Chanter Talk

Winds of Fate - Manakarna Part I

Previously, I did not cover much of this in-depth, because the details regarding this were scarce (players were doing lots of testing then). But now that strategies has been consolidated by Korean, Japanese and Chinese players, you can be assured that most of the information are now set in stone.

There’s too much to cover in one single post, so I’ll be splitting them into two parts for easier reading.

General Instance Info:

- Available to Level 65+ - 12 man instance - Resets weekly at 9am, has an entry count of 2 - Instance entrances are outlined in green (refer to screenshot), asmo map on the left, elyos map on the right - The instance has an easy mode and a hard mode, you will only face Beritra’s dragon form if you select hard mode. The hard mode selection is triggered by killing his seal keepers - Rewards include GP and equipment bundles, the amount and grade are determined by the mode difficultly (if you want mythics, opt for hard mode)

As far as I’m aware, there are no entry requirements relating to quests/campaigns. As long you hit level 65, you will be valid for entry. There are also quests for the instance you can take up, which rewards EXP, enchantment stone bundles and legion coins.

Class Setup

With 12 slots, choices are limited; and what’s more, one half of your alliance has to be composed of magic DPS, and the other half being melee DPS. For obvious reasons, these are the compulsory classes:

- Cleric - Chanter - Songweaver

You will have to allocate at least 4 slots for these classes (the lowest amount I have seen by far). One songweaver is usually enough, you can choose to bring more but you will lose out in terms of debuff/nuking diversity.

This is an example of a standard setup:

Group 1: Templar, Cleric, Gladiator, Gladiator, Assassin, Chanter

Group 2: Cleric, Songweaver, Spiritmaster, Sorcerer, Sorcerer, Aethertech

A templar is not mandatory, gladiators or aethertechs can swap in as a main tank, though this is usually recommended for experienced players. You will need at least one leather class due to hidden mobs at one stage of the instance.

Feel free to customize the class setup according to availability and preference.

Stats Recommendation

I have browsed many guides made by Korean, Japanese and Chinese players and they all have a slight difference in opinions regarding this. But there is a base minimum that most can agree to.

Magic: At least 4000+ Magic Boost and 2000+ Magic Accuracy

Melee: At least 3000+ Accuracy and 1100+ Physical Crit/Attack (you’ll really need a high crit rating if you want to see crit damage happening)

Naturally, if you can boost these figures even higher than the recommended range, that would be great. The following figures take buffs and food into consideration. This also applies to the tankers, there is little emphasis for HP, Block or MR, if you can’t do damage (and if you miss a lot of your attacks), you can’t hold aggro, period.

As for the HP range, this one is more focused towards healers, particularly the clerics. A safe range would be 19,000 HP onwards, absolute minimum would be somewhere in the 18,000 HP range onwards.

Aion - Enchanting Revamp (20 May 2015)

Korea just dropped the biggest bombshell today. Come 20 May 2015, there will be some minor (and yet rather earth-shattering) changes done to enchanting.

1. Improved benefits to upgraded armour

Currently, the only benefits for upgrading armour are:

- Physical Defense - Strike Resist - HP - Magical Defense

It’s not as rewarding as compared to enchanting a weapon. In fact, if not for PVP, nobody would bother enchanting armours in the first place. The first part of the update will be applying Attack and Magic Boost stats to upgraded armours. Based on the example provided, it’s save to conclude that the formula will be

- +1 Attack/enchant level - +4 MB/enchant level

Both stats will be applied universally to all types of armours (PVE/PVP).

2. Reduced Penalties for +11 ~ +15, general changes for Omega stones

I think most of us should be familiar with the outrage and grief involving +15. Currently, the penalty imposed on failing an upgrade between +11 and +15 onwards, is that it resets the enchant level to +10.

To summarize, these are the upcoming changes for this part:

- Failing an upgrade between +11 ~ +15 will only cause the enchant level to drop by 1 - When using Omega Enchantment stones, the success rate becomes 100%* - The upgrade probability of a +2/+3 jump will now be applied to +11 ~ +15 enchant levels* - Increased drop rate on Omega Enchantment stones from regular mobs

*only applies to Master Server

3. Simplified Amplification process 

NCsoft has received feedbacks regarding the Amplification process, and they (finally) realized how redundant and torturing the current system is. The update will automatically put any equipment in amplified state upon reaching +15 enchant status.

