Albion Online News

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSsJFUaklhc
Strange rumblings can be felt in the Outlands, as if the land itself were preparing to give way. The upcoming season brings whispers of a new, rising threat... and unknown treasures to be claimed.

Wondering what it all means? Read on for more details...


On November 13, a unique event season begins, with all-new conflicts, incredible rewards, and an upheaval that will alter the very foundations of the world of Albion. More will be revealed as the season proceeds, but here's what we can tell you for now:


The remaining dates for the season will be announced on November 13. The season ends on January 20, 2020 and will be followed by the Queen update. Until then, get ready for a whole new Albion experience – and be sure not to miss out on the week-long Fame Boost happening November 4-11!


As this is a one-of-a-kind, standalone season, it comes with some unique rewards for ranking guilds, as well as the top three guilds overall:

• Crystal Rank: Unique Avatar (+ all following rewards)
• Gold Rank: Caerleon Gate Avatar Frame (+ all following rewards)
• Silver Rank: Small Caerleon Realmgate Furniture Object (+ all following rewards)
• Bronze Rank: Outlands Map Carpet (+ Iron Rank reward)
• Iron Rank: Pile of Tomes
• 1st - 3rd Place: Inclusion in a memorial statue in Caerleon

As you might guess from the teaser above, there will be many more surprises coming... but you'll have to wait until November 13 to learn their true nature. Get ready for a season event the likes of which has never been seen in the world of Albion!

Feel the chill in the air, and the cold touch of grasping, undead hands:  Allhallows is here! This three-week event brings a new themed dungeon to explore, a deadly high-octane mount race, and other surprises. Read on to see what's coming...


This limited-time, Halloween-themed group dungeon features eerie pumpkin-lined corridors and a cornucopia of creepy-crawly critters, plus the mysterious new foe known only as Bob. Some say his family was killed by gankers when he was just a baby, asleep on a bag of pumpkin seeds. He grew up in a kennel, raised by a cruel pumpkin farmer who twisted his body and mind. Now he returns to seek vengeance on Albion's unsuspecting human souls...

Hallowed Ground offers valuable loot, including a very rare chance for mount skins like the Jack o' Donkey and Horse Macabre along with other items. The dungeon has a small chance of spawning in all T4-T8 zones, with rewards scaling depending on the tier – so form a party, put on your spookiest dungeon-crawling garb, and get ready for a fight!


Next week, you'll have the chance to compete against your fellow players in a heart-pounding race with Halloween-themed rewards! It all goes down on a deadly course lined with flame traps, where one misstep can spell defeat... but for those who cross the finish line first, glory awaits.

Here's how it will work:

• There will be a total of 3 race events
• The first two will be on October 29 at 18:00 and 22:00 UTC
• The winning 15 players from each race will qualify for the Finals
• The Finals will take place on October 30 at 20:00 UTC
• The first two races are Blue Zone rules; the Finals are Black Zone rules
• Participants must be in Caerleon at these times to join the races, and must bring their own Mule mount
• Further details on exactly how to participate in the race will follow

Rewards for qualifiers:

• Each of the 30 finalists gets a Jack O' Donkey Skin

Rewards for winners:

• 1st Place: Horse Macabre Skin + 21,000 Gold
• 2nd Place: Horse Macabre Skin + 10,000 Gold
• 3rd Place: Horse Macabre Skin + 3,750 Gold
• 4th - 10th Place: Horse Macabre Skin

Grab a trusty mule and get ready to race for prizes and glory!



To round out the festivities, Halloween decorations have returned to Albion's cities, a week-long Fame Boost runs from November 4-11, and a creepy presence has appeared on the forums. Allhallows will haunt Albion from now through maintenance on November 13, so take advantage of these limited-time opportunities while you can!

Today we launched Percival Patch 7, which brings changes to Albion's Silver sinks, quality-of-life improvements to building and transmuting, updated resource spawn rates, and more. So what's new?

