Banking

Nodes advance to the first stage quickly. This enables NPC services such as vending or banking items.

• Banking between characters will likely be restricted to Furniture and completed items.
• A warehouse ability may enable a player to transfer non-material goods between alternate characters. This excludes resources, materials or anything that relies on the caravan system.

Storage

Storage chest in an Alpha-1 freehold.

Storage points exist at warehouses within nodes and in chests (storage containers) that can be placed in freeholds and static in-node housing.

Warehouses

Warehouses are storage points within a node.

• Warehouses may enable a player to transfer non-material goods between alts. This excludes resources, materials or anything that relies on the caravan system.
• Players are prohibited from moving goods out of depositories within a node following a siege declaration against that node.
• Player stalls are linked to that player's warehouse.
• A portion of all Materials (crafting components) and Gatherables that were stored in successfully sieged nodes become lootable to the victors of the siege as spoils of war.
  • Whole items (crafted items) are not vulnerable to loss during node sieges.
• Corrupt players may not store items in public warehouses.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Personal caravans may be launched from any point of storage (including warehouses).

Player housing storage

Alpha-1 chest concept art.

Alpha-1 chest 3D renders.

Chests are a type of furniture that provides localized storage within a specific house.

• Players must obtain and place storage containers in their player-owned housing.
• Different grades of storage containers have different inventory capacities.
  • There are restrictions on the grades of storage containers available in different types of houses.
• Access permissions can be set to allow others to access a player's personal storage devices.

• • Personal storage chests may be set to permit access by family or guild members.
  • Transfer of resources and materials to alts will only be possible via player housing storage, as this is local to the specific house.
• Players are prohibited from moving goods out of depositories within a node following a siege declaration against that node.
  • Gatherables and processed goods that were stored in in-node housing and apartment storage chests become lootable upon a successful siege against the parent node. These do not become lootable if the node survives the siege- even if the housing buildings are destroyed or damaged during the siege.
• Corrupt players are able to utilize private storage in their Freeholds.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Personal caravans may be launched from any point of storage (including chests).

Player to player trading

Ashes of Creation concept art.

There will be player to player trading in Ashes of Creation.

• Player to player trading, interacting with vendors or NPCs, and the ability to access storage is disabled for corrupted players.

Q: Will Ashes of Creation have player-to-player trading? Will there be anything stopping me from gifting a friend that's fresh to the game a bunch of in-game money to help them get on their feet quickly?

A: There won't be anything to stop you from doing that. – Steven Sharif

Buying and selling

Player stalls, personal shops, and auction houses enable buying from and selling to other players.

	Player stalls	Personal shops	Auction houses
Cost	Rental fee.	Placement certificate purchase.	Listing fee.
Location	Can be rented at locations near the unique building in an economic node or in Marketplaces.	Certificates from non-metropolis nodes, allow placement near the node's unique building or on a freehold. Certificates from economic node metropolises allow placement anywhere in the world.	At Markets in Village economic nodes allow raw resources and processed goods to be posted. At Exchanges in Town nodes allow all goods/items to be posted. Metropolis stage Economic nodes enable remote bidding from linked economic nodes. Auctioneer NPC emissaries present in Vassal nodes allow some access to the parent node's auction house.
Player presence	An attendant NPC is assigned to the stall. Character does not need to be online or at the stall.	Player must be online and present at the shop.	N/A
Storage	Linked to character's warehouse.	Linked to character's inventory.	Raw materials and gatherables are automatically deposited within the listing node's local warehouse. Anything other than raw materials and gatherables will be mailed to the purchaser.
Advertising	Items and services are listed on Bulletin boards in the same region. There may or may not also be listings at auction houses.	Custom billboard appears above the character. Items are not listed in the parent node or auction houses.	Items listed are visible in community boards (bulletin boards). Metropolis level economic nodes enable worldwide sale prices for auction houses across Verra.
PvP	Players are not able to be attacked or robbed while occupying their player stall inside the limits of a node. Material losses may occur if the node's warehouse is destroyed during a node siege.	Players may be killed while occupying their personal shop and are subject to material loss due to normal death penalties.	N/A

Mailing items

• Raw gatherables and materials are not able to be mailed by players.
  • Purchases of anything other than materials and gatherables from integrated auction houses will be mailed to the purchaser.
• Social messages sent via mail will be received instantly.
• It hasn't been decided whether crafted items such as gear will be able to be sent via mail.

