Search
← Trade & Economy Philosophy
Trade & Economy Philosophy ~20 min read 3,852 words

Salt & Steel: Economy Philosophy

Document type: Economy Design — Foundational Philosophy
Status: Canonical
Last updated: 2026-04
See also: Currency System | Crafting Methods | Trade System | Voyages and Seasons | Pillars

Preamble: Why Document Philosophy

Economy philosophy documents don't ship to players. But they govern every decision made by everyone who works on the economy. Without a documented philosophy, teams make locally reasonable decisions that globally undermine the economy's integrity — adding a new currency here, adjusting a drop rate there, enabling a new crafting method — and six months later the economy is broken in ways no single decision caused. The philosophy is the mechanism that keeps individual decisions coherent with each other and with the game's long-term health.

This document is also the source of truth when players push back on economic decisions. Salt & Steel's community will, at various points, advocate for an auction house, for more deterministic crafting, for gold instead of functional currencies, for wider item binding. When those arguments are made, this document provides the principled response: not "we won't do this because players will complain" but "we won't do this because it contradicts the specific design reasons documented here, and those reasons are good ones."

When we change our minds — when evidence demonstrates that a philosophical position was wrong — this document is updated and the reasoning for the change is recorded. Philosophy is not dogma. But it should be stable under casual pressure and change only under genuine evidence.

Principle 1: No Gold — Why Functional Currencies Are Non-Negotiable

The Problem With Gold

Gold-based ARPG economies fail in a predictable sequence:

  1. Gold generates faster than it is spent (every monster drops it; few things truly consume it)
  2. Over time, price levels rise to match gold supply (inflation)
  3. Eventually gold quantities become absurd (millions or billions of gold) and individual drops feel meaningless
  4. Players stop caring about gold drops; they play for item drops; the economy becomes inert

Path of Exile solved this with use-value currencies. We follow the same solution, applied through the pirate lens.

Why Functional Currencies Work

Every currency drop is meaningful on two axes: it can be used OR it can be traded. A Doubloon is simultaneously crafting potential and purchasing power. This dual nature cannot be decoupled without destroying the currency's value proposition:

  • If currencies could be used only for crafting (not trading), they would accumulate in hoards among players who don't need specific types, becoming dead weight
  • If currencies could be traded but not used for crafting (i.e., if they were just gold with different names), they would inflate

The dual nature creates a permanent tension: every player is constantly deciding between using their currency to improve their own gear or trading it for something already improved. This is the economy's core decision loop. It is more interesting than "accumulate gold, spend gold."

The Pirate World Demands This

Pirates didn't accumulate gold in treasure chests and sit on it. They spent prizes: they traded captured cargo for supplies, sold plunder for better ships, exchanged rare charts for crew loyalty. The pirate economy was an economy of functional goods — everything had a use, and the most sophisticated pirates understood the use-value of everything they touched.

Salt & Steel's currency system is historically authentic in its spirit. Doubloons were real coins with purchasing power in real Caribbean ports. Pieces of Eight were the most traded currency in the colonial world. Salt was precious enough to start wars. The currencies in this system carry that historical weight: they are not "gold with different names," they are specific economic instruments with specific roles in a specific world.

What Gold Would Cost

If we replaced the functional currency system with gold:

  • Every monster drop is trivially boring (gold increments)
  • Crafting becomes purely a matter of accumulated wealth without mechanical character
  • The economy inflates; eventually gold is worthless
  • Players who time-invest heavily outpace skills-investment players indefinitely
  • The item discovery experience degrades (found gold ≠ found crafting potential)

These costs are unacceptable. The no-gold position is non-negotiable.

Principle 2: How the Pirate Theme Enhances (Not Reskins) the Economy

The risk in using a pirate theme for an ARPG economy is that the theme becomes decoration. "Chaos Orbs" become "Doubloons" — different name, same function, no thematic integration. Salt & Steel's economy avoids this by using the pirate world to generate genuine economic differences that wouldn't exist in a generic setting.

