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I am not going to make a poll in this thread but the recent update by Tim Cain does raise questions about the intended direction of economy in Project Eternity. There hasn't really been a thread on this before (There's been a couple on specific elements such as economy related to magic or difficulty, or currencies), but not a discussion of the economy in itself. So I am making this thread for us to discuss economy in Project Eternity. To start off the thread properly I'll need to do a fairly good main post so I'll try to cover everything I can think of. I'll try and open the discussion from the perspective of the player's wealth as it is really the only thing that the designers have to be weary of in the game. We know the inputs to player wealth in the game (perhaps not all of them, but enough to talk about) - so I think the discussion should be about the value of those inputs, the outputs of which the player spends their wealth. Inputs to player wealth: Items found Money found Skills (Crafting, Stealing etc) Quest rewards Outputs from player wealth: and as per this post on the Something Awful forums it seems that one of the purposes of it is as a money sink for players who don't necessarily do much with the Stronghold Buying new items Paying for Crafting Paying for magical service (Healing, Restoration, Identification etc) Repairing items (currently) Player House Player Stronghold Quest inputs (eg. Paying the Shadow Thieves for transport to Spellhold in BG2) I don't think this discussion should be particularly about multiple currencies or anything specifically but by all means feel free to talk about them. My input I'll start off by saying I'm not a huge fan of Item Durability proposed in Update 58 and as per this post in the Something Awful forums it seems that one of the purposes of Item durability is as a money sink for the player in case they do not invest in the Stronghold. My suggestion here would be to remove item durability from the game and focus on other outputs from player wealth instead. Is it important that if a player does not invest in the stronghold that there be other money sinks in the game to circumvent the amount of wealth they will still have from doing so? Should the economy be balanced so that if the player wants to invest in the stronghold they might have to sacrifice other outputs? Outputs themselves are also probably affected by skills (such as bartering might reduce the cost of items or increase the cost of sold items etc, we can't be sure until we see the full skill tree). Here are some brief suggestions to get the ball rolling Buying items should be expensive Having a vendor craft items for you should be more expensive than doing it yourself for the convenience it offers Paying for magical service should be expensive There should be hopefully many quest options where you can use player wealth (paying for bribes etc) to garner specific outcomes. "Conscience do cost." Selling items should get you a minimal fraction of the item cost, perhaps influenced by reputation or a skill such as bartering if one exists Keep the money you find or are given in the game down Artifact crafting could have a high money cost like BG2 Limit the junk item sell value to 1gp or currency equivalent in game Expeditions: Conquistador also had a nice price/demand system for their trading that might be worth considering. Personally I don't think the player having excess 100K gold is an issue, but there are definitely ways to bring that number down excluding Stronghold investment. Anyway there's some points to discuss. I'm sure everyone else has heaps of ideas as well. Bring on the micro/macroeconomics enthusiasts etc.

Across the various forums (Here, RPGCodex, SomethingAwful etc) there seems to be a fair divide about the existence of Item Durability in Project Eternity. Here is a response from J.E. Sawyer to give context. The purposes of it as described in this post seem to be: A money sink in case players don't invest in the Stronghold and to prevent non-optimal placement (or waste) of skill points when investing points into Crafting on two or more characters. Do you think Item Durability has a place in Project Eternity? If you do not 100% agree with the proposed mechanics, what do you suggest that they change?

