Spruce up your desktop with authentic artwork from the world of Albion Online! A few sample images are below - to view the full collection and download hi-res versions, click here: https://albiononline.com/en/news/albion-online-wallpapers

The next major content update for Albion Online, Merlyn, is coming soon. In this Dev Talk, Robin Henkys, Game Director of Albion Online, describes some of the features coming your way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE84UmTQ6dQ
No time to watch the video? Click here for a written description of his talk:
https://albiononline.com/en/news/devtalk-merlyn-roadmap

Today's the day: Albion Online is now available on Steam!

The world of Albion welcomes all, new and veteran players alike, with the Mists of Albion buff. From now until May 23 at 10:00 UTC you'll gain a 25% Fame boost on gathering, crafting, killing monsters, and all other activities. Dive right in and make Albion your home!

And to all new players: join us for an Intro to Albion Livestream, the perfect way to make sure you're up on the basics of the game. Join us on AlbionTV this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to learn the basics of gathering and crafting, the Albion economy, exploring the open world, and progressing through early-tier leveling. Each day's program will be different, so feel free to tune in for any or all of the broadcasts!

Here's the detailed streaming schedule:

Wednesday 16. May from 20:00 UTC: Introduction to the series; the Day 1 experience with Q&A
Thursday 17. May from 18:00 UTC: Weekly GvG Highlights
Thursday 17. May from 20:00 UTC: Day 1 recap; the Day 2 experience with Q&A
Friday 18. May from 20:00 UTC: Day 1-2 recap; the Day 3 experience with Q&A

Big news: Albion Online will officially launch on Steam on May 16. If you've been waiting for the Steam launch to join the world of Albion, the big day is almost here!

To set the mood, we've released an action-packed new trailer, "Join the Fight". Check it out on the official store page, or watch it on Youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kixfZq_VttA
And finally, we're celebrating the Steam launch by giving all players a week-long Fame boost. From May 16-22, all players will get 25% more Fame for all activities in the world of Albion - gathering, crafting, killing mobs, and anything else. The boost is automatic, so get ready to log in and send your Fame levels skyrocketing!

Until then, be sure to follow us and add Albion Online to your wishlist. We'll see you soon in the world of Albion!

Albion Online features a unique classless system in which your stats and abilities are entirely determined by the gear you have equipped. You can freely combine your equipment items to match any situation, going from a cloth-wearing archer to a healer in plate armor to a mage wearing a mixture of all armor types. Experiment with different builds and specializations, and customize your equipment to your preferred playstyle.

Forge Your Own Destiny

Progress in Albion Online is tracked via the Destiny Board, an in-depth visual tool that shows the game's numerous skill paths and their corresponding milestones. As you progress outward through the various paths on the Destiny Board, you'll unlock nodes, each of which grants you access to new skills and specializations along with more powerful tools and equipment. Become a generalist with a vast array of decent skills, or focus on one particular niche to become a legendary specialist. You have the freedom to become whoever you want - as long as you're willing to invest the time and practice.

Classless Character Creation

When you create your character, you will not have to choose any specific playstyle, class, or role. Your character's stats and abilities are entirely defined by the armor and weapons you choose to equip. Each weapon and piece of armor will open up different playstyles in Albion Online, and each new milestone you reach on the Destiny Board will unlock new gear in turn.

Where weapons dictate how you can attack and what type of offensive abilities you have, armor will give different defensive resistances and toughness while also bestowing both passive and active defensive abilities.

Define Your Own Role

When you create your character’s ideal loadout, every single piece of gear matters. Try experimenting with different weapon and armor builds to create your own unique character suited to your playstyle - with hundreds of unique spells, pieces of gear, and weapons, the choice is yours.

The world of Albion is rife with conflict, and as players compete for resources and wealth, they will often find themselves fighting over territories and cities. Fights range in size from two-player duels and small-group engagements to massive battles involving hundreds of players. With numerous open-world raiding objectives such as Guardians, Territories, Castles, and World Bosses, you can your friends will have countless opportunities to claim a piece of Albion for yourselves.

Deep and Engaging Combat

In Albion Online, there are no classes to choose from to restrict your gameplay style. As a player, this offers a great level of freedom in the way you customize your gear, weapons, and ability loadout. Experiment and create your ideal builds, moulding them to different situations and enemies. Albion's classless system brings a new dimension to combat, resulting in engaging PvP battles and requiring smart tactics to outplay your opponents.

Guild Warfare

The world of Albion has various types of ownable land, including territories and major cities. The ownership of cities is determined through intense 20 vs. 20 battles, where team composition and the group strategy of your guild and alliance matters. Smaller 5 vs. 5 MOBA-style battles determine ownership of guild territories, allowing smaller guilds to use smart tactics to carve out their own piece of Albion.

