Albion Online Development Sneak Peek, New Spells and Abilities

Albion Online’s development team has released some information regarding four new spells and abilities that would most likely be introduced in the near future. As usual, they point out the fact that these are still in development, and may be different upon their introduction in the game.

Flame Orb
Damaging AoE spell for the two-handed staff that also inflicts a DoT effect.
Tackle
Two-handed Hammer rush skill that stuns enemies.

Charge
Claymore rush attack to close distances between the user and an enemy.

Tornado
Ranged Quarterstaff ability that deals AoE damage.

Albion – A Look at the Class Less Environment

Unlike most MMORPGs that utilize a class-based system for characters, Albion has done away with this altogether. Instead of creating a character to fulfill a specific role, or having to keep changing roles using an NPC within the game, Albion allows for changing at any point in time. This is because it uses a gear-based system instead, where each piece of gear contributes to passive and active skills that you can utilize.

Looking at the Crafts

When it comes to crafting within the game, there is one thing that you have to do with each item: choose which benefits are going to be placed on it. This helps give the game a unique feel (in that most armor and weapons have multiple options with different choices underneath), but it also allows for carrying multiple sets of gear to allow playing in any role at any time. As an example of how this works, let’s take a look at the Journeyman’s Broadsword. This has three slots, and the first one has the following options:

• Dash – dashes to target enemy
• Defensive Stance – increases physical and magic armor by 104 for 5 seconds
• Taunt – taunts nearby enemies, increasing the chance that they will attack you
• Hamstring – deals 231 damage and reduces the enemy’s movement speed by 50% for 4.6 seconds
• Sunder Armor – deals 231 damage and reduces target’s physical and magic armor by 52 for 5 seconds

When looking at this list, you’ll notice that they are all pretty much based on tanking. Taunt would be great for drawing aggression of enemies, but Sunder Armor would be good for survivability. In any case, there are options with each piece of gear, allowing you to fully customize it on your own. And some of those skills are active spells; things you need to manually use. Others are passive and are always active.

Using Skills

Once you have chosen skills and crafted each item, equip it and on the right side of the screen will be any active spells that can be used. These are also attached to different hotkeys, making it easy to use them in battle. Swapping out gear will swap these skills out accordingly, so essentially what skills are available isn’t determined by level or class, but rather by the gear that is equipped at the current time (which can be changed at any point).

What About Spellcasters and Hunters?

While these may seem a bit different from the melee players at first, they work in the same way. They are able to equip two items: a staff and a spellbook. Both of these work exactly the same as the sword shown earlier: a spell (or more than one) is chosen for it, then it’s crafted and you have use of it when it’s equipped. Furthermore, the same thing works with the bow users as well (“Hunters”). This is great because it means going from being a ranged character to a melee one is as simple as changing from a bow or staff to a sword and shield. Of course, this does require carrying more than one set of weapons and armor.

Weight Restrictions

The downside to the class-less system is that you have a maximum weight that can be carried at any given moment. Gear is by far the heaviest thing you can carry, so at least in the beginning it really isn’t viable to carry multiple sets. As you level up and practice weight management, however, it does become possible to carry two or three sets without restricting yourself too much. But then you have to worry about being killed by an enemy player and having it all stolen.

Picking Skills

Probably the hardest part about crafting is deciding which skills you want equipped. This is difficult because in a lot of cases there are multiple to choose from that would all fit the same role. What it all ends up boiling down to is personal play style. If you are good at keeping aggression of enemies, for example, taunts can be swapped out with the skills that decrease enemy armor. Or maybe even increases to your attack speed. If you need help with the taunting, however, it would be a good idea to equip that instead. There is really no wrong choice here, but some are going to benefit some players more than others. It helps significantly to experiment with lower level gear to see what matches up best with how you play and what you are most effective with. That will help make much more informed decisions and will boost productivity (and usually survivability) while out on the field.

