Aion Online Dredge Guide

Aion Online Dredge Guide by Sharparrows

The basics:

Dredgion is an instance that is available for lvls 46-50, but only on certain times. The times varies depending on server, so you will have to ask someone for the exact times, but for all servers the entry opens 3 times a day, and each time you have 2 hours to enter, before it closes again. If you have the right lvl, a little icon will show up on your screen.

The difference with the instance is that the opposing faction will be in it too at the same time, so there will (hopefully) be both PvE and PvP. Each room has a couple of mobs, and a surkana. The teams accumulate points, and the team with highest point after 1 hour or if any team kills the captain, win. Each player in the winning team gets an extra 3000 ap, and each player in losing team gets an extra 1500 ap. Other than those freebies you will also have a personal score, that will give you individual ap.

Points:

Your number one source of points are the surkanas. And hence you should aim to get as many surkanas under your control as possible. Be vary tho, hitting a surkana will aggro all nearby mobs, so make sure you clear the needed mobs first. But again, never kill more mobs than you need to, as you want to be ahead of the other team. You will learn after a couple runs which mobs aggro and which you should leave alone. Having an experienced player pulling only the needed mobs will save you a lot of time, and give you the upper hand. Each room (except the very first) will also have a small boss guarding the surkana. This boss however will reset if you leave his room, so the general tactic is to cc the boss, kill the surk, and leave the room.

This is the score for all surkanas:

Resized to 94% (was 781 x 603) – Click image to enlarge

Other than surkanas there are points to be made on killing all types of mobs in the instance. Some mobs also drop keys, that leads to the 3 prisons that each of the two brigs have. Points vary a bit depending on what lvls you got in group, but it should be very close to the following.

Captain: 1000p
Bridge boss: 500p
Room bosses: 200p
Prisoners: 100p
5 dot mobs: 40p
2 dot mobs 18p

As mentioned earlier, everyone will have a individual score. The sum of all individual scores makes up the groups score, and will be measured against the other groups score to see what team wins. When the instance end, the ap you will get is calculated by: 1,15 * your individual score + 3000/1500 for winning/losing.

Any boss/mob/surkanas points will be divided like xp on regular mobs. Higher lvls in group will get more than the lower lvl, and if both faction hit the same surkana, each group will get a % of the points depending on how many % of its hp they killed. If Asmo kill 80% of the gravity surkana, and Elos 20%, Asmo will claim 720p and Elos 180p.

However, it gets more complicated than that. For a player to get the score, he has to be near the surkana when it dies, and alive. If a player is dead when the surk dies, his score will disappear. Lets say the Elos, instead of hitting the surkana, attacks the Asmo, and at the time the surkana dies, only 1 Asmo is alive, but all 6 of Elos. Then the scores would be about 720/6= 120p for Asmo, and 180p for Elos.

The points produced per person however is not the same for all, it depends on the damage they did on the surkana. If in fact, one player in your team did 50% of the dmg to the surkana, while the rest was killing mobs, and only this player dies before surk does, then his 50% of the points is gone. In other words, if you find the enemy group attacking a surkana, and u want to stop them from getting as much points as possible, always kill the one who you think did the most dmg to the surk, which probably is the Assassin.

This also makes suiciding into surks a bad idea, if you cant keep your team alive until the surk dies. If you rush a surk and lose half your team by the time the surk dies, you will lose around 50% of its points. If you however manage to keep everyone in your team alive until surks died, you will get surk point-360p(for the deaths), which is still decent considering that you spent 0 time killing mobs, and can move on to the next surkana while the other team is still killing mobs.

PvP 101:

You are in the same instance as the other faction, and there will be fighting. To win the fight, one of the most important things is deciding who to kill first, and having everyone assists on killing that person. A cleric can easily keep his party alive if 3 targets each take a little dmg, but if the enemy assist on 1 target together it will die faster than the cleric can heal. A lot of the times when I’m in a PUG, the one marking will put one target on mobs (skull for example), and when seeing enemy he will put the same mark on them, and after the fight, go back to using the same mark on mobs again. This means of course the mark on enemy will be lost, which is stupid.

What I do, and I find is much more useful, is using 1-4, stop, and ZZ mark on enemy, and skull on mobs. This mean I only have to mark the enemy once, and they will stay marked for the rest of the instance. Once marked, just proceed to kill the enemy in order of the number, and everyone in your group always know who to hit/cc. This is to each of his own ofc, but personly I got the 6 marks mentioned on F1-F6, and the “select mark” for those on F7-F12. This means I can mark, and switch to any target almost instantly, without even having to see them on the screen. This also is much faster than trying to target them with mouse/tab. You might not need to have hotkeys for marking, but you should always have six buttons easy to reach to select the marks your targeter use (this goes for all PvP in general, not just Dredgion)!

