Albion Online News

We are pleased to announce that a very special guest has delivered an innovative experimental cover of the Albion Online theme song. The composer is none other than Günther Wach, the up-and-coming artiste in Berlin’s avant-garde music scene!

Before we present the cover to you, we managed to personally get in touch with Herr Wach himself to ask a couple of questions about his work (not an easy feat – he’s quite a busy man!).

What made you choose to do a cover of the Albion Online Theme song?

Albion Online has always meant a lot to me - from the full-loot system where I’ve spent many sleepless nights over losing my Command Mammoth to getting ganked in a deeply unfair 20v1 fight. It really teaches you the power of resilience, numbers and fighting for what you believe in.

The world is unfair, get used to it.

Actually, Albion Online is really like a metaphor for me. A small indie game overcoming all odds to succeed in a niche market… and I, who was once a lowly, unknown misfit, but now THE rising star of Berlin.

I resonate with it so much.

Interesting. And what’s the inspiration for your work?

Simple. Three things:

• Oat milk
• Daily yoga and meditation
• A constant state of existential crisis

Anything else you’d like to mention about the game?

I would love to do a musical K-Pop Dev Talk with Robin Henkys. I think it would be a T8.3 Masterpiece!

Finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for…



Happy April Fool’s, everyone!

It's time for a Fame Boost in Albion Online! Get 25% additional Fame for a whole week for all ingame activities.

Here are the details:

• At the end of maintenance on Tuesday, March 31, the Mists of Albion buff will be automatically enabled for all players
• Automatically grants an additional 25% Fame for all activities
• Excludes Fame earned via PvP kills and Tomes of Insight
• Ends at maintenance on Tuesday, April 7

Now is the perfect time to explore the new Outlands, face off against the Avalonians in an Elite Dungeon, go out gathering and fishing, or level up that new weapon or armor line you've been curious about. Log in today and start earning extra Fame!

Territories will be reset this weekend, Season Points earned will be doubled... and we'll be covering it live on the AlbionTV Twitch channel starting Saturday at 17:45 UTC! Join our hosts Shozen, Bogul and Lewpac as they broadcast the Invasion Day madness live with a 15-minute delay.

Starting at 18:00 UTC, guilds will have new opportunities to claim territories and launch attacks. Those in the North American time zones can tune in again at 00:45 UTC for the second round of invasions.

For the complete Guild Season 8 schedule, check out this forum post.

Patch 8, AKA the Queen Balance Patch, is here! In addition to numerous adjustments intended to improve the overall combat meta, today's patch includes some changes specifically intended to address current open-world imbalances.

Here's a partial list of some of the bigger changes:

• Mount carry weight bonuses now apply whenever the mount is equipped, not just while mounted, and carry weights now scale more accurately with the mount's item power and tier
• Disarray has been adjusted to discourage one-shot builds and army splitting
• Gathering gear skill ranges and durations have been increased to give gatherers better odds against hostile groups
• Daggers have been reworked with faster auto-attack speeds and a new Q spell; Poison Coating skill has been updated to "Bloodthirsty Blade"

Combat Designer Michael Schwahn describes the intent behind these changes:

"This patch contains a lot of changes to the Dagger line, a new Q ability that provides an AoE attack, and a rework of the underused one-handed Dagger. We increased the cooldown of Dash to reduce its mobility for the open world, but as many gatherers use Bloodletter and this would reduce their escape chances, we buffed the gathering gear shoe abilities to compensate. The passive buff to mount carry weights should also help gatherers and make it overall more attractive to use mounts with good carry weight.

This patch also addresses the current burst-damage ZvZ items: Galatine Pair and Weeping Repeater. These items will keep their high damage potential, but it will be harder to hit as many players with them."

Here's a rundown of some of the other major changes arriving with this patch:


[h3]Better High-Level Gathering[/h3]
After extensive player feedback, we've taken steps to improve the high-level gathering experience in Albion. In addition to increasing the overall amount of T6-8 resources by 20% across the board, this patch also ups the respawn rate of these nodes, meaning once a node is located it's far more likely to be harvestable. Based on your feedback, we've also reverted the spawn behavior of small resource nodes to its state with the Queen update launch, to give a better chance of finding resources to gatherers braving high-tier zones. And on top of that, the overall small-to-large ratio has been shifted in favor of large nodes to increase the chances of finding these highly valuable gathering spots.
[h3]Open-World Optimizations[/h3]
This patch includes updates to several crucial open-world topics:

• Yellow-Zone Faction Flagging: Hostile players and faction-flagged players can no longer interact with each other in yellow zones. This is to prevent the case where hostile players would knock down faction-flagged players, who were then executed by enemy factions, resulting in a lucrative ganking opportunity with zero risk.
• Invisibility Shrines:Click priority for Invisibility Shrines in Outlands Portal Zones is now prioritized over player corpses and loot, to prevent a case where players could not use the shrines while still allowing optional looting after use.
• Hellgate Settings: Hellgates now spawn every 6-10 minutes, offering more reliable opportunities to participate. Fame has also been shifted from the sub-boss demons to the final boss, and its loot (and that of the final chest) are now protected for the party dealing the most damage to reward those who do the heavy PvE lifting.

