This update introduces dragons to Albion, from open world attacks to the Dragon Sanctuary, where adventurers will face the most challenging raid battle to date against Azaryon, the Fire Dragon. Players can also explore the mysterious Ancient Lands and earn powerful new rewards, including brand-new Dragonslayer Armor, consumables, and the elite Firewing Drake mount.
Ancient Lands
Dragonfire unveils a previously undiscovered realm: the Ancient Lands. This domain comprises numerous floating islands suspended over Albion, linked by a network of Leygates. Upon arrival, adventurers will face Ashborn mobs, brand-new creatures, and rival parties. Activating Leygates allows deeper exploration into the territory, where even more significant challenges and rewards await those who venture furthest.
Entering the Ancient Lands
The Ancient Lands can be reached via portals in the open world.
- In Yellow Zones, portals take you to partial-loot, orange-zone Ancient Lands where only inventory is dropped on death; in Black Zones, portals take you to full-loot Ancient Lands
- The Ancient Lands have a 1200 IP soft cap
- This soft cap scales differently in full-loot and partial-loot Ancient Lands
- Orange zone: 20%
- Black zone: 35%
Within the Ancient Lands
When you arrive in the Ancient Lands, you’ll appear on one of the outer islands, and you’ll see two quests in your HUD Tracker:
- A local quest, tied to the island you are currently exploring
- A global quest, which culminates in unlocking the final encounter
Defeating the enemies on an island completes its local quest, rewarding you with a Leygate Keystone:
- Leygate Keystones are used to activate the Leygates that connect the various islands of the Ancient Lands
- These can be used on any Leygate in the Ancient Lands
- Each island has several Leygates which connect to different islands
- Keystones can be removed from an active Leygate, allowing you to carry them elsewhere and activate a different route
- Activated Leygates are displayed on the Region Map, with newly activated connections briefly highlighted
As you explore, you will encounter four Drakes on certain islands, marked on both the Minimap and Region Map. You must complete each of these islands’ quests to complete the global quest.
- Once the global quest has been completed, the central island unlocks after a short delay, granting access to the Ancient Lands' final boss: the Fire Drake
- Defeating the Fire Drake awards a large amount of loot and opens a portal back to the open-world region from which you entered
If you wish to leave before completing the encounter, any entry portal found around the outer islands can be used. These return you to your original open-world region.
Spirit Essence
Spirit Essence is a stackable buff that can only be acquired and used within the Ancient Lands.
- Each stack increases Fame earned and grants increased damage and defense against mobs
- Spirit Essence can be obtained in several ways:
- Interacting with Dragon Statues, which grant Spirit Essence to you and your party
- Defeating mobs, which have a chance to award Spirit Essence to your party
- Certain enemies, such as Drakes, always grant Spirit Essence
Revive
In both partial-loot and full-loot Ancient Lands, players who are knocked down in PvP enter a Bleedout state instead of dying immediately. While in Bleedout, players can be revived by allies before a timer expires.
- A bar displayed on-screen indicates the amount of time in which a revival is possible
- Moving away from your downed party member causes this timer to deplete more quickly
- If no allies remain to perform a revival, Bleedout ends in a short time
- Revived players return with a stacking 10% maximum Health debuff
- This effect lasts only while inside the Ancient Lands
Ancient Altars
Ancient Altars can be found throughout the Ancient Lands, with a guaranteed Altar on the central island and additional Altars spawning on smaller islands adjacent to the spawn location.
- Ancient Bones, obtained from Drakes and sometimes chests, can be offered at Ancient Altars to earn Draconic Insight, Fame, and temporary Fame bonuses
- Small sacrifices grant a 10% Fame bonus for one hour, while large sacrifices grant a 20% Fame bonus for two hours
- Nearby allies also receive rewards when a ritual is completed
Dragon Sanctuary
The Dragon Sanctuary is Albion’s most challenging dedicated PvE encounter to date, built for raids of up to 20 players. Fight through a dangerous Ashborn stronghold, overcome powerful high-level bosses, and ultimately face Azaryon, the Fire Dragon.
