AION 2 Kinah (Kina): how to earn currency

Kinah is the most searched name for the in-game currency in AION 2, but it isn’t the one you’ll see in the game. There, the currency is called Kina. It is one and the same thing: the official name for the Western version is Kina, while the community inherited the spelling Kinah from the original 2009 AION, and it sticks around in guides, on forums and in search. This article is about AION 2, not the original 2009 game. The economies differ so much that old guides won’t help you here.

Besides the in-game currency there is also Quna, a premium currency bought with real money. You can exchange it for in-game currency, but only with a paid membership. If you want to know what AION 2 costs and what exactly you pay for with a card, that belongs in our breakdown of the price, free-to-play model and cash shop. This article is strictly about money inside the game.

The essentials in five points

• Kina and Kinah are the same thing. The official name is Kina, but people search for “kinah”, which is why this article uses both forms.
• The second currency is called Quna, not “Kuna”. You buy it with real money and can’t earn it by playing.
• There are two kinds of in-game currency: tradeable and bound. Bound currency can’t be put into storage or sold.
• The daily earning cap is 1,000,000 Kina; once you reach it, item drops are limited too.
• Both the market and the exchange are locked behind an optional membership for $15 a month. Without it, a player can neither buy nor sell.

Kinah or Kina? One currency, two names

It is one and the same currency. The official name for the Western version is Kina, while the spelling Kinah comes from the original AION from 2009 and is used by most English guides, videos and shops.

The difference comes from transliteration. The Korean original is written 키나 and is romanized in English as Kina. In the Western versions of the original game, however, the spelling Kinah took hold, and it has stuck with the community and search engines for sixteen years.

The evidence for the official form is direct. NCSOFT’s press release from 25 March 2026 uses the terms “Kina” and “Kina (Bound)” and states verbatim: “Reflecting player feedback, Kina (Bound) has been added to the game.” The Fextralife wiki uses the same form. English translations of the Korean patch notes, on the other hand, write Kinah, and in-game currency sellers use both. One of them has “kina” in its URL but adds in its own text that it is also called “Aion 2 Kinah”.

One factual error worth correcting: Google’s AI Overview for a query about this currency describes the premium currency as “Kuna”. That is a mistake. The kuna was the Croatian currency. The premium currency in AION 2 is called Quna.

A practical tip: when you look for guides, search for “kinah”. When you read text in the game, you’ll see “Kina”. How AION 2 differs from the older game overall is covered in our comparison of AION Classic and AION 2.

Kina and Quna: two currencies and what sits between them

There are two currencies, and there is only one way to mix them. You earn the in-game currency by playing, you buy the premium one with money, and between them stands an exchange you can’t get into without a membership.

Currency	How you get it	What it’s for	Can it be exchanged?
Kina (Kinah in English guides)	By playing: quests, hunting, dungeons, selling on the market	Gear upgrades, market purchases, running a Legion, crafting	Yes, but only at the exchange and only with a membership
Quna	With real money	Cash shop, cosmetics, premium battle pass track	Yes, but only at the exchange and only with a membership

The exchange (Quna Exchange) doesn’t work like a vending machine with a fixed rate. One player offers in-game currency, another buys it for Quna. NCSOFT itself compares it to the currency exchange in Guild Wars 2. So the price is set by supply and demand, not by the developer.

Korean figures from December 2025 show how expensive things are in Quna: a cosmetic armor set cost 2,500 Quna, wings 1,500 Quna and a character appearance change 200 Quna, or one hundred during an event. More interesting than the numbers themselves is that the same cosmetic sets were sold in parallel directly for Korean currency, at 49,000 won. So Quna isn’t really an “in-game” currency. It is just another form of payment.

NCSOFT hasn’t announced what Quna will cost in the West. Without that, none of the prices above can be converted into Western currencies, which is why we don’t try to do it here.

Bound Kina: the currency split in two in March 2026

Since the patch of 25 March 2026, not all money in AION 2 is equal. The in-game currency split into tradeable Kina and bound Kina, called Kina (Bound) or Soul-bound Kinah in English. In its official press release, NCSOFT presented this as a response to player feedback.

	Tradeable Kina	Bound Kina, Kina (Bound)
Where it comes from	Trading between players, hunting monsters, Odyle Energy Cube, market settlements	Quests, daily task rewards, NPC shops, sealed dungeons, strongholds and, according to the patch notes translation, “all other content”
Into storage?	Yes, into both character and server storage	No
Tradeable?	Yes	No
What it’s used for	Purchases on the market and World Market, private trades, converting Kina boxes	Regular spending at NPCs and in game systems

Here is the most useful detail of the whole system: when you pay for something, the game spends the bound currency first and only then the tradeable one. The patch notes translation puts it as “sinks prioritize Soul-bound first, then tradeable”. In practice, this means you don’t have to keep track of the spending order yourself. The game handles it correctly for you.

