22cans has released New Beginnings for Masters of Albion, and the first thing existing players need to know is the painful bit: the update requires a completely new save. In the studio’s patch notes, 22cans says version 1.4 saves cannot be loaded in version 2.0 because the update makes “fundamental changes” to the game’s structure and progression. For anyone not ready to abandon an in-progress run, the studio says a public version 1.4 branch will remain available through Steam for one month.
That reset is attached to what 22cans is framing as a much larger rebuild, not a routine patch. In its announcement, the studio calls New Beginnings the game’s “first major update” and says it reworked several underlying systems after player feedback during Early Access. According to 22cans, players had pushed for better performance, more varied nights, deeper progression and more satisfying interaction with the world.
The result, the studio says, is an update that adds performance improvements, a new opening, a redesigned Order System and product creation flow, card-based progression, and reworked nighttime combat. In practical terms, that means New Beginnings is trying to tackle both how Masters of Albion runs and how its day-to-day loop feels.
What changed in New Beginnings
On the performance side, 22cans says it moved the game to “a more efficient & completely different rendering system,” rebuilding or converting every in-game asset in the process. The studio says that work delivered up to double the frame rate in its own tests, while also improving stability and responsiveness. It also says those gains will vary depending on hardware, resolution and graphics settings, which is an important qualifier if you are reading “double the frame rate” and preparing to hold your GPU personally responsible.
PC Gamer’s overview of the update includes comments from Peter Molyneux that describe the jump in more concrete terms. He said the team had hoped to reach 30 frames per second on recommended specs and now sits between 60 and 80 frames on average, though that remains a reported claim tied to the studio’s testing and statements rather than a guarantee for every player.
The game’s opening has changed too. 22cans says the update adds an expanded prologue that begins on the outskirts of Oakridge and reveals more of the Chosen One’s origins before they inherit godlike power. That suggests the studio is not just tuning systems behind the scenes, but also trying to make the introduction less slight and more like an actual beginning instead of a polite shove toward the rest of the game.
Nights, orders and progression got a larger rethink
Some of the biggest design changes seem to be aimed at the parts of the game players were expected to repeat the most. 22cans says it reworked nights around defined objectives and permanent reward cards earned through score, replacing a looser survive-the-night structure with clearer goals and more explicit rewards. Better performance in those battles earns commendations that can be spent immediately on permanent cards, which can unlock buffs, buildings, parts and other upgrades.
That card system feeds into a redesigned Arcadium, which 22cans describes as a more collection- and deck-building-focused progression layer. The studio also says the cards carry good, neutral or evil alignment, affecting both the player’s broader alignment and the look of the God Hand. If New Beginnings works as intended, nights are no longer just the thing you endure to get back to daytime building.
Daytime systems got an overhaul too. In the patch notes, 22cans says it reworked the Order System so jobs now follow each order giver’s story instead of appearing as random requests, while the refreshed design table better shows production costs, potential profit, customer requirements and alignment effects. The studio is clearly trying to make making stuff feel less like admin and more like actual decision-making.
New Beginnings also adds broader world interaction changes, including more reactive environments and more things the God Hand can manipulate, according to 22cans’ announcement. Those details matter because one of the persistent promises of a god game is that your giant invisible hand should feel less like a cursor and more like a presence.
Early Access means the rebuild is not the end of it
New Beginnings is substantial, but 22cans is not presenting it as a finish line. In the same announcement, the studio says Masters of Albion remains in Early Access and will continue receiving updates after this one. It also says more performance work is planned, including another update scheduled for two weeks after New Beginnings and a resubmission for Steam Deck verification.
So the short version is: Masters of Albion just got a major overhaul, but it comes with a hard restart. If you want to see the rebuilt version 2.0 systems, you’ll need a new save. If you want to finish your current run, 22cans says you have about a month on the public 1.4 branch to do it.
For players who bounced off the Early Access launch, that may be a reasonable trade. For players deep into an existing settlement, it is still the kind of note in patch notes that lands like a meteor.