Conclusion

A huge selling point of the game for a lot of players is that there is no need to choose a class and stick with it. A side effect of this is that it also means no alternative characters are needed. You can play through the game with one character, never needing another, and still enjoy everything it has to offer. This can add a lot more enjoyment to it, as well as decrease the amount of time that would be normally spent trying to level up multiple characters. This isn’t to say that you can’t make more; simply that it’s not a requirement in order to do everything. Through experimenting and learning, you’ll get a better grasp of your own play style and which gear and bonuses most benefit you.

Albion Online : A Player-Friendly Experience

It’s been a while since I first took a look at Albion Online, and wow, have things changed (for the better!). While everything still feels the same graphically, multiple quality-of-life changes have been implemented, making it all much easier for new players to catch on and understand what’s happening.

A Solid Tutorial

While most games give text overviews of how things look and then let you remember the information for further down the road, Albion starts you out at the very beginning with a tutorial. And rather than just getting players accustomed to the game, it has you venture out in the world and just do things. Gathering and crafting a weapon, armor, and gathering tools are the first things thrown at you, and it’s fairly easy to understand what to do after this. This is where a large part of the game’s progression system resides, and getting a hands-on look makes it much more enjoyable – and takes away the grind-like feeling there might otherwise be.

Tons of Quests

There are many quests that can be found around the world. The tasks vary between things like gathering something to turn in, slaying certain mobs, crafting, or smelting things. The rewards for these are pretty great as well. For example, the ones in Foxvale, a safe (non-PvP) tier 2 zone, give an item called Royal Sigils. These are needed to craft tier 4 items from the same NPCs that give the quests, and generally just require silver in order to finish crafting. This setup helps remove the grind from the game, while at the same time giving great rewards, in the area of progression. And the quests are pretty quick to get completed, too, so even if someone has a limited amount of time to play, progress can still be made.

Fast Respawns and Many Material Nodes

One thing I noticed that was different with materials is that spawns seem a lot faster, and there are more nodes available. Just standing in the same spot, it’s viable to hold down 4-5 nodes and not need to leave. Just doing one or two will have a little downtime, but it’s still doable if you happen to be in a zone that is already full of players – otherwise just roaming around should be good enough. When talking about material nodes, that also includes the mobs that spawn, so when it comes to getting skins for crafting, it’s fast and easy (as long as you’re geared up enough not to die).

And to make things even better, the gathering rate is based on your equipped gathering tool and a little randomization. The actual speed of the gather is quickened when using higher-tiered tools. As for the amount that are gathered at once, that seems to be random (usually either 1 or 3 at a time), so for nodes that have 15 materials in them, plowing through them can be done in as little as about 30 seconds. Quick, easy, and painless!

Gearing Up and Progressing

Crafting items is pretty straight-forward in the game, generally working like this:

• Visit NPC of the type you want to craft

• Go through the items you want and look at their materials, note it down

• Go out and farm those materials

• Go back to town to smelt/combine what’s needed and then finalize the craft at the original NPC

What gets a bit more confusing is when you toss in the Destiny Board. Essentially, this is what determines the items that can be crafted at any given time, and they are unlocked through various achievements. As an example, you have to kill creatures worth 750 fame to unlock the lowest level of bows (note that you can craft what you want – you just can’t equip). To get to the second tier of bow (Journeyman) you have to kill creatures worth 12,000 Fame while using the Novice’s Bow. So when you pick the path you want to follow, you’ll follow the Destiny Board to unlock those specific nodes. After each one, you can equip the related items. It’s pretty simple once you get the hang of how it works – it’s really just like a questing system, but with choices.

Final Thoughts

Albion Online is a lot more fluid and easier to both play and understand than in the beginning. Its additions have really made things better than before, opening the doors for a much faster grasp of how things work and faster progression overall. Do note that it’s still in the pre-launch stage, and things are always being altered. Luckily, the team behind it is very open to opinions and suggestions and have done a great job at giving players what they want as a whole.

