Albion Online Weekly Chapter Update (Week of July 3rd)

Hello Knights - welcome to another weekly update for the Albion Online chapter of Aureus Knights.  We had an incredible week where I think we saw a lot of growth as a group. We covered a lot of ground from a night spent completely dominating our local area in the roads, to another night where we popped out to the Outlands and took down siphoning mages and won some good fights ending with a successful capture of a medium chest.  

We clocked more kills this week than we did the rest of our time in the game as a group, and the result was two of our biggest ever splits as a group.  We have a long way to go still, particularly figuring out how to work with our alliance partners, but there is material progress being made and I'm thrilled with our showing so far in Season 20.

And finally we hit a major milestone and target for this season - we have cracked the Top 1000 rankings!  Top 500 feels a long way away, but I'm starting to believe we might be able to do it this season.

As per usual we have a lot to cover, so let's get into it.  In this week's update we will cover:

• Alliance & Diplomatic Update
• Internal Economy Update
• Weekly Update
• The Week Ahead

Alliance & Diplomatic Update

There has been, what I suspect will be our last change for the season as an alliance.  At the start of the week the alliance leadership team met and discussed inviting our zone friends Blutmond into the alliance.  At that time alliance member guild Grace du Lyon raised concerns that they did want to have Blutmond in the alliance.  

It was impressed upon Lyon that Three Horsemen and Aureus Knights would much prefer, that in the interest of QSV safety, we bring Blutmond into the fold.  We did not however say this had to happen and we left it up to Lyon to decide what happened next.  Lyon already had an all hands meeting planned and they said they would let us know where they are out after that point.  The result of that meeting is the membership of Lyon decided to oust their GM and leave the alliance with immediate effect.

We are sad that Lyon could not come to the table and figure out a way forward inside of the alliance.  The upside of this is Blutmond has now joined the alliance and they have immediately been friendly, cooperative and I think we will have a bright future together.

I want to thank Omni and the membership of Three Horsemen for being honest, honourable and reliable partners as we've transitioned into the roads and we've worked together to build the best alliance we can for our respective guilds.

In terms of Grace du Lyon we now have no diplomatic relations with them.  I would prefer if we kept things relatively peaceful with them until such a time as they make clear to us what they want our relationship to work on.  Go into encounters with them presuming nothing - seeing a Lyon name tag at this point is NOT SAFE.  I would encourage you to be friendly as much as possible and we will continue to update you as we develop a new understanding.

Another diplomatic update is in regards to Aeternae in the north corner of the zone.  They are a fairly active and effective group that can be quite dangerous.  We have been working on building towards an understanding with them and we anticipate that their dislike of Lyon (they really don't like eachother) will bring them into the fold, at least in a limited regard.  We are working on firming up plans for an NAP with them but that is not yet in place.  I would ask while we are doing these negotiations that you try not to engage with Aeternae.  If they engage with you, etc that is what it is, but I would ask we not proactively engage with them.  

We will have more on these various diplomatic positions as conversations evolve.

Internal Economy Update

Over the last few weeks we've been discussing ways to enable making sure that gear is obtainable and affordable.  In last week's update we discussed the high level approach to how we're going to do that, and now we're almost ready to go with the details.

Later today or tomorrow we will be flipping the switch on a system that brings together guild sourced resources, volunteer crafters and a closed loop market that allows us to easily build up and resupply gear at the hideout.

I will keep this update short and to the point, knowing that within 24 hours we will have a big announcement of the system implementation and details on how it works.Thank you all for your feedback during the last week or two while we've figured out how to best put the guilds resources to work in the hideout.  I also ask for your continued patience as we iron out the details - if we get this right, and I am confident we will, this will result in a big big win for the guild.

Weekly Update

Top 1000!  I was thinking maybe by half way through the season we'd get there, but wow you guys are awesome and we've knocked it out quickly.  As I said in the introduction this last week felt like a big level up - there's a long way to go but last week we managed to feel comfortable in the outlands, with Three Horsemen we dominated our zone and pushed away gankers and it just felt COMFORTABLE maybe for the first time.

We're really growing as a group and I know it can feel like a long road sometimes, but it really does feel like we're making material gains and with increasing speed.  I think you guys should be really proud of that, I am.

This Week

As I said a lot of the focus this week will be the final steps in unlocking the economy of the guild in the Hideout.  I am very excited to get that done so I can get back to playing the game more!  Here's the event lineup for this week:

• Tuesday - Roads Roam (9pm eastern / 1:00 UTC)
• Thursday - Faction ZvZ and Bandit Event if up (9pm eastern / 1:00 UTC)
• Saturday - Roads + Bz Roam (9pm eastern / 1:00 UTC)
• Sunday - Static Dungeon Fame Farm (2pm eastern / 18:00 UTC)

And that's it...

Thank you for reading.  There are a bunch of things I wanted to cover in this update because we have A LOT of stuff planned and coming down the pipe, but I am going to call it there.  

Please look forward to a very full content week, and in addition to everything covered above I'll have more to say on the guild economy launch, another lotto and the formation of our Crystal Arena competitive team this week.  And thank you all for contiuing to go on this crazy Albion journey together, I am having more fun with you all then I have in an MMO possibly since I first fell in love with this genre.  It's a great game, but mostly it's down to you all.