The Treasure Hunt IS the Economy

In most ARPGs, the economy is a system that sits alongside the gameplay. Players kill monsters → find items → trade items → buy items they want. The economy is the logistics layer.

In a pirate ARPG, the treasure hunt is itself the gameplay, and the economy is therefore the game's narrative expression. Finding a Treasure Map Fragment is not finding an access token — it is finding a piece of a map that might lead somewhere extraordinary. The Fragment economy is the treasure map economy of Treasure Island and Sid Meier's Pirates! made real. Players hoard Fragments; they trade Fragment pieces with allies to complete maps; they guard their maps from rivals.

This is the same mechanics as PoE's Atlas fragments — but the pirate theme means it feels like what it is rather than like a token.

Geographic Expansion Generates Authentic Economic Variation

When Salt & Steel expands to new geographic regions (Expanding Horizons pillar), those regions don't just add content — they add new supply chains. A new Indian Ocean expansion introduces:

  • New Salvage Materials specific to Mughal and East India Company encounters
  • New Scrimshaw Token types themed to regional crafting traditions
  • New Essence Bottle types from regional supernatural encounters
  • New item base types with region-specific implicits

These materials create demand for the new region's content and supply new modifier types to the existing crafting economy. The economy naturally expands with the world — not because we added new items, but because new geography means new resources, which means new crafting opportunities, which means new trade.

This is economically coherent with how historical maritime expansion worked: discovering new trade routes meant discovering new commodities. Salt & Steel's expanding economy follows the same logic.

Cargo and Trade Routes (The NPC Economy Layer)

The pirate economy exists within a larger simulated economy of NPC trade. Colonial ships carry sugar, silver, spice, and slaves between ports. The value of these goods fluctuates based on the faction simulation (the Living Sea pillar). Players interact with this NPC economy in several ways:

Privateering: Players with Letters of Marque can attack specific faction's ships for bounties paid in Doubloons. The "economy" of privateering includes the risk-reward of which ships to attack (Spanish galleons are dangerous; merchant sloops are safer), the reputation consequences (faction standings change), and the market impact (sinking enough Spanish sugar ships reduces sugar supply in Spanish ports, changing NPC prices).

Trade Route Investment: Players can invest in trade route protection (paying crew to escort merchant convoys) or disruption (raiding them). Route protection pays steady Doubloon income; disruption provides lump-sum prizes at risk. Both are viable economic play styles.

Market Manipulation: By controlling supply of specific NPC goods (through faction influence, piracy, or trade), players can influence NPC market prices in ways that affect their own Merchant roll bonuses when selling. A player who has flooded a port with captured sugar has depressed sugar prices there — a minor economic consequence for the world's behavior.

This NPC economic layer is not as deep as a dedicated economy simulation game. It exists to make the world feel economically alive — to give the sea's faction geopolitics an economic dimension that players can affect and benefit from.

Crew as Economic Asset

Crew Members are not just combat resources — they are economic assets that affect economic play:

The Trade Agent (see Trade System) is the most obvious example. A skilled Navigator crew member improves chart accuracy, making treasure find more efficient. A skilled Carpenter enables Figurehead Carving. A skilled Cook increases crew morale, which improves efficiency in boarding actions (better boarding → more captured prizes → more items to sell).

Crew investment compounds economically. Players who treat crew as the economic layer they are — developing them, protecting them, mourning them when they die — get better economic outcomes over time than players who treat crew as interchangeable stat blocks.

Principle 3: Trade Friction Philosophy

What Friction Does

Trade friction — the effort required to complete a transaction — is the mechanism by which the item discovery experience is preserved.

