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Albion Online |OT| Craft. Trade. Conquer.

HowZatOZ

Banned


Title: Albion Online
Developer: Sandbox Interactive
Platform: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android | IOS Planned Soon
Price: $29.99 USD (Veteran Starter Pack)
Release Date: July 19, 2017 | IOS Coming Soon

What is Albion Online?
Albion Online is a cross-platform sandbox MMORPG set in an open medieval fantasy world. It has a fully player-driven economy; all equipment items are player-crafted. You can freely combine armor pieces and weapons in our unique classless system – you are what you wear. Explore the world and tackle challenging PvE content. Engage other adventurers in small- or large-scale PvP, and conquer territories. Gather. Craft. Trade. Conquer. Leave your mark in the world.


How much is Albion Online? I hear it is Pay 2 Win, is it?
Albion Online currently starts at a base price of $29.95USD, which includes 2,000 gold coins and 30-days of Premium time. In-game gold coins can be used to purchase special outfits and items that are purely cosmetic (and in some cases can be broken/looted by other players in PvP) or extend your Premium status. Once purchased the game is forever free, with no ongoing costs unless you decide to subscribe for further Premium time like a typical subscription MMO. Gold can also be traded in-game through the market for silver, so again another similar system to that of other MMOs like World of Warcraft or EVE.

Also note, everything in this game be broken or looted from other players. This includes at this moment the Epic and Legendary starter kit exclusive armour and mounts. You've been warned.

How do I play?
Albion Online is a cross-platform MMO, including mobile devices. Players can play across Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and IOS (coming after launch, sorry Apple!).

You say sandbox, how is it a sandbox? Is it truly player-crafted?
Albion Online is most definitely a sandbox MMO with its player-driven crafting system. In the world you will not find any items dropping off NPCs that are created by the game, only by a player. This means that if you want to become a heavy armourer wearer who wields a two-handed axe you have to create all of those items to become that character, or barter from other player's specialising in those trades. Due to this economy choice from the developers it means that at times items may be incredibly rare because of popularity, so there is always a chance to make money or craft your own personal adventure!

Wait, what is this Premium status? Is that the Pay 2 Win?
Albion Online is, at this very moment of launching in no way resembling other MMOs that may be considered Pay2Win. With Premium status on your character (Premium time is character-based, not account-based) you are essentially paying for convenience rather than any form of winning at the game. With Premium a character gains a variety of reductions or increases, but overall there is still no game skill advantage as any non-Premium player can still access ALL of Albion Online and its adventures that await.

Currently at the time of launch this is what Premium status gives players:
+ 20 Learning Points per day - shortcut for learning one level of a skill, can only be used when at least 20% of the skill XP bar has been filled
+ 10,000 Crafting Focus per day - can enhance a crafting item potentially increasing its item level and stat value
+ 50% Fame Bonus
+ Ability to buy personal island - Retroactive, once player loses Premium status they can still keep their personal island and continue to build on it
+ 50% Silver and loot from mobs
+ 50% Gathering yield
+ 100% Crop yield
+ 100% Farm animal growth rate
+ 50% Reduced market tax

Purchase for the first time and get:
+200 Learning Points
+30,000 Crafting Focus

Because all current purchasable versions of the game get a form of Premium status there is inherently no pay2win element involved, alongside the fact that silver is INCREDIBLY easy to get so purchasing it shouldn't be a problem for anyone playing.

So what do you actually do? Is this solo-friendly?
Literally anything you want is the real answer. Want to be a farmer who raises animals providing mounts and transport for adventurers? Fancy being the best sorcerer this side of The Royal Continent? Rather just live your life in the woods whispering to the trees that cutting them down isn't deforestation? You can do all of those and a ton more in Albion with how open the world is and how vast the character customisation goes.

With each character you are able to master a variety of skills at your choosing, however it is advised to know a general outline of what you want to do. While everyone can do anything they want, Albion Online rewards those who are truly good at their art, and less so the Jack-of-all-trades that many other MMOs before have rewarded. Being that it takes some time to just master one profession you are going to see more success honing your skill, and this is most definitely something that a solo player can accomplish without the aid of guilds.

