Since Albion Online presented the Hector update with a huge post of the major in-game changes on June 7. Here we’ll show you some details on the improvements of Hector in addition to the “Main Innovations Of The Hector Update“.
Improvements
Health bars have been given a visual makeover.
An energy bar is also now shown beneath health bars.
Load screens are now approx. 700% more sumptuous.
The Destiny Board UI has been brought up to date, and is now much easier to read.
The Destiny Board tracker widget is substantially improved:
- You can change its size!
- You can show percentages!
- You can untrack individual nodes!
- You can switch to an “icons only” view!
Destiny Board completion notifications have been updated to be sleeker and more modest (and therefore use up less of the screen).
World map has been smoothed and polished.
The territory UI has been overhauled, as has the UI for scheduling attacks.
The GvG UI has been overhauled too (and you can now kick players from GvG again).
Multiplayer expeditions will now tell you what role other players signed up for (so you can kick your “healer” who’s using dual daggers).
You can now adjust the quality of footsteps in the options menu.
Hovering over resources in the world now displays a tooltip telling you what type of resource it is (can be disabled).
The cluster map now has a compass border again!
The Keeper leadership – including the Earthmother – once again walks the world, and can be found in Inis Mon.
Inis Mon replaces the old Caerfyddin area.
Added a proper “buildings” button to the HUD.
The travel planner UI has been improved.
The portrait selection UI has been improved (as you can tell, the UI team has been busy).
Silver drops should now consistently appear 0.5s after a mob dies (previously they were being blocked by death animations).
Armors have had a visual rework, improving quality and making them more readable.
Using a ground-target spell no longer interferes with auto-attacking.
When force-moving (default RMB in Classic controls), instant spells will now generally not interrupt the movement.
You can now use arrow keys to scroll between regions when searching in the world map.
Login screen now gives you feedback that it’s doing something when you log in.
Added missing armor and weapon sounds.
Added missing sounds for various buffs and debuffs.
Added missing sounds for various mobs.
Added reward jingles for Destiny Board notifications.
Added sounds for certain player actions (eg buy, sell, repair).
Added sounds when selecting major buildings.
The Farming Merchant now sells decorations for your personal and Guild islands. Check it out!
Changes
Essences are no longer needed for refining!
Essences are now only dropped by special mobs at altar locations.
A new Morgana boss has been added: The Torturer.
You can no longer harvest resources while participating in GvG fights.
Focus numbers are now all 10x larger: you get 10x more per day, and as a baseline everything costs 10x more than it used to. (Focus stockpiles should also be multiplied by 10x.)
On top of the above change, focus costs now vary by item, depending on their tier and how many resources they use.
The chat font is now bigger.
Options to auto-deny duel requests and Guild invites are now found in the Social setting rather than the HUD settings.
Beginner’s items have been buffed to be somewhat stronger.
T2, T3 and T4 hide mobs are now slightly faster to skin (reduced by 50%/25%/10%) to somewhat balance out the time penalty involved in killing the mob.
Corrected build requirements for Legendary player houses.
Reduced the item power soft cap in the Yellow zone from 900 to 800 item power, and in the Safe zone from 900 to 700. The scaling factor is also somewhat stronger than it used to be.
Laborer balance overhaul:
- “Fame to progress” recalculated – it should now take ~50 journals to get a laborer to T8. (Note that, to get the laborer to a useful level of happiness, you need the appropriate tier of house and furniture too, which will take somewhat longer to afford for most players. Also note that there is never a disadvantage to levelling up your laborer!)
- Journal rewards recalculated to match current balance: they should now give ~20% of the value of what they need to fill. Generally this means Fame targets go up and rewards go down, compared to the previous balance.
- Mercenary journals have had their Fame targets reduced, and their silver rewards rebalanced.
- Work time is now 22h.
- Trophy journals now take ~3x as long as an equivalent non-trophy journal.
Fame rewards for Brittle Skeletons, Frail Skeletons and Ghouls have been reduced by 30-70%.
Destiny Board specialization nodes (ie the outer ring of the Destiny Board) for combat, crafting and farming have had their Fame targets doubled.
Destiny Board specializations (see above) for gathering and refining have their Fame requirements per mastery level increased by between 1.01x and 2x (scaling linearly from ML0 to ML100).
All Destiny Board crafting nodes in the farm tree have their Fame requirements per mastery level doubled (multiplies with the above, where applicable).
Destiny Board adventurer nodes have had their Fame requirements rebalanced.
Destiny Board trainee fighter node now unlocks automatically when you reach the center node.
Destiny Board journeyman weapon nodes no longer have two stages, and the spell they formerly unlocked is now unlocked from the start.
Spell unlocks on the Destiny Board have been repositioned so they unlock earlier.
Region names have been reviewed and, where necessary, streamlined to aid readability and pronounceability. (For example, many Hs were removed from mountain region names, because Celtic is not most players’ first language.)
Material costs of armored horses and oxen increased by 50%.
Mobs will only aggress players by proximity if they’re not in combat: once they start fighting, they will only aggress players who do something aggressive until they die or reset.
“Aggressive things” (for the purposes of mob aggression) now includes all aggressive spells on mobs and all beneficial spells on mobs’ targets.
Giving a shield to a mob’s target will now cause aggression proportional to the shield’s strength, bringing it in line with healing.
Critter/hide mob skeletons will now stick around for twice the mob’s average respawn time, decreasing “skeleton piles” and making it easier to see where higher-tier mobs spawn.
Veteran and Elite Morgana Knights have had their mechanics adjusted to be more interesting.
Added some additional Guild logos.
Lowered territory yield buff to 50%, to compensate for the increased amount of resources now found in watchtower territories.
Changed how Premium gather yield bonus works: now gives a 100% chance of 50% bonus yield (with fractions randomized), rather than a 50% chance of 100% bonus yield.
Removed suicides from kill/death history
Spiked Demons now have a slowing attack
Substantially adjusted journal setup; note crafting journals now only count items of their tier
Disabled gear scaling in cities
Siege Camps in No Respite, Carpet of Bones and Blighted Bog can now be used to attack Caerleon
Fixes
Fixed an issue where disconnecting and reconnecting while queued for an expedition did not re-enable the queueing UI.
Fixed an issue where keybindings for developer macros were showing up in the options menu.
Fixed an issue where Elder’s Legendary House could not be constructed.
Fixed an issue where some artifacts were not getting crafting bonuses from the Destiny Board.
Fixed the expedition minimap marker being far too big.
Fixed an issue with faction capes being incorrectly listed in crafting nodes on the Destiny Board (because you can’t craft them).
Fixed an issue where you could get “free repairs” by enchanting a damaged item: enchanting an item now requires it to be undamaged.
Fixed an issue where you couldn’t cancel alliance invitations.
Fixed an issue with quantity sliders getting stuck after using the “-” button.
Fixed an issue with people falling off bridges.
Fixed an issue where market warnings were confusing “above average” and “below average”.
Fixed an issue where territory guards were respawning too fast: they now take around twenty minutes to return
Fixed an issue with game clock and chat timestamps being out of sync.
Fixed some issues with the quantity slider in the crafting UI.
Fixed an edge case where blue players could manipulate unrestricted PvP zones to attack other blue players when they shouldn’t be able to.
Fixed an issue where player abilities were not using the correct hit detection radius on mobs.
Fixed player footsteps sounds for all weapons types.
Fixed a number of issues with mob spell audio.
Fixed some issues with audio effects on projectiles.
Fixed mount footstep sounds and mount interaction sounds.
Fixed sound volumes in many places.
Fixed various localization issues.