Aion 1.9 patch specifics with producer Chris Hager pt. 2

Combat balancing — new skills and two-handed weapon merge

Patch 1.9 will also be bringing 15 new skills to the table, spread across Aion's eight classes. Most of these skills are geared towards balancing combat, such as new skills that can break stun effects. Beyond the new skills, there will be around 17 to 20 class balancing changes as well, so keep an eye out for those in the patch notes.

However, a new major combat balancing component comes in the form of the two-handed weapon merge system.

"I always hated having my gladiator be unable to fight effecitvely with two-handed weapons because dual-wielding was more efficient," Hager commented. "Now, this new system should help balance the two combat forms out."

The merge system allows players to merge a more powerful two-hander with a less powerful two-hander, merging some of the statistics from the lower weapon into the higher one. A percentage of the stats, like damage, will be added to the more powerful weapon, but all of the slots of the lower weapon will be added to the higher one. This will bring two-handed weapons on par with those who dual wield, as they previously had double the slots available to them.

Money sinks down, experience gain up, item output up

And, of course, everyone's most wished for request finally came true — the infamous money sinks of flight transporation, teleportation, and spirit healing have been reduced. Now you can keep some of that Kinah in your pockets, instead of shelling it out just to get around the world. In addition, more flight points and bind points have been added to the maps where players naturally congregate, facilitating quicker travel.

Casual players can look forward to getting more experience with the new "energy of salvation" system, which will function as a rested experience system for the game. All players can also look forward to finding that many quests will have their experience rewards raised while campaign missions will offer more powerful loot for their ending rewards.

Lastly, drop rates on instance loot have been increased. So, hopefully, you won't have to run an instance over and over again for that one piece of loot you really wanted.

And that's only the highlights

We've only hit the high notes of the patch notes, so there's many more secrets hidden inside of those files. Patch 1.9 is just reaching the Korean test servers now, so it will be some time until we see it here in the Western world. The patch is also still a work in progress, so expect some of these details to change and morph over time.

For the full 26 page monster, though, keep an eye on the main Aion website for the recently translated information.