Aion 4.7 Regions: Levinshor

The 4.7 patch was uploaded to NA servers about 4 months ago,  and it added two new regions to the game:  Levinshor and Kaldor.  This post is my review of these regions,  and includes my opinions of them as well.

Levinshor

This region has some new,  and unfortunately,  badly designed,  elements to it.  It's an end game region for lvl 65 players and also a pvp zone,  however it lacks an actual fort for either of the factions.  Instead each faction's "safe area" is more like a typical bare bones camp,  with a few NPCs,  2 of whom give daily ceramium medals quests and quests for instances like Illuminary Obelisk and Infinity Shard.  There's a general goods merchant, who doesn't sell kisks,  and field armor merchants. It's far from a full service zone.  There's no broker.  and no stigma master npcs.  While other camps in the region do supply these services,  the fact that the safe zone camp doesn't is a complaint of mine,  and many players other than myself.

The region is built like a drain. Every step you take is a downward one,  which eventually leads to the center of the region,  Flameberth Downs.  When you leave your faction's camp,  you jump down to the area below with no way of going back,  except by means of using the return skill,  which,  as we know, has a 20 min. cooldown.  It's for this reason that you'll see a lot of kisks placed near the jump off point.  It's the only way to get around without having to waste use return when you complete a quest in the area near the camp. You can also use the escape skill,  but this is also a waste,  imo,  because of it's long cooldown time.  What we have so far is a popular end game area with no way to walk back physically.  The only flight teleport that exists is very inconvenient,  and it's at the safe zone camp. At the edges of this "safe area" below the camp,  there are other jump off cliffs. These are also point of no return cliffs,  meaning that once you jump down,  there's no way back up. This (I'm guessing) was intended by the designers to make the immediate area below each faction's camp inaccessible to the opposing faction,  however if the area can't be reached,  then why are there zap towers to protect the faction members?  It seems like an unnecessary addition,  unless they anticipated the eventual infiltration by the opposing faction,  which did happen.   When there's a will to pvp in this game,  the players find a way.

The "safe" area below the camp has an entrance to Linkgate Foundry,  a new solo instance introduced in the 4.7 update.  More on that in another article.  The rest of the region consists of small camps occupied by Balaur that can be conquered by either faction.   In the center of the region there's a large camp called Flameberth Downs,  which is the largest camp in the region.  A portal to Infinity Shard has been placed outside this camp.

Standing outside Flameberth Downs with a map of the Levinshor region up.

The art design in this new zone places characters drawn in the style of one of NC's other MMOs,  Wildstar.   They look like a goofier,  more cartoony version of the usual creatures seen in Aion.
 If by now you think I'm not too crazy about them,  then you've guessed right.    The art has really gone awry here.

One of the new artwork characters seen in the Levinshor region,  in the style of Wildstar.

Some areas look like a more tropical re-tooling of Theobomos,  which isn't too bad.  There are 2 portals that lead to Ingisson and Gelkmaros,  for your teleporting convenience.  I'm guessing the reason why is fort siege transportation,  since the forts in those regions have been raised to level 65 in this recent patch,  and since Levinshor was designed for level 65s,  NC is assuming that most of the end game player base would be in this region,  and could use a quick teleport to those far away zones when fort sieges begin.

One of the biggest attractions of this new region is the daily Ceramium medals quests.  The other things the region is good for is taking the balaur camps and farming the opposing faction npcs that spawn around the camp for various goodies.     It's one of the only things to do around there,  besides pvp.  More on that in one of my next articles.