Refining in Albion Online: Bonus Cities, Focus and Profit

Refining turns raw resources into the materials every crafted item is made of: ore into metal bars, logs into planks, fiber into cloth, hide into leather and stone into stone blocks. Refine each resource in its bonus city, where you get back 36.7% of your materials without Focus and 53.9% with Focus, against 15.3% and 43.5% in the other cities.

Whether refining makes silver depends on the gap between raw and refined prices, and that gap changes every day. This guide shows where to refine, what each tier needs, what Focus and your specialization change, and how to check the profit before you buy anything.

The recipes, bonuses and Focus costs below are read from the game's item and crafting data.

Where to refine: the bonus cities

Every refining station in the Royal cities, Caerleon and Brecilien gives an 18% production bonus. The bonus city adds 40% for its own resource, 58% in total. Using Focus adds 59% more. The production bonus turns into a return rate like this:

The return rate is the share of the materials you get back, on average over many refines. It applies to everything in the recipe, the raw resources and the refined resource of the tier below. A 58% bonus gives a 36.7% return because 58 ÷ (100 + 58) = 0.367; the Resource Return Rate guide explains the formula.

The Resource Return Rate Calculator lists every place you can refine an item, with or without Focus. Tick Show Island Rates to compare your island, or Include Hideouts to see guild hideouts, which have their own refining bonuses.

An island has no 18% base bonus, but the city's 40% resource bonus still applies there, so refining at home is a little worse than the city's station. The Island guide covers island stations.

Daily production bonus

On some days one refining category gets a daily production bonus of 10% or 20%, added to everything above. Refining in the bonus city with Focus on a 20% day gives a 137% production bonus and a 57.8% return. The party hat icon in the top bar of albionfreemarket.com shows today's bonus for your server, and the city bonuses guide lists the crafting bonus of every city.

What each tier needs

Each refine takes raw resources of its tier plus one refined resource of the tier below. To make Bloodoak Planks (T6) you need 4 Bloodoak Logs and 1 Cedar Plank (T5), and the Cedar Plank needed 3 Cedar Logs and 1 Pine Plank (T4):

The counts are the same for all five resources:

The refined resources and the raw resource each one needs:

Enchanted resources

Uncommon (.1), Rare (.2), Exceptional (.3) and Pristine (.4) raw resources refine into refined resources of the same enchantment. At T4 the recipe takes a plain T3 refined resource; from T5 up it takes the tier below at the same enchantment. Rare Cedar Planks (5.2) need 3 Rare Cedar Logs and 1 Rare Pine Plank (4.2).

Each enchantment level costs the Focus of one tier higher: Uncommon Pine Planks (4.1) cost 94 Focus, the same as Cedar Planks (5.0), and Pristine Whitewood Planks (8.4) cost 4,714.

Stone is the exception: there are no enchanted stone blocks. Uncommon, Rare and Exceptional stone refine into 2, 4 or 8 ordinary blocks per refine, and the recipe takes 2, 4 or 8 blocks of the tier below.

Hearts

From T4 to T8, every refine except the .4 ones has a second recipe that replaces one raw resource with a heart:

That recipe only pays when a heart costs less than the raw resource it replaces. One heart replaces one raw resource at any tier, so it is most interesting at high tiers, where raw resources cost the most. Hearts are sold on the Marketplace; Faction Warfare players buy them from their faction's trader for 3,000 faction points.

Focus and specialization

Refining with Focus costs the base Focus in the table above for each refine, and your refining specialization lowers it: every 10,000 Focus Cost Efficiency halves the cost.

Each resource has five refining nodes on the Destiny Board, from Adept to Elder: Adept Ore Smelter up to Elder Ore Smelter for ore, and the same for the Wood Planer, Fiber Weaver, Hide Tanner and Stone Cutter. Every level of a node gives:

• 250 Focus Cost Efficiency for the node's own tier
• 30 Focus Cost Efficiency for every tier from T4 to T8 of that resource

So a Master Wood Planer at level 100 gives Bloodoak Planks 28,000 Focus Cost Efficiency, which brings them from 164 to about 24 Focus: one day of Premium Focus (10,000) refines about 420 instead of 60. With all five Wood Planer nodes at 100, Bloodoak Planks have 40,000 and cost about 10 Focus each.

