Albion Online Gathering Complete Guide
Albion Online Gathering Complete Guide by ZaZii
Topics
- Introduction
- Basics
- Why would I want to gather?
- How fast do I get to Tier X?
- How do I not die very time I leave my comfort-zone?
- What’s the deal with enchanted resources?
- How do the masteries work?
- What are the numbers useful to know?
- conclusion: How to gather efficient?
- Additional content
- Gathering-armor
- Watchtowers
- Guardians
- Albionhelper.com
- My thoughts on T8 being exclusive (Watchtowers)
Introduction
To keep things simple, I’ll ignore the premium-bonus, since it’s just a flat multiplier across the board.
I’ll however mention, when it was included (e.g. to show the “realistic” numbers)
Most players here may know the “Basics”.
There are some non-obvious things even those players may be surprised to know, but still – you can just skip this part and head to the numbers for the juicy part.
Basics
Why would I want to gather?
cuz it’s fun.
I lied – it’s not fun – so here are some other reasons
Every craft-able item in the game now comes directly or indirectly from Gathering.
It is the pillar of the economy – whether you like it or not.
The less-casual guilds need dedicated gatherers to keep up with the demand of the PvP-action.
Top guilds go as far as focusing their players heavily in single aspects of the game, e.g. you’ll find players doing PvE 95% of their play-time, just to stay competitive(masteries+) for the GvGs and PvP, which make up the remaining 5% of their activity.
Therefore, they need players, who invest a lot of time in gathering and can keep up with the enemies’ gatherers.
Solo players may also want to do some gathering, since maintaining good gear is fairly difficult with the PvE-drops alone.
In most cases it’ll be faster to gather T6.1 by yourself then grinding the necessary silver (to buy it from market) by other means.
Overall – it saves you a lot of silver – most times even provides a decent income, if you dedicate more time into gathering.
How fast do I get to Tier X?
from my experience:
- T4 was unlocked within the first two hours.
- T5 was done after 8h30min.
- T6 was slowed by lack of LP.
First step was done after 24h, for the missing (60)LP I grinded another 6h. - T7 unlocked after playtime of total ~80h (character-playtime).
First step took after t6 around 42 hours, with another 8 hours grinding off the LP. - After that it’s all about competence of your guild.
Having access to watchtowers within a t7+ territory greatly decreases travel-time and reduces risk. - T8: ~130h playtime
Assumptions and other notes:
I started a bit later, therefore had a small boost of already available gear and some pies.
The difference isn’t huge, though. The pies provide a boost of +10% and getting the equipment isn’t much of a struggle early-on, either.
Naturally, I had a horse (being a founder and all) – which is very similar to a donkey (that any player can get via referrals), efficient-wise.
I invested learning points (LP) as soon as I could.
Those times are pure-gathering – if you PvE/PvP in-between for longer periods of time, expect delays.
Those times are also accumulative, therefore a T6 unlock of X hours also includes the t5 and t4 unlock.
How do I not die very time I leave my comfort-zone?
Overall Tier/Power:
Don’t use trash-gear, just ’cause it’s afford-able!
Go for something you can maintain over longer periods of time.
e.g, if you gather 500 t5 ore/day -> 150-250 bars/day, you can easily afford running in t5 and won’t need to stick to t4 gear.
Armor:
The T4 gathering-armor isn’t that important – so you got choices here.
At T5+, however, you’ll want to wear the gathering-armor for good reasons. Got a topic on this further below.
Accessories:
The bag is pretty basic – get something that’s afford-able but not too trash.
Have it same tier and enchantment as your gear and you should be good.
The gathering-backpack is also recommended.
Weapons:
You got choices here. Depending on what you gather – especially if it’s leather – you’ll want to balance damage and escape-ability.
You do not want to gather with a tank-weapon, since you already got a low/no damage-bonus from gathering-armor, and you still need to kill one or another creep/elemental.
Anything that adds some mobility is great, e.g. daggers with dash, spears or something with sprints, bow with frost-shot, … Some of those skills may be tough to unlock, though.
