The latest update for Albion Online is a doozy. Released on Monday, October 16, 2023, Wild Blood is the game’s largest update since Beyond the Veil introduced Brecilien and the Mists in November 2022. This updated added a completely brand-new weapon line, new potions, awakened weapons, and an entirely new mechanics called Tracking to Albion Online. Furthermore, multiple other game mechanics have been tweaked to promote cross-city trading and create a livelier version of the MMORPG.
Primal Weapons
The feature that most players are likely excited for in the Albion Online: Wild Blood update is the addition of Shapeshifter weapons. This cool new weapon tree creates a level of flexibility that’s never before been available in the game, even with the game’s ‘you are what you wear’ combat system.
The basic abilities for each shapeshifter staff essentially fall into the support or magic damage roles, either dealing direct damage, shielding allies, or debuffing enemies. The ‘E’ ability for each staff is really what separates this weapon tree from the rest, however, as each type of staff will transform its user into a unique creature with a completely different playstyle.
The first staff players will need to level up the skill tree is the Journeyman’s Prowling Staff, which can turn users into a stealthy panther with a high amount of burst DPS. The tier 4 staves include an upgraded version of the panther staff and six other animals. The Spirit Bear is a tanky brawler that focuses on crowd control with both a stun and fear. The werewolf is a damage-oriented brawler that can heal by ripping apart its enemies. The Sylvian turns you into a gigantic tree that heals allies while damaging and slowing enemies with its roots. The Hellfire Imp is a pure ranged-DPS that can put out a lot of damage while being incredibly fragile. The Golem is a colossus tank with immunity to forced movement effects and strong crowd control. Finally, the Dawnbird is a terrifying long-ranged magical DPS with a powerful nuke that can’t be reflected.
The journeyman staff can be crafted with a handful of Rare Animal Remains, but the tier 4 and above staves require special animal parts and artifacts that can only be updated through hunting those animals with the new Tracking mechanic. This has unfortunately made these weapons incredibly expensive for the moment as tons of players want to try them out and only so many crafting resources have been farmed. At the time of writing this, the cheapest tier 4 staves are around 500k silver each and quickly go into the millions. However, if you just want to give shapeshifting a try without a huge investment, the journeyman staff is already quite cheap.
Mini Monster Hunter
The best way to get new components to craft these shapeshifting weapons, and the new potions, is through a new mechanic called Tracking. This system basically works like a Monster Hunter mini-game. Players will stumble upon tracks, inspect them, and chase a giant monster across a single zone in Albion Online. These hunts can range from recommended parties of 1 to 8 and bringing too many allies to take down a weak monster could cause it to flee. I personally found this to be a fun ‘extra’ activity to do while fame farming.
Legendary Attunement
While the shapeshifter weapons were a nice improvement that should eventually be accessible to all adventurers, the new Awakening system is targeted towards high-end players who have too much silver in the bank. Only the top enchantment level (.4) weapons can be awakened, which already sets the bar quite high. In order to test out the new system, I bought the cheapest 4.4 spear available on the market, which was 2 million silver at the time of purchase. For comparison, a Tier 8 spear with essentially the same stats, was available for less than 1 million silver on the market. This means there’s a significant premium just for attempting the new awakening system.
After obtaining a .4 weapon, it can be attuned to your character at the Artifact Foundry for some silver and siphoned energy. This cost is relatively low compared to the rest of the process. After attunement, most combat activities will grant the weapon energy, which can then add traits to that specific weapon. There are a maximum of 3 traits that can be upgraded multiple times. The more traits and upgrades the more strain is put on the weapon, increasing the cost to upgrade it further. After unlocking the third trait on my weapon, each additional upgrade will cost hundreds of thousands of silver.
For lower end .4 weapons, this system hardly seems worth it. It would likely be more cost effective to simply buy higher tier weapons instead of sinking silver into the attunement process. However, 8.4 weapons are already the most powerful weapons in the game and this gives a system to min/max those stats even more. Considering 8.4 weapons start around 15 million, this is definitely not something new players are going to jump into anytime soon. It’s more likely something high-end PvP guilds and mist players will focus on to give them that slight edge.
Connecting the World
In addition to the combat and over world updates, Wild Blood significantly changed personal islands and their effect on the world economy. Previously, players could only have an island in one major city and in Brecilien, but now they can have an island in each city. To incentivize the movement of goods, each island now has a specialized farming bonus to crops, herbs, and animals depending on where they’re located.
Additionally, animals now have a favorite type of food, which is worth double the nutrition value. However, the ideal location to raise that type of food is located in a different city than the bonus for raising that animal. Therefore, it’s best to grow an optimal type of food on one island and then transport that food to another island where a particular animal is best raised.
Overall, Albion Online: Wild Blood has added a lot of new variety to the game while shaking up many of the systems that were already in place. While some of the systems will require some time to become fully fleshed out and accessible, they should benefit the game in the long run.