Chapter 1, released on 1 July 2026, extended the system deeper into dungeons. In Conquest Normal mode, the currency became bound in Fire Temple and Ferocious Horn Den, while in Dying Dramata’s Nest and Cradle of Nihility half of it is bound. In Conquest Hard, Krao Cave, Draupnir, Urugugu Canyon and Vakron Sky Island are fully bound, and in the remaining dungeons roughly half of the reward is bound.

The takeaway: a growing share of what you farm can’t be sold or moved to another character. It is a countermeasure against bots and resellers, and at the same time a reason to spend as you go instead of saving up for one big purchase. An overview of the other changes in that update is in our Chapter 1 patch notes summary, and the individual dungeons are covered in the dungeon overview.

The 1,000,000 Kina daily cap and what happens when you hit it

Yes, a daily earning limit exists, and it is 1,000,000 Kina. The patch of 10 December 2025 lowered it from the original two million to one.

What matters is what happens once you reach it: item drops are limited as well. So it isn’t just about currency, but about everything you get out of the game. You can see the status of the limit in the buff window and in the party member info; the same patch also shortened the time dropped items stay on the ground to two minutes.

The limit also applies to loot gained in a group, so you can’t get around it by playing in a party. Chapter 1 added a summary indicator: the in-game currency and Abyss Points now show the cumulative total together with the maximum that can be earned.

Why this deserves its own section: it is the most common “why did this suddenly stop working” moment a new player runs into, and yet most guides say nothing about it. The most cited English text about farming recommends playing Expedition Conquest Mode “for a million an hour” without mentioning that an hour and a bit later the player hits the daily cap. Those two numbers directly contradict each other, and it’s good to know that in advance. When estimating how much you can realistically earn, go by the cap rather than by farming speed. How this ties into your progression pace is covered in the leveling guide.

Three market layers, all behind a membership

The answer to “why can’t I sell on the market” is unpleasant and unambiguous. The Korean update notes from 10 December 2025 put it verbatim: “All marketplaces can only be used by Membership users.” Without a paid membership, you can neither sell nor buy on the market.

This matches exactly what NCSOFT confirmed for the West in its announcement of 8 July 2026: an optional membership for $15 a month unlocks the Market (auction house), the Kina↔Quna exchange and the subscriber shop. The game itself stays free; the economy doesn’t.

Market layer	Available since	Sales tax	Listing limit	Membership?
Local / server market (broker)	Since launch	Not stated	Not stated	Yes
World Market and Quna exchange	10 Dec 2025 (KR/TW)	20%	10 listings, separately for the market and for the exchange	Yes
Cross-Server Market	Not opening at the global launch	–	–	–

The World Market is a server-wide market: trading on it happens across servers and factions, and that is exactly why it carries a twenty percent sales tax. The tax applies to every listing, so with cheap items, reselling stops being worth it sooner than you’d think.

One precedent from Korea deserves more attention than all the numbers combined. The new servers Poeta and Ishalgen weren’t allowed on the World Market at all; they could only use the original local market. So a new server in AION 2 doesn’t mean full access to the economy, and at the global launch all servers are created at once.

Korea also has two memberships, Wind Breeze Membership and Special Shugo Membership, and World Market access was added to them only later, on 10 December 2025. According to the July announcement, the West gets a single $15 membership. What exactly you pay for and what is free is broken down item by item in the article on price and the cash shop.

Without a membership, the practical consequence is simple: you have to win or craft all your gear yourself, and you can’t sell your surplus. For many players, this is the main reason they talk about the AION 2 model as something other than classic free-to-play.

Where to earn in-game currency, from early game to endgame

Reliable income looks different in each phase of the game. At the start it comes from quests, in the midgame from dungeons and crafting, and in the endgame from repeatedly running one specific piece of content. All the numbers below come from the Korean and Taiwanese versions and from commercial sources, so treat them as a ballpark guide, not a guarantee. Besides saving up Kinah in the game, you can invest in your wardrobe too – check out the AION 2 merch at the GamersTogether shop.

Game phase	Income source	Approximate yield	What you need
Start	Daily and weekly quests	A steady base, noticeably more generous after level 45	Nothing, it works from the first hour
Start	Gathering materials along the way	Depends on market prices	Gathering points, a willingness to take detours
Midgame	Daily dungeons	Loot, materials and currency at the same time	A group and Odyle Energy
Midgame	Crafting for market demand	Margin depends on demand	A chosen profession and a membership to sell
Endgame	Expedition Conquest Mode solo	~1,000,000 per hour; a 6–7 minute run for ~85,000	Item level 1,400–1,500, a class with area damage
Endgame	Krao Cave	~600,000 per 10 minutes	Matching gear

At the start, the safest route is completing daily and weekly quests. There are no gear requirements, you can do them solo, and the rewards grow noticeably once you reach higher levels. On top of that, it pays to gather materials along the way and clean out your inventory regularly. Old loot loses value faster than you’d think.

