MERCHANTS
OF NEAR
BUILD YOUR WEALTH. SHAPE THE ECONOMY. RULE THE MARKET.
Game economies are painted backdrops.
NPC shopkeepers sell fixed goods at fixed prices and never run out. Nothing you do ripples outward, so trading is arithmetic, not strategy. And whatever you build lives in one company's database, owned by nobody.
Agents with balance sheets, assets with owners.
Every merchant in Nearhaven is an economic agent with its own gold, inventory, costs, personality and memory. Prices emerge from what they — and you — actually do. The businesses you build become deeds you hold in your own NEAR wallet.
They perceive, evaluate and act every in-game hour — and show their reasoning.
Holds grain when prices are low, floods the market at harvest, lays off hands in winter.
Buys wheat only when bread margins clear her bar. Competes with the Golden Crust.
Switches between tools and weapons by margin, borrows boldly to expand — and can go bust.
Runs caravans to Port Aurora when price gaps beat travel risk; remembers routes that burned her.
Scores leverage, earnings and history. Lends to sound borrowers, refuses the rest, tightens after defaults.
Hybrid AI: a deterministic decision engine drives every economic choice, so the world keeps running with no API at all. When a Claude API key is configured, merchants also voice their reasoning in character — grounded strictly in their real state and decision log.
One interconnected simulation.
Price discovery
Each good is priced from the stock on the shelves and a demand-pressure term: price = base × (reference ÷ stock)^elasticity × pressure. Every unit you buy walks up the curve.
Supply chains
Farmers grow wheat → bakers turn it into bread → citizens eat it. Miners feed the forge, livestock feeds the looms. A drought or a mine collapse ripples down every chain.
A closed money loop
Gold circulates between citizens, merchants and the exchange. Wages flow back into households; the exchange can only pay out coin it holds; mission rewards come from market fees.
Seasons, weather, events
Autumn harvests glut the granary, winter doubles firewood demand, storms ground the fleet. Festivals, bandits and royal commissions shift demand for days.
Credit and failure
The banker lends against real risk. Merchants who miss payroll three days running go bankrupt, liquidate, and are replaced by a successor with guild capital.
Two markets
Port Aurora runs its own regional economy six hours away. Price gaps open, and caravans — Selene’s and yours — close them.
Ownership that outlives the server.
Routine simulation stays off-chain so play is instant and free. The moments that matter — owning a business, selling it to another player, proving an achievement — settle on NEAR, where neither we nor anyone else can quietly revoke them.
- Wallet sign-in with NEP-413 signed messages, checked against your on-chain access keys.
- Business deeds minted with a game-signed certificate the contract verifies with ed25519 — you can only deed what you really own.
- Deed marketplace settled atomically in NEAR; the game follows on-chain ownership and hands the business to the buyer.
- Soulbound badges for verifiable achievements. Every transaction is shown with its real status and a NearBlocks link — never faked.
- 1NPCs are agents with money, not vending machines.
- 2Your trades move real prices for everyone.
- 3Merchants can win, borrow, fail and be replaced.
- 4Every activity-feed line comes from a real state change.
- 5Your empire is yours, on-chain, tradeable for NEAR.