AP Gaining Methods

[Berabouman]

Hi all, I'm back with a new post. Now that I am 39 going onto to 40, I've started seriously thinking about AP, something which I previously more or less ignored in favor of grinding/questing. I've searched through the Net
and on Aionsource, but there seems to be an abysmal (no pun intended) lack of information on how the various methods of AP gain stack up...or even what they are.

So once again I turn to Blue Garter, purveyors of fine gaming entertainment since...hmm, I'm not too sure. Anyway, I hope you can fill in what I've gotten right/wrong.

First off...as I understand it, you get more AP when you are at a lower rank, killing guys at a higher rank, right? If so, wouldn't it benefit you the most to spend all your AP until you are Soldier Rank 9, unless you are at a high
enough rank to get special powers?

AP Gaining Methods :

Killing mobs - Seems to be the slowest, from what I've heard/seen. Unless mobs at 50 give you a lot more AP than what I get now, other methods all seem to be faster. Of course, there is not inconsiderable factor that killing
mobs gives you XP and loot as well.

PVP - A great method...assuming you kill them and they don't kill you. I've heard that AP gain from PVP caps outat about 600-700 at 50, so it actually doesn't seem that appealing in the long run. Still, I guess if you gank
a whole bunch of dudes, it could be significant.

Fort raids - Ok, I'll admit this is a huge gap in my knowledge right here...I have no idea how fort raids are as an AP gaining method, since I've never been in one. Every time fort battles are on, I'm either offline or in
the middle of something. Also, my computer is none too powerful and I'm kinda worried lag will steal all my AP, and lose me some to boot.

Also, do you get medals for any damage done/healed while in a raid?

Dredgion - I know this is for 50 only, but I see a lot of shouts for it on my server. Is it really that good, or do people do it for the drops mainly?

Abyss instances - Same here, never got a chance to do them, because until recently everything was held by Elyos. I know people do them for the drops, but how are they for AP?

AP items - I'm not even sure WHERE you get these things...as far as I know, they are loot from Abyss raids and instances? There was a post on Aionsource in which they talked about how using them at low ranks gave more AP
than using them at high ranks...and some other information which I didn't quite understand.

Grinding guards - I hear lots of people talk about this as well. Can any class do it, or is it limited to ranged classes? Do you get XP/loot as well, or only AP?

The way Aion is designed, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the best way to gain AP is indeed grinding at 50...but I would also like to know what other methods there are, and how they stack up against each other in terms
of class, solo/group etc etc etc.

[Sta]

Grinding guards - I hear lots of people talk about this as well. Can any class do it, or is it limited to ranged classes? Do you get XP/loot as well, or only AP?

I grind guards for 65 AP per mob and around 30,000exp, It doesn't have to be Elyos/Asmodian guards, it can be Balaur guards too. If you're grinding Asmo/Elyos guards I would go to the lowest of the fortresses so you don't get caught by the opposing side. Also on EU servers (I'm not sure about NA) the server basicly shuts down after 11pm... the later into the night you get it, the less people there are you gank/bug you.

Any class can take the guards, I started grinding Balaur guards at 39 Templar... Balaur guards drop all the usual "Balatic" items (Skins, Hearts, Scales, Blood, Hearts) each selling between 10-20k. However, the Elyos/Asmodian guards only drop kinah and stigma shards, at least... that's all I have had drop.

Doing this (along with killing a few Asmo) got me 8,041 AP Yesterday

[Koga]

Which fort guards are you taking on at 39/40?
Just Lower region?

[Sta]

Which fort guards are you taking on at 39/40?
Just Lower region?

Yeah, the upper forts are level 50 guards

[Trichocyst]

Guards are great AP but I can't help but find trouble any time of day grinding them. It's part of the asmo stranglehold on the lower abyss. Gladiator and chanter aren't really viable yet to go mowing down the enemy and we haven't been able to do a single abyss instance in nearly a month. It blows.

Working on a ranger to be my hardcore PVP character, but my fucking bow refuses to be crafted into existence.

[burnation]

There's pros and cons to doing all the methods you just listed, it just depends on what the other faction is doing at the time. Farming guards is the most consistant way to get AP, but if you own forts or there are asmos ganking you may have to look somewhere else. If you are skilled enough to beable to take attackers down then it can be really solid. Instances have the potential to net decent gains if you can consistantly clear and get lucky with rolls, especially if you own a majority of forts at the time. I go with legion members and do Roah, Asteria and Miren daily and get anywhere from 4K-9K AP for a couple hours plus a ton of cash from Balaur mats. Also, there is a great repeatable for Elyos at Western Shard upper for 38+ killing Klaw in the middle for 200-400 AP a turnin if killing mobs is more your thing.