In the midgame, daily dungeons take over, giving you loot, materials and currency at the same time. According to the only available source, some dungeons have a weekly limit of around 35 runs, so you can’t repeat them endlessly. The second pillar is crafting, but not random crafting: it pays to make what the market consumes every day, meaning potions, scrolls and enhancement materials. How gathering, professions and worthwhile crafting work is covered in the article on crafting and professions.

In the endgame, according to available sources the fastest option is Expedition Conquest Mode played solo in a private room. In a group the loot is split and enemies have more health, so a solo run pays off more; the recommended gear is item level 1,400 to 1,500, and a class with area damage works best. You need Odyle Energy for the chests at the end of a run. In a solo run, the combat contribution requirement is met automatically; in a group, you have to deal damage equal to at least 5% of the boss’s health or heal at least 20% of the damage the party takes. These numbers come from a blog post sponsored by an in-game currency seller, which is why we cite them with attribution and without a link.

Another method that gets mentioned is stone flipping: buy manastones and spirit stones on the market, craft higher versions from them and sell at a margin of around 25 to 30 percent. The source is the same single, unverified one, so treat it as an idea rather than a plan.

Alt characters work as an income multiplier: they don’t need gear, they can handle daily quests and gathering, and the earnings are transferred to your main through shared storage. But there is a major catch that nobody else mentions: bound Kina can’t be moved through storage, and there is more and more bound currency since Chapter 1. The newer the content your alts play, the smaller the share of their earnings that can actually be moved elsewhere.

And the last, most important caveat for this whole section: the daily cap is 1,000,000 Kina. An hour of farming “for a million” can’t be repeated endlessly, and the difference between “a million an hour” and “a million a day” is exactly what planning is about. How much each dungeon gives and how often you can enter it is covered separately in the dungeon overview, and if you play with a group, the article on Legions and how to lead them is worth a look too.

Where your Kina goes: an overview of real costs

Expenses in AION 2 are scattered across five different systems, and nobody puts them together. Yet only in a single table can you see the scale involved.

Expense	Cost	Data source
Gathering point reset	50,000	Wiki and community sources
Founding a Legion	100,000	Community sources
Locking one Arcana property	500,000	Official KR patch notes
Running a Legion base	~1,000,000 per month	Community sources
Weapon upgrade (Guardian 78 → 84)	5,000,000	Video, unverified
Weapon upgrade to Splendent 92	10,000,000	Video, unverified
Advanced Inheritance, cost cap	50,000,000	Official KR patch notes
Blueprint for Abyssal Forge: Weapon Selection Box	50,000,000 and four tickets	Official KR patch notes

On top of that come ongoing costs that people forget when planning: gear repairs, enhancement fees, material consumption when crafting and the twenty percent tax on every sale on the World Market.

The best way to picture the scale is a simple calculation. The daily cap is a million. Advanced Inheritance costs fifty million. That isn’t an expense, that is fifty days of playing at full capacity.

In the long run, the most expensive item remains gear enhancement, for one specific reason: on failure, the stones are returned, but the currency you spent is not. How exactly it works, where the safe threshold is and when failures start is covered in the article on gear enhancement. The costs of professions and materials belong to crafting.

What in-game currency can’t buy

AION 2 doesn’t have one currency. It has several, and most of them can’t be exchanged for one another, which causes a lot of confusion.

• Abyss Points (AP) are a separate PvP currency. PvP gear and PvP consumables can only be bought with them, and in-game currency can’t replace them. Where you collect AP and what exactly they’re for is covered in the article on the Abyss and the PvP zone.
• Quna can be obtained for in-game currency, but only through the exchange, and that is behind a membership. Without one, there is no bridge between the two currencies.
• Odyle Energy, which you need to open chests in dungeons, is its own resource with its own recharge. Note that it isn’t the same as the material Odyle, and it isn’t enough on its own: to be eligible for the reward, you also have to contribute to the boss kill.
• Founder’s Packs are bought with real money, not in-game currency, and they are purely cosmetic. What they contain and how tier upgrades work is covered in the article on Early Access and Founder’s Packs.

The practical conclusion is simple: before you start saving for something, check which currency it’s paid with. In-game currency is the most universal, but far from all-powerful, and several of the most important things in the game are tied to resources you can’t buy with it. If you get this straight in your head right at the start, you’ll spare yourself the disappointment of having millions in your account and still not being able to buy PvP gear.

