Money, cases, and farming: how the STALCRAFT: X economy works

[p]Is the ruble in STALCRAFT: X actually subject to inflation? Will the open world become more profitable? And what’s the real issue behind equipment cases?
In this article, Prometey breaks down the key aspects of the in-game economy and answers the most common questions.
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• [p] What level of income in rubles per hour is considered optimal, taking open world rewards into account? What factors are considered, such as barter resources, items for sale, and rare drops like tools or safe keys? And how does a map’s difficulty affect overall earnings?[/p]

[p]It’s highly individual. You can look at casual players who stick to their home locations, or experienced players who roam wild areas like they own the place. Even on the same location, a player’s income can vary greatly depending on their skill. For a northern player, an optimal income might range anywhere from around 50k to 500k rubles per hour. Key factors include: [/p]

1. [p] The time it takes to reach the location[/p]
2. [p] How PvP-heavy the area is, meaning overall survivability[/p]
3. [p] The difficulty of specific events and the time required to clear them[/p]

[p]The type of rewards given. For example, getting a safe key doesn’t guarantee a player will be able to use it. If a player gets resources worth 100k rubles, it doesn’t mean they’ll extract with all of them — weight limits might get in the way, or they may be saving space for more valuable loot

In reality, there are a lot of variables, enough for an entire lecture.

The core rule for us is simple: higher risk should mean higher reward. Those who put in more effort and invest more resources should earn more.[/p]

• [p] Why weren’t the costs of data in exchange coins adjusted when the prices of data fragments and data blocks were changed? [/p]

[p]Because a resource’s value in exchange coins is determined solely by its value within the barter system.[/p]

• [p] Are there plans to make the open world more profitable? Right now, players have little incentive to farm it beyond three well-known activities, which makes the gameplay feel repetitive and leaves a large portion of the content overlooked.[/p]

[p]We’re aiming to diversify farming methods, but I can’t say exactly what or how we’ll change things just yet. Some events definitely need reward adjustments, and we plan to address that.[/p]

• [p] Why do NPC patrols in the South drop boosters, ammo, and medkits, while in the North they don’t?[/p]

[p]This will soon be fixed on the Wild North. Hopefully, we’ll also get around to updating it for the regular North afterward.[/p]

• [p] Are there plans to rebalance the weight of filler items from spots? The same goes for Gamma — its price was reduced, but its weight stayed the same.[/p]

[p]I’ve been wanting to go over all sellable items for a while now. We recently tested a draft version of changes on Wild North items. Hopefully, we’ll have time soon to review the rest of the open world as well.

Barter item weight is a separate issue that we still need to think through.[/p]

• [p] What’s the deal with Marxont’s thought experiment? Was this idea actually discussed by the economists, or was it just a developer joke?[/p]

[p]The idea was discussed a bit, but personally I didn’t like it. Current filler items aren’t perfect and need systematization and further work, which we do plan to tackle, but they have more potential to create interesting gameplay in the long run.[/p]

• [p] Why are outpost rewards so low? The cost of consumables often exceeds the reward — are there plans to increase it?[/p]

[p]The issue lies in the reward calculation algorithm. Right now, it doesn’t handle large-scale outpost fights very well. In theory, we’ll fix it soon, and the rewards should become more fair.[/p]

• [p] What’s the point of faction supply crates? They’re presented as special rewards, but in practice they only contain one Clarinol and about 30 SBP.[/p]

[p]We’re currently recalculating their contents. In the near future, we’ll make them more valuable: not ultra-rare, but still satisfying to receive.[/p]

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• [p] Why do events generate more currency than the open world?[/p]

[p]That’s not always the case, although there have been instances. We’re now aiming to avoid situations like that.[/p]

• [p] Attack on Perimeter and Frost Troopers introduced an excessive amount of currency.[/p]

[p]Frost Troopers acted as a net sink for the economy. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about Attack on Perimeter :([/p]

• [p] Will there be any forced currency sinks? It feels like too much money was generated after the winter double emissions and the event.[/p]

[p]The good news is that, for the most part, it only feels that way. Hard, mandatory sinks are unlikely. We’re almost always thinking about ways to remove currency from the economy, but we don’t aim to make it forced. The core idea is that if a player spends currency, they should get something in return, not just empty their pockets.[/p]

• [p] Why do economy-affecting issues appear at the start of events? A clear example is Black Hole drop rates.[/p]