Without friction:

  • Finding an item is never exciting (anything can be purchased instantly for market value)
  • Farming is reduced to "how much currency did that session generate" — items are irrelevant
  • Market knowledge is irrelevant (transparent prices eliminate information advantage)
  • Bot operators have systematic advantages (they execute trades at machine speed)

With appropriate friction:

  • Finding an item is exciting (it might be something rare you couldn't afford; it might be something worth trading; it might be something you'll use)
  • Farming has intrinsic value (specific content drops specific items; going after what you need is a strategy)
  • Market knowledge is rewarded (knowing an item's value when a seller misprices it is a skill)
  • Bot operators have less systematic advantage (friction slows them proportionally to how it slows everyone)

What Friction Costs

Chris Wilson's 2026 reflection acknowledged that PoE's friction model was more costly to legitimate players than to the bots it was designed to deter. Salt & Steel learns from this:

Good friction: Travel to purchase items (destination + exploration incentive). Price discovery effort (Trade Board provides history but not exhaustive analytics). Time-to-transaction for social trades.

Bad friction (eliminated or reduced): Currency-to-currency negotiation (automated via Currency Exchange). Waiting for sellers to log in (Factor NPCs handle transactions; sellers don't need to be online). External tool dependency (Trade Board is in-game; price history is in-game; no poe.ninja equivalent required).

The friction taxonomy:

  • Discovery friction (acceptable): Effort to find items and determine their value; rewards knowledge
  • Transaction friction (acceptable within limits): Effort to complete a trade; creates social moments
  • Temporal friction (eliminated where possible): Waiting for offline sellers; the Factor handles this
  • Information friction (reduced): Price ignorance that exploits new players; Trade Board price history addresses this

Why We Preserve Friction for Items But Not Currencies

The distinction is about social value of the interaction:

An item trade between players involves questions of trust, knowledge, and assessment. Is this item actually what it appears to be? Is this price fair? Should I negotiate? These questions make the trade socially meaningful — even a brief whisper and port meeting creates a moment of human contact.

A currency exchange — "200 Doubloons for 1 Lodestone" — involves none of these. The exchange rate is either fair or it isn't; both parties can see the market rate; there is nothing to discuss. Automating this removes waste without removing anything valuable.

Principle 4: How Voyages Reset Economies (Cleaner Than PoE Leagues)

The PoE League Problem

PoE's league system creates excellent fresh-start economies with one brutal flaw: everything the player builds in the league transfers to Standard, which is an inflated ghost economy that nobody primarily plays in. The fresh-start value is real; the reset grief is real; and the Standard destination is real but secondary to the point of meaninglessness.

Salt & Steel's Voyages solve this more cleanly:

Two-layer persistence: The Account Record (identity, reputation, cosmetics) persists across Voyages. The Voyage Standing (gear, currency, crafting progress) resets. This means players restart economically but not identitarily — you are still a captain with a name and a legend; you are just setting sail again from zero currency.

Standard is secondary but acknowledged: The Standard economy (where Voyage characters migrate) exists and is playable. It is acknowledged as inflated and economically secondary. Players who prefer a persistent economy can play there. The design doesn't pretend Standard is as exciting as Voyage economy — it honestly presents Voyage as the primary competitive and economy experience.

The reset as launch event: Each Voyage reset is a genuine launch event — the economy starts fresh, everyone is at zero, the first week is the most competitive and most exciting. This cadence gives the economy a heartbeat: players who want fresh-economy competition know it arrives every 16 weeks. Players who don't want to restart can continue in Standard.

Legacy Account Migration: At Voyage end, Voyage characters' most significant functional items migrate to the Account Record at reduced potency — a limited, softened migration that ensures Voyage characters aren't completely forgotten. This reduces the grief of reset without eliminating the economic fresh-start.

What the Voyage Reset Fixes That PoE Leagues Couldn't

PoE leagues reset the economy but not the player's sense of loss — you lost everything you built. Salt & Steel's Voyage reset is different: you lose the economic position but not the identity. You are a returning captain, not a deleted character. This distinction is emotionally significant.

Principle 5: Geographic Expansion and Economic Health

New Regions as Demand Sinks

When Salt & Steel expands geographically, the new region creates new demand in the existing economy:

  • Existing currencies (Doubloons, Lodestones) are spent on crafting new region gear
  • New crafting materials require existing currencies for access and application
  • New modifier types create new desired modifier combinations, driving new crafting activity

This demand side of expansion moderates the inflation that new supply creates (more content → more drops → more currency in system). The expansion simultaneously adds supply (new drops, new farming content) and demand (new crafting goals, new gear tiers).

