Trading in Godmaw flows through two surfaces: The Exchange (the global order-book auction house in the Nexus) and the Workbench (the crush-and-upgrade crafting station at your Rig). Between them, every Token and every item in the game has a documented path in and a documented path out.
The Exchange: Buying and Selling
The Exchange is accessed from the Nexus hub. The market UI surfaces the best bid (highest buy offer), the best ask (lowest sell offer), and a quantity field. Full order-book depth is available for players who want it.
Selling an Item
- Choose the item from your inventory, enter a sell price in Tokens, confirm.
- The item is escrowed to the MARKET account immediately — it is removed from your inventory and locked.
- Your SELL order rests on the book until a buyer fills it (at your price or better) or you cancel.
- On a fill: Tokens arrive in your wallet minus the broker fee (~3%). If you are offline, the Tokens credit directly; you will see the balance when you next log in.
Buying an Item
- Browse the book for your item type, enter a bid price and quantity, confirm.
- Tokens are escrowed from your wallet immediately — the bid amount is locked against your order.
- If a resting SELL exists at or below your price, the trade fills instantly. Otherwise, your BUY order rests until a seller lists at your price or lower.
- On a fill: the item appears in your inventory (or your delivery inbox if the fill happens while you are offline). Claim from the inbox at any Exchange terminal.
Partial fills: you do not need to buy or sell in exact round lots. A BUY for 10 items fills 3 if only 3 are available, leaving the order open for the remaining 7.
Canceling: cancels return the escrowed item or Tokens in a single atomic transaction. No delay, no fee on cancel.
The Workbench: Crush and Upgrade
The Workbench is at your personal Rig, reached via a door off the Nexus. It is not a market — it is where you convert surplus loot into progression fuel.
Crush
Dismantle any gear item at the Workbench to receive Compute Scrap in return. The Scrap yield scales with the item’s rarity and band. Crushing destroys the item permanently (it becomes the SINK account’s property in the ledger). This is the economy’s primary item-sink: it removes gear from circulation while producing the resource that powers upgrades and The Rig.
Upgrade
Spend Compute Scrap plus a mix of server parts to upgrade an item one band and reroll its modifiers within bounded ranges. The upgrade is irreversible and consumes all inputs.
Recipes require parts from multiple biome tiers — a mid-band upgrade needs both T1 and T2 parts; a top-band upgrade needs T2 and T3 (GPU, deep-biome only). This ensures that every biome stays relevant for crafters at every stage of progression.
Upgrade examples (illustrative — exact quantities are sim-tunable):
- Low-band: Compute Scrap + Copper Wire + Cooling Fans
- Mid-band: Compute Scrap + RAM Stick + Motherboard + Storage Drive
- Top-band: Compute Scrap + CPU/Cores + GPU
The apex tier (Pristine) is primarily craft-gated: the reliable path to maximum gear consumes lower-band items and Exotic parts (GPU, Quantum Core), making the top tier itself a deep economy drain.
P2P Direct Trade
Direct player-to-player trade is supported alongside The Exchange. Both players lock their offered items and Tokens into escrow, both confirm, and then a single atomic transaction swaps ownership. There is no “trust trade” window where a last-instant item switch is possible.
OPEN: P2P direct trade is parked for post-MVP. Version 1 ships with The Exchange only.
Sinks and Faucets at a Glance
| Faucets (currency enters) | Sinks (currency leaves) |
|---|---|
| Loot and parts sold on The Exchange | Broker fee on every fill (~3%) |
| NPC payouts, contracts, quest rewards | Crafting: Compute Scrap + parts consumed |
| The Rig’s capped idle mining generator | Item upgrades (irreversible part and Scrap burn) |
| Apex craft-gate (consumes lower-band items) | |
| Extra Vault tabs, Rig upgrades, respec |
The idle faucet is deliberately small. The Rig’s mining output caps quickly and slows over time. Active diving out-earns a day of idling. Idle is a floor — a reason to log in — not an engine that replaces play.
Wealth buys bounded power, not unbounded dominance. The Exchange moves earned items between players; it does not mint them. A rich player reaches the gear ceiling faster. That ceiling is fixed and the skill requirement is not. Wealth is convenience, not dominance.
RWT Guardrails
Godmaw does not operate or endorse real-world trading. The design makes it structurally pointless: items trade freely at fair market prices inside the game, so there is no friction for off-platform bridges to undercut. Every trade is logged in an audit graph; one-sided wealth transfers, impossible-price trades, and new-account funneling are all detectable patterns. New accounts carry trade velocity limits as an additional guardrail.
OPEN: exact P2P trade caps and new-account limit numbers are post-MVP tuning, pending live data.