Albion Online's September referral pays you nothing until the friend you invited buys at least 30 days of Premium, which is the game's paid membership. The announcement puts that third in its three steps, and excludes Premium bought with the in-game currencies Gold and Silver. One referral unlocks the Steelplate Cougar mount skin.

Albion Online, if you have not played it, is an open-ended fantasy world you play online with other people, and a Season is one of the named stretches of play it runs, each with its own bundles and rewards. Two other September offers lean on Premium as well. The Season 34 bundles are listed at $69.95 and $119.95, with 90 days of it inside both. And the Adventurer's Challenge, the game's own rolling reward event, hands its Weekly and Monthly tiers to people who have it.

What is actually in the Season 34 bundles?

Four things each, and only one of them is cosmetic. Everything quoted in this section comes from the Season 34 bundles announcement, which is a different post from the referral one above.

	Season Bundle	Conqueror's Bundle
Price	$69.95	$119.95
Premium	90 days	90 days
Gold (one of the game's two in-game currencies)	2,000	9,000
Learning Points (an item the game hands out for progress)	1,000	3,500
Vanity	Dragon Hunter Vanity Bundle	Dragon Hunter Vanity Bundle

Vanity, on that last row, is the game's word for appearance items.

The announcement closes its price list with "Prices may vary by platform and region", so both figures are list prices rather than what a given store charges.

It is direct about why 90 days is 90 days: that covers "the full season and both surrounding off-seasons", meaning the gaps either side of a season. It is equally direct about where Premium stops being optional. Premium "is required to take part in the Conqueror's Challenge", which is the season's own run of tasks. A player doing it earns avatar sets, unlocks legacy avatars, which the page describes as avatars from previous seasons, and claims reward chests and what the page calls "valuable Fame buffs". Fame is the game's word for experience points.

There is also an upgrade path. Start on the Season Bundle, move to the Conqueror's Bundle any time before the offer ends, pay the difference.

What does the September referral actually require?

Your friend has to spend money, and the announcement puts that third.

The Steelplate Cougar is a mount skin unlocked by one referral, and the ladder climbs from there. Three friends for a T7 Pile of Tomes worth 100,000 Fame, where T7 and T8 are the game's labels for how good an item is. Five friends for a T8 Pile worth 200,000 Fame. The announcement also lists a T8 Pile worth 200,000 Fame as a bonus for your first-ever referral, and 500 Gold for each friend referred. The referral announcement lists three steps. Step one is sharing the link. Step two is the friend signing up. Step three is the one that decides whether any of it happens: the friend "purchases at least 30 days of Premium status".

Then comes the condition, in the same breath: "Note that this does not apply to Premium purchased with ingame currencies (Gold and Silver)". Silver is the game's other in-game currency.

Where does Premium sit in the Adventurer's Challenge?

Above the daily rewards and below nothing else.

September's Challenge is the Heretic Challenge, and its announcement sets the split out plainly.

Only Premium players unlock the Monthly Rewards: the Heretic Challenge Avatar Ring, and the Heretic Combat Mule. The ring is an avatar border, which is decoration around a player's picture; the page says it unlocks permanently for one character or can be traded to the game's Vanity Merchant. The mule is a mount, and it fires a cannon shot which knocks back and slows targets, with the page warning about its "massive recoil". Only Premium players unlock the Weekly Rewards, which are the Heretic Challenge Chests, meaning reward containers. Anyone can claim the Daily Rewards, which the page says include 10 Learning Points and a Tier 4 Tome of Insight, where Tier 4 is a rung on the game's quality scale.

Then the part that deserves credit. Players without Premium "also make progress on all reward tracks". A player who unlocks Premium later is told their earned rewards will be waiting.

The three offers side by side

The publisher posted these as three separate announcements over two days. Here they are in one place.

Offer	Window given	What it costs	What Premium unlocks in it
Season 34 bundles	to 21 September, 10:00 UTC	$69.95 or $119.95	the Conqueror's Challenge, avatar sets, reward chests, "valuable Fame buffs"
Steelplate Cougar referral	September; no closing day given	a friend's "at least 30 days" of Premium	the whole ladder: the skin, three Tome piles, 500 Gold per friend
Heretic Challenge	September; described as monthly, no closing day given	not stated; points come from open-world activities	Monthly Rewards (Avatar Ring, mount) and Weekly Rewards (Challenge Chests)

Our take

Our reading is that these three announcements are one offer wearing three hats, and the hat is Premium. A bundle that includes it. A referral that requires somebody else to buy it. A monthly event that hands its Monthly and Weekly tiers only to people who have it.

Nothing here is hidden. Every price, condition and reward above is printed on the publisher's own pages in plain English, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. The plain-words explanations are ours: what Gold, Silver, Fame, Vanity, Learning Points, an avatar border and the T tiers are, what a Season and its off-seasons are, and what kind of game this is. So is the subtraction below.

What we would push back on is the referral condition. A referral programme is a friendship being asked to do sales work, and this one only pays out when the friend buys Premium outside the game's own currencies. Gold and Silver are excluded by name. Our reading is that this is a choice about who the programme is for, and our view is that a note tacked onto the end of the steps is the wrong place to qualify the step the whole ladder hangs on.

The Adventurer's Challenge is the one we would defend. The Premium gate on the mount and the ring is the least interesting thing on that page. The line worth noticing is the other one: players without Premium make progress on all reward tracks, and the announcement promises the earned rewards will be waiting for them. Banking somebody's progress while they are not paying is a decision in the player's favour, and it is one sentence long.

We will leave the bundles to your own sums, with one observation ours does support. Both tiers carry the same 90 days of Premium and the same Dragon Hunter Vanity Bundle. So every one of the $50 between them buys Gold and Learning Points and nothing else. Our maths, not the publisher's: the announcement prints the two prices and never subtracts them. What that extra Gold and those extra Learning Points are WORTH to a player, the announcement does not say, and we are not going to fill that in for it.

What's next

The bundles close on 21 September at 10:00 UTC, the only closing time any of the three announcements gives. The challenge is described as monthly and running all month long, with no day named, and the referral says only that it is September's. That 21 September close is now a row on our calendar beside the other September dates we track, each row linked to the publisher's own page.