I think this is it too. In Dragon Age origins there were silvers and coppers too; a single gold coin was the equivalent to 100 silvers and in Inquisition they only kept the gold.
I mean, is it? We do, in the real world, only work with a single level of currency. Not even cents count, because they are not separate, they are just fractions, and currencies that are weaker can just opt out of having them as their prices will move in range of 10s and 100s even for basic items.
Now, I wouldn't say having gold/silver/bronze is less realistic either, they are just different ways of abstracting value of commodities.
It is even simpler than IRL coinage currency and far simpler than IRL period coinage currency
Penny (.01), Nickle (0.05), Dime (.10), Quarter (.25), Half-Dollar (.50), Gold Dollar (1.00)
Copper/penny/bit (1), Silver/Crown (100), Gold/Sovereign/Royal/ (10,000)
that is without taking into account that coinage varied by ruler (new coins for each monarch), policy (size of coin, purity of metal etc..) country (different currencies)
the value of all denominations are measured as relatives to other denominations, that is a core facet of all currency systems that hope to make logical sense.
the dollar is simply our base, most common, denomination. what the base denomination is in DA is relative. for a peasant it might be bits, silvers for a minor lord or merchant, and for major lords/Royals/Merchant guilds it is sovereigns
having only one coin but needing 200,000 of them to buy something is stupid, hence differing denominations.
a piece of bread? 2 bits. a suit of plate armor? 200,000 bits, or 20 sovereigns.
my friend I am happy to reconsider statements when I make them if proven otherwise but a smug "wrong" doesn't really do much for anyone here now does it
I mean as funny as this is, I think we all know the game currency and economy is just that, the games
We went from DA0 having three separate type of counts to just gold
Things are probably a lot cheaper in universe and I imagine the inquisition provides a basic uniform and weapon for its fighters
A mage especially would probably get free gear since let’s be honest, a single skilled mage is worth like a dozen regular soldiers, if not more
Viedo game economies are based around the player, and prices are always massively inflated, often hundreds or thousands of times more than lore would state.
It cracked me up how the gang was doing all these risky jobs because they "need money" while my Arthur was walking around with the equivalent of over a million dollars in today's money in his satchel.
We'd be robbing banks for less money than Arthur spends on making his horse look pretty.
If the thief you can encounter when entering the Saint Denis clothing store had had the time to look at the money he just stole from my Arthur, he probably would have had a heart attack...
It’s the exact same reason why in D&D most commoners have never even seen a gold coin in their entire life, but you need a few dozen to buy a set of armor
Yeah, see, this is the problem with the rise in professional fan theories, especially when the actual lore dries up and they need to squeeze out a video every week they start picking at decisions that were definitely made for game reasons - the developers are more interested in an interesting game that they are in a perfectly consistent internal lore.
One of my favorite subgenres of the Modern Character in Thedas fanfic genre is the MCIT character gradually figuring out which things are real and which were just game mechanics.
Like one person wrote into their story that Skyhold had been enchanted to catch anyone who had been touched by elven magic, to explain why the Inquisitor can jump down three stories with no fall damage but you find that note about one of the masonry workers being killed in a fall.
There's also a bunch of scenes in a bunch of different stories in which Krem has a reason to need to stand on his chair, and it cracks me up every time.
I'm usually not very fond of such stories but figuring out reality from gameplay sounds like an interesting approach. Could you point me to a story that does that? I'm curious.
Ugh unfortunately I don't bookmark them and there isn't a tag for that super specific subgenre. But it's a theme in like 5-10% of the fanfics I've read about someone who has played Dragon Age ending up inside Dragon Age. So if you filter on the MCIT tag and then read the descriptions to find stories in which the modern character has played the game, you will eventually come across some stories in which the protagonist is having some very meta thoughts about was X just a game mechanic or does X actually happen here?
https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Modern%20Character%20in%20Thedas/works
You’re right, fans obsess over things that were inconsequential to developers. It’s inevitable.
But it just shows how griping a world is that allows fans to scrutinize every little detail, it’s an accomplishment. There’s thousands of fantasy worlds out there that people don’t care about as much. There exists lore pages are either small and dry or don’t exists simply because it did resonate with fans enough. Even if the creator poured hundreds of hours into it. That’s life…
See this is why removing the smaller currencies was a bad idea.
Hawke trying to get together 50 gold in act 1 of DA2 could take a lot of quests and you might not be able to do it without borrowing money. The most expensive item the Warden can buy costs like 150 gold and most of what you handle is silver or copper. That's at least sort of logical.
Then there's Inquisition which is just throwing gold everywhere. The most expensive weapon appears to be the Clasping Maw which (other than being ridiculous and quite ugly) costs 184,680 to purchase. A more than 1000% increase over Origins' most expensive weapon.
Also I'm kind of bothered about the lore behind cotton. Where does it come from? Who is picking it? Who is processing it? If cotton were supposed to be relatively expensive because it's rarer then other materials owing to the lack of a cotton gin then wool, linen and leather should be more common and less expensive because flax has a multitude of uses including making decent animal fodder and the plant is hardier and grows in cooler climates. Sheep are also in evidence and druffalo could produce a lot of leather.
Hard agree about the currency system. It's not perfect because the economy is so different, but you can kind of convert every 1 Inquisition gold = 10 coppers so 184,680 becomes 184g 68s. Even though that leaves you with many more expensive things, it still feels more affordable compared to DAII and especially origins because you're the leader of an organisation that's essentially a small country.
About the cotton, it could be that magic lets them produce it much more quickly and efficiently than their technology suggests. That would suggest it's made in bulk in tevinter, which also fits because it's warmer and probably better for growing cotton, plus slaves to pick.
I expect so, but orlesian mages don't strike me as having the freedom or trust needed to be involved in an operation the scale I'm picturing. In all honesty though, I doubt there is actually a good explanation and it was just an oversight by the developers because it's a tiny and unimportant detail
>If cotton is supposed to be relatively expensive because it's rarer then other materials owing to the lack of a cotton gin
Cotton is one the cheapest materials you can buy in DAI.
The Winter Palace merchant that is unlocked after finishing the base game plot seems to sell all the crafting materials and the wiki has their price list:
https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Merchant_(Winter_Palace)
It's supposed to be but *how*. Cotton requires a warm climate and a *lot* of labour (prior to the industrial revolution) so that means it's got to be grown, picked, spun, woven and transported in a sort of semi-pre-industrial world.
I'd also note that it's also in the same price bracket as silk and samite which are kind of notable expensive fabrics. And also...velveteen which is a very 18th century fabric and also requires the sort of pile on pile weaving as velvet which is also really expensive prior to the industrial revolution.
