Faction Warfare

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 five cities of the Royal Continent: Thetford, Fort Sterling, Lymhurst, Martlock and Bridgewatch.

This article is based on the "brief guide to FW" from the forums. Please help improve it with additional info.

Joining a Faction

• You can join a faction (aka "enlist", "flag" or "flag up") in any of the Royal Cities. 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 full loot conditions by players flagged to enemy factions.
• Certain zones will automatically unflag the player upon entering, including Hellgates, Arena, GvGs, and Expeditions.
• Certain zones are not enterable while faction flagged: other faction cities and starter towns, Caerleon, and the Outlands.
• 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

Bar indicator when a player un-flags from a faction.

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.

Faction Points and Standing

• Flagged players receive faction points and faction standing for collecting fame via PvE, gathering, fishing, and outpost capturing (see below).
• 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
• Faction Crests:
  • a token that allows you to craft powerful new faction capes
• Faction Reputation:
  • 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 autoattack
    • Effect: Releases Chain Lighting, dealing magic damage to up to 4 enemies. (The damage scales with Item Power)
    • Cooldown: 20

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)

Outposts

• Most of the wilderness clusters 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

Trade Missions

• Trade Missions can be accepted from the Faction NPC.
• Missions cost City Heart resources, which can be obtained with Faction Points.
• To accept a quest, the player needs to meet the conditions - for example, 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
  • 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 the rival faction's City Heart resource
• There are 12 different missions in each Faction City:
  • 1 option for each rival faction city, with
  • 3 different levels of mission item weight (light, medium, heavy)
    • light and medium can be done on foot (when using equipment in a clever way)
    • heavy will require at least the carrying capacity of an ox
  • 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, 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.

Trade Mission Rewards by Size and Length:

	Short Distance (~3 zones)	Moderate Distance (~5 zones)	Long Distance (~10 zones)
Small Package (125 kg)	Cost: 3 hearts Reward: 4 hearts	Cost: 3 hearts Reward: 5 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: 13 hearts
Large Package (TBD kg)	Cost: 15 hearts Reward: 19 hearts	Cost: 15 hearts Reward: 21 hearts	Cost: 15 hearts Reward: 26 hearts

Images of Faction Generals

(unhappy with the sizing so far, needs better pictures)

Image	Faction	Name
	Martlock	Warmaster Angus McCraig
	Lymhurst	Captain Flynn Swift
	Fort Sterling	General Thora Ironheart
	Bridgewatch	Commander Yara Sunblaze
	Thetford	Archmage Lymond Ashmoor