Laborers and Journals in Albion Online: How They Work and What Pays

Laborers are workers you place in a house on your island or in a guild hall. You carry an empty journal while you gather, craft, fish or kill mobs until it is full, then hand it to a laborer of the matching type. After 22 hours the laborer gives you resources, silver or a trophy, and the journal back empty.

How much a laborer brings back depends on the journal's tier and on the laborer's happiness, up to 150% yield. This guide covers every laborer and journal, the numbers behind them, how to keep laborers happy and level them, and how to check which journals make silver.

How laborers work

1. Build a house. Houses go on the building plots of your island (the Island guide has the build costs). Guild halls can hold laborers too.
2. Hire a laborer. Open the house's Hire menu and pick one of the 11 laborer types. New laborers start at Novice (T2), cost 1,000 silver to hire and spend 30 minutes settling in.
3. Get an empty journal. A laborer sells empty journals of its own type, up to its own tier, in its Journals tab. Empty journals are also on the market.
4. Fill it. Keep the journal in your inventory while you do its activity. The fame you earn goes into the journal until it is full.
5. Hand it in. The laborer only takes full journals of its type, of its own tier or lower. The job takes 22 hours.
6. Collect. Take the returned items and the empty journal. Collect on time: the laborer window warns that uncollected rewards are removed after a deadline.

The hire price, settling time and job length are from the game's laborer data.

Every laborer and its journal

There are five gathering laborers, four crafting laborers, the Fisherman and the Mercenary. Each one only works with its own journal:

The shares are each material's chance in the game's loot tables. Gathering and crafting journals return materials of their own tier: a Master (T6) Blacksmith's journal returns T6 bars, planks and cloth.

A few rules decide which fame counts:

• Gathering journals fill from resources of their tier up to two tiers higher, enchanted ones included. An Adept (T4) Lumberjack's journal fills from T4, T5 and T6 logs. A T7 journal fills from T7 and T8, a T8 journal only from T8.
• Crafting journals only fill from items of their own tier.
• Mercenary journals fill from mobs of their tier or higher. Fisherman journals fill from any fishing fame.

Trophy journals

Every laborer also sells the Generalist Trophy Journal, which fills from any fame you earn, and takes it back full. The Lumberjack, Stonecutter, Prospector, Cropper, Gamekeeper, Fisherman and Mercenary also have a trophy journal of their own type. Trophy journals need more fame than the normal journal of the same tier (two to three times as much) and return a single trophy, a piece of furniture that makes laborers happier.

Fame and returns per tier

Fame capacity doubles with each tier. At 100% yield, a journal returns this many items:

All values are from the game's item data. Returns are averages; a fraction means the amount varies from job to job.

• Yield multiplies the return. At 150% yield an Adept Lumberjack's journal brings back 72 logs on average instead of 48.
• Some returns are enchanted. From T4 up, about 5% of returned logs, ore, fiber, hides, bars, planks, cloth and leather are .1, 0.5% are .2 and 0.05% are .3. Stone always comes back unenchanted.
• Mercenary journals return silver: 371 at T2, 660 at T3, 1,123 at T4, 1,746 at T5, 2,690 at T6, 4,202 at T7 and 6,584 at T8 as the base amount. They need 1,412 fame at T2 up to 10,800 at T8.
• Fisherman journals need 720 fishing fame at T2 up to 8,320 at T8.
• Buy empty journals from your laborer when the market asks more than the laborer's fixed price.

Look up any journal on the Market Prices page to see its fame capacity and the list of items that fill it.

Happiness and yield

A happy laborer brings back more. The game ties a laborer's happiness to three things in its house:

• A bed of its own. Every laborer needs its own bed, of a tier at least equal to its own.
• A seat at a table. Laborers share tables. Novice to Adept tables seat 4 laborers, Expert to Elder tables seat 6. The table must also be at least the laborer's tier.
• Trophies. A trophy adds happiness to up to 3 laborers of its type, and Generalist trophies to any type. In the game data a type trophy adds 10 happiness and a Generalist trophy 5.

Happiness does not jump at once: after you change the furniture it rises or falls over time, and the laborer window shows when it will change next. The yield is capped at 150%.