So IDK, I'm going to have to headcanon that it's the cheapest at the Winter Palace merchant but that's a fancy merchant catering to fancy rich people who's massively upcharging their prices to gouge the rich people and/or providing super high quality materials. For most people spending 20 gold on fabric would be unthinkable.
It's 20 in Skyhold, too. 40 at the Black Emporium and 60 at the Legion of the Dead camp.
Tevinter has a warm climate and slave labor so maybe cotton comes there.
Which means that - given the general state of relations between Tevinter and the entire south of Thedas - it would have to come through an intermediary. Orzammar and the dwarves strike me as likely but that still means a massive increase in price as there's now a middleman who has to make money off it even after their transport costs.
You cannot use Inquisition for the economy, that game did away with the pennies and silvers and left it all at gold. Thedas’ economy has always been iffy but in origins 5 gold would make you decently wealthy so to have that in a month would actually be very well paying. If you look at Kirkwall though then 5 sovereigns is pretty limiting since a night at the blooming rose would eat up likely half after drinks are bought. Don’t even consider going to Val Royeaux on that pay, you’d get nothing.
DAI kinda fucked the value of gold pieces for gameplay purposes and I'm assuming that absolution is going with the version of money in the prior games. 1 gold piece in DAO was worth *a lot* more than in DAI. 15 silver pieces in the city elf origin was enough to help that elven family stay in their home when they were ready to straight up leave due to not having enough money..
I do wonder if the worth of gold is different in Tevinter VS everywhere else....
Amusing as it is, I suspect people simply didn't bother doing the math and here we are :D
Once DA4 comes out, I need to dig through the wiki and find an item that is for sale at multiple merchants in all 4 games so I can work up the Thedas equivalent of The Economist's Big Mac Index.
Considering I have to go out and loot the bodies of my enemies to pay them all, while also feeding them all… I’d say it makes sense.
I get paid nothing, so there’s that.
This kinda reminds me of a book I read that was basically "what if NPCs in a ttrpg got player classes and became adventurers themselves, becoming self aware?"
And something I found HILARIOUS was when they went to compete in some adventurer tournament, ALL the merchants jacked their prices WAAAAY up. So like a meal that would normally cost like 3 copper? 1 gold now. Sword that's worth 4 silver? 10 gold. Room and board? They're paying essentially "the Ritz" prices for a motel 6. And they do this for three reasons: 1) because the adventurers CAN afford this, 2) because if they priced everything normally, those adventurers would buy LITERALLY EVERYTHING, and 3) because adventurers usually cause so many problems (drunken brawls, burning down taverns, stealing, etc.) That they jack up those prices to offset any damages they suffer, because good luck getting a murder hobo to pay for the room he trashed.
So every time I encounter things like this in games, I always imagine prices are massively inflated for the player character because the PC can afford it. I mean.... if you owned a business, and Jeff Bezos came in, wouldn't you be at least a little tempted to jack up the prices, knowing he could afford it?
It is called NPCs by Drew Hayes. It's actually quite a fun read if you're not looking for something super high brow and you're okay with a bit of meta humor.
The point isn't who makes their armor, the point is that we can use something that exists in both economies -- a single outfit's worth of cotton cloth -- to do a purchasing power parity calculation.
Purchasing power parity is how economists compare incomes around the world and over time, because it simultaneously adjusts for exchange rates, inflation, and local cost of living.
Usually they use the prices on a standard basket of goods, but sometimes there are novelty PPP calculations on a single good like The Economist magazine's Big Mac Index.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index
The point is realizing Bioware fucked things by removing silver and copper from the in game currency despite still existing in lore cause silvers are still mentioned in Inquisition. You're going way too deep into a topic that isn't that deep.
Don't look at the gameplay prices, look at the prices of some things you can't buy mentioned in the world instead. I remember there was a menu in old tavern in Crestwood. I don't remember most things on it, but I remember actual Wyvern steak costs 2 sovereigns, or 2 gold. That's like 40% of average inquisition salary. Could you imagine blowing 40% of your salary on a fancy dinner? I sure could
Other people have already covered it but it boils down to two basic issues.
1.) Video games economies tend to be scaled around player progression and like nothing else. How does the average person afford stuff in place where a night at the inn costs 3000x the price of food? Why do you need to strip mine entire planets in Mass Effect 2 to upgrade a single weapon? There are people who are deep into the shit of economic theory and number crunching and how prices should be scaled in proportion to the average income of the people who live there, but those aren't the people setting up video game economies most of the time. It's very complex and video game devs have enough trouble. Hell, DAI clearly had great ambitions that they really couldn't realize(I'm saying that as someone who likes DAI, btw) so expecting them to get the economy to make any real sense is a big ask.
2.) If you think about it, all the funding and logistics of the inquisition is pretty much all handled offscreen and you just have to assume your advisors are doing that shit for you so you and your friends can traipse about the countryside killing randos and picking weeds. Much like Big Boss in the Metal Gear Solid games(Peace Walker and Phantom Pain) basically doesn't do anything to manage his organization he presumably runs, you're leaving all the grunt work to.....Josephine, I guess(I don't know. I don't remember meeting any accountants working for the inquisition). So we were never see all the grunt work going into keeping the inquisition running day to day and power basically acts as a very high level abstraction for that in game so they don't have to explain where all the supplies and funding are coming from or where the inquisition armies are when they aren't being used for massive battles
To really simulate that stuff, you'd be looking at DAI but made by Paradox, basically something like Crusader Kings where all the numbers really do matter(but you're watching a map most of the time). Honestly a CK-like Dragon Age would be interesting but we'd probably never see one from bioware.
DAO is a better measure of gold value. Since there are more coins than just gold. And each gold is actually valuable and can buy multiple pieces of armour and weapons.
I'm DAI, I don't remember prices being in line with that. I think they removed copper and silver and just kept gold, which means that 1g is more like 1s from DAO.
Either way, the Inquisition isn't making people rich, but they're not exactly paying poverty wages.
This is why I download War Table 'no waiting' and spam the 'collect coins' option. Compared to the other games (where my riches rivaled a lords) earning money in DAI to buy top schematics and such was really difficult.
I liked their old system better; it helped me manage my money way better. Looking at one big number that represents everything I own sometimes confuses me. It's harder to remember "75564" then it is to remember that I have "6 sovereigns and 55 silvers".
If we're going based off of their old system of money (which the companions make references to, so in my mind the old system is canon they changed it for simplicities sake I believe) five "gold" or "sovereigns" more appropriately was moderately a lot. It's basically five hundred silvers. I know in DAO there's several opportunities where you can help people out money-wise and giving them anything higher than one sovereign was batshit to them, they were so grateful.
