I have 100% agree with everything you said. One question. How and where do you farm 200 shimmer orbs in 15 minutes? I would like to know that secret. All the other ones I know alrwady
While I will be the first say I have way less knowledge than others on “Economies”, I will ask this:
Using what you say that things are down 75%(ish), is it possible that things were SO overpriced at launch (or soon there after) that is why it appears we are in a worse condition? If things had not spiked early on then things would not seem so bad now.
I would agree with @Crete that the economy is not broke, just settling into a more normal state.
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It’s certainly possible. That was (in a grossly simplified way) one of the causes of the great depression. IRL the stock market has “corrections” where things that had been trading too high come back down to “reality,” so that can and does happen. But when it does, those corrections are usually in the single digit percentage range, anything larger indicates a problem with the stock itself. To translate that to boundless, imagine tomorrow that we found out that the durability boon was bugged and not applying. The price of +dura hammers would fall because the “stock” had underlying problems. That is different than, say, the supply of those hammers increasing (more stock issued) so the price falls to reflect more of it is on the market (a small price correction). Due to the severity of the fall off, that indicates to me there is something more at play here than the economy at launch being overvalued by 400-500%. But, again, without the data I can’t say for sure.
You need a T9/T10 DMG + AOE diamond shovel, persisting pie, a fast brew and regen bomb, some cooked steak and go to shendu tier from Ultima Hub check for serenity portal and farm using regen bomb.
Edit: also need shovel skill maxed and all DMG maxed, with luck.
Im glad i didnt play ea. Not comparing values to what they used to be makes this so much easier.
Too much supply and not enough demand. Currently each planet (server) seems to average between 2 and 10 players. Everyone goes out and farms what they want. If each server was full then that would be a player increase of at least 800%. Supply would go down because the amount of resources available would go down due to places being consistently farmed out.
I think that the devs have deliberately soft launched the game (they’ve almost said as much), once the game is in a more complete state then I think there will be a second, bigger launch, which will hopefully bring in new players to fill the existing servers. The only solution to the problem (I think there is a problem) is a bigger player base; new players tend to buy more, supply will go down, more money will be in the economy, having money to spend will mean buying things instead of farming them. It all comes down to player base IMO.
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Love the OP. I think this is another great point. Flip shops and actual value add/ product shops work a little different, but there’s an overarching theme. You wanna make money; you gotta sell.
I think the best way is to start small. Farm your mats, put out what you’re selling at a price you feel is reaching a bit and give it a few days. If nothing sells, lower your price. Repeat.
Once you find where people buy, see if you can gather/ buy your mats at a worthwhile margin. If you can, you’re in business. If you can’t, then don’t. Willing buyer willing seller needs 2 to tango. Same logic if you really want/ need coin, you’d be willing to sell for less than you think an item is “worth”; if not, you dont need the coin bad enough 
You need:
A minimally forged 3x3 diamond shovel
Strength Brew (Depending how minimally forged your damage is)
A Persisting Pie, for good measure.
World Regen Bombs
Go to the Aqua/Ultima Shedu Tier Hub, and Go to Serenitys Haven, Shimmer farm.
It’s actually 10mins, the length of the strength brew is how long i farm for. I usually pull 300 Orbs. And My shovel is still on it’s 5th run. maybe 3 more left in it if I use Persisting food.
There it is! =D
My fix.
Get rid of portals. I know it’s cool and convenient, but when you can go to any planet at any time and get any resource there’s not much use for stores.
Make it so we can only open up personal portals. Or maybe just portals around one planet, no interplanetary ones.
I’ve always wondered how awesome that would be without portals. Like, someone gets 25 bright yellow mushrooms from Galan to Finata… and everyone looses their minds when they get one.
“Holy cow! Did you see Tommy has those Yellow Mushrooms! I got one!!! Cost me an arm and a leg, but it is sweet as tits!”
Things would be quite different…
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That would be fun as a limited event. Some baddie shows up and knocks out our portals and we have to warp totem around the solar system like it’s launch day to stop them
First, i need to clear myself first, i have no problem to buy & sell at any point.
