Tradelands Economic Update – February 2026

The month of Befruary saw $845.6 Million in market activity. This represents one of the greatest drops in market activity in the history of the game, with the market having effectively lost 35.5% of it’s value in just three months. To say this another way, the market is is only two thirds of what it was this time last year. If this trend continues for another month, the in game economy will officially be in a recession. At least this month’s daily market analysis shows there is some strength, with an increase in treading volume occurring with the release of Lunar Crates. However, our current analysis shows that the market will return to it’s pre-release state once crates are off sale, which would put us back in recession territory if it happens.

To make matters worse, the market also lost -2.6% in total value, meaning the stock exchange has not fared any better than the overall economy. This can be partially explained with the introduction of new fort mechanics, which convert goods which would otherwise be traded on the market, into materials used sole for construction of these fortresses. Normally, when things like this happen, we expect to see an increase in prices due to lower available inventory, but this has not been the case. In fact, buyer demand has remained consistently low for all materials.

Fewer Players Fewer Transactions

Let’s not dance around the issue here. The main problem plaguing the in-game economy is the significant drop-off in player count since November 2025. This is partly due to some decision made by Roblox, but mostly due to a shift in the games focus away from trading and more towards combat, specifically PVP. This isn’t the first month where we’ve seen historical lows like this, and when you look at the market performance over time, you can clearly see what’s happening (click the image to zoom in).

December was the last time the game was able to hit 100 concurrent players somewhat consistently. After the end of the Winter Event, the player count never recovered. The market activity reflects this. However, it only tells part of the story. This seems to indicate there has been a rebound in the last week of February. But when we look at the Market Activity breakdown by buyer and seller activity, we see that this is just a facade. The reality is buyer activity has only rebounded to mid-January levels, and will likely fall again when Crates off back off-sale. This is not a good look for the economy, and the lack of buyer interest is almost certainly due to the lack of new players who are looking to become long-term participants in the economy.

We are continuing to monitor the situation. Our guidelines requires three months of consistent recession-like behavior before we will officially call a recession. Because December did not consistently meet this criteria, we are at least one more month away from being able to make that declaration. However, for those in the game, especially those who are actively trading, they may already know the answer to this uncertainty based on how business is performing for them.

The Ship Blueprint Story

In a twist from our usual analysis, we decided to try and answer one of the most asked questions, “Are blueprints worth obtaining?” This is usually asked in relation to ship blueprints that are obtained from crates. To answer this, the first thing to know is what are the prices for Crates, and what is the generally accepted threshold for profit. Mystery Crates are currently selling for $77,706.93, with some crates selling for as low as $30k. If we calculate the probability of obtaining a blueprint, using the default drop rate of 1%, we arrive at a range of $1.468 Million to $2.793 Million. For the sake of this analysis, we will use the lower of these two break even points.

This is the current buy and sell ranges for all blueprints recorded from December 1st to February 28th:

As you can see, some Blueprints do sell above the $1.4 Million break even point. However, when you use the top level estimate of $2.7, only 35 of the 425 transactions recorded are above this number. That represents only 8.2% of all Blueprints on the market. In fact 286 of the 425 (67.3%) of all blueprints don’t even his the lower break-even point. That means there is a two in one chance you will not make your money back on Blueprints obtained from crates.

I will add that this is a very conservative number and is based on simple majority. To do a true and proper probability model, based on actual Mystery Crate values, the price to obtain a Blueprint from a crate is actually $5.16 Million, and only one crate ship has ever hit that threshold, the Wyvern Class. In the past three months, only two transactions ever exceeded that amount.

For the curious, the average Ship Blueprint price for all blueprints on the market is $1,428,734.11. So if you are selling a Blueprint for less than this, you are below the market average.

Mining Price Changes

We reported several months back that the inflation of iron prices seemed to be a seller effort but the volume of available materials didn’t seem to indicate that the price change would be permanent. Today, we are able to report that iron prices are already correcting. The price peaked at $198 per piece but has already dropped back down to $195 per piece. Buyers seem to be sitting firm at $150 per piece meaning we are already seem instability in negotiated prices.

The new metal added in this release is Februinum. This item was added in parallel to the new mining mechanic which strives to push players away from collecting inventories of metals and instead use them to participate in the new fort mechanic introduced to the game. This item is hard to predict in terms of future value. The price point seen today is for an item which is still obtainable and is therefore expected to sink in price as more volume is added to the market. Because of the game’s shift toward combat, it’s difficult to predict an increase in value unless there is also a combat property that comes with items constructed using the material.