AION 2 Unveils Its Biggest Update Yet: Optional PvP, Reduced Grind, and Major December Improvements

Table of Contents

• PvP Becomes Optional in Rifts via “War Mode”
• Rift Schedule and Capacity Reworked for Working Players
• Feather Traces (Monolith Feathers) Grind Cut by 75%
• Abyss Monolith Stats Moved to Safe Regions
• High-End PvE Difficulty Lowered + Free Ode Energy
• Abyss Points: From Daily Limits to Weekly Caps
• “Class Care” Weekly Balance Program (Starting With Spiritmaster)
• December 10: Cross-Server Auction House and Major UI Upgrades
• Shugo Festival Mini-Games: Anti-AFK and Fairer Rankings
• Mobile & Cross-Platform Control Improvements
• Pet Collection Costs Halved + Extra Pets Refunded
• Easier Access to Resurrection Stones
• Crackdown on Macro Users and Bot-like Behavior
• Attendance Calendar and Miscellaneous QoL
• Overall Direction: Less Stress, More Flexibility

NCSoft just outlined the biggest post-launch overhaul yet for AION 2, aiming to reduce grind, make PvP optional in most open-world content, and calm down a pretty angry Korean playerbase.

During a December 2 developer livestream, the team walked through changes arriving with the December 3 patch, plus follow-up updates on December 10 and December 17. Much of what they showed matches what’s already circulating in fan translations from Korean.

Below is a full, structured recap in English using all the info you shared.

PvP Becomes Optional in Rifts via “War Mode”

The biggest headline is a new toggleable PvP flag inside dimensional rifts:

• A new “War Mode” is being added specifically for rift content.
• Default is PvE: by default, all players enter rifts in a safe PvE mode, where they cannot be attacked by other players and cannot attack others.
• To participate in PvP, you must manually enable War Mode, which turns your name red and allows you to fight – and be fought.
• To prevent abuse, switching modes has a 70-minute cooldown (10 minutes while the portal is open + 60 minutes inside), so you can’t spam-toggle immunity mid-fight.
• Once you cross into the enemy faction’s world, you cannot change modes at all until you leave.

The idea is that players who love ganking and open-world fights still get that gameplay, while players who only want to quest and clear objectives can finally do rifts without being farmed.

Rift Schedule and Capacity Reworked for Working Players

Rift timing was also completely restructured to better match real-world schedules:

• Old system: portals opened every 4 hours and filled up fast.
• New system: rifts spawn every 3 hours instead, cycling through times like 2:00, 5:00, 8:00, 11:00, then back to 2:00, etc.
• Instance capacity is doubled from 200 to 400 players, greatly reducing queues and click-wars at the portal.

This is clearly targeted at working adults who were missing the late slot and losing an entire day of rift rewards.

Feather Traces (Monolith Feathers) Grind Cut by 75%

The infamous feather trace grind for Monoliths – which had turned into a pure “follow the map and click 560 times” chore – is being massively simplified:

• Each trace you find now counts as 4 feathers instead of 1.
• As a result, you now need to discover only 140 locations instead of 560 to complete the collection.
• This change is retroactive: players who already over-collected will receive Enhancement Stones as compensation (around 50 stones per extra feather, up to 84,000 stones per server).
• On December 17, feather progress will be synced account-wide on that server so your different characters share the same completion level (sealed dungeons and some other elements are not shared yet).

Developers openly admitted that turning exploration into a pure “checklist with an external map” was a mistake and said their goal now is to remove unnecessary routine without deleting rewards.

Abyss Monolith Stats Moved to Safe Regions

To address complaints that core character power was locked behind forced PvP in the Abyss:

• All core stat bonuses (the “god stats”) from Abyss Monoliths are being moved to Regional Monoliths in safe areas.
• Abyss Monoliths will remain, but will now focus on PvP-oriented buffs only.
• If you already finished the safe Regional Monoliths, you’ll simply log in after the patch and be stronger, because those ex-Abyss stats will be added on top automatically.

That means you no longer need to grind PvP zones just to keep up in basic PvE power.

High-End PvE Difficulty Lowered + Free Ode Energy

Several pieces of top-end content turned out to be overtuned for the average player:

• Tier 3 Expedition dungeons (especially Temple of Fire),
• High levels of Transcendence, and
• Bosses in Awakening modes

are all getting HP and difficulty reductions so more players can actually clear them.

To encourage people to test the new tuning:

• All players receive 10 Ode Energy after the update.
• On Saturday and Sunday, they get 3 more Ode Energy each day, for a short-term total of 16.

The devs specifically mentioned that many players were avoiding Tier 3 content entirely and just dumping Ode Energy into easier runs; this is meant to break that deadlock.

Abyss Points: From Daily Limits to Weekly Caps

The Abyss Point (AP) system is being re-framed to reduce daily pressure and allow more flexible play:

• Previously, there was an internal daily cap of 25,000 AP from PvE kill farming, which made AP feel like another daily chore.
• Now AP limits are weekly:
  • Up to 200,000 AP per week from PvE (monster hunting).
  • Up to 200,000 AP per week from PvP.
  • So you can earn up to 400,000 AP per week via combat.
• Across an 8-week season, the total cap is 2.5 million AP, intentionally lower than the theoretical 3.2M to avoid forcing people to grind every single week.
• AP gained from events and structured content (like sieges, Shugo Festival, etc.) does not count toward the cap.
• Ranking points for Abyss ladders keep accumulating even if you hit the AP limit.
• Lower-ranked players get a buff to AP acquisition, making it easier to catch up to the front-runners.