Skills you say? What skills?
These skills.
giphy.gif

Yeah, there's a lot. Don't be overwhelmed though as once you become aware of what you would like to do in Albion Online it becomes easy enough to decipher and guide yourself through the vast skill tree, unlocking exactly what it is you require to complete the task at hand. I personally found Bucky's video on the skill tree a great overview of what exactly it has to offer, and where you should look into first when it comes to deciding who you want to be in this vast world.

So you've talked about PvE a lot, what about PvP? I want to kill things!
Albion Online is almost all PvP orientated, with the world divided into three different tiered colours: Blue where players can not PvP, Yellow where players can PvP but will not drop all of their items on death and Black where it is full blown PvP with loot on death.

For the most part you can adventure in Albion Online without needing to PvP, but that does mean you will miss out on the highest tier of crafting materials and rewards alongside some of the more tougher dungeon rifts that feature PvEvP. Again though it is entirely up to you, the player, as to how you want to play and for the most part the game caters to your choice should you not want to PvP with a variety of ways to escape combat if thrust into it.

Alongside normal PvP encounters guilds can also take on their own battles with Guild versus Guild. There is also base capturing among the black tiered areas for guilds to conquer and make their mark on the world of Albion Online, if they are good enough. Doing so gains you notoriety but also unlocks higher resource income and taxing of those using your goods and services in the town or city. Yeah, you can capture cities.

Player and Guild Housing
Build your home, then furnish and decorate it to your own style! Comfy beds, tables laden with hearty food, gruesome hunting trophies… Furniture not only makes your house a home; each item also provides distinct bonuses and abilities to your character.

Claim your own corner of the world, then choose from over 20 buildings to develop your patch of land into a functioning city! Whether military, industrial or residential; plan carefully to use the valuable building land effectively and expand your empire.

Pretty Pictures and Videos


Specifications
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows

Windows Vista, 7, 8 or 10
Intel/AMD CPU with SSE2
Graphics card with DirectX 10 support or better
4 GB RAM or more

OSX:

Mac OS X 10.7 or higher
Intel/AMD CPU with SSE2
Graphics card with OpenGL 3.3 support or better
4 GB RAM or more

Linux:

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit or higher or SteamOS (other distributions do work, but are not officially supported)
Intel/AMD CPU with SSE2
Graphics card with OpenGL 3.3 support or better
SDL2: libsdl2-2.0-0
4 GB RAM or more

Android (full Android Support will be available after official release):

Android 5.0 (Lollipop) or higher
A tablet with 7"+ screen size is required. (Phones can most likely run it, but are not officially supported)
ARMv7 (Cortex) or Atom CPU
OpenGL ES 2.0 support or higher
2GB RAM or more. We expect the minimum RAM requirement to increase to 3 GB in the near future as the game keeps expanding.

iOS (full iOS Support will be available after official release):

A high-end iOS tablet will be required. Detailed minimum system requirements will be published ahead of the iOS release (ETA yet to be determined)

3uDOEp1.jpg


Links: These will be updated as time goes on so keep checking back!

GAF Guild? Our official Albion Online guild is titled Glory and Fortune, which you can find in-game by pressing 'G' and searching for the guild name. We also have a Discord channel up as well which you can quote to reveal.
 

Freeman76

Member
I was really loving what I was reading until I got to the fact its based on PvP and if you dont PvP you miss out on the best stuff :(

Is there a free trial?
 
I was really loving what I was reading until I got to the fact its based on PvP and if you dont PvP you miss out on the best stuff :(

Is there a free trial?

You really don't have to PvP if you don't want to.

You can focus on crafting, farming, etc. The higher tier materials are found in red zones where it's open world PvP but there are ways to avoid combat.

There's no free trial
 

HowZatOZ

Banned
what does premium get you over being a f2p player?