My favorite way to gain AP personally is rifting if you have 3-4 friends to roll with. Grab a few kisks, head out to Belusian and camp their home nation thingy up in the north. We'll usually kill bots if it's slow until one of us get cursed, then asmos will come to you and it's face rape time.

It's not the fastest but generally the most fun. Some days you can be there for hours and get 1000 or so AP or you can grab 5000 in 20 minutes, depending on opposing faction activity. Just do what you find the most fun and go with it.

[niwaar]

Killing mobs/Grinding Guards - This is where grinding guards comes in. If you are 35-45 you can grind lower fort guards for AP. This is how most people gain the most of their AP pre 46.

PVP - In general PvP is going to be sporadic outside of Fortress Sieges. Sure you can go rifting and pick up some significant AP this way. Before the Bot Purges, a good number of people would rift and farm the bots as they ran weakened out of their res points. However, this is not as easy to do as it once was.



Fort raids - Fort raids are going to get you anywhere from 15 to 1000+ AP depending on your level and you being inside or outside of a good alliance. Get in a good alliance with the opposite faction defending or attacking and you can get quite a bit of AP. However, in my experience this is not the norm. As AP received is divided by all who attack it + anyone in alliance with those people, you often get 1-5 AP from a single PvP kill during a siege.

Also, do you get medals for any damage done/healed while in a raid?

Yes you do, but only if you get enough "Contribution Points" (hidden number based on the AP gain during the 35 minute siege timer) to put you in the top 3 groups of people. Defending a fortress is now probably the easiest method in obtaining medals. It is not uncommon for the opposing faction to not attack a fortress. By killing their guards in the area you can obtain both AP and medals easily.

Dredgion - Dredgion is actually level 46+. It can be a wonderful way to gain AP if you roll the dice and get a good group. Yet a horrible way to get a consolation prize of AP if you lose. Beauty here is that AP is not lost for deaths taken inside the instance like outside PvP does.

Abyss instances/AP Items - Abyss instances range from mediocre randomness for AP items, to extremely nice for AP and even some loot. The lower fortress instances tend to be really hit or miss in this regard. Eastern Siel just plain is annoying, multiple patrols and packs in a large circular room (ie just not exciting and usually poor AP). Western Siel is more interesting, but you really have a 1 in 6 chance of getting a good AP drop and sometimes you will get only a couple hundred kinah for your trouble. The same goes for Sulfur. Although Sulfur has a much higher chance of seeing a greater+ AP item and some bit of loot from the large chest.

The Upper fortress instances have easily completable in a single instance repeatable quests that give 700-1000AP. So anything else is gravy. If you are really good you can pick up 2 chests worth of AP items usually 2-4 items per chest.

--
All in all, AP is as much a grind as anything else in Aion. If you plan on getting that gold PvP armor or transforming you will be doing all of the above on a daily basis to gain AP. Just remember any PvP death you take you lose an ever increasing amount of AP as you rank up. Higher rank players lose thousands of AP for a single death.

[burnation]

I usually get 1AP from any bot I kill, even at lowest rank. Do you need to be like level 30 to get anything from bots?

[Warudo Ecksu]

Bots are likely rank 7-9 so they're not worth much AP

[Corwen]

Level difference also matters. If you are more than I believe it is 3 above a person, you don't get as much AP. At 10+ over, you only gain about 1% of the full AP value. From what I've seen lately, bots seem to get banned by the time they'd get to about 35-40, so they don't really get high enough to give high level players many points.

As for the original post, PVP and guard grinding are great ways to get quick AP when your rank is low. As you get higher rank, PVE mobs AP value diminishes, and PVP kills diminish in value if you are more than about 2 ranks higher than your target as well as PVP deaths costing you more points. After a while, the risk starts to outweigh the reward.

Quest reward AP and fort instance loot turn-ins do not diminish in value and generally have a low risk, if any, of a PVP death, so these become more valuable as your rank gets higher. It is common practice for people to hoard a bunch of fort instance items and not turn them in to keep rank low, then eventually turn them in all at once for a huge spike in AP to purchase equipment / hit high rank.

[Berabouman]

Thanks for all the comments and info so far!

How long does it take to kill a guard? Are they basically just normal mobs? if Balaur guards give the same AP/XP and also drop Balic items, they seem to be the best to grind on, especially since Balaur can't ask for help in /1

"It is not uncommon for the opposing faction to not attack a fortress. By killing their guards in the area you can obtain both AP and medals easily."

