As stated previously you will need a level 2 private island before you can farm. This is because you need a specific plot called a “farming plot” before you can build pastures, farms, kennels, and herb gardens. It’s rather cheap in the beginning but upgrading the island fully ends up costing an arm and a leg.

All of the costs and bonuses for upgrades are below:

Global discount is a constantly fluctuating amount, it is based on the amount of gold in the game at a moment in time.

The island will be bound to the city you purchased it from and you will be visiting the farm daily, so keep that in mind when purchasing an island. 

After you buy and upgrade your island(you will have to wait 2 minutes for the upgrade) talk to the island merchant and he will send you straight to your island!

Building the Farm

Now that you’re at your island you need to build the actual farm! Towards the back of your new island you will see plots that appear to be just dirt, these are your “Farming Plots”. You can build pastures, farms, herb gardens, and kennels here at the cost of some building materials. Each building has its own use(potions, cooking, mounts) and you are free to choose any of them but I would stay away from kennels unless you know exactly what you’re doing. They are not cheap to start using. However, if you’re just starting out as a beginner and aren’t sure what to do, I recommend creating a farm plot.

If you’re on pc you can press ‘h’ to bring up the building screen, alternatively you can click the building icon in the top right corner. Once the building screen is open go to the farming tab and scroll down until you see the appropriate building. For the purposes of this guide, we will be building a farm.

After selecting the farm you will need to place it over the farming plot and click build. You now have to gather materials to construct the building, in this case, 15 Tier 1 wood and 15 Tier 1 stone which are both spread across the island. With all of the materials collected, you will have to add them to the construction site and sit through a short animation. When all the construction requirements are met you will have your own farm!

Each building(not kennels) is 3×3 for a total of 9 spots to place animals/seeds.

Buying Seeds/Animals for your Farm

So now you have your own place to grow crops, that’s great! But now you need to buy seeds to plant. There are two ways for you to get seeds: the farming merchant or the local marketplace. The farming merchant is usually more expensive than the local marketplace(but not always so pay attention) because players who use Focus Points on their crops/animals will get extra seeds/offspring that they don’t need, so they sell them for cheap at the auction house. This doesn’t just happen for lower-tier seeds/offspring either, purchasing an Elder’s Foal(Tier 8) from the marketplace is 800k silver cheaper than the farming merchant!

To find the farming merchant, just look to the right of your first farming plot. He is rather conspicuous.

When thinking of planting seeds remember that a farm has nine spots you need to fill, so saving 300 silver per seed adds up quickly.

You don’t need to purchase higher-tier seeds either, they all give the same amount of fame gain and yield. The only difference you will find between the different tiers is the increased chance to get your seeds back(carrots are 0%, beans are 33%) without using Focus Points on them. Don’t buy expensive seeds/animals unless you plan on making something with them. For example, buying and growing pumpkins not only don’t give you any extra fame but is also only 90 silver more than carrots at the auction house! If you just want to level your farming stick to carrots, they are cheap and give the same nutrition as every other crop.

Although I mention seeds throughout this goes for herbs and animals as well!

Sowing your Seed(with Extra Focus)

You built your farm and bought your seeds, now it’s time to actually place them. To do this you will need to click on the seeds(or animal) in your inventory, the items information screen will pop up and just under the icon of said item there will be a button that says ‘place’, click that.

After clicking the place button you should notice a preview of what the crop will look like when placed(it is visually similar to placing a building), simply go to where you want the crops to be placed and click the ‘place’ button on the center of your screen. Do this 8 more times and you’re done! Sort of…

Placing the seeds/animals is half the battle, now you have to deal with ‘Focus Points’. To be brief, Focus Points are a premium bonus that allows you to do things more efficiently and in regards to farming increase, the chance your crop produces seeds or your animal produces offspring. In the former’s case, you will have to water the plants immediately after placing them, in the latter’s case you have to feed them and then nurture them. That’s what the little floating images above the crops that look like a watering can are, indicating you haven’t watered your crops. Simply clicking on them and pressing ‘water’ will increase the seed yield.

Three things that you should know about Focus Points when it comes to farming:

1. Farming a single crop/animal consistently increases your Focus Cost Efficiency with them. This means that you will use fewer Focus Points per crop/animal the more you grow that crop/animal. So it’s better to focus entirely on a specific crop than it is to have many different types in your farm(unless of course you are using them to craft something).
2. Focus point formula: New cost=Original Cost*0.5^(Focus Cost Efficiency/10000). If you have 5000 focus cost efficiency for watering carrots you will only need 708 focus points to water a single patch of carrots. To see your Focus Cost Efficiency you need to look at the farming nodes on the destiny board.
   
3. Using Focus Points on crops is the same Focus Point to silver cost no matter the tier of seed. Some people think that because carrots are 0% seed yield without Focus that using a higher tier seed with closer to 100% yield without Focus would be better. This is only true if you don’t buy seeds from the vendor. The vendor cost is balanced around the fact that using Focus Points on crops is the exact same regardless of tier.

