Chương 115: 4.5 Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes (5:03)

Z3ke (Original Poster) Now this is where I need help from all of you. After I gave Patch the Tech Slate, he seemed pretty eager to move the conversation along. I was fine with that because I told him all about you guys and I gave him the Slate. Whether he actually logs onto the forum is up to him, but if he does, try not to be dicks. Anyway, he ended up saying basically the same thing that Malv0lio did.

If I'm actually planning to leave The MIZ and the Deadlands and head north, I need to show up with enough cash to establish myself and not be completely dependent on the goodwill of strangers. I still remember what it was like stumbling into The MIZ that first time. I didn't know anybody and had no prospects and barely understood what kind of world I'd landed on. If you all hadn't told me about Patch and the Roaring Drake and given me the passphrase, I would have been screwed.

Unfortunately, Patch can't really help me here. The bar is doing great and he's got more cash than he knows what to do with, but he agrees with all of you that The MIZ currency might not be worth anything where I'm going. It's more than just money. He knows practically everyone in The MIZ and he's got contacts up in Cliffhaven, but beyond that he's just as blind as me. Once I step foot on a ship and sail away from the Deadlands, I'm basically on my own. Which means I need to plan ahead. So… economics.

What do you all know about money and trade? Malv0lio, you're my primary. Do you have any of that primary wisdom for me? I'm thinking that anything I carry out of The MIZ is basically whatever I've got to set myself up in Emberveil. Everything I pack is going to be something meant to keep me alive or something meant to be turned into local money. So what should I start stockpiling? Malv0lio (Primary) I am your primary.

And as your primary, I am going to delegate this task to whoever on the forum actually understands economics. Quality leadership is all about delegation. TinkerTom What Mal is trying to say is that economics is sort of a touchy issue for this forum; one that I believe we are all uniquely qualified to solve. Much more than just giving you combat advice. We can tell you about which Skills you should rank up, we can guide you to unique and legendary weapons, and we can tell you about the lore you're skipping over.

But at the end of the day, there are serious limitations for us when it comes to combat. We aren't able to hover over your shoulder and tell you when to swing and when to duck. But we can help with economics because it's simple logistics, and logistics can easily be solved by hundreds of people sitting around and optimizing a plan. Somewhere on this forum there's probably an accountant, a truck driver, a warehouse manager, and an economist, and their day jobs are about to be incredibly useful.

CrushDaddyXx | there are serious limitations for us when it comes to combat. | What are you babbling about? Mushroom, 7 and I got him to kill the Reclaimer. It's not our fault that the rest of the primaries have dropped the ball when it comes to getting him to smash things. Plethora Zeke, what Tinker and Mal are dancing around is that video game economies are a disaster, and we don't have nearly as much useful information as we'd like.

The problem gets even worse because your story is focused on realism, which means you're writing about an actual functioning world instead of a game pretending to be one. There are a lot of shortcuts that developers make because they're making entertainment and not an economics simulator. Take merchants, for example. In most RPGs, you can walk into town carrying a bunch of swords, wolf pelts, goblin ears, a magical staff, and some old boots.

You can dump it all on the nearest shopkeeper, he hands you a pile of money, and everyone goes home happy. But real economies don't work like that. Merchants don't just buy whatever you're willing to sell. They buy things they can actually use, things they know they'll be able to resell, or things they specifically need to keep their businesses running.

If you walked into a 7-11 right now carrying a dead otter and tossed it on the counter, asking the clerk behind the counter if you can trade it for a slurpee, the cashier is going to ask you to leave before calling the police. Even businesses that do buy used goods aren't unlimited money fountains. A jeweler buys jewelry. A lumber mill buys lumber. A butcher buys livestock. None of them are interested in the other two because that's not their business. Then you've got supply chains.

A blacksmith doesn't magically produce swords because a player clicks a crafting button. A real blacksmith would need someone to mine the ore, some to smelt it into steel, someone who makes the charcoal, someone who delivers food to the workers, and someone who can make the aprons and the bellows and all the other things. Every step in that chain costs time, labor and money.

