Dungeons

0:00 Dungeons are the instanced PvE content of Aion 2: solo instances, party dungeons and raids, run apart from the open world. NC promised more than 200 of them before launch, "ranging from solo instances to group dungeons for four or eight players", and the Korean and Taiwanese version has added more with each season. For the global version, Anders sums up the differences: dungeon parties of five instead of four, a raid of ten instead of eight, and no Heroic items at launch, from drops or from crafting. Each category has its own page, and the weekly routine that ties them together is on Endgame Routine.

Quick facts

Dungeon categories

At the Aion2NIGHT livestream of Aug 8, 2025 NC set out Aion 2's combat content in three groups. Solo play covered Nightmare Dungeon, Seal Dungeon, Garrison and Awakening Battle; party play covered Expedition, Transcendence, Eradication and Sanctuary; and the casual Daily Dungeon and Shugo Festa were shown for the first time (NC, Aug 12, 2025). NC's later English releases speak of Sealed Dungeons, Strongholds and Ascension Trial, and none of the sources used here describes Eradication. Hardcore Gamer's preview of June 2026 reduced the list to four types: Sealed Dungeons as entry-level dungeons in the open world, Nightmare's solo boss battles, four-player Expeditions and the eight-player Sanctuary raid (Hardcore Gamer, Jun 16, 2026).

Solo content

0:00 The open-world solo instances come first. Strongholds and Sealed Dungeons sit behind question marks on the map, are cleared once per character from the leveling phase into the early endgame, and give Daevanion crystals and the materials for belt and amulet upgrades (Sealed Dungeons and Strongholds; Daevanion Boards).

24:18 Nightmare pits a single player against one boss at a time. NC's global team describes bosses taken from the story and from dungeons and repurposed for one-on-one fights, so that players can learn mechanics and test their class at several levels of difficulty; the bosses come in seasonal layers (Nightmare and Ascension Trial).

3:02 Ascension Trial is the other solo endgame mode: a player clears a few rooms at a chosen difficulty against a timer, three times a week, for rewards that include materials for Stigma skills.

Party dungeons and raids

30:01 Expeditions are the "bread and butter" of Aion 2's dungeons, in NC's words: a party kills the monsters and bosses, takes the loot and goes again. Each has a guided Exploration mode and a Conquest mode, and they are ranked in star tiers, with the one- to three-star dungeons from Krao Cave to the Fire Temple at the global launch and harder ones such as Dying Dramata's Nest added later in Korea and Taiwan (Expedition Dungeons).

43:54 Conquest dungeons have no timer. Transcendence dungeons do: the party must reach a kill count before the final boss, and the speed of the clear earns a grade from S downwards. They are the main source of Arcana and are climbed in numbered stages, and later ones include Mirror of Scarlet Desire (Transcendence Dungeons).

31:43 Sanctuaries are the raids and, according to NC's global team, the game's toughest PvE challenge. They launched for eight players and now take ten in two parties of five; the global version has only the first, whose final boss is Ludra, and NC took it out at the Oct 5, 2026 launch to rework it after early access players cleared it too soon, while Korea and Taiwan have added Corroded Decontamination Facility, Muspel's Chalice and Snowfield of Sorrow (Sanctuary Raids).

Casual dungeons

4:44 Despite their name, Daily Dungeons are limited by the week. In May 2026 Society Of Gaming described 14 entries a week per server, shared between three short solo dungeons that give enhancement stones, fragments for the pet system and bound Kina. NC added one of them, Crobahki's Secret Depository, on May 13, 2026: players have 40 seconds to dodge bombs and collect coins for Kina (NC, May 13, 2026). The hourly Shugo Festa mini-games complete the casual content (Daily Dungeons and Shugo Festa; Pets and Mounts).

Weekly limits and rewards

3:50 Most dungeon content runs on a weekly rather than a daily clock. Society Of Gaming shows the counters on the Korean and Taiwanese servers in May 2026: an energy pool, entries for each dungeon and a boss loot counter of 35 a week, so a player can do the week's dungeons on a Monday and Tuesday and be free for the rest. NC's Daniel LaFuente told Hardcore Gamer that dungeons are "primarily on a weekly cycle" because weekly limits suit daily players, sporadic players and "weekend warriors" alike (Hardcore Gamer, Jun 16, 2026).

