Aion 2 Gear Progression Guide: Item Level, Best Gear and Upgrades

Meta GlobalProgression guidePatch: Global · Season 1Updated: 27 October 2026

At level 45 your progress is measured in item level, and nearly everything you do in the endgame either raises it or opens the content that does. This guide follows the order you meet things in. First how the number is built and what each threshold opens, then the gear of each Conquest tier and of the crafted Dragon Lord line, and last the upgrades worth paying for at each step.

How item level is calculated

Item level is a sum, not an average. Every slot adds to it, so one empty or outdated slot holds the whole number back, and some of the cheapest points are not on your gear at all.

Two things follow from the table. A piece at +15 is worth 15 item levels more than the same piece at +0, nearly as much as moving up a whole Conquest tier, whose gear is 16 item levels better. And Arcana cards and Daevanion points are item level you never lose, because they stay when you change gear.

What each item level opens

Move up as soon as the next tier opens. Its gear is better in every slot, and its Wrathful material opens the next steps of the crafted line.

The gear of each Conquest tier

Each tier pairs a dungeon for weapons and jewellery with a dungeon for armour. Everything they drop is Unique, with four Manastone sockets, and weapons and guards have a Theostone socket as well. The guard comes with the armour set.

Drops are rare. A weapon has 0.4% to 0.9% per clear, an armour piece 0.4% to 1.3% and a piece of jewellery 1% to 3.4%. That is why every Conquest dungeon also guarantees a Gear Change Voucher, after 14 clears in tier 1, 21 in tier 2 and 28 in tier 3. Substance Morph turns it into a selection chest of Unique gear, so you choose the piece luck has not given you, and the armour dungeons can give a guard instead. Ludra has its own, the Ludra Gear Voucher, after 4 kills.

Each dungeon guide has the route, the bosses and the full loot table with every drop chance.

The crafted Dragon Lord line

The other way up is crafting. The Dragon Lord line covers weapons, guards, armour and the necklace, earrings and ring, in six steps. Elyos and Asmodians craft it under different names, with the same stats.

• The first piece is a normal craft. It needs mastery 55 in the profession that makes the slot (Blacksmithing, Handicrafting or Armorsmithing) and an Artisan’s Splendent Orichalcum piece of the same type, and like any craft it can fail.
• Every later step upgrades the piece you own. The upgrade cannot fail, and the new piece keeps the enhancement, Amplified Enhancement and Soul Binding of the old one. Steps 3 and 5 also take a new Artisan’s Splendent Orichalcum piece.
• Splendent comes two ways. Steps 1, 3 and 5 have a 25% chance to come out Splendent straight away. If they do not, steps 2, 4 and 6 upgrade the plain piece to its Splendent version.
• The Wrathful materials follow the Conquest tiers. Wrathful Mind drops in tier 1, Wrathful Will in tier 2 and Wrathful Ego in tier 3, and Ludra drops all three. Steps 1 and 2 run on Wrathful Mind, steps 3 and 4 add Wrathful Will and steps 5 and 6 add Wrathful Ego, together with other crafting materials and the Artisan’s Ultimate Refining Stones that every Conquest dungeon drops.

Each pair of steps comes out above the dropped gear of the tier whose material it uses. Steps 1 and 2 (62 and 70) beat tier 1’s 54, steps 3 and 4 (78 and 86) beat tier 2’s 70, and steps 5 and 6 (94 and 102) beat tier 3’s 86. And because the line keeps its enhancement from one step to the next, a crafted piece never makes you start your + again.

How to upgrade your gear

Enhancement

Enhancement raises the stats of a piece and adds +1 item level per level. It costs Kina and Enhance Stones. A higher item level makes it more expensive, but it does not change the odds.

Past +10, a Unique piece succeeds 65% of the time on the way to +11, then 50%, 35%, 25% and 20% for +15. Every failure adds 5% to the next try until it works, so bad luck has a ceiling. A failure costs the Kina and Enhance Stones of that try and nothing else. The piece keeps its level and never breaks. Taking an item level 102 piece from +0 to +15 costs about 15 million Kina and 190,000 Enhance Stones on average.

When you replace a piece, extract it to get Enhance Stones back. The Kina does not come back, and neither do the Manastones and Theostones socketed in it.

Amplified Enhancement

Unique dungeon and crafted gear can go past +15 with Amplified Enhancement, and how far depends on its tier. Tier 1 gear (item level 54, and steps 1 and 2 of the Dragon Lord line) gets one extra level, tier 2 gear (70, and steps 3 and 4) three, and tier 3 and raid gear (86 and up, and steps 5 and 6) five, so the best pieces reach +20. Each extra level adds +5 item level, five times as much as a normal one.