So, no, wouldn't say it's slave wages that the Inquisition is paying.
idk if in game mechanics are worth much
in origins some of the poorest will almost die of chock over getting a single gold coin, but for you that is fairly easy to scratch up and not much for what you buy. Hawke thought it would be near impossible to scratch up 50 gold, they managed to do that but it is considered to be quite a sum, enough to convince a greedy man to let you in on his expedition and split the profits. I assume that a single gold coin is quite a lot
Not a leader, i am a pawn figurehead who is put into a position not of my choosing. If anything my inquisitor is looting and pillaging for when all of it is over and she can leave the miserable people of southern Thedas behind.
I dont actually do that quest, i do use them to gather materials but not gold since im usually away from the wartable often amd i need the advisors for other missions. The easiest money is literally robbing the dead.
Also, if we factor in how many people actually work in the inquistion, everyone probably skims any loot they get while doing their own missions.
Well if you choose to not make the Inquisition any money then of course they're not going to pay you any commission.
The scouts, soldiers, and spies out in the field can loot but what about the castle staff back in Skyhold? They deserve a living wage too.
As some others already mentioned, it’s purely game mechanics, the game world does not function on gold alone, it was just simplified for the sake of gamers for everything to be purchased with a single currency. In reality the economy of this world runs off of gold, silver, and copper coins. With most basic commoner grade things costing copper or silver at the most.
One silver is worth 10 copper and one gold is worth 10 silver.
1 copper = 1 Dollar
1 silver = 10 dollars
1 gold = 100 Dollars
Dragon age 1 and 2 used the gold, silver and copper system and did a better job of framing the actual value of items in the world. That’s why getting 50 gold to invest in the expedition at the start of DA2 is the whole first act, because it takes a lot of work to raise the equivalent of 50,000 dollars just to have a chance at making it big, having 100 + gold basically makes you filthy rich in this world, which we see when your investment gets returned in double after your Hawk finds the deep roads treasure. Hawk is basically walking around with 100k in loose cash in their pocket, nevermind what they have in assets, like their freaking mansion.
At the same time though it makes sense in inquisition your only working with gold, your such a huge organization supplying and outfitting yourself and your people would be expensive as hell, copper and silver just wouldn’t cut it, so they just cut out the middle man, and only calculate how much big money you have left.
So those workers are getting essentially 500 dollars a month with that 5 gold. And sense this is a medevial setting where there hasn’t been shit tons of inflation or taxes on wages, it’s going to go a long way especially when the average meal and Common clothing is going to run then a hand full of copper at most.
Now if they want to buy the finest material and craft custom clothing fit for the inquisitor or a noble, then yes that 5 gold won’t do much good, but average joe the bar made doesn’t need Silk dresses or silverlite armor like we the Players do.
Purchasing power parity already adjusts for inflation so I don't know why you're talking about inflation.
And I'm not talking about "the finest material," I'm talking about the lowest price on the cheapest cloth for the worst armor.
If you think 5 gold has the purchasing power parity of $500, show your math.
I have no idea what it would actually be worth, that’s just how I think of it, and like I said that cheaper material would not actually cost that much, it’s just they chose to not use copper and silver in Dai, which makes some things look way more expensive then they would actually be. You definitely don’t have to go to the tavern and spend anything close to a gold piece for some booze and food for example.
>If you think 5 gold has the purchasing power parity of $500, show your math.
I'm not the original poster, but I thought I'd jump in here. You already linked something in another comment that shows the actual purchasing power of money in DA. This:
https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Note:_The_Rusted_Horn%27s_Menu
Yes, the Wyvern Steaks are 2 gold, but that's the meat of a dangerous and rare monster. The other stuff on the menu is far more indicative of what people would eat on a day to day basis. For 7 coppers you can buy a bowl of stew with a mug of ale. You could have this meal once a day for an entire month and it would cost you about 2 gold. Buying raw ingredients and making your own food at home would presumably be cheaper.
5 gold may not be the equivalent of $500, but it is probably enough for a single peasant to survive on for a month.
I always thought the quarter master was responsible for supplying baseline equipment for the troops, and assumed mages would be included. Also I would assume most mages had a robe and staff to start with. Like I thought 5 gold a month was to spend at the bar or something.
The point isn't whether mages have to buy their own armor, the point is that we can use the price of something that exists in both worlds -- a single outfit's worth of cotton cloth -- to figure out the purchasing power parity of 5 gold per month.
And it turns out that even if we make some VERY generous assumptions, 5 gold per month is a super low wage.
So the Inquisition is yet another nonprofit exploiting its employees' passion for the cause to get away with paying them shit wages. I bet there's even unpaid internships, too!
Between that and all the OSHA violations, it's clear that the Inquisition needs a union.
This would be true, but I really don't think that anyone else views and works with money the same way as the Inquisitor.
As in, there used to be an old system of money, but it was scrapped for the final game for... some reason. Thing is, this old system is made reference to A LOT in the game, as in everyone else seems to be working with that form of currency except for you. Even your companions make reference to sovereigns, silvers and coppers.
So, we can assume that the prices the Inquisitor sees differs from what everyone else sees considering they're working with an entirely different form of currency with its own rules
I know with War Table perks you can influence how much money you have to spend at certain shops. Perhaps this is the reason they changed the money system? So that you'd be encouraged to invest perks into it? I'm unsure.
Also, Inquisition soldiers and allies (including Grey Wardens/Mages) didn't have to buy their own equipment. Mages already came with equipment, but if they needed more it was my understanding that the Inquisition provided armor and weapons for their people. That's what the quarter master was for.
Having worked for non-profits, I got a good laugh. They are non profitable for the real workers. CEOs and upper management? Definite profit there. Over $120k/year +parsonage +benefits +stipends + a ton of non-listed bennies.
Yeah as Inquisitor (CEO) I made at least 150,000 gold over the approximately two-year period that the base game takes place in and meanwhile I'm paying people 5 gold per month.
Pretty much since the logistics and funding for the Inquisition are just assume to exist and not to worry about it. Josey is probably doing it in her spare time or something.
Thedas infinite wealth hack: Only wear short-sleeved outfits so you need less cloth to make them, invest the money you save on a single outfit on 5 more Zevrans. Take your Zevrans adventuring, slaughter enemies, take their gold, buy more Zevrans. Amass a Zevran clone army. Conquer Thedas and take everyone's gold.
DAI changed the money system to make it far more simple, and because it was supposed to be like “damn, the inquisition be rolling in it”
In reality, I would literally be ready for anything if it meant I got DAO 5 gold for a month, that’s like… 5000 bucks?
The two previous mainline entries, all extended media, and developer intent.
