Stoneshard Update #40 – Trade System

The latest development update for Ink Stains Games’ roguelike RPG Stoneshard provides a fairly detailed overview of the game’s trade system. According to the update, the system was designed with both usability and realism in mind, and as a result, you can expect Stoneshard to feature commodity shortages, NPC roles that influence their trading preferences and prices, dynamically rotating merchant stocks, and more.

Check it out:

Hello!

In today’s devlog we will show another new feature, and this time it’s quite a massive one: trade system. Trade is the vital force of our game economy, so we paid a lot of attention to its development. We faced a difficult task – to make trade system both user-friendly and moderately realistic, and we’re quite happy with the result.

Let’s start with the context. The game takes place in a country ravaged by a bloody civil strife. But the war is still not over: due to some unfavorable events, all factions were forced to declare a temporary truce, thereby securing a precarious status quo. But at any time their confrontation may resume again. All this impacts the economy: currency is devalued, because of the chaos and production slump many commodities are in acute shortage, and the prices of essential goods are greatly inflated.

In Stoneshard you can trade with almost all neutral and friendly characters: from merchants to simple peasants and city guards. But at the same time, it is worth remembering that the wartime economy is pretty brutal: because of limited resources, everyone is primarily interested in securing personal gain – so NPCs tend to overprice their goods a lot and prefer to buy your goods far below their true value.

NPC role also influences trade prices. Depending on what craftsman you’re dealing with, you may expect some price fluctuations on goods he’s interested in. A blacksmith, for example, works with metal, so he’d buy iron equipment more expensively and also sell it cheaper, while merchants and wandering traders, due to their versatility, tend to trade at less favorable tariffs for you. In addition, your reputation level with a particular settlement and faction, some local and world events, and the quality and condition of the item itself will have their impact on the final price too.

Other important aspects of trade are NPC interests, their stock and wealth. These parameters are different for each NPC, depending on its role, settlement and faction.

Ordinary peasant possess very few items: usually, food, drinks and tools. They tend to buy the same kind of stuff from your character and won’t be interested in buying armor or potions. They’re also very limited in their funds, so you should probably seek some another person to sell an expensive gem to – peasant won’t have enough money to make this deal possible.

However, the blacksmith’s stock is much more impressive: he sells a huge variety of various equipment, is quite wealthy and is willing to purchase some of your spoils of war, though he won’t be interested in buying scroll and potions too. It’s worth mentioning that there are some items which are demanded by almost everyone due to wartime conditions – such as food, alcohol and different valuables.

Trading stock will be regularly refilled: NPCs will purchase new goods instead of the sold ones, and the speed of this process will also depend on the situation in the settlement and the world around.

And finally, repair function. Now battered items can be repaired by a certain artisan for a fee: metal equipment can be fixed by blacksmith, while carpenter and tanner would work only with wood/leather and cloth items respectively. The repair cost depends on the item’s condition and its base price. By the way, you’ll also have an opportunity to fix the item by yourself using a repair kit or an appropriate skill, but the efficiency of such amateurish repair is much lower, and item’s max durability will degrade a little too. Therefore, it’s a good idea to have your most valuable equipment to be repaired by professional craftsmen only.