ALBION TWEAKS ITS TREES, RESOURCES, AND LANDSCAPES FOR SUMMER ALPHA

Albion is gearing up for its summer alpha, and one of the new features on display during the test will be a landscape redesign.

“The layout, vegetation, and overall look of a region will change dramatically depending on what resources can be found in it,” the dev team explains. Areas include grasslands and deadlands, with “large tasty-looking apples” populating the trees in the former while “dry, wrinkled fruits” that you wouldn’t even feed your horse are the order of the day in the deadlands.

The developers plan to make a similar revamp to rock formations and types in the near future, all with the goal of fleshing out Albion’s environments and more clearly representating an area’s unique characteristics.

Albion Online : A Look at the Class Less Environment

Unlike most MMORPGs that utilize a class-based system for characters, Albion has done away with this altogether. Instead of creating a character to fulfill a specific role, or having to keep changing roles using an NPC within the game, Albion allows for changing at any point in time. This is because it uses a gear-based system instead, where each piece of gear contributes to passive and active skills that you can utilize.

Looking at the Crafts

When it comes to crafting within the game, there is one thing that you have to do with each item: choose which benefits are going to be placed on it. This helps give the game a unique feel (in that most armor and weapons have multiple options with different choices underneath), but it also allows for carrying multiple sets of gear to allow playing in any role at any time. As an example of how this works, let’s take a look at the Journeyman’s Broadsword. This has three slots, and the first one has the following options:

• Dash – dashes to target enemy
• Defensive Stance – increases physical and magic armor by 104 for 5 seconds
• Taunt – taunts nearby enemies, increasing the chance that they will attack you
• Hamstring – deals 231 damage and reduces the enemy’s movement speed by 50% for 4.6 seconds
• Sunder Armor – deals 231 damage and reduces target’s physical and magic armor by 52 for 5 seconds

When looking at this list, you’ll notice that they are all pretty much based on tanking. Taunt would be great for drawing aggression of enemies, but Sunder Armor would be good for survivability. In any case, there are options with each piece of gear, allowing you to fully customize it on your own. And some of those skills are active spells; things you need to manually use. Others are passive and are always active.

Using Skills

Once you have chosen skills and crafted each item, equip it and on the right side of the screen will be any active spells that can be used. These are also attached to different hotkeys, making it easy to use them in battle. Swapping out gear will swap these skills out accordingly, so essentially what skills are available isn’t determined by level or class, but rather by the gear that is equipped at the current time (which can be changed at any point).

What About Spellcasters and Hunters?

While these may seem a bit different from the melee players at first, they work in the same way. They are able to equip two items: a staff and a spellbook. Both of these work exactly the same as the sword shown earlier: a spell (or more than one) is chosen for it, then it’s crafted and you have use of it when it’s equipped. Furthermore, the same thing works with the bow users as well (“Hunters”). This is great because it means going from being a ranged character to a melee one is as simple as changing from a bow or staff to a sword and shield. Of course, this does require carrying more than one set of weapons and armor.

Weight Restrictions

The downside to the class-less system is that you have a maximum weight that can be carried at any given moment. Gear is by far the heaviest thing you can carry, so at least in the beginning it really isn’t viable to carry multiple sets. As you level up and practice weight management, however, it does become possible to carry two or three sets without restricting yourself too much. But then you have to worry about being killed by an enemy player and having it all stolen.

Picking Skills

Probably the hardest part about crafting is deciding which skills you want equipped. This is difficult because in a lot of cases there are multiple to choose from that would all fit the same role. What it all ends up boiling down to is personal play style. If you are good at keeping aggression of enemies, for example, taunts can be swapped out with the skills that decrease enemy armor. Or maybe even increases to your attack speed. If you need help with the taunting, however, it would be a good idea to equip that instead. There is really no wrong choice here, but some are going to benefit some players more than others. It helps significantly to experiment with lower level gear to see what matches up best with how you play and what you are most effective with. That will help make much more informed decisions and will boost productivity (and usually survivability) while out on the field.

