ALBION ONLINE CITY FACTION WARFARE
Faction warfare ( abbreviated as FW) is a game mechanic whereby you can sign up to fight for one of the five city factions (against its enemy faction) for control over certain areas of royal continent.
Faction warfare is primarily centered around (red and yellow) special war zones. In these zones, players who participate in Factional Warfare attempt to conquer Magical Rune stones for their city, and are rewarded with loyalty points and increased faction standings for their efforts.
Joining as a solo player
Join Factional Warfare through the Royal Officer NPC in a city you wish to fight for
Any player can join Factional Warfare provided that their standings towards the city faction (e.g. Martlock or Fort Sterling) .
If you join as a solo player, you will leave your current guild (be it a player-run or NPC guild) and automatically join one of the five city guilds (NPC-run guilds which are populated exclusively by other players enlisted in Factional Warfare for a given city):
- Thetford: ?
- Lymhurst: Defenders of the Royal Forest
- Bridgewatch: ?
- Fort Sterling: ?
- Martlock: ?
Joining as a solo player happens immediately, unless you have higher ranks in a player-run guild (in which case it takes at least 24 hours to relinquish your roles and leave your guild).
When you joined a city faction, you won’t able to visit enemy city/cities anymore also you get some production bonuses in your city depends on your royalty points.
The leader of the guild who owns the city will be able to decide on which side his city will be in the faction warfare and if he wishes he can establish an alliance between his own city and any other city.
The core Factional Warfare gameplay of capturing magical control rune stones and completing open world city missions takes place exclusively within the royal continent(red and yellow war zones)
The core mechanics of Factional Warfare revolve around capturing and holding regions in the war zones. This occurs in two steps:
Capturing regions for your city faction.
Attacking and destroying magical energy rune stones in open-world to make the region vulnerable to capture.
Once the region is vulnerable, attack and destroy (“capture”) the Outpost to capture the region.
A region starts off as “stable” (or “uncontested”). The attacking faction (for instance, players moving for the Fort Sterling attacking a Lymhurst-held region) must first attack and captures rune stones in the region ; for each captured runes, the region becomes ever more “contested” (commonly quoted from 0% to 100%). Once a region has become 100% contested, it is listed as “vulnerable”, and the attacking faction can then attack the region’s city outpost(Magical barrier doesn’t protect it anymore). Once the outpost is destroyed, the region is considered “lost” and will switch to the attacking city faction’s control after the next downtime.
During this time, the defending faction can also capture rune stones in the region for each captured runes, the region becomes ever less “contested” (or, if it’s currently “vulnerable”, it will revert to being “contested”), all the way back to “stable”. Their Outpost will have a magical protection barrier again.
While a region is “vulnerable” or “lost”, the attacking faction may still capture runes, but they will not get any reward nor affect the region’s capture. Additionally, once a region is “vulnerable”, the defending faction needs only to capture a few runes to revert the region to “contested” (and therefore render Outpost invulnerable again); the attacking faction only create a small “buffer” against this by capturing more runes while the region is “vulnerable”. Similarly, once the defending faction has captured enough runes to revert a region to “stable”, the attacking faction only needs to capture one runes to put the region back to “contested” so their newly built outpost will be protected by a magical protection again.
Obviously, in addition to the mechanics above, players can (and should!) attack the other faction’s players to stop them from completing their objectives!
Rune Stones (Just like runes in Arenas with a difference)
At the center of each rune stone area, a few away centre of the rune area circle, An NPC boss belonging to the city controlling the region defends the rune stone.
Once a rune stone has been captured, it disappears from the region and despawns after a few minutes. A new rune stone of the same size will spawn about 30 minutes after the previous one was captured. On average, there will be one or two rune stones of each size in an region.
However, if many players have been active in a region recently, it may be the case that, for a brief time, there are no rune stones available to capture.
Rune stone areas come in four types, called “sizes”. They vary in how many players are allowed to enter at the same time, what NPC defends them, and how long it takes to capture them. While each type of rune area contributes the same amount to capturing a region(measured in victory points), capturing larger rune stones result in higher rewards. Additionally, capturing rune stones in enemy-held regions gives higher rewards than capturing rune stones in friendly-held regions.
Small : Max 2 player and only max 1 player per faction. (1vs1)
Medium: Max 6 player total and Max 3 in same city faction. (3vs3,3vs2,2vs2,2vs1,1vs1)
Large: Max 10 players total and Max 5 in same city faction(max 5vs5 or lower )
Rune stones are defended by a single NPC boss , it’s designed to be killed without too much trouble by a player of similar power level. Once killed, the NPC defender will respawn after between 90 and 180 seconds for small rune stones. In medium and large rune stones, the NPC respawns after between 90 and 300 seconds.
Outposts
The Outpost is a structure in a region which the attacking city faction needs to destroy in order to capture a region. The Outpost can be found from the mini-map, but can only be damaged if it is in a “vulnerable” state(without any protection barrier), and then only by playes of the attacking faction (Players of the defending faction, players in their allied city faction, or neutral players cannot damage the Outpost).
The Outpost has huge amount of hitpoints (HP). This means that a zerg is needed to destroy an Outpost in a reasonable period of time (keeping in mind that it has high health rg rate), which is the absolute minimum amount of DPS needed to destroy it). Once the Outpost is destroyed , the region will be “lost” and will switch to being occupied by the attacking city faction after the next downtime.
As explained above, if a region is “vulnerable”, and if the defending faction can capture enough rune stones, the region will revert back to “contested”. The Outpost will then become invulnerable again(loses it’s energy barries), and any damage which the attacking city faction has so far managed to do to it is reset. Therefore, while attacking the Outpost, the attacking faction must also prevent the defending faction from capturing rune stones.
