Review: Killer Guides Aion Kinah Guide

Review summary: The Unofficial Aion Kinah Guide by Killer Guides is quite possibly the most comprehensive money-making strategy guide for the game. It adequately covers Aion’s various economic facets and will help you make your character better as a whole, not just a mindless grinder with deep pockets.

Coming in at a whopping 145 pages, the Unofficial Aion Kinah Guide by Killer Guides leaves very few ’stones’ unturned. Not only does it cover the monetary benefits of enchantment stones, manastones, and Godstones, it explains trade brokers (auction house), personal stores, warehouses, community tips, and pershaps most importantly, tradeskill professions (crafting).

Perhaps the thing I like most about this guide is that its mission isn’t to simply point out the best grinding spots (even though it does) and tell you to mindlessly farm there all day long. Instead, the main aim of this guide is to assist players to keep a steady income while developing their characters.

This includes detailing good places to grind, the most rewarding quests, listing which enemies drop uncommon items, how to make the most out of gathering crafting materials, and providing essential advice on crafting valuable items (which seems to be the best kinah maker).

The guide also lists twelve excellent quick start tips that all future kinah millionaires should follow. One of these tips is to sell items at a reasonable price, which sounds obvious but apparently isn’t to many players. Often, players become overly opportunistic or greedy and try selling items for unrealistic sums. The end result is a warehouse full of unsold goods and wasted fees at the auction house. Do your research and price accordingly to get the best return on investment.

The “Kinah Grinding” section is especially helpful, even though its name belies its content. For most people, grinding means setting up shop in one area and mindlessly killing creatures for hours on end. This guide covers all the zones in the game (Elyos and Asmodian) from levels 1-20 (20-50 coming in free future updates) and includes farming strategies, monster drop lists, quest rewards, and other kinah-earning opportunities instead.

A great deal of time is spent explaining Aion’s crafting system because according to the author, crafting is the best way to get rich while developing your character. It starts by covering all the work order quests boosting your profession level up to 150. Next, it presents a full recipie list for each craft. It doesn’t say where these recipes all come from, but you can use the names to search the AionArmory. Finally, it provides strategies for selling crafted items that will earn you the most kinah.

This guide was created during the closed and open beta phases for Aion, so it doesn’t currently cover everything in the game up to max level. However, purchasing this guide will grant you access to free updates as they are made, which shouldn’t be too long after launch.

One thing I should point out is that the official guide page is advertising a few features that aren’t in the version of the guide I reviewed (e.g., addons, 10 tips for personal stores, etc.). I assume these will come with future updates as well.

I am giving the Unofficial Aion Kinah Guide a 9/10 because I think it covers everything essential to earning kinah in Aion while still showing players a fun experience to holistically improve their characters.