Naturally, failing an enchant +15 onwards will still bring the equipment back to +15 BUT it’s amplified status will be retained. Once the update arrives, Amplification Tools/Stones are no longer usable.

Final Notes: Before anyone runs out to start hoarding Omega stones and getting rid of their Amplification stones, do take note it will take a while before this patch finally comes to NA (we also won’t get it immediately with our Upheaval patch, based on what it was like with the stigma/skill and socketing revamp).

Master Server - April Updates

Korea recently unlocked another tier of contents for the Master Server. To quickly summarize this:

Character/Class changes

- Level cap has been raised to 50, with this also introduces another additional stigma slot - All classes have their skills unlocked from level 46~50, as well as having skills re-introduced at a lower level (eg. a level 60 skill brought forward to level 41) - EXP bar now displays % instead of numerical figures

PVE changes

- New instances unlocked - Dark Poeta, Adma Stronghold, Theobomos Lab. Instance entrances have been restored to their former locations (unlike Live Server), Dark Poeta’s instance entrance has been relocated to Lower Abyss - Commander Bakarma is unlocked for Draupnir Cave (previously, it was locked) - While no reset scrolls are introduced to the Master Server, players now have an option to reset their instance cooldown by clicking the “+" button next to the entry count. Cooldown will reset by 1, and utilizes kinah to do so

PVP/AP changes

- Dredgion PVP instance has been unlocked - PVP dailies introduced in the Abyss - Fortress next vulnerability notice has been improved upon; rather than to address the fortress’s condition per hourly update, it now tells you the countdown to the next vulnerability (this change has also been applied to Live Servers) - Increased AP rewards from lower fortress AP instances - Deity Generals have their stats increased

Item changes

- New series of equipment introduced (Dark Poeta/Adma Stronghold/Theobomos Lab/Elite 50/Commander Bakarma/Heiron World Bosses) - Potion and Scroll clean-up (this change has also been applied to Live Servers)

Winds of Fate - Mythic Equipment Rentals

NCsoft has been making it easy for newbies or people returning back to the game. The recent update introduced mythic grade rental equipment.

The NPCs selling the rental equipment can be found in either Pandemonium/Sanctum or the Abbey, and naturally, the prices will definitely be cheaper in the Abbey (refer to third screenshot, the lower prices are from the Abbey).

The base stats on the rental gear are also adjusted to accommodate to most standard level 65 PVE content. There is a stat comparison between the rental equipment to ancient coin gear (and +5 ancient coin gear), so you can see the disparity. As with rental equipment, they come with no manastone sockets and they will disappear when their 14-day rental date is up (countdown begins upon purchase).

Winds of Fate - General Potion/Scroll Reorganization

NCsoft is still cleaning up their databases and the next target they have set their sights on are the general potions and buff scrolls. This news will be more of an interest to players who dabble in Alchemy, and preferring to craft their own potions and scrolls.

As you all know, these are the current grades of potions we have available:

- Lesser - Normal (having no form of prefix, eg. Life Potion) - Greater - Major - Fine - Superior

After the reorganization update, these will be the grades available:

- Normal - Major - Superior

Just to clarify, the existing stock of items that players may have will not be deleted. But their sources will be completely halted, just as NCsoft did with the godstone cleanup. As a result of the clean-up, crafting under Alchemy will be affected as well.

One huge change is probably the transfer of lower grade recipes and their materials to Superior grade potions. I assume that with the deletion of the old maps, certain materials become even harder to come by. Even as we speak, it takes way too much kinah sink to even justify the efforts of crafting or purchasing Superior grade potions.

Superior Recovery Serum (refer to second screenshot) for eg. will now only require

1 x Fresh Liconsis/Hintera 1 x Fresh Plia/Zeldt 3 x Fine Elemental Water 3 x Glass Bottle

A little downside of this is that the yield becomes a 1 instead of the previous 3. Moving on to general buff scrolls*, these are the current grades of scrolls we have available:

- Lesser - Normal (having no form of prefix, eg. Awakening Scroll) - Greater

After the reorganization update, these will be the grades available:

- Greater

There’s only one standard type of buff scroll now, the crafting process will also reflect the clean-up done. They will still require different grades of materials but the only change is the yield (refer to third screenshot).

