An honest economy: the paid-advantage ceiling and four ways to print money

IMAGE SUGGESTION (cover) — does not exist yet Bar chart of the vendor spread: buy price vs sell price, before and after the fix, with the round-trip profit called out for each scenario. Every number is below; this is a build, not a screenshot.

This devlog is about the part of the game that does not show on the title screen: the money.

Two currencies. ChaosCoin (CC) is the game's currency — you earn it playing. SpecialCoin (SC) is the bought one. One rule governs both: SC buys time and cosmetics, not victory.

What changes for you

• The shop has a per-level advantage ceiling. There is a limit to how much real purchasing power your character can convert into advantage — past the ceiling, the shop stops selling it to you.
• Selling loot to the generic vendor pays 60% of value. Selling into a region NPC's buy order pays 70%.
• An item bought from a vendor cannot be sold back to a vendor. You can use it, equip it, dismantle it, craft with it, take it into a raid and list it on the marketplace — it just cannot go back out the counter it came in through.
• The region you control pays what its economy actually produced, with a daily floor and ceiling.
• The sell bonus now costs per unit sold, not per click.

The P2W ceiling, without the euphemism

A browser game with a shop has two roads. On the first, whoever pays more wins, and the progression curve is designed to hurt exactly enough to open your wallet. On the second, money buys convenience and the rest is the game.

We picked the second, and it is annoying to implement: it requires a per-level ceiling inside the shop, it requires premium automation to save clicks rather than decisions, and it requires turning down revenue that was sitting right there.

Passive income: the region pays what it produced

Controlling a region earns money. The first version of that paid a flat hourly rate, which is the definition of a faucet: money appearing from nothing, proportional only to time.

Now the payout is a share of what that region actually moved in the last 24 hours, with a floor (a quiet region still pays something) and a per-region daily ceiling. On top of that:

• Per-character and per-account ceilings, because three characters on one account were multiplying the same income.
• The banked balance has a limit — not collecting for a month does not bank a month.
• Passive income does not count as region activity. If it did, it would feed itself and compound at its own take rate.

The four ways to print money

We found this while balancing passive income. It was not a wrong number — it was a wrong shape, which is why it is worth a post.

Every vendor pair in the game prices the buy and the sell off the same base with a fixed spread between them. And the player controls symmetric percentage modifiers on both legs: the reputation discount with an NPC is the same number that pushes the buy price down and the sell price up. Add bonus consumables at 25% each.

When the combined modifiers exceed the spread, the round trip profits. Always. Without limit.

Route 1 — the global shop. The worst one. The shop charged exactly what the inventory paid: zero spread. A lossless ChaosCoin warehouse. With one sell-bonus consumable: +25% per round trip, at unbounded volume. And the consumable burned one unit per click, not per item, so a single token multiplied a whole stack.

Route 2 — NPC catalog against a buy order. A 30% spread. The maths:

The middle row is the dangerous one: it needs no reputation at all. A freshly made character, two purchased tokens, printing money. The top row is the persistent one: +2.8% at zero marginal cost, repeatable forever.

Routes 3 and 4 — player marketplace and dismantle/craft. Checked, clean. The marketplace is a transfer, not a mint.

And there was an aggravator: rarity multiplied price twice. A legendary reached nearly 79× the common price, which put 2.36M CC items in the catalog. +2.8% on one of those is ~67,000 CC per trip.

Why changing the numbers was not enough

We considered and rejected, in this order:

• Widen the spread. To fit today's modifiers, honest loot sales would have to lose 42% of their value. And it would close only for today's numbers: the next new perk reopens it. A treadmill.
• Cap the modifiers. It only closes by halving the reputation reward players already earned.
• Add the discounts instead of multiplying them. Tested: it is worse — the round trip goes from +71% to +80%.
• A time window. That converts an exploit into a scheduling problem. Profit per trip is unchanged.

The fix was to close the return leg: an item bought from a vendor carries that mark and does not go back to a vendor. The perks were not wrong; the loop was.

What it costs an honest player

−14% on mass loot dumping at the generic shop. 0% for anyone selling through region NPCs. The order of the two rates finally makes sense: the path with friction (be in the region, have the NPC want that item today) pays better than the counter that takes anything from anywhere.

Why we are telling you this

Because the exploit was fixed before you could use it, and because the only proof that an economy is being watched is a history of watching it. After launch we will publish fixes the same way: what it was, what it paid, how it closed.

One thing we will say out loud: any new perk with a symmetric modifier reopens this class of bug. That check is now part of every patch that touches price.

What comes next

Devlog 05: seasons. What gets wiped, what stays, and why we are telling you a month ahead instead of letting you find out.

→ Join the waitlist.