Faction Warfare
General Information
Faction Warfare is a feature that was introduced with the Merlyn patch. The different factions of Albion are now at war with each other.
The different factions are named after the six cities of the Royal Continent: Thetford, Fort Sterling, Lymhurst, Martlock, Bridgewatch and Caerleon
The official video tutorials for the Call to Arms update can be found on the forum post here: https://forum.albiononline.com/index.php/Thread/147438-Video-Guide-series-on-Faction-Warfare/
Joining a Faction
- You can join a faction (aka "enlist", "flag" or "flag up") in any of the Royal Cities, and Caerleon.
- You can only enlist for the faction that is based in that city, and you will have to travel to that particular city each time you want to re-flag with that faction.
- Flagged players can be attacked anywhere on the Royal Continent (even blue and yellow zones) under zone type conditions by players flagged to enemy factions. Blue and yellow zones result in knockdown, in red zones result in player death. All the black zones will take flag away from the player, as there is no faction wars in black zones.
- Certain zones will automatically unflag the player upon entering, including Hellgates, Arena, Expeditions, and the Mists.
- Certain zones are not enterable while faction flagged: other faction cities, starter towns and Roads of Avalon
- Flagged players will have a modified logout time in blue and yellow zones.
- Flagged players have to unflag to be safe in blue and yellow zones.
- Flagged players have a new respawn option, "Faction City":
- If selected: Player will keep their faction flagging and will be teleported into their faction city.
- If another respawn option is selected (Home, Territory, etc.), the player will lose their faction flagging when respawning.
Un-flagging
You can unflag from a Faction the same way you can for PvP mode, just click the shield icon next to your avatar on the top left of the screen.
Leaving a Faction
- To join another Faction just head to the Faction's main city you wish to join and talk with the Faction NPC and press the "Enlist" Button
- When switching Faction's a portion of your current standing will be transferred to your new Faction. The untransferred portion of your Standing will be lost.
Faction Points and Standing
- Flagged players receive faction points and faction standing for collecting fame via PvE, gathering, fishing, and outpost capturing (see below).
- Faction Points: Currency that used to purchase faction items. When you buy something from the Faction Store, you spend Faction Points.
- Faction Standing: A numerical value indicting your standing within a particular faction. This number determines your rank (title).
- Faction Rank: A title given to the player based upon the numerical Faction Standing. Example titles are Recruit, Guard, Ranger, etc, although some titles are tailored to fit the theme of each city and faction.
- The amount of faction points earned depends on the amount of fame the player receives - however, the cluster bonus does not apply.
- The amount of standing earned, in turn, depends on the number of faction points the player receives.
- The player's rank with the faction they currently represent will give a bonus to the faction points they receive and in turn the amount of standing they receive.
- Points and standing remain with the player, and cannot be lost or dropped.
Faction NPCs
- Each faction has an NPC in its city who will:
- allow you to flag for that city's faction
- allow flagged players to start trade missions for their faction
- offer rewards in exchange for faction points
- Next to this NPC is a stack of crates which offers Trade Missions to Smuggler Outposts (more details on Trade Missions can be found below).
(todo: insert example images of UI & crates on the right side)
Faction Rewards
- City Heart Fragments:
- Each city offers a special resource unique to its faction's biome. These can be used for:
- resource refinement
- crafting faction-specific capes and mounts
- Each city offers a special resource unique to its faction's biome. These can be used for:
- Faction Crests:
- a token that allows you to craft powerful new faction capes
- Faction Standing:
- High reputation is required for purchasing high tier rewards
Faction Capes
- Faction capes include the following spells (stats and effects are subject to change):
- Sandstorm (Bridgewatch Cape)
- Condition: Activates when you cast a spell.
- Creates a 3.5m radius sandstorm at your position. Reduces move speed and attack speed by 40% for all enemies inside the area. (Sandstorm duration 5s)
- Cooldown: Scales with IP (100 IP = 63s, 1300 IP = 45s).
- Untouchable (Fort Sterling Cape)
- Condition: Automatically activates when you get stunned or rooted
- Effect: Removes any movement-impairing and debuff effects from you. (Doesn't remove damage-over-time spells)
- Cooldown: scales with IP (100 IP = 136s, 1300 IP 100s)
- Energy Reserve (Lymhurst Cape)
- Condition: Activates when you cast a spell and your energy drops below 40%
- Effect: Restores 4% energy per second for 10 seconds.
