AION 2: Manastones, Soulstones and Theostones

AION 2 has three kinds of stones that you engrave into your gear, and people mix up all three. Manastone goes into weapons and armor, Soulstone into accessories, and Theostone gives your attacks a chance to trigger an extra effect. This guide shows you exactly what they give, what they cost, where to get them, and why pouring resources into them doesn’t pay off at every stage of the game.

One thing up front, because it decides everything else: an engraved stone disappears along with the item. When you replace or dismantle a piece of gear, you don’t get the stones back. Only Enhancement Stones are returned, as explained in detail in the article on enhancing gear. That is the only reason this guide doesn’t open with a table of the best stones, but with the question of what to put them into in the first place.

Watch out for guides that describe a different game

If you search for aion 2 manastone today, the whole first page is about the original AION from 2009: a wiki, an item database, a forum and an eight-year-old video about the system from version 6.0. Not one of those results describes AION 2.

And the difference isn’t cosmetic. In the old game, manastones were socketed and socketing could fail, which also wiped out the stones you had already socketed. In AION 2, stones are engraved (the UI uses the verb engrave), they have their own screen, and on top of that there’s a whole Theostone system that didn’t exist in this form in the old game. How the two games actually differ is summed up in the AION Classic vs. AION 2 comparison.

Three stones, three different slots

Stone	Where it goes	What it does
Manastone	weapons and armor	adds a random stat
Soulstone	all accessories: necklaces, earrings, rings, bracelets, brooches	adds a random stat
Theostone	weapon and off-hand armor (guard)	gives your attack a chance to trigger an effect

This split comes with one nasty detail in the game. In the game UI, Soulstone is listed as Common Manastone, so its item type has the same name as the weapon stone. Only the description tells you it goes into the Soulstone slots on accessories. And the tab in the enhancement window is simply called Manastone / Soulstone, because both share one inventory. If you go by the item type instead of the description, you’ll buy the wrong stone.

The second mix-up is even sneakier: in the same shop that sells Superior Soulstone, you’ll also find Resurrection Spiritstone. That one can’t be engraved at all, it’s a resurrection item. Spiritstone and Soulstone have nothing to do with each other.

Manastone and Soulstone: nine effects and nothing more

Both the effect and its value are random. It says so literally in the description of both stones: the stat type and value are determined at random. The list of possibilities is finite, though, and the game shows all of it on the auto engraving screen:

Effect	Value range
Attack	2 – 8
Defense	20 – 75
Accuracy Bonus	6 – 13
Evasion Bonus	6 – 13
Critical Hit	6 – 13
Critical Hit Resist	6 – 13
Block	9 – 18
HP	45 – 130
MP	23 – 65

Nine entries, nothing else. So manastones and soulstones don’t give Intelligence, Smite or positional stats. Those come from elsewhere, as described in the combat system breakdown.

The lower bound in the table matches the lowest result quality, the upper bound the highest. Quality has four grades: Basic → Higher → Superior → Ultimate. For some stats the gap between the extreme grades is threefold (Attack 2 vs. 8, HP 45 vs. 130), so a bad roll isn’t a few percent off, it’s in a different league.

How many slots an item has

The number of slots isn’t fixed, it depends on the item’s rarity:

Item rarity	Slots
Rare (regular piece)	2
Unique	4
Heroic	5

Actual gear from the game, so you can see what it looks like in practice:

Item	Stone effects	Slots
+10 Explorer Brooch	Evasion Bonus +7, Critical Hit +5	2
+10 Enraged Kromede Necklace (Unique)	Block +20, Evasion Bonus +15, HP +30, Weapon Damage Boost +10	4
+13 Ancient Spirit Ring	Critical Hit Resist +7, Attack +3, HP +160, Evasion Bonus +10, HP +50	5
+14 Ancient Spirit Breastplate	HP +50, Block +15, Block +15, Critical Hit +10, Attack +10	5

Two things follow from this that are worth knowing before you start spending. The same effect can show up twice on one piece: Block +15 on the breastplate above is an example. And a heroic piece has five slots, so better gear soaks up more stones than a stopgap piece. Which is exactly why it only pays to invest heavily in gear you’re going to keep.