Video games usually collapse all that into one menu because nobody wants to spend thirty hours arranging wagon deliveries before crafting a helmet. (Except for people who play Paradox games) Then you have to worry about logistics and supply and demand. If one town has 500 barrels of ale sitting in a warehouse, you're not going to get much money selling then a further 100 barrels. If another town hasn't seen alcohol in six months because the mountain pass is blocked, your barrels are going to go much further there.

Supply changes prices. Demand changes prices. Distance changes prices. Transportation changes prices. Risk changes prices. Real economies are constantly shifting because people are constantly making decisions. The Fracture-verse isn't like X3 or Eve Online which are player driven economies where you can buy in one location and sell for much more in another. In fact, most games don't bother simulating supply and demand. Instead, the Fracture-verse relies on what is called a money sink.

You've got armor repairs, fast travel fees, crafting costs, consumables, enchantments, auction house taxes, and all the other little expenses that exist because players are constantly generating wealth by killing monsters. Those systems are designed to remove money from the player, because if they didn't your PC would become infinitely rich and the "economy" of the game would completely collapse. The merchants in the Fracture-verse aren't meant to be realistic.

They are meant to help the player convert bandit axes into gold into supplies for your Skills and your consumables. That's why this question is actually harder than it looks. We know that trade existed in Syndicate's Wake. Caravans traveled between regions, ships carried cargo, and merchants obviously made a living somehow. But it was all handwaved away. It was background filler.

The game never expected people to look to deep into the merchant side of the game, so it never explained what those people were actually hauling around. Which means that we need to reason this out instead of simply relying on game knowledge. We can't tell you "buy item X because it sells for 3x in Emberveil." The game never exposed those numbers because they didn't matter to players. Instead, we need to think like actual traders living in a real world. Hambones It feels that there's a pretty simple answer here.

If I were Z3ke, I'd spend the next couple days hitting up every pawnshop in The MIZ. They already specialize in buying things that can quickly be turned back into cash. I'd be looking for gold chains, rings, necklaces, bracelets, and anything else I can quickly liquidate. The nice thing about jewelry is that it gives you two different ways to make money. At a minimum, it's worth whatever gold and silver is in it, but if the craftsmanship is especially good you can sell it for even more.

Even if nobody in Emberveil likes the style, they can always melt it down and just take the precious metals. JimothyTheBarber | if the craftsmanship is especially good you can sell it for even more. | What the hell do any of us know about craftsmanship of jewelry? Nothing. The answer to that question is nothing. Staniel Au contraire, mon ami. * I'd actually tell Zeke to look for older jewelry pieces.

Classic designs tend to survive changes in fashion a lot better than trendy pieces, so they've got a better chance of still being desirable somewhere else. * I used French to show that I've got class. Also, I worked in a jewelry store at the mall for like three years. VantaVoid Skip the jewelry all together and buy raw gemstones instead. They're usually cheaper than finished pieces, and as Jimothy pointed out, we don't know what the people in Emberveil consider fashionable.

An uncut sapphire is still a sapphire no matter where you take it. Also, no offense Staniel, but working at a mall jewelry store doesn't exactly make you an expert on the luxury markets of a video game world. Unless you're about to write us a 5, 000 word essay on gemstone grading and the economics of Emberveil, I'd suggest that raw materials are a safer bet for Zeke. Byte-Sized If we're talking about raw materials, why stop at gemstones? What about rare earth elements?

I have absolutely no idea whether Emberveil has an industrial demand for them, but they're supposed to be incredibly difficult to obtain. If someone up there needs them, they could be worth a fortune. Z3ke (Original Poster) I'm sorry… what? You want me lugging around weird rocks? Expensive weird rocks? What the hell do I know about rare earth metals or gemstones? I appreciate that everyone is trying to help but… what?!?!? MushroomCleric You tell 'em Zeke.

Besides, you should forget the rocks and instead focus on monster parts. Monster harvesting is a huge industry in Frontiers, and Emberveil is filled with mages, alchemists, artificers, and researchers who spend their time carving up all the new, strange creatures so they can study their magical innards. The Deadlands is filled with monsters that don't exist in Emberveil. You've got claws, hides, venom sacs, teeth, bones, glands, and a whole bunch of other body parts that would be considered an exotic import.

