I. Basic Knowledge of Islands#
1. Types of Islands#
Islands are divided into two types: personal islands and worker islands.
Personal islands can be unlocked for purchase by buying a membership for at least 7 days, while worker islands are purchased using alternate accounts to create guilds.
The guild creation fee has been adjusted to 1 million.
The construction cost of guild islands has been adjusted from 11,500 to 5 million.
Below is the chart for island upgrades.
(12 building plots actually consist of 11 building plots + 2 small building plots)
Next, let's talk about houses.
Houses are divided into two types: regular houses are built on medium building plots, while guild halls are built on large building plots (T1 guild islands come with one).
The unit cost of regular houses is lower than that of guild islands.
(However, the total cost of both is the same, 5 houses = one guild hall), and they can only accommodate 3 workers and 14 furniture spaces.
Although the cost of guild islands is 5 times higher, they can accommodate 15 workers and 75 furniture spaces.
Furniture and loot that increase worker happiness will occupy corresponding levels of furniture space, which is the "cap" mentioned earlier.
This is especially evident when your playstyle is material processing.
2. Workers#
Workers are the main output of the island, aside from agricultural and livestock products.
They will return corresponding rewards and an empty log 22 hours after the player provides logs.
Workers are mainly divided into two categories:
Gathering Workers (Farmers, Hunters, Stone Workers, Miners, Lumberjacks, Mercenaries, Fishermen)
Manufacturing Workers (Blacksmiths, Fletchers, Enchanters, Carpenters)
3. Worker Happiness#
Happiness affects the quantity of output from workers, with a maximum capacity of 150%.
The way to provide happiness is to increase specific furniture.
Each type of furniture is effective for up to 3 workers (tables for 6), and the effects cannot stack on the same worker.
For example: T2 general loot can give 3 workers +5 happiness each, but when you place the second T2 general loot, it will have no effect unless there are more than 3 workers in the room.
The types of furniture include:
Beds (Furniture type, happiness majorly can be self-manufactured)
Tables (Furniture type, happiness majorly can be self-manufactured)
General Loot (Loot type, very cheap and abundant)
Special Loot (Loot type, corresponding gathering worker's loot logs will appear)
Luxury Loot (Only two types, not much added, but can unlock T8 industry chain, worth over 10 million, a symbol of wealth, sharks can be obtained through fishing, commonly known as the fierce beast of the sea)
This is the current known quantity provided by all furniture.
Each worker class has a happiness cap, and providing happiness beyond this cap will not add to the output capacity.
The basic happiness in the chart represents the happiness required for the logs of that level (100% output capacity).
The value exceeding the basic happiness will increase the output capacity by 0.5% per point.
For example:
A T6 carpenter using T5 logs, if your house has T6 beds + tables, then your worker happiness is 600.
At this point, your T5 log's output capacity will be 150%.
Having read this, you should now have a basic understanding of Albion workers and gradually glimpse a part of the economic chain.
Here is the necessary table mentioned in the text.
3/4 Added: Island Cost Calculator (with necessary tables)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRG1ZDZRwFUD7GZPMxUK2n2oi1IxriXknzfD4am1z0CQFl9miFgVRSNFDay3deuJR41kdyYnAPgnjAm/pub?output=ods
4. Suggestions for Buying Islands#
Before buying an island, you must learn about the "global discount," which is present on all NPCs in Albion.
Formula: (1 - Gold Price / 5000) * 100%
This chart also applies to global discounts.
Example: Current gold price is 2900.
Creation fee = 1 million - 1 million * (1 - 2900 / 5000)
= 1 million - 420,000 = 580,000
Guild island = 5 million - 5 million * (1 - 2900 / 5000)
= 2.9 million
Therefore, the drop in gold price is a good time for you to buy islands; of course, the current gold price is about 5800+.
4-1. Is Worker Island Really Cheaper and More Useful than Personal Island?#
The reason worker islands have always been cheaper than personal islands is that "no membership is required."
This means that without spending money, you save at least 10 million silver coins.
Thus, worker islands are a great value.
On paper, this is true, but in reality, it depends on the economic maturity of the server.
In a non-paying situation, worker islands can be directly used by players.
Because the market in the West server is relatively stable compared to the Asia server, the return on investment is fast.
