The Ins and Outs of Albion’s Gold Exchange

In Albion Online, there are two main currencies: (1) gold and (2) silver. Players have to buy gold with real money or silver. Currency is useful for certain cosmetic items and premium status. In fact, premium gives boosts to various skill gains, which players progress faster than non-premium accounts.

Silver is something that players can gather by playing the game. Defeating enemies (other players or monsters that roam around), and trading in the marketplace are a few ways to collect silver. Even though silver isn’t utilized to purchase what gold can get, it’s helpful for just about everything else that involves money. Besides, you can trade gold or silver for the other.

Why Exchange Currencies?

The feature lets players achieve premium status without shelling out real money. It also gives another area of trade for the player-driven economy to flourish. On the developer’s side, it creates a demand for players who are willing to spend some bucks.

Think of this way: Albion’s gold goes through a tube, while silver is collected in a bowl. In this metaphor, the tube and bowl represent the amount of currency in-game. Gold goes in the tube as players acquire it, and it goes out the tube as it gets used for premium or particular items. Meanwhile, as players gather silver, it mostly just circulates around the game as player’s trade in markets (the bowl). There aren’t many silver sinks that exist in Albion Online, perhaps property (farm/island) sellers, which takes silver out of the circulation.

Anyhow, considering the metaphor, gold can easily run out once players stop purchasing it (no gold goes in the tube). To ensure that there’s always gold in the tube, the Gold Exchange is a reliable system to put into place. Players spend their money for gold that they can easily trade for silver, and other players can enjoy what gold has to offer. The developers get their money while the players keep the economy going.

What’s Next?

All right, how to predict the price of gold so that you can figure out when to purchase gold for cheapest, and sell when it’s the most expensive. It’s simple! The less gold in the tube the higher the gold. The more gold in the tube the cheaper the gold. The trick is knowing how much gold is in the tube.

Stuff that Increase Gold in the Tube

Some examples of what could amplify the circulation of gold are events and promos. In-game events sometimes award gold if players are successful in their participation of the event. An example of an event that can add gold in circulation is the End of Beta Event Week. It awarded gold to players successful in completing tasks in certain days, such as the day players have to rescue Tax Collectors, as well as the day guilds have to hold and defend castles.

Promos, including sales or bundles increase the number of people buying gold with money. In a way, the pre-release founder packs are like this: after the release, buying the game with the packs that give you less gold than if you bought them before the release. Currently, there isn’t anything like this but who knows? There could be something similar to honor the recent release or something.

Things that Decrease Gold in the Tube

Interestingly, the same things that enhance gold in the tube could decrease it as well. Other events encourage players to spend their gold on items or consumables available for a limited time. There was last year’s holiday season event, which didn’t give out gold, but it made players spend their gold for fun items.

Those types of events can even be paired with a gold sale to make it easy to buy gold to spend for those limited edition items. When the events end, it’s probably a good idea to keep gold or sell it because players have to recuperate from all their spending. There’s going to be a dip in the amount of new gold that will enter for some time, which means gold prices would rise. It will stabilize after a few weeks though.

In a way, predicting this is just figuring out what’s greater between supply and demand. Here’s the rule of thumb: with higher demand, prices go up, and with higher supply, prices go down. Stay on the lookout for updates for these events and promos, and find the pattern in the rise and fall of gold prices.