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

The Queen Update launched on January 20, 2020 and revolutionized Albion’s Outland gameplay. Our next major focus will be on a crucial aspect of Albion Online that needs more attention: solo and small-group gameplay. In this Dev Talk, Game Director Robin Henkys covers several major upcoming features that address this topic, as well as other changes and improvements coming to the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSkCbo3tkiU
No time to watch the video or prefer a written summary? Then read on...
[h3]Roads of Avalon[/h3]
The Roads of Avalon are mystical paths through a misty, otherworldly realm. This ever-shifting network of roads connects locations all across Albion, but only lets a limited number of players pass through any given entrance at a time. Furthermore, while the Roads themselves persist, the connections at either end only last for a limited time, providing a huge number of potential gameplay scenarios.



Solo players can explore these roads to discover where they lead, engage in valuable single-player activities along the way, use them for transportation, and share scouted paths with friends or guild members. Some shortcuts through the mists will go directly from the Royal Continent into the deep Outlands, avoiding potential gankers in portal zones altogether – though the Roads of Avalon follow PvP rules, and present dangers of their own.

Small groups will find valuable group content within these pathways, as well as using them for travel. And finally, small guilds will have the opportunity to settle permanently in locations deep within the mists, removed from the fierce competition of the Outlands but still maintaining numerous options for small-group gameplay.
[h3]Corrupted Solo Dungeons[/h3]
The next update will introduce an all-new type of solo dungeon, Corrupted Solo Dungeons. These areas are intended for players who enjoy PvE with a risk of PvP, as long as it’s a fair fight against a single attacker. Corrupted Solo Dungeons are non-linear dungeons filled with creatures that have been possessed by a demon from Albion’s Demonic Planes. The dungeon will “swallow” any player entering it, closing the entrance behind them and preventing other players from following.



Players will have to fight their way out by defeating the demon’s minions, and eventually the demon itself. Those looking for PvP can embrace the demonic powers of this place and use them to invade another corrupted dungeon to hunt for the player inside, facing them in a one-on-one battle.

We’re very excited for this new solo PvP activity, as it is already very fun in playtests – and it will be available in both knockdown and full-loot PvP variants!
[h3]Upcoming Improvements[/h3]
Combat

• Balance adjustments and improvements to the current combat meta as the current season proceeds
• Changes for the next Guild Season starting in May, including:
  • Incentives to attack guilds holding many valuable territories to make these guilds prioritize defense
  • Adding additional incentives for powerful guilds to fight each other, rather than other, weaker groups in the Outlands
• A whole new set of artifact weapons, which will come with their own set of destiny board specializations and give veteran players something new to aspire to

Economics

• Revisiting resource changes made with Queen and boosting spawns of T6-8 resources in the Outlands
• Fixing a number of issues with fishing in the new Outlands, and finally reworking and fixing the seaweed economy for fishermen
• Streamlining and improving craft times in order to correlate them with the actual amount of resources involved in the crafting process (making time-based craft buffs from food more meaningful)
• Adjusting focus cost of artifact items to ensure they make sense to craft with focus as well
• Adding more variety to currently underrepresented slots like bags, offering new choices for players as well as increasing the variety of items to craft

Usability

• A new Mail UI
• Improved map modes displaying useful information like time zones
• A new building UI for buildings
• A quick-equip / quick-buy feature, which will allow you to configure and save sets of equipment you regularly use

[h3]Big-Picture Topics[/h3]
In terms of big features, we know we want to focus on improving the Royal Continent and Faction Warfare. In our vision, Faction Warfare will become a simple and exciting activity to engage in as a beginning player – a training activity for open-world PvP – but will also have enough depth to engage advanced players who prefer the Royal Continent over the Outlands. As such, we see the potential for Faction Warfare to be similar to “Realm vs. Realm” content in other games, where players should really identify with their chosen faction, earning unique rewards and meaningful standings.



In terms of open-world experience in Albion overall, we believe it is finally time to significantly improve the different mounts available in Albion. We want to improve the variety and usefulness of mounts by adding active abilities to different mount types, giving each type a distinct role in the world of Albion.

Finally, work on the mobile versions is proceeding nicely, and we’ll soon be ready to share some significant improvements – including an all-new HUD and joystick-based control scheme, as well as an auto-downloader for patches. That means the mobile release of Albion Online is finally drawing closer, but we will still take the time to iron out all flaws in the control scheme before we move forward with any release date. Still, we’re having a hard time not being excited when we think about finally giving every player the possibility of jumping into their Albion character on their phone!
[h3]In Conclusion[/h3]
Lastly, in regards to last year’s roadmap: while we’ve achieved most of what we set out to do, some things remain unfinished (like better highlighting of PvP hotspots and open-world objectives), which we will continue to work towards. Other ideas from that roadmap have become part of our upcoming features, such as Gathering Dungeons, which are included in our plans for the Roads of Avalon. The same might happen to some of the topics in this roadmap, as things change or are adapted as part of the development process.

That said, we’re really excited about turning our attention towards improving the small-scale PvP experience in Albion Online, along with all the other improvements listed above. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on our roadmap!