The Focus guide covers how much Focus you get and how to compare refining with other uses, and the Focus cost guide shows the cost formula.

Is refining worth it?

A refine makes silver when the refined resource sells for more than what went into it:

Materials per refine = (Raw count × Raw price + Lower-tier refined price) × (1 − Return rate)
Profit per refine = Refined price × (1 − Sales taxes) − Materials per refine − Station fee

• Sales taxes: a sell order costs a 2.5% setup fee plus a 4% tax with Premium, or 8% without. Selling instantly to a buy order costs only the tax.
• Station fee: the station's price in silver per 100 nutrition, times the refined resource's nutrition, which is its item value × 0.1125. Refined resources have an item value of 16 at T4, 32 at T5, 64 at T6, 128 at T7 and 256 at T8, doubled for each enchantment level. The station fee guide has the details.

Example: Bloodoak Planks in Fort Sterling

These are the Americas server prices on 3 November 2026, all from sell orders, for a player with Premium: Bloodoak Logs 1,179, Cedar Planks 901 and Bloodoak Planks 3,030. The station charges 300 silver per 100 nutrition, so the fee is 64 × 0.1125 × 300 / 100 = 21.6 silver per plank.

Without Focus (36.71% return):

Materials = (4 × 1,179 + 901) × (1 − 0.3671) = 3,555
Profit = 3,030 × (1 − 0.065) − 3,555 − 22 = −744 per plank

With Focus (53.92% return):

Materials = (4 × 1,179 + 901) × (1 − 0.5392) = 2,588
Profit = 3,030 × (1 − 0.065) − 2,588 − 22 = +223 per plank

The Simple Crafting and Refining Calculator shows the same for 100 refines: a loss of 76,063 silver without Focus and a profit of 20,529 with Focus, for 16,400 Focus. Its totals differ a little from the per-plank numbers because it buys whole materials and sells back what is left over.

At those prices, refining without Focus lost money: the planks would have had to sell for about 3,825 to break even. That is common when you buy every input from sell orders, but it is not a rule, so check the numbers for your tier and server before you buy.

What makes refining pay

1. Use Focus. It saves more of every input than any other bonus.
2. Refine in the bonus city. With the same Focus, 53.9% beats 43.5% anywhere else.
3. Pay less for the inputs. Buying raw resources with buy orders instead of from sell orders costs time and a 2.5% setup fee, but often a lower price. Resources you gathered yourself are worth what you could have sold them for.
4. Refine on a daily bonus day for your resource.
5. Refine before you haul. In the example, 100 Bloodoak Planks weigh 114 kg, while the logs and planks bought for them with Focus weighed 249 kg.

Refining also gives crafting fame for the refining nodes: the 100 Bloodoak Planks above gave 40,500 fame with Premium. A small loss can still be worth it while you level a node, since every level lowers your Focus costs.

Journals and laborers

Refining does not fill any laborer journal. Gathering journals (Lumberjack's, Prospector's, Cropper's, Gamekeeper's and Stonecutter's) fill while you gather, and the laborers you give them to bring back raw resources, which you can then refine. The laborers and journals guide explains how they work.

Tools for refining

• Resource Return Rate Calculator: the return rate of any refined resource in every city, island and hideout.
• Simple Crafting and Refining Calculator: one refine with live prices, taxes, station fee, Focus and fame, as in the example above.
• Crafting and Refining Calculator: plan a whole chain, for example refining from T4 to T8, or refining and then crafting with the result. The calculator tutorial walks through it.
• Profitable Crafts: ranks what makes silver on your server with and without Focus (results are a Masterpiece feature).

New to crafting? The crafting guide for beginners covers how to start.

Resource Return Rate Calculator · Simple Crafting and Refining Calculator · Crafting and Refining Calculator · Profitable Crafts