I'd especially focus on the glands of monsters. Alchemists lose their minds over weird shit they've never seen before. If you're carrying around monster parts that literally don't exist anywhere else, you might accidentally corner the entire market. The biggest tragedy is that you sold all that Reclaimer loot in The MIZ. If you had sold it in Emberveil, you might have made bank. Z3ke (Original Poster) You're all making this sound so much easier than it actually is.

You're also all forgetting exactly what Plethora just wrote. | Merchants don't just buy whatever you're willing to sell. They buy things they can actually use, things they know they'll be able to resell, or things they specifically need to keep their businesses running. | Everyone is telling me to buy jewelry, gemstones, rare earth metals and whatever else sounds expensive. That's great in theory but you're forgetting that I don't know anything about that stuff.

How am I expected to walk into a pawn shop and buy all that stuff without getting ripped off? Actually, how am I expected to walk into a pawn shop and buy RARE EARTH METALS! I don't know the first thing about jewelry. The only time I ever bought a necklace was for mother's day and I just entered the store and pointed to something in the case and had it wrapped up. I couldn't tell you the difference between an emerald and a piece of green glass. You could be reading stolen content.

Head to the original site for the genuine story. But there's another problem which is: who am I supposed to sell this stuff to? It's easy to say that something is valuable. I remember reading about horseshoe crab blood and how it's supposed to be ridiculously expensive because it's used in medical testing. There was a reddit question where someone was like "if you could get any liquid coming out of a finger, what would it be?"

The number one answer was horseshoe crab blood because it's worth something like 100k for a liter of the stuff. Great. Do any of you know a horseshoe crab blood guy? If someone gave you a gallon of the stuff tomorrow, what would you actually do with it? Would you head to the nearest hospital with the blood in a baggy and be like "hey, I heard this is valuable. You all do medicine stuff. Money please." No, you wouldn't because that is insane and you'd end up looking like a crazy person.

That's basically what you're all telling me to do. I can't just go out there and buy a bunch of expensive stuff and hope that someone in Brightharbor takes it off my hands. I need to know what I'm buying, who I'm selling it to, and how an idiot wandering through town is supposed to not accidentally sell a fortune for pocket change. CogEatoEggoSum What about automatons? Zeke, you barely did anything with them after you got to The MIZ.

From what I remember, you mentioned them when you were headed to the Roaring Drake the first time, but then you didn't talk about them ever again. This sounds like the perfect opportunity for you to be digging into that part of the lore. You should seriously consider buying automaton parts, or maybe even a whole automaton if you can afford it. IIRC, Emberveil doesn't have automatons. That means there should be a healthy market for them. Saltmines Won't work.

Since Emberveil doesn't have automatons, there won't be anyone around who can fix them if they break. If Zeke is the only guy importing them, he's also the only guy who can bring in replacement parts. Most merchants aren't going to want to spend a fortune on a machine they can't repair. There's also the issue with buyers that both Zeke and Plethora are harping on. Who exactly is supposed to buy his automatons? Maybe a wealthy collector would buy one.

A university or factory could buy them to take them apart and figure out how they work so they can build more. But those are very specific buyers. He can't just wheel a six-foot-tall mechanical worker into time square and shout out "get your automatons here!" UnhelpfullyHelpful Hmmm. The fact that neither of you pointed out the ethical constraints around the automatons is a little concerning. The ones in The MIZ are sapient, or at least close enough that the distinction gets a little uncomfortable.

Now you're saying he should buy a bunch of them, stack them in a boat and haul them across an ocean, and sell them in another country. That sounds an awful lot like human trafficking. It sounds like you're trying to get Zeke to introduce the transatlantic slave trade into the Fracture-verse. NullSigil Jeezus. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that that is one of the money-making schemes this forum has suggested.

Although, I am proud that it took this long for someone to suggest that Zeke become an international slave trader. CogEatoEggoSum That wasn't what I was saying. I wasn't suggesting that he sell slaves. I was just saying he could sell parts. Maybe the people of Emberveil would like to study them or something. NullSigil Too late, I already took the screenshots. This is going to haunt you til the end of your days Cog. Craaazzzzy Dayum Cog. Have you learned nothing from watching Black Panther? Or Twelve Years a Slave?