Update by Tim Cain, Senior Programmer and Designer I have been working on a lot of different gameplay mechanics since my last update about monks (Update #52). All of the classes are in the game now, along with their abilities and spells up to level 5. This should give us a good basis to test encounters in the game's early maps. So I have turned my attention to some of the non-combat skills, including crafting. Crafting Basics Crafting is the skill that you use to make equippable items like armor and weapons, and consumable items like potions and food. To begin crafting, you must find an appropriate crafting location. Forges – these blacksmithing locations can be used to make all of the equippable gear. From helmets to armor to boots, if you can wear it, then you can make it here. Labs – these alchemical tables are used to make any enchantments, as well as all alchemical consumables like potions, scrolls or figurines (which let you summon a creature that will fight for you). If you want to improve your gear or brew a potion, you need to find one of these labs. Hearths – these cooking spots are used to make food and drink that can give you long-term benefits when you ingest them. Many rest areas will have hearths, so crafting of this sort can often be done “in the field”. When you use the central object at these locations, such as the anvil at the forge, you will enter a crafting interface that displays all of your forge recipes, broken down into categories such as armor, weapons, boots, helmets, rings, etc. You pick a category and can see all of the recipes you know for that category. Each recipe has a set of ingredients needed to make its item (or items, as some recipes will make batches of items). Some recipes will have additional prerequisites, including requiring you or a companion to have a certain talent or ability or even skill at an appropriate level. Higher level recipes have more prerequisites and need rarer ingredients. You may be wondering where you get recipes. You get a few automatically when you level up your crafting skill, and you can also buy them from vendors. Sometimes you will find recipes in the world, as loot on creatures or as rewards for finishing quests. There will be a lot of recipes in Project Eternity for you to find, so make sure you explore every nook and cranny of this world, especially the crannies. Crafting doesn’t take any time. If you have everything the recipe needs and are at the appropriate crafting location, then you can make the item instantly. Usually the ingredients are used up, but sometimes they are reusable. And for recipes like enchantments, the main ingredient is not used up but is instead improved by the addition of a new bonus. For example, you might have a sword with high accuracy and a Flaming Sword recipe that adds fire damage to any sword. If you use that sword with that recipe, you will have the same sword with a high accuracy bonus but also with additional fire damage! Win win! Crafting can also be used to repair items, but first we should talk about item durability in Project Eternity. Item Durability Most items don’t degrade over time. This means that boots, rings, helmets, gloves, amulets, cloaks, and belts are not worn down by use. However, weapons, shields, and armor (that is, chest armor) do have durability values and are worn down by use. Specifically, every attack with a weapon degrades that weapon by one unit, and armor and shields are similarly degraded when the wearer is attacked. Items have lots of units of durability, and they do not suffer any negative effects until those units are completely gone. When an item has reached 25% of its maximum durability, it will become “worn” and appear that way in your inventory, but it will not behave any differently until the last unit of durability is lost. At that point, the item is “damaged” and the following effects will happen: Weapons – damaged weapons do less damage and have less accuracy Armor – damaged armor has lower damage thresholds and the wearer’s attack speed is slower Shields – damaged shields lose part of their defense bonuses Items can never become worse than “damaged”. They will not break or become more damaged. They just stay damaged until you have them fixed. Vendors can repair items for money, so that’s a fast and easy way to keep all of your items in top notch condition. The cost of the repair is proportional to the percentage of the durability lost and the cost of the item, so expensive items tend to be more costly to repair than cheaper ones, especially if you let them lose a lot of their durability before repairing them. However, let’s see how you can save your precious hard-earned money by bringing this discussion back to crafting. A typical Hearth where you can craft food and drink. Durability and Crafting You or any companion can repair items by using the crafting skill at a forge. More importantly, you can use materials instead of money, if you have the right ones. The higher your crafting skill or the more materials you have, the less money it costs to repair an item. Some items might even repair for free! But wait...there’s more! The crafting skill also decreases the rate of degradation on items used by a character. So if you have the crafting skill, when you hit someone, your weapon doesn’t lose a whole point of durability. Instead it loses a fraction of a point. And when you are hit, your armor and shield don’t lose a whole point each either. And the higher your crafting skill, the less durability you lose. We are assuming that if you know how to make an item, you also know how to use and take care of it. So a high crafting skill means your weapons, armor, and shields degrade more slowly and you can repair those items (and those of your companions) more cheaply than a vendor. That is such a win-win situation, how can you afford to NOT take the crafting skill?! I’ll answer that question in a future update about the other skills in Project Eternity.