Auto Engrave: tell the game what you want and let it grind

Engraving one stone after another by hand is a waste of time. The game has an Auto Engraving Goal Settings screen where you set a goal along three axes:

• Grade: the minimum result quality, i.e. “Basic or better”, “Superior or better”, or “Ultimate” only.
• Amount: a slider from 1 or more to 5 or more. How many effects have to match the goal for the automation to stop.
• Effect: tick the specific stats from the nine above.

Then you just start Auto Engrave and the game engraves stone after stone until it hits the goal. It’s convenient and it’s a trap at the same time: it works like a casino slot machine. The stricter the goal you set, the longer it keeps rerolling, burning stones and currency until everything lines up at once. “Ultimate, four effects at once” is a setting that will eat your entire stockpile and end with you having nothing left to roll with.

What engraving costs

One engraving costs 3,000 units of the currency shown right next to the button; five engravings in a row swallowed exactly 15,000. So the stones themselves are only half the bill. How much currency you realistically earn per day is worth working out before you set auto engraving to Ultimate.

Theostone: percentages, cooldown and one hard rule

Theostone is engraved into your weapon, and also into off-hand armor, meaning whatever you hold in your other hand. It gives your attacks a chance to trigger an extra effect. The description always follows the same pattern: X percent chance of an effect on attack, plus an Effect Activation Cooldown, which is how long the effect can’t trigger again after it fires.

And then there’s a sentence that’s easy to miss and trips up a lot of people: if you engrave two identical Theostones, only one counts. Doubling up on the same stone does nothing.

Theostones are built mainly for PvP

This is an opinion, not a line from a tooltip, but there’s simple logic behind it. Six hundred bleed damage against a boss with a huge health pool is a rounding error. On the other hand, Seal, Paralyze or Blind for a few seconds decides a player-versus-player fight. The effects theostones offer aren’t really meant for regular dungeons: they make sense in the Abyss and in arenas.

The practical takeaway: if you mostly play PvE, take a theostone with direct damage. If you’re going into PvP, take the one with a control effect, even if it has a smaller number in the table.

Theostones come in three rarity tiers, which you can tell by the frame color: green is Rare, blue is Epic, gold is Unique. Specific stones, as read from the game:

Theostone	Rarity	Effect	Cooldown
Feruk’s Instinct	Rare	3% chance of 400 Bleed damage every 2 s for 10 s	1 s
Perion’s Tragedy	Rare	3% chance to inflict Seal for 3 s	5 s
Mahisha’s Wrath	Epic	3% chance of 600 Bleed damage every 2 s for 10 s	1 s
Deltras’s Loyalty	Epic	3% chance of −50% movement speed for 6 s	5 s
Freyr’s Wisdom	Epic	5% chance of 2,000 Earth damage to a single target	1 s
Ereshkigal’s Honor	Epic	3% chance to inflict Paralyze for 4 s	5 s
Beritra’s Conspiracy	Unique	3% chance to inflict Seal for 5 s	5 s
Tiamat’s Rage	Unique	1% chance of 15,000 Fire damage to a single target	1 s

Why Unique isn’t seven times better than Epic

This is the part that theostone overviews usually don’t calculate. Tiamat’s Rage deals 15,000 damage, but only on a one percent chance. Freyr’s Wisdom deals 2,000 on a five percent chance. So the average damage per attack looks like this:

Theostone	Calculation	Average per attack
Tiamat’s Rage (Unique)	1% × 15,000	150
Freyr’s Wisdom (Epic)	5% × 2,000	100
Mahisha’s Wrath (Epic)	3% × 5 ticks of 600	90
Feruk’s Instinct (Rare)	3% × 5 ticks of 400	60

So the difference between the gold and the blue stone is fifty percent, not sevenfold. On the other hand, the gold stone is far less reliable: with a one percent chance it may not trigger at all in a short fight. For long boss fights in dungeons the average is what matters; for short PvP skirmishes in the Abyss reliability matters more than the average.

And one more thing the table leaves out: stones with control effects can’t be compared by damage at all. Paralyze for four seconds, Seal for five or Blind for seven decide a fight in a way that never shows up in damage numbers.

Nothing raises the trigger chance

This is the most common misconception about theostones, and it’s worth saying bluntly: the percentage chance is fixed and no character stat moves it. One percent stays one percent, no matter what Critical Hit you have, what level you are or how far your weapon is enhanced. It isn’t a hidden roll that gear can influence.

