ArtCraft Entertainment published some information about how in-game currency will work in Crowfall. Their take on the concept is an interesting one; the game won’t just have generic gold coins:

– We are going to scatter precious metals throughout (and IN) the worlds. As with all other materials, the quality and quantity will skew heavily towards the riskier campaign worlds (keeping with our philosophy that greater risk should yield greater rewards).

– When exploring, you can find raw materials in the form of ore (copper, silver, gold). Ore is an inventory item. As such, it can be carried, dropped, traded, placed in containers, looted, etc.

– You can use crafting recipes to turn ore into coins. These coins are still inventory items, but they are easier to stack and carry (i.e. more efficient use of inventory space than transporting ore itself).

– Some disciplines (like Alchemy) will allow you to take other types of materials and turn them into ore, which can then be turned into coins.

– You can find coins on some monsters though it’s relatively rare to do so (compared to traditional MMOs). We aren’t using monster camps as the primary “faucet” for these, and the quantities won’t scale with monster difficulty in the same manner as a level-based RPG.

– Items can be salvaged, which will result in a (lossy) conversion of that item back into raw materials. This will include some amount of previous metal that can be crafted into coins.

– There are a number of sinks in the game that will accept coins. You can use them to purchase parcels and buildings from the shop, upgrade your strongholds, pay maintenance or you can treat the coins as a raw material for crafting more items.

– But we AREN’T going to provide common (system-run) vendors. Our goal is to facilitate and enable the flow of goods and services — but keep it player-driven.

We decided to leave our currency as an inventory item because it means that the handling and transport of this currency around the map now has tactical considerations: Do you carry it by hand? Place it on a pack pig and move it via caravan?

Every decision has a cost.

As well, they have announced that the game’s login system will support two-factor authentication, and have also made it possible for current backers to gift a pledge to a friend.