Note that this is a concept, take any terms as abstraction, i.e. "item quality" can mean anything, from selling value to merely the name of the item. Why do people like combat, but not crafting? How does combat work? Combat forces you to make decisions and game/genre experience determines the result. If you do stupid things, like casting "Cure Wounds" on an uninjured party member, you will end up in trouble. Combat is inherently limited - by hit points. Your goal is to get past the enemies without losing your hit points. The quality of the battle is determined by the amount of resources you spent - hit points, spells, potions, etc. and the difficulty of the encounter. If you didn't spend or lose anything at all to win the hardest encounter, it was the best possible fight. How does crafting work? The goal in crafting is to have a usable item, with the best item quality and the least consumed amount of resources. You can't call yourself Grandmaster Tinkerer before you can craft a crossbow from a paper-clip and a goat. You see the similarities, right? But if both tasks are very similar - we just need to combine the fun of combat and the process of crafting. When crafting an item, the player has a limited amount of whatever. When this reaches zero, there will be no item (battle lost). The player has to choose an option. This decision process must/can be reevaluated periodically. The core options are "finish item" and "improve quality". Now, this is still no fun, because when you say:"You can choose 10 times.", player picks 9 times "improve quality" and the last action will be "finish item". Like combat grants you more options than "hit" and "run", the options need to be expanded and the results slightly randomized. More skill level would allow more options. When the enemy poisons your character, you either cast "Cure Poison", drink a potion or you try to finish the opponent faster. So, you can add random events to the crafting, like "Sneeze attack". If you are experienced or have the right item (handkerchief), you have an option to solve this problem (it still costs you an amount of whatever). You can also decide to live with the event - it might lower your item quality or your amount of whatever each turn, but maybe this is still better than investing the costs for the cure or the event might even do something good (adds option to disease opponents). If you do something stupid, like solve the Sneeze attack with black powder instead, you will face consequences. I guess what this concept is basically about is: Crafting should require decisions (beyond what to craft) and have consequences, to be fun.

Why not list some interesting weapons as inspiration for game content? They could be unique items found in the game, or crafted by mid-to-high level characters. Maybe something you created from PnP and would like to share. The examples below are stat-free because the numbers would not be currently meaningful. "She Wroth" - Flail crafted from Medusa skull and spinal column. - Poison/Petrification/Paralysis. Maybe swap Petrification for Charisma damage. "Pale Mistress" - Scythe blade crafted from female Dracolich claw. - Necrotic bonus damage. Fear. "Gypsy's Kiss" - Dagger crafted from huge Viper fang. - Poison. Improved stealth. "Trollblight" - Corrosive Halberd or Greataxe. Acid bonus damage. "Vampiric Lash" - Battle Whip with Vampiric Regeneration.

As a follow up to the discussion on Resting, I was thinking about the kind of useful/optional activities a wilderness campfire might provide for your party. These ideas are based on class skills and/or "Background Professions", which have been discussed in a few threads already. Campfire activities take place outside of cities, and are an abstract way of taking time to achieve a desired result. They also involve an element of pseudo-crafting that should save you money, compared to higher costs in a city. Examples: If you're a Ranger or have the Hunting Profession: - Previously killed wild game = Raw meat + Campfire = Cooked meat = 10 hp Ration Pack - Uncured Winter Wolf Pelt + Campfire + Successful Hunting check = Cured Winter Wolf Pelt = Increased resale value If you're a Druid or have the Herbalist Profession: - Misc. Forest Ingredients + Campfire + Successful Herbalist check = Antidotes / Herbal Remedies If you're a Fighter or have the Bladesmith Profession: - Dull/blunt weapon + Whetstone/Honing stone = Normal (sharp) weapon = Increased resale value If you have the Historian Profession: - Examine and identify certain special items combining the Lore skill. You may discover the actual (increased) resale value If you have the Jeweller Profession: - (Example only) 50gp gem + 10gp silver chain (or ring) + Campfire + Successful Jewellery check = 100gp silver necklace (or ring) = Increased resale value - A Jewellers' Toolkit might contain a basic soldering iron, crimping pliers/pincers, tweezers etc. If you have the Armourer Profession: - Minor armour repairs at campfire, providing there was a mechanism for them to be damaged in the first place. - Even plate armours have leather straps, buckles, and harnesses that can be repaired without a forge - An Armourers' Toolkit might contain a small dishing hammer, riveting tool, leather punch etc. - But you could only repair "poor" armour so it became "average" armour at campfires. You must go to a city to fully repair armour, via a forge or professional blacksmith, with an implied additional cost. - Maybe allow different "states" of armour repair, which also relates to resale value. - 75% - Good - 50% - Average - 25% - Poor The long-term benefit of any profession is to make you money if you intend to create/repair and on-sell mundane items. The suggestions above are only one side to having Professions (the economical side). We need to consider other useful aspects that may affect quest outcomes too. Would anyone use these options around a campfire if they wanted to rest in wilderness areas anyway?