It costs Amplify Stones and Kina, from 6 stones and 600,000 Kina for the first level to 20 stones and 3 million Kina for the fifth. The chances are 66%, 50%, 33%, 25% and 20%, and the bonus after a failure shrinks at every level, from 5% to 1%. Amplify Stones are made with Substance Morph from Amplify Stone Fragments, which drop in every Conquest and Transcendence dungeon and in every Ludra kill.

Gear Transfer

Gear Transfer moves the enhancement and Soul Binding of a Unique piece to another Unique piece of the same slot. It always succeeds and costs Transfer Stones, not Kina. This is what makes high enhancement on dropped gear safe, because when the next tier’s piece drops, your levels go with it.

Manastones and Theostones

Every Unique dungeon piece has four Manastone sockets, and weapons and guards also have one for a Theostone. Each stone adds +1 to +4 item level by grade, on top of its stats, and a Theostone adds an extra effect to your attacks. Socketed stones are lost when you extract the piece, so keep your best Manastones for gear you will keep, like the crafted line.

Soul Binding

Soul Binding gives a piece four extra stats and raises them step by step toward 100%. A Unique piece takes 10 steps, about 2.1 million Kina and 408 Soul Codex in total, and every Ludra kill drops Soul Codex. At 100% the piece opens one more Manastone slot.

• Sync rerolls one of the four stats with a Sync Stone, which every Conquest dungeon guarantees after 28 clears.
• Philosopher’s Stone: Revelation drops in 30% of Ludra kills. Two of them open a Soul Fuse slot on a fully bound piece, with an extra effect.

Potential

Unique weapons, guards, armour and most accessories also have a Potential track of four levels, paid with Potential Stone: Abyss and Abyss Points. Every step succeeds, and the last one gives the piece 2% PvP damage or 2% PvP damage reduction. It does nothing in PvE, so leave it for last unless you play the Abyss or the Arena.

Amulet and belt

The amulet and the Noble Belt are never replaced. They evolve with Substance Morph from Rare (item level 13) to Epic (36) and Unique (65), and the level 45 guide explains where their scrolls come from.

What to upgrade first

1. Free item level first. Fill every Arcana slot and spend every Daevanion point. Neither is lost when you change gear.
2. Everything to +10. It cannot fail, and extracting the piece later gives Enhance Stones back.
3. The weapon before the rest. It is the biggest single upgrade for every class except tanks, who want defense and HP first.
4. Past +10 only on pieces you keep or transfer. The crafted line keeps its enhancement at every step, and Gear Transfer carries it from one dropped piece to the next. On a piece you will throw away, +11 to +15 is Kina you do not get back.
5. Your best Manastones on the same pieces. Socketed stones do not come back.
6. Gear Change Vouchers on the slot you are missing. With drops around 1%, the voucher is often the fastest way to finish a set.
7. Potential last, unless you play PvP.

Item levels, drop chances, guarantees, enhancement rates and costs, and crafting recipes come from the global client. The upgrade order is our recommendation.

What the best players wear

What the top 496 level-45 players on the global servers are wearing, all classes together (29 October 2026). The most common item in each slot comes first, with the share of players using it, then the runner-up. Weapons are grouped by line, because each class has its own.

Hover or tap an item to see its stats and where it drops.

Slot	Most worn	Typical +
Weapon	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord59%Splendent Wise Dragon Lord40%	+15
Off-hand	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Guard58%Splendent Wise Dragon Lord Guard40%	+15
Helmet	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Helm35%Splendent Wise Dragon Lord Helm26%	+15
Shoulders	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Pauldrons35%Nuakum Pauldrons27%	+15
Chest	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Breastplate34%Nuakum Breastplate29%	+15
Legs	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Greaves33%Nuakum Greaves29%	+15
Gloves	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Gloves38%Splendent Wise Dragon Lord Gloves27%	+15
Boots	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Boots34%Nuakum Boots27%	+15
Cloak	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Cloak35%Splendent Wise Dragon Lord Cloak27%	+15
Necklace	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Necklace52%Splendent Wise Dragon Lord Necklace37%	+15
Earrings	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Earrings50%Splendent Wise Dragon Lord Earrings36%	+15
Rings	Splendent Ebony Dragon Lord Ring56%Splendent Wise Dragon Lord Ring39%	+15
Bracelets	Ascension Bracelet50%Liberator Bracelet30%	+10
Belt	Noble Belt100%	+10
Amulet	Revelation Amulet76%Fierce Battle Amulet24%	+10
Runes	Clash Rune100%	+4

Global data from NCSOFT's official character profiles; player list from the global Combat Power leaderboard. Early days of the global launch: the sample grows every week.

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