I just updated that section to include what is currently available as a premium status player. In all honesty it is purely speeding time up for crafting and learning skills, that is honestly all it offers. The fact that at the moment it is so easy to get silver also makes it incredibly easy to be premium for at least a decent time into the game's life, and being that everything is player-created there is no inherent P2W element because of the structured economy.
 

Freeman76

Member
You really don't have to PvP if you don't want to.

You can focus on crafting, farming, etc. The higher tier materials are found in red zones where it's open world PvP but there are ways to avoid combat.

There's no free trial


Ok. Sounds a bit like BDO which I love but without a free trial I'm out. Thanks for info.
 
I'll be jumping in soon or later, it all depends on my little issue with the client. I've made a topic about it in the official forums.
My PC is setup with Aster so that we can play on our own monitor, Windows account & kb+m. However, the PC is still one and in my experience in other games, some allow multi client while some others don't. I'm planning to play the game with my wife so it would be wonderful if we can play together with the PC setup.

Would it be possible?
If it's not, I guess I'll have to wait until I get a decent gaming laptop later, or maybe until the Android version is fully released.
 

Freeman76

Member
They have created 0 buzz for this and without having a free trial its shooting themselves in the foot.

These games have a huge market, look at BDO which basically is the same sort of thing as this, they started with 7 days free for everyone with guest passes etc and it did them the world of good.

If the guys who make this game dont learn how to market it and spread the word, it will be F2P before we know it.

Looks quite good too.
 
They have created 0 buzz for this and without having a free trial its shooting themselves in the foot.

These games have a huge market, look at BDO which basically is the same sort of thing as this, they started with 7 days free for everyone with guest passes etc and it did them the world of good.

If the guys who make this game dont learn how to market it and spread the word, it will be F2P before we know it.

Looks quite good too.

It seems to be quite popular in some niche MMO sites like mmorpg.com and the likes. You wouldn't find MMO news on Gaf unless it has a well-known SP game IP attached to it like Final Fantasy or Elder Scrolls.

Though I do agree that they should offer free trials. Though with the looks of things (with all the premium subscription stuff) it seems that they've already prepared for the F2P jump later in the future.
 

Freeman76

Member
It seems to be quite popular in some niche MMO sites like mmorpg.com and the likes. You wouldn't find MMO news on Gaf unless it has a well-known SP game IP attached to it like Final Fantasy or Elder Scrolls.

Though I do agree that they should offer free trials. Though with the looks of things (with all the premium subscription stuff) it seems that they've already prepared for the F2P jump later in the future.

Thats true. When you click videos on their website the top one doesnt even feature any gameplay lol. I mean, they have a lot of cool shit in this game, and some fresh ideas, they should be selling it to people and giving new accounts trial keys to send out to their friends to spread the word.
 

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
So if mobs don't actually drop any gear, what is the point of killing them?
 

Lucifon

Junior Member
I was really loving what I was reading until I got to the fact its based on PvP and if you dont PvP you miss out on the best stuff :(

Is there a free trial?

A free trial could potentially cause some issues with the player economy and introduce ways to abuse systems / bot. I'd say they're much better off waiting until things start to die down then really think hard about the best way to implement such a system without screwing over a bunch of things. And by locking people out of those systems they're missing out on what makes Albion, Albion - so it's a tough one.

You don't need to PvP actually but it's certainly a cool aspect of the game and the way some of those systems are designed. The top tier materials to craft the top tier items are in the open PvP zones but technically you could just buy those items from the market rather than gather and craft them yourself.

So if mobs don't actually drop any gear, what is the point of killing them?