The only game that I've had experience with crafting is Arcanum. I haven't played many of the new RPGs (lack of money, and honestly, these forums don't really have glowing reviews about them in any case) and so I'm not really sure how crafting has been implemented in newer games. I guess FO:NV is the only game that I wish to play and that crafting is involved in it. I haven't really read much from the devs about crafting and enchantment. Are there any mechanics specifics that someone out there can provide? I also am interested in opening up the discussion towards crafting mechanics that you guys have enjoyed in the past and that you'd like to see implemented in this game. What are some crafting elements that you've enjoyed and some that you don't think should make it into the game. From what I understand with Fallout:NV, it seems a lot of the crafting is directed at ammo creation and a few weapons, "potions". One of the crafting mechanics that I really enjoyed was Arcanum's crafting mechanic of both having to upgrade your technical skill in a field and also having to find schematics to help create new items. The fact that there were 8 fields of study made it impossible to become an expert in all the fields, and would only come in multiple replays of the game. I would like that to be done in PE as well. From what I understand with Fallout:NV you only have survival skills, explosive skills, and science skills that much matter. I'd like it to be a little more involved than that. Baldur's Gate 2 also had a nice "Cromwell's smithy" mechanic where if you found certain otherwise useless items, cromwell the blacksmith could make some legendary items for you. I never really used any of them (most of the epic items you had to kill bosses for: e.g. Holy Avenger), but that was a good mechanic too, although very much less involved. I'm not even sure you could call it crafting. Anyway, what things have you guys enjoyed in previous crafting mechanics? What would you like changed? Any interesting ideas that you think the PE team might want to explore?

I do understand that it is a cRPG and not a trading game. But could it be possible to own stores and participate to their success in a limited capacity in order to have a steady source of income? I've always liked to loose a few hours of gameplay on this kind of stuff. That or an elaborate crafting system.

We know that souls will be the power source that allow our heroic (and not so heroic) characters to perform the extraordinary. As souls are used as power could individuals be able to craft souls into items? Could an individual have the power to remove a soul to make a weapon? Could desperate individuals offer their soul up so that some champion could wield it to avenge a great wrong? This is something I wanted to do in a D&D game but sadly never got to run. A few rare artefacts empowered by souls created in times of desperation. One example was of a blade made by a nation on the eve of annihilation. The blade was to be trusted to a champion to ensure revenge. Unfortunately the champion never arrived in time and the sacrifice was in vain. She saw the knife it seemed small and poorly crafted. A simple wooden handle warped with age would make it awkward to wield. The blade itself seemed sharp enough but looked like it was made in a rush without much care. Initially she was going to ignore it, but something compelled her to pick it up. Once in her hand she was swarmed with emotion. The Sorrow was crushing. The Fear overwhelming. The Hate intoxicating. Her thoughts drowned out with cries for justice and revenge. A whole nation of voices screaming endlessly. This seemingly simple weapon had been forged in a time of desperation. People with no more hope gave the last thing they had. How many souls had been used to craft it? She would never know. She would never let it go. She would never stop till the blade was sated. What a shame the disaster had long since passed. The great enemy long dead. The hopeless nation forgotten in time. Now just a champion driven mad by angry souls demanding justice. The surrounding lands were doomed. Do you think souls will be used to create items of power?