- Cooldown: scales with IP (100 IP = 162s, 1300 IP = 120s)
- Shield of Protection (Martlock Cape)
- Condition: Activates when you take damage and your health is below 30%.
- Effect: Increases your defense by 80% for 5s
- Cooldown: scales with IP (100 IP = 188s, 1300 IP = 140s)
- Chain Lightning (Thetford Cape)
- Condition: Activates on normal attack
- Effect: Releases Chain Lighting, dealing magic damage to up to 4 enemies. (The damage scales with Item Power)
- Cooldown: 20
- Opportunist (Caerleon Cape)
- Condition: Activates when you use your weapon first-slot-ability.
- Effect: Resets the cooldown of your first-slot-ability.
- Cooldown: scales with IP (1000 IP = 34s, 1100 IP = 29s)
- Sandstorm (Bridgewatch Cape)
Faction Baby Animals & Mounts
- New Baby Animals:
- These new baby animals can be placed in a kennel to grow into tame animals. The grown animals can be crafted into faction mounts.
- Faction Mounts:
- Saddled Moabird (Bridgewatch)
- Saddled Winter Bear (Fort Sterling)
- Saddled Wild Boar (Lymhurst)
- Saddled Bighorn Ram (Martlock)
- Saddled Swamp Salamander (Thetford)
- Saddled Greywolf (Caerleon)
- Faction Elite Mounts:
- Elite Terrorbird (Bridgewatch)
- Elite Winterbear (Fort Sterling)
- Elite Wildboar (Lymhurst)
- Elite Bighorn Ram (Martlock)
- Elite Swamp Salamander (Thetford)
- Elite Greywolf (Caerleon)
Outposts
- Most of the zones on the Royal Continent have at least one faction warfare outpost.
- These outposts always belong to only one faction at a time and can be captured by any of the other four factions.
- To capture an outpost, players must:
- Defeat the champion and the guards who defend it
- Capture the outpost by remaining in the area for a set amount of time, uninterrupted by enemy faction players
- After an outpost is captured by a faction, it belongs to this new faction and goes into a cooldown of 20 minutes.
- During this cooldown, it cannot be captured by any faction.
- After the cooldown, any faction who doesn't own the outpost can recapture the outpost for themselves, and so on.
- Typically, outpost boss fights are successfully attempted with at least 3 players. More players in the group will be safer against other factions, but each player will receive a lesser reward.
- The faction boss will reward faction points, faction standing, fame, and Silver to the group doing the most damage.
- However, a big portion of the reward will come from capturing the outpost itself:
- Capturing the outpost rewards points, standing, Fame, and Silver
- Players must have an average item power of at least 700 equipped to receive a share of the reward
- The higher a player's item power, the higher their share
- This reward will be shared with all players of the capturing faction near the outpost's position
- During a Bandit Assault, the outposts in the Red zone around Caerleon are all reset to be owned by Caerleon.
- Bandit Assault is a 1-hour event that happens several times a day at random times.
- Faction points are increased if you participate in the bandit assault by taking or defending outposts. You must be faction flagged at the end to ensure you get the bonus if you did not get it before the time expires.
Trade Missions
- Trade Missions can be accepted from the Faction NPCs.
- Missions cost City Heart resources, which can be obtained with Faction Points or through the markets.
- To accept a quest, the player needs to meet the conditions: the player cannot be overburdened after accepting the quest (and the quest items are very heavy!).
- The player will fail the mission if:
- the player is killed or knocked down.
- the player removes the mission item from their inventory.
- the player loses their faction affiliation.
- Mission flow:
- The mission will send the player with a crate of their own faction's City Heart resources to a Smuggler Outpost close to a rival faction city.
- The player will exchange the mission item at the Smuggler Outpost for another crate filled with the rival faction's City Heart resource.
- There is a protective zone around the Smuggler Outpost that prevents players from being attacked.
- Trading the mission items with the smuggler NPC will provide the player with a 30-second Invisibility buff.
- The player will have to return the new items safely to their own faction city.
- If the exchanged resources are safely returned, the player will be rewarded with rival faction's City Heart resources.
- There are 12 different missions in each Faction City:
- 1 option for each rival faction city.
- 3 different levels of mission item weight (light, medium, heavy).
- The heavier the quest item, the higher the reward.
- The further the destination, the higher the reward.
- If a player doing a trade mission is killed or knocked down (depending if he is in safe or lethal zone), they will lose the mission item. However, from a looting perspective, they will not drop the mission item but will instead drop a quantity of City Heart resources of the type they were currently carrying.
