Albion Online crafting and refining: how it works and how to profit

Refining and crafting: the difference

Refining turns raw resources into materials: logs into planks, ore into bars, hide into leather, fiber into cloth and stone into blocks. Crafting turns those materials into gear, food, potions and other items.

Together they are the base of Albion's economy: almost everything sold on the Market was refined and crafted by players.

An item's path

An item always follows the same path: you gather or buy the raw resource, refine it into the material, and craft the item. An example from the game's data: the Adept's Light Crossbow (tier 4) takes 16 Pine Planks and 8 Steel Bars, and is crafted at the Warrior's Forge.

On the Builds Forge Crafting recipes page you see each item's ingredients, amounts and station, and the cost at Market prices.

Where to craft: the stations

Each station makes one kind of thing:

• Refining: Smelter (bars), Lumbermill (planks), Stonemason (stone blocks), Tanner (leather) and Weaver (cloth).
• Gear: Warrior's Forge, Hunter's Lodge, Mage's Tower and Toolmaker.
• Food and more: Cook, Alchemist's Lab (potions), Butcher, Mill and Saddler (mounts).

Stations exist in the cities and you can have your own on the island. The resource amounts for each are on Island buildings. Note that the game decides each item's station: for example, crossbows are crafted at the Warrior's Forge and not at the Hunter's Lodge.

Cities and refining bonuses

Each royal city gives a refining bonus to one type of resource: Thetford to ore, Fort Sterling to wood, Martlock to hide, Lymhurst to fiber and Bridgewatch to stone. Refining in the right city gives back more materials.

Cities also have crafting bonuses by item type. Crafting in the item's specialty city gives back more ingredients:

The guide Albion Online royal cities and refining bonuses explains this in detail. Always check in the game.

Resource return

Resource return is the percentage of the ingredients you get back when crafting or refining. It is the strongest lever of profit. The approximate values are:

• About 15% in a city without a bonus and without focus.
• About 37% in the city with the right bonus, without focus.
• About 54% in the city with the right bonus while using focus.

These are approximate values and may change with patches. On the Crafting recipes page you can type your own value into the Resource return field and see how profit changes.

For crafting (not refining), the item's specialty city gives about 25% without focus and about 48% with focus. The values by location, without and with focus:

Focus adds a flat percentage to the production bonus, and every day two items get an extra 10% or 20% bonus, which you can see in the game's activities menu.

Focus

Focus is only available with Premium. It is spent when crafting or refining to increase resource return. Each recipe has its own focus cost, which we show as Focus cost, and that cost drops as you specialize.

Since focus is limited and regenerates through the day, it is worth spending it on the recipes where it pays off most.

Crafting specialization

Each crafting and refining line has its own specialization on the Destiny Board. Instead of crafting a bit of everything, pick one or two lines and specialize: you become more efficient and spend less focus.

The guide The Albion Online Destiny Board: how it works and what to invest in explains how fame fills those nodes.

Quality

What you craft can come out in different qualities, from Normal to Masterpiece. Higher qualities give more item power and sell for more. On the Market you can see each quality's price, by city, on every item.

Costs the ingredients don't show

An item's profit is not just the sell price minus the ingredients. Also in the mix:

• The station fee, paid to the station's owner, a cost separate from resource return.
• The sales tax and the order setup fee on the Market, which depend on Premium.
• Transport of the ingredients and the item, and the risk along the way.

So the Builds Forge calculations give an estimate: use them to compare items and check final costs in the game.

How to tell if an item is worth it

1. Open the Crafting recipes and pick the item.
2. Enter your resource return and sales tax.
3. Compare the cost per item with the sell price, in your city and quality.
4. Check the Market for where the ingredients are cheapest.
5. If you craft a lot, consider having your own stations on the island, which have no taxes.

Common mistakes

• Refining in the wrong city and losing the bonus.
• Forgetting the station fee and the sales tax in your math.
• Buying ingredients at the first price you see, without comparing cities.
• Crafting without specialization and spending too much focus.
• Not counting transport and the risk of taking the item to the city where it sells best.

What to check in the game

Values change with patches, so check:

• Each city's resource return, with and without focus.
• Each station's fee.
• Each city's refining bonuses.
• Each recipe's focus cost.