The house sets the limits. A house holds laborers and furniture only up to its own tier ("up to Adept level" for an Adept's house), and its tier sets how many of each fit:

Three laborers in an Expert's house or better need three beds and one table, which leaves ten furniture slots for trophies and anything else you place there.

If a laborer refuses a job with "Not enough yield to start the job!", its yield, which comes from happiness, is too low: check that it has its own bed and a table seat of its tier, then wait for its happiness to rise.

Leveling laborers

Every job gives the laborer laborer fame. Once it has enough, the laborer window offers "Advance to Tier" and the laborer moves up one tier, so it can take higher-tier journals. Your house has to allow the new tier, and its bed and table have to match it to keep it happy.

At 100% yield, with journals of the laborer's own tier, a laborer advances after:

That is 50 journals from Novice to Elder, and at 22 hours per job it takes at least 50 days per laborer. Crafting laborers need 20 journals for the last step instead of 19, and Fisherman laborers follow their own curve: 1, 2, 3, 6, 13 and 28 journals. The counts come from the fame each returned item gives the laborer in the game data, so a happier laborer, which returns more items, should level faster.

Laborer contracts are the shortcut. When you pick up a laborer it goes to your inventory as a laborer contract, such as a Master Lumberjack Contract, and you can place it in another house. Contracts are items with their own market category, so you can sell a laborer you leveled, or buy a higher-tier one when someone lists it. Picking a laborer up loses its progress toward the next tier, its journal and any unclaimed resources, so collect first.

What pays: three ways to run journals

The Journals Calculator prices every journal type from T3 to T8 with live market data and compares three runs:

• Buy Empty, Sell Mats: buy empty journals, fill them while you play, give them to your laborers and sell what comes back, including the empty journal. If you would gather or craft anyway, filling costs you nothing extra, and the return is silver on top of your normal session.
• Buy Empty, Sell Full: fill journals and sell them full to other players. This works without any laborers.
• Buy Full, Sell Mats: buy full journals on the market and sell what your laborers return. This is for players who run laborers but do not fill journals themselves.

Set your laborers' happiness (the calculator goes up to 150% for T3 to T7 and 142.5% for T8), your Premium status (Premium halves the sales tax), where you buy and sell and which prices to use, then refresh the prices. Setup fees and sales tax are already in every result.

A warning icon next to a profit means at least one price is missing, often a rare .2 or .3 material nobody traded recently. Click any result to open the Journal Run Details: what you buy, the expected amount of each returned material, its price, fees and taxes. Type a custom price for any item and every result that uses it updates.

When you compare, keep these in mind:

• Count silver, not items. Gathering journals return 32 to 60 raw resources at base, crafting journals 4 to 38 refined ones, but refined materials are worth more each.
• Higher tiers pay more per job but need more fame. Fame capacity doubles every tier, so a T8 journal takes far longer to fill than a T4 one.
• Mercenary journals return little. Their base silver is fixed, and in the screenshot above they are the lowest row at every tier.
• Trophy journals depend on the trophy's price. Many trophies trade rarely, so check the price first, or fill them for trophies your own laborers need.

If you craft, the Crafting and Refining Calculator and Profitable Crafts can include the journals a craft fills in its profit, so you see the journal value next to the craft itself.

The Albion Journal is something else

The in-game Albion Journal has nothing to do with laborers. It is the book of achievements, with tasks such as "Talk to yourself..." and rewards such as Tomes of Learning (Learning Points), Tomes of Insight and Bags of Silver. The Albion Journal page lists every category, task and reward.

Common questions

• Why won't my laborer take the journal? It has to be full (a "Partially Full" journal is refused), of the laborer's own type and of its tier or lower.
• Where do I get journals? Buy them empty from the laborer or the market, or buy full ones on the market.
• Do I need Premium? Laborers themselves do not need it, but you need Premium to buy a personal island, and your houses stand on it.
• Is a laborer worth it? Hiring costs 1,000 silver, so the real cost is the house, the furniture and the empty journals. If you fill journals while you gather or craft anyway, the calculator shows what each return adds.

Journals Calculator · Island guide · Market Prices · Albion Journal