Allods Online

Allods Online is a free-to-play fantasy MMORPG by Russian studio Allods Team, released in 2009. The game is set in Sarnaut, a planet shattered by a catastrophe into hundreds of isolated islands called allods, drifting through a magical substance known as the Astral. The game combines classic genre mechanics—quests, leveling, dungeons, raids, and PvP—with a unique system of astral travel on ships built and equipped by player crews.

The project continues to evolve in the 2020s: major updates are released, the visuals are being modernized, and the barrier to entry for new players is gradually being lowered. Alongside the main servers, there is a subscription server called “Thread of Fate”—a pay-to-play model with no paid advantages, where all players are on equal footing.

The lore of Allods is based on a conflict between two gods. Long ago, the god of Darkness, Nihaz, imprisoned the God of Light, Sarna, in the prison world of Sarnaut, appointing twelve Great Dragon Guardians as his jailers. The only way for Sarna to escape is to destroy Sarnaut itself. While imprisoned, he could not do this himself, so he began creating intelligent races on the planet’s surface, hoping they would destroy the world. Time and again, his plan failed: the peoples built civilizations instead of destroying one another.

The turning point came after a meteorite struck and destroyed some of the Guardians. Sarna’s chains weakened, and he began to act within the world to a limited extent, setting off a series of events that led to the Great Cataclysm. The once-thriving planet broke apart into allods—isolated islands of land, each kept from dissolving into the Astral by one of the Great Mages, who paid for this with eternal imprisonment on their island.

Sarna, having completely lost his sanity, created demons—beings from the depths of the Astral whose sole purpose is to destroy the Great Mages. Protecting the allods’ guardians became one of the key tasks of every nation in Sarnaut. Later, the Architect invaded the world—a creator god from another universe who sought to bring all existence under a single Order—but the combined forces of the two main factions destroyed him. By the time the game begins, the demonic threat has largely been overcome, but conflicts continue to shake the world.

Before the Cataclysm, Sarnaut was a single planet with several continents, advanced races, and nations. It is now scattered into allods of various sizes: some are inhabited and politically developed, while others are abandoned and forgotten. The latter make up a distinct part of the game’s content: uninhabited fragments of the former world drift through the Astral and can be explored aboard astral ships.

Politically, the world is divided into two opposing blocs—the League and the Empire:

The world also includes several smaller groups—the Free Traders, Pagans, the Church of Light, and others. Each pursues its own goals; your relations with them affect your character’s reputation and unlock unique gear and opportunities.

The world of Allods consists of isolated zones, each with its own biome, population, quests, and level range. Progression is linear: players move from one allod to another as their character levels up. The content grows more challenging over time and remains one of the game’s key distinguishing features.

The visual design of each zone reflects its faction: the League has natural harmony and traditional architecture, while the Empire has a practical industrial style. The variety of biomes increases as you progress. Early zones include the birch groves of Svetolesye, home to the League’s main city, Novograd, and the harsh, snowy Siberia, with its wild peoples and natural resources. Later, you can explore tropical atolls, deserts, industrial Imperial zones, ruined cities, flying islands, and places frozen outside of time.

The Astral is a game activity in its own right, not just the space between zones. A crew of several players sets off aboard a ship into randomly generated sectors to fight Astral demons, explore drifting fragments, or gather resources.

Personal Allod is each player’s own territory. It starts as an empty island and can be built up with buildings as you invest resources. These buildings provide stat bonuses and produce resources. The system was significantly reworked in update 17.0.

Each faction has its own capital—a main hub where players arrive after the tutorial and which serves as the starting point for all further interaction with the game.

The capitals contain all the main services: the marketplace, bank, auction house, faction NPCs, entrances to dungeons and raids, shipyard, storage, blacksmiths, and gear vendors. The main quest chains and reputation quests also converge here. The capital remains your permanent base throughout the game.

The story in Allods is structured differently from single-player RPGs: instead of a linear campaign with cutscenes, it is spread throughout the world in quest chains. The main narrative is centered on the “Secrets of the World” series—special quest chains that unlock as you level up and gradually reveal the cosmology of Sarnaut: the nature of the gods, the origins of demons, and the mystery of the Astral. A lot of lore can also be found in ordinary quests, if you read them carefully.

Quests make frequent use of cultural references, woven naturally into the world without direct parody. They include Slavic folklore, Soviet and post-Soviet aesthetics, and images from popular culture: variations on the theme of Koschei, everyday scenes reminiscent of a Russian bathhouse, and military-service parodies with distinctive humor and tone. The result is a recognizable and sometimes ironic atmosphere, especially familiar to players from the CIS.