Conclusion

A huge selling point of the game for a lot of players is that there is no need to choose a class and stick with it. A side effect of this is that it also means no alternative characters are needed. You can play through the game with one character, never needing another, and still enjoy everything it has to offer. This can add a lot more enjoyment to it, as well as decrease the amount of time that would be normally spent trying to level up multiple characters. This isn’t to say that you can’t make more; simply that it’s not a requirement in order to do everything. Through experimenting and learning, you’ll get a better grasp of your own play style and which gear and bonuses most benefit you.

Albion Online’s Alpha Test Is Live and Kicking

Sandbox Interactive officially announced today that their upcoming crossplatform sandbox MMORPG title Albion Online has begun with Alpha testing. Players need to act fast if they want to join in on this, since there are only a limited number of keys available. Get your key here and with some luck you might be joining us on the battlefield.

The exclusive Alpha test also came out with a guide tutorial in which new players are given the juicy details of the game and what they can expect from Albion Online. The developers stated that the game, when it is released, will be completely free-to-play!

POE4Orbs.Com Emerges As Preferred POE ORBS Provider

POE4Orbs.com, a renowned name when it comes to retailing game currencies, has emerged as the preferred provider of Path of Exile ORBS. POE ORBS is a particular type of currency used in the Path of Exile game.

POE4Orbs.com has become the most sought after cheap Path of Exile ORBS online provider worldwide. If experts in this field are to be believed,the main reasons for this are the low prices, fast delivery, quality service and round the clock supportoffered by POE4Orbs.com.

When contacted, a representative from the company stated, “We are pleased to see such a great response from customers across the globe. Online games are the most popular pasttime today for many internet users. We are making it easier for players to buy their required currency online to enable them to reach to new levels.” He further added, “We are known as the most popular online resource for providing game currencies in a fast and secure manner and we aim to continue this success in times to come as well.”

Path of Exile is a free-to-play online action role-playing game developed and published by Grinding Gear Games. It is a free-to-play title supported by microtransactions. An open beta was released on 23 January 2013, and the game was officially released on 23 October 2013.The player controls a single character from an overhead perspective and explores large outdoor areas and underground caves or dungeons, battling monsters and fulfilling quests from NPCs to gain experience points and equipment. The game borrows heavily from the Diablo series, particularly Diablo II.

The game had been in development since 2005 under the codename “Rapture”, and was announced in 2009 for Windows and PlayStation 3 video game consoles. It ran on Square Enix’s Crystal Tools middleware engine, which was adjusted to suit the game’s specifications. During development, the team carried over multiple aesthetic elements from XI while creating something that stood on its own. Due to several factors, the development was beset by problems that would later have drastic effects on the game. Attempts to bring the game to Xbox 360 consoles fell through due to disagreements with Microsoft about the use of Xbox Live.

In order to discover the amazing world of POE and strengthen his, or her, character as desired, players must collect powerful weapons and equipment. These weapons help them to defeat monsters and get to the next level. And so POE4Orbs.com is helping players to buy POE ORBS cheaply and safely.

About POE4Orbs.com:

POE4Orbs is a leading online supplier of game currencies. The company provides all kinds of game currencies including Exalted Orb, orbs and many other items needed for leveling up in games.

For Media Contact:
Person: Sales Manager Lucy
Email: gamehelper365@gmail.com

THE DAILY GRIND: WHICH PVP SANDBOX IS BEST FOR PVE GAMERS?

Back in May, Albion Online developer Sandbox Interactive reiterated to fans on a Q&A video that while it’s building a hardcore PvP sandbox, it wanted to appeal to co-op PvE players too. Let me quote my own writeup:

“Albion is intending to appeal to hardcore PvP sandbox players as well as a wider audience of ‘players who are not immediately aligned with the idea of risking everything they’ve played for a long time to someone just killing them.’ [Albion’s Robin] Henkys says that the two groups synergize, create goods for each other, and become targets and allies.”