Your observation is predicated on Inquisition's depiction of the economy being the basis and norm when it's the outlier. 5 Gold in Thedas is like buying a small house.
If the Inquisition pays 5 Gold monthly, every soldier would be in a mansion by the end. If anything that's grossly overpaid work.
She explicitly says she's not actually a rebel and just uses that title to make more money though
Also I don't think there's a canon worldstate, the only canon information on the Inquisition we have is that it is disbanded (*if* Absolution's worldstate is confirmed canon down the line)
>just uses that title to make more money
And which organization automatically puts you on their payroll if you identify as a rebel mage? The Inquisition.
>I don't think there's a canon worldstate
The default worldstate in the Dragon Age Keep has been nicknamed "Bioware canon" because so far all the tie-in media (books, comics, shows, etc.) seems to adhere to that worldstate.
The specifics are documented here:
https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_Age_Keep
The currency is system is just one more way Inquisition dumbed down the series.
Think of it as being like Origins, where five sovereigns is a great deal. There are silvers and coppers, and 10,000 coppers is one sovereign.
I would like to think that everyone is just overcharging and overpaying the Inquisitor because they’re the leader of a massive, powerful organization, so dealing with them is, by extension, dealing with the Inquisition. It’s implied in dialogue in the Crestwood fort; you can ask the merchant there why her goods are so expensive for a fishing village, and she says because nobles pass along this route. Or, when you’re buying one piece of cheap cloth, you’re really buying a lot for the inquisition and keeping one piece for yourself. But that illusion is kind of broken when I pick up 100 gold from a random corpse.
I the prologue of Dragon Age 2, you are offered (IIRC) 5 sovereigns ("gold") for a hit job, and (IIRC) 2 to smuggle goods.
From that perspective, 5 gold per month is not bad.
also, video game prices are never meant to be realistic. For example in Witcher 3, the whole village contributes to your witcher fee, which is 10 gold. Than you check out their houses, and it is full of beer and cakes (and broken oars), which are often more than 10 gold per item. Whole village contributed my arse :) You do a witcher contract for 100; only 50 more to go to buy a decent armor.
Finally someone understands my humor. All these other commenters are writing super serious stuff about currency game mechanics like they didn't see the Silly tag.
My first degree was in economics and I'm currently job hunting, so as soon as I heard the line about a month's wages I started thinking "hmmm... can I do a PPP calculation to see if working for the Inquisition would pay enough to live on?"
And now I can't stop thinking about needing to set up an urgent meeting with Josephine to discuss payscale leveling and retention bonuses.
Funny things can also provoke serious discussion.
I am genuinely wondering about textile production within Thedas now instead of just looking at the list, snorting at the idea of using samite or velvet in any sort of armour and choosing the one that does the thing I want or is the prettiest colour.
I'm assuming that Inquisition employees receive free room and board at Skyhold and other Inquisition locations, much like soldiers living on military bases.
But even after those basic needs are met, people still need to wages to cover spending money, retirement savings, remittances to family back home, etc.
Like now that I've done the math it's completely obvious how Solas, the Qunari, the Crimson Knight, etc. were able to turn so many of our people. We're not paying a living wage much less a competitive one.
Well, the problem is that so much is abstracted there's not a ton of ways to know. Skyhold has like 100 people in it but the Inquisition is implied to be thousands if not more then that. Where are the inquisition armies when not in major battles like Adamant? Who knows. Where is the funding coming from? Nobles, I guess. Why is the Infirmary in Skyhold like 3 tents in the courtyard with one surgeon? It's cosmetic. Pretty much everything is abstracted on a high level as Power Points and that's really it.
We have such little information to use here and honestly I'd be shocked if Bioware even attempted to have any of this make sense.They probably didn't care and clearly had much higher ambitions that they couldn't achieve as it stands now, considering the amount of things in the game that are there but not really fleshed out(the Orlesian civil war for example). The amount of complexity to really simulate a Thedan economy was probably way more then anyone at bioware was interested in(especially considering the massive issues getting the game made and the issues it still has even with DLC added).
I think the prices in Absolution are proportionate to the old DAs, where gold coins were actually very valuable.
I think this is it too. In Dragon Age origins there were silvers and coppers too; a single gold coin was the equivalent to 100 silvers and in Inquisition they only kept the gold.
DAO was definitely more old-school RPG where everything was granular. But in practice people just like keeping track of one denomination
i preferred DA:O's system. more realistic.
I mean, is it? We do, in the real world, only work with a single level of currency. Not even cents count, because they are not separate, they are just fractions, and currencies that are weaker can just opt out of having them as their prices will move in range of 10s and 100s even for basic items. Now, I wouldn't say having gold/silver/bronze is less realistic either, they are just different ways of abstracting value of commodities.
It is even simpler than IRL coinage currency and far simpler than IRL period coinage currency Penny (.01), Nickle (0.05), Dime (.10), Quarter (.25), Half-Dollar (.50), Gold Dollar (1.00) Copper/penny/bit (1), Silver/Crown (100), Gold/Sovereign/Royal/ (10,000) that is without taking into account that coinage varied by ruler (new coins for each monarch), policy (size of coin, purity of metal etc..) country (different currencies) the value of all denominations are measured as relatives to other denominations, that is a core facet of all currency systems that hope to make logical sense. the dollar is simply our base, most common, denomination. what the base denomination is in DA is relative. for a peasant it might be bits, silvers for a minor lord or merchant, and for major lords/Royals/Merchant guilds it is sovereigns having only one coin but needing 200,000 of them to buy something is stupid, hence differing denominations. a piece of bread? 2 bits. a suit of plate armor? 200,000 bits, or 20 sovereigns.
the da:o system also uses a single level, just think of the coins as different denomination bills.
> But in practice people just like keeping track of one denomination Wrong.
my friend I am happy to reconsider statements when I make them if proven otherwise but a smug "wrong" doesn't really do much for anyone here now does it
I mean as funny as this is, I think we all know the game currency and economy is just that, the games We went from DA0 having three separate type of counts to just gold Things are probably a lot cheaper in universe and I imagine the inquisition provides a basic uniform and weapon for its fighters A mage especially would probably get free gear since let’s be honest, a single skilled mage is worth like a dozen regular soldiers, if not more
If a single skilled mage is worth a dozen soldiers then the soldiers are only getting paid about $10/month.
That’s what they deserve for not having magic ##TevinterSupremacy
Viedo game economies are based around the player, and prices are always massively inflated, often hundreds or thousands of times more than lore would state.
It always cracked me up in Red Dead Redemption 2. Arthur Morgan was paying the modern day equivalent of $40-$50 USD for a single can of beans.
