Expeditions

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This article is based on the basic guide from the official website. Help by editing and improving it!

There are two types of Expeditions: Normal Expeditions and Hardcore Expeditions.

Basics

Expeditions are instanced PvE areas, accessible from the cities in Albion.

What are expeditions?

Expeditions are instanced PvE missions which can be accessed through the Expedition Master NPC in cities. These expeditions are relatively short, with a successful run taking 20 to 30 minutes on average, and can also be considered fairly safe: In case you die, you will be transferred to the start of the expedition or your last reached checkpoint, without losing any gear, you will only lose durability on your equipment.

Expeditions are available in two variants: solo and group. To queue for a groups expedition you need to find the Expedition Master NPC in a nearby city. Depending on your equipment, you will be automatically be assigned a role:

  • Defensive Your role is to tank, making sure the mobs and bosses of the expedition focus you.
  • Supportive Your role is to heal and shield your teammates, making sure everyone survives.
  • Offensive Your role is to deal damage and kill the mobs, while avoiding taking damage.

Once you have selected a group-size and tier difficulty, you will be teleported to an expedition, where you will be given a mission. When you are assigned to a specific role, you are locked to that specific role the whole duration of the expedition and other players can see your role as well. Complete the mission and a portal will appear to bring you back to the city you came from. You will have 60 minutes to complete solo expeditions and 120 minutes for group expeditions, failing to complete the mission will teleport you back to the city. Leaving an expedition prematurely will put you on a penalty timer before you can start another expedition.

Sigils: Special Expedition Rewards

Expeditions are ideal content if you are not quite ready to venture into the open world or if you are simply lacking the time. Not only will you earn silver and fame during the expedition (albeit less than in the open world), the first expedition of the day will give you additional fame and a Royal Sigil.

These Royal Sigils, in combination with regular equipment parts, are used to craft royal armors. There are three different Royal equipment sets: Cloth, leather and plate. Similarly to artifact items, they are unlocked through the combat-tree of the Destiny Board. Each royal equipment piece will also have its own unique spell, which makes for 9 unique spells.

Important:

Royal armours are special items which require an NPC drop. However keep in mind that to craft them you need to normal players crafted armors as a requirement. Thus although sigils are theoretically an infinite drop, royal armors still do not harm the player driven economy.

How to unlock higher tier expeditions?

Expeditions are divided by tiers, as are many parts in Albion Online. You can unlock new expeditions by killing creatures in the world of Albion, the more creatures you kill the higher your ‘Reaver’ tier will be. Similarly to the adventurer’s progression, reaver tiers are unlocked through the combat-tree of the Destiny Board.

If you want to host a Master’s expedition you need to be a Master’s Reaver and the needed ‘Average Item Power’.

List of Expeditions

There are two types of Expeditions, solo and group with a total of 7 different environments.

Individual Expedition (Solo)

Sellsword Expedition (Group)

Hardcore Expeditions

Hardcore Expeditions are the more challenging variation of the normal expeditions.

To join a hardcore expeditions, players must first acquire a "Map" of Level 1 - 15. The higher the level the tougher the Hardcore expedition.

You can loot maps in the open world, or buy them at the auction house. The maps are in the "token" category, and the easiest way to search for one is to type "lvl. X" where X is the level of map you're looking for.

It is worth noting that only one player needs to own a map. Once he creates his 5 man party, he can start the expedition from the same portal as the normal expeditions by selecting the third tab and putting the map in the slot. Then his party will all be prompted to enter.

Once inside, you will notice that you have a quest to complete (just like normal expeditions) and two timers.

If you finish the map before the first timer, you will get a free map of one level higher for a random zone (e.g. finishing a lvl1 Stone Wars might grant you a lvl2 Lumber Lunacy or any other lvl2).

When the second timer runs out, the whole party will be kicked out of the map and back to your expedition portal. even if you were mid-fight.

