Tradelands Economic Update – April 1, 2025

March saw $2.0 Billion Doubloons of trading activity. Typically, March is a quiet month with very little trade activity. This is due to real life factors such as spring break, but also because it’s the month in between two major crate releases. This year was different, however, as a popular ship variant was added to the game on March 7th and there were no crate releases in February, causing for a change in the market expectations for March.

The Mars Factor

Without a doubt, the release of the Mars was a success. Everything about this update was received well in the market. The ship included additional Mars Rifle Blueprints as well as a highly desirable figurehead which changes to match any ship’s decor. That is on top of the fact that it essentially became a publicly available version of the Ares, a ship which was traditionally locked to only those who could afford to join auction servers.

May 7th is currently the record holder for the most activity of any single day in 2025. This was the exact day that the Mars Variant was released. In fact, after its release the market activity remained higher than any day prior, an indication that its demand for players was high. It also resulted in the inflation of several high demand items used in its construction, with Premium Tokens seeing the biggest bump, but also an increase in demand for materials such as Brekonium and Pwnwood which have been in low demand for several months.

The ship itself cost 9,000 Premium Tokens if you purchased it from the Premium Merchant. This breaks up the expected price point of 5,000 tokens which was the price for all previous ships released. While this was a disappointing move, it actually makes sense. The Ceres is in a different class of pricing than the previous two, namely that it costs nearly 5,000 premium tokens to build a Ceres. This means that it would have been possible to purchase this variant Ceres for less than the base ship. Raising the price to 9,000 tokes allowed for the variant itself to hold value and not become a cheap method of obtaining the craftable trade ship.

Brekonium Demand Increases

Brekonium is purchasable by anyone who owns a Breki Wealth Token. Along with Electrosteel, it is a combat effect material that is craftable. This month saw the first major jump in Brekonium demand in over a year. The last time it was at the same level it is today was when the craftable navy weapons were open to the community.

Electrosteel also saw similar gains to Brekonium, trending at around +19%. However, Electrosteel has other factors that put it in demand. What makes Brekonium’s increase so interesting is the fact that it has a guaranteed purchase price of $10k doubloons per piece. In other words, the price has limits to how far up or down it can go since it’s price point will be tied to the fact that anyone can effectively purchase it for $10k. The fact that it was able to effect an 11% price increase despite this means the market has really shifted in it’s demand for the glowing material.

Premium Token Correction

Our final market highlight is recognition that Premium Token sellers have successfully pulled off a price correction. The data shows that there has been a permanent 100 db increase in the base price, and buyers have started adopting this new price point. This trend was started in December of 2024 and took three months of constant effort to pull off, a lesson for anyone who wants to pull off a similar effort on their own items, and the amount of effort required to do it.

We have more data on this trend than I could possibly explain in a singly monthly status report, but the three metrics which are most telling are the price point (left chart). Specifically, the green line which indicates the buyer price which hovered between 200 and 220 for most of 2024, how now reached $292 per piece. That means the majority of buyers are willing to purchase premium tokens at just under $300 per piece.

The second trend is the pricing pressure. This is how much players are trying to push prices up or down, either through manipulating how much they sell their goods for publicly, or how much they move in actual negotiations. Just a visual glance at this report shows a different in the averages pre and post May 7th. The demand from buyers shifted up slightly on that day, which prompted nearly all sellers to shift up considerably to differentiate the buy/sell demand, presumably to aid in future negotiations for discounts.

Third, the final nail in the coffin, was the ever increasing demand for Premium Tokens, and virtually nonexistent oversupply. When a market has over-supply it means there available to sell that what the market will currently purchase. The result is usually seller power, and buyers being more choosy with their purchases. It’s worth noting that this depicts the state of buying and selling at the price point at the time. As unfilled demand remains unfilled over longer durations, the market either removes the demand or is more willing to entice higher priced sellers. There are three spikes that occur in March, which indicate that buyers chose to cave instead of withdrawing their interest. This can largely be attributed to the Mars, which was only available of one month and thus had to be purchased quickly.