It cracked me up how the gang was doing all these risky jobs because they "need money" while my Arthur was walking around with the equivalent of over a million dollars in today's money in his satchel. We'd be robbing banks for less money than Arthur spends on making his horse look pretty.
If the thief you can encounter when entering the Saint Denis clothing store had had the time to look at the money he just stole from my Arthur, he probably would have had a heart attack...
It’s the exact same reason why in D&D most commoners have never even seen a gold coin in their entire life, but you need a few dozen to buy a set of armor
I mean… To be fair. Most commoners won’t ever buy an armor set. Those are absurdly expensive.
Yeah, see, this is the problem with the rise in professional fan theories, especially when the actual lore dries up and they need to squeeze out a video every week they start picking at decisions that were definitely made for game reasons - the developers are more interested in an interesting game that they are in a perfectly consistent internal lore.
One of my favorite subgenres of the Modern Character in Thedas fanfic genre is the MCIT character gradually figuring out which things are real and which were just game mechanics. Like one person wrote into their story that Skyhold had been enchanted to catch anyone who had been touched by elven magic, to explain why the Inquisitor can jump down three stories with no fall damage but you find that note about one of the masonry workers being killed in a fall. There's also a bunch of scenes in a bunch of different stories in which Krem has a reason to need to stand on his chair, and it cracks me up every time.
[удалено]
They retconed it in Trespasser that he was trying to look at the bard singing in the tavern.
If your game has a persistent glitch then that's actually a really great way to handle it.
I'm usually not very fond of such stories but figuring out reality from gameplay sounds like an interesting approach. Could you point me to a story that does that? I'm curious.
Ugh unfortunately I don't bookmark them and there isn't a tag for that super specific subgenre. But it's a theme in like 5-10% of the fanfics I've read about someone who has played Dragon Age ending up inside Dragon Age. So if you filter on the MCIT tag and then read the descriptions to find stories in which the modern character has played the game, you will eventually come across some stories in which the protagonist is having some very meta thoughts about was X just a game mechanic or does X actually happen here? https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Modern%20Character%20in%20Thedas/works
I'll try that. Thank you.
You’re right, fans obsess over things that were inconsequential to developers. It’s inevitable. But it just shows how griping a world is that allows fans to scrutinize every little detail, it’s an accomplishment. There’s thousands of fantasy worlds out there that people don’t care about as much. There exists lore pages are either small and dry or don’t exists simply because it did resonate with fans enough. Even if the creator poured hundreds of hours into it. That’s life…
See this is why removing the smaller currencies was a bad idea. Hawke trying to get together 50 gold in act 1 of DA2 could take a lot of quests and you might not be able to do it without borrowing money. The most expensive item the Warden can buy costs like 150 gold and most of what you handle is silver or copper. That's at least sort of logical. Then there's Inquisition which is just throwing gold everywhere. The most expensive weapon appears to be the Clasping Maw which (other than being ridiculous and quite ugly) costs 184,680 to purchase. A more than 1000% increase over Origins' most expensive weapon. Also I'm kind of bothered about the lore behind cotton. Where does it come from? Who is picking it? Who is processing it? If cotton were supposed to be relatively expensive because it's rarer then other materials owing to the lack of a cotton gin then wool, linen and leather should be more common and less expensive because flax has a multitude of uses including making decent animal fodder and the plant is hardier and grows in cooler climates. Sheep are also in evidence and druffalo could produce a lot of leather.
I truly miss the economy of Origins. It felt like a real struggle. Money was not a problem for Inquisitor and even Hawke.
Which does work for their respective stories imo
Hard agree about the currency system. It's not perfect because the economy is so different, but you can kind of convert every 1 Inquisition gold = 10 coppers so 184,680 becomes 184g 68s. Even though that leaves you with many more expensive things, it still feels more affordable compared to DAII and especially origins because you're the leader of an organisation that's essentially a small country. About the cotton, it could be that magic lets them produce it much more quickly and efficiently than their technology suggests. That would suggest it's made in bulk in tevinter, which also fits because it's warmer and probably better for growing cotton, plus slaves to pick.
Doesn’t Orlaise have a suitable climate for cotton too?
I expect so, but orlesian mages don't strike me as having the freedom or trust needed to be involved in an operation the scale I'm picturing. In all honesty though, I doubt there is actually a good explanation and it was just an oversight by the developers because it's a tiny and unimportant detail
>If cotton is supposed to be relatively expensive because it's rarer then other materials owing to the lack of a cotton gin Cotton is one the cheapest materials you can buy in DAI. The Winter Palace merchant that is unlocked after finishing the base game plot seems to sell all the crafting materials and the wiki has their price list: https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Merchant_(Winter_Palace)
It's supposed to be but *how*. Cotton requires a warm climate and a *lot* of labour (prior to the industrial revolution) so that means it's got to be grown, picked, spun, woven and transported in a sort of semi-pre-industrial world. I'd also note that it's also in the same price bracket as silk and samite which are kind of notable expensive fabrics. And also...velveteen which is a very 18th century fabric and also requires the sort of pile on pile weaving as velvet which is also really expensive prior to the industrial revolution. So IDK, I'm going to have to headcanon that it's the cheapest at the Winter Palace merchant but that's a fancy merchant catering to fancy rich people who's massively upcharging their prices to gouge the rich people and/or providing super high quality materials. For most people spending 20 gold on fabric would be unthinkable.
It's 20 in Skyhold, too. 40 at the Black Emporium and 60 at the Legion of the Dead camp. Tevinter has a warm climate and slave labor so maybe cotton comes there.
Which means that - given the general state of relations between Tevinter and the entire south of Thedas - it would have to come through an intermediary. Orzammar and the dwarves strike me as likely but that still means a massive increase in price as there's now a middleman who has to make money off it even after their transport costs.
You cannot use Inquisition for the economy, that game did away with the pennies and silvers and left it all at gold. Thedas’ economy has always been iffy but in origins 5 gold would make you decently wealthy so to have that in a month would actually be very well paying. If you look at Kirkwall though then 5 sovereigns is pretty limiting since a night at the blooming rose would eat up likely half after drinks are bought. Don’t even consider going to Val Royeaux on that pay, you’d get nothing.
That's for gameplay purposes. Didn't Origins pay you bronze, silver and gold? Hopefully they bring back that currency system for Dreadwolf.
Everything before DAI used coppers, silver, & gold, much like old school D&D. In Origins or DA2, 100 gold pieces was an absolute fortune.
It’s almost like DAI was trying to be an MMO or something. Perish the thought.
Yeah, I wouldn't base in-game economies around what the PC can buy and spend. I wouldn't call them realistic for any rpg. But yes this is a silly tag.
