The Arelithian Economy: You Can't Eat Gold

[The Rambling Midget]

And unless you're a Melnik, you probably don't want to wear it either, yet it's the most sought after substance on the island.

As many have noticed, Arelith's economy is no longer flourishing, as it once did. With the increasing influx of gold over the past few years, merchants are uncommon, crafters are rare, and only the most profitable of items are created for sale in shops. Long passed are the days of tailor shops in every town with one of every craftable item. It's been ages since I've seen a carpenter in business, and cooks appear to be nothing more than healing kit factories on legs.

Why has this happened? Those who would be gatherers - warrior and adventurer types - no longer have any incentive to lug huge bundles of resources and supplies back to merchants. Who wants to carry a bag of bear pelts, a sack of sand and coal, two bushels of fruit, a barrel of salt, a cart of meat, and a bucket of ore back to a merchant when dropping the weight and making another pass around the farming circuit will yield twice as much gold?

Some PC merchants have attempted to inflate values to account for the increased prevalence of gold, but it's been met with a lot of resistance, in part because many older players are still set in their ideas of what certain items are worth, and also because the NPC merchant prices have not increased along with the shift, giving players skewed apparent values for crafted items.

Why was this change made? It was the hope of the staff that increasing the gold income rate would make life easier for casual players who don't have the desire or the time to craft their own items, ingratiate themselves to a benefactor, or simply grind their way into enough gold to pay for expensive equipment and consumables. For a while, this was achieved, while the economy was still finding its new direction. Now, however, it is apparent to me (and I don't blame the staff at all for experimenting) that it has backfired. Yes, gold is much easier to get. It takes effort to not be a millionaire before hitting epics. But, there's no longer much of anything to do with it.

Why is this a problem? As previously stated, adventurers no longer have an incentive to gather things to sell to merchants. On top of this, crafters no longer have an incentive to craft things, because they can go out and farm for gold, just like the adventurers. They'll craft items if it's lucrative enough, but in the open market that's mostly limited to alchemical goods and high value consumables. With so few items on the open market, PCs are forced to go to other PCs to get one-off crafted items. This is a good thing. But, since there aren't many merchants putting their names out there and earning reputations for quality, punctuality, and integrity, most players will choose to go somewhere they know they can be assured of those things: OOC friends and acquaintances. This is not a good thing, as it encourages cliquey behavior and OOC planning, and discourages community wide interconnection.

Most of that is secondary, with the largest issue being that gold decreases dependence. The more liquid your assets are, the less you are dependent on others to realize their value. If all you have are chickens, you're going to have to take those chickens to somebody who wants them in order to barter for the things that you need. If you have a sack of gold, you can walk into any store and buy what you want. There's a chance you'll come across a shopkeep who prefers barter over gold, but all you have to do then is walk another ten paces to the next store that takes coins. The effect of this is that players are deprived of the interaction which would result from meetings for trade and service. The larger effect stemming from this is that players miss introductions which would lead them to continue those interactions in the absence of necessity.

Merchants don't do what they do for the sole purpose of amassing wealth. (Most of them, anyway.) They're organizers. They are the ones who spend their lives piling up gold, so that they can pay others exorbitant sums of money to do what they want without asking too many questions. This is how wars are fought, political regimes are toppled, and masterminds rise to power. In a world where everyone is independently wealthy, this is impossible. Absent wealth as a driving force, the only motivation left is ideology, and that doesn't lead to much variation. You can try to pay a mercenary to do something for you, but if they're any good, they're already going to be rich from farming, and you're going to have to empty out your entire bank account to convince them to walk you down the street.

How can this be remedied? Well, that's the point of this thread. Rather than directly making a suggestion on my own, I'd like to hear what others think about the overarching ramifications of Arelith's withered economy, and how it might be repaired or revamped to provide a greater benefit to the community.