The writing and dialogue are of high quality, with a more mature tone than is typical of the genre and an emphasis on atmosphere and intrigue. In some cases, it is not obvious how to continue a quest line, so players have to follow it themselves or use the map for guidance.

There are no specific protagonists with established backstories—the player creates a character who is not tied to any known figure in the world. The narrative revolves around the global conflict between factions and threats that force the League and the Empire to alternate between fighting and joining forces against a common enemy. Update 17.0, “Blood of Kings,” continued the main story: it added the new location of Quator and the heroic adventure “Oasis of Yolitstli.”

By modern MMO standards, the presentation is modest, with no cinematic direction. The story is for those willing to seek it out: reading dialogue, following quest chains, and studying notes and letters. If you do, there is enough lore here to last a dozen or two hours.

The game has six playable races, divided between two sides. Choosing a faction when creating a character determines your allies, enemies, and starting content for hundreds of hours to come. Although in the current version of the game you can change sides using special in-game items, this choice remains fundamental to immersing yourself in the lore.

The League:

The Empire:

Neutral:

Each race has passive racial abilities, but they have minimal impact on balance. In practice, race choice is based on aesthetics and lore, not gameplay advantages.

Allods has 11 classes; which classes are available depends on the race you choose. The Aspect system lets each class switch between roles—damage, defense, healing, and support—on a single character, though each role’s effectiveness depends on the current balance.

Main archetypes:

Classes with unique mechanics:

The gameplay loop follows the classic MMO pattern: pick up quests → complete them on the right allod → return for your reward, level up → repeat. Leveling is slow by modern standards, but not painfully so. Update 17.0 introduced a fast-track progression system: a special location lets you reach level 115 out of 120 in just a few evenings and jump straight into current content.

Activities unlock in stages: milestones at level 10, island dungeons a little later, followed by Astral, reputation quests, and daily activities. There is no open-world PvP in the starting zones, but on higher-level allods and contested territories, you may well run into enemies: faction rivalry is part of everyday gameplay, not just an endgame feature. By the level cap, enough activities have opened up to keep you busy—if you enjoy this style of play.

Crafting is available, but it is not the main way to get top-tier gear. The professions are the usual ones for the genre: alchemy, blacksmithing, weaponsmithing, tailoring, and leatherworking. Alchemy is implemented as a minigame with its own mixing rules—a feature unusual for an MMORPG.

Recipes are earned through faction reputation and quests. Resources—herbs, ore, and wood—are gathered in the open world; high-level gear also requires materials from raids. Many players consider the system unnecessarily complicated: making a good item often requires combining farming, crafting, and upgrades at an anvil. Loot from regular mobs and the open world is practically irrelevant—junk at low levels, and nothing useful at high levels.

Gearing up is a season-long marathon. Gear is divided by quality (from blue to lemon/lettuce); each new season introduces a new tier of equipment, making the previous one obsolete. You cannot get a finished item as a direct drop: activities drop a base item, which you then upgrade at an anvil in the capital. The main sources are Astral Islands, raids, dungeons, compasses, and daily quests. Astral Islands once required a ship and a journey on your own—now you enter through the group finder.

The gear system has many layers, with lots of windows, slots, and ways to upgrade. At higher levels, it’s easy to get lost, and your inventory quickly fills up with materials. Each item can be upgraded in several ways:

You can buy crafting materials and first-tier gear at the auction house. This helps you get started faster, but does not replace farming: top second- and third-tier gear requires you to take part in raids and compass runs, while key upgrade resources (amalgam and realgar) cannot be traded.

Mounts and pets have skins and ranks; usually, there’s just one meta mount—the fastest one. The reincarnation system lets you create additional characters in your main character’s slots while keeping some progress, such as mounts, cosmetic items, and certain bonuses.

Another strong point is the wide range of appearance customization: costumes, armor skins, wings, auras, masks, and visual effects. You can completely change your character’s appearance; many costumes look especially good on certain races—for example, Zem or Elves.

The world of Allods is full of life and imagination: from harmless squirrels, foxes, and deer (with the occasional rare unicorn among them) to unique races such as the birdlike Aviaks, river-dwelling Aquatics, and giant Ogres. Vampire Elves and maddened Leshies lurk in abandoned locations and instances. The greatest enemies of all living things are demons of every shape and size, from tiny imps to gigantic monsters like Prutoglav. Enemies behave reasonably well: they run away when low on health, choose priority targets, and group together.

