and some XP.
Quests: There’s plenty of quests here too, for those that prefer them to grinding. There’s also some good rewards I think.
Fortresses: If you’ve played another MMO with them, you’ll likely be familiar. Forts have doors and force fields (to prevent flight entry) that need to be taken down, then large guardian raid bosses that must be killed. Attackers can use siege weapons. The Balaur hold control of all forts, at first.
Artifacts: They’re mini-capture points that can provide various effects when used. There’s a sort of introductory video/quest that you go through to explain some of it — basically, control over them allows access to effects like massive AoE nukes/Rez’s and other effects. Powerful stuff. To control you must kill the guardian NPC that watches over them.
Named: There’s some named mobs around that drop good loot. Always an incentive.
Kisks: Now here’s a fun item — obtained at the General Goods merchant. It’s a rez point that you can set up anywhere and temporarily bind yourself to. Get a group/alliance version and others can use it as well. The group kisk holds 6 different people, 18 rez’s (3 each) and lasts some 2 hours. Used one in a group while hunting Asmodians and it proved *very* handy. Be warned: they can be destroyed fairly easily. I happened to get lucky and die right as an Asmodian Gladiator was walking up to ours — killed him and saved our kisk. Always hide it in a good, out of the way spot.
Flight: You can fly anywhere here — anywhere that your timer will take you. You should know by now that flying high and on a low timer will get you killed, even more-so in the abyss where there’s plenty of… abyss… to fall into. Get some flight timer potions and flight speed scrolls — big help in PvP. Also of note: rings. There’s rings all over the Abyss that will charge up your flight time by flying through them. You can ‘hump’ the rings (just going back and forth through them) to fully recover your time quickly. If you really want to kill someone, trying flying as high as possible — if they follow you’ll likely both wind up plummeting to your deaths. This is most likely to happen with melees for one reason — getting into melee range manually in flight can be a pain in the ass, especially in PvP. Using auto-approach target is a great way to keep your melee character in range and dealing damage, especially if you don’t have to worry about situational attacks (like my Chanter).
PvP Gear: This is some good stuff. Once you hit 30 you can start to wear gear purchased with Abyss Points.
That’s all I can think of at the moment. Most, if not all, of it has been done before in various parts by various games, and it all works well in Aion.
I can’t tell how balanced the PvP is right now, as I’ve only gotten some 40+ish kills in so far, but I can tell you that grouping is important. There is no single class that can do it all in Aion; you need a diverse party to really get the most out of PvP. Numbers are important, as always, and the smaller group will almost always get crushed by the larger one — provided the larger one stands united. That is something that I’ve seen happen some — a slightly larger force caving in to a smaller one after a couple kills, which then results in the deaths of them all. Don’t let that happen and you’ll be fine.
As a last word: Stigmas almost seem made solely for the Abyss. They’re cheap on the AH right now (with the exception of a few, mostly higher ones) so grab up what looks good and put em to use. You get Stigma Shards from mobs in the Abyss, and you’ll have plenty of them — don’t be afraid to experiment.
*Edit — I’ve finally taken the time to realize the simple process to link to the full image… yeah, I’m a newb — clicky the images for bigger ones!*
Abyss PvP
On the Western Shard in the lower abyss a large group (raid/alliance size it seemed) of Asmodians were out killing Elyos. Hard to tell from the shot, but we eventually got about the same number of people and pushed them back — killing many. This is the largest battle I’ve seen yet, though I haven’t participated in a fortress siege. Of note: on Siel we have two fortresses taken over by Elyos and none by Asmodians — both Elyos forts are owned by the legion Benny Lava.
Training Camp Dungeon
This is the first instanced dungeon you face, do-able at around level 25. If you do it at 25 make sure to bring a full group. Group content in Aion, as I’ve said before, is really made for groups — it’s tough stuff.
The General here is the end boss; he’s fairly tough but an easy tank and spank monster. The *real* challenge (for us) was killing the Teleporter above him. The Teleporter is a Balaur that summons up one add after aggro’ing (need a Sorc to sleep it, if it doesn’t take or gets broken you can be in trouble), does an AoE slow with somewhat decent damage and a stun. The problem can come from the add not getting slept, aggro’ing the healer, and the tank being stunned/slowed and not able to get to the add. Almost everything here hits hard. The XP though… oh so nice. The loot *can* be but you’re not guaranteed anything; so just be happy for the fast leveling.