My own opinion is that the greatest loss has been creation of and interaction with trade conglomerates with ulterior motives, which might use their monetary influence to shift the IC dynamics of the server. My solution would be to decrease gold drops, (Yeah, I know.) while increasing the output of resource deposits, so that the accumulation of wealth becomes more about interaction with other players, and especially crafters, than the wholesale slaughter of NPCs for their lunch money, and so that what gold remains flowing is directed toward the player economy rather than NPC merchants.

What does everyone else think?

[Cortex]

Aren't gold drops less than they were at first now?

First everything dropped gold once.
Then everything dropped gold for everyone, lots of it.
Now only monsters that make sense having gold drop it.

Has it not stabilized yet? None of my past characters paid much attention to economics and shops.

[Scimiter]

My main was a active merchant during the good times that you described but sadly I was away for a time and came back to the current economy.

I agree with your assessment to the cause Midg but hate the idea of gold sinks. When you make something really expensive but desirable you create farmers rather than RPers. To make the gold to get that desirable thing people feel the need to rush to epic.

[The Rambling Midget]

Aren't gold drops less than they were at first now?

Between 2013 and 2014, everyone could pick up their own sum of gold once from each corpse, and then it was changed back, but overall gold drops have vastly increased with the introduction of new dungeons with wealthier NPCs. Kohlingen is one of the most recognizable places, but there are others which I won't name on the forums that have similarly large gold drops.

I agree with your assessment to the cause Midg but hate the idea of gold sinks.

I don't think I put anything about gold sinks in there.

[grip]

Places that drop insane amounts of gold along with 1x1 or 1x2 items of maximum shop value should be nerfed. There are still many creatures that drop masses of gold that should not be carrying gold.

Glad this was brought up, needs attention.

[Cortex]

In that case, the gold drop from certain dungeons should be tweaked. It sounds like a more simple solution.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I just think things need to be more volatile. Since Arelith is not as violent as it once was, "going out and farming" is a lot safer. The death of powerful factions means widespread conflict is not a looming threat or responsibility. It's totally safe to go out and just kill things.

I very much remember playing as a Myon elf years ago, and you'd just always be afraid to be lurking around certain areas because of drow sightings. Or, when I was playing a pseudo-assassin after that, there'd just be criminals everywhere and nothing was really certain.

A lot of that "fear" is gone. It's safer to do things. Since its safer, markets, economies, and bank accounts need to be more volatile and victim to change and crazy things. More unpredictability makes things more exciting.

[Tomato Sword]

Considering how many points it takes to make the most simple item with crafting that you need tons of levels to invest in, I don't know how not having any gold around is going to fix anything. That's just going to further contribute to the stratification of new players and characters having a hell of a time trying to just buy the basics to go anywhere, with the grandfathered characters sitting with their 5 million in their bank, throwing away 500,000 in the enchantment basin just for the giggle-factor.

Making things in the favor of crafting still just hurts casual players, since by definition, they are logging in less and therefore have less points to spend.

Gimmicks that try to force RP usually don't work. The cliques will still only hang out with their cliques, the grinders will still grind just for the sake of grinding, and people who are on the server to RP will RP regardless.

[The Rambling Midget]

I think you misread my idea, Tomato Sword. I wasn't talking about getting casual players to do their own crafting. I was suggesting that they could be rewarded for their grinding time with commodities, rather than gold, which could be injected into the PC economy, rather than the NPC gold vacuum.

The point isn't to get them spending more time in front of crafting fixtures. It's to incentivize interaction with other players and decrease the benefits of soloing.

[Yma23]

I have to confess I'm not.. (and maybe this is just me!) really seeing this?

All the characters I've had who've amassed huge amounts of wealth have done so through crafting. Every single one of them. Comparitivly little of it has ever come though farming.
And I do see a fair amount of crafting 'stuff' sold, as in 'low end items' for higher end crafters to make.

With the glass change, I anticipate more reasonably priced glass items about, which is good. But... well fraknkly it's not just the grinding issue that can be a problem. Sure - I can run around and make a shard of glass at a low level, sell it on for 200 gold.

