Live Server / Revision #59147 7 years ago

Director's Notes

We are introducing this update as a out-of-turn response to some issues that have arisen in the new world: increased travel times, lack of attractive PvP rewards and the difficulty of running dungeons in pickup groups.

We will further monitor these issues and bring additional improvements to these topics in future updates, but we felt it was necessary to start introducing changes as soon as possible.

The next regular release will follow in a few weeks and bring the new Highlands biome along with the return of the Keepers!

Changes

Mounts

With their new Gallop Mode mounts have become way more mobile, which has a strong impact on the game. First and most important traversal is now much faster and feels better. Ganking a mount is also now more difficult, especially for solo gankers. However, we believe that ganking mounts was clearly too easy before - if a majority of mounted players face certain death whenever they encounter a ganker, they will eventually avoid using mounts altogether or avoid going out into pvp zones, ultimately decreasing the prey for the ganker too. To keep mounted players encouraged to travel through PvP areas, it is important that their chances to escape from ganks need to be reasonable.

We also revisited the roles of the rare mounts and adjusted some of their values to better differentiate them.

Note that some of these balance changes represent a compromise at this time and will be changed along with the dismounting behaviour in an upcoming update.

• New Gallop Mode: After a few seconds of moving while mounted, your receive an additional move speed buff. This buff is cancelled if you are damaged or slowed, and put on cooldown for 8 seconds.
• Mounts are no longer buffed by movespeed passives on equipment.
• Move Speed Buffs, such as Flee and Sprints, are now removed when mounting up.
• Oxen and all other mount types will be dismounted after taking the same amount of damage. Before this change, a player on an ox would not be dismounted until they were already dead.
• Dire Wolves no longer provide any additional defensive stats or crowd control resistance.
• Dire Bears no longer provide any additional crowd control resistance.
• Dire Boars' crowd control resistance has been increased.
• Undead Horses no longer increase your carry capacity.
• Donkeys' carry capacity is slightly increased.

Increased Chest Rewards

We were unhappy with the fact that participation in open world PvP objectives did not contribute enough to the guild's objectives of improving their gear, which is why we've significantly improved their rewards.

We also felt that there was not enough variety in chest reward and frequency to cover all types of open world play: small skirmishes, daily fights and large organized guild actions. This is why we've rebalanced the frquency of different tyoes of chest spawns and their locations.

• Rewards in chests have been increased, to make it more attractive to fight over them and create hotspots for PvP. The longer it takes for a chest to respawn, the bigger the rewards in it.
• The smallest chests, found on the Royal Continents and around cities in the Outlands, spawn every hour.
• Intermediate chests, found only in the Outlands, spawn once a day, during their region's battle period.
• In castles, chests spawn once a week - 2 hours before a clusters battle period every Sunday.

Dungeon Escape Mechanic

• While inside a dungeon, players always have an additional Exit Dungeon ability. This takes 60 seconds to cast, so it can't be used to instantly run from other players, while still being able to be used to avoid back tracking or getting left alone in a high tier dungeon.

Hellgates

• Added refined resource drops to Demon bosses.
• Adjusted hellgate spawn amounts and times: Gatekeepers across the world will now refresh on a 30 minute cycle.
• Adjusted the balance of how many Gatekeepers appear in different areas.

• After a GvG, all team members of the winning team receive the invulnerability spawn buff.
• The invulnerability buff given when changing region now also expires on distance, i.e. if the player has moved too far away from the region's entrance.
• The Flee ability now provide 200% extra carry capacity, instead of unlimited extra carry capacity.
• Reputation changes are now displayed as overhead messages
• The command /suicide is no longer usable during combat.
• Sending a new chat message will automatically scroll the chat window to the bottom.

Fixes

• Reduction in crafting focus use now works when when refining or crafting enchanted items.
• Fixed a bug that prevented buildings from being set to 'everybody can attack'.
• It is no longer possible to keep harvesting resources when you have a full inventory.
• Fixed a bug where clicking on a popup window after switching clusters wouldn't close the window the first time.
• Fixed an issue where Demon Gatekeepers were not appearing in T6 regions.
• Fixed an issue where alt-H would remove the HUD while dead.
• Fixed an issue where Slipscarp Jetty was not showing correctly on the world map.
• Fixed a missing territory connection in Deepforest Grove.

Live Server / Revision #59395 7 years ago

• Fixes an issue where a few chests were spawning on the wrong cycles.