With today's patch, we've increased the Silver costs assessed by the system for various activities. These system-based costs serve as Silver sinks, which keep the overall quantity of Silver in the world of Albion consistent, and prevent runaway inflation of the Silver-to-Gold ratio. With the introduction of Randomized Dungeons in the Oberon update, the amount of Silver in the game increased tremendously, leading to inflated Gold costs for those looking to trade in their Silver. These updated costs mean the amount of Silver leaving the economy is once again in line with the amount entering it.

This patch brings the following cost changes:

• Increased repair costs of all items by 100%, but halved knockdown damage (from 10% to 5%), meaning repair cost of knockdowns remains the same
• Increased Market Order Fee from 1% to 1.5%
• Increased Market Tax from 4% to 6% (from 2% to 3% with Premium)
• Increased the cost of buying additional bank tabs by 50%
• Increased the cost of buying and upgrading islands by 50%
• Increased the cost of converting Fame to Fame Credits by 50%
• Increased the cost of using the fast travel feature by 50%
• Reduced the rate at which Silver offers are generated by the Black Market by 10%

In addition to the changes listed above, we've rebalanced the cost structure for transmutation. Transmutation was always intended as a natural ingame sink, but was previously so expensive that it was almost never used. This patch lowers overall costs for transmutation, while also making the transmutation process four times faster, in order to make it more appealing. With decreased Silver (and time!) costs for transmutation, this previously overlooked activity should become a more viable option.


Along with the increased speed of transmutation, constructing, upgrading, and repairing buildings is now twice as fast. Construction and maintenance already require a great deal of resources, so we've decided to make the actual processes of building creation and upkeep less time-consuming for players who have already made the necessary resource commitment.

Last but not least, we've also made some changes to keep the game's gathering and combat balanced. Resources and "resource critters" in tier 2, 3, and 4 blue zones now take twice as long to respawn, to avoid flooding the market with low-tier resources. On the combat side, we've made various changes, including reducing the impact of Damnation bomb squads in ZvZs and removing the option to stack Quarrier Boots via Self-Ignition, which gave gankers an undue advantage.

You can read the detailed list of changes in the official patchnotes.

Queen, the next major content update for Albion Online, will bring wide-ranging changes to the world of Albion. Foremost among these is a complete redesign of the Outlands continent. Along with new game systems like Hideouts and Open-World Territory Conquests, this redesigned continent will bring new sandbox possibilities to high-level play in Albion.

In our most recent Dev Talk, Game Director Robin Henkys and Level Designer Dominik Müller discuss the what, the how, and the why of the reworked Outlands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ONquGyh6jc
No time to watch the video, or prefer a written summary? Read on for all the details:

In our last Dev Talk, we discussed the massive improvements coming with the Queen update. Today we’re going to go more in-depth with the key change: the new Outlands map.

With Albion’s next major update, we're going to change the shape of Albion’s gameworld for good: we’re bringing in an all new Outland map which will revolutionize high-level gameplay and deliver the foundation for Guild Hideouts, as well as the new Open-World Territory Conquests.



Before we get into how awesome the new map is, we’ll first cover what happens when the old Outlands go away. Many of you are probably wondering what will happen to your stuff and how this process will go down. We don’t know the exact timing of this change yet, but we will announce it at least a month in advance, ideally a month and a half. We’d love to do it earlier, but with the complexity of this change we just can’t be sure of the timing until we’re pretty much ready to go.

• When the time of the world change is announced, you’ll have to start thinking about evacuating your belongings from the Outlands.
• We’re planning to automatically evacuate any items you have in personal banks and guild vaults in territories or siege camps - players will have access to these items in the Royal cities.
• However, any buildings and contents of furniture chests will be lost if you do not evacuate them by the time of the change.
• We’re also trying to find a way to evacuate laborers and Marketplace contents, but we’re not sure if and how these will work yet - the exact rules will be announced with the final announcement of the world change timing.