However, in the Asia server, the cost of worker islands is equivalent to throwing money away unless you have more than two accounts for forging or use wholesale methods after going through a painful period.
The so-called painful period is "raising workers," as the market in the Asia server has very few workers, so it takes about a week to raise them.
4-2. If Paying, Which Should You Choose: Worker Island or Personal Island?#
In a paying situation, personal islands are a great value.
This table has appeared several times, showing that the corresponding guild island with 15 building plots is a T3 personal island.
The consumption of the island is only 260,000, and globally it is only half, plus there are 2 plots that can generate revenue, making it far superior to guild islands in terms of consumption and revenue.
4-3. Maximizing the Benefits of Paying for Islands#
When paying, we will see memberships and gold.
(You didn't expect a free guide to tell you to pay for SBI, right?)
Generally, micro-payers will choose to buy a 30-day membership (about 448 yuan), while those with more money will open 3 accounts, which is 1200 yuan.
Heavy payers will directly choose to pay 3000 yuan for 19,000 gold to exchange for 50 million silver coins.
Let's not worry about heavy payers; we will focus on micro-payers. The efficiency of common micro-payer methods is quite low.
The reason is that SBI has released a new money-making value membership - the 7-day membership.
Similarly, SBI's membership, like Albion, is not as simple as it seems.
At first glance, 3 seven-day memberships only total 21 days, and the money spent is equivalent to one 30-day membership, which seems like a loss.
However, if you spread it across different characters, you make a profit.
For the same 448, you can get three personal islands and 90,000 focus points. Although it is only for 7 days,
with the same amount of money, others only have one island with 10,000 points per day, while you have three times that.
And with a budget of 1000, after using 3 characters, you can still have 10 million silver coins as startup capital (this situation is right after the server opens, and it will vary with gold price fluctuations).
7 days is enough for your main account to open a 30-day membership.
Finally, SBI's payments, except for STEAM, have a hidden automatic subscription feature, which deducts money automatically when the time comes. Next, I will teach you how to cancel it.
On the official website, after clicking on your account, there is a "Subscription" option where you can see this screen.
For those who have bought gold, there will be an option to cancel the subscription here.
II. Basic Knowledge of Worker Islands#
1. Introduction#
I believe that whether you are a new player or an old player, you are definitely attracted by Albion's stable economic model.
After some time of understanding, you will find that this is an economy driven by the black market, which purchases equipment at high prices.
However, after a certain period of accumulation, the population of players with efficient gathering and manufacturing capabilities increases, gradually forming another small subsidiary cycle system based on these two types of players, which is the "worker island" system.
Logs, as a byproduct of life players, are mostly sold directly to the market as additional income.
But they are actually resources compressed under weight, allowing players to transport large quantities of goods with very light weight, especially gathering logs.
This can increase the cyclicality of resources in the main city and delay consumption, allowing resources imported from black zones to be timely replenished.
The two types of worker islands, gathering and manufacturing, act as decompressors for logs.
Worker island players earn profits or forge materials released from logs, but living content is not as straightforward as grinding dungeons or robbing, so in the following chapters, I will introduce how to use the two types of worker islands and some concepts.
2. Myths about Worker Islands#
Basically, many videos online, whether on YouTube or Bilibili, have a common myth about worker islands, which is "you must fill them with loot." This statement is actually incorrect except for cases involving T8 logs.
Let's return to the image from the first chapter:
I believe some forum members have already noticed that "when the level of the bed and table you use is higher than the logs, and you use logs of lower levels than them, the happiness is just the sum of the beds and tables."
For example: (Example from the first chapter)
A T6 carpenter using T5 logs, if your house has T6 beds + tables, then your worker happiness is 600.
The basic happiness required for T5 logs is 500 (100% happiness).
600 - 500 = 100
100 * 0.5% = 50%
Thus, the output capacity of T5 logs is 150%.
So we can see that loot is not necessary.
Another myth is "the higher the worker island, the more you earn." This is also incorrect; when using worker islands, you will find that they actually exchange quantity for unit time output. The more islands you have, the faster the speed.
So correctly speaking, "the better the circulation of the worker island, the more you earn."