Access
- To enter the Dragon Sanctuary, you need a Spirit Waystone
- Spirit Waystones can be obtained by:
- Collecting Waystone Fragments in the Ancient Lands and combining them at the Artifact Foundry
- Receiving a complete one as a drop from Fire Drakes or Dragons
- Buying either Waystones or their fragments from other players or on the Marketplace, as both are tradable
The Dragon Sanctuary
The Dragon Sanctuary contains new Ashborn enemies, powerful Drakes, deadly traps, and increasingly demanding PvE encounters. There is no Item Power cap, allowing groups to bring their strongest PvE gear and optimized compositions.
Guarding the path to the Dragon Sanctuary's heart is Maeve, the Unfettered Oracle. As the leader of the Ashborn, this formidable high-level encounter serves as the ultimate test for your party before the raid's final boss: Azaryon, the Fire Dragon.
Azaryon, the Fire Dragon
Awaiting at the end of the Dragon Sanctuary is Azaryon, Albion's most challenging raid boss to date.
Designed for up to twenty players, the encounter demands coordination, execution, and teamwork across multiple phases featuring devastating attacks and unique mechanics. Players capable of defeating Azaryon can earn immense rewards, including a rare Drake Egg (see ‘New Rewards’ below).
If your party defeats Azaryon, every member will receive a Lingering Dragon Spirit, lasting for seven days. Each Lingering Dragon Spirit makes completing the Dragon Sanctuary significantly more difficult, making repeat attempts a considerable challenge.
Dragon Attacks
Dragons also launch attacks across both the Royal Continent and the Outlands, creating large-scale, open-world encounters that any player can join.
- On the Royal Continent, attacks are announced only shortly beforehand to encourage spontaneous encounters
- In the Outlands, they are announced much earlier, allowing groups to prepare and contest the objective
As the dragon approaches, its roar echoes across the region and its shadow sweeps overhead before it descends in a fiery landing, scorching the surrounding area and challenging everyone nearby.
Reduce the dragon's health until it is forced to retreat. As it flees, it leaves behind a reward chest containing loot for every player who contributed to the fight, whether playing solo or as part of a group. In the Outlands, successfully repelling a Dragon Attack also awards Might and Favor, making these encounters valuable Guild Season objectives.
New Rewards
Dragonfire introduces a host of new challenges and rewards, from powerful equipment and consumables to exclusive cosmetics.
Draconic Insight
The more you encounter Dragons and explore the Ancient Lands, the more you learn about them. Draconic Insight is a new form of Standing which can be increased through the following activities:
- Interacting with Dragon Statues
- Sacrificing Bones to an Ancient Altar
- Defeating Drakes and Dragons
Increasing Draconic Insight unlocks brand-new rewards, including the Ancient Mystic Vanity Set, Avatar, and Avatar Ring.
Dragon Armor
Fire Dragon Scales can be obtained by defeating Drakes and Dragons, and used to craft the new Dragonslayer Armor set. Each piece grants a unique ability:
- Dragonslayer Jacket: Creates a protective zone that grants immunity to enemies outside it while increasing your damage output and cooldown recovery
- Dragonslayer Hood: Launches a flare that reveals invisible enemies and slows their cooldown recovery
- Dragonslayer Shoes: Build up stacks of movement speed that can be consumed to instantly refund your weapon cooldowns
Drake Mount
Defeating Azaryon, the Fire Dragon, offers a rare chance to obtain a Fire Drake Egg. These can be raised in a Kennel into a Firewing Drake, but be warned: these creatures have quite the appetite, and you'll need to feed it other mounts before it's ready to ride.