Rewards come from a cube at the end of a run that costs Odyle Energy to open. Anders gives the regeneration as 10 energy every three hours, or 15 with Membership, and aselon_eu reports that subscribers can open the cube a second time by spending the energy again (1:29 The Kinah Guide I Wish I Had From Day One, aselon_eu, Sep 12, 2026). NC's own changes in Korea and Taiwan raised the weekly Expedition limit from 14 to 21 and the Transcendence limit from 7 to 14 on May 13, 2026, and on Jul 1, 2026 removed the tickets for Expedition and Transcendence, so that rewards are claimed through Odyle Energy (NC, May 13, 2026; NC, Jul 6, 2026). Odyle Energy Cubes are also one of the sources of regular Kina, while Sealed Dungeons and Strongholds pay Kina (Bound) (NC, Mar 25, 2026; Kina and Quna).

Shared mechanics

56:05 Boss fights share a vocabulary. A visible enrage timer under the boss counts down against the party's damage; a stagger bar under its health bar can be broken for a few seconds of free damage; and many attacks are marked on the ground and kill in one hit whatever a player's gear, so dodging, stacking and spreading matter more than item level. Players revive with a Cleric's resurrection or with resurrection stones, and in Korea and Taiwan they have been able to ride pets inside dungeons since Jul 1, 2026 (NC, Jul 6, 2026; Combat System).

Several quality-of-life changes followed player feedback in Korea and Taiwan. The Season 2 roadmap promised eased boss mechanics for certain encounters that targeted melee players and class rankings for Ascension Trial and the Daily Dungeon (NC, Jan 7, 2026); the update of May 13, 2026 added an indicator for a boss's rear and an expanded dungeon invite list (NC, May 13, 2026); and the patch of Sep 9, 2026 added commendations, which players can give a party member once per clear of an Expedition, Transcendence or Sanctuary (Blazeon, Sep 10, 2026). Aerial combat, the signature of the open world, is not used in instanced dungeons (Hardcore Gamer, Jun 16, 2026; Flight and Wings).

Parties and matchmaking

1:00:58 Elyos and Asmodians play on separate servers, but dungeons bring them together. In Korea and Taiwan players of both factions have been able to form PvE parties since Mar 11, 2026, with limited cross-faction chat (NC, Mar 11, 2026), and on the global version dungeon matching can group players from the other faction and from other servers, or be limited to the player's own faction. Groups form in a dungeon lobby with role filters and a quick join option (Elyos; Asmodians).

8:15 EUTOPIA's guide for new global players, published the day before Advanced Access, makes the same point: factions keep separate home worlds, but "dungeon matchmaking does however expand beyond your individual world within the same region".

On the global servers NC stresses that "all instanced content including dungeons are available cross-server", which is why it asked players stuck in queues on Sep 30, 2026 to create characters on newer, recommended servers instead (NC on Steam; Servers). Citing NC's FAQ, mein-mmo explains that dungeon party matching brings together the players of every active server in a region; during Advanced Access it covers only the early access servers, and from the Oct 5 launch Founder's Pack players and free players meet in the same dungeons (mein-mmo).

The global version

The global version, open to Founder's Pack buyers since Sep 30, 2026 and to everyone from Oct 5, starts with a smaller set of dungeons than Korea and Taiwan now have. According to NC's streams and Anders's launch guide, it opens with the six one- to three-star Expeditions and no Hard Conquest, the two launch Transcendence dungeons, the first Sanctuary, the first Nightmare layer, Ascension Trial, the Daily Dungeons and the Sealed Dungeons and Strongholds of both faction maps, all without Heroic gear in season 1. NC told Hardcore Gamer that the global version will be close to a year behind Korea and will release the backlog as data shows players are ready (Hardcore Gamer, Jun 16, 2026). NC's first community event confirms the two Transcendence dungeons by name: its Transcendence Dungeon Leaderboard ranks players per server and class by Rank Points earned in Deus Research Base and Shattered Arkanis, from Sep 30 on the early access servers and from Oct 5 to Nov 2 on the rest, and pays the top 10 and places 11 to 50 in upgrade materials (NC on Steam; Transcendence Dungeons). The Daeva Pass also names Nightmare Dungeon challenge tickets among its rewards, and lists clearing Sealed Dungeons and Strongholds among its missions, although no notice says every Korean Chapter 1 instance is open on day one (NC). The free Launch Scale Test of Sep 17 and 18, 2026 capped characters at level 37, below Conquest's level 45, and closed Transcendence, Nightmare and Ascension Trial (Global Release; Gear Progression).

Reception

0:46 Reviewers who played the Korean and Taiwanese version agree on the quantity. Comparing Aion 2 with Throne and Liberty in August 2026, Grobs counts three raids with a fourth coming, 18 dungeons with several difficulties, and plenty of solo and casual content, "crazy" for so young a game. He finds most Aion 2 dungeons less about coordinated team mechanics than about each player perfectly dodging boss attacks, though newer content adds more team mechanics.