The economy is separate during early access

If you jump in with a Founder’s Pack from 30 September 2026, you’ll play for five days in a closed economy. For that whole period, the early access servers have a separate Market, a separate exchange and separate PvP matchmaking, and only afterwards do they merge with the main population.

In practice, this means two things. First, anyone selling in the first five days sells only to other Founder’s Pack holders, so early access prices won’t be representative and there is no point planning around them. Second, the Cross-Server Market doesn’t open even at the full launch, so even after 5 October 2026 the economy won’t be connected across everything.

If you don’t buy early access, you don’t lose anything economically. Prices only settle once the main population arrives anyway, and from the market’s point of view, the first five days are more of a closed test than a head start.

The Korean precedent with the Poeta and Ishalgen servers shows that this kind of restriction doesn’t have to be short-term: the new servers there weren’t allowed on the World Market at all. And one thing that people often worry about needlessly: Founder’s Packs give no economic advantage. The Daeva’s Campaign Supply Chest is identical in all three tiers, and the difference between them is purely cosmetic.

Is it worth buying in-game currency from resellers?

Let’s be frank about what it looks like: when you search for “aion 2 kinah”, you mostly get shops. Six of the nine results on the first page are in-game currency sellers, the rest are two discussion threads and one blog post sponsored by one of those shops. There isn’t a single independent editorial article about the AION 2 economy in that list.

We don’t recommend buying currency, and not out of moralizing. There are four concrete practical reasons.

1. Bound Kina can’t be bought. A growing share of the economy is bound, and it simply can’t be transferred between accounts. So buying solves a smaller part of the problem than it seems at first glance.
2. Selling and buying on the market require a membership. Without it, it’s hard to get purchased currency to where you want to use it.
3. There is an official route. The Kina↔Quna exchange is also behind a membership, but it is legal and you don’t risk losing your account.
4. NCSOFT cracks down on bots and resellers. The introduction of bound currency and the daily cap are direct evidence of that: both are designed precisely against mass currency farming.

The scale of this market is best illustrated by one discussion thread that Google itself serves for the topic: a Korean player bought ten billion units of in-game currency for $35,000 and built a complete PvE set out of it. A regular player doesn’t compete with that and can’t, which is one more reason to plan around the daily cap and not around other people’s spending. How this connects to the cash shop and the pay-to-win question is covered in the article on the AION 2 free-to-play model.

Was Kinah the same in the original AION?

No. This article is about AION 2. The original AION from 2009 also had a currency called Kinah, but its economy worked differently and guides for it won’t help you here.

That this is a real source of confusion can be shown directly in the search results. One seller ranking third has the description “Kinah is the main currency in Aion, used by both the Asmodians, Devahs, and Balaur”. That describes the original game, and with a garbled spelling of “Daeva” to boot. So texts about two different games sit side by side there. What Daeva means in AION 2 and why the word has six different meanings is covered in the article on ascending to Daeva.

Feature	Original AION (2009)	AION 2
Currency name	Kinah	Kina (Kinah in English guides)
Bound currency variant	No	Yes, since 25 Mar 2026
Daily earning cap	No	Yes, 1,000,000
Server-wide market with tax	No	Yes, World Market with 20% tax
Exchange for premium currency	No	Yes, but behind a membership

Will it be the same in the global version?

Most of the numbers above come from the Korean and Taiwanese versions, which have been running since 19 November 2025 and got Chapter 1 on 1 July 2026. Far from all of it is confirmed for the global version.

Confirmed for the West: the free-to-play model and an optional membership for $15 a month that gates the Market, the Kina↔Quna exchange and the subscriber shop, all from NCSOFT’s official announcement “Team Update: Business Model / Our Approach” of 8 July 2026. The names of both currencies, Kina and Quna, are also confirmed in Western materials.

Not confirmed: the daily cap, the exact rules for bound currency, the twenty percent World Market tax, Quna prices in Western currencies, or whether the West will have one membership or more. Where your money is concerned, it’s more honest to say this than to guess.

The dates are clear: early access on 30 September 2026 for Founder’s Pack holders and the full free-to-play launch on 5 October 2026 for everyone, exclusively on PC. Details on both dates are in the article on the AION 2 release date. NCSOFT itself writes in the announcement that some areas may still change during launch preparations, so we will update this page as soon as it’s clear which rules the global version launches with.

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FAQ

The AION 2 economy changed repeatedly during 2026: bound currency was added, the daily cap was lowered and a server-wide market opened. The mechanics described here are based on the Korean and Taiwanese versions, and we’ll refine them as soon as it’s clear what the global version launches with. More articles on the topic are in the AION 2 game guides section. Information verified as of 15 August 2026.