Taking points from http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1491326-wip-immersive-jewelry/ thread, and the fact the whole of Skyrim's economy is broken, I would like to create a mod that addresses as many issues as possible with it. I've not found a mod that I'm satisfied with, so I would like to fix this. I am not an economist so I don't know what would be the 'ideal' mod to fix everything. So I would like as many opinions as possible, preferably backed up by comparisons to real life. A while ago I did some searches for how much things cost in medieval europe, but I had a lot going on so nothing really came of things. So if there are any history buffs around here any input would be welcome.

I don't have an extensive list of what needs addressing, but a few things that stick out are:

• It's too easy to make money.
  • 10 hours chopping wood (in-game) nets you 1500 gold. Four working days chopping firewood means you can buy Breezehome in Whiterun and have some spare change.
  • Loot is easy too come by, and once you level up it becomes even more easy to find high valued loot.
• No money sinks.
• No fluctuation in prices between different holds/areas (supply and demand etc.).
• The prize of things makes almost no sense:
  • A gold ingot is 100 gold.
  • A chicken briast is 3 gold.
  • A gold ingot is 33 chicken briasts. Or 17 chickens.

I'm sure there's much much more that needs changing, but I can't think off the top of my head. The idea is that I can get as much feedback as possible to make Skyrim's economy make a lot more sense. Then once there's something much more in-depth than this I can start making the mod.

The only money sink in game I can think of is spell tomes, if you play a mage. There are a few scattered around various dungeons, but if you want to advance your magic spells, the tomes generally come at a high cost. When I play mage characters, it's usually well into the higher levels before I start to stockpile any cash. (I view this as a good thing, btw.)

Possibly the cost of weapons & armor could be made higher, so that fighters face similar money sinks?

Another issue I think should be addressed is the rewards you get from people for quests - take for example delivering the supplies to High Hrothgar for Klimmek - you'll get anywhere between 500 - 1500 gold for doing this; way too much IMO. (Although apparently he can make that up with 10 hours chopping wood )

Remember, gold in the real world fluctuates. I don't think it would be that easy to change in Skyrim, so it has to remain an absolute value. But I hope you come up with a better, more realistic value system than VANILLA.

You don't like trade and barter or trade routes?

Yeah, I definitely will be addressing the amount of money you get as rewards for things, they are completely crazy.

I use trade and barter, but that doesn't affect the base values of things, just the relative values. Trade routes is good, but it's still not a complete solution.

Skyrim has several money sinks. Smithing, spell tombs, horses, and the collection of various decorated houses will keep a player gold starved for a long time.

With that said, there is no feasible and fun way to 'fix' Skyrims economy. Sure, you can "fix" the values of various items to be more appropriate, but that still won't fix the real problem. Skyrim DOES have gold sinks, but they are finite. Once you've maxed out your crafting skills and bought a house, horse, equipment, and have a nice get-up for your chosen follower... You're set for the rest of the game. Skyrim's underlying problem is that you are completely gold-starved for much of the early game and then later on have so much that gold becomes meaningless. The the three biggest issues are...

1) Leveled enemies carrying valuable gear past the mid-game (especially ebony wielding Draugr)

2) Unrealistic Carry weight

3) No gold sinks after a certain point (unless you "Legendary" your crafting skills).

#1 is out of scope for the mod, an economy mod shouldn't be messing with the enemy leveled lists. It would take a mod like ASIS to address that, but it still doesn't wholly fix the problem. You still have elven patrols walking around in there fancy armor.

#2 People are very opinionated about carry weight. A lot of people take everything that isn't nailed down (within reason) to support there current costs/goals.. That new house, horse, follower armor, smithing upgrades, and so on. Others look at it realistically and don't like the idea of carrying around 300 lbs. of gear on your back.

#3 What can you possibly invent for an interesting, useful, and fun to use gold sink? What can you offer the player that they can't get elsewhere? How will you make them need or want to use it?

Some things to think about. And only the most dedicated grinders will sit there and chop wood for hours on end. If you want to spend that much time chopping wood for your house, then you might as well have it.

Keep in mind, you want to make it fun, and not burdensome to get gold, is too easy to type : player.additem 00000f 5000

But perhaps make it so you have to buy bottles for alchemy potions (goldsink), can only buy empty soulgems (enchanting goldsink), perhaps have to buy all the "patterns" for blacksmithing.

If you could find a way to make weapons degrade , then player would be forced to either pay an NPC gold to repair it or buy crafting materials to repair himself / herself. Somehow incorporate a gold cost into repairing / blacksmithing (maybe have to buy coal for the forge, oil for the grindstone or tanning rack). Unfortunately, don't think you can lose gold when you die, since you just reload last save. Perhaps make gold weigh more, so that you can only carry so much, then have to put remainder in the bank, and then have that bank make you pay taxes on your account balance once every 30 days (but, would be nothing preventing players just tossing gold in their houses or random chests in game). Could incorporate property taxes, and if you don't pay, you lose your house, or perhaps furniture and stuff in the house starts to unspawn (tables, beds, trophy racks, whatever, just disappear so you have to remake them, though would be an issue of items in said furniture disappearing when those items are despawned).

Regarding the value of gold (33 chicken briasts = 1 gold ingot), that's a tough one to adjust, early on you are very gold starved. You start a new game and if you just play normally (don't stand there and chop wood for 4 hours straight), it takes some time to earn 5000 gold to buy your first house, not to mention to buy the supplies to furnish it.

Biggest problem, I believe is, gold goes from being too scarce to too much, way too fast. At first most things loot like 10g, then 15 experience levels later, things are dropping 100+g. Not to mention enchanted items and potions are selling for 1000 or more gold each. Then you get to the point where merchants never have enough gold to buy your loot. Think of it this way, early on you have to buy your house for 5000 gold, then once like lvl 30 or 40, you go to buy gear, and the gear typically costs under 3000 gold. Once level 30 or 40, 3000 gold isn't that much, since you don't have much else to spend the gold on, other than maybe some training every time you level up, or potions if you don't do alchemy.

IMHO, the biggest problem is that once you buy your house, there really isn't that much to spend gold on, heck if you use blacksmithing and enchanting, you don't even really buy gear (except to maybe learn enchants, by disenchanting vendor gear).

To begin to valuate gold, I think the first step would be to give all NPC vendors like 20,000 gold to buy loot. That way it encourages players to loot items, and gives them a solid base income, then start to balance gold values on items sold to NPC's. Reason I say that is, currently , without perks, vendors typically have like 1000-1500g to buy loot, so either you have to visit many towns to sell your gear, or just rest to reset vendors (which is really a workaround for the vendor gold totals). But by giving vendors pretty much enough gold to buy all player loot, then you give players incentives to loot and you get a bigger incremental gap for the worth of gold. Simply put, in vanilla, 1000 gold isn't really worth much, but 5000g will pretty much buy ANYTHING in the game.

I think the formula for the price that vendors buy items from you should also include your current exp level, not just your skill in speech. Since, the amount of gold that your loot from monsters, and armors and weapons seem to also be regulated by exp level. This way, if you are level 5 selling glass armor to a merchant, you aren't getting almost 1000 gold per item, maybe only 50g.