Economy
Thumpstone’s economy is player-driven. There is no admin shop where you can endlessly sell resources for fixed prices, and some of the most valuable assets cannot simply be bought from the server.
Money moves between players through trade, while systems such as Jobs provide the main way for new money to enter the economy. Building wealth therefore means finding something useful to do, produce or provide.
Jobs
Jobs are the easiest and most reliable way to start earning money.
Join jobs that suit the way you already like to play. As you perform relevant activities, you’ll earn money and progress your jobs.
Jobs are particularly useful early in the season because you don’t need customers, valuable equipment or an established base before you can start earning.
Jobs Points
Jobs also award Jobs Points as you progress.
These are separate from normal money and can be spent in the Jobs Shop on exclusive rewards. This means Jobs remain worthwhile even once you have other sources of income.
Tip: Don’t think of Jobs purely as something to grind. Pick jobs that complement what you were going to do anyway and get paid for playing normally.
Player Shops
The real heart of the economy is trade between players.
You can create chest shops to sell items to other players or create buying shops that offer money for resources you need.
There is no limit to the number of shops you can create, so you’re free to build anything from a single roadside chest to a large marketplace.
Finding Shops & Prices
You don’t have to travel around blindly looking for a good deal. The shop system provides tools for finding shops and researching the market.
For example, /shop browse shows every shop on the server, the items they are selling and their minimum, maximum and average prices. /shop suggestprice can use the item you’re holding to suggest an appropriate market price.
Use /shop help in-game to see the exact commands available to you.
Running a Successful Shop
A shop is only useful if people actually visit it.
Every player can create up to 6 player warps (starting at 3, earn more by climbing the Guild Ranks), giving you plenty of scope to advertise useful destinations. A warp could lead to your main shop, a specialist store or even a larger market shared by several players.
Good traders will:
- check existing prices before setting their own;
- keep popular products in stock;
- use buying shops when they need a steady supply of resources;
- choose convenient, memorable shop locations;
- advertise a player warp so customers can return easily.
You don’t necessarily need to be the cheapest seller. Availability and convenience have value too.
Spawners
Spawners are potentially valuable economic assets, but they are deliberately scarce.
Spawners cannot be bought from the server.
The only way to obtain one is to discover it in the world and collect it using Silk Touch. Exploration therefore matters: finding a useful spawner can give you something that cannot simply be purchased from a server shop.
Once established, spawners can accumulate:
- mob drops, which can be sold directly from the spawner, or collected to your inventory;
- XP, which is banked by the spawner for later collection.
Lands Rent
You don’t have to make money by selling items.
The Lands system allows landowners to create rentable areas, opening another form of player-to-player commerce.
This can be particularly useful around established settlements and commercial centres. Rather than every player building in isolation, a successful Land can offer desirable places for other players to live or operate businesses.
Rent can therefore provide an ongoing source of income for the Land, while tenants gain access to a location without having to establish everything themselves.
Location matters. A plot beside a busy market or popular player warp may be considerably more attractive than an identical plot in the middle of nowhere.