Areas:
It’s important to differentiate between “dangerous” and “low-risk” clusters – both also being time-dependent.
The time-dependent part is easy:
if you gather in a EU time-zone during 0-8am UTC, you won’t be seeing as many players as during the prime-time of 4-8pm UTC.
This gets somewhat fuzzy in areas, which are easily reachable from other time-zones
(Circle-form of the world: In the middle, you can easily jump between different timezones of clusters, while on the corners it’s more time-consuming)
There are also some important time-frames, during which you should be careful: local events like chests, bosses, warcamps/GvGs,…
The choice of clusters is the more interesting part.
Obviously, it heavily depends on the traffic within those zones – regardless of the time.
You’ll notice that clusters right next to cities are more often visited then clusters further away.
Current design solved the problem of “useless” clusters, which were a heaven for gathering – but you still have some clusters in-between important locations, which are great for gathering.
Basically, if you remove the areas next to a city and areas with contested objectives (e.g. raid during prime-time, chest, dungeon),
you’ll have a small list of areas, which in general should be more quiet.
I specifically said “areas”, since you can even gather in clusters next to a city, as long as you avoid the more-dangerous areas like roads/hellgate-spawns/dungeon-entrances/objectives.
Mount:
A lot of players are doing a mistake here.
You go for HORSES.
Forget that Oxes exist, since their balancing makes them just a loot-pinata with almost zero chances on escaping death.
While you may need to return to a chest more frequently, the horse provides infinitely more escape-possibilities compared to an Ox.
The “rare” mounts are not that viable in most cases. Either they have nothing exclusive/important to offer, or are too expensive, or a mix of both.
Exception would be a fast mount (e.g. Direwolf) for scouting very high-tiered nodes.
How persistent mounts work:
– If you de-mount, your companion stays in the area and carries your weight as long as you’re in range.
– This allows you to move at good speed between nodes, even though you would be heavily overloaded without that mount.
– Jumping on a persistent mount is a much faster cast compared to a normal mount-up cast – even allowing you to mount up between auto-attacks from a single enemy.
– Important side-note: Attacking other players de-spawns your persistent mount! Doing PvE is fine.
How to utilize it:
If you see any enemy approaching, click on your mount and you’ll be ready to run away within a split-second.
To not fck it up, do NOT move away from your persistent mount!
You having to move even one second to your mount in-before being able to mount up is a huge risk.
A whole second of you running to your mount is a whole second an enemy rider is able to move closer and start attacking you.
This is entirely avoid-able if you move your mount for every single node – even though it’s “just two feet away”.
To be extra, extra safe – could even keep your mouse-cursor on the mount while gathering a node.
In case you get catched and are being chased, or already engaged:
Usual moba/PvP-mechanics: Map-awareness is key, and use abilities wisely.
Keep an eye on the local map to avoid dead-ends. Think ahead and use any possible/needed jukes.
If engaged in combat, analyze the enemy and know what he can&can’t do. Don’t mindlessly sprint, if you know that he can stun/CC you the very same second.
Gathering-gear got a fair amount of skills tailored for those scenarios.
Overall – this requires some experience.
Don’t expect to be able to dodge any and all confrontation, always prepare for the worst-case and plan possible escapes ahead.
What’s the deal with enchanted resources?
Enchanted resources are “rare” versions of the normal resource.
Utilized, e.g. crafted into equipment, it provides higher item-power overall.
Most common terms are “flat” or “.0” for the un-enchanted, “.1” for green, “.2” for blue and “.3” for purple enchantments.
Each enchantment-level adds +100 item-power on the item, making e.g. .3 items as strong as a flat item 3 tiers above.
(to be specific, an artifact-item crafted with 8.3 would be even stronger then a “normal” item of tier 8.3)
Other factors play a role in the item-power, too – but the enchantment is one of the easiest to use for a power-boost.
