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The Market
October 6, 2026 at 11:56 PM
Added how the Market, World Market and Exchange work on the Korean service, and updated the direct trading status and members' merchant access
The Market is where players buy and sell with each other, priced in Kina. NCsoft describes it as the centre of the game's player-driven economy, with prices set by players and reflecting the value they place on items.
There are two of them, and they do not open at the same time.
Market | Reach | Availability |
|---|---|---|
Server Market | Your own server's local trading hub | Live from the very start of advance access and onward after launch |
Cross-Server Market | Every server in your region, with a much larger pool of buyers and sellers | Not available at advance access or at launch. Opens after release, once participating servers reach a similar stage in the game. |
The staggered opening is deliberate. Holding the Cross-Server Market back keeps early server economies separate while they are still finding their level, and Early Access servers keep their Markets separate from Launch servers during the head-start window, which is the mechanism that stops five days of extra farming from setting launch-day prices.
NCsoft's July 17, 2026 server notice said the Server Market is available from the very start of Early Access, and its announcement for Advance Access, which opened on September 30, 2026, listed the in-game marketplace and economy among the features of that phase.
Trading on either Market requires an active Membership. NCsoft states this twice in its own business-model letter, and it is the line that separates AION 2's free-to-play model from a purely cosmetic one: the Membership is not a convenience tier, it is the gate on player-to-player commerce.
Without a Membership | With the Special Quai Membership |
|---|---|
Items can be listed for sale but not bought | Items can be both listed and bought |
Personal trading is unavailable | Five personal trades a day, and the other player also needs an active Membership |
The Kina and Quna Exchange is unavailable | The Exchange is available |
The Wind Breeze Merchants open only at merchant NPCs in the world | The Wind Breeze Merchants open from the Shop menu at any time |
Items become untradeable once equipped, and bound Kina and bound items never enter the Market at all. Those two rules together mean the Market handles materials, unequipped gear and consumables rather than a used-equipment trade.
The official Korean guidebook (last updated March 17, 2026) gives the mechanics of the Korean service's Market, which the global Market shares in its overall design. Trades are paid in Kina between players on the same server, and an account needs real-name verification and the security service as well as a membership.
Rule | Detail |
|---|---|
Listing period | 72 hours; items that do not sell can be taken back |
Listing fee | A share of the asking price is charged when the item is listed and is not refunded if the listing is cancelled or fails to sell |
Settlement fee | Charged at a tax rate when the proceeds are collected |
Collecting proceeds | Sold items are settled from the Settlement tab to receive the Kina |
Categories and filters | Main, All, Weapons, Armor, Accessories, Consumables and Other; filters for Elyos or Asmodian items, grade and name; favorites |
Refresh | The listing can be refreshed once every 30 seconds |
Tradability | Each item's details show whether it can be traded |
The Korean service also runs a World Market, opened from the menu, where players trade with players of the same faction on every server. It works like the regular Market, but a higher settlement fee is charged when an item sells; buying carries no fee. Its companion, the Exchange, lets players sell Kina Boxes (400,000, 2,000,000 or 10,000,000 Kina, made through Material Conversion) for Quna or buy them with Quna, also in a server version and a World version. The global Special Quai Membership notice was revised to drop a World Exchange feature from its benefits, and the global Cross-Server Market is held back until after launch.
The Market, the Exchange and player-to-player trading were all switched off for the Launch Scale Test on September 17 and 18, 2026, along with every payment route. That was a test restriction rather than a design decision.
One trading change did outlast the test. The notice that closed the Launch Scale Test on September 18, 2026 said that, as an anti-bot measure, direct player-to-player trades are disabled and the Market remains the central hub for trading between players. The notice did not say whether or when direct trading returns, so the five-trades-a-day personal trading perk in the Membership table above may not be usable. As of October 7, 2026, nothing on the global notice board, in the storefront announcements or in the global support FAQ says direct trading has returned. The Market itself is unaffected.
Kina and Quna for the currencies. Monetization and Memberships for the Membership itself. Servers and Regions for how the server waves affect it.