Upgrading gear in AION 2 without wasting materials: enhancement, stones, binding and transfer

Update, October 28: the patch raised the Amplify cap on Crafted gear (True and Star Dragon from level 1 to 3, White and Dark Dragon from 3 to 5) and made it possible to transfer Expedition gear down into Crafted gear one tier lower (Tier 3 Expedition into Tier 2 Crafted, Tier 2 into Tier 1). The rest of this guide still applies.

AION 2 has five ways to make the same piece of gear stronger, and most early mistakes come from spending on the wrong one at the wrong time: rolling expensive stones on a piece you replace a week later, or burning the rare transfer material on gear that was never going to last. Here is each system in the order you meet it, with the rule that keeps it cheap.

A note on numbers: most of what the community has measured comes from the Korean servers, which have been live since November 2025 and run more systems and bigger stat totals than the global build. Treat exact figures as a direction, not a promise, and expect them to move as global catches up.

1. Growth: plus levels and Amp levels

The familiar one: Kinah plus Enhance Stones raise the item to +15 (Unique) or +20 (Heroic). Then five Amp levels use Amplify Stones, which you make by morphing Amplify Fragments together with Enhance Stones. The success rate softly resets to 60% when you go from +15 to +16. Enhance Stones come from almost everywhere, yet they are the bottleneck for players who spend real money, so do not assume you will always have enough.

2. Manastones and Soulstones

Each stone you consume rerolls every stone socket on the item at once (Manastones for weapons and armour, Soulstones for accessories). On end-game gear you want Superior stones. On gear you will replace soon, roll little or nothing: these lines are lost on transfer and Superior stones are expensive.

• Aim for at least one yellow damage-boost line. The jump from blue to yellow is large: a blue boost line gives 30, a yellow one 100, and 100 points equal 1% of that stat on your sheet.
• Two yellow Attack lines are worth roughly one yellow Damage Boost line, and a single yellow Attack line (10) is a fair placeholder when stones are short.
• Best to worst: Front/Back Damage Boost, then Weapon Damage Boost and Critical Damage Boost (about equal), then Damage Boost, then Attack.

3. Theostones

One per weapon, duplicates do not stack, and each has a small chance to proc on hit (crowd control or damage). Faster attacks mean more procs, and ping matters. Even the best ones add well under 1% to your damage today, so plenty of players simply pick the one whose weapon glow they like.

4. Soul Binding: Bind, Sync and Reset

The names make it sound complicated; it only works on your stat lines. Bind spends Soul Codex books to raise each line's value. Every use is a guaranteed increase of a random size, and the books cost more each time. When every line reaches 100%, the Soul Binding Rate is full and two Philosopher's Stones (mostly from Conquest dungeons) unlock an extra line. That extra line never transfers. Sync rerolls one line, Reset rerolls them all (see the gear guide for what to keep).

5. Transfer: the material to protect

Transfer moves enhancement and stat lines onto a new item. It costs Transfer Stones, made from fragments you get by morphing gear. Heroic fragments come almost only from morphing Heroic items (5 fragments each), apart from a few shops such as the Season Shop:

• Accessory stone: 10 fragments, so two Heroic items.
• Armour stone: 15 fragments, three items.
• Weapon stone: 20 fragments, four items.
• Same-grade transfers take one stone of that grade; Unique into Heroic takes five extra Unique stones.
• Unique fragments come from morphing Unique gear, and higher item level gives more of them (1 to 5).
• You cannot upgrade a Unique Transfer Stone into a Heroic one.

The rule: hoard Heroic fragments from the start. Rolling and transferring on Unique gear is cheap; Heroic is where everything becomes expensive, and you will need a lot of Heroic fragments later. A common recommendation is to skip the first Heroic set entirely and make the jump to Heroic on the second one.

Potential (global: PvP only)

On the global servers Potential adds PvP damage and tolerance, so PvE players can ignore it. It is fed with Potential Stones, made by morphing gear; the stone's tier follows the item level of what you morph.

The odd ones out

• Belt and Amulet use their own scrolls (belt: Strongholds; amulet: feather turn-ins), go to +10 and then morph up a grade.
• Runes upgrade by combining two and are destroyed on failure: the only gear that can break. Each level adds Damage Tolerance and Damage Boost (0.5% each) and Penetration (+50); Combat Speed starts climbing after +6.
• Pendant uses Unique Amp stones and Radiant Balaur's Essence up to +20. Perfect chance starts growing after +8 and Double Chance after +13, and the cost climbs steeply near the top.

A sensible spending order

• Enhance your keepers; leave stopgap gear alone beyond what you need to progress.
• Fix stat lines (Synch Stones, Reset books) on a piece you intend to carry forward.
• Bind those lines once the piece is final.
• Only then roll Superior Manastones and Soulstones.
• Theostones last, or for looks.
• Never spend Heroic transfer material casually.