Short Distance | Moderate Low Distance | Moderate High Distance | Long Distance | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Small Package
(125 kg) |
Cost: 3 hearts
Reward: 4 hearts |
Cost: 3 hearts
Reward: 5 hearts |
Cost: 3 hearts
Reward: 6 hearts |
Cost: 3 hearts
Reward: 7 hearts |
Medium Package
(688kg) |
Cost: 7 hearts
Reward: 9 hearts |
Cost: 7 hearts
Reward: 10 hearts |
Cost: 7 hearts
Reward: 11 hearts |
Cost: 7 hearts
Reward: 13 hearts |
Large Package
(1623 kg) |
Cost: 15 hearts
Reward: 18 hearts |
Cost: 15 hearts
Reward: 21 hearts |
Cost: 15 hearts
Reward: 23 hearts |
Cost: 15 hearts
Reward: 26 hearts |
Images of Faction Generals
(unhappy with the sizing so far, needs better pictures)
Image | Faction | Name |
---|---|---|
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Martlock | Warmaster Angus McCraig |
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Lymhurst | Captain Flynn Swift |
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Fort Sterling | General Thora Ironheart |
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Bridgewatch | Commander Yara Sunblaze |
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Thetford | Archmage Lymond Ashmoor |
Related Patch Notes
Patch Link | Date | Patch Name | Patch Notes |
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Version 20.000.1 | 8 June 2022 | Into the Fray Update |
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Version 18.110.1 | 13 October 2021 | Call to Arms Patch 11 |
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Version 18.100.1 | 21 September 2021 | Call to Arms Patch 10 |
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Version 18.090.1 | 28 July 2021 | Call to Arms Patch 9 | The behavior of the Bandit Ringleader (Caerleon Faction boss) has been updated:
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Version 18.040.1 | 6 May 2021 | Call to Arms Patch 4 (Balance Patch) |
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Version 18.030.1 | 19 April 2021 | Call to Arms Patch 3 |
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Version 18.020.1 | 31 March 2021 | Call to Arms Patch 2 and Hotfix 2.1 |
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Version 18.020.1 | 31 March 2021 | Call to Arms Patch 2 and Hotfix 2.1 |
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Version 18.020.1 | 31 March 2021 | Call to Arms Patch 2 and Hotfix 2.1 |
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Version 18.010.1 | 25 March 2021 | Call to Arms Patch 1 |
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Version 18.000.1 | 17 March 2021 | Call to Arms Update | The layout of Caerleon has been completely revamped and the Royal Continent has gained 37 new regions. These regions have been balanced with Faction Warfare in mind, including Trade Missions and the new Bandit Assault event:
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Version 18.000.1 | 17 March 2021 | Call to Arms Update | Faction Warfare has been completely reworked and updated:
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Version 18.000.1 | 17 March 2021 | Call to Arms Update | Caerleon is now a playable sixth city in Faction Warfare. To match its identity as a hub of bandits and thieves, Caerleon Faction gameplay differs in several important ways:
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Version 1.16.393.162877 | 25 March 2020 | Queen Patch 8 | With Queen Patch 8, players who are flagged hostile and players who are flagged for Faction Warfare can no longer attack each other in yellow zones. This is to prevent cases where a hostile player knocks down a faction-flagged player who is then executed by other faction-flagged players. Details:
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Version 1.14.379.138841 | 20 March 2019 | Oberon Update - Oberon Update Hotfix #1, #2, and #3 | Faction Bosses
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Version 1.12.365.124104 | 15 August 2018 | Merlyn Patch #2 | Trade Missions
To reconcile the risk of Faction Trade Missions with their rewards, the weight of the Medium Trade Mission quest item "Unsuspicious Boxes" was increased from 288.5kg to 688kg. Transporting this item will now generally require mounts with higher load capacity (such as regular horses, stags, and oxen) and exclude many mounts with higher survivability. This increases the risk of these lucrative missions, and brings them more in line with the current rewards. Faction Bosses
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Version 1.12.365.123575 | 8 August 2018 | Merlyn Patch #1 |
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Version 1.12.365.123101 | 31 July 2018 | Merlyn Update | Enlist with one of the five Royal cities to earn faction points and standing. In addition to engaging in full-loot, open-world PvP with enemy factions in all zones, faction-flagged players can:
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Version 1.11.362.119971 | 20 June 2018 | Lancelot Patch #9 |
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