Again – those gathering-boni only affect the current tier: so your fancy high mastery in TierX won’t improve your gathering of TierY.Gathering-speed:
Per mastery, you get +0,5 speed-modifier, so at 100/100 it’d be +50 “speed-modifier”
I’m not certain how it’s calculated, so it might be a +50% speed-buff or +33%.
I’d assume the latest, since it would be on-pair with our buff-food buff from last beta and ’cause SI never makes it that obvious/easy^^.
Gathering-yield:
In general – gathering-yield can be seen as a “chance to double the yield”
With +50% gathering-yield (100/100 mastery), in average each 2nd gathering you do gets doubled.
It however only uses the “normal” value – completely ignoring the premium. (Just so you know)
What makes gathering-yield so great is the fact, that it also rewards double the fame in addition to double the resources.
Basically, having +100% gathering-yield throws off twice the resources and twice the fame, so overall +100% progression-speed.
Therefore it can be simply used as a factor for progression.
Further on that, see the “Watchtowers” point of the guide.- The highest clusters on Royal are not T7 or T8, but both T6 – so I just copied the columns.
– Those “High/Medium/Low” can be ignored overall, since I colored the Tier of the resources to match the ingame-colors.
– The three lines for each color mean: primary, secondary and tertiary resources.
Example: Forest T6 cluster on Royal would have: 200 Trees(T6), 133 Leather(T6) and 66 Stone(T6).
– Each biome has three resources, those are:
Mountains: Ore > Stone > Fiber
Steppes: Hide > Fiber > Ore
Forest: Wood > Hide > Stone
Swamp: Fiber > Wood > Hide
Highlands: Stone > Ore > Wood
For everything Cluster <T7 the node-numbers are even similar to Royals.Important side-fact: Royal continent got a higher player-density, meaning you’ll still can have a lot less nodes “available” to gather there compared to Outlands.
The difference is much bigger for T7 and T8 nodes – since you got none of those on Royals.
You can see how the Outlands have a great density of T6 within the T7+ clusters.
– Creeps take the place of a Node, so they’re included in the node-number in last spoiler.
– Guardians are found in Hotspots(marked on world-map) and are basically raid-bosses.
There are some inconsistencies on lower-tiers, e.g.
– for T2 and T3 you gather 3 resources at a time, for T4 you gather 2 at once;
– as mentioned before, T8 is only available in Watchtowers and re-spawns with the prime-time (that’s why it says 0 under re-spawn time)
The total re-spawn of a resource depends on the re-spawn per charge. For T7 and T8 (and T6-Guardian) it’s instant with full size; For the other you’d have to see how much it re-spawns with and what’s its’ total size.
It means as much as, T6 fully respawns in 5x 58min(average) = ~5 hours.
I’ve also given the min and max numbers for the re-spawn time, although I can’t tell whether they tend to re-spawn around the average time, or are totally random within those boundaries.
– Based on those gathering-times, I used the Fame of flat-resources to calculate the fame-per-second (assuming you gather at 100% efficiency)
– To have it more realistic and therefore include the additional gathering-yield, I used some average numbers for Gathering-Gear-tier, masteries and buff-food.
(assumptions: Gathering-gear always at tier of tool, masteries while progressing in average at 10/100 and buff-food t3 for lower tiers, t5 for the more important ones and t7 with t8-tool)
– Premium is also included.
– The red marking means “unefficient”, green being the “focus that” and yellow “still fine” efficiency.
(Those totally ignore the enchantment, but we’ll get to this soon)
- Royal got “good” amount of nodes, but it gets less interesting if you take into account the traffic on that island.
- T7+ Clusters in Outlands are a heaven for T6 – which is very efficient to progress in once you got T6+ tool.
- While the enchantment-differences (around 5% for Low-Outlands vs. 22% for High-Outlands) are huge – for reasons mentioned further below I don’t see this being much of a big deal for the progression-phase of the gatherer.
- The re-spawn- and harvest-time sheet is pretty self-explanatory.