Or Amistad? PatchNotesOrDidntHappen Binary tried to get our boy killed by locking him in an impossible puzzle room but at least he didn't suggest slavery. How is he now the second most morally reprehensible person on this forum? Cog over here trying to found Robo Plantation Inc. MetaMonger Can you imagine if Patch chose this very moment to log onto the forum for the first time? He probably read Cog's post and then immediately shut off the Tech Slate and handed it off to someone to be burned. Thanks Cog.

You ruined our chance of having a new person tell us all about Frontiers lore. I hope your happy with yourself. Z3ke (Original Poster) Wait a sec. Cog said that automatons don't exist in Emberveil, but they DO exist here. That's a little confusing. This is a post-apocalyptic wasteland and I always assumed that tech here was pretty stagnant. You've got people driving Mad Max vehicles and guns are rusty and a complete mess. So… how does this place have better tech than Emberveil?

StoryLeech Ooo, you're touching on a pretty interesting argument which is: what era does Emberveil exist in? Well, it's less an argument and more an observation that gets talked about by the forum. Most of us think of Emberveil as existing during the Victorian-era. The cities are filled with gothic architecture, there's a bunch of fog everywhere, and it all screams nineteenth-century horror novel. But that falls apart once you start listing the tech made available in Emberveil.

You've got cars, motorcycles, and modern firearms. There are factories, industrial machinery, and a bunch of tech that is at home in the present day. So it's more accurate to say that Emberveil has a Victorian-era aesthetic and modern-day technology. Lorem-Ipsum ^Story. People conflate the artistic inspiration and the technological realities. Emberveil is more like Jules Verne and Mary Shelley, but the place is still very much like an early twenty-first century industrial society.

The clothing tells one story and the engineering tells a different one. HexaDeweyDecimal I always thought of Emberveil as being more like those old pulp adventure novels. Think Indiana Jones or that Bronze Man book I can't remember the title for. You've got cars, machine guns, occult artifacts, forgotten ruins, masked cultists, and professors punching out monsters in abandoned temples. Ilike2mung | Bronze Man book I can't remember the title for. | Doc Savage.

The Rock was supposed to be filming a movie for the character but that went nowhere. My old college library had a bunch of those pulp adventure novels - The Phantom, the Shadow, and Doc Savage - and I LOOOOOVED reading them. I'd agree that Emberveil takes more after those novels than anything. Also, Indiana Jones was based on those novels. It's also why the fourth movie (that they never made, it was just a dream) was all about aliens. The 1940s pulp novels were about occult artifacts and fighting Nazis.

The 1950s pulp novels were all about alien visitors to Earth. StoryLeech Yea… but there's also a lot of tech you expect to find that isn't present in the setting. TVs for example. I think that's why it's got that Victorian-era feel. Most communication is done through letters and telegraphs rather than radios. One of the reasons it's so difficult to pin down a time period for Emberveil is that it borrows from different eras, mixes them all together, and still somehow feels internally consistent.

I think Severance Systems were trying to make a hodgepodge of a setting and then stumbled across Emberveil. LSMFT | Most communication is done through letters and telegraphs | There are still phones though. References are made about them. Z3ke (Original Poster) So… Victorian era pulp novels with cults and motorcycles. Got it. KetracelWhiteNoise Just because you don't see the TVs doesn't mean anything. You have to remember that Severance had to build everything about this world.

If no one was going to sit down to watch tv, why spend time creating them? If they put tvs or radios in the setting, they would have also had to program the programming for it. They would have had to make news broadcasts, music stations, advertising, emergency alerts, talk shows, and hours and hours of content that ninety-nine percent of players are never going to listen to. It's exactly why most RPGs never simulate every office job or school classroom.

Those things probably exist somewhere, but they're not relevant to the player experience so the devs never bother building them. Chik8da_swarm | that ninety-nine percent of players are never going to listen to. | Speak for yourself. I have a rip of the Lazlo Show from GTA 3 that I still listen to. Did you know that guy had a podcast for a while? It was amazing. Lorem-Ipsum I think you're wrong there Ketracel. There's a difference between not implementing a mechanic and choosing not to program it at all.

