Albion Online mounts: speed, capacity and which one to pick

What a mount is for

A mount does three things: it makes you faster, lets you carry more weight and helps you escape danger. Almost every player uses one for nearly everything they do outside the cities.

Speed has two levels. There is the normal mounted speed and the gallop, which is faster and which you get after a few moments moving without taking damage. A hit interrupts the gallop and, if you take enough damage, you can be knocked off. That is why gallop is great for travel and less so for fighting.

The mount families

Mounts split by role:

• Riding Horse: the general mount. It is cheap, common and useful for almost anything, including ZvZ.
• Transport Ox: for hauling. It is slower but carries much more weight, so it is the choice of gatherers.
• Transport Mammoth: the biggest carrying capacity, but very expensive and slow.
• Armored Horse: as fast as the normal horse of the same tier, but with more health.
• Swiftclaw and Direwolf: fast, for escaping and for hunting players.
• Saddled Direboar and Saddled Direbear: a middle ground between speed and capacity.
• Giant Stag: a lower-tier option, fast and with reasonable capacity.

The numbers for each mount

These values come from the game's files and match the official wiki. Speed and gallop are speed bonuses; load is what the mount adds to your weight limit; for mounts with several tiers, the table shows lowest to highest.

The Transport Mammoth has no gallop. Values change with patches, so when in doubt, go with what the game shows on the mount.

What the numbers say

• The Direwolf is the fastest mount at walking pace (85%), and the tier 8 Riding Horse has the best gallop (135%).
• The Swiftclaw is fast (75%/120%) but has little health (797): it escapes well and takes little punishment.
• The tier 8 Transport Ox (60%/110%) is on par with a tier 4 horse. A low-tier ox is much slower.
• The Armored Horse moves like the normal horse but with more health (+80 at tier 5, +95 at tier 8).
• The Direbear and the Mammoth have more than double a horse's health, but they are slow.

The difference in load is huge: a tier 8 Horse adds 247 kg, a tier 8 Ox adds 3,200 kg and the Mammoth 22,521 kg.

Weight and load

Every player has a weight limit they can carry without slowing down. If you go over, you move slower, and that hurts a lot on gathering trips. The mount raises that limit (see the table above), which is why gatherers use an ox.

A riding horse adds little weight: if you go gathering, you'll fill your inventory quickly. There is also a difference: the load of the horse, stag and boar stays even when you are dismounted next to the mount, while the ox, bear and mammoth only count while you are mounted.

Mounting and dismounting

Mounting takes about 3 seconds on every mount and is a channel that a hit interrupts. If you dismount and stay near the mount, you remount in about 0.5 seconds, but if you walk out of the circle around it, it despawns. If the mount runs out of health it also despawns, and you wait up to 30 seconds to use it again (the wait is proportional to the health it lost).

While mounted, you cannot attack, use skills or consumables, you get no heals from other players and you lose speed bonuses; only normal regeneration works. The mount is for escaping and travelling, not for fighting.

Dismounting has a cost too: with enemy players nearby, your abilities go on a 5-second cooldown (15 seconds with a chest nearby). And if you dismount and take or deal damage to another player, the mount despawns.

In practice, mount early when you see danger: besides the 3 seconds to mount, the gallop only starts after a few seconds of movement (the table shows how many for each mount). If you wait until the last second, you may not make it out.

Which mount to buy

• Starting out and traveling: a Riding Horse. It is cheap and its gallop is only beaten by the higher tiers.
• Gathering and trading: a Transport Ox, of the highest tier you can afford: a tier 3 ox moves at 35% and a tier 8 one at 60%. For the Outlands, tier 6 or higher, and with an escape plan.
• Escaping or hunting: a Swiftclaw first (75% and 120%); move to a Direwolf (85% and 132%) when you can afford it.
• All-round: a Saddled Direboar, with good speed and more health than a horse.
• Large-scale hauling: a Transport Mammoth, but only with an escort: it is slow (30%) and expensive.

Compare the prices of each on the Market, by tier and by city.

Risks

The mount you carry equipped is one more piece of gear. In full-loss zones, gear can be lost on death, so treat an expensive mount the way you would treat an expensive weapon. Mammoths are the most targeted, because they carry a lot of value.

In risky zones, consider bringing a cheap mount instead of the best one you have.

Common mistakes

• Buying a fast mount to gather and running out of capacity.
• Buying a mammoth without an escort.
• Waiting too long to mount when there is danger.
• Forgetting that gallop is lost when you take damage.
• Spending all your silver on the mount and having no reserve for gear.

What to check in the game

The numbers change with patches, so check:

• Each mount's speed, gallop, health and capacity (the description shows them).
• The mounting time and the wait after being knocked off.
• The current price of each tier on the Market.