Awakening (economy)

The Awakening economy model is based around two types of NPC traders: Merchants and Vendors. It is important to understand the difference between these two, for knowing which wares you can trade and what income you can expect. When learning about the merchants and vendors, the main reference - listing all traded wares and individual NPCs in each kingdom, is a spreadsheet Awakening Merchants & Vendors - which is useful to bookmark and return to now and then when in the market.

Tax

All trades with both merchants and vendors pay a tax of 5% (at the time of writing), to the king's coffers. The king's coffers is actually a global account, meaning all kingdoms share the same money. This money is used for paying for items sold to the deed token, but more commonly is spent when players find a rare coin after a moment of inspiration - when foraging, for instance. So, keep in mind, that whenever you find a rare coin, some other player has paid that coin in tax. It could be said that the king travels wide and far when nobody is around, have lots of coins in their pockets - with big holes through which coins steadily fall out. This is indeed not a very good foundation for a kingdom economy - just shut up and go forage instead.

Merchants

The merchants model was the first of the two that was released, and has been developed continuously since about the summer of 2018, and is by now fairly stable and balanced. It's basis is that all wares sold are placed in a global market database. Only bulk wares are traded, i.e. wares that can be placed in a crate, and some liquids. This includes logs, rock shards, crops, planks, bricks, fish, meat etc. Merchants won't trade in crafted wares such as tools, cooked food, furniture etc. All quality levels are traded by merchants; with the exception of lumps, merchants will only trade lumps with a QL of 30 and above - the reason for this is that we had trouble with new players mining out the metal veins in the capital mines and sold to the merchants for money, making it difficult for other new players to get lumps for crafting tools. Merchants won't buy metal ores, only lumps.

Selling to Merchants

To sell you should lookup which merchant will trade in your wares. To do so, go to the spreadsheet linked at the top, and have a look at the page Merchant Wares & Prices (tab is at the bottom of the document). It lists about 300 types of wares the merchants will trade in. There is a column Category which will be used here; the other columns will be explained below in this article. Let's say you've been botanizing and found some woad, if you look it up you'll see that it has the category Alchemy. Next you flip to the page City Merchants, where you will find which merchant trades in which category of wares. Let's say you're a citizen of Thekandre, then you look on the row alchemy bulk wares and in the column for Thekandre you find the name Shedres Arlov. You will then have to find this merchant, who in the case of Shedres is a gentleman with a black pointy hat, standing near the council hall. Place your woad in the crate next to him, hovering the mouse will say "Shedres' wares", then talk to the merchant by right clicking and selecting "Talk". In the popup window select "Merchant, I would like to make a trade." and click "Continue". In the next page you get a list of the wares the merchant will buy, and what price you will get. Prices are in amount of silver, and so if the price for your woad says "0.0254" it means 2 copper and 54 iron. You can place many types of wares and sell at the same time. Make sure to check the box in the "Sell" column for the wares you would like to sell, then click the "Sell" button. You will then get a message in the event-log saying how much you earned, and then how much you paid in tax.

Selling other wares works just like selling woad; however, liquids should be placed in barrels and foods should be placed in a FSB instead. Don't place other wares than liquids in the barrels! In some cases, wares the merchant won't buy will be listed but without a checkbox in the Sell-column, hovering with the mouse on that row will inform of the reason.

Merchants have a maximum limit of 3000x of any type of ware, crates are of course limited to 300x but the FSBs will accept larger amounts and then the maximum is 3000x. Merchants also won't buy wares for a larger amount than 3 silver, they will simply then inform the player that they don't have that amount.

Buying from Merchants

Buying wares from merchants works similarly, the dedicated merchant containers must be empty, then when talking to the merchant a window opens listing the trades the merchant will trade in, and which containers are used for which trades. There is a drop-list below listing the trades you can buy wares of. To know which merchant to buy from, read the selling to merchants section. Continuing the example of trading with woad in Thekandre, from the precious section, you now want to buy woad so then you would talk to Shedres Arlov again, and select "alchemy bulk wares" and click "Continue". In the next window there is a number of fields where you can filter the search for wares, including type of item, material, maximum amount and minimum quality. Fill in these fields then click "Continue" again; we select "woad" in the "Type of item" list and continue. If there is no woad available in the market the merchant will say so (note that there is a delay of one Wurm month before sold wares can be bought again), otherwise the next window contains a list of available wares, inclusing QL, weight and price. All prices are in silver, so if the price says for instance "0.0757" it means 7 copper and 57 iron. Check the boxes in the "Buy" column for the wares you want to buy, then click "Buy". Your get a message in the event-log listing the wares you've bought and the prices. You don't pay any tax, but the merchant pay tax instead. Your wares will appear in the dedicated containers, usually a crate for bulk wares and a barrel for liquids, so make sure you empty the containers before you leave, or before you buy more wares.

