Economy

Systems and Tools

Online Avlis is attempting to develop a self-sustaining player run economy. What is meant by this? In single-player NWN there is no economy to speak of. Your single-player PC will soon gain much more wealth than he can possible use. But in Avlis an attempt has been made to balance the amount of money in the game world, such that the amount of money entering the game is the same as the amount of money going out.

How money enters the game

There are two primary ways:

1. Adventurers gain money by killing monsters and taking their treasure, or completing quests and
2. Crafters sell the items they have made.

Since most crafting ingredients are free and never run out, this means that gold is constantly entering the game, just as in single-player NWN. If Avlis were the same as single-player NWN in terms of how money could be spent, then many Avlis player characters (PCs) would soon become multimillionaires, with nothing to spend their money on. This is because all they would really need to buy are potions and ammunition, since your weapons, armor and other worn items never rust or wear from use.

Dungeons

Dungeons and loot outside of them commonly befall the Avlis Dynamic Placeable Loot System (DPLS). Individual dungeons offer thematic loot as well.

See also: List of Dungeons

Quests

Your PC can make money through selling dungeon loot (and some crafted items) to NPCs in Collectors Quests, as well as running Delivery Quests (also known as Fed-Ex quests). Other quests exist as well, which will result in net gain of gold pieces (GP) and experience points (XP).

See also: Experience System

Recycling

The money flow is influenced by the Recycling System. It creates a continuous process tasked towards the disposal of loot drops and crafted durable goods, combined with a way to obtain crafting ingredients through a token exchange system.

In the context of money entering the game, a PC has the option to trade in junk for gold. However, their net gain will likely be much higher if they opt to have the junk processed into crafting ingredients. If the PC is not a crafter, they can sell the ingredients to crafter PCs (through Persistent Merchants or in person). Similarly, a PC can sell tokens obtained from the Recycling System to another PC.

Crafting

PCs involved in the Crafting System (crafters) can sell their finished goods to other PCs, as well as to Collectors Quests NPCs and Biomerchants. They can also trade them for tokens using the Recycling System (see above).

Biomerchants

The standard Bioware merchants (Biomerchants) function much like those in single-player NWN, with the following modifications:

1. A generalist or a survivalist Biomerchant will buy whatever a PC sells to them. There is at least one of those on every Avlis server.
2. A trap crafting supplier Biomerchant and some Rogue guilds Biomerchants may buy stolen goods as well, if you know where to find them.
3. A merchant selling specific goods (a specialist) will only buy this kind of goods, typically at a better price than a generalist. eg. a cobbler will buy boots.

The net gain may vary depending on whether or not the Biomerchant allows for the Appraise skill (most of them do).

See also: Shop Locations

How money leaves the game

The word 'persistence' is the key. Avlis is a persistent world (PW). That means that the servers are running almost all of the time, and even when they aren't they have saved your inventory and location. So if you log out of the game, no matter how much time has passed , when you log back in you will be right where you logged out, with the same inventory as before.

This is not true of things in the game. Whenever a server is reset, all items in non-player chests (such as dungeons) go back to their default values. Anything that PCs sold to a standard Bioware merchant is now gone – those merchants are now selling only the items that they usually sell. So what happens when your PC's inventory becomes full but you want to accumulate more stuff?

Inn Room Rental

Perhaps you would like access to a persistent chest but cannot afford one. In that case you can rent a room in one of the many inns and taverns located across the servers of Avlis. Your character pays a monthly fee and in return gets a key to that room and access to its persistent chest.

See also: Tavern Locations

Player Housing

Yet another way is character-owned housing. Some characters that have become well-established in the community may want to own a house in a city, or a cottage in the woods, a mage tower, or even an inn to run as a business. And some player-run guilds may want to build some sort of meeting place where they can organize meetings and discuss guild business. All of these buildings are also persistent, and can contain persistent chests.

See also: Player Housing Guidelines

Persistent Storage

In Avlis you have the option of buying a persistent chest. The items stored in such a chest have their information stored in Avlis' secure database. Even if a server goes down due to lag, or a power outage, or for routine maintenance, whenever the server comes back online you can open that chest and find all of the items that you put in it still there, just as you left them. But persistent chests are not easy to get. They are expensive – extremely expensive. This is one way that money is removed from the economy.

Persistent Merchants

While speaking of persistence we must also mention persistent merchants. An advantage to Bioware merchants is that when a PC buys an item from them that gold leaves the game. But a big disadvantage is that if anyone sells an item to that merchant and the server is reset, that item disappears, meaning that no one else will have a chance to buy that item.

Persistent merchants are different. When someone sells an item to a persistent merchant it stays in their inventory, even after a server reset. Persistent merchants have Artificial Intelligence – they keep track of how much they have bought and sold, and they attempt to make a profit. Though ultimately, it's up to the intelligence of the player.

Rare Crafting Ingredients

Some of the more powerful items that can be crafted require expensive ingredients that can only be bought.

Recycling

Yet again, the Recycling System comes into play. One of the options in junk processing is offer gold in exchange for the junk being converted to crafting ingredients. Ultimately, the crafting ingredients will contribute to creating money but in this specific instance, money is leaving the game temporarily.