OR I could make a spell component, with a bit of extra skill, and sell it on for 800 gold. Which would you do? Kudos to those who do have the time and want to put in the effort of selling base crafting items. But truly, after about level 10... what's the point?

Tweaking some areas, especialy mid level places, is not a bad idea. But honestly whilst I'm all in favour of boosting the merchant game, I don't want the game to be utterly dependent on a character -being- a merchant. This is, after all, a DnD game. Part of the fun is going out and killing stuff. And some players just don't have the time, or desire, to sit around playing shop keeper.

Indeed, I wonder i fmaking gold very diffcult to get will actualy -hurt- the crafting business. To use the above example - Let's say I am a mage and need to make spell components. Sure - I could buy them at 800 a pop. Or I could just put the points in alchemy and make them myself.

But that gives a small issue of 'Real Life Time.' Lugging huge amounts of glass/coal/sand/stone/wood is bloody -tedious-. It's mind numbingly, head bangingly, groan inducingly Dull.

When I buy glass from a merchant, I'm no buying the value of the item IC. I'm actualy more often buying the value of the other players time grinding slowly around, often alone, often boared brainless, to gather this stuff for me, so that I don't have to do the same.

if gold is so rare that the only way to make a good profit is to suffer ooc, then I wonder if we'll end up with an economy where those with lots and lots of time to play, who don't mind doing something utterly tedious will end up terribly rich, whilst those with little time, who just want to go out and play adventurer, will end up brutaly poor.

To conclude? Yes. Maybe some dungeons need tweaking but honesty I'm not really seeing a huge issue with the economy as is. In fact, I'm finding many shops more boyant and interesting than ever!

EDIT: Actualy - I will agree a little with TRM in that having monsters drop more resource items, as opposed to gold, isn't a bad idea. Though what sort of resource items I'm unsure. Weight is always a major issue.

[Scurvy Cur]

My own quick reflections:

There are some specific dungeons that are particularly lucrative in terms of gold and item drops. Island ruins is, imo, the worst of the bunch, since it's equivalent in difficulty to a number of CR 15-17 dungeons, gives XP like a CR 20-24 dungeon depending on which spawn set you get, and absolutely craps huge piles of money everywhere. There's a reason the players who are most interested in grinding as fast as possible vanish into that dungeon at 15, spend enough time there to take citizenship, and leave once they hit 24-26.

Dungeons like this should have gold, and in many cases, XP rewards dropped.

Beyond that, on a macro sense, if money feels relatively pointless (I actually haven't run into this on any of my recent characters, but part of that is likely my utter detestation of IR, and refusal to grind it), and goods are bought too dearly, then the classic macroeconomic answer is to reduce the money supply while simultaneously increasing good supply. Less cash chasing more goods drops prices, so decreasing gold drops and increasing the drops of crafting goods would accomplish this.

However, I would caution that this would make starting out even harder for new characters, who will thrive in a mildly inflationary economy, where they are highly rewarded for the time they invest in gathering and crafting low-tier goods, and where ready abundance of money gets them through the first major gearing milestone of a full set of double stat (or single stat, quad skill) gear.

Again, for the record, I've brought one character to low epics, and two characters to middle levels since gold drops got nerfed. These characters have been perpetually poor, and at one point in their career, all of them spent large amounts of times grinding lowbie areas for iron ore, coal, sand, tin, zinc, and copper ores, so that they could sell glass to other PCs, iron ore to one NPC, and brass/bronze ingots to Cordor, which at the time were the highest return of GP per crafting point available to the characters. I'm not entirely sure this "problem" is one really being experienced by anyone except players who are still sitting on huge piles of gold they've had since Zimbabwelith, or who are still printing tens of thousands of gold per hour running healing kits between Cordor and Wharftown with a high appraise skill.

[The Rambling Midget]

some players just don't have the time, or desire, to sit around playing shop keeper.

They don't have to. In fact they never did. Adventurers got along just fine and had as much gold as they needed to buy all of their gear, before the influx was increased, they just weren't getting rich. It was enough to survive and stash some extra for a rainy day and even get a good enchanted gear set, but not enough to own a boat and an Upper Cordor mansion, and still have leftover gold to dump into 5% spam enchantments.