The Market

When a player sells bulk wares to a merchant, the wares are removed from the crate or FSB, or the container connected with the merchant, and is removed from the game completely. The properties of the wares are collected and stored in the market database. The market is global, meaning all merchants in all kingdoms access the same wares. To account for logistics, sold wares have a period of a Wurm month (three days and 12 hours in real time) before they become accessible for buying.

Market Decay

All wares in the market database have a decay factor, found in the Merchant Wares & Prices page in the spreadsheet linked to at the top of the article - which is the number of days before a ware will be completely gone due to decay; but also accounts for an invisible market consuming the wares, such as the kingdom population that are not players, and may not be seen visibly but nonetheless are considered to be there. 30 days before the wares are removed from the marked due to decay, the wares will start getting QL-loss-ticks, by a random percentage each tick. When wares lose QL they also go down in price, which means players can buy back wares to a lower price than what they were sold for - which may be advantageous if QL is not a matter, which is often the case with bulk wares; e.g. often the QL of bricks doesn't matter when building a house, and you can always improve the wall instead afterwards.

Merchant Pricing

Merchants use very complex pricing, and many factors are involved. We should first have a look at the pricing when selling wares. The first factor is found when looking at the Merchant Wares & Prices page in the spreadsheet linked to at the top of the article, which shows a Price column. This price value is a relative index, and in itself can't be calculated into copper and silver, but it will hint what kind of prices to expect; e.g. if woad has the price index 3 and you sell 10x woad for 2 copper and 43 iron, then 10x wemp plants with the price index of 1.5 should sell at about 1 copper and 21 iron; however, because of other factors, prices won't scale this way exactly.

Each individual merchant will evaluate wares different from others, this means prices will differ between merchants and travelling between merchants could increase or decrease prices by up to as much as 20%. Merchants have a profit margin factor, which is how much the merchant will increase the price for personal profit. City merchant have a profit factor of 2.5, which you can see in the profit column in the spreadsheet linked above on the City Merchants page. It is again a relative index value. Private merchants (see below), have a profit margin of 3, which is slightly higher, so expect to make less money when selling to these. The QL of the wares modify pricing quite a lot, the material also affect pricing, e.g. planks of oak tree will give better prices than planks of birch for instance.

Once the basic price has been calculated, a check is made with the market to adjust for the supply and demand factor. As the market fills up with a ware, prices goes down.

Prices when buying wares are less complex, they are based on the price they were sold for, but the merchant adds a bit to the price. Merchants will modify pricing individually, it may differ up to 20%. Market decay will also affect prices, when the QL of the wares goes down.

Supply & Demand

On the page Merchant Wares & Prices in the spreadsheet linked to at the top of this article, there is a column Supply & Demand; this value is how much of a ware in the market database is required to lower the base price by 10%. The supply & demand (S&D) price adjustment is logarithmic, so to lower the price by 20% an increased amount is needed. For example, if the S&D is 100, then when the market contains 100x of that ware, the price will go down by 10%, but for it to lower by 20% the market has to contain 400x of the same ware. When the resulting price is lower than 30% of the base price, then the market is flooded with this ware, and the merchants refuse to buy any more; so if the S&D factor is 100, the market is flooded at 4900x, and it scales linearly so that for a S&D factor of 1000 the market is flooded at 49000x. The S&D price adjustment is calculated like this 1 - 0.1 * (sqrt(amount in market) / sqrt(S&D factor)).

When calculating the price adjustment for the S&D factor, the amount of wares being sold is added to the amount in the market database. So, if the market contains 100x of a ware and you are selling 100x, then the S&D adjustment is calculated from the amount of 200x.

Setting Up your Own Merchant

Setting up your own merchant is a comfortable way to access the market on your deed, or elsewhere, and save time on logistics. First you need a servant, and then the merchant is a servant task. Private merchants will trade in all available wares, and don't focus on any particular trades.

Vendors

The vendors model was developed during the spring of 2019, but it was only about half a year later that it was balanced enough to be actually useful, and by the time of writing it is the more popular model among advanced players for making income. Vendor trade in crafted wares, but also gems and some bred animals. Only items with a QL of 30 and above are traded, and there is no market database, but instead the wares are completely destroyed and removed from the game after being sold.

In general, vendors are representatives of the demands of the invisible population of the kingdoms, for example each kingdom have a military which has demands for weapons, animals for the cavalry, food, tools and clothing. The population of the cities have a demand for cooked food, clothing, tools etc. All of these market interests place their vendors in the cities to buy such wares.

Vendors are only available in the capital cities, and players cannot setup a private vendor.

The purpose, in game-terms, of the vendors is to be able to make money from selling larger amounts of items, that often are the product of "grinding" up skills. For example, a player may be working on getting a better skill in Blacksmithing, and so create and improve 20x pickaxes to the QL of 30, then it could provide a fairly good income. However, working hard on crafting one pickaxe, would usually not be very profitable, and in such a case selling to other players would bring a better income.

