Decay and the economy?

[AnnaC]

One thing with decay too, is that pretty much kills any casual players. If you log in once or twice a week and play maybe an hour or two at a time, back in them olden days with the old decay system, every time you played all your time was spent patching your stupid palisade or something. It really made this game a chore.

[Morsigil]

I personally love the seed bags. I put them all in my inventory, open then up in a few rows, and then harvest and survey the quality as I go. Sure there a few annoyances, but having the ability to harvest my entire wheat field in one go is priceless. Saves a lot of running around. Now if only there were straw bales or something.

I don't think it's the case, but do scythes and shovels affect the quality of the harvested items?

[Horatius]

I don't think it's the case, but do scythes and shovels affect the quality of the harvested items?

No.

[Koru]

I see economy in hnh very similar to TeckXKnight, but I think quantity matters too, in some ways even more than quality and that should be mentioned.

[JackSimple]

The economy is driven by three things: Quality, learning points, and stats.

Raising quality is difficult, expensive, and a huge boon. Basic q10 items perform at a x1 modifier while q40 are at a 2x modifier, q90 at a x3 modifier etc. etc.. When going into combat, you're going to want to have the finest Sword and Armor possible. Higher quality foods also work on the same principle and even producing goods requires high quality goods. So even if you've made an anvil today, if it's a mere q20 anvil it's lowering the qualities of your tools so you'll need to make a new, better one. You can sell your old one to someone else who sees it as a quality boost. Sure, you can stagnate and keep your old tools forever but you'll always be outclassed in terms of metal production and progress much more slowly as it effects your other industries such as hunting, skinning, tanning, mining, etc.. Acquiring and trading materials to produce these tools is vital. This is why there is an unending demand for high quality clay as it drives every other market and can constantly be improved by growing quality from other markets (Such as higher quality fuels used to produce higher quality bricks to produce higher quality metals for higher quality tools. Or higher quality fuel used to make higher quality planters pots to make higher quality trees for higher quality wood for higher quality fuel.)

Learning points are almost completely earned with curiosities which are expended once studied. So the production of curiosities is endless to feed your constant need for more and better skills. Trading curiosities is a huge driving factor of the market this world as it's a means for poorer players to acquire quality goods or rare goods from villages. Pearls for silver, for example or ant queens for silk.

Stats are gained through food, precious metals, silks, bones, and cloths. Food is, needless to say, expended once eaten. Your materials used to construct cutlery and symbel degrade with every use. You will always need more and can always consume more. A good trader will never scoff at a large chest full of pies or cheese.

Sure you don't need to remake some items such as cabinets, houses, or carts but this is also assuming you never need to expand. Ideally you should be growing the longer you play. When you upgrade from wooden plows to metal plows and scythes you're suddenly able to process 5x as many crops in the same amount of time and effort. That means you'll need to build that many cabinets and maybe a few more houses. Goodness help you if friends move in and start to need a place to manufacture goods and their own plots to harvest and store things. Early on it's easy to acquire all the logs for yourself and to produce everything on your own. After awhile you'll have no problem with paying a newbie two bars of bronze in exchange for a cartload of cabinets. It means that you didn't need to deforest your own surroundings or perform the labor and they get a decently difficult to acquire good in exchange for labor.

So no, the economy should not stagnate. That isn't to say things can't go to hell and things such as raiders and wars can't blockade trade but that's not stagnation and is an interesting in-game occurrence of its own worth observing.

Wow, thanks for the insight. A lot to think about.