Otherwise, you will encounter the phenomenon shown in the image below: you built 5 islands to gather T8 carpenter logs, but only 2 logs are sold per day, resulting in your islands becoming large garbage.
3. Basic Knowledge of Logs#
First, all logs can only be fed to workers of the corresponding level or higher, not lower.
Due to the current version, the ability to forge manufacturing logs has been severely weakened, and it is no longer possible to fill logs without cost to supply islands as it was a year ago.
So aside from a few wholesale logs, you basically need to purchase logs to maintain output.
The decisive factors affecting log prices are the following four:
- Equipment prices
- Popularity
- Composition of log returns
- Trading volume of empty logs
Equipment prices depend on the black market and players. When the speed of the black market's system for purchasing equipment is slower than the output of equipment and the gap is too large, or when a certain type of equipment is not popular among players, the equipment will depreciate, and logs, as a means for manufacturing players to recoup costs, will flood the market, causing logs to also depreciate.
Popularity refers to "whether a large number of players are doing it." Most manufacturing logs do not have this issue, except for typical cases like carpentry.
Carpentry mainly produces wholesale types and is concentrated in T4~T6, leading to a phenomenon where there are hardly any logs traded in the market starting from T7, and this phenomenon can also easily occur with gathering logs.
The composition of returns refers to the proportion of materials returned by each type of log, usually applied to manufacturing logs.
The material proportion of logs will affect the price of that log.
For example:
Many newcomers or players preparing to engage in manufacturing have watched videos about rain boots, where it was mentioned that hunting tool workers are the most profitable. Although this is not an absolute answer, it appears to be true on the surface because the returns from hunting tool workers consist of 46.66% leather.
Finally, the trading volume of empty logs indicates the potential number of players engaged in the corresponding log-related manufacturing and gathering in that city. High sales volume is beneficial for players with small islands buying full logs because there are constantly people buying empty logs to fill books, so the price of empty logs will remain stable, benefiting small island players who earn continuously.
However, there are also individual cases of player monopolies.
A typical case is when the price difference between empty logs and full logs is pulled very low, indicating that a big player is either buying full logs at a low price or selling empty logs at a high price. (Congratulations, you have learned about short selling in the stock market through Albion.)
Finally, I remind players preparing to play worker islands to act within their means and not to go bankrupt, focusing on what they can afford.
III. Gathering Worker Islands#
I wonder if you have ever experienced that the cheapest refining shop is always crowded with players, even when the tax is an unbelievable 3000, yet those shops are still packed?
Isn't it confusing? Why do they keep coming back even if they lose?
Of course, it's not because they are foolish; it's because they are using cheap materials produced by gathering worker islands.
How cheap?
Take a look at the image below (the top shows worker island output, and the bottom shows market refined goods).
How cheap?
Have you seen T4 cotton for 9.5 coins each? OWO
This is not an illusion; this is the result of pulling T4 logs from the purple city and bringing back the empty logs.
From the above table, I can see that my cotton cost is only 68,850, and one T4 log can produce 72 T4 cotton. After rounding up some market cotton, it becomes 9.5 coins (pure logs yield 6.4 coins).
I used these cotton to make 48,000 batches of T4 cloth and sold them in the red city for 201 each,
which means I made a net profit of 5 million, and this is just from 2 T5 worker islands.
So how did it achieve this? How does it work?
Please see the following chapters. OWO
1. Gathering Workers#
Gathering workers are divided into two categories: mercenaries and general gathering workers.
The characteristic of logs is that you must gather materials that are equal to or higher than the log level to fill experience into the log.
This is also why it was mentioned earlier that gathering logs have a phenomenon similar to carpentry logs,
because most of the resources in black zones are mainly T5~T6, unless you have T7 or higher maps for gathering.
Moreover, compared to the first two, the latter two will fill logs more slowly, and the price of empty logs is also higher,
resulting in a situation where T5 and T6 are more prevalent in the market.
So why distinguish between mercenaries and general workers?
This is because of the uniqueness of mercenaries.
Mercenaries are the most unique among all gathering workers; as long as you kill monsters, they will fill logs. How fast?
You can fill 30 T5 mercenary logs in half an hour with T5 mist.
But don't think you can earn a lot; the simpler the item, the lower the profit.