Well-designed expansion economics should be approximately neutral to the Voyage economy's health: the demand created by new goals approximately matches the supply created by new content. Calibration is required per expansion.

Region-Specific Materials as Mild Economic Isolators

Region-locked materials (specific Salvage Materials from new regions, new Scrimshaw Token types) can only be acquired from that region's content. This creates a mild economic isolator: the most powerful uses of new materials require active engagement with new content, not just purchasing.

A player who purchases Kraken Ink from the Currency Exchange has access to Scrimshaw Crafting's Corrosion effects — but they paid market price for it, which reflects other players' farming effort. A player who farms the new Kraken content themselves has essentially paid effort-cost instead of currency-cost. Both routes are valid; neither is dominated.

This design avoids the trap of "expansion materials are so valuable that farming them is mandatory" — trading provides access; farming provides efficiency.

Principle 6: Anti-RMT Design

The Reality

Real-money trading (buying in-game currency or items for real money from third-party sellers) cannot be eliminated in any popular online game with a functional economy. We acknowledge this directly rather than claiming our system is RMT-proof.

What We Can Do

Reduce the incentive: The Voyage economy resets every 16 weeks. Purchased RMT currency provides advantage for one Voyage, then becomes worthless at reset. The limited lifespan of purchased advantage reduces its marginal value compared to a permanent economy.

Reduce the advantage: Transparent pricing via the Currency Exchange and Trade Board price history means RMT buyers cannot exploit price ignorance — the market is too well-informed for that edge. RMT buyers can buy more resources, not better information.

Reduce the visibility: Account-level verification systems (without RMT, we cannot reference specific technical implementations here — coordinate with Technical Architecture) should flag unusual currency acquisition velocity. Not as ban triggers but as investigation triggers.

Ethical F2P as RMT inhibitor: The most effective anti-RMT measure is making the in-game economy rewarding enough that legitimate players don't feel outgunned by RMT. A player who can progress meaningfully through normal play is less likely to resort to RMT than a player who feels economically shut out. The Ethical Free-to-Play commitment is also anti-RMT design.

What We Will Not Do to Fight RMT

We will not make trade so restricted that legitimate players suffer in the name of anti-RMT. Account-bound items, no-trade restrictions, and closed economies are anti-RMT tools that also destroy the economy's value for legitimate players. The better path is accepting some RMT as the cost of having a functional economy.

Principle 7: Ship Equipment in the Economy

Additional Demand Sinks

Ship equipment (Cannons, Sails, Figureheads, Hull Plating, Ship Wheels) represents approximately 30-40% of total item acquisition goals for naval-focused players. This is a significant secondary demand sink beyond character gear.

Why this matters economically: In PoE, the item demand is concentrated entirely on character gear (six equipment slots + utility items). In Salt & Steel, ship equipment adds a parallel demand vector. A player who has excellent character gear still needs excellent ship gear. A player who prioritizes ship gear over character gear can choose to invest there first. Two characters with the same character build but different ship outfitting have different play experiences — and different economic priorities.

The ship equipment demand sink is also thematically appropriate: the Captain's Fantasy (Pillar 1) is hollow without the ship, and the ship's power comes from its equipment. The economic weight of ship equipment reflects the ship's narrative weight.

Ship Equipment Doesn't Inflate Character Equipment

Ship equipment has its own modifier pool, crafting materials (Hull Patches as primary), and trade venues (Port Markets, same as character gear). The two economies are connected (same Doubloon trade currency, same Lodestone for value rerolling) but distinct in material requirements.

This prevents ship equipment from competing directly with character equipment for the same scarce resources — a player who spends Hull Patches on ship repair isn't depleting character gear crafting resources, because Hull Patches are not used for character crafting.

