AION 2 Crafting Guide

AION 2 Crafting Guide Quick Overview:

1. AION 2 features 5 crafting professions: Blacksmithing, Armorsmithing, Handicrafting, Alchemy, Cooking.
2. Each crafting profession recipe usually includes materials gathered in the wilds along with materials acquired from crafting vendors.
3. High-level recipes use refined versions of crafting materials
4. Gathering in AION 2 is called Essence Extraction
5. Essence Extraction has 3 general gathering skills as well as 3 skills for each gatherable material type.

Would you like to level up your professions faster? Buy AION 2 Professions service and get any crafting profession to a desired level, or upgrade your essence extraction skills.

 

 

 

AION 2 Crafting and Essence Extraction Basics

AION 2 features a fully realized crafting and gathering system. Right off the gate, I’d like to say that players who have an active subscription would like to get busy with crafting mainly to sell the crafted items in the player market to make more Kina, while players without a subscription would like to use crafting and gathering just to sustain themselves by making something useful for their characters. It is entirely possible to craft armor and weapons for your class, although I’m not sure this would be better, easier, or faster than farming better gear in one of the PvE Activities. That being said, crafting gear upgrade resources might be useful to all players. Speaking of upgrades, check out my AION 2 gearing guide where I explain how to upgrade your gear and what kind of resources are used for that.

Both crafting professions and Essence Extraction cap at 100 total proficiency levels. The game splits those 100 levels into two ranks: Novice (Lv. 1-50) and Professional (Lv. 51-100), meaning you can level up your professions and gathering up to level 100. When you reach the level 50 cap, you have to undergo a “promotion” quest, which upgrades you from Novice to Professional and allows you to continue to level up. More on that later.

Lastly, crafting uses recipes, which come with their own level requirements and, of course, the list of required resources or materials needed to make an item. That’s the gist of it. Now, let’s take a closer look at gathering and crafting separately.

AION 2 Essence Extraction Explained

In AION 2, gathering is, for some reason, called Essence Extraction. It has two types of skills that allow you to be better at gathering materials in general, as well as specialize in gathering one of six types of materials. Also, unlike Crafting, gathering doesn’t have dedicated professions.

Before I start talking about skills and skill points, it’s important that you understand how the gathering process happens. Actually, gathering and crafting processes are similar.

Once you start gathering, you’ll see two gauges: one shows success and the other shows failure. Every equal number of seconds, either the success or failure bar fills up by a random amount. If the success bar reaches 100%, you’ll extract the material from the node; if the failure bar reaches 100%, you won’t. Each resource node can be used several times before it is depleted. Therefore, you can either succeed and extract from the same node, let’s say, 3 times, or fail 3 times. And the essence extraction skills, especially common ones, allow you to become more successful at extracting from nodes. That’s how the process works in general.

Common Skill Points

 

There are 3 Common Essence Extraction skills. These affect every resource you gather.

Common Skill	What It Does	Maximum Level
Proficient Handling	Increases how much the Success Gauge fills whenever you get a successful roll	10
Delicate Touch	Reduces how much the Failure Gauge increases on a failed roll	10
Lady Luck	Gives successful rolls a chance to massively increase the Success Gauge	10

 

Every time you level up essence extraction, you get 1 Common Skill Point, which you can then invest into one of these 3 common skills. 

A very important thing to understand here is that a higher level of a skill costs more skill points. Novice levels 1–5 cost 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 points respectively. Professional levels 6–10 then cost 5 points each. So fully maxing one Common skill costs 40 points.

You also have a chart with 3 axes that shows your alignment with these 3 skills:

• Adeptness = Proficient Handling
• Prudence = Delicate Touch
• Luck = Lady Luck

So that triangular graphic is essentially a visual representation of how you've distributed your Common skills. At Novice Lv. 1, all three are effectively at zero.

It is actually known by how much each of these 3 skills increases the success gauge or decreases the failure gauge, as well as increased luck chances:

 

Skill Level	Proficient Handling	Delicate Touch	Lady Luck
1	+5 Success Gauge	-8 Failure Gauge	8% chance for ×2.5 Success
2	+10	-16	12%
3	+15	-24	16%
4	+20	-32	20%
5	+25	-40	24%
6	+30	-48	27%, ×2.5 or ×4
7	+35	-56	30%, ×2.5 or ×4
8	+40	-64	33%, ×2.5 or ×4
9	+45	-72	36%, ×2.5 or ×4
10	+50	-80	40%, ×2.5 or ×4

Personally, I’m focused on making sure that I’m extracting successfully every time, so I’m leveling Proficient handling and Delicate Touch equally first.

Specialty Skill Points

So, Specialty Skill Points refer to specific material types:

1. Ore
2. Gem
3. Log
4. Herb
5. Ingredient
6. Odyle

Each one has 3 skills associated with them, but they’re all similar: Seeker → Plentiful Harvest → Appraiser.