Live Server / Revision #59569 7 years ago

• Fixed invisible furniture issue (also fixes other invisible things).
• Fixed an issue where a character supporting (eg healing) another character inside an unrestricted PvP area (eg around chests) and then outside the restricted area would cause the supporting character to take reputation hits while doing so outside the restricted area.
• Fixed an issue with gallop mode not interacting properly with cluster changes.

Live Server / Revision #61187 7 years ago

Director's Notes

While the design team is busy analysing the data collected from final beta, reading through your feedback on the forums and developing plans for the future, the art team has been continuing on our quest to bring more visual variety to the world of Albion.

Today, we're introducing Albion's most lush biome yet: the Highlands. Their wild waterfalls and mighty rock formations go well with the return of the Keeper Faction, who've made a home in the Highlands of Albion.

The update also brings several important fixes which were developed in between August's patches and a few balance adjustments. Some of these changes are a little experimental, so expect us to follow with additional adjustments as soon as we've drawn conclusions from their impact.

Finally, while we were awaiting results of the first months of testing, the code team has finally been able to work some magic and improve the underlying technology behind many of Albion's systems. They're not quite done yet, and especially large fights are being further optimized, but you should already notice a significant reduction in "stuttering" and a performance increase in situations with many characters, in particular cities. Additionally, mobile devices have been running significantly more stable in our tests.

That is it for now, but very soon we'll be able to share more about our plans regarding Albion's Road to Launch!

Until then: stay safe out there, and don't let the Keepers get you!

Improvements

Highlands Biome

The Highlands arrive! Half of the old Mountain areas have been switched to the new Highlands biome. Highlands are hilly areas, featuring rock, ore and wood. They are inhabited by the Keepers of Albion, who guard the land from all who would seek to despoil it (this includes you).

New Artifacts

• Keeper artifacts are now available, rounding out the full selection of items at the Gateway power level.
• Hell artifacts are also available for all item types; these are more powerful than existing artifacts, and can be obtained from Demon Bosses.

Other Improvements

• Reduced all resource weights by 40%.
• Added an option to set the intensity of spell area indicators.
• Biomes can now spawn their least-common resource type (eg wood for Highlands, ore for Steppe) all the way up to Elder resources.
• Swamp areas now have a full set of swamp-specific mobs. (Note that this does not apply to areas which will be converted to Forest in future.)
• In case you have been banned, the login screen will now display the reason for this action.
• All salvageable items should now drop silver on knockdown/death.
• Leaving unrestricted PvP Areas while in combat will not instantly cancel the unrestricted PvP mode. This means when a player engages in combat close to a treasure chest, he can be downed without any reputation loss, even if the player leaves the circle again.
• Significantly reduced memory allocation per frame, which should reduce stuttering in scenes with many characters.

Balance Changes

Arcane Staffs

Empower Beam

The damage buff now stacks up over time, starts with 50% damage bonus and maxes out with 140%

Cooldown: 10s -> 15s

Channel Duration: 7s -> 5s

Purge

Now purges all buffs at the moment it is cast, but no longer removes all the buffs on the target for several seconds after the cast.

Axes

New W-Slot ability: Internal Bleeding

Crossbows

New Q-Slot ability: Exploding Shot

New W-Slot ability: Noise Eraser

Caltrops

Area Radius: 1.5m -> 2m

Slow Duration: 2s -> 3s

Daggers

Disembowel

Damage per tick: 44.46 -> 31.26

Added a damage-over-time element to the ability. (The ability's total damage output stayed the same, but a portion of the damage is applied over time.)

Frost Staffs

Frost Nova

Root no longer breaks on damage

Root Duration: 3.22 -> 2.19

Damage: 41.86 -> 69.76

Frost Bomb

Damage: 96.89 -> 129.19

Slow Strength: 33% -> 40%

Freezing Wind

Root no longer breaks on damage

Root Duration: 3.22 -> 1.57

Energy: 15 -> 16

Ice Storm

Damage no longer stacks up

Damage per tick: 10.97 -> 29.25

Holy Staffs

Flash Heal

Cast Time: 1.5s -> 1s

Heal: 73.13 -> 43.88

Energy Cost: 6 -> 4

Holy Blessing

Cast Time: 1s -> 0s

Additional Healing Gained: 21% -> 30%

Heal per Tick: 7.20 -> 5.96

Maces

Spell Unlocking Order

Pull Area: Tier 8+ -> Tier 5+

Interrupt: Tier 5+ -> Tier 8+

Nature Staffs

Rejuvenating Mushroom

The heal over time can now be stacked up to 3 times

Cooldown: 5s -> 3s

Energy Cost: 9 -> 6

Heal per Tick: 51.11 -> 36.56

Ticks: 3 -> 4

Poison Thorns

The poison now spreads to all enemies in close proximity (3m radius).