Anyone who claims to know a way to raise that chance is most likely talking about something else, such as attack speed, which increases the number of attempts per minute but not the probability of a single attempt.

Merging theostones: nine out of ten attempts end where they started

Theostones can be merged: you register four and the game turns them into one new stone. The key point is that merging doesn’t guarantee the result. The game shows the exact numbers, though, so you can work it out in advance:

You merge	Stays at the same tier	Moves up
Rare theostones	Rare: 88.88%	Epic: 11.12%
Epic theostones	Epic: 90.90%	Unique: 9.10%

So nine out of ten merges get you nowhere. And if you’re after one specific stone, it’s even worse: the game breaks down the chance for each individual theostone separately, and the numbers are small:

Specific result	Chance	On average once every
Tiamat’s Rage (Unique)	0.902480%	111 merges
Kaisinel’s Reverie (Unique)	0.451240%	222 merges
Freyr’s Wisdom (Epic)	1.102810%	91 merges
Mahisha’s Wrath (Epic)	0.551405%	181 merges

The practical conclusion is unpleasant but honest: merging is a way to use up surplus, not a way to get a specific stone. If you set yourself the goal “I want Tiamat’s Rage”, you’re burning resources on a lottery with a hundred tickets.

At the top tier it’s also the only known route. So far no source has been found where Unique theostones can be obtained directly, at least none that would be available at the launch of the global version. Rare and Epic come from content, Unique so far only from merging Epics.

Where to get the stones

Manastones and soulstones drop from mobs, come from quests, achievements and events, and the Alchemy profession can craft them. You’ll have several hundred basic stones early in the game, so there’s no need to save those. The Superior line is noticeably rarer, and it makes sense to keep it for later in the game.

Theostones come from three places: shops that take currency from Transcendence and Expedition Ordeals, achievements and seasonal quests.

Only the shops give you a predictable supply, though, and they have caps. Just like these stones upgrade your gear, your wardrobe deserves an upgrade too – check out the AION 2 merch at the GamersTogether shop.

Arena currency shop

Item	Price
Rare Theostone Chest (Bound)	35,000
Lesser Abyssal Manastone (Bound)	1,000
Lesser Abyssal Soulstone (Bound)	2,000

Dungeon points shop, with a weekly cap

Item	Weekly limit per character	Price
Superior Manastone (Bound)	5	2,000
Superior Soulstone (Bound)	5	3,000
Superior Abyssal Manastone (Bound)	5	3,000
Superior Abyssal Soulstone (Bound)	5	6,000

That cap is the whole story. Five per character per week can’t be bypassed with time or with money. If you burn your weekly allowance on a stopgap piece of gear and swap it for something better three days later, you wait another week. Your stone supply is a hard limit, not a matter of farming, and that’s why it pays to hold on to them until you have a piece you’re going to keep.

The quality of the regular line goes up in the order Intermediate → Superior, and a Soulstone always costs more than a Manastone of the same tier.

Abyssal stones are a completely different product

This is the most important thing in this whole section, and it’s easy to miss because the stones have almost the same names. Lesser Abyssal and Superior Abyssal Manastones don’t give the nine stats from the table above. They give PvP stats: PvP Damage, PvP Attack, PvP Damage Boost, PvP Block and others from that family.

So these are purely PvP stones, and nothing else comes out of them. You get them by killing mobs and players in PvP, but the reliable source is the Abyss points shop. If you only play PvE, you have no reason to touch them, and if you’re building a PvP character, you need them no matter how good your regular stones are.

Ping spikes in AION 2? Code MAGIC takes 62% off LagoFast.
LagoFast is a game booster that optimises the route to the game server. After registering you get 4 hours free, so you can check whether it helps on your server before paying – and the code MAGIC gets you 62% off your first order. Step by step in our LagoFast guide, or try it with the discount.

This is an affiliate link. If you buy through it, GamersTogether earns a commission. It doesn’t affect your price or what we write here.

FAQ

The data was read from the game UI of the Taiwanese client on 7 September 2026. What the stones tie into is covered in the gear enhancement guide, crafting your own stones is explained in the crafting article, and the rest of the game systems are in the AION 2 guide.