09 — Economy
Where the money is now.
Gold still comes from killing things. What changed is that a large part of your income is now materials, and a large part of your spending is upkeep.
Income
- Creature products are the real loot. Vampire teeth, rope belts, protective charms, dragon scales — the imbuement materials. Everyone needs them constantly, so they hold value on the market far better than equipment does.
- Rashid pays much more than local NPCs. He moves city each day of the week. Doing The Travelling Trader quest early is the highest-return hour of your first month.
- The market (in-client, at a depot) is where you actually sell anything worth more than a few thousand gold. Check the Cyclopedia's item prices before dumping something to an NPC.
- Bosses pay in equipment, and the bosstiary boss slot multiplies that. The daily boosted boss at 250% loot is the best single hour available to a mid-level character.
- Improved-loot prey and the Gut / Scavenge charms compound quietly. A loot prey on the creature you're farming materials from is often better than a damage one.
Outgoings
These are recurring, which is the part that surprises returning players.
| Cost | How often | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Potions and ammunition | Every hunt | The dominant cost at every level. The analyser tracks it. |
| Imbuements | Every 20 hours of hunting | 7,500 / 60,000 / 250,000 gold plus materials, per imbuement. |
| Blessings | Every death, and before every session | Scales with level. Not optional on Open PvP. |
| Charm detaching | When you change hunting spot | Level × 100 gold. Pick spots you'll stay in. |
| House rent | Monthly | Cheap, and the hireling inside saves you real time. |
If a hunt loses money, check in this order: prey bonuses set? imbuements alive? boosted creature ignored? item prices set to market instead of NPC in the Cyclopedia? Four times out of five it's one of those, not the spot.
Premium — what you're actually buying
For what you two are doing, premium is a requirement rather than a luxury. Without it you have:
- No promotion, and therefore no stances.
- No Wheel of Destiny at all.
- No intricate or powerful imbuements at a shrine (scrolls only).
- No forge dust, so no equipment tiers.
- One prey slot instead of two; two charms instead of six.
- Access only to Thais, Carlin, Venore, Ab'Dendriel, Kazordoon and Yalahar — which excludes most of the hunting grounds worth going to.
- Capped offline training.
A few things persist after premium lapses if you earned them while premium: Rashid and Black Bert access, royal mailboxes, and gate mechanisms you've already opened. Worth doing those quests during your first premium month.
Tibia Coins
- Bought with real money, spent in the in-game store on premium time, outfits, mounts, the third prey slot, the charm expansion, hirelings, exercise weapons, blessings and various conveniences.
- Transferable coins can be traded between characters and sold for gold in-game. This is the legitimate route from gold to premium time — a well-off character can effectively play for free.
- CipSoft has been adjusting how coins convert and what fees apply, so check the current rules on the website rather than assuming.
- The grey market for accounts that existed in your era is largely gone, replaced by the official channel below.
Char Bazaar
An official character auction house on tibia.com. You bid with transferable Tibia Coins; if you win and hold the highest bid, payment is automatic or you have seven days to settle.
Two reasons this matters to you specifically:
- It sets the price of everything. When you wonder why a piece of endgame gear costs what it does, the bazaar is the reference market.
- It's a legitimate catch-up mechanism. If your sorcerer friend joins two hundred levels behind, buying a character is a normal, sanctioned way to fix the party level gap that would otherwise break shared experience.
What's worth paying for, in order
- Premium. Everything else is downstream of it.
- Exercise weapons at low level. Skills are the slowest thing to grow and the cheapest thing to buy time on.
- The third prey slot, once you're hunting regularly. It's permanent and it compounds.
- A hireling, once you own a house. Pure time saved, every session.
- The charm expansion (450 coins), much later, when you have enough charm points for it to matter.
Everything else in the store is cosmetic, and mounts are the only cosmetic with a mechanical effect — speed, which is genuinely useful.