Essence Type	Seeker	Plentiful Harvest	Appraiser
Ore	Shows Ore on minimap	Up to 30% double Ore	Up to 30% grade reroll
Gem	Shows Gems on minimap	Up to 30% double Gems	Up to 30% grade reroll
Log	Shows Logs on minimap	Up to 30% double Logs	Up to 30% grade reroll
Herb	Shows Herbs on minimap	Up to 30% double Herbs	Up to 30% grade reroll
Cooking Ingredient	Shows ingredients on minimap	Up to 30% double ingredients	Up to 30% grade reroll
Odyle	Shows Odyle on minimap	Up to 30% double Odyle	Up to 30% grade reroll

You also get a very limited amount of Specialty Skill Points per essence extraction level:

Essence Extraction Level	Specialty Points Awarded
10	+1
20	+1
30	+1
40	+1
50	+2
60	+1
70	+1
80	+2
90	+2
100	+2

That’s a total of 14 points. Fully maxing one resource category costs:

• Seeker: 1
• Plentiful Harvest: 3
• Appraiser: 3

That's 7 Specialty Points per resource type. Since you only receive 14 points in total, you could theoretically completely max two of the six resource categories, or distribute those points more broadly. That makes the Specialty tree much more of an actual build choice than the shared Essence Extraction level itself.

Gathered material quality

Ore, Gems, Logs, and Odyle can have several material grades, while Herbs and Cooking Ingredients behave somewhat differently. For example, there are four versions for Ore, Gem, Log, and Odyle nodes, including progressively higher-quality variants. Herbs have a more limited quality structure, and Cooking Ingredients generally don't follow the same four-grade progression.

For example, Odyle has:

• Odyle
• Fine Odyle
• Pure Odyle
• Radiant Odyle

When you interact with a node, you might get lucky and start extracting a higher grade of a material. On top of that, the node can additionally drop Poko's Skin Bundle (Bound) as a bonus item.

Skill Reset

You also have the Skill Reset button which allows you to respect your point investments. But you have to pay 50,000 Kina, which refunds your Essence Extraction skill allocation so you can redistribute it. This matters because 14 Specialty Points aren't enough to build all six branches fully. You're not permanently trapped by an early choice, but changing specialization isn't free.

Aion 2 Crafting Explained

Crafting in AION 2 uses the same basic Success versus Failure system as Essence Extraction. Every recipe has its own Required Proficiency Level, while each crafting profession has a separate Current Proficiency Level. When you start crafting, the game runs a sequence of turns where either the Success Gauge or Failure Gauge increases. If the Success Gauge reaches its target first, the craft succeeds. If the Failure Gauge reaches its target first, the craft fails.

Each recipe has different Success and Failure Gauge values, so recipes do not all have the same base success rate. Your proficiency also matters. The larger the difference between your profession level and the recipe requirement, the better your maximum success chance usually becomes. This increase is not linear, though, and some proficiency differences can result in the same displayed probability.

You can check the exact chance before crafting through the Crafting Chance window. The Expected Probability tab shows the maximum success probability based on the difference between your current proficiency and the recipe requirement. The displayed value also takes the recipe’s gauge information, proficiency adjustments, and other applicable modifiers into account.

For example, a recipe requiring Novice Lv. 1 can have a basic success chance of about 95.20% when your proficiency matches the requirement. With a proficiency difference of +3, that same recipe can reach roughly 95.74%. At higher differences, the chance continues to improve, although not by a fixed amount every level.

Proficiency Difference	Example Basic Success Chance
0	95.200927%
1	95.587774%
2	95.724539%
3	95.739046%
4	95.739046%
5	95.888298%
6	96.467538%
7	96.837241%
8	96.837241%

A failed craft still consumes the materials used in the attempt. However, both successful and failed crafts contribute proficiency EXP, so failures are not completely wasted from a leveling perspective. You should also avoid starting a craft in a dangerous area. If you are hit while crafting, the process is canceled, counts as a failure, and the materials are still consumed.

Crafting Stations

You can’t craft anything from the crafting menu, instead, you must find crafting stations in one of the major cities or towns for your faction. Only by interacting with a specific crafting station can you actually start crafting.

Faction	Crafting Station Locations
Elyos	Dawn Legion Base and Zumion Village in Verteron
Asmodians	Safe Haven and Nornir Assembly in Altgard

The crafting areas also have profession merchants nearby. These vendors sell the supplementary materials used in recipes, such as solvents, oils, powders, seasonings, and other profession-specific reagents. A simple early example is Orichalcum Ingot, which combines gathered Orichalcum Ore with Orichalcum Solvent bought from the Blacksmithing Shop.

There are six crafting-related merchant types worth mentioning:

Merchant	Shop
Blacksmith Merchant	Blacksmithing Shop
Armorsmith Merchant	Armorsmithing Shop
Handicraft Merchant	Handicrafting Shop
Alchemy Merchant	Alchemy Shop
Cooking Merchant	Cooking Shop
Morph Merchant	Substance Morph Shop

The first five naturally correspond to the five crafting professions. The Morph Merchant is slightly different because it serves Substance Morph rather than a normal crafting profession. Current Global shop data lists Blacksmithing, Armorsmithing, Handicrafting, Alchemy, Cooking, and Substance Morph Shops in Verteron and Altgard.

