AION 2 › Gear

AION 2 Arcana: every card, set bonus, skill line and enhancement cost

Updated 2026-10-10 · checked against Global launch (client 2.0.5.0)

Arcana are five cards that sit beside your gear from level 45. Each one gives a single Empyrean Lord stat and a few skill-level lines: +1 to +4 on skills of your own class. They are the gear system that touches your skills directly, which is why they matter more than their small stat line suggests.

The short version:

• Five slots — Chalice, Parchment, Compass, Bell and Mirror — and two sets at launch, Primal Vigor and Magic Armor. Two and four cards of one set turn on its bonus.
• The grade sets the number of skill lines: one on Common, two on Rare, three on Epic, four on Unique.
• Enhancement never fails. Arcana level up on experience from other cards, and an enhanced card fed to another gives almost all of its experience back.
• They drop in Transcendence — Deus Research Base and Shattered Arkanis — and the Season Shop sells the Mysterious Crystals and Training Arcana that feed them. Transmute makes a Unique card with the lines you choose.

The five cards

Each card has one main stat, decided by its set, and rolls its skill lines from a fixed pool. The Chalice can roll any of the skills the other four cover; the Parchment and Compass split your actives between them, the Bell and Mirror your passives.

The main stats are Empyrean Lord stats, the same family the Pantheon decor grants: each Lord’s name is shown in brackets. A Unique card starts at +20 and gains +1 per enhancement level.

The two sets

Four cards of one set and one of the other is the usual layout: the 4-piece bonus is where the set pays. Primal Vigor is the damage set, active while you keep your HP high; Magic Armor is the survival set, an MP refill and a large PvE Defense bonus while your MP is above half.

Which skills each card can raise

Pick your class. Every skill links to its page; a Unique card rolls four lines from its card’s list, each starting at +1 and rising with enhancement to +4.

The odds are even within a list, so a card’s chance of rolling the skill you want is one in the list’s length per line. That is the case for Transmute below: choosing two lines removes most of the luck.

Grades and enhancement

Arcana level up by feeding them other Arcana or Training Arcana, never by a roll that can fail. Each level costs Kina and raises the main stat by 1.

• Feed what you outgrow. A card’s fodder value climbs with its level: an enhanced Unique gives back nearly everything put into it, so moving to a better card never wastes the old one.
• Training Arcana exist only to be eaten:

Transmute: making the card you want

Transmute turns Mysterious Crystals and Kina into a Unique Arcana of the slot you pick. The main stat follows the set you choose; each skill line you fix in advance costs extra, up to two:

Mysterious Crystals come from extracting Arcana you do not need and from the Season Shop, five a season for 25,000 Oath Coins each. Extract duplicate drops rather than feeding them when you are short of crystals for a card with two fixed lines.

Where Arcana come from

• Deus Research Base and Shattered Arkanis, the Transcendence dungeons: their cubes drop Arcana. Each Arcana’s item page — for example Arcana: Chalice of Magic — lists its exact sources.
• Transmute, above.

Common mistakes

• Splitting the sets. Two cards of each set buys two 2-piece bonuses; four of one set buys the 4-piece effect, which is the bigger one.
• Enhancing a Common or Rare card to the top. It still has one or two lines. Level the card you will keep, and feed the rest.
• Ignoring the Chalice’s pool. It can roll any of your class’s Arcana skills, so it is the slot where a lucky drop is most likely and a Transmute with two fixed lines is most valuable.

Our read

Arcana are the cheapest skill levels in the game once the cards are in hand: the enhancement cannot fail and the experience is never lost. Run Transcendence for the drops, settle on one set for four slots, and spend Mysterious Crystals on a Transmute only for the Chalice or for the one card that keeps rolling the wrong lines.