The Outpost is also the place where players of the defending faction can donate loyalty points to upgrade the Outpost itself.
Victory points
Formally, how “contested” a region is is measured in how many victory points have been accumulated by the attacking faction for that region. If the attacking faction has not yet accumulated any victory points for that region, then the region is “stable”, and if they then capture a rune (regardless of its size) they are rewarded with 20 victory points. (conversely, if the defending faction captures a rune, 20 victory points are subtracted). In order to bring a region to “vulnerable”, the attacking faction must accumulate 3000 victory points (i.e. capture 150 runes more than the defending faction). Once a region is vulnerable, the attacking faction can continue capturing runes until they have a “buffer” of 100 victory points; this is to give themselves some breathing room while they attack the Outpost.
Open World Events and City Missions
Missions in Factional Warfare: Killing NPC trade caravans of a city in open world etc. Reward is Loyalty Point.
“Destroy trade caravans of the rival city traveling in open world. “
“Hurry your city needs you ! It is under attack by Earth Mother. Protect it and earn royalty points”
Killing enemy city player
You will also receive loyalty points based on the power of the player you killed
As with capturing runes, if several players are involved in killing a player, the reward is shared equally between them. The LP reward scales with faction tier.
Region upgrades
A region can be upgraded by donating loyalty points (LP) at the region’s Outpost.
Players participating in City Factional Warfare can donate the loyalty points (LP) they earned with their city guild to “upgrade” the regions which their faction currently controls. To do this, they must go to the region’s outpost, deside how much LP they would like to donate.
When you donate LP, a part is lost as a “maintenance tax” (for example, if you donate 1000 LP, and the maintenance tax is 5%, then only 950 LP are actually counted towards upgrading the region). The maintenance tax starts at 0% and increases the higher their faction’s tier is, up to about 75%. The LP you donate is put into a pool with the LP donated by other players from your faction in that region, and the size of that pool determines the region’s upgrade level. A region can be upgraded up to level 5.
Beyond providing benefits for the region itself, upgrading regions also contributes to the overall tier of the war zone, which can bring additional benefits.
The amount of LP in a region’s pool is reduced every time a player from the attacking faction captures a rune in that region; 10% of the LP reward they receive is subtracted from the region’s LP pool
A Lymhurst player captures a small rune in a region belongs to Fort Sterling. Lymhurst Player is rewarded (say) 10,000 LP for her efforts, and hence, the Fort Sterling’s LP pool for that region is reduced by 10% of that (1,000 LP in this case).
If the amount of LP in the pool drops below the threshold required for the current region level, then the region’s upgrade level will drop accordingly. The defending faction can counteract this by donating more LP to the pool; even if the region is at level 5, they can continue donating LP into a so-called “buffer” (i.e. more LP than is needed to reach level 5) to stop the region dropping to level 4 as soon as one enemy player captures a rune.
If a region is captured by the attacking faction, then all the upgrades are lost and the region reverts to its base (i.e. “un-upgraded”) state.
Faction tier
The more regions in a war zone a city controls and the more those regions are upgraded, the higher the rewards the players who fight for that faction receive. This is represented by the “faction tier” mechanic: each faction receives a point for each region they control in their war zone, plus an additional point for every region level upgrade .
The main effect of faction tier is that it affects how many loyalty points you receive for various activities you do in City Factional Warfare; the higher your faction’s tier, the higher your rewards
Tier 1: -50% LP rewards
Tier 2: (no effect)
Tier 3: +75% LP rewards
Tier 4: +150% LP rewards
Tier 5: +225% LP rewards
This bonus affects all activities which reward Factional Warfare LP, notably capturing runes and completing missions.
Rewards
While the primary reason for Factional Warfare is to encourage solo PvP in Royal continent, solo players are also rewarded directly for participating in the Factional Warfare mechanics.
Runes and Outposts
If you capture a rune you are rewarded with loyalty points (for your city faction’s guild, so a player fighting for the Lymhurst would receive LP for the Defenders of Royal Forest). The LP rewards for capturing a rune in an enemy-held region depend on the size of the rune and on your faction’s tier. You have to be within the rune capture radius at the moment it’s completed (i.e. when the timer runs out) to receive a reward; if there are multiple player within the rune at the moment it’s completed, the LP reward is split evenly between them (irrespective of how long they have been there).
If you capture a rune in a friendly-held region ,you receive a reduced reward based on how contested the region is.
This means capturing a rune in a friendly-held region will pay out, at most, 75% as much as capturing an equivalent rune in an enemy-held region, and the closer the region is to “stable”, the lower the reward.
The base reward(depends of Outpost tier) for destroying an outpost is really high, split between all the players who damaged the Outpost.
Factional Warfare LP store
The five city faction guild each have a LP store where you can buy special items with the LP you have earned.
Standings and city guild ranks
Participating in Factional Warfare can impact your standings towards, notably, the City guild. High standings towards your City Faction Guild not only grants you access to higher-level expeditions, but also awards you “ranks” (which are visible in your character profile). You are promoted to a higher rank every time your standings reach an integer number ; you also receive a higher guild rank in your city guild. Otherwise, your rank is purely cosmetic. The more you fight for your city faction guild, the higher the position you’ll get in that guild. You can become highest Right-Hand of your faction City Guild. Guild master always will be the guild leader which owns the city itself.
Leaving Factional Warfare
You can leave Factional Warfare at any time through the guild window if you joined as a solo player You will keep any loyalty points you have earned, but will no longer be able to participate in the formal Factional Warfare mechanics (capturing rune stones and regions).
After you leave Factional Warfare the players of your enemy factions will still attack you for several hours in war zones so be careful when you attempt to travel. Waiting 16 hours is long enough for the enemy players to forget about you.
