Albion Online News

The air is crisp, Adventurers are contesting the Yuletide Challenge, and festive decorations adorn Albion's cities. It all points to one thing: Uncle Frost is back!

This strange, bearded figure has a chance to appear at the end of any T4+ Solo or Group Randomized Dungeon across all factions and zones between now and December 30 - just look for Christmas trees as you approach the end of a dungeon. If you manage to find and defeat him, you can unlock the final chest for a chance at special Yule-themed items including snowballs and the rare Yule Stag mount skin!

[h3]Celebrate the Occasion[/h3]
Uncle Frost has a benevolent side as well, of course, so to mark his arrival and celebrate the festive season, he’s sent fireworks and snowballs to all players! To claim them, just log into the game before December 30 at 10:00 UTC. There you’ll find an in-game mail containing snowballs and three colors of fireworks, available to all characters who have completed the tutorial.



So grab your gifts, head out into the streets and join in the festive spirit with a snowball fight or a spectacular light show. Uncle Frost would be delighted!

The first Lands Awakened patch is now live! This patch updates the requirements for Headquarters Hideouts, brings combat balance changes to War Gloves, Maces and other weapons, introduces UI improvements and guild invite spam protections, and much more. Here’s a summary of what’s new:

[h3]Headquarters Hideout Requirements Updated[/h3]
The requirements for declaring a Headquarters Hideout have been updated. Most notably, you can now designate a Headquarters immediately when the Season Point threshold has been reached - you no longer need to wait until the following season to declare a Headquarters. Furthermore, the top-600 ranking requirement has been removed.

For more details, as well as the current point requirements by zone quality and tier, see this forum post: https://forum.albiononline.com/index.php/Thread/157670


[h3]Energy Surge Season Winner Statues Unveiled[/h3]
The winners of the standalone Energy Surge Season have had their statues unveiled, and this time they are placed in the open-world! Here are the winners and where you can find their statues:

• First Place: The Lonely Men, Redtree Enclave
• Second Place: Hadoop, Drybasin Oasis
• Third Place: Be Careful, Sunstrand Quicksands

[h3]New Guild Invite Spam Protections[/h3]
To prevent players from being spammed with guild invitations, a limit has been placed on how many invitations can be sent out at a time. In addition, sending too many declined guild invitations in a short space of time now applies a guild-wide cooldown on sending invitations. Along with these changes, there is also clearer feedback on whether a guild invitation has been accepted or rejected.


[h3]Combat Balance Changes[/h3]
With Lands Awakened having introduced a brand-new weapon line in War Gloves, Patch 1 makes some slight adjustments to ensure they are competitive in the combat meta, with a broad range of abilities across the line improved. Maces have also been adjusted so that they don’t clearly outperform other, similar weapon types, with the Threatening Smash and Deep Leap abilities reworked somewhat.

Further changes:

• Whirlwind (Great Axes) speed increase removed
• Blood Ritual (Demonfang) self-damage decreased
• Channel time to enter a Hideout increased

[h3]Other Changes and Improvements[/h3]

• Introduced a Static Dungeon UI showing mob types and tiers
• Adventurer’s Challenge Daily Bonus upgraded to an Adept’s Tome of Insight (10,000 Fame)
• Hideout Power Levels are now viewable in the Guild Estates UI
• Power Cores and Energy Crystals can be carried through Passages in the Outlands
• …and much more

As always, you can read the full list of changes in the official patchnotes.

The 2021 Deutscher Entwicklerpreis awards took place on December 9 in Cologne, and we're delighted to say that Albion Online took home the award for Best Mobile Game!

The Deutscher Entwicklerpreis (German Game Developer Prize) is the most prestigious industry award in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), presented to professionals by fellow professionals. Unlike similar awards in other regions, the Deutscher Entwicklerpreis is organized, supported, and juried almost entirely by developers themselves, and is a vital and integral part of the ever-growing games industry here.

Albion Online's official mobile version launched in June 2021, fulfilling a nearly decade-long goal of bringing the full sandbox MMO experience to iOS and Android. And while game development can be a long and difficult process, the mobile launch trailer was decidedly more lighthearted:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Thanks to the jury, the team, and most of all, to the Albion community, without whom none of this would have been possible!

Festive cheer may be spreading across Albion, but the forces of darkness never rest. From the farthest corners of the world, a malevolent energy is stirring. Diabolic figures march slowly across the lands, releasing vicious Hellhounds from their dungeon abodes. As the people revel in Yuletide obliviousness, in the supposed safety of their homes and Hideouts, they’re soon going to face a rude interruption...

Join these evil hordes with a new vanity set for your character, coming next week! With Yuletide celebrations all around, what better time to grab some hellish garments and spoil the party?

Stay tuned to find out exactly what’s on the way with this new set.

The Lands Awakened update launched November 24, ushering in a new era of open-world gameplay in Albion Online. Along with sweeping changes to biome graphics and layouts, dungeons, mobs, open-world objectives and Guild Seasons, the update brought some major quality-of-life improvements to a wide variety of ingame activities. In our latest Dev Talk, UI Designer Moritz Bokelmann discusses some of the biggest improvements to UI and usability that arrived with this latest update.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
No time to watch, or prefer a written summary? Then read on...
[h3]Marketplace Loadouts[/h3]
Loadouts were introduced with the Call to Arms update as a major quality-of-life improvement, and this feature has now been expanded to include the option to directly purchase full Loadouts from the Marketplace. How it works:

• New tab added to Marketplace UI to allow purchase of Loadouts
• Allows users to designate which Loadout to look for, and what quantity
• Marketplace then searches all local Sell Orders for the items, using parameters set in Loadout creation
• Can purchase alternatives if one or more items are unavailable

Once the search is completed, the Marketplace shows a summary of available items and alternatives. Details:

• Shows prices of available items
• Compares each item to market average
• Each entry can be toggled to buy or skip
• Does not reserve the items, so they may be purchased by others. If so:
  • Unavailable items appear on a separate screen alongside alternative suggestions
  • This screen generates a new search if any alternatives are selected

[h3]Farming Usability Improvements[/h3]
Farming is an essential part of Albion's economy, but on a large scale can take a long time and lots of clicks. Alongside small improvements (simplifying animal placement, moving T2 hide animals) the number of clicks farming takes has been greatly reduced:

• All farming actions can now be performed by shift-clicking (double-tapping on mobile)
• Steps are unchanged, but opening the farming interface is not required, reducing clicks/taps greatly
• Shift-click actions include a distinct icon above the crop or animal

New in the UI:

• Animals with growth and production stages now have a “Take all” option
• Can be toggled to pick up the animal and its product or offspring
• Can be set persistently based on the animal

[h3]Party Improvements[/h3]
Lands Awakened brings updated party chat commands for better feedback and easier party formation:

• In addition to using /invite to invite a player, a new /join command sends a request to join another party
• Both /invite and /join now work for entire parties
  • With /invite, the inviting party's leader retains leadership
  • With /join, the leader of the party being joined will stay the party’s leader
• All solo and group invite and join requests can be expanded to show player details

In your Social settings you can now clearly define who can invite you to their group or request to join yours. Additionally, you can always use the /snooze chat command to temporarily suppress all party invitations.

We can't wait to hear your feedback on these changes, and of course we already have more quality-of-life improvements lined up for the next updates, so stay tuned!