Where to Craft and Refine Every Item in Albion Online: City Bonuses and the Daily Bonus
Every Royal City, Caerleon and Brecilien gives an 18% production bonus to everything you craft or refine there. On top of that, each city has specialties: +40% for refining one resource and +15% for crafting a few item lines. Refining in the right city raises your resource return from 15.3% to 36.7%; crafting in the right city raises it from 15.3% to 24.8%.
The tables below list every specialty. All values come from the game's crafting modifiers file, the same data the Resource Return Rate Calculator uses.
Where to refine each resource
| Resource | Refined into (T4 example) | Station | Bonus city |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ore | Metal Bars (Steel Bar) | Smelter | Thetford |
| Fiber | Cloth (Fine Cloth) | Weaver | Lymhurst |
| Stone | Stone Blocks (Travertine Block) | Stonemason | Bridgewatch |
| Hide | Leather (Worked Leather) | Tanner | Martlock |
| Wood | Planks (Pine Planks) | Lumbermill | Fort Sterling |
Caerleon and Brecilien have no refining specialty. So the best city to refine wood is Fort Sterling, hide goes to Martlock, and so on:
| Refining | Production bonus | Return without Focus | Return with Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| In the resource's bonus city | 58% | 36.7% | 53.9% |
| In any other city | 18% | 15.3% | 43.5% |
Refining is where the city matters most: without Focus the bonus city gives back more than twice as much. The refining guide covers when refining pays and how to plan it.
Where to craft each item
Each city adds 15% to the item lines below, and its Butcher adds 10% to one or two kinds of meat:
| City | +15% crafting | +10% at the Butcher |
|---|---|---|
| Thetford | Maces, Nature Staffs, Fire Staffs, Leather Jackets, Cloth Cowls | Raw Pork |
| Lymhurst | Swords, Bows, Arcane Staffs, Leather Hoods, Leather Shoes | Raw Goose |
| Bridgewatch | Crossbows, Daggers, Cursed Staffs, Plate Armor, Cloth Sandals | Raw Goat |
| Martlock | Axes, Quarterstaffs, Frost Staffs, Plate Boots, Off-hands | Raw Beef |
| Fort Sterling | Hammers, Spears, Holy Staffs, Plate Helmets, Cloth Robes | Raw Chicken, Raw Mutton |
| Caerleon | War Gloves, Shapeshifter Staffs, Tools, Gathering Gear, Food | None |
| Brecilien | Capes, Bags, Potions | None |
Where to craft armor
Armor is split by piece, so one set needs three cities:
| Material | Head | Chest | Shoes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plate | Fort Sterling | Bridgewatch | Martlock |
| Leather | Lymhurst | Thetford | Lymhurst |
| Cloth | Thetford | Fort Sterling | Bridgewatch |
Where to craft weapons and off-hands
| Station | Weapon line and city |
|---|---|
| Warrior's Forge | Swords: Lymhurst · Axes: Martlock · Maces: Thetford · Hammers: Fort Sterling · Crossbows: Bridgewatch · War Gloves: Caerleon |
| Hunter's Lodge | Bows: Lymhurst · Spears: Fort Sterling · Daggers: Bridgewatch · Quarterstaffs: Martlock · Nature Staffs: Thetford · Shapeshifter Staffs: Caerleon |
| Mage's Tower | Fire Staffs: Thetford · Holy Staffs: Fort Sterling · Arcane Staffs: Lymhurst · Frost Staffs: Martlock · Cursed Staffs: Bridgewatch |
All off-hands (shields, tomes, torches and their artifact versions) get Martlock's bonus. Artifact weapons and armor follow their line: a Galatine Pair is a sword and crafts best in Lymhurst. The one exception in the game data is Black Hands, which are War Gloves but listed under daggers, so they get Bridgewatch's bonus instead of Caerleon's.
Items with no city bonus
- Mounts get only the 18% base bonus, in any city.
- Royal armor and faction capes are made from a finished item (an armor piece plus Royal Sigils, or a cape plus a city crest and a heart). They use no Focus and return nothing, so craft them wherever is convenient.
- Satchels of Insight count as bags (Brecilien), and fishing rods, tracking toolkits and siege hammers count as tools (Caerleon).
What the bonus is worth
An Adept's Soldier Armor takes 16 Steel Bars, so 100 of them take 1,600 bars before returns. Bridgewatch has the Plate Armor bonus:
| Where you craft 100 Adept's Soldier Armor | Production bonus | Return rate | Bars back | Bars used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Any other city, no Focus | 18% | 15.3% | 244 | 1,356 |
| Bridgewatch, no Focus | 33% | 24.8% | 397 | 1,203 |
| Any other city, with Focus | 77% | 43.5% | 696 | 904 |
| Bridgewatch, with Focus | 92% | 47.9% | 767 | 833 |
| Bridgewatch, Focus and a 20% Plate Armor day | 112% | 52.8% | 845 | 755 |
Without Focus the right city saves 153 bars per 100 armors; with Focus it saves 71. The city bonus matters most when you craft without Focus, and on expensive materials.
