Before you start crafting, you need to understand gathering. Gathering is the process of accumulating materials required for crafting. There are tons of gathering nodes sprinkled all over the landscape. Gathering in Aion has a leveling system, which means that you cannot gather some items until you’ve reached the right gathering level.
You can start gathering at level 1, and although it’s time consuming to gather everything you use, it’s best to start doing it from the beginning. There are several important reasons to improve your gathering skills, even though you decide never to take up crafting. One is that you actually earn a small amount of XP from gathering, which may not seem much compared to the amount from grinding or questing, but during your early levels they do help. Another is that at later levels you’ll encounter quests that require you to give an NPC a certain amount of say, fruit. If you don’t have the proper gathering level, you can’t get this fruit. You may be able to buy them at the Trade Broker or a Private Store but don’t always count on this, and may also sell for ridiculous prices. And finally, crafting materials sell well on the Trade Broker, so you can make a profit from selling them. However, some sell better than others, so keep an eye out on which are the money makers and which are the duds.
During the first nine levels you’re supposedly gathering the raw materials, but when you become a Daeva at level 10 you instead are now extracting vitality, which suggests that you’re instead gathering the essence of the material. Regardless, there is no difference as the fruit and ore look exactly the same in your inventory when you gathered them as a mortal and when you gather them as a Daeva. However, as a Daeva you’re also able to gather one important material — aether. Aether is required for most crafting professions and has other uses. The tricky thing with aether gathering is that not only are they available in certain areas (e.g. Altgard Fortress in Asmodae), but Aether is located in the air, usually at high altitudes. Since you only have a short amount of flight time — especially as a newly minted Daeva — it can be particularly challenging and frustrating to gather this much needed product.