The problem is that now the benefits of grinding are so disproportionate to those of playing a merchant that the latter has been rendered defunct, except as a character trait. I'm not suggesting that anyone should need to use the crafting system in order to survive, only that there should be an added incentive for those who do, in the form of greater wealth.

The ideal balance is one where those who want to be filthy stinkin' rich can play merchants and suck up loads of gold, but those who have no taste for it should be able to gather enough gold for food and basic equipment, without being dependent on others. However, players should still be dependent on the assistance of others to achieve the highest levels of power, otherwise interaction can be viewed as a hindrance, and that's not good.

[Thake]

I play mostly on surface and I am so not seeing this.

Can't speak for Cordor / Underdark, but surface is like just the opposite. Ecenomy is flourishing.

[DestroyerOTN]

With due respects, a few points

1) The absence of crankout goods looks like an absence of work to you. That's the surface of it, the warrior perspective.

As player of a mage enchanter, I'll tell you the lack of low-end, asinine, basinable nonsense is just that: It's basinable

Any lowbie with a brain that has managed a few goblins can make their own iron sword. Or be a fighter, keen it, and be better than that at level 5.

Let's go deeper down that road, shall we? That road of non-worthwhileness. Since you like to toss economic terms out, make me privvy to the last time someone has actively used a craftable amulet. An elven helm? If you're anything like most, you probably either professed to only using the "more profitable" options. Or, hells, here's another for you: that amulet.

Did you go and get it enchanted? It's probably so, for most players. Even more likely, that enchantment is exactly the 377337537466th 2 stat/2 skill one in existence.

It's not the gold. It's not no effort. It's literally not worth it for customer or salesman.

Nobody buys it. In fact, I have seen shops shut down for carrying iron. They're ignored, worthless in a sea of supply and demand where the supply is 0 and the demand is subject to chance and player want

2) Artifacts change this system further, and have subsequently reduced enchanters. I'm currently the only reliability omnipresent one I know, and that's a frightening prospect since it's hard to say "no" when the IC says "yes". They're entitled after all, right? Every weaponmaster gets their STR CON DISC HEAL gear.

This is part of the friend mentality problem certain. If I am given the choice of an underpaying schlep without courtesy and a "friend", or curt player, that is willing to wait? Guess who I'm picking

3) Artifacts again! It's literally more profitable in the supply demand scheme to venture now if you're lucky. Or depart on your own and make merchants redundant. This isn't saying they're bad, no; this actually combines with the last to a fourth point.

4) Select items are crafted because only select items are worth crafting.

My suggestion? Bulk the matrix with more than 2 "endgame" options, and give other sections love with non-substandard stuff worth making

Give me some boots of -DEX and + 3 dodge AC; or stuff like the ruby amulet mire common? We'll be in business.

[Dalenger]

Idea: what if we granted substabtial (ie, 100-1000+, depending on the item) exp bonuses for successful crafts? Doing something like this would give an alternative way to leveling for those who don't want to grind and would encourage low level crafting.

[Thake]

Idea: what if we granted substabtial (ie, 100-1000+, depending on the item) exp bonuses for successful crafts? Doing something like this would give an alternative way to leveling for those who don't want to grind and would encourage low level crafting.

That's like a free boss spawn every 2h24m. Bring it on


No really. I could totally see a DM rewarding someone who concentrates on his crafting career exclusively. But yeah.. envy ahoy

[The Rambling Midget]

IIRC, that's been suggested and rejected, with the justification being that it falls under RPB.

[Dalenger]

I'm not saying it won't be abused. But it'll be a lot more difficult to abuse than some boss chambers (kill the boss, step outside, go make a sanwich, kill the boss again, repeat). But taking into consideration that you'll still need to collect the materials, there is a chance of failure, and some items will take more than one day to create, I don't think that it will be that abusable.

