Dark times are rapidly approaching for Albion Online players. Starting on November 28, 2022, premium subscription prices in Albion Online are increasing 25 percent, whether you pay for the subscription with real money or the in-game premium gold currency. This should also cause silver (common in-game currency) prices to drastically inflate as well because silver is converted to gold through the marketplace and then used to pay for premium time. However, don’t fear because I’ve got a handful of tips to fill your pockets in Albion Online and pay for that subscription with in-game silver.
Although Albion Online is a free-to-play MMORPG that does not have many true paywalls, not having premium status is a huge setback for anyone who isn’t casual. There is a 50 percent buff to Fame (experience), gathering and drops from mobs, 100 percent rate to animal growth and crop yield, 50 percent reduced market tax, 30 learning points per day, 10,000 focus per day, and the ability to purchase an island.
In Albion Online, time is money, so getting more Fame or gathering materials for the time you spend is a huge advantage. Additionally, having an island can be a great way to make money. Having at least 7 days of subscription time is required to initially purchase an island, but you can keep it even if premium lapses.
With the upcoming increase in Albion Online premium costs, many players are concerned about not being able to afford the subscription. However, I’ve put together this guide to help players pay for premium rights and hopefully stash away some extra silver for the upcoming price hikes.
Blue/Yellow Zone Gathering
New Albion Online players always start off in the blue and yellow zones. These areas are safe from any real consequences. Dying only results in getting knocked down and having a small repair cost. Most activities are incredibly low risk and low reward.
This is a perfect spot for getting used to the game mechanics, but generally there isn’t a lot of money to be made. One thing that is often overlooked in blue and yellow zones, however, is high-end gathering. Many players will use these zones to level tier 2 to 5 gathering and then move on to the more profitable red and black zones where the tier 6 to 8 nodes spawn.
While it’s true that tier 6 to 8.3 gathering nodes can be incredibly profitable, they’re also more contested and the best nodes are sometimes camped by entire guilds. This usually leads to depleted nodes, running into gankers, and often dying. Any wasted time and lost equipment needs to be calculated into your profit per hour.
This leads us back to the blue and yellow zones where gathering nodes are typically uncontested and other players are rarely going to fight you. This makes gathering safe and efficient because there will almost never be a reason to stop until you’re full.
The best setup for Blue/Yellow zone gathering includes: Tier 5 of the relevant equipment for the biome you’ll be gathering in (Miner gear for ore, Harvesting for cotton, etc.) including a backpack and high-tier bag, Pork Pie consumables, Tier 8 tools (or the highest you can currently equip), and a high-tier mount with a lot of weight capacity (Ox, Bear, Boar, Ram, etc). Additionally, make sure to have a sufficient amount of T5 gathering journals, which add about 10k profit for each one filled. You’ll also want a decent combat weapon for killing mobs that can be harvested for resources. Once you’re set up, get out there and gather everything you see.
Although this seems incredibly basic, with the right setup it can be quite profitable, especially for newer players. Using the bare minimum, Tier 5 equipment can net around 300k silver per hour while using Tier 8 can bring in closer to 1 million silver per hour. Additionally, gathering will occasionally drop tomes based on the node harvested, which can sell for up to 200k silver at T5. At the going rate, this should cover a month of premium in about 12 hours at max efficiency.
Island Activities
Managing your island is one of the best ways to passively make money in Albion Online. The caveat is that you need to have purchased at least 7 days of premium to buy an island, and building/upgrading your island does require an initial investment. The Tier 6 island will cost 6,450,000 silver to upgrade and the buildings themselves will vary based on your activity. Additionally, you want to use focus when crafting or raising animals, which requires premium to accumulate.
One things players should avoid is constructing any crafting buildings, with the exception of the Toolmaker and/or Saddler. Almost every other crafting building is a complete trap that will not benefit you at any stage of the game. This is because cities provide a bonus to crafting that you do not get on your island. Typically, the fee you pay the building owner in a city is much less than the materials you receive back due to the bonus.
