The world of AION 2
Updated 2026-10-07 · checked against Global launch (client 2.0.5.0)
AION 2 is set two hundred years after the original conflict. The Tower of Eternity has been destroyed, the universe it held together is shattered, and the Elyos and Asmodians are still at war with each other while a newly empowered Balaur faction rises against both. The player is a Daeva trying to recover the secrets of the past and the powers the Daevas have lost.
A world built for the sky
NC’s own pitch for the world is one sentence long: Atreia was built for the sky. Every region and every battlefield is designed with height as a real axis, and flight is how you fight, explore and travel, not a movement upgrade you earn late. Combat works in the air, and skill ranges were reworked so that fighting at altitude plays properly.
The world is a single seamless open world, which NC put at 36 times the size of the original game, and it runs underwater as well as on land and in the air.
Getting around
You earn your wings in the tutorial, and from then on V takes off. In the air, Space switches to a glide and Shift is a burst of quick flight.
Flight is not unlimited. It runs on a flight bar, a timer that empties while you are airborne. Rings hanging in the air extend it, so a ring line is a route someone meant you to fly. Slipstreams are the long-distance version: currents that carry you across an area through the air, and they have no flight timer at all. Updrafts, columns of light on the ground, launch you up into the air to reach high places.
On the ground, C calls your mount — your pet, once you have one — and Shift is sprint.
The two halves of Atreia
Each faction levels through its own half of the world, and the two halves mirror each other:
| Stage | Elyos | Asmodians |
|---|---|---|
| Starting region | Poeta | Ishalgen |
| First main region | Verteron | Altgard |
| Second main region | Eltnen | Morheim |
For the Elyos, the first field after the tutorial is Cantas Valley in Verteron, reached from the Dawn Legion Base: Valley Outpost, Western and Eastern Cantas Valley, Eastern Cantas Camp and Steep Guard Post, with the first field quest from level 11.
Every region has a map page with every waypoint, dungeon entrance and Empyrean Trace, the field bosses, and the areas in levelling order: Poeta, Verteron and Eltnen for the Elyos, Ishalgen, Altgard and Morheim for the Asmodians.
The Abyss — Reshanta, in lower, middle and upper layers — is where the two halves meet and fight. It has its own hub: Abyss and PvP.
Exploration
The open world is dense with things to find. There are several hundred hidden cubes to find; Empyrean traces number well over a thousand. Traces are marked on the world map as white feathers, are named for their region on screen (“Empyrean Trace: Verteron”), and take an F to collect.
Story is told in the same open world. A solo story event is instanced on the spot: the world visibly shifts around you and the scene plays out in your own copy of that place, with no loading screen and no other players in it.
The Monoliths are the other landmark worth learning early: resonating with them levels the Amulet of Revelation, one of the slow power systems on the Gear hub, and pays permanent stats for every Empyrean Trace you hand in — see Monoliths.
The Shugo Festival is the world’s side show — a mini-game every hour, with a Dimensional Invasion boss on the half hour; both pay a reward cube. See field events.
Servers and regions
The global service runs regional servers for North America, South America, Europe and Japan, and NC opened new Asia servers on launch day. The client ships in ten languages.
Our read
The size figure is the one every launch article repeats, and it is the least useful thing about the world. What changes how you play is that NC designed every region around height, so a map read flat is missing half of what is on it. The skill worth practising first is not a rotation, it is flight.