But i still feel the market is broken lol.
Also you already point out the problem, everything now is extremely cheap.
Its way to cheap at any items…
The only a few items now have value i can already list them all here.
Hoper trophy around 3500 c - 4500 c / unit
Wildstock trophy around 1000 - 1500c / unit
Road runner trophy should be the most expansive materials in the game so far i guess.
Oortstone 150 - 190 c / unit
Forge gear around 12k - 20k
Advance power coil now only 2500c - 3900c lol
I mean really ? As you can see only Forge gear can sell over 10k / unit.
Right now only thing worth in market is forge gears…
Basically other things are same as dirt lol.
Base on the example you mention "simmering orbs"
I can get 900 in one persisting pie.
Its even easier than i go out and collect the fibrous leaf and inky leaf….
The healthy market shouldn’t only allow one type of business.
I mean if you take looks all the reason all the trophy still remain these price is because forge ingredients.
All the eye / sac are still worth price is because of forge ingredient as well.
Other materials not related to forge system are simply just garbage with extremely low price 
Of course you spend more time to grind like 10x amount of number than before you still get good money.
For example before i only need to sell 1 advance power coil i earn 17k - 20k . Now i need to sell 7 power coil to get the same result.
The current market really can’t prevent someone keep lowering the market price.
The forge system is way too easy for everything. It cause some players become very rich. Also money become not necessary for them as well.
As result, making 10k / day is no more different for them as making 1k /day.
This why they acting like you who keep lowering the market price for a lot of items.
If one day power coils drop to 1000c or 500c, i won’t be too surprise lol.
Forge gear will be the next product to drop price.
People now are able to forge their own tools, and they all want a forge gear shop
(Because this is only business worth to spend time on it)
When demand drop, and more players involve + this is super easy to achieve.
This game will have nothing worth at that moment.
Money will become completely pointless in the game.
Even now if one guy wants to lower the forge tools to 1000c, and the owner + their group can fill up the shop daily. The new forge gear price will become 1000c.
Unless you can buy all the forge items in his shop and sell it higher at your shop.
But it really depends on their ability too. Maybe they can fill up with the speed before you burn out all your money.
Can other people fill the shop with that kind of speed ?
Maybe yes and maybe no. But they all need to be force to agree the new price.
As you said "We should lower the price, our pricing was too expansive"
Basically its what happened for Advance power coils in last month.
Experienced players, groups they kept lowering the pricing.
They can fill up the shop very fast.
But if new or mid game players want to do the same type of business, can they fill it with this speed too?
Maybe their gem grind rate is around 150 -250 unit / hour, and they may spend couple hours for a 1000c / unit income.
For experienced players its 1 hour work for 1000c x 25 income.
For new or mid players it will be like 4 - 5 hour work for 1000c x 25 income.
Basically they lost the chance to get involve to the market anymore.
They can only switch the other business type to making their money, but that maybe not the game content they enjoy most.
This why i keep mention the market is broken.
Right now is on the edge. People start to feel it, this why those topic keep coming out.
If the current situation keep happening in next 1- 2 month.
The entire market will be totally no function.
This game is not like other mmorpg. End game players still has the gears (legendary gears) they really want to buy.
Money still has meaning for them. Maybe they won’t care about the difference between 100c and 1000c. But they will still care about 10k to 100k difference or 100k to 1m’s difference.
So they won’t keep lowering the price by a lot of weird reason like providing a better environment for new players…etc
They still need their money to buy the thing they need. Sometimes they may spend all the money they have just for 1 valuable gear.
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I get your opinion but I can only assume that part of this is a result of my post since a few people posted the same thoughts.
In transparency my post was a result of talking to James during an Oortian call where we discussed the economy. They have metrics that show various things around this and felt work needed to be done regarding the economy. So whether you want to use the work “broke” or “jump start” or whatever, it IS something that the developers will be working on.
The problem does go beyond “prices” and the data proves that. Obviously an honest conversation about prices is welcome so I am not disputing your post. But, I don’t think it is fair to say it is “not broke” when data and others feel that the economy could be better.