Buildings in cities provide a flat bonus to all crafting and specific cities provide higher bonuses for specific materials. For example, Fort Sterling provides a refining bonus for wood and a crafting bonus for Spears. The downside is that materials in those cities might be more expensive, so hauling goods from another city where they’re cheap can enhance your profit.
So what should you make on your island? The most basic, but also most expensive, thing to build is houses equivalent to the highest tier that you can craft. If you craft Tier 6 plate armor then build Tier 6 houses. Then fill them with laborers relevant to what you craft, which would be blacksmiths in the case of plate armor. Fill the house with furniture and trophies to increase laborer happiness, purchase empty journals from them, and fill those journals while crafting. Once full, laborers will turn journals into additional resources or they can be sold on the market.
The other main profitable venture on an island in Albion Online is raising animals. There are two main types of animals: Farm Animals and Wild Animals. Most farm animals are raised on pastures and fed vegetables to be butchered or turned into mounts. Whereas most wild animals are raised in a kennel, eat meat, and are crafted into mounts.
One of the main exceptions also happens to be very profitable with little effort. The Adept’s Fawn is a Wild Animal that can be purchased for around 55k silver, is raised on a pasture, and eats vegetables. It costs around 9k silver to fully grow a fawn. A full-grown Adept’s Giant Stag takes less than 2 days to raise and sells for around 65k silver.
In order to craft the Giant Stag at the Saddler, it requires 20 Tier 4 leather, which costs about 4k silver. A neat trick to saving money is to tear down the Saddler when it runs out of food and rebuilding another because it will always spawn with 7% maximum food. It’s cheaper to build a new one than to keep it supplied with food.
Initially, this seems like a loss, but when using focus to nurture the fawn, it has a 35% chance to have an offspring. That’s about 25k profit per stag every two days, and each T6 island can hold 45 fawns. That’s nearly 900k profit every 2 days or 13 million profit every month. That’s currently enough profit to pay for premium on its own, and raising stags only requires about 5 minutes of work per day, which makes it great passive income.
Corrupted Dungeons
Many Albion Online players think Corrupted Dungeons are only for hardcore PvPers, but that’s not entirely the case. There are 3 tiers of corrupted dungeons: Hunter, Stalker, and Slayer. Hunter corrupted dungeons are only found in blue and yellow zones and are not hardcore. These are great to practice in because there’s no risk, but the money isn’t great. It should also be noted that each dungeon has a soft IP cap of 900, 1000, and 1300, respectively. You don’t need to go in your best gear, and many Stalker builds cost less than 100k silver.
Regardless of your feelings on PvP, Stalker and Slayer corrupted dungeons are where you should go to make money. While in a corrupted dungeon, killing enemy minions and bosses will increase your infamy, and the higher your infamy the better loot you’ll get in the dungeon. Additionally, 100k infamy is required to enter Slayer dungeons.
While in a corrupted dungeon, you can choose to invade other players by accepting the contract at the demonic shrine near the entrance or you can wait for someone to invade you. Sometimes you’ll clean an entire dungeon without invading or being invaded. If an invasion does happen, 5 crystals spawn through the dungeon and breaking 3 of them will send the invader home.
Killing other players can be the most profitable route if you bring a cheap build and can win at least 50% of your fights. Other players you meet could be wearing expensive gear or might have found valuable loot, which will be added to what you’ve already found if you kill them. Consistency and having enough money to replace any lost gear sets is important.
I’ve had days where I’ve made more than 1 million silver per hour and days where I’ve lost multiple fights in a row, however, players who are comfortable with a good build should usually make more than they lose. A few easy weapons to pick up for corrupted dungeon dueling are the broadsword, claymore, brawler gloves, warbow, and arcane staff. Other equipment that works with many builds include the cleric’s robe, mercenary jacket, assassin’s hood, mage cowl, soldier boots, and assassin’s shoes.
For those who don’t want to fight, ratting is an acceptable answer. Builds focused on clear speed (spears), survivability (Nature Staves), or high mobility (Bear Paws) are great at killing demons and breaking crystals if invading players arrive. The money isn’t always as good as fighting other players but it can be more consistent. Depending on the dungeon tier, level of infamy, and some luck, ratting corrupted dungeons can earn hundreds of thousands to millions of silver per hour.