Principle 8: The Economy as a First-Class Activity

Economy as Endgame

For a meaningful percentage of Salt & Steel's player base, the economy is not a support system for build progression — it IS the primary game. These players:

  • Spend significant time in Port Markets, Trade Board analysis, and price discovery
  • View character progression primarily as a vehicle for economic positioning
  • Derive deep satisfaction from completing expensive crafts, accumulating wealth, or building mirror-tier items

This play style is valid and designed for. The depth and complexity of the currency/crafting/trade system is not accidentally rich. It is designed to support economic play as a first-class activity alongside dungeon-running, treasure hunting, and naval combat.

The Captain who never leaves port: A player who spends most of their time in Port Markets — buying underpriced items, crafting them into something better, selling at profit — is playing a legitimate form of Salt & Steel. They are a merchant captain, trading in knowledge and craft rather than in plunder. The historical parallels are exact: merchants and pirates operated in the same ports, used the same ships, and competed for the same trade goods.

Economic Skill as Captain Identity

The GURPS social and economic skill tree (Merchant, Streetwise, Fast-Talk) gives build expression to economic play styles. A captain built around Merchant skill and Reputation bonuses with trading factions is not a "useless" build — they are a specialist in a legitimate playstyle with genuine advantages (better prices, information access, faction missions).

This integration of economic play into the character system is one of Salt & Steel's genuine improvements over PoE, where the character build has essentially no connection to economic play. In Salt & Steel, how you build your captain affects how you play the economy, and vice versa.

Principle 9: The Honest Acknowledgments

Every economy philosophy should acknowledge where its model has known limits.

Friction hurts some players more than others: The travel requirement for item trading is a design choice that disproportionately affects players with limited time (who can't travel to the right port in a session) and players with social anxiety (for whom any social interaction is a cost, not a texture). SSF mode addresses the latter; Crew Trade partially addresses the former. We acknowledge the residual cost.

Information asymmetry disadvantages new players: Despite Trade Board price history, new players will overpay and undersell until they learn the market. This is by design (knowledge is rewarded) but creates real friction for newcomers. The Price History feature, tutorial economic onboarding, and guild systems (when designed) should mitigate this.

Voyage resets punish casual or time-constrained players: A player who plays 5 hours per week cannot compete economically in the first week of a Voyage economy. They will never race the leaderboards. This is acknowledged and accepted — the Voyage model is designed for the 20+ hours/week engaged player as its primary audience. Casual players have Standard, SSF, and cosmetic engagement paths that don't require economic competition.

We cannot guarantee RMT elimination: Stated above. Accepted. The Ethical F2P commitment and the Voyage economy's limited-lifespan currency are our best tools; they are not perfect tools.

Standard economy will become inflated: It always does in persistent economies. Standard exists as a continuation path, not as a competitive economy. We should be honest with players: the Voyage economy is where economic play is healthy and competitive; Standard is where characters continue, not where fresh competition happens.

The Economy Philosophy in Summary

  1. No gold: Functional currencies that have use-value cannot hyperinflate; every drop is meaningful; crafting and trading are the same decision
  2. The pirate theme enhances: Treasure maps are content keys; cargo is the NPC economy; crew are economic assets; geographic expansion creates authentic new trade routes
  3. Trade friction is a feature for items, a waste for currencies: Preserve friction where it creates social and discovery value; eliminate it where it creates only waste
  4. Voyages are cleaner resets than PoE leagues: Economic fresh-starts without identity erasure; Standard is acknowledged as secondary
  5. Geographic expansion creates demand without inflation: New regions add goals that consume existing currencies
  6. Anti-RMT through game quality: Make legitimate play rewarding enough that RMT is unattractive; accept that some RMT is the cost of a functional economy
  7. Ship equipment doubles the demand surface: Two parallel item systems create more economic depth and more build expression
  8. The economy is a first-class activity: Economic play is as valid as dungeon-running; the GURPS skill system gives it character-build expression
  9. Honest acknowledgments: Friction has real costs for specific players; new players are disadvantaged by information asymmetry; casual players cannot compete in Voyage economy racing; these are accepted trade-offs, not ignored problems

Cross-References