Keep in mind that to water every plant you will need 9k Focus out of your daily 10k(when starting out). You can choose to water none of them, all of them, or some of them. It doesn’t matter for anything except seed/offspring yield. You don’t get more crops/animals (matured), farming Focus is only so you don’t have to keep buying seeds or baby animals every time you use them.

The Fruits(or Vegetables) of your Labor

Nearly a day later you can now reap your rewards! Something important to take note of is that you won’t get the same amount of crops every time. For non premium players you will get 3-6, and with premium players you get 6-12.

The fame gain is 100 with an extra 50 because I have a premium(50% fame gain). Also, since I watered my carrot seed, I now have two more! If I sell one on the market for 690 silver and sell all the carrots(200 each) I’ll end up with almost 2k silver! Multiply that by 9 and you’re on your way to recouping your initial investment!

Alternatively, you could always make some carrot soup or maybe even feed some animals :O.

How to Train your Chicken

With your carrots in hand it’s time to finally get the pasture up and running. You should already know how to build one and place all the animals, it’s the exact same process as explained above the only difference being you now have mouths to feed.

Animals are very expensive to raise, even lower tiers. Not only do they cost more to purchase but they also require food(only crops) with higher tiers requiring even more. Most animals aren’t worth it to raise financially, they cost more to feed than they produce. Of course, you must raise the lower-tier animals to unlock the higher-tier ones so usually, it’s worth it.

The upside to raising animals is that they provide resources needed for cooking such as eggs or milk. Some can even be ridden as mounts like the foals or oxes. Note: To craft mounts in Albion you have to have unlocked the required animal in the farming node.

To feed an animal in Albion you need to drag and drop the food from your inventory into the box on the left-hand side after clicking on an animal.

Feeding an animal is based off of nutrition. All crops have the same nutrition value(which is why most people who raise animals simply farm carrots). A single point of nutrition is worth 3 minutes of growth time and every crop has 48 nutrition. So when feeding this chicken I would need 22 hours worth of nutrition or 1320 minutes. (48 * 3) *10 = 1440, so we need 10 carrots(9 wouldn’t be enough).

Any food that is over the amount required is wasted and you don’t get it back. In this case it wouldn’t matter because the chicken can only take 22 hours worth max, but when you grow something that needs several days worth of food, say a foal or a stag, you can go over and waste crops. For example: the stag below only needed roughly 19 hours of nutrition but I fed it 23 hours worth because I dragged the entire stack instead of splitting it, effectively wasting crops.

Speaking of long growth time animals… you can also nurture them every day, unlike most crops and animals. So even though you won’t get the grown animal for several days doesn’t mean you should not check in daily to nurture them. Without premium you can expect a longggggg waiting time, as you can see the bonus for having premium is 100% and this stag still takes days to mature.

Let’s get back to the chicken. After the 22 hours have passed you will now have eggs! Or a chicken. I can never remember which comes first.

Anyhow, that’s about it for raising animals. One extremely valuable tip I can give you when expanding your farm is having a 2-1 ratio of farms to pastures. This ensures you will never run out of food to feed your animals and sometimes even have some leftover to sell(or hoard).

Short FAQ

What seeds should I use?

The answer to this varies depending on what you want to accomplish. If you are just looking to feed your animals, go with carrots. If you are looking to craft some food then you will want to grow the proper crop. Maybe you want to just grow crops? In that case, you would still stick to carrots(mainly). Carrots sell for more than most of the higher-tier crops and are easily affordable.

Herb Garden or Farm?

Want to craft potions? Herb Garden. Want to cook food? Farm. Want to do neither and are just looking for the highest profit you can squeeze out? Depends on the current prices and demand of the crops/herbs at that moment in time.

Do I Need Premium on Every Character for a Private Island?

Yes. You will need to either have had premium or currently are subscribed to premium on each character. Private islands can be accessed by your alts with access rights. So even though one of your alts might not be able to purchase an Island, they can still plant and harvest crops for your main(assuming you gave them access to your island).

Quickest way to Level Farming?

Sadly with farming you can’t expedite the process with learning points. Instead, you will have to simply plant as many crops or animals as you can and be patient(it is a virtue after all). The best way to do this is to create a farming alt who does all the farming for every character you have. This means having 3 private islands(1 for each character allowed) and giving the farming character access to all of them. Not only will this make leveling quicker, but you also won’t have to log in to each individual character to gather all your crops/animals.

Can I Farm Anywhere Else?

There are territories that guilds can hold which have farming plots. These are the only other places you can farm as guild islands don’t have farming plots.

Where’s the Cooking/Potion/Kennel Guide at?

I’m working on the cooking and potion crafting guide. The kennel guide will be released with the mount guide(probably).

As always thanks for reading! If you have any questions leave them in the comments and I’ll get back to you.