Peek Into The Armoury Of Albion Online’s Wild Blood Shapeshifter Weapons

Albion Online, the fantasy MMORPG from Sandbox Interactive, launched its massive Wild Blood update on 16 October, and central to it is a brand-new weapon line: Shapeshifter Weapons. These Staffs are Albion’s most elaborate weapon line to date, allowing players to shift into the forms of fantastical beasts, with their own spells and abilities, while in combat. This brings a whole new element to Albion’s ‘You are what you wear’ system, giving players the potential to take on more than one role at once. Here, we take a closer look at what these weapons offer.

How They Work

There are a total of seven different Shapeshifter Weapons you can use, each with its own abilities and strengths – dealing damage, disrupting enemies, healing allies, and so on. Their power comes from manipulating reality – for example, one spell can turn enemies into helpless little rats!

Using these abilities in human form builds up Shift Charges, and these unlock the weapons’ true potential – the ability to transform into Shape form. Each Shapeshifter Staff has an associated Shape – a powerful, magical creature with its own qualities, ranging from fragile damage dealer to immovable tank – and Shift Charges provide energy for a Shape’s unique abilities. Here, we take a closer look at each of these Seven Shapes

• The Shadow Panther is a sneaky assassin that turns invisible when no enemies are nearby, letting it ambush enemies but also make a stealthy escape.
• The Sylvian is a hulking tree-like form, which provides additional health and healing in group fights. It can also give your allies a powerful shield that grants immunity to forced movement effects, and can spread its roots to slow enemies.
• The Spirit Bear is an aggressive tank that excels at disrupting enemies. When low on health, it becomes enraged, speeding up its cast times and increasing its damage and CC duration.
• The Werewolf is a bruiser with high sustain. When attacking enemies, you can gather their blood from the ground, boosting your health and speed and making you extremely difficult to shake off.
• The Hellfire Imp deals very high damage but has low defense. It can also resurrect in human form after death, albeit with low health and with your transformation on a long cooldown.
• The Runestone Golem, by contrast, is an unstoppable and immovable force, immune to all forced movement. The more shift charges you have, the larger it grows and the more health it gains. It can also create a stone wall that traps enemies in front of you, where you can beat them up with your giant fists
• The Dawnbird is a majestic eagle that can deal very high damage from a safe distance. Its mightiest ability is Judgment, a beam of immense energy that strikes down from the sky, dealing massive damage to all enemies in the impact radius and making the Dawnbird a particularly dangerous force in large-scale fights.

Combat Strategies

As entering Shape form overrides your human armor stats, it’s possible to completely switch roles mid-combat. For instance, wearing Plate Armor with a Prowling Staff makes you a tank in human form, and a deadly assassin in Shape form. Also, buffs persist after transformation, so wearing a Hunter Jacket and transforming into a Werewolf means you can carry over your auto-attack buff, making your Shape form even more ferocious.

Switching back and forth between forms in this way makes for a uniquely active playstyle, which offers a lot of versatility and really lets players show off their skills. Shapeshifter Weapons are going to be a truly valuable, powerful addition to combat in Albion, so choose your Staff and join the fight!

Learn more about the update here.