1. Gather early, gather often. You can begin to gather “Angelica” at level one. Not only does this allow you to upgrade the skill but it also gives you experience points. Not a ton, by any means, but enough to make it worthwhile. Plus, at later levels there are quests that require you to gather materials and if you do not have enough skill to gather the items you have to buy them or not do the quest.

2. Shards, use them. Shards are items that can be purchased from a General Good vendor or picked up off a defeated mob. If purchased they are relatively cheap for a stack of 50 at low level. Make sure you equip them (standard right click to equip) and use them. They work pretty simply, when activated (default key is ‘B’) they add + attack power to each hit. Each hit consumes one of the shards so you go through them pretty quick. For that reason, I save them for “emergency” situations when I need to down a mob quickly for some reason. When activated they generate a cool lightning effect around your weapon until you deactivate them, so its easy to know when they are active.

3. Avoid adds. This is not WoW, nor is it WAR or LotRO. Adds will kill you. One mob is tough enough, but if you get two of your level, prepare for a tough battle. 3 mobs is a recipe for disaster unless you are a healer, even then its really tough. Pull carefully, watch for patrols and always have an escape route planned out in case it gets hairy.

4. Manastones, use them. Manastones are a lot like gemming in WoW but easier to acquire. They drop from mobs fairly consistently. Most gear can have manastones socketed, white gear normally has one slot, green has two and so on. Socketing can fail, which consumes all manastones on the item. For this reason make sure to socket your least valued stone first. After socketing the stones give various bonuses to the gear, such as +5 evasion, +20 health points and so on. As I said, they are easy to get so do not make the mistake of letting them sit in your bag waiting for better gear, use them!

5. Glide. Anytime its available, glide. There are no mounts in Aion and only limited places you can truly fly. You can glide anywhere, however. Gliding will allow you to cover ground much, much faster than hoofing it on your two feet. To glide all you need is a decent sloped hill, large rock or tower to jump off of, once gliding you can hit your ‘S’ key to allow you to “ride the currents” and stay aloft for longer. When going from place to place I find myself constantly looking for things to glide off of, even if they are a bit off the beaten path. Gliding is fun and it can decrease travel time noticeably.

6. Use the Locate feature in your Quest log. If you click on a quest in your quest log, you will notice that NPC names and locations have a blue hyperlink. Click that hyperlink and a new box will open up telling a bit about the NPC, mob or location and at the bottom there will be a button marked ‘Locate’. Click that and a waypoint will be placed on your map that shows the general location of the NPC, mob or item. This will save you a ton of time. Use it.