The characteristic of mercenaries is that logs directly return silver coins, and the amount of silver coins returned is based on the following table
(there may be some discrepancies because the official has adjusted the return amount to 86.94% of the original to prevent players from becoming too comfortable).
The happiness bonus for workers does not turn into 150% output for mercenaries but rather "critical hit rate."
When a mercenary triggers a critical hit, the returned silver coins will double.
Workers with 150% output have a 50% chance of triggering a critical hit. Fortunately, the official has set a safety net for non-lucky players; after testing, it is about "the median number of people in the house - 1."
For example: If there are 3 people in a regular house, at least one can trigger a critical hit.
If it is a worker island, then at least 6 can yield double silver coins.
However, so far, I have only triggered a maximum of 8 with double returns, which may be a limit set by the official to accommodate non-lucky players. OWQ
Aside from mercenaries and fishing workers, the remaining gathering workers follow a gathering return chart (I later tested more fishing logs and found that this chart cannot explain them, sorry OWQ).
So what does this chart mean?
The numbers above indicate the number of materials each gathering worker brings back (at 100% output capacity).
So if you meet the 150% condition, remember to multiply by 1.5.
The x.0 numbers indicate the proportion of enchanting materials in the single return quantity.
For example:
The return quantity for T5 leather is 32 pieces, of which general leather accounts for 30.2 pieces, and enchanting 1 accounts for 1.6 pieces.
Do not underestimate the numbers above; 32 pieces of T6 leather are very few for a T8 gatherer,
but if you consider this is for one log, then for 30 logs, that is 1440 pieces of T6 leather.
With 60 workers, your daily output is 2880 pieces, surpassing T8 gatherers,
and after calculations, the cheap logs you purchased will yield materials cheaper than market prices.
2. Log Purchasing Guide#
Rewinding to a year ago, after the release of the most viewed gathering island teaching video about rain boots, the price of hunting tool logs in the red city reached the highest price since the economy stabilized. Many newcomers directly lost their investments, especially players from Bilibili who watched her teaching and criticized her harshly.
This is the most realistic aspect of the Albion market; when you lack sufficient information, it is extremely easy to fail because the market composition of a product is multifaceted.
So in the next section, I will try to write down everything I know in this article.
From the second chapter, we learned about the four factors affecting log prices:
- Equipment prices
- Popularity
- Composition of log returns
- Trading volume of empty logs
Among these, points 3 and 4 are the main conditions for market trading logs.
This is the composition of a log:
Logs traded in the market are generally priced based on the premise that the seller (manufacturing player) has an island with 120% happiness.
(That is to say, the selling price in the market is yellow)
So for sellers, under the premise of good trading volume, the lower the empty logs, the better, as this will increase their profits.
Subtracting the profits from empty logs means that materials must be sold at prices above the market price.
Conversely, islands with 150% happiness can extract more resources and then sell back empty logs.
This is the buying and selling cycle of logs.
The price of an empty log is actually a variable that is easy to grasp; although it has a bottom price when the server first opens, as player transactions occur, this value becomes:
"The average price of logs multiplied by 1.25 is the price sold by worker NPCs."
Conversely, if NPC sells logs at 20% off, it is the market average price.
Based on this, using the table provided earlier, we can create a log calculator.
We will take T5 and T6 cotton logs as examples (prices from March 17 at 10:00 AM):
We can see in the upper right corner the "multiplier," which indicates whether the current market price of empty logs is higher than the market price.
For T5, we see it written as 1.14, indicating that the current purchase price of T5 cotton empty logs is 114% of the NPC price.
So currently, empty logs are profitable, belonging to the "profit zone."
The T6 log at 0.81 indicates 81%, or 8.1 discount, meaning it is in the "reasonable zone."
When the price is at 60% of the NPC price, it is in the "extreme zone," which is on the edge of potential loss.
So how do we calculate the reasonable price of full logs?
This requires using the gathering table from section 1, which states that T5 and T6 logs return 32 cotton each, and at 150% capacity, it is 48.
Using the market price of cotton in the purple city (without enchantments) T5 = 202 T6 = 611, we can calculate:
202 * 48 = 9696
611 * 48 = 29328
Have you noticed that the prices are very close to the log market price?