Open-World PvP

Challenge yourself with intense, exhilarating PvP fighting against other players in the open world of Albion. Gear up and use teamwork to send the enemy fleeing from the battlefield! Compete for rare resources, fight roaming bosses, seek out hourly or weekly treasures, or try your luck in a Hellgate. Hellgates mix PvE content with a thrilling dose of PvP, pitting two teams against hellish demons (and each other) with valuable rewards at stake.

Full-Loot PvP

Albion Online uses a rewarding full-loot PvP system, where you, as a player, lose your whole gear set and full inventory upon death in full-loot zones, which are called red and black zones in Albion. The corpse of a killed player can be fully looted by the victor, or by any other player who happens to be nearby. This high-risk, high-reward system brings a thrilling element to open-world encounters, and means that any trip into the game's more dangerous zones, while requiring careful planning, also has the potential to bestow great rewards.

The world of Albion is rife with conflict, and as players compete for resources and wealth, they will often find themselves fighting over territories and cities. Fights range in size from two-player duels and small-group engagements to massive battles involving hundreds of players. With numerous open-world raiding objectives such as Guardians, Territories, Castles, and World Bosses, you can your friends will have countless opportunities to claim a piece of Albion for yourselves.

Deep and Engaging Combat

In Albion Online, there are no classes to choose from to restrict your gameplay style. As a player, this offers a great level of freedom in the way you customize your gear, weapons, and ability loadout. Experiment and create your ideal builds, moulding them to different situations and enemies. Albion's classless system brings a new dimension to combat, resulting in engaging PvP battles and requiring smart tactics to outplay your opponents.

Guild Warfare

The world of Albion has various types of ownable land, including territories and major cities. The ownership of cities is determined through intense 20 vs. 20 battles, where team composition and the group strategy of your guild and alliance matters. Smaller 5 vs. 5 MOBA-style battles determine ownership of guild territories, allowing smaller guilds to use smart tactics to carve out their own piece of Albion.

Open-World PvP

Challenge yourself with intense, exhilarating PvP fighting against other players in the open world of Albion. Gear up and use teamwork to send the enemy fleeing from the battlefield! Compete for rare resources, fight roaming bosses, seek out hourly or weekly treasures, or try your luck in a Hellgate. Hellgates mix PvE content with a thrilling dose of PvP, pitting two teams against hellish demons (and each other) with valuable rewards at stake.

Full-Loot PvP

Albion Online uses a rewarding full-loot PvP system, where you, as a player, lose your whole gear set and full inventory upon death in full-loot zones, which are called red and black zones in Albion. The corpse of a killed player can be fully looted by the victor, or by any other player who happens to be nearby. This high-risk, high-reward system brings a thrilling element to open-world encounters, and means that any trip into the game's more dangerous zones, while requiring careful planning, also has the potential to bestow great rewards.

Every facet of Albion Online, from exploration, gathering and crafting to PvE and PvP combat, drives the economic cycle. Read on to learn about the various ways players can engage directly with the in-game economy.

Shop local

Marketplaces in Albion Online are local. This means an item put on sale in a certain location will only appear in that location. You can take advantage by this by buying resources or gear cheaply in one part of the world and transporting it to another market to sell for a profit. Major cities can be found in every biome, and each offers an opportunity to buy and sell goods in a thriving local economy where thousands of commodities are bought and sold daily.

Visit the Black Market

The Black Market can be found in Caerleon, the central city of the Royal Continent and the only city linked to the dangerous Outlands. It's run by a shady tycoon who purchases items from players and redistributes them to the various mobs, factions and chests of Albion who, in return, drop them to players in the open world.

It is very important to note that the Black Market is not your typical NPC merchant that simply buys up all your stock at a fixed price. Instead, each time a mob in the world is killed, there is a chance that it drops a specific item from the Black Market. If there is no such item available, the Black Market will create an offer or increase an existing one to entice players to sell there. In this way, equipment in the game stays player-crafted, while still allowing for exciting loot drops.

Fight for your fortune

Albion's open world offers treasure chests, mob camps, and challenging bosses who drop valuable goods. In Albion's higher-level zones, you can also attack and be attacked by other players. When a player is killed, there is a chance some of their gear will break, thus creating an ongoing demand for new equipment. In one way or another, every single action in the game contributes to its economic cycle.