- Resources got a huge re-spawn-speed, so if you run over a 4.3 you can mine it empty and it could re-spawn up to 3 times
(=another 6 resources without premium/+yield) before it switches the color!(Not that camping it is efficient fame-wise, but shiny resources are always great.)
- Resources got a huge re-spawn-speed, so if you run over a 4.3 you can mine it empty and it could re-spawn up to 3 times
As for the Fame-per-second sheet:
My assumption was that you gather 100% of the time – leaving no room for travelling between the nodes.
This is not realistic, since you DO run between nodes while gathering.
Still, when you gather around your tier (e.g. you wear T5 tool and gather T6 or T5/T4) you spend a LOT more time actually gathering, then running between nodes. (Here, I also assume that you know where to gather…e.g. you don’t go into forest for stone, since forest got like 1/3 the density of stone compared to highlands)
Look at the following example on why those 100% are still a “fine” number to do math with:
So – you are 100% gathering during those 40 seconds.
How long does it take you now to jump on the next t6-node?
That’s an average of 1-2 seconds for me in Outlands, meaning out of those 42(=40+[1-2]) seconds 40 seconds are at 100% efficiency, so overall you’re well above 90% efficiency (40/42=95%)Another example:
I need 30 seconds to mine a node, and I need another 30 seconds to find the same node to gather again.
Therefore, out of those (30+30=) 60 seconds, I’ll be gathering only 30 seconds -> = 50% efficiency(=30/60)
You’d simply multiply my (based on 100%) numbers with those 50% (so, simply half) to get fame per second based on your efficiency.
30 seconds is a really long time. Try it out for yourself – in 30 seconds you can scout half the map^^
Therefore, most efficiency-values will be well above 80%-90% (again – depending on where and what you gather)
The extreme case would be mining T2/T3 with a T8 tool.
Those nodes are done within around a second, and you’ll need several seconds to get to the next node – making the efficiency way below 50%…therefore I marked those nodes as “not efficient”
Basically, focus your gathering on the tier of your tool and also pick up anything of the (one) tier below your tool.
For best progression: do NOT gather above your tool.
(Unless you’re doing stone, it may have exceptions/other priorities for a progress-oriented guild)How about enchanted resources?
Some earlier beta-stages, you were able to skip the flat resources and be more efficient by simply gathering enchanted.
This beta, it’s less obvious and not that strong.
(The fame-reward got lowered and the occurance of enchanted resources is more rare.)
Yet, for T6+ it’s still possible!
It’s almost twice as efficient for highest outlands-clusters (T7/T8) compared to T6-flat; but I wouldn’t bet on it for <T6 clusters.
This means, I gather a full 6.1 node every 50 seconds (40 seconds actual gathering + 10 seconds travel) for twice the fame of a 6.0 node.math it for 1 hour and you got: 90x 6.0 resources vs. 80x 6.1 resources.
Since those 6.1 give twice the fame of 6.0, you can say: 90 vs 2×80(=160) fame-comparison.
What is the max. travel-time to have 6.1 gathering more efficient then 6.0 gathering?
play around with the equation, and the answer is:
The travel-time between 6.1 needs to be shorter then the time to mine another 6.0 (=40 seconds+travel-time between 6.0)
With the travel-time between 6.0 being almost 0 in some areas, just stick to “travel-time between 6.1 < time to gather a second 6.0”
It leaves you around 40 seconds to play with, which should even be enough to find a 6.1 in less-dense clusters then Outlands-t8.
Due to the direct relation with travel-time between those nodes, focusing solely on 6.2 is not that efficient.
It’s just too rare. (unless you’re one of those lucky ones, who find a 6.2 every 1-2 minutes)
You’ll notice on the world-map how Royal and Low-Outlands have an enchantment-rate of around 5,5%, the medium-Outlands around 11% and High Outlands winning with 22%.What does it mean?
Every hour the resources re-roll their enchantment.