Finding a group

While a lot of people will run with friends and guildmates that they know and trust there are still a lot of players looking to create a group with other random players.

A lot of that will be facilitated via the LFG channel in the in-game chat. Most messages contain the following:

  • Is the player Looking For a Group (LFG) to join, or already has a group and owns a map and is Looking For a Member (LFM) to join them.
  • Your weapon, as it's key to create a well-rounded group. Be aware that people tend to be picky about weapons and follow the "meta", so you might have trouble finding groups depending on your weapon.
  • Your global Item Power (which is the average of all of your items excluding the bag), which you can view from the stats at the left of the inventory menu.

This is just the best way that people who don't know you can get an approximation of how much you'll be able to contribute to the group. For safety's sake, people tend to request way higher IP than what they really need (for example people often look for 1300+ IP for t4 maps that you can easily complete with 1100-1200 IP)

  • Your weapon item power; since for healers and DPS, the weapon is really the main measure of what you contribute, if you have a much higher IP on your weapon than your average IP, it is worth mentioning it.

Pulls and skips

Due to the fact that maps have limited time to be completed, you will hear a lot about pulls and skips.

Pulls

"pulls" refer to having a specific set of enemies attack you.

The tank will be the one taking care of pulling the right enemies to keep the number of enemies engaged manageable and squeeze past the groups that you don't need to complete the map.

Skips

In the same spirit of saving time, some maps (all of them when you get to higher levels) will require you to "skip" parts of it. It is achieved by using gear that allows you to become invisible or run through enemies.

The idea is that you will fight with your normal weapon and when the group decides to skip (usually the tank will be the one calling for it), you swap weapon, skip through enemies and go back to your normal gear to fight again.

There are two main variants for skip sets:

  • Specter shoes + royal cowl; where specter shoes allow you to go invisible over a long distance but uses a lot of mana and royal cowl helps negate the mana cost
  • Leather skinning gathering boots (using scent of the wilderness); which allows you to run through enemies without getting attacked

And several optional variants can come and complement those :

  • Axe (any of them, usually the 1-handed axe alongside a mistcaller); because activating its W gives you a speed boost which helps you skip further
  • Occult Staff's with "Time Corridor"; as its speed boost serves a similar purpose as the axe
  • Bloodletter; Similar to the previous two, it allows to cover a lot of ground without taking much damage before starting your real skip
  • Assassin jacket, or any gathering gear chest with ambush; for an additional bit of distance via its invisibility. Most people will use this addition to the skip set.
  • Invisibility potion; which is expensive hence tend not to be used unless really pressed for time in high level maps
  • Assassin hood; sometimes you need to skip twice in a row. If it's the case, you might want to use an assassin hood between both skips to refresh your cooldowns
  • Soldier helm, or any gathering gear helm with block (only possible to use alongside the skinner skip set); since the block spell helps you run through enemies for a bit before starting your real skip.

Map tiers

Some maps are harder to complete than others.

It might be because they're more punishing, because they have harder groups that you need to kill, because the boss is harder to kill or even because you have less time making it harder to get the bonus map.

This is rather subjective (some groups hate fistful of silver while other groups who come fully prepared will breeze through it) and depends a lot on the current state of the game (from time to time, the maps get reworked and become easier or harder). A good guide is the market price. If a map is cheap on the market, compared to other maps of the same level, it likely means that it is harder to complete.

Death

A death in an HCE will:

  • Make you lose 10% durability on everything you're carrying. Not only what you have equipped but also what you carry in your inventory.
  • Have a chance of making you lose part of your food, potion, or any extra HCE map that you might be carrying.

You can then either wait to stand up (as in the open world) which gets you to keep your current food, or press die, and come back from the latest checkpoint that you activated by running past it.

Choosing to die and come back will make you lose any food you had ongoing, and grant you an invulnerability bubble that will last for 10 seconds or 10 meters.

Dying in HCE will never cause you to be looted and lose your gear.

Map Names and Guides

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