- The Firewing Drake is immune to forced movement effects
- Rather than entering a traditional gallop, the Firewing Drake glides across Albion
- While gliding, it is immune to roots and slows
- Unlike a normal gallop, taking damage will not interrupt its glide
- Only stuns can end the effect
New Consumables
Drake Eggs can also serve a rather different purpose in the kitchen:
- Drake Egg Biscuits: Increases Combat and Gathering Fame for 25 hours
- This bonus does not replace or remove combat food buffs, allowing it to be used alongside regular combat food
Drakes and Dragons can also drop Dragon Blood, a rare crafting material used to create a powerful new potion:
- Lifeward Potion: Protects nearby allies from a fatal blow, reviving them the first time they would be defeated
The Ancient Lands are also home to a previously unknown type of fish. These Leyfin fish can be used to cook a new dish:
- Leyfin Omelettes: Provides cast speed reduction, cooldown reduction, and a healing cast bonus
New Albion Journal Missions
Dragonfire brings new missions in the Creatures, Exploration, and PvE categories. These focus on hunting Drakes and Dragons, exploring the Ancient Lands, and raiding the Dragon Sanctuary.
New Guild Might Levels
Guild members can now earn Might and Season Points through two new Guild Might Levels, one focused on the Ancient Lands and one on Dragon encounters.
Ancient Memories
New Lore Fragments can be found throughout the Ancient Lands, uncovering the history of Dragons and their connection to Albion.
- Each Ancient Memory is permanently recorded in a new Lore category in the Albion Journal, where you'll also find hints to help locate those you have yet to discover
- Lore Fragments that were in the Exploration category have been moved to the Lore category
Destiny Board Crafting Bonuses
Leather Armor
With the addition of the new Dragonslayer Armor items in the leather category, Focus Cost Efficiency and Quality bonuses have been adjusted for all Leather Armor items in order to keep the total available crafting bonuses equal across all armor types.
- Focus Cost Efficiency to all Leather Armors/Heads/Shoes per level:
- 15 → 12.5
Potions
With the addition of the new Lifeward Potion in this update, we have also looked at Focus Cost Efficiency bonuses for potions. Since certain potions require expensive artifact ingredients, we have decided to weight Focus Cost Efficiency bonuses away from these and towards those which do not require more specialized ingredients. In doing so, the total alchemy bonuses will be more fairly distributed between base potions and more specialized potions.
We chose this specific approach as it benefits the majority of crafters, and keeps alchemy competitive with cooking as the majority of the bonus comes from simple ingredients. This also now more closely mirrors the Focus Cost distribution for weapons and armor, where base items provide more of the overall bonus due to their accessible reagent costs.
The Lifeward Potion is grouped with those which provide less Focus Cost Efficiency bonuses.
- Heal Brewer, Energy Brewer, Gigantify Brewer, Resistance Brewer, Sticky Brewer, Poison Brewer, Invisibility Brewer, and Bootlegger
- Focus Cost Efficiency group bonus per level: 18 → 22.5
Destiny Board Improvements
To improve visual clarity, specialization nodes on the Destiny Board with the same parent node have been combined into one. This does not change the behavior of specializations in the game, but visually simplifies the Destiny Board.
- To keep a sense of accomplishment, individual specializations are represented by badges encircling the combined specialization node
- Individual specializations can be previewed by hovering over the combined specialization node
- Each badge visually reflects its specialization level
Armory Improvements
The Armory's Metrics section now includes a second page with a detailed breakdown of a build’s performance, making it easier to evaluate and compare them.
- This view displays average per-hour statistics, including damage dealt, healing done, kills, deaths, and other combat metrics, alongside each build's Average Item Power
- Players who want to compare builds at a glance can also enable a new option to display Average Item Power directly in the Armory's equipment list
UI Changes
- Added a new Ping chat channel for ping messages
- The Ping channel has been added by default to the General, Combat, and Social chat tabs
Other Changes
- Resource Guardians now spawn in Tier 6+ regions in the Outlands, instead of around resource hotspots
- A Guardian only spawns in a biome in which its resource is present
- Resource Guardians spawn without any preannouncement and are neither shown on the Region or the World Map
Combat Balance Changes
Mob Debuff Changes
After observing both elite and standard groups in PvE, the performance gap between groups that consistently reach the maximum debuff caps and those that only apply part of those debuffs has become too wide. The debuff caps applied to players and PvE enemies have therefore been decoupled.
