Albion Online News

Fall has come to the world of Albion... the shadows are growing longer... and the Harvest Challenge is back! For the entire month of October, earn points for open-world activities, unlock chests to get spooky loot, and claim your very own Spectral Bat. This time around, in addition to the mount and avatar ring, you can also claim up to six new Halloween-themed furniture items that have a chance to appear in weekly chests.
[h3]A Time to Sow, a Time to Reap[/h3]
SPECTRAL BAT: This month's Challenge offers another chance to claim the amazing Spectral Bat. In addition to its spooky appearance, this winged menace comes with a powerful Blink spell that allows you to jump to a target location in the blink of an eye. (Note: like all mounts, the Spectral Bat cannot fly over obstacles or gaps.)

AVATAR RING: Adventurers who rack up enough total Challenge Points will also earn the Harvest Challenge avatar ring, featuring a pair of eerie, grinning skeletons. This non-tradable item permanently unlocks this avatar border for one character, or can be traded to the Vanity Merchant for one Vanity Token.

SEASONAL SPECIALS: All month long, reach weekly point totals to unlock Harvest Challenge Chests. Along with valuable rewards like Adventurer's Tomes, Silver, resources, and other loot, you'll also have a chance to unlock six brand-new eerie furniture items: the Scary Pumpkin Lantern, Friendly Pumpkin Lantern, Halloween Lantern, Halloween Cauldron, Halloween Scarecrow, and Halloween Pyre.

As always, you can earn Challenge Points by gathering, fishing, farming, and killing monsters. Points count simultaneously toward a daily bonus, a weekly unlockable chest, and the monthly mount and avatar ring reward. So log in, head out into the open world, gather points, and claim these rewards while they last!

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Territories will be reset this weekend - and we'll be covering it live on the AlbionTV Twitch channel starting Saturday at 17:30 UTC. Join our hosts Lewpac, Bogul, and Shozenwon as they cover the Invasion Day madness live! All fights are broadcast live with a 15-minute time delay.

Starting at 18:00 UTC, guilds will have new opportunities to claim territories and launch attacks. Those in the North and South American time zones can also tune in for the second round of territory resets on Sunday at 00:30 UTC with hosts Bogul, Shozenwon, and Robinhoodrs, with territories becoming claimable at 01:00 UTC.

Between the two reset broadcasts, we'll also be broadcasting Level 5-7 Crystal League fights with no delay at 20:30, 21:00, and 21:30 UTC.

For the complete Guild Season schedule, check out this forum post.

Today's patch brings numerous fixes and quality-of-life improvements to gameplay in Albion. Here's a bit of what's new:


[h3]Black Market: Persistent Crafting Info and Improved Performance[/h3]
Items sold to the Black Market will now retain their "crafted by" info. This means that a great deal of item loot from mobs and in treasure chests will now show who originally crafted the item. In addition to helping active crafters make a name for themselves, persistent item info adds to the depth and continuity of Albion's ever-changing world. This patch also includes performance improvements to Black Market item distribution, correcting an issue where "split" party loot mode would sometimes not work when looting items.


[h3]A Dynamic "Hotkey" and Other Mobile Improvements[/h3]
Starting with Patch 5, the mobile version includes an additional "Custom Button" next to the spellbar, with one fixed option ("Inspect") and four additional customizable buttons that can be set via the Settings menu. This button allows for everything from Autorun to party member selection to emotes, and is among the most-requested features for mobile devices. This button is still in the experimental stages, so give it a try and let us know your thoughts on our mobile forum.

Additional improvements include the ability to connect a mouse for desktop-style chat scrolling, the ability to send feedback and bug reports via a new UI, an "Increase Brightness" slider in Settings, and various bug fixes.
[h3]General Changes and Fixes[/h3]

• The health increase for Demonic Shards in Corrupted Dungeons that was intended for Patch 4 is now live.
• The combat log now displays combat data for mounted players.
• Repair Tables can once again be placed in Expeditions.
• Maxed-out specialization nodes now display the correct item power bonus.

For the complete list of changes, please see the official patchnotes.

Last month, Albion's best 5v5 teams faced off in the first-ever offseason tournament. The finals came down to the last moments, with June Esports pulling off a stunning victory. (You can read the full rundown of the tournament here). We're very excited to announce the return of this high-stakes Crystal League competition with the Season 10 Crystal League Championship.

Like the last tournament, this one will take place between Guild Seasons, on Saturday November 28 and Sunday November 29. This time around, we've updated the entry requirements to include more teams while still representing Albion's highest-tier 5v5 players: the Crystal League Championship will be open to any team who wins one Level 9 match or two or more Level 8 matches.

Prizes for the first- through fourth-place winners are as follows:

• First Place: Each player on the winning team will receive the extremely rare Sabertooth Rex Swiftclaw skin unlock item and 10,000 Gold
• Second Place: Each player will receive the White Tiger skin unlock item along with 5,000 Gold
• Third Place: Each player will receive the Jousting Horse skin unlock item along with 5,000 Gold
• Fourth Place: Each player will receive the Armored Bonehorse skin unlock item along with 5,000 Gold

Regarding first-place prizes, our current plan is to offer a new first-place skin every calendar year. This means that this championship will be the final one where the Sabertooth Rex is awarded, and an all-new skin unlock will be introduced for 2021.

We'll be publishing more details on our forums soon, so stay tuned!

Back in May, we reported on the massive population growth that Albion Online saw in the first part of 2020, starting with the Queen Update in January and growing further with worldwide quarantine measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, even as many of these measures are easing, the ingame population continues to grow: this month we surpassed the lockdown population peak to achieve a new Daily Average User count of over 125,000 players.

This boost comes in large part from the Rise of Avalon Update, which launched on August 12 with a host of massive new features like Roads of Avalon, Corrupted Dungeons, and Avalonian Weapons. The update also introduced Chinese and Korean language support to the game, which has brought a huge influx of new players from these regions and grown the Albion Online community into a truly global one.


[h3]Expanding the Royal Continent, Working Toward the Mobile Launch[/h3]
As mentioned in our last update, we've been focusing not only on supporting the content introduced with the Queen and Rise of Avalon updates, but also on improving the gameplay experience for all players as population numbers increase.

In tandem with new features and upgrades coming to the world of Albion over the coming months, we've set our sights on an expansion of the Royal Continent. The ongoing growth of the player base has made Albion's blue, yellow and red zones fuller than ever, and we're currently hard at work on a comprehensive plan to expand these Royal zones while deepening the gameplay experience they offer.

We're also hard at work improving and streamlining the mobile version of Albion Online, with continual improvements to mobile-based controls and menus being rolled out since the Queen launch, and more to come. We'll soon have further updates on the mobile version, including the next steps towards a Play Store beta launch in the final leadup to the official Apple and Google store launches, which will finally fulfill our vision of a truly cross-platform MMORPG experience with platform-optimized content updates. For now, though, we're focusing on making the mobile experience as fun and intuitive as possible.

Thanks for being part of the ever-growing Albion Online community!