In other words, if you miss a few days, you can still catch up over the weekend or in later weeks.

“Class Care” Weekly Balance Program (Starting With Spiritmaster)

NCSoft is launching a weekly “Class Care” initiative to continuously adjust class balance instead of doing rare mega-patches.

First up is the Spiritmaster / Elementalist-type class:

• Its spirit mechanics are being redesigned:
  • Spirits will now automatically use abilities based on time intervals or number of basic attacks.
  • These actions build stacks used to trigger powerful conditional skills more fluidly.
• The goal is to increase DPS and usability without turning the class into macro-dependent piano spam.
• Other classes (including healers and support) are also slated for tweaks, but Spiritmaster is the first big focus.

On top of that, the passive skill often translated as “Will to Live” gets an extra baseline crowd-control resistance for all classes, making stuns and disables slightly less oppressive across the board (the Korean stream cited roughly +5% resistance).

December 10: Cross-Server Auction House and Major UI Upgrades

The unified cross-server Auction House, originally planned for December 2, has been delayed to December 10 due to critical bugs found in final QA.

When it arrives, it brings a wave of long-awaited quality-of-life UI features:

• Integrated auction house shared across servers for more stable prices and liquidity.
• Chat improvements:
  • Separate chat windows/tabs (Legion, Party, Whispers, etc.) you can move and arrange.
• Map and party info:
  • Share map coordinates directly in chat.
  • See party members’ level, class, and item level directly in the party-finder UI without opening additional info windows.
• Inventory QoL:
  • Drag & drop in inventory for better organization.
• Visibility improvements for large-scale fights in the Abyss, making the chaos of big battles easier to read.
• Early Christmas event starting December 10:
  • A month-long event with weekly rotating activities and rewards.

Shugo Festival Mini-Games: Anti-AFK and Fairer Rankings

The devs are closing a major loophole in the Shugo Festival mini-games:

• Mini-games now require a minimum score to qualify for rewards, so players who just stand AFK will no longer earn freebies.
• When multiple players tie in score, whoever reached that score faster will rank higher, instead of the system favoring earlier registrations.

This change is designed to prevent the event from turning into an AFK festival while still rewarding active participation.

Mobile & Cross-Platform Control Improvements (December 3)

Since AION 2 is cross-platform, the team is rolling out control upgrades on December 3 that focus on mobile (but also improve general controls):

• A target-lock camera mode where your character automatically moves around the locked target, making positioning easier in action-heavy fights.
• A new “smart dodge” feature that uses some light AI logic to perform more effective evasive movements when you dodge.
• A fix for the Tab-targeting bug where cycling targets sometimes didn’t work correctly.

The devs specifically highlighted that these tweaks made mobile play feel noticeably smoother in internal tests.

Pet Collection Costs Halved + Extra Pets Refunded

The very demanding Pet Collection (Pet Codex) system is being scaled back:

• The number of duplicate pets required for each collection entry is being reduced by 50%.
• This change is also retroactive: if you already burned extra pets to complete entries under the old requirements, the surplus will be refunded in the form of Soul Crystals (or similar pet-related currency).
• Pet collection progress is planned to be shared server-wide for your account (paid pets are treated more carefully, but the goal is to reduce grind).

Again, the philosophy is: keep the system, remove the unnecessary excess.

Easier Access to Resurrection Stones

To reduce dependence on cash shop items and rare event drops:

• Resurrection Stones can now be purchased directly from a Supply merchant using in-game currency:
  • Cost: 200,000 Kinah per stone.
  • Limit: 14 stones per week per account from this source.

This gives active players a reliable, non-whale way to stock up on res stones for difficult content.

Crackdown on Macro Users and Bot-like Behavior

The team also announced a much stricter stance on hardware and software macros:

• The number of Game Masters (GMs) assigned to monitoring has been significantly increased.
• Starting now, accounts caught using unauthorized macro tools or automation for gathering can face permanent bans.
• They are especially targeting:
  • External programs that hook into the game client.
  • Repetitive “no-input” gathering/harvesting patterns that clearly indicate automation.

A dedicated in-game reporting feature is also planned, but for now the devs say manual monitoring and log analysis will be heavily ramped up.

Attendance Calendar and Miscellaneous QoL

As a make-good for launch issues and patch delays, plus to let latecomers catch up:

• The Attendance Calendar / Login Event is being extended by 14 days, giving everyone more time to claim all rewards.
• More Ode Energy via push rewards (as mentioned above) to encourage players to try the newly tuned dungeons.
• Various UI and system polish:
  • Optional removal of certain world-map transition effects.
  • Improvements to dungeon matchmaking UI to show party member info at a glance.
  • Ongoing work on things like server transfers, character customization sharing, and storage improvements, slated for later in December and beyond.

Overall Direction: Less Stress, More Flexibility

Taken together, these changes show a clear shift in AION 2’s design priorities:

• PvP is no longer mandatory in most progression systems.
• Daily checklists (Abyss Points, feathers, pet collection) are being turned into weekly or greatly reduced grinds.
• High-end PvE is being tuned to be difficult but actually accessible, not just for the top 1%.
• Class balance is moving to a steady, weekly maintenance model instead of rare, disruptive mega-patches.
• UI and control changes, especially around December 10, aim to make the game feel less like a mobile port and more like a modern cross-platform MMO.