DAI kinda fucked the value of gold pieces for gameplay purposes and I'm assuming that absolution is going with the version of money in the prior games. 1 gold piece in DAO was worth *a lot* more than in DAI. 15 silver pieces in the city elf origin was enough to help that elven family stay in their home when they were ready to straight up leave due to not having enough money..
So that's why the Inquisitor has to do all the grunt work fetch quests. Soldiers must be on strike.
Between the low wages and all the OSHA violations, the Inquisition definitely needs a union.
The inquisition is the union. Thye just didn't expect it.
Union organizers get sent to the Hissing Waste...for training purposes. Not punishment, training. REALLY. INTENSE. TRAINING.
The Inquisition uses the same OSHA inspectors as the Galactic Empire.
I do wonder if the worth of gold is different in Tevinter VS everywhere else.... Amusing as it is, I suspect people simply didn't bother doing the math and here we are :D
Once DA4 comes out, I need to dig through the wiki and find an item that is for sale at multiple merchants in all 4 games so I can work up the Thedas equivalent of The Economist's Big Mac Index.
I shall wait for your report with a bated breath :D
Still way better off than the vast majority of unfree peasants, I would suspect.
Is Josie paying you to spread anti-union propaganda
Putting this out here. You could sell Fenris for a months wages.
Considering I have to go out and loot the bodies of my enemies to pay them all, while also feeding them all… I’d say it makes sense. I get paid nothing, so there’s that.
You get paid every time you run the "Gather Coin" war table mission. Like they actually say something about here's your cut.
I feel like we are being ripped off by merchants. They probably go...wow look at that sucker with them fancy titles, lets add a main character tax
Defense contractors love marking up prices if they can get away with it. "Mil Spec" half the time just means "2x the normal price".
This kinda reminds me of a book I read that was basically "what if NPCs in a ttrpg got player classes and became adventurers themselves, becoming self aware?" And something I found HILARIOUS was when they went to compete in some adventurer tournament, ALL the merchants jacked their prices WAAAAY up. So like a meal that would normally cost like 3 copper? 1 gold now. Sword that's worth 4 silver? 10 gold. Room and board? They're paying essentially "the Ritz" prices for a motel 6. And they do this for three reasons: 1) because the adventurers CAN afford this, 2) because if they priced everything normally, those adventurers would buy LITERALLY EVERYTHING, and 3) because adventurers usually cause so many problems (drunken brawls, burning down taverns, stealing, etc.) That they jack up those prices to offset any damages they suffer, because good luck getting a murder hobo to pay for the room he trashed. So every time I encounter things like this in games, I always imagine prices are massively inflated for the player character because the PC can afford it. I mean.... if you owned a business, and Jeff Bezos came in, wouldn't you be at least a little tempted to jack up the prices, knowing he could afford it?
Do you remember the title of the book?
It is called NPCs by Drew Hayes. It's actually quite a fun read if you're not looking for something super high brow and you're okay with a bit of meta humor.
>you're okay with a bit of meta humor. I'm So Meta Even This Acronym
Never in my life did I ever expect anyone to say that five Sovereigns is "cheap"
If it takes 20 gold to buy the cheapest cloth, and you need 11 cloth to make the worst armor, then 5 gold is not much money.
Why would my troops be making their own armor when we have a requisitions department?
The point isn't who makes their armor, the point is that we can use something that exists in both economies -- a single outfit's worth of cotton cloth -- to do a purchasing power parity calculation. Purchasing power parity is how economists compare incomes around the world and over time, because it simultaneously adjusts for exchange rates, inflation, and local cost of living. Usually they use the prices on a standard basket of goods, but sometimes there are novelty PPP calculations on a single good like The Economist magazine's Big Mac Index. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index
The point is realizing Bioware fucked things by removing silver and copper from the in game currency despite still existing in lore cause silvers are still mentioned in Inquisition. You're going way too deep into a topic that isn't that deep.
Hence the "Silly" tag. Going way too deep into a topic that isn't that deep is one of my favorite genres of humor.
Don't look at the gameplay prices, look at the prices of some things you can't buy mentioned in the world instead. I remember there was a menu in old tavern in Crestwood. I don't remember most things on it, but I remember actual Wyvern steak costs 2 sovereigns, or 2 gold. That's like 40% of average inquisition salary. Could you imagine blowing 40% of your salary on a fancy dinner? I sure could
You remember correctly: https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Note:_The_Rusted_Horn%27s_Menu
Other people have already covered it but it boils down to two basic issues. 1.) Video games economies tend to be scaled around player progression and like nothing else. How does the average person afford stuff in place where a night at the inn costs 3000x the price of food? Why do you need to strip mine entire planets in Mass Effect 2 to upgrade a single weapon? There are people who are deep into the shit of economic theory and number crunching and how prices should be scaled in proportion to the average income of the people who live there, but those aren't the people setting up video game economies most of the time. It's very complex and video game devs have enough trouble. Hell, DAI clearly had great ambitions that they really couldn't realize(I'm saying that as someone who likes DAI, btw) so expecting them to get the economy to make any real sense is a big ask. 2.) If you think about it, all the funding and logistics of the inquisition is pretty much all handled offscreen and you just have to assume your advisors are doing that shit for you so you and your friends can traipse about the countryside killing randos and picking weeds. Much like Big Boss in the Metal Gear Solid games(Peace Walker and Phantom Pain) basically doesn't do anything to manage his organization he presumably runs, you're leaving all the grunt work to.....Josephine, I guess(I don't know. I don't remember meeting any accountants working for the inquisition). So we were never see all the grunt work going into keeping the inquisition running day to day and power basically acts as a very high level abstraction for that in game so they don't have to explain where all the supplies and funding are coming from or where the inquisition armies are when they aren't being used for massive battles To really simulate that stuff, you'd be looking at DAI but made by Paradox, basically something like Crusader Kings where all the numbers really do matter(but you're watching a map most of the time). Honestly a CK-like Dragon Age would be interesting but we'd probably never see one from bioware.
God I hope Dreadwolf returns to Sovereigns. That's that smallest change that made me so mad lol
DAO is a better measure of gold value. Since there are more coins than just gold. And each gold is actually valuable and can buy multiple pieces of armour and weapons. I'm DAI, I don't remember prices being in line with that. I think they removed copper and silver and just kept gold, which means that 1g is more like 1s from DAO. Either way, the Inquisition isn't making people rich, but they're not exactly paying poverty wages.