They have a system called the black market which does make some enemies have a chance of dropping gear, but it's still gear which is fed through the players. It's a pretty interesting system - https://albiononline.com/en/news/video-black-market-feature. However killing mobs gets silver, sometimes crafting materials, and fame (xp). There's large world bosses which spawn on week+ long timers which require large organised groups to work together to defeat which drop huge amounts of top tier materials too - when they're downed they don't respawn until the timer resets, so they're pretty damn tough from what I've read.
 

arimanius

Member
Started playing this yesterday after watching several streams and I'm enjoying it so far. I did the intro quest so I could get the mule and then just ran around exploring. The only thing I think they need to add so far is what skills you get from the weapons and armor. I found a google doc that had all of them but that should really be in game.

Now I just need to figure out what weapon I want to use going forward so I don't waste learning points.

I'd be down for a guild as well. I don't know anyone else that's playing this.
 
Started playing this yesterday after watching several streams and I'm enjoying it so far. I did the intro quest so I could get the mule and then just ran around exploring. The only thing I think they need to add so far is what skills you get from the weapons and armor. I found a google doc that had all of them but that should really be in game.

Now I just need to figure out what weapon I want to use going forward so I don't waste learning points.

I'd be down for a guild as well. I don't know anyone else that's playing this.

I suggest figuring out what weapon, type of armor, gathering and crafting you want to focus on.

I made the mistake of trying to work on way too many different things at once..
 
Seems quite interesting and the entering price, considering it's buy once keep forever, it's low.
How are your impressions so far?
A MMO based on gathering/crafting and exchanging stuff seems really good
 

arimanius

Member
I suggest figuring out what weapon, type of armor, gathering and crafting you want to focus on.

I made the mistake of trying to work on way too many different things at once..

Yeah I'm really kind of stuck right now and not progressing until I figure out what I want to focus on. More than likely with just be a tank or heavy dps spec.
 
Seems quite interesting and the entering price, considering it's buy once keep forever, it's low.
How are your impressions so far?
A MMO based on gathering/crafting and exchanging stuff seems really good

If you're into that stuff, I highly recommend it.

One thing I love about the game is that every city has their own auction house and the areas surrounding the main cities all have their own biome. So let's say you're mining a lot of ore in one city, the prices for ore there would be pretty low...so grab your ox/horse and make the trip to another major city where they don't any ore in the surrounding areas and make bank.

Just make sure you stay off the roads if you're in a "red" area or you can get your supplies stolen.
 

donnaben

Member
I just started, but I'm a little overwhelmed. I've completed the "tutorial", and headed to the first town. Now what? Like what am I supposed to do? Just wander around and collect random stuff? All I have right now is a sword and a skinning knife... Is the point of the game to just keep collecting resources and building new stuff? What can I build next with a sword and a skinning knife.?
 

Vyrance

Member
Was watching summit play it a bit last night. Game looks interesting, but I'm knee-deep in BDO so I won't be touching it anytime soon. Hope it does well though.
 
I just started, but I'm a little overwhelmed. I've completed the "tutorial", and headed to the first town. Now what? Like what am I supposed to do? Just wander around and collect random stuff? All I have right now is a sword and a skinning knife... Is the point of the game to just keep collecting resources and building new stuff? What can I build next with a sword and a skinning knife.?

There's a small quest line in your starting town that should help you and even gives you a mount.

Look for the red scroll on your minimap I think.
 

Lucifon

Junior Member
I just started, but I'm a little overwhelmed. I've completed the "tutorial", and headed to the first town. Now what? Like what am I supposed to do? Just wander around and collect random stuff? All I have right now is a sword and a skinning knife... Is the point of the game to just keep collecting resources and building new stuff? What can I build next with a sword and a skinning knife.?

Once you have the donkey you're free to explore the world as you see fit. Look at the destiny board and start setting your own goals. Whether it's working towards a new weapon, armour, gathering, crafting, gearing up to be pvp ready, making some money on the auction house, running expeditions from a city (head to the portals, they're short dungeon type things) or investing in an island and beginning to farm, cook or grow it.

That's just some of the micro goals. Also don't forget to activate your premium from your in-game mail - it'll help a lot.
 