From an item standpoint obviously we can't allow mailing to include any type of resource material or raw gatherable because those are central to the gameplay and transiting through the caravan system and economic regions. But it may be possible to send completed crafted items like you know gear, equipment, stuff like that. But it's something we're still discussing. – Steven Sharif

Gear binding

There may be some gear binding (BoE or BoP) but it will be an exception rather than the rule, as this doesn't facilitate the objectives for the economy.

• Very little gear will be account bound or soulbound in Ashes of Creation.
  • The game economy is based around crafting and degradation of items.
• Gear is obtained via crafting, gathering and processing along with raid and dungeon bosses.

A lot of what we experienced in games that usually come before us is that many things are account bound and they're soulbound to your character... Instead very little here is character bound. Very very little. The vast majority of gear- yes you will get quest related gear as rewards- but it won't be let's say one set in one dungeon and you must run the dungeon over and over. Instead we want to really emphasize the reliance on the economy and crafters and gatherers and processors to support a majority of the gear structure in-game, combined with that of world raid bosses and dungeon bosses; not a repetitive quest line through a single dungeon. – Steven Sharif

Theft

There will not be a theft (stealing/pickpocketing) mechanic in Ashes of Creation in regards to living players.

• There may be quest related actions that involve some form of stealing, but not of actual items from a player's inventory, where the player is identified as the quest's target via a title or some other means.

That kind of emergent gameplay is obviously the objective behind how can we accommodate a non-static quest-line; and the way you do that is you can apply a flag to a title and whoever holds that title becomes the target of that quest segment. And this can change too because that title can change- you know different people might rise up in the ranks of different societies and organizations. – Steven Sharif

• Players are not able to be robbed while occupying their player stall inside the limits of a node.

There is not a theft mechanic for you to walk up to a player that's alive and steal something. – Steven Sharif

Security systems

Security systems will be in place to combat cheating, exploiting, botting, gold selling/real money transactions (RMT), item duplication and other things that affect the economy starting from Alpha-0.

• These systems collect user data and flag abnormal activities for investigation. This combined with player reporting functions generates a live "heat map" that draws attention to unusual behavior.

We do have already built into the game on the outset is essentially behavioral metrics. So in the game, as a player does normal things and they acquire normal gold, that's all good and well, but if there starts to be item IDs that appear on the player account that are out of the norm, like either a large amount of gold, or significant legendary items, what it does in the back-end it flags the account for view so that we can take a look at where did this item come from. Is it coming from a known gold seller or a flagged bot, or whatever; and then we investigate. So we're going to be pretty hard on the ability for players to subvert the natural economy systems by RMT or botting. – Steven Sharif

• Botters, cheaters, gold sellers, and RMTers, will face harsh penalties from the active GM/community team.

It's important to note that there is a sanctity that must be protected within the game from RMTing; and let me just go into a little diatribe about this: But in games that I've played where the company or the publisher does not enforce rules, it becomes the standard that you buy gold if you want to be competitive. If you want to compete at the top tier levels in certain games, and everyone's buying gold, you almost either have to buy the gold or you're just not going to be able to compete with those people and that's a really shitty feeling to have. Excuse my French, I apologize. That is sucky; and in order for that not to be the case it is the responsibility of the publisher or the developers both to make sure that we have stringent practices from a CS- from a customer customer service perspective- to enforce our rules and to make sure that players are aware if they partake in this there is a huge risk in doing so. It's not going to be a slap on the hand. It's not going to be a "we told you once, we told you twice, we told you three, four, five six times okay. We're just taking some gold away", that kind of thing. We have got to ensure that it is feared to do those things because you know that ashes has active GMS, it has active customer service, it has an active community team. – Steven Sharif

Escrow system

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

An escrow system is planned to prevent griefing in the crafting system.

We're going to have a UI... you're gonna put the resources in or they're gonna put the resources in. It'll be like an escrow system and then once [the job] is complete you'll get the item they'll get the money.

See also

• Economy
• Currency
• Sharemarket