For players who may be still holding on to old stock of potions, morph recipes have been introduced (refer to fourth screenshot) to allow them to morph their old grades to the current grade stocks.

*this refers to the following buff scrolls:

It’s unlikely NA will ever see them, but here’s to satisfy the curious minds.

These fancy bubbles above the players’ heads are actually known as “말풍선 타이틀” or Achievement Titles (here come the “achievement unlocked” jokes). There’s no tentative English term for it, it just makes it easier for people to understand at one glance.

These titles were actually introduced in the 2.5 patch but they recently got expanded upon in the Winds of Fate patch. They also seem to be Korean server exclusive as well, because I have yet to see them outside of Korea.

The titles are not permanent, and they’re really just “badges” to show off your unlocked achievements (server-wide contest). Some of these titles range from a temporary basis of daily to monthly. The reset period occurs after server maintenance (after their specified given duration) and you would have to unlock them in order to use them again.

You can also choose to turn off display for these Achievement Titles, for either yourself or your allies (you can’t see the Achievement Titles of the opposing faction).

There are currently 5 categories as of the Winds of Fate patch:

- PVP - PVE - Special  - Item - Housing

Some examples from each category:

PVP

- Faction that has scored the highest no. of kills on the opposition (Daily, only one faction will get this) - Player that scored the highest amount of kills from Arena of Glory (Weekly) - Player that has the most no. of Transforms attempted (Weekly, applies to 5 * Officers and higher)

PVE

- Player that has achieved the highest score in the Eternal Bastion (Weekly) - Player that has killed Hyperion the most number of times (Weekly) - Player that has won the most victories from Kamar Battlefield (Weekly)

Special

- Player that rakes up the highest amount of Transformation Candy usage (Weekly) - Player that has dyed the most number of items (Weekly) - Player that has completed the most number of quests (Weekly)

Item

- Player that has the highest number of dice-roll passes from loot  - Player that has attempted the highest amount of manastone socketing - Player that has exchanged the highest amount of AP from relics (Weekly)

Housing

- Own a luxury home (as long it’s not a Studio) - Player that has made the highest amount of contributions to the neighbourhood development (Weekly, the daily quests in each housing district) - Player with the highest amount of plant decor in their garden (Weekly)

Winds of Fate - 봉인된 지식의 전당 (Sealed Danaur Mysticarium)

My apologies if this was late, prior to this, I had zero information regarding this instance aside from a few screenshots and videos in circulation. As previously mentioned, Danaur Mysticarium will be removed in the upcoming Winds of Fate patch. In it’s place is a new solo instance that utilizes mini-games while recycling the map.

The instance is available to both factions via the Legion Halls. If you are clueless about the latter, you can read up the information regarding them here.

A very quick summary regarding this instance:

- Available to Level 65+ - Solo instance - Unlimited entries, but requires an entry fragment per run - Three mini-game modes - Rewards consist of AP relics, manastone and composite manastone bundles (you may or may not receive all of them simultaneously)

You will need to complete an introductory quest in order to unlock the instance. It’s a simple talking quest in which you can receive from an NPC at the default faction’s base the moment you enter 시그니아/엔샤르. Completing this quest also awards you an entry fragment (see second image).

This instance has no cooldowns, basically, how many times you can run it is dependent on how many entry fragments you have. You can obtain the entry fragments via two methods:

1) Completing weeklies, there are three of them, one per Legion Hall. One quest will award two entry fragments. The weekly consists of a simple monster hunt (6 kills) around 시그니아/엔샤르.

*tl;dr - 6 entry fragments per week

2) Mindless grinding of mobs around 시그니아/엔샤르, which can randomly drop the entry fragments. Take note that the entry fragments themselves are not tradable, so this is not a very reliable method.

As mentioned, the instance presents you three types of mini-game modes. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to select the type of mini-game, it’s completely random per run.

1) Monster Hunt - Video Link

2) Key Collection - Video Link

3) Tower Defense - Video Link

With the exception of Monster Hunt, the other two modes only utilize a very small portion of the map (refer to third image). There is technically no time limit (aside from the Key Collection part), so this is a do-it-at-your-own-pace of instance.