Severance Systems could have created tv sets as props and littered the world with them. They didn't need to create functioning sets with hundreds of hours of shows on them. They could have just put them in apartments. Developers fake that kind of worldbuilding all the time. The fact that they didn't is what makes it interesting. Someone on the dev team made the conscious decision that TVs shouldn't be part of Emberveil.

Whether that's because they don't exist or because they're incredibly rare or because the setting developed along a different technological path… that's something there isn't a good answer for. But I don't think they just forgot to program it in or took some shortcuts. 10161066 Incan Matrimonial Headmasks. That's your problem Zeke. Z3ke (Original Poster) Uh… what? You want me to find Incan Matrimonial Headmasks? I thought we just talked about how I didn't know jewelry and rare earths. 10161066 No.

It's something from Ocean's Eleven. In the remake movie, with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, there is a scene where Danny Ocean gets out of prison. He's talking to a bunch of people during a card game and he's like "I was caught trying to move Incan Matrimonial Headmasks," and they ask him if there is a lot of money in that. He says some, but then Brad Pitt says that there is a ton of money in them, but you can't move them. That's your problem.

You shouldn't buy anything that you don't know the value of or that you can't sell right away. You should stop thinking of yourself as an investor, a merchant, or even a trader. Instead, you should think of yourself as a refugee. You don't need the stuff that gives you the highest theoretical profit margin, because chances are you aren't going to actually know how to earn that profit.

Owning something valuable doesn't magically create a buyer, and wandering around asking strangers if they want to purchase your Incan Matrimonial Headmasks is a great way to get scammed. You need liquidity. You need things that can be converted into local currency quickly, reliably, and almost anywhere. Gold has been solving that problem for thousands of years because nearly every civilization agrees that gold has value. But silver is actually better for you.

If you need food, transportation, a room for the night, some new clothes, or basic supplies, silver is going to be your better bet. It's a lot easier to just get a bunch of small pieces of silver and exchange that for cash than it would be to ask someone to make change for a large gold bar. Your goal right now shouldn't be to become rich during the first week that you're in Emberveil. Your goal is to just get there.

Once you've arrived in Brightharbor, and you make some contacts, and you understand the local economy, and you start posting updates from Emberveil, then we can help you come up with all sorts of ridiculous money-making schemes. Interestingly enough, your chance at making a profit is hampered by the fact that you're traveling from The MIZ up to Emberveil. If you were doing it the other way around, you could probably make a ton of money.

You would be moving from a relatively stable industrial society into a post-apocalyptic economy that is obsessed with survival. Think about what The MIZ actually produces. Everything there revolves around surviving the Deadlands. There's salvage operations that take all the goods from the pre-Fracture and make something useful out of them. There are refineries because vehicles need fuel. There are workshops that focus on repairing engines that should've stopped working decades ago.

The whole city's economy has evolved around surviving one more day in the Deadlands. That's exactly why trade in the opposite direction is so difficult. The MIZ is incredibly good at producing survival goods, but survival goods aren't necessarily what a city in another region desperately needs. A society that's never dealt with the Deadlands isn't automatically going to pay a premium for salvaged engine parts or specialized monster-hunting equipment.

Also, post-apocalyptic economies are incredibly specialized in ways that don't rely on trade. Everyone with useful skills is going to work on keeping people alive by making guns and ammo and tools. They aren't going to focus on making luxury goods, artwork, or precision equipment. Anything that requires years of specialized training without directly helping people survive tends to disappear when civilization is hanging on by a thread.

You need to realize that whatever is worth the most in Emberveil, you're not going to get your hands on. You can't walk into a military warehouse and buy up a bunch of rifles. You don't have guild connections or government contracts. You need something that is available to the average person with a decent amount of savings. Gold and silver. Preferably in small units that can be easily liquidated. Buy those, get up to Emberveil, and we can come up with ways that will make sure you can earn more cash.

Hambones Holy hell. I literally said that Zeke should hit up pawn shops and buy jewelry for the gold and silver. You know what, I'm taking credit for this plan. You're welcome Zeke. Z3ke (Original Poster) Patch is over here laughing because I read out what you all just said. He had suggested gold and silver bullion about half an hour ago. Thanks… I guess. I'll update you all once I get to Cliffhaven.