Loot cap/saved posts
Topic: Developer's Corner
Message #: 1944
Author: Senior GameMaster Estild
Date: 12/04/2020 07:11 PM CST
Subject: Treasure Update
On January 1st, 2021, we'll be making a significant update to treasure gain, specifically in reference to farming. Over the past several months, we've been monitoring treasure gain across all characters and accounts to gather some metrics. We noticed some very specific issues where the top 5% treasure generating characters are earning significantly more than the bottom 95% of characters. As an even more significant example of the problem, one character earned more than the bottom 60% of all characters combined. This activity is detrimental to the gaming environment and causes problems for players who are otherwise not trying to abuse the system for personal gain. It's also a significant issue that causes silver value to be pointless for some characters while others are barely earning any. When we try to price items and services to be worthwhile, we have to factor in both groups and as shown with the raffle prices at the last Ebon Gate, it often causes us to have to unfairly penalize the players that are not making 100s of million silver each month. As such, we will be implementing a system that has soft and hard caps to the amount of treasure an account can earn. Because of the metrics we gathered, we are able to precisely implement this update so that it doesn't affect 95% of players. For the 5% that are affected, when the soft cap is reached, it will apply a penalty to treasure gain that increases as more and more treasure is gained, until the hard cap is reached. We do not plan to share many details of this system, other than what's already stated, to avoid potential abuse of it. We realize this update may be unpopular with some players, but we feel the remaining 95% of players are better served with these restrictions in place.
GameMaster Estild
Topic: Developer's Corner
Message #: 2160
Author: Senior GameMaster Estild
Date: 01/16/2021 02:01 PM CST
Subject: Re: Treasure Update
Two points of clarification:
Paid event and quest areas are exempt. They're already restricted by access.
It was discussed and we do agree, there's no potential for abuse to tell you when the penalties start. The soft cap doesn't start until 16m and even then, the penalty starts so low, it's pretty much impossible to notice. The hard cap is 35m. You can definitely go higher than that, since we don't attribute all treasure to the total (some players are already at 40m for this month).
GameMaster Estild
Topic: (Unknown)
Message #: Discord link
Author: Senior GameMaster Estild
Date: 16/01/2026 17:16 PM EST
Subject: (Unknown)
To kick off 2026, we are implementing significant updates to treasure and experience gain. While we anticipate some changes will be more popular than others, these adjustments are necessary for the long-term health of the game.
Treasure Updates
To address the impact of automation and balance the economy - where the top 5% of earners currently account for 27% of all treasure generated - we are making the following changes:
- Monthly Treasure Cap: The soft cap is being reduced from 15 million to 10 million. Treasure gain is gradually reduced between 10 and 15 million, then set to 1% for any gain thereafter. There no longer is a hard cap. This resets monthly per account.
- Pawnshops: The maximum value for a single item is now 25,000 silver (down from 35,000).
- Cap Exemptions: Treasure from quests and paid events is no longer exempt from the cap.
- Gems: Certain gem rarities and values have been adjusted.
- Player Locksmith Pool: A fee is being added that is significantly lower than the NPC locksmith rate. Additionally, F2P characters are no longer eligible to use the player locksmith pool.
- Treasure Boxes: Box drop rates are reduced by 2/3, but the output per box is increased 3x. Finding a box will be more rewarding, and disarming/lockpicking experience will increase 3x to offset the lower frequency. Locksmith Mastery reps have also been reduced by 2/3.
- Locks and Keys: the drop rate of locks and keys have been tripled.
Topic: [Official] Loot and Experience Changes
Message #: Discord link
Author: Senior GameMaster Wyrom
Date: 31/03/2026 09:16 PM EST
Subject: (Unknown)
Just checking in here at the end of the month. We are going through the data and we’ll need to make some adjustments. While the optics are likely there are a lot less silvers now, the reality is, these changes barely moved the needle. The bottom 95% made more silvers and the top 5% was right on track of where things were before the changes. The only different is the top 1% didn’t quite hit over 32mil anymore.
I certainty realize this isn’t the best solution. We turned a lot of knobs his time and we dove right into it. And it wasn’t enough. So we need to restrategize and come up with a plan that works. We’re not going to simply roll this back, but we aren’t going to keep the current implementation either.
The goal isn’t to create a fair market where we try to dismiss players who put in the work to earn while giving more to the people who don’t put in the effort. It’s to make sure we can keep silvers worthwhile and to keep providing value to them without hyper inflating all prices to match top earners.
We’ll announce something soon, I can’t give an exact date, because we are going to analyze the data beyond big number too big. We put a lot of effort into this. I give back as much as I can to the GS economy. I sacrifice a lot of time to make sure enjoyable events can happen with silver and I continue to fight for CLAIM to exist, because I find it very important.
We’ll be in touch soon. Not :rsn:, just soon as we can.
… As for the Fash item, they won’t stack, but we’ll figure out how we want to work that in. Accounting (not Chris in Billing) will have to get over it.
I also know this is always hard to believe, but there are thousands of unique players who play GS. The average playtime is a little over an hour. And that is removing anyone who just logs in and out for login rewards. So there is a big pool of players not represented here.
That’s part of the data we need to examine. Most 1%ers are well over 20mil. We think we know what’s happening, we’ll need to determine if a loophole, an oversight, or GMA. The bottom 95% didn’t really make less in March. The median was actually higher.
We moved the needle hundreds of millions. Not billions like the goal was. I do think part of it is people get down and out by the negativity and might think they are impacted. Lot of herd negativity can happen. Just like real life, most people are undecided where they land, and will follow the lead. I’ve never used Lich, but I do think something people are using are also reporting very high number recordings from some script. Might be something to look into from those script maintainers.
Right now, 94 people hit loot cap this month. There are 1,782 people who did not. And there are a lot of zero earners we don’t include.
Loot cap is account based.
But the last few messages sound more like, hey these are really good changes for the whole game. But like I mentioned, we’re going to go over the numbers and restrategize. Make sure our goals are clear and we’re designing the game with those goals in mind.
Maybe we’ll sell bridges for big silver sinks too.
I know that 94 accounts had less fun with loot cap in March.
This is a game, the aim is fun.
To answer some questions that went silent in here. The goal is also not to make things like trading, purifying, chisels, etc worthless. We just need to strike a balance. I really want to be able to continue to offer everything I can for silver. I am your biggest advocate. I just want to get it under control in some way.