The above percentages are basically the chances on it getting enchanted
(for low Outlands: 5% on becoming .1; 0.5% for becoming .2; and 0.05% for it to proc .3)
Let’s put it into simpler numbers.
Out of 1000 nodes with 5,5% chance you’ll find in average:
50x green; 5x blue; 0,5x purple; remaining 944,5 being flat.
For the high Outlands, 22% chance, that would be different:
200x green; 20x blue; 2x purple; remaining 778 being flat
Can’t really say whether it’s broken or whatever, since most times you don’t have to deal with the other continents. The difference is even less for open-world action, since players don’t tend to bring their best gear to that one.
Gathering-armorWe got fancy gear for gathering
Therefore – it reduces the weight of the fitting resources in your inventory.
To be specific, it halves the weight of (corresponding) raw resources of the same tier and below.
Their stats are similar to a heavy armor – even if some of those pieces are crafted with leather/cloth.
Therefore – you’ll be very tanky with that armor, at the cost of damage-increases from normal armor.Gathering-equipment also has special skills in addition to most the generic ones (which you also have on the “base” armor)
Gathering-Skills are all about getting the fck out of nasty situations.
You’ll see
– more efficient sprints, which forbid you to attack/use skills
– shields and auras, which protect you from pointy melee-weapons
– cleanses, which get rid of unwanted slows or stuns or CC in general
– many more profession-tailored skills (like damage-skills for hunting down prey as a leather-gatherer)
As a bonus, this armor adds gathering-yield as a passive-skill (instead of your usual dmg-/cast-speed-/armor-/combat-buffs)
To have their full effect, the armor needs to be worn for several minutes – at which point the boni to gathering-yield are:
T4: +10%, T5: +20%,
T6: +30%, T7: +50%,
T8: +70%.
Overall – the gathering-armor is pretty much a must-have.
If you don’t like their unique skill-set, you still have more choices from the base-line.
Those skills are fairly well balanced – at least I haven’t felt the “need” to equip royal or hellgate or whatever-else armor instead of this gathering-gear.
Owning the local watchtower is a good boost for gathering.
Watchtower are also the ONLY source for T8-resources.
(You still can “raid” the enemies’ Watchtower, but it’s a lot easier to gather in there when you actually own it)
The buff is: +50% gathering-yield – which basically means, that you get extra-resources each 2nd harvest (in average)
This is stack-able with your other gathering-buffs from food/armor/masteries.
Example: you can get lucky and get from 1 gathering up to 4 resources: 1 normal + 1 (watchtower) +1(other bonus-yield) +1(premium)
For the fame it’s a little more tricky.
Fame counts towards the overall-yield without premium-yield; means:
1 normal resource (with or without 1 premium) = 1,5x normal-fame (1 normal + 50% premium)
2 normal resources (norm + 1 via yield with or without premium) = 3x normal fame ( [1norm +1extra] +50% premium)
3 normal resources (norm + 1 via yield + 1 via watchtower) = 4,5x normal fame ( [norm+extra+watchtower] +50% premium)
Overall – you get up to 3x the fame from gathering within a watchtower, while “only” up to 2x the fame outside of watchtower based on normal-fame of already 150% (including premium)*why I wrote “you” all capital:
You can kite your prey (creeps/animals) to the border of the territory (if kiting it into the watchtower is too far away/leashes the mob) and still benefit from the bonus by standing within the boundaries while skinning/harvesting the resource right outside.
One important side-note: The amount of T8 nodes are the SAME for t5-clusters(outlands) with watchtowers and t8-clusters(outlands) with watchtowers.
Meaning, at least for t8, it does not matter whether the cluster is t5 in front of Caerleon, or t8 next to some Raid.
There are some other reasons to fight over the T8 one, though (namely: have a save-spot within t8 cluster, also getting t7-spawns within the watchtower)The Primetime-Respawn makes things interesting.
As the name suggests, when the Cluster hits Primetime (the first hour of the shown Timeframe), every resources – including elementals – within that watchtower re-spawns!
