ECONOMY & TRADING
A centralized marketplace where players list items for sale and others bid or buy outright, letting supply and demand set prices rather than fixed vendor rates.
An illicit or restricted trading channel offering rare, stolen, or otherwise unavailable goods at a premium, usually with legal or reputational risk attached to using it.
Discrete, repeatable objectives — kill this target, deliver this item, clear this area — offered by an NPC or board in exchange for currency or reputation, distinct from the main quest line.
NPC vendors who exchange goods for currency in both directions — the foundational economic interface that converts loot into money and money into upgrades, consumables, and gear.
Discrete, repeatable work offers posted by NPCs or systems — deliver this cargo, kill that monster, craft ten swords — with defined payment on completion.
Prices that move in response to supply, demand, or player behavior — flooding a merchant with iron ore drops the ore price, war raises the cost of weapons, scarcity spikes food.
In-world casino-style minigames — dice, cards, roulette, cockfighting — that let players wager currency for a chance at more, purely as a diegetic activity separate from the main progression.
An interactive negotiation over an item's price, letting the player attempt to talk a merchant down (or up, when selling) rather than accepting a fixed listed price.
Committing money now for delayed, larger payoffs — funding businesses, buying property that yields rent, backing ventures with returns arriving over time.
Borrowed money with obligations — loans to repay with interest, mortgages structuring the whole game, debt collectors as consequence.
Traveling traders moving between settlements — caravans that arrive on schedules or wander routes, bringing goods, news, and trade opportunities to the player's door, or serving as escortable/raidable targets in the world.
Direct item or currency exchange between players, either through a face-to-face trade window or a broader marketplace, letting the player-driven economy redistribute loot beyond what any single player found themselves.
Moving contraband past inspection — hidden cargo compartments, banned goods with premium margins, checkpoint searches to evade, scanner-dodging runs through patrolled space.
Tradeable securities inside the game — company shares whose prices move with events, portfolios to build, markets to read, manipulate, or crash.
Prices set by simulated market forces — goods cheap where produced and dear where scarce, gluts crashing values, shortages spiking them — rather than fixed vendor tables.
Established connections between settlements or cities that generate ongoing income and resources, representing commerce as a persistent, buildable asset.