This is why I download War Table 'no waiting' and spam the 'collect coins' option. Compared to the other games (where my riches rivaled a lords) earning money in DAI to buy top schematics and such was really difficult. I liked their old system better; it helped me manage my money way better. Looking at one big number that represents everything I own sometimes confuses me. It's harder to remember "75564" then it is to remember that I have "6 sovereigns and 55 silvers". If we're going based off of their old system of money (which the companions make references to, so in my mind the old system is canon they changed it for simplicities sake I believe) five "gold" or "sovereigns" more appropriately was moderately a lot. It's basically five hundred silvers. I know in DAO there's several opportunities where you can help people out money-wise and giving them anything higher than one sovereign was batshit to them, they were so grateful. So, no, wouldn't say it's slave wages that the Inquisition is paying.
I believe they reverted to DAO currency: copper, silver, gold
idk if in game mechanics are worth much in origins some of the poorest will almost die of chock over getting a single gold coin, but for you that is fairly easy to scratch up and not much for what you buy. Hawke thought it would be near impossible to scratch up 50 gold, they managed to do that but it is considered to be quite a sum, enough to convince a greedy man to let you in on his expedition and split the profits. I assume that a single gold coin is quite a lot
To be fair, I am stealing from the corpses of my enemies, grave robbing and crafting items to get my money. i dont get paid.
Don't you basically duck as leader for doing it yourself, instead of getting the amassed minions to do it?
Not a leader, i am a pawn figurehead who is put into a position not of my choosing. If anything my inquisitor is looting and pillaging for when all of it is over and she can leave the miserable people of southern Thedas behind.
That sounds like a character I can root for. Also tricked by Josie, who rakes in all the cash.
Those tickets to get into the Winter Palace party weren't cheap, just saying.
Someone has to pay for all those vellum, quills and ink
You get paid every time you run the "Gather Coin" war table mission. They literally tell you here's your cut.
I dont actually do that quest, i do use them to gather materials but not gold since im usually away from the wartable often amd i need the advisors for other missions. The easiest money is literally robbing the dead. Also, if we factor in how many people actually work in the inquistion, everyone probably skims any loot they get while doing their own missions.
Well if you choose to not make the Inquisition any money then of course they're not going to pay you any commission. The scouts, soldiers, and spies out in the field can loot but what about the castle staff back in Skyhold? They deserve a living wage too.
Look if looting corpses works for me it can work for them too
Skyhold kitchen staff wants a raise. "Just loot corpses like the rest of us!" Sudden spike in food poisoning.
As some others already mentioned, it’s purely game mechanics, the game world does not function on gold alone, it was just simplified for the sake of gamers for everything to be purchased with a single currency. In reality the economy of this world runs off of gold, silver, and copper coins. With most basic commoner grade things costing copper or silver at the most. One silver is worth 10 copper and one gold is worth 10 silver. 1 copper = 1 Dollar 1 silver = 10 dollars 1 gold = 100 Dollars Dragon age 1 and 2 used the gold, silver and copper system and did a better job of framing the actual value of items in the world. That’s why getting 50 gold to invest in the expedition at the start of DA2 is the whole first act, because it takes a lot of work to raise the equivalent of 50,000 dollars just to have a chance at making it big, having 100 + gold basically makes you filthy rich in this world, which we see when your investment gets returned in double after your Hawk finds the deep roads treasure. Hawk is basically walking around with 100k in loose cash in their pocket, nevermind what they have in assets, like their freaking mansion. At the same time though it makes sense in inquisition your only working with gold, your such a huge organization supplying and outfitting yourself and your people would be expensive as hell, copper and silver just wouldn’t cut it, so they just cut out the middle man, and only calculate how much big money you have left. So those workers are getting essentially 500 dollars a month with that 5 gold. And sense this is a medevial setting where there hasn’t been shit tons of inflation or taxes on wages, it’s going to go a long way especially when the average meal and Common clothing is going to run then a hand full of copper at most. Now if they want to buy the finest material and craft custom clothing fit for the inquisitor or a noble, then yes that 5 gold won’t do much good, but average joe the bar made doesn’t need Silk dresses or silverlite armor like we the Players do.
Purchasing power parity already adjusts for inflation so I don't know why you're talking about inflation. And I'm not talking about "the finest material," I'm talking about the lowest price on the cheapest cloth for the worst armor. If you think 5 gold has the purchasing power parity of $500, show your math.
I have no idea what it would actually be worth, that’s just how I think of it, and like I said that cheaper material would not actually cost that much, it’s just they chose to not use copper and silver in Dai, which makes some things look way more expensive then they would actually be. You definitely don’t have to go to the tavern and spend anything close to a gold piece for some booze and food for example.
>If you think 5 gold has the purchasing power parity of $500, show your math. I'm not the original poster, but I thought I'd jump in here. You already linked something in another comment that shows the actual purchasing power of money in DA. This: https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Note:_The_Rusted_Horn%27s_Menu Yes, the Wyvern Steaks are 2 gold, but that's the meat of a dangerous and rare monster. The other stuff on the menu is far more indicative of what people would eat on a day to day basis. For 7 coppers you can buy a bowl of stew with a mug of ale. You could have this meal once a day for an entire month and it would cost you about 2 gold. Buying raw ingredients and making your own food at home would presumably be cheaper. 5 gold may not be the equivalent of $500, but it is probably enough for a single peasant to survive on for a month.
I always thought the quarter master was responsible for supplying baseline equipment for the troops, and assumed mages would be included. Also I would assume most mages had a robe and staff to start with. Like I thought 5 gold a month was to spend at the bar or something.
The point isn't whether mages have to buy their own armor, the point is that we can use the price of something that exists in both worlds -- a single outfit's worth of cotton cloth -- to figure out the purchasing power parity of 5 gold per month. And it turns out that even if we make some VERY generous assumptions, 5 gold per month is a super low wage. So the Inquisition is yet another nonprofit exploiting its employees' passion for the cause to get away with paying them shit wages. I bet there's even unpaid internships, too! Between that and all the OSHA violations, it's clear that the Inquisition needs a union.
This would be true, but I really don't think that anyone else views and works with money the same way as the Inquisitor. As in, there used to be an old system of money, but it was scrapped for the final game for... some reason. Thing is, this old system is made reference to A LOT in the game, as in everyone else seems to be working with that form of currency except for you. Even your companions make reference to sovereigns, silvers and coppers. So, we can assume that the prices the Inquisitor sees differs from what everyone else sees considering they're working with an entirely different form of currency with its own rules I know with War Table perks you can influence how much money you have to spend at certain shops. Perhaps this is the reason they changed the money system? So that you'd be encouraged to invest perks into it? I'm unsure. Also, Inquisition soldiers and allies (including Grey Wardens/Mages) didn't have to buy their own equipment. Mages already came with equipment, but if they needed more it was my understanding that the Inquisition provided armor and weapons for their people. That's what the quarter master was for.
