Tradelands Recession Update – July 2026

July saw the first time in a while where Tradelands was able to break 100+ concurrent players. This, combined with the decision to delay the Summer Crate Sale meant we were primed to have a strong July. The question is, was it all enough to start a road toward recovery from the recession. Despite one of the strongest performances in all of 2026, the economy still ended up shrinking -6.0% in July. The market added $2.31 Billion in new activity, almost all of it driven through the new crate release.

To say it another way, the market lost $148 Million in July despite the increase in activity. That said, this is the first time since December 2025, which had $2.02 Billion in activity, that we saw over $2 Billion in activity and the first time since January that we have been under -30% in retraction. All of this is a positive outlook for the future, as it looks like the market is on the road to improvement since the low point in May.

The projections going into August are mixed. On one hand, it’s clear that the developers attempted to pack as much of their progress into a single month. The tell tale sign is that no new additions to the market were made in June. That ended up pulling some of the market growth, which would traditionally be applied to June, forward into July. Now that we know the ending figures for the 11th Anniversary crates, we know this would have amounted to 15.6% in additional activity if they had been released on the same schedule as last year. That would mean June would be at -27.9% and July would be at 21.6%, showing that we are in fact currently on a road of improvement.

Electrosteel Recovery

Electrosteel once had a monopoly as the only glowing material that can be used in crafting by players. That was broken earlier this year with the introduction of Solsteel and Alchemical Powder. When Solsteel first entered the market, combined with the new difficulty in obtaining it, Electrosteel interest all but disappeared, falling under $5k per piece, making it once of the greatest falls of a staple item in several years. However, it is finally on a road to recovery, mainly driven by the fact that it is no longer in the spotlight as a resource that has fallen from grace.

On the positive side, July saw an increase in market capacity. There was a spike in buyer interest when the market price hit $5.3k per piece. This means Electrosteel is still a desired material, it has just lost around 50% of its value in 2026. This isn’t that unexpected as we’ve seen a significant shift in the value of several items in 2026 stemming from changes made to resource gathering as well as the way items are crafted.

Oak Devaluation

We have heard several rumors suggesting that Oak is being devalued. The question we are being asked is if it’s false rumor, or really happening. Well, we can definitively say that the devaluation is real! In fact, it briefly skirted with losing it’s status as a three digit item in the third half of July.

This time last year Oak was consistently selling at around $150 per piece and held at that price point for some time. In fact, looking back at the historical values of Oak, this wood material has been trading around $150 per piece since September of 2022 with very little deviation until May 2026.

Unless something drastically changes in the demand of Oak, such as the release of a wildly popular ship, an influx of new players, or some major change implemented by the developers, it’s likely that Oak will continue to fall until it reaches a new stable price point, likely under $100 per piece. If this happens, it will be good for new players as the material will be cheap to obtain by other players, but it will also significantly de-value one of the most profitable professions in the game at the same time.

Steam Engine Parts Evaluation

Due to the new ship blueprint that was added this month, we were asked to do an evaluation of Steam Engine Parts and their projected value. Many veteran players may remember that this item was once stable at the $125k per piece price point. However, that was upended in the inflation period in 2025 and hasn’t sold below $130k per piece since 2024.

There are two issues that players need to be aware of when dealing with the Steam Engine Parts market. The first is that this is a craftable item so players will set the benchmark value based on the cost of the materials needed to construct it. That means you will often find it cheaper to purchase these items and make the Steam Engine Part yourself than to buy a fully built on from another player. Moreover, it’s expensive to hold Steam Engine Parts in your inventory when you could probably sell the raw materials a low faster.

The second issue is related to the last point in the previous paragraph, that because few people carry these in their inventory the price will follow demand. When new ships are on the market that require a Steam Engine Part, the price point tends to go up significantly. Moreover, most ships will require more than one Steam Engine Part to build, meaning the more that is needed in construction the more are needed on the market. The best time to buy these are when no new ships are being released. In fact, looking back to May we recorded sales as low as $122k per piece, meaning if the buyers held onto them, they could be making $25k in profit in July. Unfortunately, it’s more likely that they used it when they bought it.

The Fujin and Talos IPO Valuation

Speaking of new ships, July has two new Ship Blueprints on the market. Neither of these two ships beat expectations or broke records, but the Talos did end the losing streak of Blueprints being unable to break the $1M valuation on their IPO. In fact, this is becoming an expectation that blueprints will not exceed $1 Million in value, especially not ships aligned with the Inyolan fleet. That is an interesting contrast to wearable Inyolan items being over valued, but that is a analysis for another day.

The Fujin is the Inyolan ship this month and is following the same trend as the Komodo. The ship was able to gain a price point of $873k while crates were still on sale, and fell to $650k by the time it was off-sale. At the end of the month it was holding steady at $725k and looks like this will be the long-term price point until the next release of the an Inyolan ship.

The Talos is a Purshovian ironclad and introduced some new concepts that we haven’t seen in the game. It was able to obtain an ending IPO price point above $1 Million. This is the first ship to do this since the Demeter re-release last year and that was a unique case. It also means there is a small chance that this could follow in the footsteps of the Wyvern Blueprint, although I think that is very unlikely. It’s more likely that this ship will follow the Kingfisher and stay steady at this price point until new ships are added to the game that have similar characteristics. When they do, I project it will follow other similar ironclads such as the pretty much off-market Megalodon Ironclad which only had 10 market entries in July.