At this point, subtracting the log price from the empty log price gives you the price of the returned products.
From the chart below, we can see that for T5 cotton, we effectively purchased it at 66% of the market price (after tax), while T6 is at 95%.
Thus, we can derive three formulas:
Material Market Price = Lowest Material Price in the Continent (without enchantments) * Number of Materials Returned by Logs
Log Material Price = (Log Market Price - Empty Log Purchase Price)
Reasonable Price = Log Material Price / Material Market Price
The green city prices for T5 and T6 cloth are 540 and 2036, respectively.
After importing into the refining calculator, we get:
We can see that the products made from logs are competitive at normal tax rates.
The T6 logs also have a good price at 95% of the market price, which is decent in general,
but during heavy tax periods, 95% is very fragile.
Based on my experience, I created this chart
(The premise here is that only one order is placed without changing the price; if the price is changed, the above profit is halved each time).
In cases below 70%, under normal tax conditions, the profit is over 25%.
So now do you understand the charm of gathering islands? OWO
3. Choosing a Location for Worker Islands#
Finally, let's talk about location; gathering islands are quite location-dependent.
If you don't want to spend too much effort or don't have a high-load mount, just choose a processing city related to the gathering materials.
Of course, if you want to play a mixed style or engage in trading (sharks please OWO), you can choose an industrial chain like the one in the image below:
For example, place a gathering island in the yellow city to collect stone logs + leather logs + cotton and then transport the materials for manufacturing.
4. Summary#
So let's summarize the pros and cons of gathering islands.
Threshold:
A worker island costs about 6.5 million (including furniture and worker guild creation fees); if you can craft bricks yourself, you can save about 500,000.
Requires refining skills.
Advantages:
- One of the few projects with certain profits in safe zones (transporting to the red city can double profits).
- Can purchase enchanting materials at prices below 30% of market prices.
Disadvantages:
- At least 60 workers (4 worker islands) are needed to reach a more efficient operational state.
- Requires large-scale manufacturing each time, which also means slow capital recovery.
(This game's output bonus is based on the quantity produced; the larger the quantity, the closer it gets to the main city's bonus). - Prone to heavy taxes of 2000.
IV. Forging Worker Islands#
When you search for Albion islands on YT or Bilibili, you will see a lot of videos.
When you are a beginner, they may be useful, but once you start, you will find that these videos lack some basic information, making them hard to understand.
This is what is known as "hearing one person's words is better than hearing another's."
Some things, if you look closely, you will find that they themselves do not know what they are talking about, and some even hide information that you cannot discover.
So in this small chapter, I will clarify the necessary data you must know, explain the characteristics of each type of log, and teach you how to avoid pitfalls and buy logs.
1. Basic Knowledge#
The characteristic of forging workers is that by providing them with corresponding logs, they will return materials.
The composition of materials will vary in proportion depending on the type, but the quantity is fixed.
Below are the return quantities of logs at two different conditions; it is important to note that forging workers cannot stack happiness like gathering workers can with T8 logs.
2. Forging Workers#
Forging workers are divided into four categories:
Characteristics:
Logs can produce anything, and the material proportions are:
(From left to right: Cloth, Leather, Iron, Wood)
The wholesale kings of T4~T6; a year ago, when forging logs were not weakened, a player with 10 T6 worker islands could produce nearly 10,000 materials (including 200 enchanting materials) in 5 days using their daily logs, making them the only manufacturing workers not reliant on the main city.
However, due to the lack of bunkers and worker island production, the early losses do not apply to carpentry.
This is because the main products of carpentry in the black market, backpacks and capes, have transaction volumes exceeding those of other equipment by over ten times.
Aside from backpacks, which are low-margin but high-volume, there are also capes that have 11 types, making them very profitable and resistant to price drops.
In the market, there is also strong liquidity (because log materials are diverse, some manufacturing players prefer to use them).
However, the disadvantages are also apparent; due to this special composition, there are hardly any orders for T7 and above, and the value of enchanting materials will be amplified starting from T7, making it impossible to become rich like the other three types of forging workers in T8.
Blacksmiths (Weapons):
Characteristics:
Logs focus on producing iron with a small amount of wood and cloth, no leather.
