Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: Difference between revisions

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* In ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', vendors pay 25% of the selling price of an item, if you're allowed to vendor it at all, and all vendor-bought items cost the same everywhere (subject to reputation discounts). Sources of income are quests and [[Money Spider]]s. That said, the player-driven economy is vibrant and can be highly profitable.

 

== [[Roguelike]] ==

*In [[Dwarf Fortress]] all item values (not the final prices) are the same no matter where you are, based entirely on material and quality, and every non-worthless item has a minimum value of 1. So while you can't turn a profit on bought goods, even if they're from the other end of the world, you can make money selling found/stolen goods even if they're literally found in infinite quantities ''laying around on the ground in front of the buyer''. There are presently two exceptions to this rule, through entirely randomised (on the AI side) fortress mode trade agreements it is possible for items fixed values to be increased by a given %. It is also possible to get items at a better price by using the appraisal skill in both modes, though no NPC will ever trade items at a loss as a result.

 

* Completely averted in the latest ''[[Atelier]]'' series game: ''Atelier Lina''. The price of goods fluctuates year round, and buying stuff in one town to sell in another town is the fastest, easiest and most profitable way to make obscene amounts of cash in a very short amount of time.

* Averted in ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]],'' where it's possible to buy items in one town and sell them at another town for a profit. One of the possible ways to do this is told to you as payment for a side quest. "Go to Petalburg, buy a Sleepy Sheep, go to Rogueport, and sell the Sleepy Sheep for a two-coin profit!"

* Averted in ''[[Fallout]] 1'' and ''2''. The price you sold things for was fixed (RadAway always sell for 500) but the buying price varied depending on your Barter skill, reputation, and the general disposition of the merchant in general. In several cases you could actually buy things for less than you sell them, allowing you to literally clean out the store by buying everything and selling back smaller and smaller shares until the merchant was left with a single chip or a worthless junk item.

* Followed fairly straight with the regular merchants, but averted ''hard'' with the robot traders on [[Anachronox|Sender Station]]. (They're not trading in robots, they're actual robots who trade stuff.) They only trade various useless luxury items (and also lifepetals, but you need them for other things) but each have different price listings. Simply buy as much as possible of a ware where it's cheap, then hoof it over to the one who buys it for a high price. Then repeat, but now you can buy even more. If you can stand the repetitive clicking, you can make your party economically independent in less than thirty minutes. And you can always go back if you need more.

* Merchants in [[Albion]] may have varying prices. Some even have two separate inventories for selling and for buying that have different exchange rates, but the rule of thumb is that regardless of the exchange rate, they will give 20% less for everything you sell them, then what they would ask when you're buying the same item. The way it's set up, buying something from the cheapest merchant then reselling it to the most expensive merchant will most likely get you the price back, but not much more. On the other hand, there are a LOT of merchants who are more than willing to buy your hard earned loot and [[Vendor Trash]], for pocket money (read, half the price an average merchant would give you).

* In ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games, items can generally be sold for half the purchase price. However, in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'', the player can learn the "Buy Low" and "Sell High" abilities of the Tonberry GF, which allow the player to buy and sell items at 3/4 the standard price. With those abilities and the Carbuncle GF's "Recov Med-RF" (Recovery Medicine Refinement), you can buy Tents and Cottages, turn them into Mega-Potions, and sell those for about a 20% profit.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** There still ends up being little holes in the game's default price lists that can be exploited (assuming the DM is a pushover.) For example, a ten-foot pole costs four times as much as a ten-foot ladder, so even if you can only sell items at half price, you can turn a profit by buying ladders, breaking them up into two poles each, and selling them.

*** Averting [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check]] with spells, a character could fill a warehouse with trade goods with Fabricate. Just hire near free unskilled laborers to collect the raw materials, spend a minute casting the spell, and then have a couple of skilled workers to handle the books and some guards. You'll make thousands. If you also know how to make masterwork weapons or alchemy, dropping masses of masterwork longbows or alchemical goods on the city could be even more hilarious. Offer to equip the king's archers for half cost. Since Karl Marx Hates Your Guts and you can only sell them at half price, you ''should'' sell them in no time flat. The spell costs 1/3 the value of the goods to create them and you are forced to sell for half, but remember - you can make 90 cubic feet of goods in a single casting at the minimum level. Or 9 cubic feet if you make minerals. That's about 4,400 pounds of steel goods. That's almost 9,000 masterwork daggers, if you are good enough to make them. Dozens of spells are ripe to be abused through these kinds of mechanisms and are not so absurd as cornering the ten foot pole market.

**** Magic items are intended to be rare and you aren't supposed to be required to have them at all. During third edition, a vicious circle developed between magic items being too easy and enemies being balanced to acknowledge how easy magic items were to get, which led to magic items being even more common for defeating those enemies causing even more powerful enemies with even more powerful magic items to emerge.

*** It also makes rust monsters, formerly one of the most frightening creatures to a fiscally conscious adventurer, into an extremely useful pet. In 4e, magic items can be disenchanted by a ritual that yields a powder containing about 20% of the magic essences needed to make the item. However, if a metallic magic item is fed to a rust monster, it leaves ''all'' the magic behind in powdered form.

 

== [[Wide Open Sandbox]] ==

[[Category:Money Tropes]]

[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]

[[Category:CRPG Tropes]]