Content:
Key Takeaways
- What it is: Daevanion Boards are node trees that become your main way to upgrade stats and skill levels once the early levels are behind you.
- Six boards at launch: four basic boards (Nezekan, Zikel, Vaizel, Triniel) work everywhere, while Ariel (PvE) and Azphel (PvP) are specialist boards with their own progression.
- Four node colours: gray, green, blue and orange cost 1, 2, 3 and 4 Daevanion points and give base stats, passive skill levels, active skill levels and stat bonuses.
- Normal points: green side quests and Sealed Dungeons pay them out, and the Shugo Festival Shop sells up to 50 per character.
- PvE and PvP points: they come mostly from weekly Ascension Trials and Battlefields, turned into Daevanion Crystals through crafting, or bought from the Auction House and the shops.
- Priority: skill level nodes first, then damage, then survivability.
What Are Daevanion Boards?
Daevanion Boards are one more layer of the AION 2 progression system, and probably the one that looks scariest the first time you open it. The idea itself is simple. Each board is a tree of nodes that lets you keep upgrading your character after the early levels, and you pay for every node with Daevanion points. The source material is not fully consistent about the entry level: the unlock table says level 13, while a couple of lines elsewhere mention level 12. Treat 13 as the number to aim for and trust what your own character screen shows.
Almost every node is tiny on its own. One gives you a bit more HP, another a bit more Defense, another some crit resistance, and none of them will change how your character feels. The power comes from volume: you unlock dozens of them, and the numbers stack up quietly in the background.
The four node types
Nodes come in four colours, and the colour tells you both the price and the reward.
| Node | Cost | What it gives |
|---|---|---|
| Gray | 1 point | Base stat increases |
| Green | 2 points | Level-up for a passive skill |
| Blue | 3 points | Level-up for an active skill |
| Orange | 4 points | Percentage stat increases |
Gray nodes are the cheapest and by far the most common, so they make up most of every board. Orange nodes are rare and sit near the edge of the grid.
The eight boards
The game has eight boards in total, but you will not see all of them yet.
- Nezekan, Zikel, Vaizel and Triniel: the four general boards that hand out stats and skill upgrades for any content.
- Ariel: a PvE-only board. Its bonuses do nothing in PvP, and it is currently absent on Global.
- Azphel: the mirror image of Ariel. It is built for PvP and has no effect on PvE.
- Machutan and Yustiel: mid-game and endgame boards with general boosts similar to the basic four. They are not available at Global launch.
Every board is a large grid with nodes scattered around it in a loose pattern. You always begin in the centre, so you have to walk through a lot of gray nodes before you reach the green, blue and orange ones. That is also why the early points feel weak: you are mostly paying for the road, not the destination. If you would rather not spend the whole early game collecting that first stretch yourself, the AION 2 powerleveling service can take care of the leveling part for you.
The Four Basic Daevanion Boards
Nezekan, Zikel, Vaizel and Triniel are the basic boards. They feel almost identical: simple stat nodes, skill level nodes and a handful of orange nodes. The only real difference is what the orange nodes specialise in, and each board opens at its own level.
| Board | Unlock level | Orange node focus |
|---|---|---|
| Nezekan | 13 | Combat speed and cooldown reduction |
| Zikel | 20 | Damage increase and damage tolerance |
| Vaizel | 30 | Critical damage and critical damage tolerance |
| Triniel | 40 | Multi-hit chance and multi-hit resist |
All four boards share the same kind of normal Daevanion point. That means you can drop your points wherever you like instead of feeding each board separately. The catch is that you cannot max out all four, so every point you spend is a small choice about what to leave behind.
The smartest use of those points is skill levels. The four basic boards let you add four whole levels to all of your active and passive abilities, and on Global there is no other way to get that. Ariel and Azphel, the later boards, do not touch ability levels at all. Skipping the green and blue nodes here means skipping something you cannot get back from anywhere else.
Tip: Since the points are shared, think of the four basic boards as one big pool. Walk toward the green and blue nodes first, and pick up the orange node that suits your build once the road to it is already open.
How to Get Normal Daevanion Points
There are three main ways to earn normal Daevanion points, and they are all fairly relaxed compared with the PvE and PvP versions.
Green side quests
Green side quests reward these points. Because the skill upgrades on the basic boards are so valuable, this side content is close to mandatory if you do not want to spend hours chewing through enemies with inflated health bars. Try to finish every green side quest you pass, and the payout will cover the detour.
Sealed Dungeons
Mastering a Sealed Dungeon also awards normal Daevanion points. There are plenty of them across the map, so you can pick them up at your own pace while you explore the open world. They fit well into a casual routine, and if your schedule is tight, the daily dungeons boost is a way to skip some of the repetitive running.
The AION 2 dungeons guide covers every dungeon type and its rewards.
Shugo Festival Shop
If you want to speed up, the Shugo Festival Shop sells normal Daevanion points. The limit is 50 points per character, so it is a boost and not a replacement for the two methods above.
- Finish the green side quests as you meet them.
- Clear Sealed Dungeons whenever you pass one.
- Use the Shugo Festival Shop to top up your total, up to the per-character cap.
Note: The caps and exact point rewards come from early information about the game and may change with patches, so recheck them in-game from time to time.
PvE and PvP Daevanion Boards
Ariel (PvE) and Azphel (PvP) are the specialist boards, and both unlock at level 45. They only improve stats for their own kind of content. The tooltips make that clear: +50 PvE Defense is not the same thing as +50 Defense, and the game treats them as different stats.
