Today's patch brings far-reaching changes to combat balance, gathering, Hellgates, and more.

March 25, 2020 at 9:53 AM by PrintsKaspian

Patch 8, AKA the Queen Balance Patch, is here! In addition to numerous adjustments intended to improve the overall combat meta, today's patch includes some changes specifically intended to address current open-world imbalances.

Here's a partial list of some of the bigger changes:

Mount carry weight bonuses now apply whenever the mount is equipped, not just while mounted, and carry weights now scale more accurately with the mount's item power and tier

now apply whenever the mount is equipped, not just while mounted, and carry weights now scale more accurately with the mount's item power and tier Disarray has been adjusted to discourage one-shot builds and army splitting

has been adjusted to discourage one-shot builds and army splitting Gathering gear skill ranges and durations have been increased to give gatherers better odds against hostile groups

skill ranges and durations have been increased to give gatherers better odds against hostile groups Daggers have been reworked with faster auto-attack speeds and a new Q spell; Poison Coating skill has been updated to "Bloodthirsty Blade"

Combat Designer Michael Schwahn describes the intent behind these changes:

"This patch contains a lot of changes to the Dagger line, a new Q ability that provides an AoE attack, and a rework of the underused one-handed Dagger. We increased the cooldown of Dash to reduce its mobility for the open world, but as many gatherers use Bloodletter and this would reduce their escape chances, we buffed the gathering gear shoe abilities to compensate. The passive buff to mount carry weights should also help gatherers and make it overall more attractive to use mounts with good carry weight.

This patch also addresses the current burst-damage ZvZ items: Galatine Pair and Weeping Repeater. These items will keep their high damage potential, but it will be harder to hit as many players with them."

Here's a rundown of some of the other major changes arriving with this patch:

Better High-Level Gathering

After extensive player feedback, we've taken steps to improve the high-level gathering experience in Albion. In addition to increasing the overall amount of T6-8 resources by 20% across the board, this patch also ups the respawn rate of these nodes, meaning once a node is located it's far more likely to be harvestable. Based on your feedback, we've also reverted the spawn behavior of small resource nodes to its state with the Queen update launch, to give a better chance of finding resources to gatherers braving high-tier zones. And on top of that, the overall small-to-large ratio has been shifted in favor of large nodes to increase the chances of finding these highly valuable gathering spots.

Open-World Optimizations

This patch includes updates to several crucial open-world topics:

Yellow-Zone Faction Flagging : Hostile players and faction-flagged players can no longer interact with each other in yellow zones. This is to prevent the case where hostile players would knock down faction-flagged players, who were then executed by enemy factions, resulting in a lucrative ganking opportunity with zero risk.

: Hostile players and faction-flagged players can no longer interact with each other in yellow zones. This is to prevent the case where hostile players would knock down faction-flagged players, who were then executed by enemy factions, resulting in a lucrative ganking opportunity with zero risk. Invisibility Shrines :Click priority for Invisibility Shrines in Outlands Portal Zones is now prioritized over player corpses and loot, to prevent a case where players could not use the shrines while still allowing optional looting after use.

:Click priority for Invisibility Shrines in Outlands Portal Zones is now prioritized over player corpses and loot, to prevent a case where players could not use the shrines while still allowing optional looting after use. Hellgate Settings: Hellgates now spawn every 6-10 minutes, offering more reliable opportunities to participate. Fame has also been shifted from the sub-boss demons to the final boss, and its loot (and that of the final chest) are now protected for the party dealing the most damage to reward those who do the heavy PvE lifting.

As always, you can read the full list of changes and fixes in the official patchnotes.