Pick any item in the Resource Return Rate Calculator and it ranks every place you can make it. The Resource Return Rate guide explains the formula: return rate = production bonus / (100 + production bonus).
The Rests, hideouts, islands and the Roads
The Rests
The three Rests in the Outlands give 18% to crafting like a city, plus 15% to one class of gear. Refining there gets 15% (13.0% return), with no resource specialty.
| Rest | +15% crafting |
|---|---|
| Arthur's Rest | Plate armor and every Warrior's Forge weapon line (swords, axes, maces, hammers, crossbows, war gloves) |
| Merlyn's Rest | Leather armor and every Hunter's Lodge weapon line (bows, spears, daggers, quarterstaffs, nature and shapeshifter staffs) |
| Morgana's Rest | Cloth armor and the five Mage's Tower staff lines |
Off-hands get only the base 18% at the Rests.
Hideouts
A guild hideout in the Outlands has no base crafting bonus. Its bonuses come from the Hideout Power Level and the zone:
- General bonus, for everything crafted there: 0% at level 1, 6% at level 2, 11%, 15%, 18%, 20%, 22%, 24%, up to 26% at level 9.
- Zone specialty: each Outlands zone favors the item lines of the Royal City of its biome (a forest zone favors Lymhurst's list, a mountain zone Fort Sterling's). The zone bonus goes from 1% in a Q1 zone to 26% in a Q6 zone, in steps of 5%.
- Specialist bonus, only on the zone's specialties: 3.75% at level 2, rising by 3.75% per level to 30% at level 9.
At best, a Broadsword crafted in a power level 9 hideout in a Q6 forest zone gets 26% + 26% + 30% = 82% (45.1% return, 58.5% with Focus), well above the 33% of Lymhurst. Hideout power does not help refining: refining in a hideout always gets 15%. Turn on Include Hideouts in the calculator and set the power level to compare your zone.
Your island
A personal island has no base bonus, but it keeps the specialties of its city. Refining fiber on a Lymhurst island gets 40% (28.6% return, 49.7% with Focus), against 58% in Lymhurst itself. Crafting a sword there gets 15% (13.0%). The city's own stations always beat its islands; the Island guide covers island farming bonuses and what to build.
Roads of Avalon
Refining on the Roads of Avalon gets 10%, or 20% in the Roads zones that specialize in a resource. The calculator's Roads filter lists them.
The Daily Production Bonus
Every day at server maintenance (10:00 UTC on the Americas and Europe servers, 23:00 UTC on Asia) each server gets two Daily Production Bonuses. Each one covers one crafting category for 24 hours and adds either 10% or 20% to its production bonus.
- The pool: every weapon and armor line, off-hands, the five refining resources, tools, gathering gear, food, potions, bags and capes. Butchering is not in it.
- The odds: the game data weights each 10% bonus nine times more than its 20% version, so most days bring 10%. Bonuses are picked by weight, not from a fixed rotation, so check them each day.
- It stacks with everything: the city, Focus and the daily bonus add up. Refining in the bonus city with Focus on a 20% day gives 137% (57.8% return).
- It also raises study fame: studying an item of the bonus category gives 10% or 20% more fame. City bonuses do not change study fame; the studying guide has the full formula.
To see today's bonuses, hover the party hat icon in the top bar of any Albion Free Market page. It shows the bonuses for the server picked next to it and how long they last. The data comes from players running the AFM Data Client, so it appears once one of them logs in after maintenance. The same tooltip lists the longer events, such as gathering or dungeon fame bonuses, which do not change crafting.
The calculators use it too: Apply Today's Bonus in the Crafting Calculator, Use Today's Bonus in the Simple Crafting Calculator, the Daily Bonus setting (Small 10%, Large 20%) in the Resource Return Rate Calculator, and Today's bonus in the Study Calculator.
Picking your crafting city
- Refine in the resource's city. It is the biggest city bonus, 40% on top of the base 18%.
- Craft in the item's city, especially without Focus. The specialty adds 9.6 points of return without Focus, but only 4.4 with Focus.
- Watch the daily bonus. A 20% day on your category adds more than a city's 15% crafting specialty.
- Count the other costs. Station usage fees differ by station (how fees work), and moving materials between cities takes time and risk. Each city has its own bank, so living where you refine or craft saves hauling.
- Check what pays before you start. Profitable Crafts ranks what makes silver on your server, and the Crafting Calculator prices one recipe in the city you choose.
The city you started in does not limit you: every city's stations and bonuses work for every player.
Resource Return Rate Calculator · Crafting Calculator · Profitable Crafts · Focus guide