Adjusting these caps provides a healthier baseline for balancing PvE encounters, without excessively punishing standard groups or allowing highly optimized groups to trivialize encounters. Paired with additional changes to specific spells, this should also give groups more flexibility in how they reach the new caps.
- Maximum Health decrease vs. mobs: 50% → 25%
- Maximum damage decrease vs. mobs: 80% → 50%
Axes
Axes have become much stronger in small-scale combat following the recent buff to Adrenaline Boost. Its behavior has now been refined to give opponents more counterplay.
- Adrenaline Boost (all Axes)
- Now expires if the caster does not directly damage an enemy every 3s
Fire Staffs
Flame Blast has been too powerful as a ganking tool. Its movement speed buff for allies has therefore been removed, while retaining the mobility granted when self-casting.
- Flame Blast (all Fire Staffs)
- No longer grants move speed to other allies
Frost Staffs
Avalanche has received increased damage, while its knockback against mobs has been adjusted to improve its performance in solo PvE.
- Avalanche (Hoarfrost Staff)
- Snowball rolling damage: 120 → 160
- Knockback vs. mobs: 10m → 5m
- Max. air time vs. mobs: 0.8 → 1.25
Frost Lance has received its missing AoE Escalation, along with several other spells listed below. Its damage has also been reduced to limit its effectiveness as a very long-range poke tool with limited counterplay.
- Frost Lance (all Frost Staffs)
- Damage: 148 → 134
Following its recent buffs, Freezing Wind has become a top performer in solo PvP. While the instant effect has proven more effective than the previous version, its root duration has been reduced and its hitbox has been significantly adjusted to give opponents more room for counterplay.
- Freezing Wind (Frost Staff)
- Hitbox area now grows over 0.4s
- Total hitbox duration: 2s → 0.6s
- Root duration: 2.5s → 2s
Maces
Blessed Aurora’s healing on auto-attacks has been increased to encourage a new Oathkeepers playstyle in smaller-scale PvP, focusing less on the shield’s immediate effects and more on maximizing auto-attack uptime.
- Blessed Aurora (Oathkeepers)
- Healing on auto-attack: 30 → 66
Gravitas has remained unpopular for some time. With more weapons and builds in modern Albion relying on blinks and dashes, the Morning Star’s root has become less effective. While the weapon remains a candidate for a larger rework in the future, its cooldowns have now been improved to help it better keep pace with competing options.
- Gravitas (Morning Star)
- Cooldown: 30s → 20s
- Recast cooldown: 40s → 30s
- Cooldown scaling per 100 IP: -1s → -0.5s
Following the reduction to the maximum damage decrease that can be applied to mobs, single-source, damage-decreasing abilities have also been adjusted to better fit the new cap.
- Shrinking Curse (Incubus Mace)
- Damage decrease debuff vs. mobs: 40% → 25%
Nature Staffs
Rampant Staff has received targeting and indicator adjustments to make Spirit Animal easier to use. Its hitbox now begins slightly behind the cast position, while its cast range has been increased to offset the resulting loss in maximum forward reach.
- Spirit Animal (Rampant Staff)
- Hitbox now starts 3m behind the cast position
- Cast range: 12m → 15m
Druidic Staff has fallen out of the group PvP meta. To give it more power and flexibility, Spiritual Seed can now be recast a third time, at the cost of an additional cooldown penalty.
- Spiritual Seed (Druidic Staff)
- Can now be recast a third time
- Cooldown per recast:
- 1st: 20s
- 2nd: 20s
- 3rd: 30s
Quarterstaffs
Following the reduction to the maximum damage decrease that can be applied to mobs, single-source, damage-decreasing abilities have also been adjusted to better fit the new cap.
- Fatal Blade (Black Monk Staff)
- Damage decrease debuff per tick vs. mobs: 10% → 8% (total: 30% → 24%)
- Forceful Swing (all Quarterstaffs)
- Damage decrease debuff vs. mobs: 50% → 20%
Shapeshifter Staffs
The Panther transformation’s auto-attack passive has received increased damage to encourage and better reward fighting while transformed.