Their green and blue nodes also behave differently from the basic boards. Instead of raising skill levels, they simply increase stats tied to their content, for example your damage tolerance against bosses. That makes the choice easy. If you never touch PvP, Azphel has nothing to offer you, and the same goes for Ariel if you only play PvP.
Another big difference is that both boards can be maxed out, because there is no cap on the Daevanion points you can collect for them. The price is that each board has its own point type, and those points are far harder to obtain than the normal ones. The game expects you to play the matching content for a long time if you want to become a PvP menace or a grizzled PvE veteran.
Warning: Do not rush toward Ariel and Azphel before the basic boards are in decent shape. Those two boards do not give any ability levels, so they cannot replace what Nezekan, Zikel, Vaizel and Triniel offer.
How to Get PvE and PvP Daevanion Points
This is the endgame grind of the system. The whole thing runs on a mix of crafting and weekly objectives, so plan for time and effort, not a quick unlock.
Weekly challenges
The weekly Ascension Trials (PvE) and Battlefields (PvP) are the one reliable source of Daevanion fragments. You turn fragments into Daevanion Crystals with Substance Morph, and the crystals are what give you the points. The ratio is stiff for casual players: a single Ariel Daevanion Crystal costs 100 Ariel fragments plus 50 Odyle.
There is also a gamble if you like risk. Substance Morph lets you pay one tenth of the normal materials for a one-in-ten chance to craft the item. On average you end up in the same place, but sometimes you get a lucky craft for almost nothing, which is nice when you do not feel like running another objective. If the weekly Ascension Trials are the part you want to skip, the Ascension Trials boost covers that piece.
Direct purchase
Because Daevanion Crystals can be crafted, they can be sold, and that means the Auction House is another route. You can buy crystals if you have the currency, or sell your own and take quick cash. Having enough Kinah in your wallet makes that route much smoother.
The shops also sell points directly. You can buy at most 50 PvE points from the Nightmare Shop and 50 PvP points from the Abyss Shop, in four packages whose price keeps going up. The source gives the following prices in Phantasmal fragments:
| Package | Points | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| First | 10 | 800 |
| Second | 10 | 1600 |
| Third | 15 | 3200 |
| Fourth | 15 | 6400 |
The cost doubles with each step, so the first packages are the best value and the last one is a luxury. If you need PvP currency for the Abyss Shop, an Abyss Points farm can supply it without locking you into one area for hours.
Content-specific sources
A few extra sources exist. Leveling your Monolith by collecting Empyrean Traces (or Feathers) gives some Azphel Daevanion Crystals, and certain daily and weekly quests give a few PvE fragments. They are small, but they add up when you are already doing the content.
The AION 2 Combat Power guide explains how it differs from Gear Score and how to raise it.
Leveling Priority
You might expect your class to decide almost everything about how you spend points, but in practice it matters less than you think. Most characters get a big benefit from higher skill levels, so those nodes should come first if you want to play efficiently.
After skills, here is the order to follow:
- Unlock the green and blue nodes that level up the passive and active skills you actually use.
- Take the attack-related nodes. Clearing content is easier when you deal more damage, and the faster you clear, the more points per hour you collect.
- Add survivability nodes such as HP and Defense.
- Pick up the orange nodes, which cost the most but are very impactful.
MP and critical resistance look much less important right now, so they can wait. That said, it is fine to skip a skill level-up if you are sure the ability itself is weak. Experienced Korean players, for instance, tend to ignore Soul’s Cry because they find it underwhelming. Global is a bit different from the Korean version, though, so test things on your own character before you decide that an ability is not worth the points.
The overall picture is a loop: points make you stronger, strength makes content faster, and faster content gives more points. If you want to spend less time inside that loop, you can always choose to skip the grind and let someone else handle part of it, but make sure you know which skills you want before your points get spent.
To see how skills reach level 20, read the AION 2 skill progression guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Short answers to the questions people ask most about the boards.
What are Daevanion Boards?
They are node trees that act as an extra leveling system from the early levels onward. Depending on the board, they give stacking general, PvE or PvP stat bonuses, and the basic boards also give level-ups for your abilities.
When are Daevanion Boards unlocked?
The first board, Nezekan, opens at level 13 in the unlock table (some other lines in the source mention 12). Zikel follows at level 20, Vaizel at 30 and Triniel at 40. The PvE board Ariel and the PvP board Azphel unlock at level 45 and use their own point types.
How can I earn Daevanion points?
Normal points come from green side quests and Sealed Dungeons, and you can buy up to 50 per character in the Shugo Festival Shop. PvE and PvP points come from weekly challenges, content-specific objectives, the Auction House, and the Nightmare and Abyss Shops.
Which nodes are the best?
Start with the nodes that level up your active and passive abilities. Orange nodes cost the most but have a strong effect, so get those too. Among gray nodes, favour damage first and then a little base survivability.
Can I max out every Daevanion Board?
Not the four basic ones, since they share one point type and you will have to make choices. Ariel and Azphel can be maxed, because there is no limit on the points for them, but their points are much harder to earn.
Do I need the PvP board if I only play PvE?
No. Azphel only affects PvP, and Ariel only affects PvE. Pick the one that matches the content you actually play and ignore the other.
Why is Ariel missing from my game?
According to the source, Ariel is currently absent on Global, and Machutan and Yustiel are not available at launch either. They may arrive later, so check patch notes for updates.