Best Refining City Setup in Albion Online (2026)
July 9, 2026
Why the refining city setup decides your profit
Refining looks simple — turn ore into bars, hide into leather — but where you refine changes your profit more than almost any other choice. The reason is the Resource Return Rate (RRR): each city gives a production bonus to one resource family, and that bonus is handed back to you as returned materials. Refine in the right city with focus and you get more than half your inputs back. Refine in the wrong one and you leave a fortune on the table.
This guide covers which city refines what, the exact return-rate formula, and how to turn it into silver. For your specific resources and live prices, plug the numbers into our calculator.
The refining bonus cities
Each royal city gives a refining bonus to exactly one resource. Refine there — or in a matching-bonus hideout — to get the higher return rate:
| Resource | Refine into | Best city |
|---|---|---|
| Ore | Metal Bars | Thetford |
| Wood | Planks | Fort Sterling |
| Hide | Leather | Martlock |
| Fiber | Cloth | Lymhurst |
| Rock | Stone Blocks | Bridgewatch |
Raws come from gathering, and they are heavy, so plan the route: buy or gather near the source, refine in the bonus city, and sell where crafters buy. Our gathering guide covers where each resource comes from.
The return rate math (this is the whole game)
Resource Return Rate is driven by your total production bonus, and the formula is:
Add up your bonuses — the station's base bonus, the city specialty bonus, focus, and the daily bonus — then apply the formula. Here is the ladder that produces the return rates you will see quoted everywhere:
| Setup | Total production bonus | Return rate |
|---|---|---|
| Base station, no bonus city, no focus | ~0.18 | ~15.3% |
| In the bonus city, no focus | ~0.58 | ~36.7% |
| Bonus city + focus | ~1.17 | ~53.9% |
Focus adds roughly +0.59 to the production bonus, which lifts your return rate by about half again — from ~36.7% to ~53.9% in the bonus city. That returned material is pure profit: at ~54% you are getting more than half your inputs back every refine.
The exact station and specialty bonuses vary by city and building, so treat this ladder as the shape of the math and use the calculator for precise per-item numbers.
Focus: your most valuable resource
Premium accounts regenerate up to 10,000 focus per day. Because focus sharply lifts your return rate, spending it on refining is one of the highest-value uses in the game — and unlike crafting quality, refining returns don't depend on your specialization level, so focus pays off immediately even on a fresh account. On top of that, the daily bonus adds +0.10 (silver day) or +0.20 (gold day) to the production bonus of the refining and crafting categories the Activities menu highlights that day.
Don't forget the fees
Refining isn't free. Two costs eat into the return:
- Station usage fee, based on the item's value (roughly
item value × 0.1125 × the station's fee rate). - Sales tax when you sell the output — 8% without premium, 4% with premium — plus a 2.5% setup fee if you list a sell order instead of instant-selling.
The return rate almost always outweighs these, but on thin margins they decide whether a refine is worth it. The calculator folds fees, tax and return rate into one profit number so you don't have to.
Wrap-up
The best refining setup is simple to state and lucrative to follow: refine each resource in its bonus city, always use focus when you can, and take the daily bonus. That path turns a ~15% return into ~54% — more than half your materials back — before you even sell. Feed it with your own raws using the gathering guide, or skip production entirely and profit from price gaps in our Black Market flipping guide.