Gold

Cash in Neverwinter has always been in a bit of an odd place. As a new player, I remember that the prospect of needing however many gold it was to buy my first white quality horse seemed quite daunting. (They've since changed it so that you get the starter mount for free.) After that though, the usefulness of coins quickly dropped off, because beyond maybe buying some basic potions from a vendor, there wasn't much you could do with them, what with even the auction house trading in astral diamonds.

Over time, Cryptic tried to make gold a little more useful, by making it the currency required to swap out enchantments (used to be AD) and requiring gold deposits to the guild coffer for certain guild upgrades. In practice though, most people still always had way, way more gold than they'd ever be able to find a use for.

Well, the workshop has changed all of that, because the prices some artisans charge to craft things are no joke. I was initially quite thrilled by the new option to put them to work "indefinitely" (until your delivery box is full at least) but it only took a few days for me to realise that this was quickly draining all my gold reserves, which felt very weird considering that in the old crafting system most tasks were cash-neutral or even positive.

Unblogged since had an article about how there's at least one item you can craft to generate lots of gold, though I'm wondering whether in typical Cryptic fashion that wasn't actually intended and will soon be hotfixed or even considered an exploit. I've been trying it anyway, as I figure it's just gold, and since that's not tied to the "real" economy it's unlikely to be a big issue. It's still strange to suddenly be even thinking about my gold reserves though.