Happy Halloween!

One of the things we got the last few days is special Halloween candies that turn you into various monsters when you eat them. These are just for fun, and here is what a couple of them look like:

Trick or Treat!

Exploring the Abyss

We were also excited to leave the safety of  Teminon Landing and venture out into the Abyss. Most places are pretty dark and scary. There are ghosts and other monsters on many of the small islands, some of them have quests to complete too. There are also some really cool sights to see here.

Here we ventured way across close to the Asmodian base camp. Unfortunately, we didn’t know in advance that a forcefield surrounds these camps and if you’re from the other side, you get killed instantly by them!

We did encounter Asmodian players several times while we were out here. We’re still new at this so we got killed several times, but we did also manage to kill a few of them!

We did some grinding quests on one of these islands until we both got to level 26. Then later we did Training Grounds again and now we’ve both dinged 27!

 

Nochsana Training Grounds

The Nochsana Training Grounds is the first real instance that Aion offers. You can only enter here after you reach level 25 and have access to the Abyss, and you can’t enter after you reach level 29. For a few levels, it’s a great way to get a lot of exp in a short amount of time, and it’s pretty fun too! This is for a full six-man group, and there are a few quests you can complete while you are in here.

At the end of the instance, there is of course a boss. As long as you have a half-way decent group, he seems to go down pretty easy. He can drop some decent gear if you get lucky too!

 

In to the Abyss

If you’re an Elyos like us, you arrive in the Abyss at Teminon Landing. This is the only safe place to hang around here. You can potentially be attacked by Asmodians in any other location. There were a bunch of quests to get here, and it has shops, warehouse access, brokers and pretty much anything you need except crafting facilities.

Several of the quests here do not require you to leave this safe fortress. You basically talk to several NPCs and learn a lot about the Abyss, how each side can capture fortresses and gain control, and about the artifacts that give a powerful advantage to the side that controls them.

There are also a set of group quests for the Nochsana Training Camp. This is an instanced battlefield within the Teminon Landing area. This is great place to get a lot of exp quickly, so this is the first thing we wanted to do.

Finally! Level 25

It didn’t take too long grinding on more flaming trees for us to finally both get to level 25!

Now it was off to complete an assortment of entry quests needed to enter the abyss. Somehow, not a single screenshot was taken during that process. I think we were in a big rush to get through it. Basically, you take a multiple choice quiz to see if you understand what the Abyss is about, and you choose a solo fight challenge you need to win, and then you perform some flight training in Eltnen by flying through an assortment of rings within a time limit. Finally, the location of the Abyss entry portal is revealed! We completed all of this, and were on our way…

Back to Theobomos

We switched back to Theobomos again next time, working on an assortment of questson the way to level 25.

We killed nasty bird ladies…

and little Kerubar troll thingies…

Outlaw humans for the bounty hunter…

and flaming trees in the Scorchlands…

But 25 would not come on this night either…

 

Eltnen Desert

After spending time in Theobomos, it was back to the Eltnen desert where we finally got to level 24. We were getting excited to hit level 25 now, so we could finally go to the Abyss. We did a bunch of quests here and chased some Asmos around in the desert, but we didn’t make it to 25 this night…

Theobomos

Quests in Eltnen seem to mix with ones in Theobomos at around the same level, so we’ve been working on things in both areas now. Both of these regions seem quite large, so I think we’ll be here for a while now. Last night we spent our time killing skeletons, zombies, and really cool ghosts that carry around their head on the end of a chain!

We also have both got some new gear in the past couple of days.

Finishing up in Verteron

We finally decided to finish up the last of our quests in the Verteron region. There were a few things left to do in the Tsurin Outpost, and these require a larger group of players. We went in with Bootymang and a few other random people and finished everything we needed quickly and easily!

Here we are completing the final campaign mission for Verteron, Sealing the Abyss Gate.

Visiting the Dark Side

We got our first small taste of Aion PvP the other night. First, we did an Eltnen Spy quest that involves an NPC doing a teleportation experiment. You get to select a friendly region to be sent to, and you accidently wind up in enemy territory. While you initially land high up out of harms way, flying down to the surface is dangerous!

Later we received the second quest in this series, which involves going to enemy territory on purpose and coming back with drops from a mob only found on the other side. We haven’t completed this one yet. We had to find a rift to complete this one, and once we did we joined a higher level character that needed a similar quest. On our first attempt, we got in ok, but eventually ran into Garrison NPCs on patrol that killed us immediately. By the time we made our back to the rift for a second try, a large group of enemy players was waiting on the other side of the rift, so we had no chance. We’ll have to try this one another day.

We did go in one other time and killed some bot players and a couple real ones. It was fun and exciting. I was so jazzed being there that of course I got no screen shots… Maybe next time.