HQ Hideouts are Albion's newest feature to help smaller player groups

Every good hero has their own hideout, and every villain worth their salt has their own lair. In Albion Online, heroes and villains are aplenty, and now, they will all have an opportunity to build a place of operations for themselves.

Headquarters Hideouts, AKA HQ Hideouts, are still early in development, but we’re all very excited about the changes they will bring. Developers themselves have said that they believe Albion to be best and most exciting when many small groups are competing for power in the Outlands, but the current Hideout system is controlled by large powerful groups, forcing players to consolidate or pay tribute. This is one of the ways to try and remedy that problem.

Features of the new HQ Hideouts are:

• Allows guilds to place and protect a Hideout based only on their own achievements,
• Guilds will earn the ability to make one Hideout an HQ Hideout as a season reward,
• HQ Hideouts are invulnerable to all attacks, even during battle times.

Once created, however, the Headquarters status will need to be maintained. The upcoming open-world Vortex Power System has been extended to include Hideout Power Cores, which are required to make sure an HQ Hideout stays invulnerable. The required level of power depends on the quality of the region, with Hideouts deeper in the Outlands requiring significantly more power. Attackers can take advantage of this by preventing Power Cores from reaching the HQ, causing it to lose invulnerability eventually.

Sandbox Interactive Power Cores must be escorted under heavy guard

Other features of HQ Hideouts and general Hideout changes: 

• To assist in their creation, guilds can earn the right to make a Hideout construction site invulnerable once per season,
• Access to HQ Hideouts is limited to guild members,
• General Hideout upkeep for non-HQ Hideouts will increase based on the number of Hideouts already in a region, to strengthen smaller guilds in the Outlands.

HQ Hideouts require guilds to collect enough Season Points by the end of a Guild Season. Thus, the current season will be followed by a shortened season before the launch of the next update:.