Wings Over Atreia: Greed is Good

The world of Atreia can be a bit unforgiving to the uninitiated, particularly when it comes to providing for your Daeva's economic well-being. Gear costs kinah, Aion's currency, and new skills cost even more kinah. Attaining level 40 last week set my sorcerer back over 800 thousand smackers. Granted, I got some nifty new death-dealing skills for my trouble, but I also parted with nearly all my net worth.

What's that you say? You want to advance your crafting and gathering skills beyond the newb tier? Yep, you guessed it, get ready to shell out some more kinah. In fact, skilling up a single crafting discipline to the mastery level will cost you between 2 and 2.5 million kinah, not including the cost of the materials needed to craft the work orders. Gathering is similarly expensive, though it doesn't require materials like crafting, only level tier purchases. Finally, there is the Soul Healer, that bank account black hole that has sucked many millions of mah money into the nether regions of NCSoft's server nebula, for, every time I die in PvE, it's off to see the Soul Healer to regain a bit of lost experience. As of level 40, my average trip to this big-hat buffoon costs between 40 and 50 thousand kinah. Last week, after a particularly unfortunate pickup group, I wracked up a 300 thousand kinah Soul Healing bill.

Fly past the cut for some Aion kinah-making strategies.

At times like these, Aion can be an exercise in frustration, particularly if you're used to the way that gold literally lines the streets of most contemporary MMOs. Money-sinks are plentiful in Atreia (though there are whispers of easier times ahead in a forthcoming patch), and dying is rather unforgiving if you don't spend a little time cultivating your nest egg or raiding your main's bank account. Fear not though, dear Daeva, as Wings Over Atreia is here for you. This week we'll do our best Gordon Gecko and throw a few nuggets of financial wisdom your way.

First off, let me be completely honest and say that the easiest way to make kinah in Aion is to find yourself a sugar mama (or daddy, as the case may be). The money-making know-how I'm about to dispense is all well and good, but you'll save yourself a pile of time and trial and error if you can sweet-talk your significant other into doing it for you (this is my semi-obnoxious way of saying thank you, dear). Now, with that out of the way, let's look at a few ways that you (or your benefactor) can move your Daeva firmly into the upper middle class tax bracket. This list is by no means exhaustive, and it is presented in order from easiest to most difficult.

The Magic of Gathering

Gathering in Aion is a love/hate proposition. Many players find it tedious and avoid it altogether, whereas others find it a relaxing way to de-stress and earn substantial profits over time. Crafters blow through a lot of raw materials making consumables, and consequently the demand for materials will always exist. The key here is bundling your stacks of goods and keeping an eye on the market. As an example, alchemists need a lot of Fresh Amalil and Fresh Nepeta to make Greater Health and Mana potions. Rather than dumping the sum total of a gathering run onto the broker in one fell swoop, I like to bundle my raw materials in stacks of ten, or at most, twenty, and price them out to be just a tad cheaper than the current low item price (per single item, mind you). Crafters don't want to be nickel and dimed to death by buying a single Amalil for 750 kinah, but they also don't want to have to dump 300 thousand on a stack of a hundred. Palatable stacks of ten to twenty strike that happy balance and result in consistent profits.

Romancing the Manastone

Green manastones usually sell for a tidy profit, particularly those with pluses to criticals or attacks. Since they don't drop as often as regular manastones, obtaining them can be time-consuming, unless you avail yourself of the manastone quests available from all of the manastone-remover NPCs found throughout Atreia's cities and townships.

Many players avoid these quests due to the paltry XP and kinah payouts, but each quest turn-in gives you a shot at a green manastone reward. Given the fact that common manastones are the only thing required to complete the quests, all you need do is buy the required stones, normally dirt cheap on the broker, and then complete the quest. Spending a couple hundred kinah on the chance to get a green manastone that you can immediately sell for 50 thousand is a no-brainer, but surprisingly few people do it.

Trading Places

Trading, like gathering, is predicated upon your play style and your patience. Playing the auction house has evolved into an art form in games ranging from EVE Online to World of Warcraft, and Aion is no different. Buying low and selling high may seem like common sense, but it's amazing to see just how many people throw items up on the vendor willy-nilly, unwittingly providing resellers with the patience to play the market for a few days with a steady source of income.

The key here is persistence. If you're detail-oriented and you don't mind spending a half hour or so paging through the broker checking out prices, you will make money at reselling. Timing is also critical. The absolute worst time to try and make money at trading is on or just after one of NCSoft's increasingly frequent double XP weekends. Everyone and their dog is out grinding away for 48 hours straight, resulting in an auction house that is completely flooded with item drops and components that are otherwise somewhat rare during normal gameplay periods.

Balaur Farmville

Farming Balaur mobs in the Abyss is probably the most common way to earn kinah. Everyone does it at one time or another, and many players earn their keep exclusively through selling Balaur drops. As your character hits level 25, get thee to yonder Abyss and start killing those pesky Balaur. Not only will you get a decent amount of item drops for your trouble, but you also receive AP (Abyss Points, or PvP currency) as well as better PvE XP than non-Abyss mobs.

Higher level Balaur are especially profitable, due to the fact they drop between 200 and 500 kinah per mob as well as items ranging from scales, to skins, to horns, to blood stains, all of which fetch high prices at the auction house due to their utility as crafting components.

She's Crafty

You've probably heard the capitalist adage that it takes money to make money, and, though Aion's economy is far from a free market, the principle holds true when applied to the game's crafting system. It is for this reason that I list it as the least desirable money-making method from the perspective of a newer player. Crafting is perhaps the most expensive portion of Aion's gameplay, and advancing to mastercraft while simultaneously leveling a character to 50 is liable to result in a bit of 'where did my kinah go' head-scratching. If you're foolhardy enough to attempt two crafting professions simultaneously, as your humble correspondent did, it will unequivocally bankrupt you before you master either.

Once your Daeva is comfortably in their 40s, you can start to devote some attention to serious crafting, and making large sums of kinah for your efforts, but trying to earn a living at early levels is nearly impossible without an alt, a buddy, or better yet a guild supplying you with resources and seed money. When you do decide to take up a tradeskill, it's advisable to pick one that specializes in consumables (potions, food, etc), as these items never go out of style and can be somewhat profitable even at lower crafting levels. Armor and weaponsmithing, on the other hand, are really only profitable towards end game, as many people rely on loot drops and quest rewards while leveling, which results in lukewarm demand for lower level crafted equipment.

Old Reliables

If none of the preceding avenues appeal to you, there's always the old standbys of mob grinding and repeatable quests. If you can stomach the boredom, killing humanoid mobs will reward you with small amounts of coin as well as loot. In addition, there are many repeatable quests throughout the game world (usually capped at 100 repeats per quest) that pay small amounts of kinah. Some are faster than others, and the key is to grab the repeatables well below your level so that you can blow through the mobs and quickly work out the fastest route to and from the quest-giver in order to maximize your hourly yield.

Short of lucking out and getting a gold drop on your first few mobs, there are no short cuts to wealth in Aion. The game is less forgiving than most in terms of money sinks, so you'll need to have a plan and stick with it for a few days before throwing up your hands and asking for a bailout. That said, using one or all of the strategies outlined above will more than pay for your leveling costs, and should set you on the road to Daevic wealth.

Look! Up in the air! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a snarky Daeva! Join Jef Reahard every Monday for news and views from the world of Aion. Whether he's soaring over the battlefield or hunkered down in the trenches, Jef is your combat correspondent in the world of Atreia.