In other words, while some hardcore PvP players are content to slaughter each other, the “wolves” out there in the audience are really after sheep, not other wolves. And that means giving sheep sufficient reasons to play against type.

Setting aside my cynical belief that this is a lot easier to say than pull off, I do have to say that I’ve seen it done very well in PvP MMOs with TEF and RvR rulesets; I get a huge thrill out of crafting for the PvPers and being part of economic PvP. But more FFA sandboxes seem a harder sell all around since they’re generally designed with PvPers in mind first, PvEers second. Which ones buck that trend? Which PvP sandbox is best for PvE gamers?

Albion Online: Summer Alpha Content Update Introduces Deadlands

After 2.5 weeks, Sandbox Interactive, developers of sandbox MMORPG Albion Online, have released some first stats about the currently running Summer Alpha 2015. With more than 15,000 players from roughly 150 countries, previous Alphas were hereby surpassed by far.

During the period, a lot of player feedback has been collected in order to improve the game, some of which has already been implemented directly.

Today, Sandbox Interactive have further released a new content patch, opening the so called “Deadlands” to players, which are brand new full PvP clusters. Next to the wicked and eerie landscape, players can find rare T7 and T8 resources and guilds have more than 20 new territories to conquer and claim for themselves. One of the dungeons in the Deadlands also hosts a new boss fight for players, where a group of up to 10 can take on the ferocious Demon Prince of Albion’s Morgana faction. Alongside him come two more additions to the strongest of Albion’s factions – the Demon Imps and the Demon Horrors.

Sandbox Interactive have announced that, with player participation at new heights, the content update shall provide new gameplay opportunities for more advanced adventurers of Albion Online’s players-driven sandbox world.

Interested players can still join the action of the Summer Alpha by becoming a Legendary or Epic Founder on the Albion Online website.

Remember that FFXIV Dark Dance has a relatively short cooldown

Remember that Dark Dance has a relatively short cooldown and any hit that is parried still gives full mp back, so it is good to always have that up at the start of a pull regardless. However, make sure you are not using Dark Arts + Dark Dance if you want to get maximum mp back, as it adds evasion with Dark Arts.

In my opinion, depending on how large the pull is, you can lead off with a Shadow Skin + Dark Dance, followed by Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain (Repeat the last combo as magic levels permit) that will generally establish a good threshold of enmity and be pretty self sustaining at the same time.

An alternative to that combo is Dark Arts + Dark Dance (for the parry and 20% evasion) and Dark Arts + Dark Passenger (for the blind and AoE threat) followed by some Dark Arts + Soul Eater Combos to keep your health up. You will need to adjust the combo pattern depending on the relative threat levels of your party members though, so it is not set in stone.

A warning with the second combo though, don’t pop Blood Price if you use Dark Dance and Dark Passenger with Dark Arts, as you will dodge too many hits to make full use of Blood Price. I usually save it for when that wears off and I pop Shadow Skin to take the rest of the damage until the group finishes off all of the mobs.

Yeah, I did a lot of research on how to play the class properly and just about everything I read said to never use DA+DD or DA+DP while using blood price. Makes perfect sense. But none of them ever explicitly stated that blood price has a set amount of mp restoration regardless of the amount of damage taken. I feel like the guides should suggest popping blood pricee with a defensive CD like shadowskin. I’m sure some of my healers hated me for a while there because I thought that if I had one up, I wasn’t getting all the mp I could have. As it is now, I usually wait until about 3 seconds left on blood price before before popping a DA+DP combo. Generally I try to end a pull or any given fight with at least half mp. I might be wrong, but I feel ffxiv gil like a high level drk that has full mp isn’t capitalizing on their mitigation or damage output.