14:06 Divium Furor, after 500 hours in January 2026, took about 400 hours to clear everything except the eight-player raid, which he never managed to organize. He finds that bosses have two or three mechanics, rarely four, and are easy once learned, but that there are many dungeons for so new a game, and he rates Aion 2's dungeons high B tier with the potential to reach the level of Lost Ark.

6:03 Grobs's final review of December 2025 praised the amount of group and solo PvE but criticized three things: the best PvE gear could not drop in dungeons and had to be crafted or bought at auction; resurrection stones, which can be bought with real money, could be used without limit as long as the whole group did not die at once; and mechanics were mostly a matter of dodging telegraphs. By September 2026 Anders reports a limit of two revivals per boss fight in Sanctuaries. Kets and his games, reviewing the Korean launch in November 2025, liked that dungeons focus on boss fights rather than long trash but disliked how much endgame content is time-gated (Aion 2 Full Review, kets and his games, Nov 24, 2025; Reception and Revenue).

31:57 TheLazyPeon's first party dungeon in the Launch Scale Test, played on the Asian server, shows the loop on the global client: a matched group, a floating scorpion boss, a manual resurrection bought with a currency in the middle of the fight, and his first blue item at the end. 5:05 Spid, who had played in Taiwan and Korea before the test, calls the boss fights the part where "the game shines the most", with mechanics on everything and the tank, healer and damage trinity "very important".

The first global testers found the early dungeons light. S4G's Kevin Link, level 30 after about twelve hours of the Launch Scale Test, cleared the first dungeon, Krao Cave, with an uncoordinated random group in five minutes, and his biggest complaint was how instanced the world is: small dungeons, garrisons and many story quests run in instances and the zones are split into channels, so the open world often felt solitary (S4G). On the first day of Advanced Access, mein-mmo's Karsten Scholz wrote that the grind leads into countless solo dungeons and that bosses presented with great spectacle fall within seconds (mein-mmo).

Dungeon list (global version)

What the global servers have, as of Oct 16, 2026, according to NC's streams and notices and Anders's launch guide (see The global version below):

Conquest mode of every Expedition opens at level 45 (Expedition Dungeons).

Entry limits and tickets

Global launch-week creators counted these limits; the Daily and Weekly Checklist tracks them with sources:

• Daily Dungeons: 14 runs a week, shared by a server's characters.
• Nightmare: two entries a day per character, which stack up to 14.
• Ascension Trial: three a week per character.
• Expedition and Transcendence: no tickets; a clear pays when you spend Odyle Energy on its reward cube, and the week caps the rewards (Korea's caps are 21 and 14 since May 13, 2026). Korea removed their tickets on Jul 1, 2026.
• Sealed Dungeons and Strongholds: once per character.

Tickets that do exist on the global servers are extras. NC's Halloween coin shop, open until the maintenance of Nov 3, 2026, sells Instant Clear Tickets for the Daily Dungeons (seven a week per server) and Nightmare Dungeon Challenge Tickets (three a week per server), and the Planet's Call pass pays Nightmare tickets too (NC on Steam; Nightmare and Ascension Trial). An Instant Clear Ticket claims a Daily Dungeon's rewards without running it (Daily Dungeons and Shugo Festa).

Frequently asked questions

What are the dungeon entry limits in Aion 2? On the global servers, creators count 14 Daily Dungeon runs a week per server, two Nightmare entries a day per character (stacking to 14) and three Ascension Trials a week; Expedition and Transcendence rewards are capped per week and paid with Odyle Energy instead of tickets.

Does Aion 2 use dungeon tickets? Not for Expeditions or Transcendence, whose tickets Korea removed on Jul 1, 2026; rewards cost Odyle Energy. Instant Clear Tickets for Daily Dungeons and Nightmare Dungeon Challenge Tickets exist as extras from shops and passes.

How many dungeons does Aion 2 have? NC announced more than 200 in June 2025, ranging from solo instances to group dungeons. Grobs counted 18 Expedition and Transcendence dungeons and three raids in the Korean version in August 2026, alongside the many solo instances.

What party size do Aion 2 dungeons use? Five for Expeditions and Transcendence and ten for Sanctuary raids, on the global version and in Korea and Taiwan since Jul 1, 2026. At the Korean and Taiwanese launch they were four and eight.

Are Aion 2 dungeons daily or weekly? Mostly weekly. Rewards are capped per week and even the Daily Dungeons allow 14 entries a week per server.

Can Elyos and Asmodians do dungeons together? Yes. Cross-faction PvE parties have been possible in Korea and Taiwan since Mar 11, 2026, and global matching can mix factions and servers.