Apart from items, we’re of course evacuating players as well: any players remaining in the Outlands at the time of the change will find themselves in a city on the Royal Continent and will be able to use the Outland portals to travel to the new Outlands.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, let's talk about the big change itself: the new Outland map.

Our designer Dominik Müller has been busy the last couple of months planning the details of this change. I asked him to show you what he's been working on, what you can expect from Albion’s new Outlands, and why this is such a big deal.


When we created the old Outlands, we had a very symmetrical and clean, and therefore very balanced map in mind. It was defined by repetition: "next to this T5 area there must be a T6 area, and therefore a castle.”

The new Outlands will be far more complex, as we are breaking many of our current conventions. We want to change the way players see the world, and move away from repeating patterns. The world has become a lot more varied: now you can find T8 areas next to T5 areas, or a mountain area surrounded by steppe, or your castle far away from the center of the Outlands.

Yet you can still learn and understand the map, as there remain clearly visible and tangible rules: for example, the closer I am to the center of the map, Avalon, the higher the density of high-tier areas and the greater the possibility for high-value activities. But of course, the higher the value of an area is, the harder it will be to defend.

What exactly does this do for us? Well, first, it literally reshuffles the board, as big contestants become more vulnerable with greater power creating a constant flux, while there will be smaller skirmishes around more achievable areas thus creating a map interesting for everyone.

As you can imagine, there are many things to consider:

• How deep in the Outlands do I want to live?
• Do I have access to all the resources I need?
• Do I have access to a good farming spot?
• Do I have sufficient access to farms to produce food?
• Can I make an impact on the season from here?
• How well-protected am I here?
• Who are my neighbors? Will there be conflicts - or the chance for an alliance?

For those without a guild or a Hideout, there will also be three new Outlands "cities". These are essentially small towns (similar to the "starter" towns), consisting of a Marketplace and a Bank. They are located in the middle zones, between the portals at the edges of the continent and the high-tier areas at the center, and offer safe spots to trade and regear.

With Caerleon's portal breaking down, the Royal cities will also rise in importance, as their portals are now the only way to reach the new Outlands. They will use a triple portal system, which should allow for safer entry into the black zones, while also allowing the portal areas to remain a feasible hunting ground.


We also took this chance to greatly increase the number of different prime times for zones. There are now seven prime times in total, and I'm happy to announce that these will include viable times for our Asian and Australian players. Prime times will occur at 0:00, 3:00, 5:00, 12:00, 15:00, 18:00, and 21:00 UTC. The number of areas in a given prime time directly relates to our player numbers during these times, ensuring that content will be distributed as fairly as possible between players.

This redesigned continent will have a ton of opportunities for conflict and new stories, and will allow players of different levels and with different interests to lead all sorts of lives all over the Outlands. I can't wait for this map to be filled with life, and see what you guys will do with it. 

We're very excited about the new Outlands map, and are very much looking forward to seeing the new strategies and gameplay styles which will arise from it. We are also very interested in hearing your feedback on the new Outlands, so please share your thoughts with us via our forums.

We’ll keep you updated on the progress of building the new Outlands in upcoming Dev Talks, but that's all for today. Stay tuned for more videos on the next major update!

This referral season, we have something special for you: for just one referral, you can get your very own mount skin! The Occult Cougar skin gives your Swiftclaw base mount a dark and deadly look as you stalk through the wilds of Albion - and once you've unlocked it, it can be used by all characters on your account forever!

On top of that, you can earn huge amounts of Fame for your third and fifth referrals: three referrals scores you a T7 Pile of Tomes, worth a whopping 100,000 Fame, and five referrals gets you a T8 Pile of Tomes, granting a colossal 200,000 Fame. And as always, your first-ever referral grants a T8 Pile of Tomes in addition to the Occult Cougar skin!

The current referral season lasts until maintenance on December 1, so you've got until then to refer your friends and claim your rewards. (Note that the Occult Cougar skin requires a Swiftclaw as a base mount.)

• 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.