Albion Online News

In our latest Dev Talk, Robin Henkys, Game Director of Albion Online, outlines the new character customization options and mount skins coming with the Percival update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WoJwABnVSo
No time to watch the video? Read on for a written summary.



The ability to update a character's appearance after its initial creation has long been a requested feature, and now, with the Percival update, you’ll be able to change your character's basic appearance at any time.

To make things more interesting, we’ve also added a number of free new customization options for you to explore. These include a new collection of faces to choose from, as well as a large variety of new hairstyles, beard styles, and underwear choices.

For those of you who still want more options, we’ve added a set of particularly outlandish customization options you can purchase with Gold, which will unlock the customization choice for all characters on your account permanently.

We’re really looking forward to seeing more variety in characters in the game, and want to expand both the free and purchasable options in the future.





Mount skins were also a frequently requested feature. Many players were unhappy that their rare and collectible mounts were restricted to a lifetime of sitting in storage without seeing any open-world use.

In order to make mount skins a reality, we had to weigh our options carefully, since the “You are what you wear” system in Albion means the ability to recognize your opponents' gear is a critical part of gameplay. The system we've come up with is a compromise, but we believe it's a good solution overall, which finds a balance between offering customization choices and maintaining the integrity of Albion’s item system.

Firstly, we’ve sorted mounts into skin categories. This means, for example, that your horse cannot look like a Direwolf. All mount skin options for a particular mount category will still be recognizable as their respective category. Simply put: horses will still look like horses, though we will have some particularly cool-looking horses now.

To make absolutely sure this system has no negative impact on PvP, players will also have the option to choose the situations in which skins will be displayed. While all players' mount skins will always be active in “safe” areas like cities and islands, you'll have the option to disable them in PvP-enabled areas. And of course, your choice of mount skin is entirely cosmetic and has no impact on gameplay whatsoever.





So how do you get a mount skin? Currently, there are two ways: you can either use a consumable skin unlock item to unlock a skin, or you can use Gold to buy one of the new purchasable skins. Either way, the skin is unlocked for all characters on your account.

Initially, consumable unlock items will mostly come from the conversion of existing mount items. We carefully went through all existing mounts in the game to decide which ones would be converted into skins, based on the following rules:

• All rare and collectible mounts which have no significant special ability setting them apart will be converted into a skin unlock item, if there’s a relevant base category of mounts available.
• For horses, for example, this means means that most collectible horses, like the Legendary Explorer's Horse, will become a skin unlock item for the “Horse” mount category.
• Excluded from this category would be special horses with spells, like the Morgana Nightmare or the Undead Spectral Bonehorse, both of which have very unique gameplay applications.

When it comes to buyable skin options, we’ve added a number of extra-special choices for horses and oxen which players can choose to unlock using Gold, for those who wish to set themselves apart from the crowd.

In the future, we plan to expand this system by making new mount skins available as drops or rewards, as well as expanding the purchasable range of skins.

That's all for today's Dev Talk. We hope you’re as excited as we are about the new customization options coming to Albion Online, and we can’t wait to see the new characters and mounts in action.

Stay tuned for another Dev Talk following the release of this update, in which we’ll cover the changes coming for GvG Season 7 as well as the outlook beyond Percival!

The dead have risen... and their treasures are yours for the taking! For the entire month of July, take the Undead Challenge to collect limited-time rewards. Earn points for open-world activities, unlock chests to get valuable loot, and claim an exclusive mount, avatar border, and furniture items.

NEW MOUNT: This month's Challenge introduces the Spectral Direboar, a ghostly mount with a unique spell, Glimpse of the Other Side, which renders you temporarily invisible. Use it to evade your enemies... or sneak up and catch them unawares!

NEW AVATAR BORDER: Adventurers who rack up enough total Challenge Points will also earn the Undead Challenge avatar border, featuring a spooky undead-themed design that will strike fear into the hearts of your foes. This non-tradable item permanently unlocks this avatar border for one character.
 
SEASONAL SPECIALS: All month long, reach weekly goals to unlock Undead Challenge chests. In addition to valuable rewards like Adventurer's Tomes and Silver, you'll also have a chance to unlock four costume items - the Undead Skull, Ribcage, Legs, and Ragged Undead Cape - to transform yourself into a grinning skeletal warrior!

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 / avatar ring reward. So log in, head out into the open world, gather points, and claim these exclusive rewards while they last!




A new referral season starts today! Refer your friends to Albion Online and get three fantastic rewards:the Recruiter's Ale Mug, the Recruiter's Pile of Tomes (worth a total 100,000 Fame), and the Recruiter's Giant Frog.

The current referral season lasts until maintenance on August 1, so you've got until then to refer your friends and claim your rewards. As a reminder, with the shift to free-to-play the referral system has been streamlined and simplified:

• Send your referral link, which you can find here, to a friend. (You must be logged into your account on the website to view this page.)
• Your friend registers an account and starts playing Albion Online (preferably along with you!).
• The first time your friend purchases at least 30 days of Premium, they will trigger a reward for you.
• On top of that, for your very first referral ever, you'll receive a T8 Recruiter's Pile of Tomes, worth a whopping 200,000 Fame.

Guild name: BFG
Alliance: MOUNT
Guild leaders: FrostClaw - Surlo
Date founded: January 2019
Number of members: ~50
Primary language: English

Tell us about your guild. What sort of activities do you focus on? What sort of members are you looking for?

BFG is a collection of mature, like-minded individuals who strive for excellence both on the battlefield and in our interactions with others. We focus on open-world dominance without relying on territories or allies to outnumber our opponents. Our primary focus is ~10v10 battles - wherever we can find them. We also participate in ZvZ, 5v5 content, and more rarely, ganking. We are always looking for more competitive players who want to have an enjoyable time.

