Until last week, it had been more than a year since I logged into Albion Online. I slowly started to log in less as I started a new job, had less free time, and had a falling out with my guild. There wasn’t anything I specifically disliked about the MMO, but I simply found less reasons to play until I dropped it altogether. However, with the Paths to Glory update, there’s always a new goal to strive for in Albion Online. It’s a great way to guide new players while keeping veterans engaged.
The biggest addition in the Albion Online Paths to Glory update is the Albion Journal, which is essentially a multi-tiered achievement system. There are five different categories in the journal that cater to different playstyles: PvE, Gathering, Economy, Exploration, and PvP.
Personal Progress
There are more than 100 quests in each of these categories that grant small rewards, such as tomes of insight, silver, focus potions, learning points, and furniture items. However, some of the best rewards are obtained after completing a certain percentage of each category. A special Avatar is awarded at 20 percent, Avatar Ring at 40 percent, wardrobe skin at 60 percent, new mount skins at 80 percent, and elite wardrobe skins with special vanity spells at 100 percent.
Progress for each of these categories started at 0 with the update, which means that veteran players didn’t automatically complete most of the quests, however, any that were directly tied to achievements, such as ‘Catch your first fish’, were automatically awarded.
Personally, the Albion Journal has driven me to play the game in ways that I normally would avoid either because I wasn’t interested or didn’t find them economically efficient. I typically avoid non-lethal PvP because I don’t find it worth the time for the amount of silver you earn, but with quests specifically tied to thing such as non-lethal Arenas and Hunter Corrupted Dungeons, I’ve found myself doing them more often.
Additionally, pursuing these quests has drastically affected my Albion Online experience. While working through some Corrupted Dungeon quests, an old friend invited me to non-lethal faction warfare. Normally, I would have politely declined, but I needed a ton of faction kills to complete my PvP achievements so I accepted and had a really fun time. I was even invited to a red zone (lethal) party afterwards that led to some really exciting open-world fights.
The Albion Journal even led me to join a new guild that focuses on small scale fights in the Roads of Avalon and Black Zone. Both of those areas are important for completing the Open World PvP quest series and typically very difficult without strong friends.
While most of my progress in the Albion Journal has been focused on PvP quests (I really want the helmet skin), I’ve incidentally completed many exploration, economy, and PvE quests along the way. Even being mostly interested in a single type of content won’t lock you out from slowly completing a lot of the other achievements. Some are as simple as visiting each city or buying an item from the market, but reaching 100 percent will require a ton of dedication or deep pockets, especially the Economy and Gathering trees.
Busy Roads
The Albion Journal was the only major change in the Albion Online Paths to Glory update. Before the update, a lot of my friends complained about a lack of content worth doing. In order to improve mob density during peak hours, Albion Online has introduced dynamic spawn rates. Servers will now take snapshots of their activity and then adjust treasure, mob, and resource spawn rates accordingly with caps to prevent low-activity periods from not offering anything.
Additionally, the Roads of Avalon have been completely rebalanced with an emphasis on rewarding group content. The value of larger, group chests has been increased while smaller chests cannot become rare or legendary. This incentivizes players to let these chests upgrade in both size and quality if left alone. Additionally, tracking is now available in the roads, and it seems quick common to come across high-tier tracks.
These increased rewards have incentivized more heavily geared groups to roam the roads, which also creates more PvP content. Every time my guild goes out, it doesn’t take long for us to find a fight, usually at an Avalonian chest, which means the winner of these fights is often swimming in loot. Things have definitely been a lot more exciting in the roads lately, and I’ll take fair PvP fights over solo farming or ganking any day.
The Little Things
In addition to the major changes listed above, there were a handful of quality of life improvements that have really added to Albion Online. The first are Corrupted Dungeon Scrolls. Previously, it could take a long time to find a corrupted dungeon portal; they’re one of those things that seem to be everywhere until you actually want to use one. The scrolls won’t simply teleport you into a corrupted dungeon, but they will point you do where one is on the map, which can save a lot of trouble.
Additionally, three new Crystal Weapons have been added: Twin Slayers (daggers), Dreadstorm Monarch (Mace), and the Exalted Staff (Holy). Crystal weapons are some of the most powerful in the game and can only be obtained from Guild Season Rewards, however, their real benefit is that leveling them up increases power for all weapons on a specific tree (Warrior, Hunter, and Mage).
Finally, there have been small but heavily requests UI updates, such as being able to zoom out on the Destiny Board, which is something I personally found frustrating before the update. There have also been improvements to Siege UI, Trade UI and Player Ranking UI.
As you can probably tell, I’ve been having a great time in Albion Online since the Paths to Glory update. Tell us your thoughts below on the new update and how your experience has been so far!
