Look! Look to the horizons! Do you see? There, rising with the grand golden sun? It’s new content arriving to Albion Online! Today players sup on the spread of new things to do and improvements to existing things! Huzzah!
All right, that’s enough over-excitement; let’s break it down. Today’s patch offers up several new things that pop up in the overworld like dynamic encampments, boss lairs that can be found via lair maps (the rewards for which have recently been updated thanks to player feedback), open world coffers, and dynamic resource hotspots. Other open world updates include some shifts of yellow and blue zone locations and incremental monster power boosts from regions Tier 5 and up.
Another big feature in the Horizons update is the addition of S.A.F.E. portals in the Outlands region, which bring solo players to random locations in the area in order to reach the new dynamic objectives in higher-tier regions. The zone also got mob power and reward increases that are commensurate to region quality and a new player count indicator.
The patch further makes several changes to group content like group dungeons and crystal creatures, adds a HUD editing feature, adjusts a wide assortment of weapons and items, and applies several new player rankings to climb. Eager declarations notwithstanding, this update is indeed pretty beefy.
We do need to point out that today not only marked the Horizons update but also the launch of highly controversial cash shop bundles that speed players toward progression tree unlocks; apparently player arguments about the pay-to-win nature of the bundles were not loud enough to drown out the siren song of cash registers ringing.