Wreckonomics - First Post

Wreckonomics

Welcome to the first Wreckonomics post, where I babble on about a video game, and give the best solutions I can to snag yourself lots of plunder.  As is this is the first one, I explain some ground rules and personal terms I'll be using.

Theoretically Unlimited Wealth:  At its essence, this is the idea that enough grinding, farming, and suchlike, a player can get unlimited cash and/or resources.  There is literally an unending amount of respawning or random enemy encounters, chests (or equivalents), and therefore drops.  Almost all games with a currency/loot system have this, and most games that do this also don't have the nasty economic impact of some gang of crazies showing up in town with a few million gold pieces and an urge to splurge every other hour.

Limitations:  Exactly what is says on the tin.  These are the obstacles set in place that keep the Theoretically Unlimited Wealth theoretical and limited.  First off, the very real fact that one can never have infinite currency or items.  Even if one could do so in real life (which is impossible), a computer program like a video game could not be able to hand that.  Limited memory and coding means limited wealth.  However, time and technology has made it to where this limit has become effectively meaningless in modern games.  Cases can also be made for bugs and exploits making things infinite in practice in some games. 

But the limitations I will be mentioning are the reason I'm making these posts in the first place.  A lot of games, particularly RPGS, have artificial barriers to wealth building.  These can often to lead to lots of frustration and controller slinging, and plenty of nerd rage and forum flames.  Some of the nastier ones include ridiculously low cash limits and drops, restrictive inventory sizes, and the more draconian anti-grinding mechanics out there.  A lot of these are done in the name of realism; others, so players will actually finish the game instead of tearing about slaughtering critters and bandits for weeks while the king is dying and the hot princess is dealing with the attentions of various monstrosities.  Some are done in the name of simple sadism.  The really maddening ones are typically just designers not thinking things through, or leaving out wealth building mechanics that were either helpful or downright vital in the finished game.  Another layer is the whole 'lost in translation' problem, where for one reason or another, a set of features and/or mechanics were removed when a game was imported and localized.  A variant is where features were added, but people stuck with original versions couldn't benefit from them.

TL; DR:  The game designers were jackasses and this is why.  Here there be rants

Gas Pedals:  The good news.  These will be things a player can do to really make cash and item acquisition go much easier.  A lot of these seem to be put in place by designers to get needed stuff without all the fuss of grinding, but requiring a lot of experience with the game mechanics or exploring (or GameFAQs) to find.  Others are things that were missed or made by mistake.  Still others are things that were meant to accelerate the process to a degree, but you usually don't have to step off the pedal until you get what you wanted.

A note:  I will typically not discuss glitches and bug exploits unless they are either well-known and deemed acceptable by many players, or are the only way to get your hands on enough stuff to actually ease the horrible Dickens-style cruelty going in some games. 

I signed on to rampage about, smack the legions of doom, and woo damsels, not be the heroic fantasy version of Oliver freaking Twist.

Anyway, these are the things I'll be going on about in Wreckonomics posts.  Stay tuned for all sorts of nerdity involving the slaughter of cutesy monsters and playing a game that is nothing but sidequests in Legend of Mana.  Kill the Rabite!