New weapons aren’t the flashiest part of Albion Online’s inbound Wild Blood update – this is an update where you can polymorph into an ent or a wolf, after all – but they might be the most universally useful for endgamers, and they’re the subject of Sandbox Interactive’s latest dev video.
Awakened weapons, the studio explains, are essentially the “gateway” to legendary weapons. Players will be able to take their existing .4 weapons and “awaken” them at the artifact foundry using their stashes of silver, siphoned energy, and Avalonian energy. Once awakened, those weapons rack up attunement points as players gather PvE fame. For tier 6 and up weapons, that means PvEing in full-loot PvP zones. Once the weapon has reached the attunement threshold, you can begin upgrading the weapon with traits – at increasing “strain” cost – to boost its legendary rating.
Of course, since this is a full-loot PvP MMO where items lost on death are often recycled back into the loot tables, these epic weapons aren’t merely personal.
“As a weapon’s Legendary Rating increases, its chances of being destroyed on death are reduced,” SBI explains. “Therefore, it stands a greater chance of remaining in the game, with a record of its creators and owners. Players can then choose to add to its history themselves, or trade it – maybe even back to the original owner. Awakened Weapons cannot be traded on the Marketplace, so this must be done personally. Traded items (but not looted items) must be re-attuned to the new owner for their traits to work.”
Wild Blood is due out on October 16th.