Combat is based on the classic target system: choose a target, use your attack and ability rotation, and keep an eye on your resource. A short global cooldown (1 second) and abilities that can be used outside the global cooldown allow for a high rate of actions. An experienced player makes several inputs per second, turning combat into a rhythmic “piano.” The outcome depends directly on reaction speed and knowledge of your rotation. Difficulty varies noticeably between classes: some are forgiving, while others require precise timing. Talents—passive and active upgrades arranged on a grid—let you create different builds for the same class, which can completely change how it feels to play.

Difficulty increases many times over in dungeons and raids. Bosses are complex puzzles with phases, ground-targeted danger zones, DPS checks, and positioning challenges, where one mistake can wipe the whole group. Dungeons are generally completed quickly, but their interesting mechanics add variety — Purple Widow’s webs, multi-phase battles. Raids require coordination: pulling adds away, tanking specific abilities, and reacting to timers.

Ship battles are a game within the game. The crew divides up the roles: some steer, some aim the cannons at different sectors, and others patch holes in the hold. Individual level matters less here than teamwork and knowing when to cool the reactor.

Allods’ combat system is still considered one of the game’s strengths: dynamic, visually striking, and with room for skill expression — especially in PvP. Class balance and stat changes remain subjects of debate in the community.

A guild in Allods is more than just a chat label. It is a full-fledged system with its own progression, combat bonuses, and competitive element.

You can create or join a guild at almost any level. Guilds have a rank hierarchy with customizable permissions: leader, officers, regular members, and recruits. Membership is limited, but the cap is enough for a full raid team. Guilds vary widely, from casual communities to top guilds that only accept players with strong skills and a steady online presence. In return, they help with gear and provide regular raid farming.

Guilds gain renown through their members' activities, including quests, dungeons, raids, and character progression. As renown grows, so does the guild's level, up to level 100. Each new level unlocks development points that can be spent on combat passives and stat bonuses for members. Progression is seasonal: at the end of each season, renown resets to the accumulated “Prestige,” which is permanent experience. The champion guild receives a bonus for the next season, while other guilds receive bonuses based on their ranking.

The main competitive activity—Dominion—is available in several formats (6×6, 12×12, and cross-server). Formally, you can enter through the built-in group finder, but high-level Dominion usually requires players to organize in advance. Rewards in raid Dominion are distributed through a bidding auction using accumulated PvP resources (Honor/Glory).

There are no formal alliances between guilds with their own separate mechanics; coordination is informal, through shared chats and agreements. The game has a built-in group finder (Ctrl+M), which works well for basic activities. However, players still put groups together manually for current endgame content—through world chat, megaphones, or Discord. The community is mostly Russian-speaking; the endgame player base tends to be in the 30–40+ age range, and many have been playing since the 2009–2010 open beta. Allods has traditionally been strong in its social aspects: for veteran players, it’s the people, not the content, that remain the main reason to return to the game.

The game’s economy is based on a complex multi-tier system. The main currencies are gold (for in-game transactions) and crystals (premium currency, divided into “blue” exchangeable crystals and “purple” premium ones). In addition, dozens of PvE and PvP “currencies” circulate in the game: resources from Astral Islands and compasses are needed to craft gear, while marks earned in battles and Dominion can be exchanged for current combat boosts. The system remains confusing for newcomers because of the large number of different items and specialized exchange rates.

The auction house is the main trading hub within each faction. In theory, free-to-play players can buy premium items with gold through the exchange, but high inflation on free servers means this takes an enormous amount of grinding. A personal Allod with its “Horns of Plenty” remains one of the few sources of passive gold income.

The game was originally developed as a free-to-play title, but monetization has become noticeably more aggressive over time. Runes (13 tiers), which directly increase damage and defense, are a key part of character power. The shop also offers adaptive armor, modules, skill scrolls, and mounts. The developers periodically run promotions and add ways to earn some items through gameplay, but on free servers, the gap in PvP between paying players and newcomers is almost impossible to overcome without spending huge amounts of money or playing for years.

The “Thread of Fate” server and additional servers opened after 2022 operate on a monthly subscription model (about 390 rubles). All combat advantages, including rune equivalents and artifacts, can only be obtained through gameplay. After a large influx of players in 2022, subscription servers became the most populated and popular. The most active part of the community is concentrated here: the subscription removes the problem of “endless spending” and shifts competition toward personal skill and time invested.