Albion Online Weekly Chapter Update (Week 6)

Welcome to the week 6 update of the Aureus Knights chapter in Albion Online.  We continue to grow together in the game and we've been having a lot of fun in and out of events together.  I hope you're enjoying your time in Albion with us and I hope these good times keep going for a long time to come!

This update is packed with important information, so I would strongly encourage everyone to read through!

This week's update has details on:

• Lotto update!
• Looking for officers
• Clarification on gearing for guild and alliance events
• Diablo 4 launch impact
• Season 19 scoring update
• This week's events

Lotto Update

We're currently running a lotto in Albion to help raise guild funds.  The prizing is 50 fame books for first place, 25 fame books for second place and 10 fame books.  Today is the last day to buy tickets, so if you want to buy tickets please see #ao-lotto on Discord to get your tickets!

Looking for Officers

We've been growing really fast as a chapter and it's been pushing our small team in the game to the limits.  We want to keep growing in the game and we want to continue putting on events for everyone to have fun together and in order to do that we're going to need some help from you guys!  

Officership in Aureus Knights is both a big and a very small deal.  We don't view ourselves as hierarchal and we try and make the officer positions just "the knights who want to do more to help make the fun for others".  So that's what I'm asking from you all today - would you like to put your hand up, give us a little bit of time, to help continue making our chapter in Albion awesome?

We have 2 needs that we would like to address, likely with 3 positions.  The needs are:

1) Recruiting - I'm looking for someone to help with processing recruits & trials and for posting/engaging in other communities (official forums, discord, reddit, etc).  I'm doing this myself at the moment and between running events, my irl commitments (of which there are many the last couple of weeks) and trying to have fun in the game, I'm just not finding the time to focus on this as much as I'd like

2) Events - We're hoping to find one or two people to help run events.  This is fairly straight forward - we decide on a schedule at the start of the week, you'd say "hey I want to run that one" and then you'll do the party inviting, the steering towards the fun during the event and ultimately just making sure everyone has fun.  For events we have a particular need for someone who operates during EU prime hours, to help make sure our EU crew gets the love and attention they need.  The second body would be to help Jibbles and I with the weeky events in our "eastern time prime" schedule.

If you're interested in applying you can do so here: https://forms.gle/byqNSusg2hBAe2dx8

Clarification on Gearing for Guild & Alliance Events

The officer team currently feels that folks are not sure if they should attend events with the alliance or that are guild only but PvP/BZ focused because of limitations of their own gear OR their personal economy.  

One of the reasons we've been focusing so much on build crafting and our "socialized losses"/Guild Armory program is because we do not want this tension to exist.

Let me be super clear: I'd rather the guild bank be entirely empty than have you (yes you specifically - any one of you) miss an event because you think you can't afford it or you're afraid your personal economy won't allow you to recover from losses if they do (and they can) happen.

So going forward we're going to do things:

1) Clear gear targets on every event.  In every event post that we make on discord (particularly in the core event invite that goes in #events) we will be posting clear gear and IP targets.  We will also probably make sure we are highlighting the danger level (just a call out if we're doing black zone / full loot content)

2) We will be paying for your regears on the event of death.  If you die during a guild or alliance event and lose your gear we will pay you the full market value of a replacement of your head, chest, feet, main hand and offhand slots.  In the future this will evolve to us providing you with replacement gear, but until we get the Tier 2 Armory fully built out, this is what we will do to make sure you stay whole, and I hope will help make you more comfortable with attending events where gear loss is possible.

I will be making an additional post/wiki update with details on how to request a regear later this week.

Diablo 4's Impact on Albion

There's no avoiding that this week we're going to see some disruption to our activity level in Diablo 4.  Albion is our first chapter in a long time that I think can survive the release of a new game, and I'm committed to keeping us growing, even if it's a bit slower for the next few weeks.

For the next two weeks at least I anticipate seeing one less event a week from myself (which if we get an event officer or two trained up - should actually mean we still see event growth) and I anticipate that at times, especially from the start of D4's pre-release and launch next week, the in game activity levels will drop off a bit.

I anticipate this will be a fairly windowed event, and within a few weeks we will see things go back to normal.  From my perspective as a leader in this community, this is a real test of how resilient Albion will be for us and if the game is, as I think it is, an anchor game for our community.

I genuinely believe we'll be playing this game as a community for a long time, but that needs to be anchored in reality that the hype waves of the genre will come from time to time to cause a little stir.  I'm confident we'll navigate those waves.

Seasonal Scoring Update

We've now entered the final week of Season 19, and our first season as a guild.  I'm thrilled with how fast we've managed to climb up the ranks.  By fame per week we should be somewhere between 1000 and 1300 in the rankings by my napkin math.  So the fact we've managed to close the gap super fast is great.  For season 20 I think we'll easily be in the Top 1000, and if we're sitting around Top 500 by the end of season 20 I'll be thrilled.  I think this is a very achievable goal and when we get there I look forward to work with you all to smash these points!

A big congrats to Peony and Mamu who joined oueeouee in the 1M contribution club this week!  Let's see how many others we can get there by the end of the season next week!

This Week's Events

• Monday - Roads Roam (8:30pm eastern/00:30 UTC)
• Tuesday - Alliance Roam (8:00pm eastern / 00:00 UTC)
• Tuesday - Roads or Static Farm depending on interest level (low numbers, Roads, high numbers Static Farm) (after Alliance Roam ~9:00pm eastern / 01:00 UTC)
• Friday - Ava Skip w/ Alliance (8:00pm eastern / 00:00 UTC)
• Saturday - Alliance Tournament (12:00pm eastern / 16:00 UTC)

We're keeping the weekend mostly free for folks interested in playing Diablo, we anticipate next week our Saturday Roam and Sunday EU static farm will return.

Make sure you RSVP in #events on Discord so we can know if you're coming!