I've come to the conclusion that gold is almost worthless in Tamriel, and is one of the most common metals available. When it requires 2 one ounce gold coins to buy a tomato, 3 to buy a leek, and 5 to buy a leaf of tobacco, you know something is wrong with the currency. Especially since that's the biggest denomination available, it would svck to be the shopkeeper counting out purchases of hundreds or thousands of gold pieces for items he sells relatively frequently.

Anyway, they need copper and silver pieces IMO to divide up the currency and make gold actually worth something again. And it doesn't have to be divided up into multiples of 100 like our currency, it could be in 20s for example, with 20 copper being worth 1 silver, and 20 silver being worth 1 gold. Copper would be used to buy things like food, cheap alchemy ingredients, and inexpensive arrows. Silver would be used to buy rooms at nicer inns, inexpensive weapons and armor, and good alchemy ingredients. Gold would be used for houses, horses, fine weapons and armor, and powerful magical items.

If we went by the base 20 currency system like I suggested, and 1 copper piece was assumed to be equal to 1 gold currently, then gold would be worth 400 times as much as it currently is. If you think that's too drastic then you could double prices and make copper worth 1/2 of what gold currently is and 1 gold could be 200 times as valuable as it is currently.

No, Bethesda just needs to manage their economy better.

I like your idea, and it makes sense, but it's pretty much established in the lore and in previous games that people pay for stuff with gold (septims) in TES games. Changing it up now would just annoy people.

And in Oblivion, cost the player is not the same as cost to the NPCs.

Ever hear of the heavy fines in Chedynhal? "8 Septums! That's more than I make in a month!"

Well there is a new dynasty and the old money was called "Septims" I would assume that the medes would shake things up a little.

They definitely need something other than gold. I'd also want local scrips to help with those big town economies.

I like the Idea, but i don't know how lore friendly it is :\

Also, instead of bronze, I think it should be iron. I don't know, it just sounds better to me

Iron isn't precious or even semi-precious, plus it rusts. Also it's really hard so it's difficult to stamp.

Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum, good for generic. Gold for TES

Do you really think it makes sense to have a single denomination of currency?

Is there any real lore that makes this unchangable? I've always chalked it up to gameplay mechanics.

The gold coins value just wasn't consistent in Oblivion, I mean yeh things like a tomato was 2 gold coins, but also when you are get the job to feed prisoners you only get 1/2 a gold piece a day, you would have to work for 4 days just to buy a tomato

Gold + Platnium + Copper + Silver + Nickle = Septum (MEGAZORD)

Dragon Age had an interesting system. Technically when you get down to it, it's in "copper pieces". But, once you hit 100 copper pieces, it instead marked up 1 silver piece and sent the copper counter to 0. And again when you got 100 silver, you got 1 gold. So technically, if you have 1 gold coin, you had 10000 money units.

Well then... 1 copper (Name Pending)-->1/100 silver (Drakes)-->1/10000 gold (septim)-->1/1000000 platinum (Mede)

Recap

100 Copper=1 Silver (Drakes)

100 Silver=1 Gold (Septims)

100 Gold=1 Platinum (Medes

That's not an interesting system it's a generic system (although it's better than Oblivion's single denomination). I'd rather have it in something other than a decimal based system (I.E all in units of 10 or 100). It makes more sense in a world without advanced banking or credit, since the value of the coin is actually the metal used in the coin, so a 5 pound gold bar would be worth the same as 5 pounds of gold coins (coins are just useful and convenient ways of measuring the metal). And having copper be worth exactly 1% of silver by weight, and silver worth exactly 1% of gold by weight, is kind of a stretch IMO.

I also don't think platinum is necessary. I don't even remember hearing about platinum in TES.

That sort of system is almost universal in MMORPG games.



I just don't see the need to revamp the money system. Gold seems to work just fine.


Please do bring back banks and letters of credit though. Gold weight? Sure.

It wouldn't be bad. It wouldn't really be all that useful either, but it could work. All that it would do is make the numbers appear smaller. You have a fixed number of "money points," and different denominations of currency simply remove digits to reduce the apparent size. Assume that we have a system of copper, silver, gold, and platinum, pretty standard. While in Oblivion you could have 1,234,567g, the number is reduced to 1p 23g 45s 63c, assuming copper has the same worth as previous implementations of gold. It is worth noting that in the Elder Scrolls universe, 1,234,567g is a LOT of money. By that standard, what you get is very extreme contrasts in money, where platinum is either outrageously valuable or copper is worse than pocket change. You can keep that scale, and make platinum so valuable that you will never see enough of it to actually "spend platinum" for things, or you can deflate it. But then copper becomes nigh worthless, and you probably won't spend much of it or care for it at all. Either of those being the case, you'd be dealing mostly with silver and gold, and by then you would probably be better off sticking with just gold anyways.

I think what Oblivion and Morrowind had worked out pretty well. When I think of all the issues each game has, gold is not one of them.

But in lore it has already been established a Drake and a Septim are the same thing.
If they were to do something like that I'd like something like 1/6, 1/4, 1/2 and 1 gold piece.

i dont want different coins, but i do want a better economy system

Well, if you look at how value of currency is derived in America, you'll see that it's solely based on one thing. Gold. True there was a time when it was gold and silver, but we ended up switching to straight gold to determine value, because only having one factor made it much more valuable than it already was, which really helped us through some tough economic times back then.

So yes, it does make sense.

As for what currency should be available in TES, I say please just keep it at Gold Septims (or Gold "whatever the new emperor's last name is") for a less confusing economic system. Besides, the more factors are put into the economy, the harder it is to balance.

This sounds about right. ^^^^^^

how about bottle caps?

How about different weights of gold coins. Or even take up the practice of physically dividing coins. Tomato for a Quarter-Septim?

Well it is a bit difficult for my thief to sneak when his pants are jinging with 10564 septims in his pockets.

But I'd worry more about an actual game economy than the lore economy. It would make sense and not to lore breaking. (lore improvement)-blasphemy-

Personally I like the idea of breaking gold into sub-currencies. It allows us to devalue common items like apples and pewter mugs to fractions of gold costs while keeping more valuable items, like a book or a scroll in the low gold range. Of course, like others have said, a copper (although bronze is far more likely since it is more durable than copper), silver, and gold system is somewhat hackneyed. WoW in particular has been using it for six years and as a result just about every fantasy-based MMO seems to use it. However it's not necessary to use copper at all and silver is an acceptable coin material. So a currency system using silver Drakes (as mentioned before) and gold Septims would be be acceptable. It would require a minor retcon but overall I think it would be an interesting system that at the very least would make the currency system more believable than the previous version.

I should point out though that getting 100 silver drakes should not automatically give you 1 gold. One does not transmute 100 silver into gold. 100 drakes (or however many drakes = 1 septim) could be exchanged at a bank (or a character with high disposition and 1 gold to spare) for one septim and vice versa.