Each time you kill an enemy your team gets 60 points for him, that is if your team killed 100% of his hp. If a mob killed 50% of his hp you get 30p, and the rest of the points will disappear. If a mob kills 100% of the enemy hp all points will be lost from the game. So if given the options, its always better to kill the enemy yourself, than to let them die to mobs. Whenever one of your teammates die, to a mob or in PvP, everyone in your team lose 10p from their individual score, meaning your team loses 60p. In a 6v6 fight when one side kills all in the other team without any loss themselves, and with no mobs around, this therefor means they will steal 360p.

Tactics:

You can always see how much points both teams have, and knowing how much points everything in the instance bring, gives you the chance to outsmart them. For example if they lead with 100p, the time is almost up, and all surks are dead. You might wanna kill a room boss for 200p. Or if you know they are at barracks with a 200p lead, meaning they will get another 700p there, you might wanna rush the Captain, and get 1000p and end the instance. This is hard to explain, or to learn by theory, but the more you do Dredgion the better you will get at making the right calls. Try to think: “How much do they have and how much will they get, in the same time as we get how much”. There are many occasions I have won with a weaker team just by killing the right things at the right time.

Extra:

There are a couple of quests in the Dredgion, the most important one being a 30 repeat that gives you 800 ap extra for each time your team kill the bridge surkana, this is also the reason many teams focus on trying to get to bridge before the other team. After having done this quest 30 times a new quest will lock up, but it can only be taken if you are on Korean client, which I will not explain how to in this guide. But the reward for that quest is a really nice blue earring, so you will want to do it.

There is also a couple of rare bosses that can spawn inside Dredgion. The one spawning in Gravity room drops some really nice orange belts, and one in Baracks drops a really nice orange helm. Kill these when possible. There are also two rare quest bosses, one spawning in the very first room, and one at bridge. Kill these if you need them for quest. But remember none of these bosses give any points.

Every 15 minutes, the instance will make a check to see if there are players in both teams. If one team is empty, a 5 minute timer will show up, and then end the instance. That means that if the enemy team for some reason leave within the first 15 minutes, the instance will end at 42:00, after 18 minutes. Use this 18 minutes to get as much points as possible without being disturbed by anyone. You can either rush to the bridge for quest, or kill the surkanas that give the most points.

Foulplay:

I wasn’t sure if I should include this or not, but I decided to do it after all, because whether or not you like it its part of the game atm and it is going to happen.

Training:
A lot of the times you will fight enemies that pull a bunch of mobs, and then run over to your team and die, making all his mobs aggro on you instead. This means two things. Firstly their team have no mobs guarding the surkana, and they can kill it with ease. But also, if he brought enough mobs your team will die, losing both points and time. This is considered by many a cheap tactic, because there is little you can do to prevent it if they do it right. Your best defense is trying to use a spell that stops him, leaving him to die by his mobs on safe enough distance so that you don’t get aggro. A SM fear for example is a perfect spell to stop someone with.

However if its a Assassin training you he will resist the fear, or any other skill you will throw at him. If you have no other way of stopping the person training, send in only 1 person to try and kill him, as the trainer should be at low hp from mobs. Then both the trainer and the one stopping him will die. But you will get some points for killing the trainer, and will get ressed back by your party.

Assassin stealing surks:
Assassins got advanced hide, making them able to run around in the instance without being attacked. The only mobs that can see through advanced hide are; Room bosses, Rare bosses and the snipers. Assassins also have two weapons, meaning they do double the dmg on each surkana hit (surkanas only take 1 dmg, but with two swings for assassin its 2 dmg) than any other class. That together with very high attack speed and a AoE blind stigma enables them to run to any surkana in the instance, and kill it alone in 2-3 suicide attacks.

The other team has really no way of stopping him, as they themselves are blocked by mobs. This is foul not only to the other team, but to your own too as the Assassin will be the only one in his team to get any points, as he is the only one near to the surkana. This is also sometimes used as a tactic to win the game for the group ensuring everyone the 3k ap for winning. Having 5 ppl in your team disturb the other team, while having your assassin steal surkanas and get your team the highest score.

A note on this, is when someone is alone and hitting the surkana, it will only register him as an attacker and not his group. Lets say an assassin kills 90% of a a surkana all alone. But then when he is out of range from the surkana someone else in his team kills the last 10%. Even tho the same team killed 100% of the surkana, the one who killed 90% of it is not there, and so 90% of the points will be lost. The people who killed the 10% and is there will still get 10% of the surkana points, but the rest is lost both for the assassin who killed 90%, but also from the team, as group score is the sum of everyones individual score. So if you want the score for your team, make sure everyone who hit the surkana is around when it dies.

Key hogging:
As I said earlier you will end up with a couple of keys while killing mobs. These lead to the 6 prisoners that each give 100p. The person looting this key can either use it when his group is at the prison killing the surkana, which would give everyone 100/6 points. Or as Ive seen some selfish people do, save it, and go back there later when he is alone and get 100p all for himself.

There is also a third tactic, which I must admit I have done a couple of times. Its not hard to save up a couple of keys, lets say 6 of them. And if you ever have a really close game, you pop out all your keys and is able to boost your teams point up by as much as 600p, if no one else has opened any prison yet. I have won several close games by producing an extra instant 500p in the last minute.