ALfheim Online (アルヴヘイム・オンライン aruvuheimu onrain) is a Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (VRMMORPG) in the Sword Art Online series released a year after SAO had been beaten. Compatible with all FullDive systems, and allowed transferring player characters from SAO.

The game setting features nine races of fairies that can fly for a limited time and use magic, who must clear the Grand Quest of reaching the floating castle on top of the World Tree. There, the players were supposed to meet Oberon, King of the Fairies, who would turn the race to clear the Grand Quest first into a "true" race of alfs who could fly indefinitely.

After the discovery of a sinister plot of the game owners, ALO was acquired by Ymir and surface flight became unlimited for all races. One of the patches also introduced the SAO Sword Skills with some necessary modifications.

Background

The mother company of SAO, Argus went bankrupt after the SAO incident, and the servers with all data and game rights were acquired by RCT Progress Inc. who spent a year making ALO. The world of ALO combines Celtic legends and Norse mythology, and its Cardinal System keeps drawing in more legends with its quest creation functionality.

System

On first login with the command "Link Start", the gear calibrates, then the game boots up.

ALO got rid of the leveling system and is purely skill based, with everyone's maximum hit points remaining more or less the same and skills powering up through repeated use.

The novel Flight System, first in FullDive games, offers players a natural flight using the fairy wings, and an emulated one-hand controller as a backup way until the time they learn to fly without it.

Virtual Reality Experience

The ALO immersion engine boasts the same level of realism as SAO. Players can experience the world with all five senses to a large extent, the visuals are fluid, the biomes and weather systems are varied and meticulously detailed.

The differences from the real life are mostly the same as in SAO: no pain from attacks due to the default Pain Absorption setting of zero, no blood and gore, which are replaced by bright orange digital effects, players get tired in-game without reference to their real bodies, and in-game food satiates the feeling of virtual hunger. Zero durability is represented by objects dissolving into digital triangles.

*ALO'*s several differences from SAO include the Voluntary Flight mechanic, wherein the players visualize and learn to use the flight muscles they had never had; another is the mechanic of death, by which the dying player bursts into flames and is left there as a Remain Light that still allows the player to observe the developments around it and has a 600-second timeout until magical resurrection or until the player respawns at a respawn point. Furthermore, Moral Code is slightly different and cannot be disabled in ALO.

Environment

Yui mentioned ALO presentation structure is only different from SAO by a remodeling and rebalancing overlay, as well as in that the AIs were modified to become Navigation Pixies.

Global Setting

In ALO, every race lived in their own biome on the continent of ALfheim in the world of mixed Celtic and Norse mythos; it had several small neutral territories, and the central city of Alne, situated by the World Tree base, was also neutral.

After Nobuyuki Sugou's imprisonment and the release of New ALO, a content patch introduced the floating castle Aincrad to ALfheim, which is known as New Aincrad.

Gameplay

After the initial FullDive gear boot-up, the player chooses one of the nine races, each one with its own merits and elemental affinity. The game avatar's cosmetics are created at random unless the player pays an in-game fee, and the gender is the same as in real life. After this, the new player spawns at the race territory's home town. In case of Kirito, he spawned in a forest in the middle of nowhere instead.

Races

|Race [IPA pronunciation] | Description|
|||
|Cait Sìth [kɛt ʃī] | Beast tamers with great eyesight. Have cat ears and tails. (The non-standard pronunciation is traditional in Japanese fantasy settings.)|
|Gnome [noʊm] | Earth element users, the largest of fairies. Styled in brown.|
|Imp [ɪmp] | Night magic users with superior night vision. Styled in purple.|
|Leprechaun [lɛprəkɔn] | Metalsmiths. Steampunk styled.|
|Pooka [pukə] | Masters of magical music that can support, confuse, and even strike.|
|Salamander [sæləmændər] | Firepower-first race wielding fire spells. Styled in red.|
|Spriggan [sprigən] | Illusion is their element, and so is treasure-seeking. Styled in black.|
|Sylph [sɪlf] | Wind magic users, the fastest race. Tend to be styled in green accents.|
|Undine [undīne] | Water magic users and healers. Styled in blue. (The non-standard pronunciation is traditional in Japanese fantasy settings.)|
|Navigation Pixie [pɪksɪ] | Non-playable creatures. Controlled by AI. Available as player helpers for real money or as a raffle prize.|
|Alf [alv] | A race that supposedly could fly without limits, but never actually existed, and only served to further entice the players to reach the unreachable sky castle.|

User Interface

Most of it is the same as in SAO. Only the noteworthy differences will be mentioned.

Head-up Display

Mana points (MP) gauges were added to the HUD.

Menu

Opens with the player's right hand instead of left in SAO, possibly due to the left hand being potentially occupied holding the flight controller.

The experience levels have been replaced with skill mastery.

The marriage system has gone away, although it is retained as a low-level hidden flag for the characters transferred from SAO.

Combat

In the new ALO, the Sword Skills and the Original Sword Skill system added a lot of variety in fights, and the duels had a new option allowing to select the SAO or ALO system for the fight.

With death, the player becomes a Remain Light and receives a stat penalty. With magic like the Sacrifice spell, the player's death itself causes damage, but the penalty is much greater.

Trivia

• ALfheim is a reference to Álfheimr.
• In Calibur SS, New Aincrad is inferred to be the newly-introduced realm of human race, Midgard.

References

• ALfheim Online - Fan Wiki