There are about 700 types of items the vendors will buy, plus some animals, plus more than 1500 recipes of cooked food of which most will be bought. Vendors generally won't buy food that is an intermediary stage or that is used as ingredients in other recipes. Some items that aren't crafted, but also aren't bulk wares, are bought by the vendors; such as gems and pelts.

Selling to Vendors

Selling to vendors is done by looking up the vendor for the category of the item you are selling. First look at the page Vendor Wares in the spreadsheet linked to at the top of this article, find the ware in the table and the corresponding category. Next flip to the page City Vendors and lookup the row with the category, and the corresponding vendor in the kingdom you are about to trade. Vendors are usually connected to a large chest, the container says [vendor name]'s wares when hovering the mouse over it. Place your wares in the chest and talk to the vendor and select "Vendor, I would like to sell goods." and click "Continue". You will then get a price for your wares, take it or leave it, if you accept click "Sell". Sometimes the ware doesn't fit in the chest, a spear for example, then you can activate the item in your inventory and talk to the vendor. Sold wares are destroyed entirely, and cannot be recovered in any way.

Some items can't be activated in the inventory and can't be placed in a chest, and so therefore can't be sold to vendors. This is a known bug. Until a fix for this has been released, there are other things to sell instead.

Let's say you have crafted 20x pickaxes with QL 30, you then lookup that the category is miscellaneous tools. Let's also say that you are trading in Thekandre, so then you find the vendor's name is Irnos Hestev. You then go to find this vendor - a stern looking lady in a hood and green clothing, standing in the smithy. Next to her is a large chest that says Irnos' wares, and you place the pickaxes in there. You right click the vendor and select that you want to sell goods, and she then gives you the price "1 silver and 29 copper"... you think "I could probably get a better price in Cellimdar, but I need the money now.", and you decide to sell anyway.

It's also possible to sell animals to vendors, but only animals that have been bred by a player, so it's not possible to gather wild horses and sell - only their offspring. Only horses, hell horses, night steeds, and unicorns are being traded, other animals may be added later on. When selling animals, the vendor will look for creatures that are being lead. Make sure you are not leading the animal you use for riding, or you will be walking home!

You can sell wares to the vendors by sitting on a cart or wagon, the vendor will then look into the vehicle and buy anything they find there belonging to their trade. Make sure you only keep items in your cart or wagon which you are selling, so you don't sell something else by mistake. Note that if there are wares in the vendor chest or if you have something activated in your inventory, the vendor won't look into your vehicle. This feature permits selling wares that aren't otherwise possible to sell, such as furniture, racks etc.

Vendors refuse to trade in rare items, this is to protect players from accidentally selling precious rares. Enchanted items are being traded, but the vendors don't have the ability to see enchantments and won't modify the price in any way.

Buying from Vendors

Vendors won't sell wares to players, instead players should trade crafted items to each other.

Vendor Budgets

Each vendor have a yearly budget, and will only buy wares for that amount. When the budget has run out, the population demand for such wares has been filled, and the vendor won't buy more of that ware until the new budget the following year. New budgets are made on the the day the Ant on the Starfall of the Saw, at 12:00, which is approximately at the beginning of spring.

When the new budgets are being made, each kingdom will also go through the old budgets and see how much of the demand has been filled, i.e. how hard has the players worked. The more of the old budget that has been completed, the more the kingdom citizens are rewarded with sleep bonus. For each vendor trade that reports 2% or less left of the budget, all citizens are rewarded 5 minutes of sleep bonus, and so if all trades are completed, the maximum amount of sleep bonus that can be awarded is 3 hours and 5 minutes. If the report is 10% or less, then 2 minutes are rewarded; and if the report is 20% or less, then 1 minute is rewarded.

To see the current statistics of the vendor budgets, use the command /vendors, which will open a window listing all trades, budgets, reports of how much of the budgets remain, and the name of the vendor for that trade in the kingdom of the player. Players can also check vendors in other kingdoms with /vendors [kingdom].

The total of all budgets for each kingdom is 1 gold, and so with four kingdoms, the total of all kingdom budgets is 4 gold, per Wurm year.

Exporting to other Kingdoms

Players can export wares to other kingdoms, but each kingdom will prioritize its own population and production first. Vendors will refuse to buy foreign wares from the start of the new budgets until the day of the Dancer on the Startfall of the Raven, at 12:00, which is approximately by the start of autumn. Players who intend to export to enemy kingdoms will need a kingdom invitation.

Vendor Pricing

The vendor pricing model is even more complex than the merchant pricing model. There are in fact several models: crafted items, cooked food, healing covers, papyrus and papers, and animals. All items calculate the price based on the following factors: weight, QL, vendor profit margin, supply and demand, difficulty to create, and material. Cooked food will calculate the price by looking at nutrition value and the affinity timer, instead of difficulty and material. Healing covers base the price on the power of the cover. Papers and papyrus exclude the weight as a factor.

Pricing for animals is entirely different from items, and is based on the animal age, the best prices are for aged and goes down as the animals are either younger or older. Animal traits affects the price; negative traits lower the price, positive increase.