Cast Time: 1.5s -> 1s

Damage per Tick: 14.13 -> 11.96

Armors

Bonus CC Duration has been removed from all armors.

Frost Shield

Armor Increase: 0.35 -> 0.30

Helmets

Meditation

This ability has been reworked to have a 2s channel.

Shoes

Blink

Range: 11m -> 8m

Delayed Teleport

Delay: 2s -> 1.5s

Sprint Shield

Duration: 6s -> 4s

Fixes

• Fixed Grandmaster resource nodes of ore, fiber and hide not respawning.
• Fixed dryads turning invisible on death.
• Fixed various bugs with the Ambush ability, like the first damage stack height beeing inconsistent and sometimes reapplying the invisibility after attacking.
• Fixed a problem with Journeyman Hell mobs dropping Journeyman fragments (which should no longer be dropped).
• Fixed Groundbreak ability stunning players which moved into the area after the cast.
• Fixed an issue where Gallop would not cancel correctly when standing still.
• Fixed an issue with Gallop on rare mounts not gaining correct cooldown when attacked.
• Fixed an issue where drag and drop sound effect would play even when nothing was being dragged.
• Fixed an issue where crafting a Grandmaster's Ox would sometimes return the ox.
• Fixed an issue where placed furniture would incorrectly say it was decaying in 0 seconds.
• Fixed an issue where you could feed an animal while it was waiting for offspring to be collected, wasting the food.
• Fixed some (but not all) issues where mission-givers had no missions in some locations.
• Fixed an issue where King's Highland Muster was incorrectly charging for travel to and from it.
• Fixed an issue where the Adrenaline Rush ability on Axes pausing auto-attacks.
• Fixed an issue where the Charge ability on Claymores was not cleanseable.
• Fixed an issue where right-clicking an empty equipment slot would cause an error.
• Fixed some display issues on the Destiny Board.
• Fixed some issues where Morgana furniture could not be placed.
• Removed the ability to sell partially full journals in the market; this was never intended and was thus not properly handled.
• Fixed an issue where alt-tabbing would set the in-game resolution to maximum.
• Fixed some issues with incorrect mobs spawning in dungeons.
• Fixed some issues with resource values of baby and grown animals.
• Fixed some issues with guards in GvG territories.
• Fixed an issue with the way offspring chance was calculated for farmed animals.
• Fixed some issues with the way unrestricted PvP areas work (eg around treasure chests); you should now stay in unrestricted mode until you leave combat.
• Fixed numerous rigging/skinning/animation issues.
• Removed some invisible walls in raid regions.
• Fixed numerous other level design issues.

Live Server / Revision # 7 years ago

Director's Notes

This patch is a followup to last week's update and fixes several urgent issues. Most importantly, this patch should improve client stability and reduce crashes significantly.

Fixes

• Upgraded to the latest version of the Unity game engine to fixing several cases of the game crashing introduced by the previous engine update.
• Within the area of an active GvG battle, mobs will no longer aggro players unless they are attacked.
• Mend Wound ability now also restores energy.
• Fixed an issue where abilities with on-hit components didn't work properly if no damage was done.
• Fixed an issue causing black screen on login.
• Updated login screen background.
• Fixed an issue where you could get a reputation penalty for assisting a player in an unrestricted PvP zone (eg around chests).
• Fixed an issue where Red and Black zones had the same minimap icon.
• Fixed an issue where Internal Bleeding ability was not available on Master's Carrioncaller.
• Fixed an issue where container capacity would sometimes not update properly.
• Fixed an issue where "double press to attack" was making it impossible to damage furniture.
• Fixed an issue where building repair costs were not scaling correctly with damage amount.
• Fixed some issues with non-flagged players not being able to assist flagged players; the system no longer blocks you from using abilities, but instead the ability effects will not be applied.
• Fixed an issue where you couldn't get offhand items from meld operations.
• Fixed an issue where you couldn't change equipped items when inventory was full.
• Fixed some issues with being mounted while equipped with a demolition hammer.
• Fixed an issue where you couldn't attack a castle gate unless you were already in combat.
• Fixed an issue where HUD weight limit wouldn't update when maxload changed.