This is going to be kinda noob question I guess since it seems I’m the only guy who does not know… bit what would I be farming exactly? The only thing I know I can get shimmer from is the little glowy mushroom. Is there something else that drops it that you mine with shovels?
Growth Blocks
ORLY! Thank you a bunch. And again great post
If you look at the vets that were dealing with a stable economy at the end of early access, we could have easily told you that the prices were crazy for how easy it was to get everything. So I’d say you are 100% on point here.
I guess I have a bit of an objective look on this, given that I just recently came back from a several month break.
What I personally have noticed so far is that there’s a lot of shops that look like they’ve been left to just sit with whatever they had around the time I took a break. Some of the selling prices I found haven’t changed since my break 2-3 months ago, such as gems (I see most selling at 500c each still). Edit: To put this into perspective, diamonds dropped to around 100c each buying and 150c each selling in beta when the forge came out, and diamonds were no rarer in beta than they are in live.
On top of that…I tried to go shopping to see what running prices were on items. There’s what seems like a million shops, which all stock the same exact items for the same prices. Almost all of them also either don’t buy any items themselves, which I don’t have an issue with, but there are ones that also buy materials as well. The problem I see is they are buying the same items they are selling for 20% of their selling price.
The other issue I see is the sheer number of shops that exist. It was so insane that I opened up an excel spreadsheet to keep track of the prices of the items I was looking for, just trying to find a good deal. I probably spent a good 2-3 hours going shop to shop just doing this.
TL;DR
Basically what I’m saying is prices are stagnant at inflated prices, and there are too many shops doing the exact the thing of being cheap with their purchases and overcharging for their sales.
I have to agree with @Crete on this.
If I did that no one would be buying my pies and brews…
One example:
I need 576 sweet beans to mass craft 50 teaching pies. yes, they are easy to find, 576 tho is not something that’s fun to do in 1 sitting (I usually do it in 2 or 3).
So if your prices are fair and based on how long it takes to gather them what should I ask for 1 teaching pie?
You are selling sweet beans for 50c, I need 11.52 of them per pie, that means 576c for the beans alone.
Besides that I also need for 50 pies:
103.86 fibrous herbs
207.36 barbed grass
207.36 sap
26.87 milk glands
149.3 charcoal (== trunks + coal)
74.65 gravel
Using your own prices I come at around 722c per pie. That’s without spark costs and, one must certainly not forget this one, time spent on actually making the pies on 3 or 4 different machines depending on the pie.
I currently sell them for 879c which comes to 813c after taxes for a profit of 91c.
I’d say my prices are fair, but do people actually feel they are or do they find them too expensive?
You have no idea how many people have told me that they are too expensive and that gems are cheaper.
To those people I have this to say:
if I can grab a forged tool and come back with 700-1000 teaching pies already cooked in an hour than I will price them the same as topaz!
I still find gems too expensive as compared to these. Gems are soooo easy to find and you can re-sell them without needing to do anything with/to them! Not gather for 4 more hours for any other mats and then stuff it in machines and wait for 8 hours (well not in 1 go, nope, you need to be present when the craft is done so you can do the next, maybe even in the next machine!).
No, am not complaining, it’s kinda fun, it’s just sorta frustrating when day after day I have no or hardly any sales.
I’m not saying the prices aren’t way out of whack for many items, but people are also not buying much because they either do not have the coin for it or rather spend more time to do it themselves.
And I can’t blame them for the latter, I don’t like paying for things when I can get it myself and hardly ever buy stuff in other shops. If the economy was doing great and I would have way more regular sales it would also be much easier for me to spend coin , now I feel I need to be careful.
In the past 7 days, I didn’t make any coin, but lost about 100k. Yes, I have request baskets for items that can’t even fit in my storage anymore but want to give players with way less coin a chance to earn some too. But if this keeps up like this I will have to stop that sooner or later…
TLDR; the economy is both broken and many shopkeepers have insane prices
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I just hope that by then I still want to play it…