We're approaching the Crafting & Enchanting stretch goal, so I thought it'd be a good time to discuss mechanics. Arcanum, in my humble opinion, had one of the best crafting systems out of cRPGs I have played. For those who haven't played this title, here's a quick recapitulation : The general concept was simple - characters acquired various item schematics by spending of character points in the appropriate discipline. However, some had to be found - either in shops or in various locations in the game (some would be notoriously hard to locate). It was then simply a matter of finding ingredients to create the desired item : But here's where it got interesting : 1) Lots of variation There were eight disciplines (Herbology, Chemistry, Electric, Explosives, Gun Smithy, Mechanical, Therapeutics and Smithy) in the game, with each discipline having seven degrees within it. And that's not counting found schematics. 2) Not limited to equipment upgrades While some of the disciplines offered just that (i.e. better armour), it was not a general rule. That brings us to the next point. 3) Consumables and utility equipment That, I feel, was the strongest part of this system. Most of the schematics were of various consumables or other assorted amenities. For an instance, the player could craft : a) various grenades (stun, flash, fire, acid, smoke etc.), b) substances that could benefit the player (buffs : combat and non-combat) or harm their foes (poisons), c) traps, d) various useful gadgets (better lockpicks, lanterns, projectile reflecting shields, trap detectors etc.), e) resources (bullets, batteries etc.) f) even pets (automatons). In short - all sorts of useful (or somewhat less so) items, with wildly different combat and non-combat applications. 4) Mixed crafting Some found schematics required having an expertise in two disciplines - e.g. machined plate required advanced knowledge in the fields of Smithy and Mechanical. I think these concepts would be a good source of inspiration for PE.

As soon as I read the $2.4M goal "Crafting and Enchanting" all these horrible Skyrim memories poured out. "Hey, there's a dragon right there, let's kill it in under 30 seconds and still have 95% of our HP left". or "I just torched this whole village with my super armor and infinite spells because the guards are too weak to defend it". It was only a matter of time until Throne of Baal came to mind too, with their "rogues and wizards can wear any armor" or other equally overpowered capabilities. PLEASE do not allow the crafting and enchanting (C&R) to spoil the fun by making the game too easy. After you finish the $2.4M goal line look back and ask yourselves: - Will this make roaming around the world solo a lot easier? - Is it possible to create an item that's better than the one you got from slaying that Giant_Cyclops_on_steroids that killed half my party? - Will the Expert Mode, Trial of Iron and Path of the Damned be the only real challenges in the game once the C&R is implemented? If you answer any of these questions with "yes", please go back and lower the power level for C&R. Cheers!

Hello, First off i am indeed a backer of this very exciting project. Thank you all for giving us the players the opportunity to fund, play, and give idea's for such a wonderful undertaking. When i read about your addition of player housing as one of the stretch goals it brought back fond memories i had of the crafting system in Ultima Online. UO had one of the best crafting systems to date, that i believe not one game has even come close to in its depth. I believe UO's crafting style system would absolutely be an amazing addition to Eternity. Need arrows? Click your axe on a tree, you get some logs, now use your carpenter's tool on the wood logs, now you have boards. Use your dagger on the wood boards to carve out arrow's. Kill a bird for the feathers for your arrow, etc etc. I'd especially love to have the ability to not purchase your player house, but to BUILD your player house. It would make downtime between fighting so much more interesting. Especially if some of the more hard to find resources were in dangerious spots that you would have to fight your way into. Perhaps have different paths you could take to the same goal. Wood built houses, mud/adobe style, brick/castle style, etc. I really believe that this would make this game truly exceptional and give new players that have never experienced UO's crafting system a real shock to the system to see what a REAL crafting system is like. Beyond that, it would be wonderful to run your own home/castle, buy land. Work the land, Defend your land against enemies, conquer new land that you can build on or expand on as well. I'm greatly looking forward to Project Eternity. Again thank you for making such a wonderful (i hope) game! LiTh

I'd like to see a crafting system similar to Neverwinter Nights 2 that employs recipes requiring molds, different types of metals and drops from monsters from all across the lands.

Will be there any form of crafting? For example using schematics like it was in Arcanum?