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[PDF urist master]

for dwarves, it's extremely easy to become extremely good at something. with dedication, it takes around a year or two to reach legendary in a skill. more importantly, ANY dwarf could become legendary.

this should mean that exceptional and masterwork items are relatively common in dwarven society. a legendary +1 dwarf can generally pump out exceptional items at a high frequency.

so shouldn't dwarven merchants offer more masterwork items? (or at least exceptional) maybe one or two masterwork per caravan.

[Valtam]

Well, I think what happens with fortress-trained dwarves is that usually they're making a lot of stuff between a few of them, in an unusually short span of time. In a typical mature and manageable fortress, with 200-250 dwarves, as much as 5 or 6 of them will be constantly doing crafts, but take into account that NPC dwarf sites have many more dwarves, a lot of them unexperienced or just abstracted (as a lot of the items are) so the jobs might be evenly distributed between them. Merchants seemingly bring stuff not just from a single site, but from the entire civilization, so the chances of getting masterwork items get flimsier.

That could probably change in the next release, as sites are going to be fully fleshed out, their dwarves will actually exist and you will be able to look upon on those stats and verify all this first-hand.

In the meantime, it would be wise to check if it's possible to buy back a player-made item that was sold years ago. I've bought things made by historical NPC dwarves, but haven't realized about this single thing of item-sharing among the civilization.

[Mr. Palau]

just way too easy to level a dwarf in fortress mode.

[Mr S]

Or perhaps every site in the world does what I do, sell off the lower quality junk, and keep the truly good quality things for myself!

[PDF urist master]

good point. i think the "lost a masterwork" unhappy thought might be what keeps dwarves from giving up their masterwork items.

[spook54321]

i think the "lost a masterwork" unhappy thought might be what keeps dwarves from giving up their masterwork items.

No, that's only if it is lost or stolen.  Trading away in a caravan does not matter to the craftsman (I myself think it should create a happy thought such as "sold a masterwork item")

Or perhaps every site in the world does what I do, sell off the lower quality junk, and keep the truly good quality things for myself!

I would think that they ship the quality stuff to an important location, not the new backwater post.  It would make more sense to me if the caravans brought higher and higher quality goods as you climb up the noble ladder.

I keep the higher quality stuff for the dwarf caravan myself (weapons and armor I keep for myself).  The elves can have all the worthless crap in the world if they keep giving me fantastic beasts and booze.

[PDF urist master]

while i do think that merchants will keep high quality stuff for themselves, i still think they care more about money than items.

also i can't see them keeping a masterwork steel axe when they can't use it.

maybe they sold the high quality stuff to an auction house or something.

[VerdantSF]

I wouldn't mind more specificity for merchants, but only if they blanked out the items they don't want from the very start.  Accidental trading of a taboo item is just annoying.

[Buttery_Mess]

There really isn't any sort of real economy in the world at the moment, I think Toady's going to get to that with the next release, covering the caravan arc. Hopefully that will mean less bone crap in the human cities...

Having said that, few games seem to feature working economies. I wonder how Toady will implement one.

It's pointless to wonder how it fits together at the moment, because it doesn't fit together. It's pointless to speculate how it will fit together, when it does, because the effects of, say, a personality rewrite could drastically alter the situation, and besides that we have no idea how the economy will work. I'd guess, though, that some form of inflationary effect will occur. That is, if you're knocking out hundreds of masterful mugs, eventually the world will become bereft of crap mugs, and then there will be so many masterful mugs in circulation that new ones will be worth almost nothing in trade. Precisely how this will be implemented is anyone's guess.

[Thuellai]

There really isn't any sort of real economy in the world at the moment, I think Toady's going to get to that with the next release, covering the caravan arc. Hopefully that will mean less bone crap in the human cities...

Having said that, few games seem to feature working economies. I wonder how Toady will implement one.

It's pointless to wonder how it fits together at the moment, because it doesn't fit together. It's pointless to speculate how it will fit together, when it does, because the effects of, say, a personality rewrite could drastically alter the situation, and besides that we have no idea how the economy will work. I'd guess, though, that some form of inflationary effect will occur. That is, if you're knocking out hundreds of masterful mugs, eventually the world will become bereft of crap mugs, and then there will be so many masterful mugs in circulation that new ones will be worth almost nothing in trade. Precisely how this will be implemented is anyone's guess.

Supply and demand is one factor, yes, but it's not the only factor.

A high-quality good can still demand a high price simply because it's the only thing on the market that offers that level of performance.  Generally speaking in an economy you either need a wide customer base (undercut the competition, broaden your stocks, attempt to get as many customers as possible) or a narrow but high-paying one, with narrow customer bases being lucrative but demanding more start-up (since you need to first sell the image of your material as premium, and then encourage people to buy your higher-quality, more expensive product)

Hell, if that monster company can get away with selling overpriced cables for 500% mark-up because they're gold tipped, dwarves could probably squeeze some extra dwarfbucks for their high-quality mugs.  Everyone wants a dwarven goblet!  The all-natural pitchblende glazing ensures absolute sealage of liquids and brings out the natural flavor of your beverage.