[Twily]

I'm not saying it won't be abused. But it'll be a lot more difficult to abuse than some boss chambers (kill the boss, step outside, go make a sanwich, kill the boss again, repeat). But taking into consideration that you'll still need to collect the materials, there is a chance of failure, and some items will take more than one day to create, I don't think that it will be that abusable.

I understand what you're saying, but I could see the potential for people to go to the most XP/gold efficient place that has the resources they need, so they basically get additional XP out of carrying items back from an area they would have already gone to anyways.


Overall, I do see the problem pointed out in the post, but I don't see it as too severe and in my mind I don't believe amounts of gold is a main factor. I've noticed the loot matrix has expanded a fair degree over the last year and in addition to that I've seen a larger amount of people go for optimized enchanted gear early on instead of the semi-accurate crafted gear. The only crafted things I see made, are things that cost less than the basin would charge, or things the basin can't make that some players would like. With items like Artifacts and neat trinkets from chests that can be further improved in the basin around, crafted things appear to be a bit less common to me. I've noticed a larger amount of miscellaneous stores now though, which leads me to believe the previous crafting merchants are being replaced by peddlers who buy/sell whatever people bring them.
One possible solution could be to make crafted stuff weaker, but add a larger variety. This would make it so each item is useful to a larger array of people, and to perfect each item for each character, they could bring the crafted item to the basin(which may then fail, meaning they go buy more from the crafter again). (Example: +2 AB swords with no damage, +5 single skill items, etc). The items would have to be balanced in just the right way where there is no "best choice", but instead encourages each character to be different from the last, based on the players personal preferences.

[Kuma]

And unless you're a Melnik, you probably don't want to wear it either, yet it's the most sought after substance on the island.

NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT

[Rugnar]

I'm just wondering...could I get a tl;dr? Because I believe I agree with you Rambling, but this conversation seems to be bouncing around an extreme amount to me.

[Seekeepeek]

I know some of you liked the glass change, that was recently made. I think it should go back to how it was... why? I used to hire low lvls to do the work since it was a pain to make. And I think arelith should have more items like that. Low dc essencial and high volume easy to get resources.

I think that artifact changed a lot too, they can be better then gold.

[The Rambling Midget]

I'm just wondering...could I get a tl;dr?

Gold drop increases over the past few years have made grinding with a powerbuild a faster and easier way to get rich than playing a merchant, so there's little reason to play one aside from flavor, and that has deprived the community of a lot of RP opportunities.

I know some of you liked the glass change, that was recently made. I think it should go back to how it was... why? I used to hire low lvls to do the work since it was a pain to make. And I think arelith should have more items like that. Low dc essencial and high volume easy to get resources.

Keep hiring them. Even with the change, nobody wants to spam craft low level stuff unless it's a path to quick cash. Sell me glass slugs for 150gp each, and I will empty my bank account into your purse, murse, satchel, codpiece, or whatever you keep your gold in.

[Rugnar]

I'm just wondering...could I get a tl;dr?

Gold drop increases over the past few years have made grinding with a powerbuild a faster and easier way to get rich than playing a merchant, so there's little reason to play one aside from flavor, and that has deprived the community of a lot of RP opportunities.

Then yep! I remember back when I played Cynthia, I made my first 30k selling glass just to one person, nowadays it seems that there is more of a benefit to gaining the coin through leveling because you can go through Kohlingen and if you are picking up about half of the weapons and loot all the coin, I have made about 15-20k in one run.

[vaclavc]

Economy could probably use a tweak (it always does), but I don’t see any huge problem with it at the moment. My only character who made it slightly over 1M in gold was a merchant character, operating shop with weapons, armours and wands. All my adventuring characters tend to have 10-50k in their bank accounts and I have currently characters in 10-21 level range.
True, adventuring makes it possible to buy top notch enchanted gear, but that’s the point of this game. It’s D&D, not Monopoly.
Regarding Kohlingen, please keep in mind that you need a boat or attunement potion to get there, which may be quite an obstacle to more casual players.
My only gripe is sudden boom of shops full of artifacts.
-V-