From raw materials to powerful gear

Albion Online lets players buy, trade, gather, and sell all necessary commodities as a core element of its gameplay. Each of Albion's multiple biomes has a unique distribution of different and limited resources, all of which can be gathered and exploited. You can use resources you've gathered or bought from other players to craft equipment, master one or numerous crafting lines, and sell the items you create to grow your fortune.

The game rewards dedicated players who take the time to complete their chosen progression skill line, but at the same time allows more casual players the opportunity to participate and find their niche.

Ready to get away?

Need a break from fighting, but still want to support your guild? Retreat to your own private island off the coast of Albion to harvest crops, breed animals and grow herbs. Generate food to fuel your guild’s war efforts, or to sell it at the marketplace for a sizeable profit. You can also build up your house and place custom furniture and trophies, and hire laborers to grow and gather alongside you.

Every facet of Albion Online, from exploration, gathering and crafting to PvE and PvP combat, drives the economic cycle. Read on to learn about the various ways players can engage directly with the in-game economy.

Shop local

Marketplaces in Albion Online are local. This means an item put on sale in a certain location will only appear in that location. You can take advantage by this by buying resources or gear cheaply in one part of the world and transporting it to another market to sell for a profit. Major cities can be found in every biome, and each offers an opportunity to buy and sell goods in a thriving local economy where thousands of commodities are bought and sold daily.

Visit the Black Market

The Black Market can be found in Caerleon, the central city of the Royal Continent and the only city linked to the dangerous Outlands. It's run by a shady tycoon who purchases items from players and redistributes them to the various mobs, factions and chests of Albion who, in return, drop them to players in the open world.

It is very important to note that the Black Market is not your typical NPC merchant that simply buys up all your stock at a fixed price. Instead, each time a mob in the world is killed, there is a chance that it drops a specific item from the Black Market. If there is no such item available, the Black Market will create an offer or increase an existing one to entice players to sell there. In this way, equipment in the game stays player-crafted, while still allowing for exciting loot drops.

Fight for your fortune

Albion's open world offers treasure chests, mob camps, and challenging bosses who drop valuable goods. In Albion's higher-level zones, you can also attack and be attacked by other players. When a player is killed, there is a chance some of their gear will break, thus creating an ongoing demand for new equipment. In one way or another, every single action in the game contributes to its economic cycle.

From raw materials to powerful gear

Albion Online lets players buy, trade, gather, and sell all necessary commodities as a core element of its gameplay. Each of Albion's multiple biomes has a unique distribution of different and limited resources, all of which can be gathered and exploited. You can use resources you've gathered or bought from other players to craft equipment, master one or numerous crafting lines, and sell the items you create to grow your fortune.

The game rewards dedicated players who take the time to complete their chosen progression skill line, but at the same time allows more casual players the opportunity to participate and find their niche.

Ready to get away?

Need a break from fighting, but still want to support your guild? Retreat to your own private island off the coast of Albion to harvest crops, breed animals and grow herbs. Generate food to fuel your guild’s war efforts, or to sell it at the marketplace for a sizeable profit. You can also build up your house and place custom furniture and trophies, and hire laborers to grow and gather alongside you.

Albion Online is a sandbox MMORPG set in an open medieval fantasy world. It has a fully player-driven economy in which nearly all equipment items are player-crafted, and armor pieces and weapons can be freely combined in a unique, classless "you are what you wear" system. Players can explore the world and tackle challenging PvE content, or engage other adventurers in small- or large-scale PvP battles to claim territories.

The World of Albion

The world of Albion consists of two major landmasses: the Royal Continent and the Outlands. Every player starts on the Royal Continent, which offers beginning players a safe environment to learn how to harvest, refine resources, fight mobs, and get to know people. The Royal Continent presents a clear progression from green to yellow to red zones, progressing towards the center of the Royal Continent; with full-loot PvP starting in the red zones.

Once you've experienced your first PvP fight, joined a guild, and settled in comfortably, you can eventually transition to the Outlands. The Outlands are the untamed part of Albion, with no Royal Expeditionary Forces to enforce any laws. This is where guilds are free to claim territories and wage wars, plundering and attacking as they please. The Outlands are also the richest in resources and treasures, but be careful: powerful creatures roam the lands as well.

Is Albion Online right for you?

Albion Online is a huge open-world game that offers a wide variety of gameplay experiences: open-world gathering and PvE, fast-paced PvP fights, huge battles between competing guilds, and everything in between. Because Albion Online is a sandbox MMO, everything in the game is forged by the community: from the weapons you equip to the mounts you travel on, everything is player-driven and player-created. The game will reward dedicated players who take the time to complete their chosen progression path, but at the same time allow more casual players the opportunity to participate and find a niche within the game.