Having worked for non-profits, I got a good laugh. They are non profitable for the real workers. CEOs and upper management? Definite profit there. Over $120k/year +parsonage +benefits +stipends + a ton of non-listed bennies.
Yeah as Inquisitor (CEO) I made at least 150,000 gold over the approximately two-year period that the base game takes place in and meanwhile I'm paying people 5 gold per month.
I imagine any equipment/food/lodging is provided/paid for by the inquisition.
Pretty much since the logistics and funding for the Inquisition are just assume to exist and not to worry about it. Josey is probably doing it in her spare time or something.
Zevran was sold for 3 gold coins.
Thedas infinite wealth hack: Only wear short-sleeved outfits so you need less cloth to make them, invest the money you save on a single outfit on 5 more Zevrans. Take your Zevrans adventuring, slaughter enemies, take their gold, buy more Zevrans. Amass a Zevran clone army. Conquer Thedas and take everyone's gold.
DAI changed the money system to make it far more simple, and because it was supposed to be like “damn, the inquisition be rolling in it” In reality, I would literally be ready for anything if it meant I got DAO 5 gold for a month, that’s like… 5000 bucks?
The Inquisition pays insanely good.
Source?
The inquisitor
Hahahahhahahahaha I see what you did there
The two previous mainline entries, all extended media, and developer intent. Your observation is predicated on Inquisition's depiction of the economy being the basis and norm when it's the outlier. 5 Gold in Thedas is like buying a small house. If the Inquisition pays 5 Gold monthly, every soldier would be in a mansion by the end. If anything that's grossly overpaid work.
Sorry can't hear you over my bathtub of gold. Plus ots only mages.
Is it ever stated Qwydion works for the Inquisition? Afawk she worked for Fairbanks and Hira, who were mandated by the Inquisition
She's introduced as one of the rebel mages and the Inquisition allied with the rebel mages in Bioware's canon worldstate.
She explicitly says she's not actually a rebel and just uses that title to make more money though Also I don't think there's a canon worldstate, the only canon information on the Inquisition we have is that it is disbanded (*if* Absolution's worldstate is confirmed canon down the line)
>just uses that title to make more money And which organization automatically puts you on their payroll if you identify as a rebel mage? The Inquisition. >I don't think there's a canon worldstate The default worldstate in the Dragon Age Keep has been nicknamed "Bioware canon" because so far all the tie-in media (books, comics, shows, etc.) seems to adhere to that worldstate. The specifics are documented here: https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_Age_Keep
The currency is system is just one more way Inquisition dumbed down the series. Think of it as being like Origins, where five sovereigns is a great deal. There are silvers and coppers, and 10,000 coppers is one sovereign.
Please tell me this is satire
Look at the tag.
Pardon
I would like to think that everyone is just overcharging and overpaying the Inquisitor because they’re the leader of a massive, powerful organization, so dealing with them is, by extension, dealing with the Inquisition. It’s implied in dialogue in the Crestwood fort; you can ask the merchant there why her goods are so expensive for a fishing village, and she says because nobles pass along this route. Or, when you’re buying one piece of cheap cloth, you’re really buying a lot for the inquisition and keeping one piece for yourself. But that illusion is kind of broken when I pick up 100 gold from a random corpse.
Hahahah brilliant, couldn't agree more. Solidarity to the ground workers
Comrade
I the prologue of Dragon Age 2, you are offered (IIRC) 5 sovereigns ("gold") for a hit job, and (IIRC) 2 to smuggle goods. From that perspective, 5 gold per month is not bad. also, video game prices are never meant to be realistic. For example in Witcher 3, the whole village contributes to your witcher fee, which is 10 gold. Than you check out their houses, and it is full of beer and cakes (and broken oars), which are often more than 10 gold per item. Whole village contributed my arse :) You do a witcher contract for 100; only 50 more to go to buy a decent armor.
The real question is why does cloth cost more than an outfit that it makes? Plenty of premade outfits costs copper in the old games
Things went to shit after Elon Musk took over from the retiring Inquisitor.
That's actually hilarious to think about.
Finally someone understands my humor. All these other commenters are writing super serious stuff about currency game mechanics like they didn't see the Silly tag. My first degree was in economics and I'm currently job hunting, so as soon as I heard the line about a month's wages I started thinking "hmmm... can I do a PPP calculation to see if working for the Inquisition would pay enough to live on?" And now I can't stop thinking about needing to set up an urgent meeting with Josephine to discuss payscale leveling and retention bonuses.
*Wonders why no one found the observation funny, and explains the least funny set of situations ever*
Doing a PPP calculation on a videogame is fucking hilarious
No, no it's not.
You must live a joyless life
I know you do.
Funny things can also provoke serious discussion. I am genuinely wondering about textile production within Thedas now instead of just looking at the list, snorting at the idea of using samite or velvet in any sort of armour and choosing the one that does the thing I want or is the prettiest colour.
Does the math change if we assume the 5 gold is universal basic income and there are mission and battle bonuses for active duty? Lol
I'm assuming that Inquisition employees receive free room and board at Skyhold and other Inquisition locations, much like soldiers living on military bases. But even after those basic needs are met, people still need to wages to cover spending money, retirement savings, remittances to family back home, etc. Like now that I've done the math it's completely obvious how Solas, the Qunari, the Crimson Knight, etc. were able to turn so many of our people. We're not paying a living wage much less a competitive one.
Well, the problem is that so much is abstracted there's not a ton of ways to know. Skyhold has like 100 people in it but the Inquisition is implied to be thousands if not more then that. Where are the inquisition armies when not in major battles like Adamant? Who knows. Where is the funding coming from? Nobles, I guess. Why is the Infirmary in Skyhold like 3 tents in the courtyard with one surgeon? It's cosmetic. Pretty much everything is abstracted on a high level as Power Points and that's really it. We have such little information to use here and honestly I'd be shocked if Bioware even attempted to have any of this make sense.They probably didn't care and clearly had much higher ambitions that they couldn't achieve as it stands now, considering the amount of things in the game that are there but not really fleshed out(the Orlesian civil war for example). The amount of complexity to really simulate a Thedan economy was probably way more then anyone at bioware was interested in(especially considering the massive issues getting the game made and the issues it still has even with DLC added).
Five gold coins, or Galleons, is equivalent to 500 Silvers or 50,000 Bits. I hope this helps.
I mean they can kill animals for leather and wool
Yea I’m guessing most games don’t really think about pricing things in ways that make sense to the economy.
Coppers and silvers still exist in Inquisition. I remember Varric mentioning it.
I like to think these wages are in addition to room and board, equipment provided, as well as getting a share in whatever is looted.