- this means just killing the NPC guards they spawn right, not real players?

"As for the original post, PVP and guard grinding are great ways to get quick AP when your rank is low. As you get higher rank, PVE mobs AP value diminishes, and PVP kills diminish in value if you are more than about 2 ranks higher than your target as well as PVP deaths costing you more points. After a while, the risk starts to outweigh the reward."

- in that case, shouldn't you spend your AP ASAP, rather than wait? Although I can see why you would have to wait in order to buy big-ticket items...

There is no way to obtain AP items other than by Abyss instances?

[Drex]

Yes, guards are normal mobs that hit a little harder than a regular mob of their level. They aren't even elites. On my 43 cleric I can kill guards in like 30 secs each with no downtime lol. They give like 50-70 AP each, only problem is asmos teleing in will see you right away and probably come attack you while you are fighting one. Have some sort of plan in mind before an asmo appears so you can handle it when you get jumped. Also, fort guards give better xp/ap than artifact guards but you are more likely to be spotted by an asmo grinding outside of a fort.

Yes you should spend AP asap if your intent is to buy an item, because you lose AP if you get killed in PVP and higher rank = more AP lost. As soon as you have enough AP, buy the item you want.

[Berabouman]

Ok, I guess I'll try out this guard grinding thing especially since I just hit 40...anything else I should know?

Also, the only way to get medals is from fort raids/defense? There is no other way?

[carve]

you can also get medals in fort instances or as a random reward from some abyss quests

[Anakron]

You can also buy them on the broker if that counts.

[Berabouman]

Cool, that's not so bad then. I like how everything is not Rare/Ex in this game.

My next question is...how do I find guards that are NOT Level 50? Every damn Balaur fortress I go to has Level 50 guards...am I doomed to hunt Elyos only?

[Drex]

Upper Abyss is level 50s, lower abyss is level 40s

[Corwen]

Enemy faction guard towers in the abyss have level 40 elite guards in both lower and upper abyss, but the problem is that all of the towers I know of any pull you make will come with 2 guards minimum and breaking aggro is relatively difficult on them. As a ranger I could solo the non ranged attacking ones and use trap of slowing to immobilize 1 mob in the group and break aggro on the rest by running away then come back and solo the one that hit the trap.

These start at about 180 or so AP solo at low ranks to a 42 or lower if i remember correctly, and start to diminish as you rank up past 7. They drop a pretty good amount of kinah every kill (2-8k), and high chance of 24 stigma shards. They respawn pretty quickly as well, by the time you finish with your 3rd mob or so in the tower, they will likely have started to repop.

One major drawback with doing this though is a very high probability of being ganked by high levels as these NPCs are quest givers to the enemy faction. The ones in upper abyss give out a popular repeatable group quest for people 46+ which is doable if their race doesn't control the fort. I generally did this as an alternative for AP grinding when lower forts were crowded or were all controlled by my race.

If you're a class that can't solo elites effectively, you could duo with somebody, though you'll be splitting the points. Pretty much any DD + healer combination should be able to do it without much trouble once you get the hang of the pulls.

[Uzor]

Sieges aren't a very good way to get AP at your level, as it is split amongst everyone getting the kill for said person. At your level, you will only get 1 AP per kill as all of the higher levels will suck all of the AP up.

At 46 right now, I get roughly 2000-3000 AP per siege and around 300-400 kills per Siege. At lvl 50, some of my Legion members get around 6000-7000 AP per siege, with the officers getting less (as well as the risk of losing several thousand per death) due to their higher rank. Although we have awesome clerics, so we get minimal deaths.

Guard farming is a good way of getting AP, but it is generally not a good way of getting AP when you're a stared officer, as it is pretty much a bullseye for getting killed, and 1 death means you can lose several thousand of AP. But for lower ranks, it works good. Although I would recommend doing it as a group and doing elites instead, as it decreases the risk of getting killed.

If you're good at PvP, roaming around Abyss or rifts is a good way of getting AP, but considering your low level, odds are it'll be hard, as a lot of people are 40-50 and can kill you rather easily.

Fort instances is another great way. Just remember to save all of the relics you get, and then turn them all in at once once you know that it'll give you enough AP to buy what you want.

[Naiya]

Corwen or anyone else that rifts alot at level 30, where are the most populated areas for asmo's? i'm getting around 5k/hour atm rifting but i think i can do much better