Which dungeons are in the global launch? Six Expeditions, two Transcendence dungeons (Deus Research Base and Shattered Arkanis, named in NC's launch leaderboard), the first Sanctuary, the first Nightmare layer, Ascension Trial, the Daily Dungeons and the Sealed Dungeons and Strongholds.

Do Founder's Pack players and free players run dungeons together? From Oct 5, 2026, yes. All instanced content is cross-server, and dungeon matching covers every server in a region; during Advanced Access it was limited to the early access servers.

Do dungeons drop Heroic gear on the global version? Not in season 1. NC removed Heroic items from global dungeon drops and crafting at launch, so Unique is the best rarity.

Sources

• "Ludra Awakens on November 4th", NC, Oct 23, 2026 (also on Steam)
• Aion2's Core Content Unveiled: The Complete Evolution of Aion, NC, Jun 4, 2025
• Aion 2 Showcases Core Combat Content and Signature Dungeon Gameplay, NC, Aug 12, 2025
• Aion 2 Unveils Season 2 Roadmap for 2026, NC, Jan 7, 2026
• Aion 2 Introduces New Sanctuary Dungeon, 'Corroded Decontamination Facility', NC, Mar 11, 2026
• Aion 2 Introduces Major Class Overhaul and Unveils 'Chaotic Abyss', NC, Mar 25, 2026
• Aion 2 Launches New Transcendence Dungeon 'Mirror of Scarlet Desire' and Announces June Showcase, NC, May 13, 2026
• Aion 2 Rolls Out 'Chapter 1. Lands of Sand and Snow' Update, NC, Jul 6, 2026
• Aion 2 Preview: The Future of MMORPGs and Aion 2: NC Talks Content Rollout, Global Adjustments, and Player Feedback, Hardcore Gamer, Jun 16, 2026
• Aion 2 Full Review - SO Much Potential, But You Shouldn't Play It, kets and his games, Nov 24, 2025 (video)
• I played Aion 2 for 250 hours... (Final Review), Grobs, Dec 20, 2025 (video)
• This game is Doomed. 500H Aion 2 Review, Divium Furor, Jan 2, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2: Complete Endgame Daily Routine - Things You MUST Do Every Day (Global Release), Society Of Gaming, May 27, 2026 (video)
• [Aion 2] Beyond the Abyss: Global Release Preview, Aion 2 Official, Aug 7, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2 vs Throne and Liberty, Grobs, Aug 28, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2 Strongholds Guide - Mandatory Early Endgame Dungeons for Belt +10 (Global Launch), Society Of Gaming, Sep 3, 2026 (video)
• [Aion 2] Dungeon Live Gameplay Showcase, Aion 2 Official, Sep 4, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2 Sept 9 Patch: NEW Snowfield of Sorrow Sanctuary Dungeon, Blazeon, Sep 10, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2: The Kinah Guide I Wish I Had From Day One, aselon_eu, Sep 12, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2 Free Steam Open Beta: Level 37 Cap, What You Can Actually Play (Dates + Limits), Society Of Gaming, Sep 14, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2 Global PVE - Every Dungeon, Raid, and Daily at Launch, Anders, Sep 15, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2 Global First Impressions - The Good, Bad & Ugly, Spid, Sep 19, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2 Hands-On: Great Combat, but the World Feels Strangely Solitary, S4G, Sep 24, 2026
• Aion 2 First Impressions "Is It Worth Playing?", TheLazyPeon, Sep 28, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2 Global - Everything You NEED to Know Before Playing, EUTOPIA, Sep 29, 2026 (video)
• 9/30 (Wed) New Product Info (Daeva Pass), NC, Sep 30, 2026
• "New Servers Opening!" and "Community Launch Events Overview", NC on Steam, Sep 30, 2026
• Aion 2 Server für Europa - Auf welcher Welt sind die großen Streamer? and Aion 2 hat das Zeug zum besten MMORPG seit vielen Jahren, aber das liegt nur bedingt an Aion 2, mein-mmo, Sep 30, 2026
• "Update on Sanctuary Raid", NC, Oct 5, 2026
• "Trick or Treat", NC on Steam, Oct 15, 2026
• Aion 2 What Content to Prioritize Before The First Weekly Reset - Global Release Guide 2026, Society Of Gaming, Oct 6, 2026 (video)
• Aion 2: Daily & Weekly Checklist + Perfect Week 1 Plan, Grobs, Sep 28, 2026 (video)
• MY DAILY AND WEEKLY ROUTINE | COMPLETE PROGRESSION GUIDE | Aion 2, Leonis, Oct 6, 2026 (video)