As the population of the server is very low (less than 10 people on most days), the "player driven" economy is really lacking. Often you cannot find people selling, even on trade totems things you might want. Like wise it can be weeks before something you are trying to sell even gets looked at let alone purchased on a totem.

How many times over the years have I returned to the game, met up with new tribes in my area or even on the other side of the map and created awesome relation ships with trade/commerce, only to have real live kick in and that tribe goes silent. No more trade with them often means the economy that exited because of that commerce is now gone... If there is no consistent base line for basic trade in the game... it become a solitary survival game with very limited interaction. I think that adding an NPC presence would strengthen the games economy if done right.

I like the idea of player driven economy and I am full support of it going forward, however I'd like to make some suggestions where NPC's could really help maintain a minimum base line for the economy and founders island could become a relevant location and make the surrounding locations more valuable. NOTE: I do not live any where near founders so this is not about making my tribe more relevant. I'm down in 768.

Add NPC's to Founders island to make it relevant and the tribes around it more traveled.
If Founders island has NPC's that provided some basic merchant services this would bring more traffic to this area and thus make the land/tribes around it more traveled. This would also provide more value for people to make their way to this location to do business.

Services that Founders island could provide.

Broker service NPC: This npc could be used by players to help transport goods to founders island for pickup. This would tie in to the totem system and would use actual players to move the product to/from founders island. this would be much like the contract system used in EvE to move goods. With this, players could run contract delivery from a totem to the broker as well as deliveries from the broker to the totems of those that are looking to buy product. This npc would also have a listing of whats for sale at tribes trade totems provided the data has been updated recently (with in 7 real life days) *see note on Information Collector NPC. This would open up a new area of play for those more interested in moving goods or filling contracts.

General goods merchant: This npc would use a similar model to WURM where the npc only has a limited quantity of cash on hand refreshed on regular intervals (small amount at a time). The intent is to provide a small influx of cash where new players can sell goods they produce to this vendor to make some starting capital for trade with other players. The goods sold to the vendor would be marked up and made available to players to buy creating another cash removal function from the game to keep the value of cash up as well as provide a location others can buy basic goods others have sold to the merchant. It would be important use the quality of the item as a base for increase of sell value as well as buy value but to insure that this is capped so that Master or possibly Artisan items could not be sold to a vendor. This would retain the value of crafted items being only available by way of other players and keep the interaction of trade valued. It would also prevent the players with access to high end goods from cleaning the merchant out of their fund fast.

Information collector: This npc is focused on keeping tabs on the tribes and the activity. This npc would promote visiting tribes around the map. This npc keeps a list of tribe member count & number and class of items for sale. This ties directly in with the brokers. as long as the tribe data has been updated with this npc within 7 days updated items for sale on the trade totem will be listed with the broker.
Players looking to do census collection work for money would visit the collector to pickup a census tablet, this would be used to go around to each tribe (tablet will expire after 7 days if not returned). visiting a tribe totem and viewing the roster to get the count of users will provide basic census data on the table. Returning with just the count for the tribe would be rewarded with the base level of compensation based on the distance of the tribe totem from the information collector. returning with the count as well as the listing of items for sale on the trade totem at the tribe would be rewarded for additional compensation based on the distance of the tribe totem from the information collector.


The general idea with each of these is to promote a healthy economy with things to do even when the population is low. Providing such things should also aid in drawing more players to the game is there is more to do even with others are not online.