- Infected Scrapes (Prowling Staff)
- Damage per tick: 7 → 8 (Max. damage per tick: 35 → 40)
The common Prowling Staff gameplay pattern of fishing for crowd control while in Plate Armor, then transforming to quickly use all Panther abilities before transforming back, offers opponents too little opportunity for counterplay against the less durable Panther form. To address this, Sinister Swipes’ cooldown with Shapeshifter Charges has been further increased.
- Sinister Swipes (Prowling Staff)
- Cooldown with charges: 0.8s → 1.5s
War Gloves
Dragon Leap’s recast window has been shortened to reduce accidental early casts of Dragon Punch, which would otherwise trigger the spell’s longer cooldown.
- Dragon Leap (all War Gloves)
- Recast time window: 2s → 1.5s
- Cooldown: 0s → 0.5s
Helmets
Following the reduction to the maximum damage decrease that can be applied to mobs, single-source, damage-decreasing abilities have also been adjusted to better fit the new cap.
- Howl (Mercenary Hood)
- Damage decrease debuff vs. mobs: 30% → 20%
Armors
Following the reduction to the maximum damage decrease that can be applied to mobs, single-source, damage-decreasing abilities have also been adjusted to better fit the new cap.
- Enfeeble Aura (Guardian Armor)
- Damage decrease debuff vs. mobs: 60% → 25%
Mounts
Intimidating Aura has been weakened to reduce the impact of Grizzly Bears moving through enemy groups and disrupting engagements while remaining difficult to remove, without reducing the mount’s durability or transport endurance.
- Intimidating Aura (Grizzly Bear)
- Damage decrease debuff: 70% → 40%
Resilience Penetration
For the upcoming season, all Resilience Penetration has been set to zero as a seasonal test. The goal is to shift the meta more strongly away from Plate melee DPS and create space for players to rediscover and experiment with different compositions.
Resilience Penetration is a very powerful stat that was originally introduced to compensate for the inherent risk of melee weapons having less range, particularly in large-scale PvP. However, modern Albion offers significantly more mobility across weapon lines, while player positioning and engagement strategies have also evolved.
This season will therefore serve as a test of how ZvZ combat develops without Resilience Penetration. The results will be closely observed, and further adjustments may follow based on how the meta develops.
Resilience Penetration has been removed from the following weapons and spells:
- Astral Staff (Starfall)
- 20% → 0%
Fixes
Spell Fixes
- Added missing AoE Escalation to the following spells:
- Deadly Shot (all Bows): Added to resistance reduction
- Frost Lance (all Frost Staffs): Added to resistance reduction
- Fire Wave (all Fire Staffs): Added to initial damage
- Relentless Assault (Crystal Reaper): Added to damage
- Force of Nature (Bedrock Mace): Added to damage
- Positional Drift (all Shapeshifter Staffs): Added to root
- Impaler (all Spears): Added to slow
- Frost Shot (all Bows): Added to slow
- Howl (Mercenary Hood): Added to slow
- Grasp of the Undead (Tombhammer): Added to stun
- Rending Rage (all Axes): Added to root
UI Fixes
- Fixed issue where player names in speech bubbles could display in the wrong color when using /say chat
- Fixed issue where it was not possible to enter text in several UIs with keyboard connected
- Fixed issue where number of unclaimed Albion Journal rewards displayed in the main menu would not update correctly
- Fixed issue where right stick scrolling could stop working in menus with multiple scrollable panels
- Fixed issue where several graphics settings were unavailable
Other Fixes
- Fixed issue where players could incorrectly receive Faction Points from Faction Battle Standards
- Fixed issue where Player Navigation could not be used to navigate to Starter Towns
- Fixed issue where manually targeted ground spells could cast at a nearby auto-target instead of the intended location when ‘Preview Spell Target’ was disabled
- Fixed issue where mouse scrolling was excessively slow
- Various additional controller, graphical, animation, terrain, audio, UI, and localization fixes