Faction Warfare
Faction Warfare is one of the hidden gems of Albion Online. It can be insanely profitable with little investment and only a moderate risk, which can be mitigated with a good group. There are two main ways to play faction warfare: Royal Cities and Caerleon.
Participating in faction warfare for one of the royal cities simply requires enlisting with one of the recruiters and turning on your faction flag. Once you do this, any activities you do will earn you faction points, but members of opposing factions can attack you anywhere; this only results in death in red or black zones.
The best way to make money while flagged is to join an outpost-capturing group. All members of a royal city faction are friendly towards each other, so groups can essentially be any size. This makes capturing outposts with a royal city very safe as they’ll usually overwhelm groups of gankers or Caerleon faction members with sheer size. Randomly throughout the day, Bandits will assault the red zone territories, which will then become the most lucrative zones to capture. Finally, royal city factions can also gain points by defending their outposts.
Fighting for Caerleon is quite a bit different from the other cities. First off, Caerleon faction members are hostile toward all faction-flagged players, including other Caerleon players. Players will be friendly towards other members in their group, which can go up to 20, but other Caerleon groups will be flagged as hostile. This makes playing as Caerleon more dangerous for 2 main reasons: You’ll be competing with every other Caerleon group and the 20-player group cap means most Royal faction groups will be larger than you.
In order to make the most money, in the safest way, it’s best to avoid other groups while flagged for Caerleon. The added benefit, however, is that the best time for Caerleon to capture outposts is outside of the Bandit Assault timer (opposite of the Royal factions), which is usually a longer and more flexible period of time. Another benefit of playing for Caerleon is that the rewards are typically worth more.
After accumulating a large number of faction points, there are a few main ways to make money. The easiest is trading those points for faction hearts, which can quickly be sold for a lot of silver. Other options include raising faction mounts or crafting faction capes.
For players not interested in just silver, the faction chests provide a mix of crafting material, hearts, silver bags, and fame tomes. Finally, players can also run trade missions to other cities, which will allow you to exchange hearts from your city for a higher number of hearts from another city. There’s some risk to this, but going from royal city to royal city usually only requires traversing a couple of red zones. This is usually best done with a fast but sturdy mount with lots of carrying capacity like a dire boar.
The more you play for a single faction the higher rank you’ll obtain and the better your rewards. Switching factions will reset your progress to 0, so this is not recommended unless in extreme cases, such as if you joined a guild for a specific faction. Additionally, premium status will provide 50% more faction points and unlock the faction progression track which provides 4 unlockable faction chests per month.
Group compositions will vary based on your faction and how many players are in your group. The minimum recommended group is 7 players but 10 is often the most optimal. In order clear outposts quickly, equipment should be at least tier 6 and mounts should be an Armored Horse or faster. The DPS builds are often the cheapest, costing around 200k silver to start.
The tank should always have an incubus mace for the health-reduction debuff. Utility options include the Realmbreaker axe and Spirit Hunter spear for additional debuffs. The main healer should be holy for the required burst healing and should bring either a Fallen or Great Holy staff. Everyone else should be ranged DPS with a mix of regular bows and boltcasters for optimal damage output.
A well-organized group can earn close to 100k faction points per hour, which can be quickly translated to more than 1.5 million silver. Furthermore, faction members earn bonus points at the end of each week. Therefore, it’s possible to pay for a month’s subscription in a single week, playing faction only an hour each day.
Combined Strategies
With the upcoming Albion Online premium price increase, many players are worried about paying for their subscription with silver. However, with the strategies outlined above, it should be possible for the average player to continue to fund their premium status even after the bump in cost.
Even though some ways are more profitable than others, diversifying your silver income makes for a more satisfying and efficient time in the world of Albion. For example, raising Giant Stags is mostly passive and combined with gathering or running corrupted dungeons only requires a couple of hours of grinding per month to pay that subscription fee. So get out there, find the content you enjoy the most, and earn that silver without having to worry about where your next premium fix is going to come from.