[p]The challenge with the Encaged economy was that it was fundamentally different from anything we’d done before. You could say that we, myself (Prometey) included, didn’t have enough experience designing mathematical models for an event like that. Another critical mistake was failing to account for teaming at the very start. Lessons learned—we won’t let that happen again.[/p]

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• [p] How would you assess the current state of the economy?[/p]

[p]Overall, it’s in an acceptable state. There are issues. The main one is the availability of master-tier gear on the auction. It’s not a problem when experienced players trade it among themselves, but it becomes one when a new player can buy it and skip progression. That clearly needs to be addressed.[/p]

• [p] Are there plans to introduce ways to recycle low-tier gear into something useful (for example, Arsen reputation)?[/p]

[p]There have been discussions about recycling low-tier gear, but there are no concrete plans right now. Higher-priority tasks take precedence.[/p]

• [p] Should we expect T25 gear to require resources like serum, barter materials, Arsen reputation, battle tokens and so on?[/p]

[p]This hasn’t been discussed yet, but different options will be considered. It all depends on what kinds of resource sinks the economy needs.[/p]

• [p] Are there plans to adjust case rewards, specifically their positioning relative to item value? For example, Ganymede drops at 1 in 1,000 and costs around 3.5 million, while Elbrus, with a 1 in 100 drop rate, costs 16 million.[/p]

[p]There are several reasons why we’d like to tweak these cases, but this particular issue isn’t one of them. Players themselves decided that Elbrus is more desirable, which is reflected in its auction price.[/p]

• [p] Why was the ability to sell any gear from seasonal crates introduced last autumn? It significantly boosted seasonal currency growth and increased the flow of spare parts and case gear onto the market.[/p]

[p]It only caused a spike at the time, when players were emptying their stockpiles all at once. Now the inflow of gear is predictable, and its sale is already accounted for.
Why introduce this feature at all? We wanted to give players a way to get rid of unwanted gear and receive something in return.[/p]

• [p] Why are case reroll prices fixed? At times rerolling feels too cheap, and at others too expensive, since a fixed price feels different depending on the moment.[/p]

[p]A dynamic price wouldn’t bring meaningful benefits and would likely just confuse everyone.
A fixed price is more convenient for both us and you.[/p]

• [p] What was the goal behind reworking the Season Pass to prevent overfarming from breaking the economy, while also introducing cases with high drop rates for gear that disrupts it even more?[/p]

[p]The Season Pass rework achieved its goal — overfarming no longer breaks the economy.
Case-related issues are a separate problem. We’re aware of it and will be thinking about how to address it.[/p]

• [p] Are there too many upgrade tools and parts given through the Season Pass? Do you want players to seek them more actively in the open world?[/p]

[p]For now, we’re satisfied with the amount of tools and parts provided through the Season Pass.
We haven’t considered pushing players to farm them in the open world yet, as there are higher-priority tasks.[/p]

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• [p] Why hasn’t the hideout changed and remains one of the worst ways to earn money?[/p]

[p]A rework is currently in progress. We aim to make it clearer and more useful for players, with a major overhaul to the crafting system in particular. We may share more details later, but for now, we don’t want to make premature promises.
One thing I can say with confidence: the hideout will be reworked. The work is already underway, and we want it to become a genuinely strong and valuable feature.[/p]

• [p] Why are there so many consumables (like morphine and epinephrine) in the game that they sell for 30% below crafting cost?[/p]

[p]This ties back to the overall issues with hideout crafting. The good news is that the rework is already in progress.[/p]

• [p] How did the introduction of Arsenal, a more player-driven economic system, affect location profitability calculations?[/p]

[p]In short, it didn’t. If anything, we adjust the Arsenal economy to match location profitability.[/p]

• [p] When will more auction statistics be available via API?[/p]

[p]I can’t give a precise answer on the API, but overall, we plan to provide more item statistics and data after the in-game auction rework.[/p]

• [p] Will you address the declining prices of high-rarity artifacts over time? As their numbers grow, prices will inevitably drop.[/p]

[p]I’m aware of the issue, and we’ll be looking for a solution.[/p]

• [p] Are you satisfied with the amount of money players earn from completing Operations at level 30 clearance? Focusing runs don’t seem worth the time investment.[/p]

[p]For now, we’re satisfied with the overall earnings players get from Operations.
In a recent update, we increased rewards for Focusing runs so that they better match the time invested.[/p]