This means, you can gather everything in that watchtower minutes before prime-time hits, and with the first second of the primetime, everything gets filled again.
For T8, this is the only way to get refilled.
Obviously, it’s best to take out any and every t8 before the re-spawn (since everything refills, it’d be best, or at least has not down-sides, to gather everything in there right before primetime)
Those are basically raid-bosses.Upon defeating those, they become mine-able with a total of 2560 available resources.
Have a bunch of gatherers do work on this (to speed up the process) and you can gather overall well above 5k resources (2500+50%(premium)+50%(average extra-yield))
(Now imagine it happens to be .3 – lul… not sure if possible, but 5k 6.3 would indeed be nice for any guild)
Even though 2.5k resources sounds like a lot of work, it really isn’t: You gather 10 resources at a time!
This means, that “effectively” it’s only 256 times 8 seconds of gathering – meaning a solo gatherer is done within half an hour. With 5 gatherers you can take it apart in less then 5 minutes.
Still need a bunch of Oxes to gather it, though. Or a mammoth.
Since it’s a raid-boss, you’ll need to bring a dozen of your buddies and treat it as any normal raid-boss.
Come prepared: with a full raid-composition, acceptable item-power and buff-food.
Careful with the zerg-buff, so bring only as many players as necessary (up to 12) – maybe 1-2 more.
Apparently, after a while they enrage – so kiting and tanking it for 1 hour is not a valid tactics.
I’ll just add this video here of a zerg trying some guardians; with well over 40 players they did zerg down the leather-guardian, but got 1-shotted by the wood-guardian.
It just happened to come up in discord and is from another guild. If the link doesn’t work – pn and I’ll find another vid, if needed.
Albionhelper.com
This site helps you a lot with tracking/finding the resource-nodes.
It shows all the “possible” resource-nodes (like >1000 possible ones) – from which only a part is active at a time.
(see the sheet above for number of nodes)
Even though that makes it look less reliable – you still can see the interesting parts of clusters.
You’ll know which areas got none of your interesting resources, and where are the most possible spawns.
To be efficient – cover/scout 90% of those possible spawns. Don’t run to the very corner of a cluster, just ’cause it “may have” 1 node.
It has a filter-option, where you can turn off any unwanted resources or tiers.
e.g., you can search for the cluster you’re interested in, and turn off everything but the one tier and resource you’re interested in.
For higher-tiered clusters (T7/T8), you’ll obv. not have huge amounts of T7 and T8
T8 is only in Watchtowers, means you don’t need to search for it.
T7 will have many, many “possible” spawns, but more then half of those will be t6-nodes.
You still can get the general area of where T7 could be available and where not. So – it shows you where to “not” scout/search and basically saves some time this way.
My thoughts on T8 being exclusive (Watchtowers)
I may be a little biased to it, being a member of a good guild and all, but I can still try to view it as objectively as possible:
– it’s a “multiplayer”-game. Joining groups/guilds for specific content doesn’t seem that wrong
– T8 is the highest tier in the game, to a degree where it’s not even relevant for the “casual” playerbase
– T7.3 has same item-power as T8.2, meaning only T8.3 would be “exclusive”
– due to possibility of raiding it, it’s not even that exclusive.
– very high amount of outland-Watchtowers in-game, many possible targets to conquer or raid
– conquering Watchtowers is now well rewarded by getting access to T8
– with time, it’ll be seen as much of a “given” as no-pvp in green clusters
– with time, it’ll be accessible to other players via marketplace
While I don’t see many cons with adding a few “free” t8 nodes in specific areas (maybe in the actual t8 clusters) – I also don’t see real issues with keeping this new system. Eventually, players will get used to it.
As a new player with big ambitions, I’d simply assume “Hmm…T8 is for watchtowers only? Well – join a guild and conquer or raid that sh!t – easy!”
Very similar thought to how new players view Raid-content. Nobody assumes to get the very best “whatever” from solo/casual-accessible content.
There have been whole topics on this recent change – so, write your complains to those.
Recent Comments