# Albion Online Diaries #1

By [Koen Dercksen](https://paragraph.com/@koendercksen) · 2024-02-19

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Sooo… I installed a new game a few days ago, the very popular MMORPG _Albion Online_. After suddenly being reminded of playing MapleStory an absolutely obscene amount of time during my childhood (Nexon, how could you spoil my nice memories :( ), I wanted to play something like that again. Unfortunately I could not play MapleStory on my machine since Nexon hates Linux users and Virtualbox users, so I went for the first cool-looking game I could find and Albion it was.

[https://www.gamingdeputy.com/maplestory-maplestory-players-initiate-class-action-lawsuit-against-nexon/](https://www.gamingdeputy.com/maplestory-maplestory-players-initiate-class-action-lawsuit-against-nexon/)

Now Albion seems to be a pretty elaborate game! I think there is a general consensus that it’s a bit pay-to-win, but for now there is still a lot to explore and I’m kind of liking the initial grind. It’s also nice that I can play it on different devices - instead of being locked away in the office, I can actually join my girlfriend on the couch and act like I’m present while grinding mobs, amazing.

Either way, I’m having fun playing it for now so I thought I would try to do a little write-up of my experience each week. In my first couple of sessions, I ran through the tutorial and landed in Forest Cross, where I chopped a bunch of wood and did the starting quests. After getting ripped off on the local market I decided to watch a few guides, and found out I had been going about my initial build all wrong! Classic.

I immediately moved to Lymhurst, got a skinning knife and started fleecing impalas on the steppe zones surrounding the city. I’m currently trying to level up my skinning tree and build out combat mastery as a fire mage (or pyromancer, very cool). Leveling up skinning is quite a grind but it’s surprisingly peaceful so far. A few more sessions and waiting for learning points and then I will be wearing tier 5 skinning gear. I have only stuck to blue zones so far, maybe I will venture out into the scary badlands this week.

I guess that’s about it for now, hopefully next week I’ll have better skinning gear and be dipping into tier 6 (or 7 if I’m lucky???) combat gear. Until then..

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*Originally published on [Koen Dercksen](https://paragraph.com/@koendercksen/albion-online-diaries-1)*