Weapon logs are the most numerous among all manufacturing branches in the game, so transaction volumes are very stable.
However, due to the material proportions of weapon logs, their internal circulation ability is very poor,
as most popular weapon-type equipment (axes, crossbows, fist swords), especially two-handed types, require a lot of wood and even leather.
This leads some weapon manufacturing players in the red city to buy hunting or carpentry logs to use on their islands.
However, this does not mean they are useless; weapon logs have the highest proportion of single materials among all logs, with 68% iron, meaning
that after establishing a large number of worker islands, their special material enchanting quantity is unmatched by other forging logs.
In the black market, weapon logs have the second highest quantity after carpentry.
Enchanters:
Characteristics:
Logs focus on producing cloth with nearly equal amounts of wood and a small amount of iron, no leather.
Enchanters have the second highest internal circulation ability, and the ratio of iron and wood is suitable for crafting staves,
while also having strong cross-domain capabilities, especially with bows and arrows in hunting tools, as well as torches.
The only downside is that the armor part is tied to specific items, and the skills of shoes lean towards teamwork,
but lack mobility, making them relatively niche.
Hunting Tools:
Characteristics:
Logs focus on producing leather with equal amounts of wood and iron, no cloth.
Logs made by SBI.
Almost without disadvantages, the first in internal circulation, strong in cross-domain, products are popular and versatile from head to toe.
Basically, popular equipment combinations are inseparable from the fletcher.
Even T8 is not overly competitive.
If I had to point out a disadvantage, it would be that logs are easily speculated, and related equipment is almost always nerfed. OWO
I believe that after reading this introduction, you should have some understanding of each type of worker, right?
Those with keen eyes may have noticed that some logs actually appear to be profitable upon purchase;
this situation easily occurs with any T4 logs, as T4 materials have the highest return quantities.
Moreover, they are the easiest to manipulate.
In T8, aside from hunting tools, all will be in this competitive state due to the comprehensive results of logs and materials themselves and the game mechanics.
From the above, we can see that the material ratios of each log indicate that leather output channels
only come from fletchers and carpenters.
All four types of logs will definitely produce iron and wood.
Additionally, the most common drops in the wild are capes and backpacks, while the most expensive main weapons rarely break.
Most main weapons will require iron and wood, and since iron is not a popular type for armor,
this leads to a lack of destruction methods.
A lack of destruction methods for equipment will cause related materials to depreciate, which is also why the enchanting workers, primarily producing cloth, still face competition in T8.
3. Log Purchasing Guide#
Similar to gathering worker islands, but the calculations are more complex.
Material Market Price =
((Lowest Material Price without Enchantments * Material Proportion in Logs) summed up) * Number of Materials Returned by Logs
Example:
The proportions for hunting tools are
The market prices for T5 leather, iron, and wood are: 915, 532, 538.
Market price = (46.66% * 915 + 532 * 26.6% + 538 * 26.6%) * 12 = 8532.
Log Material Price = (Log Market Price - Empty Log Purchase Price)
Reasonable Price = Log Material Price / Material Market Price
The reasonable price multiplier corresponds to the profit range, which is roughly shown in the image below; this only calculates equipment
and does not include the profits from filling logs:
4. Summary#
So let's summarize the pros and cons of forging islands.
Threshold:
A worker island costs about 6.5 million (including furniture and worker guild creation fees); if you can craft bricks yourself, you can save about 500,000.
Requires refining skills.
Advantages:
- One of the few projects with certain profits in safe zones (transporting to the red city can double profits).
- Can purchase enchanting materials at prices below 30% of market prices.
- Low-tier logs can be purchased at 60% lower than market prices for regular materials.
- T8 logs can directly yield 8.3 materials for free, and the speed will be faster than islands of the same scale.
- Can operate with a single island or dozens of islands; combining single and double islands with focus points will yield good results.
Disadvantages:
- Some logs are easily speculated.
- If you are a single or double island player, the output of enchanting materials is relatively low.
- If you encounter a random bonus that happens to belong to you the day before finishing logs, you will be overwhelmed by a large number of cheap equipment.
转载：
https://forum.gamer.com.tw/Co.php?bsn=27044&sn=11785&author=mrddggggbb