The Economy of a Rusty Sword

With the addition of encumbrance, I noticed that a lot of players have been loading up on Rusty Swords after fighting skeletons, then hauling as many as they can back to a town to sell to an NPC Vendor.

But because NPC vendors only pay out between 3 to 10 gold pieces per Rusty Sword, the economics of this transaction just doesn't make sense. Players would be far better off ignoring the high encumbrance Rusty Swords and just staying out in field to collect gold (that has no encumbrance) and other valuable items.

So the question becomes, why does a Rusty Sword even exist? It's not good in combat compared to other swords in the game. Because of this NPC vendors can't sell them to other players. The swords can't be melted down and used for scrap (yet). There's literally no use for these swords.

Before I continue, let me state that I'm aware this is Pre-Alpha and that many (perhaps none) of the economic systems are fully developed. However, based on what's been said by the devs to date, I believe that Rusty Swords are simply a very low end starter weapon that players can obtain if they have nothing else. My theory is that they could be so much more than that.

The developers have stated that eventually, MOBS will get all their items from a Player Item Repository known as "The Bank". When a player is killed by a MOB, or a player sells an item to an NPC Vendor, these items will go into The Bank where they can be reused by other MOBS throughout the game. So for example, NPC Skeletons that need Rusty Swords could get them from The Bank, keeping the Rusty Sword economy flowing.

But what I'd suggest is something that attempts to improve on this system.

I think Rusty Swords should not be "Rusty" just because skeletons are using them. I think Rusty Swords should be "Rusty" because they've been damaged or they're not being cared for properly (i.e. skeletons are using them out in the elements and they're not sheathing them).

I think that ALL Rusty Swords should be swords that have extremely low durability (under 20), and that by repairing those swords using Repair Kits, they should return to whatever it was they were previously. For example, let's say that you had a Sword of Flame! You went out into the wilds and used this sword to kill off many skeletons. But one skeleton got a lucky hit on you and killed you. The skeletons then looted your corpse, took your sword of flame and used it against other players.

Eventually, players stopped showing up to kill skeletons. The skeletons, being unthinking undead, just stood around guarding the area, allowing the weather to ruin this fine blade. Sometime later, another player showed up and fought the skeleton, but when he looted it all he found was a Rusty Sword!

He was a new player and needed gold anyway he could find it. So he took the Rusty Sword (along with 30 others) back to town and sold them for cheap to the local NPC weapons vendor. The weapons vendor used his crafting skill IDENTIFICATION to unmask which swords were the most valuable out of the 30 he had just been sold. It turns out that 5 stood out above the rest as being of "significant value". So the NPC put 25 Rusty Swords back into The Bank, and kept the remaining 5 that seemed like they might be valuable.

The NPC vendor then took those 5 swords and repaired them using repair kits. Once the Rusty Swords were fully repaired the true name of the item returned, and among the 5 swords was the Sword of Flame from the first player. The NPC Vendor then proudly put the 5 swords on display for resale (at a price GREATLY higher than what he paid for them). What a smart vendor!

Below is a quick process flowchart of what my idea might look like:


In summary, I'm proposing the following:

1. Make "Rusty" items (not just swords) a byproduct of being severely damaged. (under 20 durability)
2. Allow players and npc's the ability to train in a crafting skilled called IDENTIFICATION that will help compare items to determine their value. Not just give a number, but instead compare one to another and return a value like "This item is significantly more valuable than that item". This would allow players and npc's to look at 100 rusty swords and figure out which ones had the most potential without knowing how great the potential actually was. The items would have to be the same type "Rusty Armor vs. Rusty Armor" for example.

What this would do is give more reason to have low grade items like a "Rusty Sword" as the real value could be hidden. Therefore giving players a reason to haul all their Rusty Swords back to town instead of just ignoring them.

 

Interesting concept. There isn't a great catch-all group of skills for crafting skills, like Tactics is for combat or Focus is for spellcasting. If one were to be created, then haggling, identification, etc could go into it and make the system more interesting.

It will be good to see when crafting skills go in how they change looting behavior. Right now, I've just leaving rusty swords on the corpse because 1) I don't like corpse poofing anyway, and 2) I don't like having a destroy button. I'd like to have crafting add some depth to the grind of leveling.

 

Having the ability to scrap items for a portion of raw materials would also help. I think the devs had mentioned that in passing before. But I really like the idea that you might be able to find a great item that was previously lost in time.

 

The Rusty Swords are an artifact of the player generated economy. No players yet, so they have to have basic gear that starter / non-story/non-quest MOBs carry to use.

Eventually, I also would like to see these low level game-generated gear be melted down for their raw goods.

But I love the idea about player-generated gear becoming old / rusted over time and requiring perhaps special skills, be it restoration and/or identification, to realize its true value. I can see that being applied to not just gear, but any high value item, relics, antiques, etc.

So yeah...rusty swords because no players to craft the gear that goes into the loot table.

 

At the same time I wouldn't want to see people just constantly farming skeletons for an easier way to acquire ore than actually mining it.

 

Good point. I think the easiest way to prevent that might be to give 10% of the ore that you might mine back when you melt it down. So now it would take 10 Rusty Swords to equal 1 Mined Ore. It's much more efficient to just mine ore, but this way you have an incentive to melt them down instead of just selling them to a vendor for a small handful of gold.