Crafting Materials and Recipe Requirements

Every recipe has its own material list and proficiency requirement. Basic recipes usually combine gathered materials with reagents purchased from crafting vendors. Higher-level recipes can also require processed materials, upgraded resource grades, monster drops, or materials obtained from PvE activities.

A simple early Blacksmithing recipe is Orichalcum Ingot:

Recipe	Required Materials
Orichalcum Ingot	Orichalcum Ore ×2, Orichalcum Solvent (Bound) ×1

Processed materials like ingots are then used in more advanced recipes. This creates a natural crafting chain where raw gathered resources are first refined and later turned into equipment, consumables, or other materials.

Crafting quantity can also be adjusted before starting. The interface lets you increase the number of items you want to make or use MAX to craft as many as your current materials allow.

 

 

Crafting Combo

Certain recipes can trigger an additional mechanic called COMBO crafting. A Combo can only happen after a normal craft succeeds. If the recipe supports it, a separate Combo activation chance is checked, allowing you to attempt an improved result.

The game tracks Basic crafting probability and Combo probability separately. You can switch between them in the Expected Probability menu to see how your proficiency affects both.

Combo crafting is especially important for equipment recipes because it can produce improved versions of crafted items. In some progression chains, these upgraded results are required for later recipes, so simply succeeding at the normal craft is not always the final step.

The basic flow looks like this:

1. Meet the recipe's proficiency requirement.
2. Provide the required materials.
3. Start the craft.
4. Success and Failure Gauges compete.
5. The craft either succeeds or fails.
6. Materials are consumed either way.
7. Profession EXP is gained.
8. If the recipe supports COMBO, a successful craft can trigger an additional Combo attempt.

Crafting Profession Levels

Each crafting profession levels separately. Raising Blacksmithing does not increase Armorsmithing, Handicrafting, Alchemy, or Cooking.

All five professions use the same overall progression:

Rank	Levels
Novice	Lv. 1–50
Professional	Lv. 51–100

At Novice Lv. 50, you need to complete the corresponding promotion before continuing as a Professional. This means every profession can reach 100 total proficiency levels.

Higher proficiency does two things at once: it unlocks recipes with higher requirements and improves your success chances on recipes below your current level. Because of that, leveling a profession is useful even after you have already unlocked the recipe you want to make.

Crafting Recipe Categories

Each profession also divides its recipes into its own categories. For example, Blacksmithing includes:

Crafting Profession	Exact Crafting Categories
Blacksmithing	Greatswords, Longswords, Daggers, Maces, Guards, and Blacksmithing Materials
Armorsmithing	Chest Armor, Leg Armor, Helms, Pauldrons, Gloves, Boots, Cloaks, and Armorsmithing Materials
Handicrafting	Bows, Staves, Necklaces, Earrings, Rings, Bracelets, and Handicrafting Materials
Alchemy	Spellbooks, Orbs, Potions, Serums, Scrolls, Manastones, Soulstones, and Alchemy Materials
Cooking	Food and Cooking Materials/Seasonings

The other four professions use their own recipe categories, which makes it easier to find the type of item you want to craft.

AION 2 Crafted Item Quality

Crafted items in AION 2 use the same item-grade system as the rest of the game. For equipment currently available in the Global client, the relevant grades are Common, Rare, Epic, and Unique. Heroic and Mythic exist in the broader item-grade system, but current weapons, armor, and accessories top out at Unique.

Crafted gear does not stay at the same grade throughout its progression. As you move through a crafting line, later recipes create higher-grade versions of the same equipment type. For example, an Orichalcum weapon starts at Common, while later Expert, Artisan, and Dragon Lord versions move through Rare, Epic, and Unique grades.

AION 2 also uses Splendent versions of crafted equipment. Splendent is not a separate item grade by itself. It is an improved crafting result that can appear through Crafting Combo and is often higher-grade than the normal result. These Splendent items are important because later recipes can require them as ingredients for the next step in the crafting chain.

A simple weapon progression looks like this:

Crafted Item	Grade
Orichalcum weapon	Common
Splendent Orichalcum weapon	Rare
Expert's Orichalcum weapon	Rare
Expert's Splendent Orichalcum weapon	Epic
Artisan's Orichalcum weapon	Epic
Artisan's Splendent Orichalcum weapon	Unique
Dragon Lord weapon	Unique

This is separate from the quality variants used by some gathered materials, which I covered earlier in the Essence Extraction section. In crafting, Common, Rare, Epic, and Unique describe the grade of the finished item, while terms such as Splendent describe a particular crafting result or step in the recipe progression.

Read our other AION 2 guides:

• AION 2 Leveling Guide
• AION 2 Beginner's Guide
• AION 2 Best Settings Guide

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