Where is your guild primarily located? What regions in Albion do you focus on?

We are based in the city of Caerleon. While Mercia is our main playground, we also travel throughout Siluria from time to time, all in the pursuit of (others') hard-earned loot.

Do you have any particular rivalries or ongoing quarrels with other guilds?

While everyone besides our guild members and our alliance members is an enemy in the open-world, we like to maintain at least 'neutral' relationships with most guilds so that the potential for mercenary work is always there. Those who rub us the wrong way can expect no kindness though... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frML4IbdQt4
What were some of your most memorable battles/activities?

The above battle was definitely fun and memorable, especially when considering how easy it was to set up. To be honest though, we have too many memorable moments to count. Most of our fights have explosive conclusions. Getting famous (or infamous) from our many Reddit posts has always been memorable as well. Finally, getting our first command mammoth from an enemy during a Warcamp fight and splitting its value among the guild members who helped take it down was most definitely a great moment.

What does your guild do for fun?

We enjoy killing others and having them kill us. We also enjoy analyzing videos, theory crafting, and improving ourselves. Finally, we love to have a good time through either text or voice chat in our Discord server.



What is your guild's approach to the game? Do you have any sort of overarching philosophy?

FrostClaw and Surlo, the two guild masters of BFG, established the guild with a number of foundational tenets that were not all present in any existing guild. We sought to be, and continue to be, non-toxic, highly competitive, striving to improve, and masters of open-world tactics. We have a low tax, no mandatory donations, equal loot splitting, and no mandatory content in order to help our members feel relaxed and rewarded while playing. Finally, despite our insistence on not being toxic to others in-guild or out, our in-game actions always tend to be cut-throat; we will do what it takes to better our guild and those who are a part of it.

What are your goals for the future? What is your ultimate goal in the world of Albion?

In the future, we would like to have our guild hit the cap of 300 people and be entirely full of core members. We want everyone in the guild to be comfortable and synergize with any and all of their fellow guild members. We want our enemies to cower when they see a BFG guild member appear on their screen. Ultimately, we want to become the uncontested, strongest open-world presence in the game while maintaining something that few, if any, other top guilds can properly maintain: inclusiveness.

Anything else to share about your guild?

We understand what it takes to become a top guild in the current state of Albion, and we're striving to reach that peak. We will not let anyone hold us down, and the ideas that our guild was founded on will never fade from our minds. We love the game and we love how real people can be shaped by it.

Check out BFG in action:

BFG Highlights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIGonNOkjzY
Fun & Done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us4cS_uvoqM

The Percival update arrives July 10, bringing several major new features to the world of Albion. In our latest Dev Talk, Robin Henkys, Game Director of Albion Online, discusses the new Solo Randomized Dungeons coming with this update. He covers what exactly these dungeons are, how they play, and how they fit into the bigger picture of Albion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK_lf8bvohg
No time to watch the video? Read on for a written summary of his talk.


Simply put, Solo Randomized Dungeons are the soloable version of the group randomized dungeons we introduced with the Oberon update. You can find solo dungeon entrances of different tiers all over the open world, and you’ll be able to recognize them by their distinct portal-like entrances.

These solo dungeons exist for all for major mob factions of Albion Online and contain a highly varied set of challenges and rewards.

Maps to solo randomized dungeons can also be found as drops in the open world, which can guide you to particularly challenging and rewarding dungeons.

On average, solo randomized dungeons will be competitive with group dungeons in terms of rewards, though group versions will still be slightly better to reward the effort of putting a group together.




These new solo dungeons are mostly linear, and are somewhat shorter than their group counterparts. We’re aiming for a playtime of around 10 minutes for an average dungeon, but of course there will be some variance in both directions due to randomization.

Once you've located and entered a Solo Randomized Dungeon, you can expect to explore alternating corridor sections and highlight rooms. With this update, we’ve also expanded the overall variety of rooms you can discover in both solo and group dungeons.

In addition to these new rooms, we’re introducing a wide range of new mobs and mob types with these dungeons. These include stationary “trap”-type opponents whose area-of-effect spells interfere with the battlefield, “nest”-type opponents which will continue to harass you with spawning mobs unless destroyed, and all sorts of fun exploding opponents! As with the new rooms, these new opponents will appear in Group Randomized Dungeons as well.

Exclusive to the solo dungeons, however, will be the new small combat shrines. These relatively frequent shrines will, when activated, buff a single player with a random combat boost. These shrines provide an advantage to the user in PvE, and can make the first player to enter a dungeon into a real threat to any would-be attackers as well!




Solo Randomized Dungeons fill a long-empty gap by adding a varied and exciting solo PvE activity to the open world of Albion Online. Solo player, as well as group players who are waiting for their friends to come online, can now fill the time with highly rewarding PvE content.

In addition, these solo dungeons complete the second major PvE milestone on our roadmap. Of course we’ll continue to expand the system in the future, but now that solo dungeons are finished, we can turn our attention to the next big goal: the introduction of proper raid-level content to Albion’s open game world. You can expect to hear more about that in an upcoming update.

That's all for now – thank you for listening, and we hope you’re looking forward to exploring Solo Randomized Dungeons with the release of the Percival Update for Albion Online on July 10th!

• Rubberband Boots are now tradeable as intended
• To better reward the winning team in a Hellgate, Fame was shifted from Trapped Demons (-40% previous Fame) to the Sadistic Overlord (+100% previous Fame). The overall Fame earned in a Hellgate stays roughly the same.

• Fixed an issue where Guild Application and Alliance Invitation messages could not be deleted
• Fixed a bug that did not allow characters with extremely high amounts of Silver to place bids
• Magic Pollen (Harvester Cap) is now cleanseable, as intended
• Additional minor worldmap, UI, terrain, and localization fixes