Full rundown
The weekly maintenance started on Oct 20 at 23:30 PDT, which is Oct 21 at 08:30 CEST. NCSOFT scheduled it for 5.5 hours, so the game should be back around 14:00 CEST (05:00 PDT). That is longer than the usual 3.5 to 4 hours. The patch notes are on the "Updates" board of the official site. Every past maintenance is listed in server status and maintenance.
This is the biggest patch since the global launch. It adds the first hard difficulty for dungeons and a Daevanion board that the global version did not have until now.
Krao Cave and Draupnir in Hard mode
Both dungeons are Expeditions, the dungeons for 1 to 5 players. Until now they had two modes, Exploration and Conquest (dungeon list, Krao Cave guide). Now there is a third one, Hard.
| Hard mode | |
|---|---|
| Required item level | 2600 |
| Boss Frenzy | after 4 minutes of the fight |
| Revives | 3 per player |
Frenzy is the time limit of a boss fight. In Conquest it comes after about 5 minutes: for the last 60 seconds you see a countdown on the boss HP bar, and after that the boss moves faster and hits several times harder (aion2maps, client data). In Hard you only get 4 minutes, so the group needs high damage, not just good defense.
The 2600 requirement is higher than the entry to Fire Temple and Ferocious Horn Den (2100). Most players do not have it yet. If you are still building your gear, see gear progression.
Hard mode rewards
- A chance at Philosopher's Stone: Revelation (Bound). You can also pick this stone as your guaranteed reward. It adds an extra stat line to Soul Bound gear. Until now, on global it only dropped from the Ludra raid (disabled since Oct 5) and was sold in the Season Shop (MetaBot).
- Ariel Fragment (Bound), the fragments for the new Ariel board (below). Each of the two dungeons drops a different fragment.
- More Kina than on Normal difficulty.
- Every Unique crafting material in one place: Wrathful Mind, Wrathful Will and Wrathful Ego.
- A chance at an Expedition Hero Artwork, a collectible picture. Completing the collection gives a new achievement.
- New achievements for Hard mode, which reward Unique skins.
What to do with Ariel Fragments
You convert fragments in Substance Morph:
| Conversion | Limit | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 100 Ariel Fragments → 1 Daevanion Crystal: Ariel (Bound) | up to 30 times per character | Special → Daevanion |
| 1 Ariel Fragment → 5 Enhance Stones | no limit | Special → Consumables |
So any fragments you do not need for the board can become Enhance Stones. NCSOFT also writes that the number of crystals from the conversion is limited separately for each dungeon. The notes do not say whether 30 is the limit per dungeon or for both together.
New Daevanion board: Ariel
Until today the global version had 5 boards: Nezekan, Zikel, Vaizel, Triniel and Azphel (Daevanion guide). Now a sixth one arrives, Ariel.
- You get Ariel board points only from Hard mode: collect Ariel Fragments and convert 100 of them into a crystal in Substance Morph.
- In the Korean version, Ariel opens at level 45 and is a PvE board: its core nodes give PvE Damage Boost (more damage against monsters) and PvE Damage Tolerance (less damage from monsters). It has its own point pool, so it does not take crystals from the first four boards (client data according to gamerstogether and kanonxo). The global notes do not describe the board's nodes, so check it in game.
- Azphel is its PvP counterpart. If you mostly play dungeons, Ariel matters more.
We will add Ariel to the Daevanion routes on the class pages once we see the board in the global client.
Rise to the Challenge: Resurrection Spiritstones for Kina (until Dec 16)
From this maintenance until the maintenance on Dec 16 (Dec 15 PST), the Wind Breeze Merchants shop (Shop → Wind Breeze Merchants) sells Resurrection Spiritstone (Season 1) for Kina. These are the stones you use to revive where you died.
| Step | Price | Amount | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| STEP 1 | 25,000 Kina | 30 stones | once a week per server |
| STEP 2 | 50,000 Kina | 30 stones | once a week per server |
- You can buy STEP 2 only after using up the STEP 1 limit. Together that is 60 stones for 75,000 Kina a week.
- When you revive, the game uses the event stones first, and only then your permanent Resurrection Spiritstones (Bound).
- The event stones disappear on Dec 16 at 00:00 PST (09:00 CET). They cannot be traded.
Abyss
- More players can enter the Abyss at once.
- The Dimensional Core in the Lower Abyss has more HP.
- All bosses in the Abyss have more HP.
- The Abyss bosses Kaira and Argo have slightly larger hitboxes, so they are easier to hit.
Class changes
Sorcerer (Sorcerer guide):
- Cold Storm: attacking a target with stacked Frostbite did not deal extra damage. Fixed.
- Cold Storm: the Frostbite effect did not match the skill level. Fixed.
- Cold Storm with Specialty 1: after the effect ended, Frostbite was applied once more to targets inside the storm. Fixed, so this extra Frostbite is gone.
- Fire Wall: the extra damage also hit targets without Embers. Fixed, so the bonus now only works on targets with Embers.
Chanter (Chanter guide): Spinning Strike did not display its skill effects correctly. Fixed.
These are bug fixes. The skill bar and stigmas in our class guides stay the same.
Other fixes
- The Market restriction on gathered materials was adjusted. Some players who were blocked can trade normally again; for others the restriction stays.
- Empyrean Traces (feathers) in Verteron (Dawn Legion Base and Zumion Village) that you could not reach because of the Halloween decorations were moved to reachable spots.
- The [Movement Controls] option no longer appears several times under Settings → Key Settings.
- Title effects now match the description in the item tooltip.