AION 2 › Collections

AION 2 pets and Genus Insight

Updated 2026-10-08 · checked against Global launch (client 2.0.5.0)

Pets are the biggest collection in AION 2, and like titles they are power, not decoration. Any monster can become a pet. You unlock one by defeating that monster and collecting its souls, and every pet you take to its maximum level adds its bonus to every character on your account on that server.

Pets also carry you: the pet you have out is your mount, on C by default. Out of the box they do not loot for you — that is you, pressing F over each drop — but pet Auto-Loot can be switched on: buy a Pet: Auto-Loot Voucher (30 Days) from the Wind Breeze Merchants, and your pet picks up drops for 30 days. The catch is getting into that shop: the Wind Breeze Merchants only sell to players with an active Special Quai Membership, the monthly sub ($14.99 for 30 days, applied per server), so Auto-Loot really costs the membership plus the voucher. The voucher itself is listed at 500,000 Kina in the shop’s Special tab, needs level 10, works on the character that uses it, can be bought twice a month per character, and can’t be stacked past 30 days remaining.

The membership does more than open that shop. For its 30 days it also grants access to Remote Storage, the Market and the Quna Exchange, raises your Odyle Energy cap from 560 to 840, adds Odyle Energy Cube picks in Expedition, Transcendence and Sanctuary, and raises the Shugo Festival Reward Key cap to 21.

Pets unlock at the Dawn Legion Base, the first town after the tutorial, which is also where you get your first mount.

Five species

Every pet belongs to one of five species, and the species is what Genus Insight is built around:

That is 207 in all. Some English guides spell the fourth species Varlan; the game’s own title for it is Varian.

Levelling a pet

A kill of a monster drops one soul piece for its pet, and every pet unlocks at five souls — in our play that was five kills, and it is the same five for all 207. That holds while the monster is at your level. Once you out-level it and its name turns grey, its souls drop noticeably less often (we checked in game). Killing is not the only way in: soul chests and pet chests hold souls and whole pets, and some pets are sold in the coin shops.

A pet then levels on more souls of the same monster: 25 takes it from level 1 to 2, and 75 more to level 3. That is 105 souls from first kill to a maxed pet. Level 3 is the cap on the global release (we checked in game) — the Korean service goes to 5, so older guides that talk about level-5 pets do not apply here.

Each species’ pets carry the same bonus, and it grows with the pet’s level:

Every pet’s own page lists the monsters its souls drop from, with the chance per kill.

Farming souls fast

Two things make soul farming quick:

• Farm at level. Get a monster’s souls before its name turns grey. Coming back later at a higher level means more kills for the same souls.
• Pull packs. Where a monster spawns in groups, gather several and clear them together. Souls are per kill, so kills per minute is what counts.

Genus Insight

Once a species has maxed pets in it, Genus Insight opens for that species. You spend that species’ soul crystals and Kina to analyse it, which rolls stat effects into its slots at random. A roll you like can be locked before the next analysis, at a cost that climbs steeply with each lock. Generic soul crystals work for any species; the Special species’ own crystals are the hardest to farm, which is where to spend the generic ones.

Every species has nine slots. Slot one is open from the start and the next opens with each Insight level, up to level 9; Insight levels also raise the odds of rolling a better grade. An analysis costs four of the species’ soul crystals (or generic ones) and 1,000 Kina. Each species page has its full tables: the levels, the grade odds, and every stat each slot can roll.

Collection milestones

The pet collection pays out as its count climbs:

• 100× Soul Crystal (Bound) at 5, 10, 20, 30 … 490
• 10× Empathy Candy (Bound) at 50, 100, 150, 200 … 500

The counter runs to 500, past the 207 pets there are, so it counts more than pets unlocked; we have not pinned down exactly what yet.

Track your pets

Titles from pets

Pets feed the titles collection too. The milestone titles for owning more pets all add movement speed:

Each species page lists that species’ own two titles — one for killing its monsters, one for mastering its Insight.

Our read

Pets reward doing what you are already doing. The souls drop from the monsters you kill while levelling, so the cheapest pets are the ones in the zones you are standing in — and they get more expensive once you out-level the zone. Max those as you go, and come back to Genus Insight once there is Kina to spare — it is the slow, expensive part, and it can wait.