Albion Online - The Complete Guide to Personal & Guild Islands

Islands in Albion Online constitute of instanced areas where players can build crafting stations, houses and farms, as well as decorate to their heart’s content! There are two different types of islands, Personal Islands & Guild Islands, and while they share many similarities, there are also some core differences:

• You can buy & upgrade both types of islands from every main city’s Island Merchant NPC.
• They will both be built in the vicinity of the main city you bought them from, which means you can teleport to them without any cost, as long as you are in the same city, while teleporting from anywhere else will incur teleport costs based on your inventory items, same as using the Travel Planner NPC anywhere. So choose wisely!
• The only way to move a Personal or Guild island, is to Abandon it from the Island Merchant, and then start again in the new city. You will lose everything that exists on the island. That includes items, buildings, and any Silver you paid to buy and upgrade it.
• While you can build all types of crafting stations and houses on both islands, farms & pastures are exclusive to Personal Islands (as well as Guild-controlled territory, but this is outside of this guide’s scope).
• In order to purchase a Personal Island, your character must have at least 30 days’ worth of Premium. This restriction applies only to the 1st time you buy your character’s Personal Island, and you can use, manage & upgrade it without Premium from this point forward. Guild Islands don’t require Premium time in order to be purchased.
• Access permissions are very advanced for both islands, and can be tailored up to the last container & user. More on that below, but make sure you don’t give full access to your Personal Island to anyone!

How to Choose Your Island’s Main City

As mentioned, choosing the Island’s main city is a crucial decision, since moving it to another one will make you lose all progress you have made so far, including buildings, building materials, and the Silver you’ve spent on buying & upgrading the Island.

Therefore, you need to ensure you’ve chosen your main city wisely based on your game goals, your friends, or your Guild.

As a quick reference, these are the main cities, and the biomes they offer in close proximity:

Personal Island

Each one of your characters can own his personal island, and to buy it you need to have purchased 30 days’ worth of Premium time. You can keep using, managing and upgrading your island without Premium afterward.

Especially as a new player, your first goal should be to get enough Silver for Premium (or buy it with real money if you’d like), and buy your first island.

There are 6 levels you can upgrade your Island to, with a total cost of 6,450,000 Silver, and a total number of 11 Building Plots, 2 Small Building Plots and 5 Farming Plots:

Even though that may sound like a big money investment, it still costs less than 1 month of premium, and just by owning an island you can easily make enough to replenish Premium with Silver every month, without any more activities involved.

The two main benefits of owning a personal island, are “passive” money-making through farming / animal breeding, and “active” money-making through the use of Laborers.

Of course, everything takes time and grind in Albion, so the more you advance on your relevant Farming / Animal Breeding skills, the more you can make, with less effort, since your Focus costs will be way more efficient than when starting out.

Guild Island

Guild Islands are bigger, better, and more expensive! You don’t even need Premium time activated to buy one, and they can serve as a hub of convenience for a Guild, or even be exploited for your own use as a Solo player!

A fully upgraded Guild Island goes again through 6 levels of upgrades, with a total cost of 27,462,500 Silver, and a total number of 1 Large Building Plot (to place the Guild Hall), 16 Building Plots, 2 Small Building Plots, a common storage chest serving as a Guild Bank, a Guild Marketplace where members can trade items between them (or even other players visiting), and last but not least, a Guild Stadium where you can train your tactics!

A good way of using the Guild Island, is building all the crafting stations in it, since you never know which ones will be usable in your town, and which ones will have outrageous usage fees, that make using them unprofitable.

Keep in mind that crafting stations in Personal & Guild Islands don’t include any refining or crafting bonuses from their cities (but you can still use Focus), therefore – and depending on your case – if you find crafting stations with less than 25%~ usage fees in town, it’s better to use them. Otherwise, you would make more profit using your own crafting stations.

Don’t forget that you also have to keep the NPCs running the stations fed in order to use them, so if you’re part of a Guild, it’s one of the places your Guild Tax goes towards.

Island Buildings

There are many different ways to exploit your islands for profit, convenience, or just plain fun, so let’s dive into all the buildings, what they offer, and what they cost!

All building require a Building Plot available on your island, except the Smelter & Butcher that require a Small Building Plot, and the Farm, Herb Garden, Pasture & Kennel that require a Farming Plot.

Refining Stations

These stations will let you turn raw resources into processed ones, which you can then use as ingredients for more advanced recipes on the crafting stations.

Lumbermill

You can refine raw Wood into Planks.

Smelter

You can refine raw Ore into Bars.

Tanner

You can refine raw Hide into Leather.

Weaver

You can refine raw Fiber into Cloth.

Stonemason

You can refine raw Stone into Blocks.

Mill

You can refine Wheat into Flour, and Milk into Butter, used mainly for Cooking.

Butcher

You can slaughter Animals for Meat, used mainly for Cooking.

Crafting Stations

These stations will let you craft any gear piece that is used in Albion, from the lowest tier, to the highest tier!

Alchemist’s Lab

You can brew potions from ingredients, mainly from Herbs grown at Herb Gardens, and feeding Animals grown in Pastures.

Cook

You can cook food from raw ingredients, mainly from feeding & slaughtering Animals grown in Pastures, and Fish caught from Fishing.

Toolmaker

You can craft all types of gathering tools, gathering gear, house furniture, bags and capes.

Saddler

You can turn suitable Animals into Mounts, mainly Horses & Oxen raised in Pastures, as well as Exotic Animals raised in Kennels.

Warrior’s Forge

You can craft all weapons from the Warrior’s path, as well as all Plate Armors.

Hunter’s Lodge

You can craft all weapons from the Hunter’s path, as well as all Leather Armors.

Mage’s Tower

You can craft all weapons from the Mage’s path, as well as all Cloth Armors.

Repair Station

You can repair, reroll or salvage your items.

Farming Stations

These buildings will enable you to use the Farming system, which for the most part requires Focus in order to be profitable.

You can either plant vegetables & herbs, used in multiple recipes or as animal food, or breed animals & exotic animals for resources, or create mounts.

Farm

You can plant and grow crops, used mainly as Food for Animals, and ingredients for Cooking.

Herb Garden

You can plant and grow herbs, used mainly as Food for Animals, and ingredients for Alchemy.

Pasture

You can raise animals that can be turned into Mounts in the Saddler, or produce resources that are mostly used for Cooking.

Kennel

You can raise wild animals that can be turned into Mounts in the Saddler, by earning them as rare drops in the open world.

House

Houses serve as respawn points for you and your friends, can accommodate extra storage chests, and more importantly let you hire laborers that can get you extra resources from your gathering, crafting and combat activities.

I personally suggest you devote your 1st personal island to only include Houses in its 11 building plots, and incorporate the laborers’ journal farming into your daily gameplay.

There are 11 different laborers you can hire, 1 for each gathering & crafting type, 1 for combat & 1 for fishing. It’s not optimal to get one of each as you would have to farm many different activities, but it’s not a bad idea either as a new player, since you will get to experience how each one works for your taste.

Keep in mind that you can move laborers inside a house like furniture, but if you want to place them in a different house, you will have to pick them up, and doing so will reset all their level progress.

Guild Hall

The Guild Hall is almost as big as 4 Houses, and it can fit a huge amount of Furniture, Residents, and most importantly Laborers!

It’s quite expensive to level it up, so if you’re doing this Solo it will cut a lot into your profits at first.

Getting the Guild Hall to Level 5 will make it “as big as possible”, so it won’t move your furniture around with further upgrades, which is also true for normal Houses.