Clauss

Member
I was eyeing this when it launched its beta/alpha or whatever last year. It seems faintly reminiscent of Runescape with the player driven economy and shit. Really wish I could try it for a few days though, even if it was a "limited" version. SAD
 

Vestal

Gold Member
Once you have the donkey you're free to explore the world as you see fit. Look at the destiny board and start setting your own goals. Whether it's working towards a new weapon, armour, gathering, crafting, gearing up to be pvp ready, making some money on the auction house, running expeditions from a city (head to the portals, they're short dungeon type things) or investing in an island and beginning to farm, cook or grow it.

That's just some of the micro goals. Also don't forget to activate your premium from your in-game mail - it'll help a lot.

My problem is I like being self sufficient.. Don't think its something I will be able to fully accomplish in this game.

Currently working on.

Fighter - Sword,Armor,Helm,boots
Gathering: Mining, Logging, Scavanger
Crafting: Swords, Armor, Boots, Helm, PickAxe, Axe, Knife..


ITS A PROBLEM.
 

Apt101

Member
OT time!

I'm Jaymund, my home is in Lymhurst.

* Regarding OT, I am pretty sure one needs premium status to purchase a personal island. Unless that changed after beta. But after buying it, a subscription does not need to be maintained to keep the island.

** And maybe I missed it, but with a Nvidia card one can force FXAA by application in the Nvidia control panel and get slightly prettier visuals (Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > add Albion > Anti-Aliasing FXAA to On)

does this have european servers?

One big server, everyone shares it.
 
My problem is I like being self sufficient.. Don't think its something I will be able to fully accomplish in this game.

Currently working on.

Fighter - Sword,Armor,Helm,boots
Gathering: Mining, Logging, Scavanger
Crafting: Swords, Armor, Boots, Helm, PickAxe, Axe, Knife..


ITS A PROBLEM.

Dude! Bad idea! lol I was doing the same thing and progression felt a lot slower.

This is why we need a guild so everyone could pitch in with their own jobs.
 
Just picked it up last night, played for about an hour. Really had a chill time so far. Decided I want to go the dagger or staff route, which had me start off using a bow.

I had a blast playing Eve a few years ago and this might scratch that itch while keeping me in the desired fantasy setting.

If anyone is playing and wants to group or play together, hit me up! I won't be on this weekend but will be all of next week. I'm EST and will play most evenings. Send me a pm here :)

Hopefully we can get a gaf discord server and guild set up!
 
The game is really good, if anyone is a fan of old school Runescape I would highly recommend this game. It's even more open in terms of progression, PVP, etc. And a lot less grindy. Huge world as well, with lots of dungeons and other unique things to see.
 
Kind of on the fence about this. Seems like it could scratch that MMO itch I have for a world that's more player-vested. Also being F2P after the initial purchase is very nice, would mean I don't need to have two MMO subscriptions going as I also play a lot of FFXIV.

I think I'll look in a bit more before jumping in, or maybe join in a little later as there's also Fortnight looking tempting to grab this weekend. Shame Splatoon 2 also just dropped, so many games, such little time.
 
Anyone tried playing this on their android phone yet? How's the experience (galaxy 8+)

I've tried it out on my Nextbit Robin (which is more than 2 years old I think) and it's fine for crafting and gathering.

My phone isn't really high end so it could run better on the S8? I was surprised how well it ran on my phone and everything works as it should. I used it last night to craft some stuff while in bed.
 

Vestal

Gold Member
Guess we need a GAF guild lol.

Great Albion Family?
Greater Albion Farts?
Grand Albion Facade?
 
Pricing model is really good and it is essentially the same that is in ESO.

Shop for costumes and convenience, Premium for people with less time to grind and B2P start to keep economy healthy and to stop gold sellers. Although there has been a few already...


Really, really liking it thus far. I am moving to another town from the starter town, hauling my stuff and picking some tier III hides while doing it.

Every place is cramped atm and everyone's camping for resources, but it will get better soon I think.


Just a hint for you guys, there is a "Guides" section in the Albion website. There's guide to what to do in the first days and weeks. Helped me to start.
 
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