Spoiler: Money and Gems (Edited with new material)

[Mental Mouse]

This is the summary of game money, gems, and related options that I wished I'd had when I started playing. I've now edited it to include the items from the comments below.

The take-home message, up front:

Get to know the Skud Bank and the basement of the Trademarket. You'll want to keep most of your stash in platinum, and eventually jade. However, some of the "vending tables" around Scorn only take gold, notably for buying gems or arrows & bolts. Wannabe alchemists and jewelers may want to hoard emeralds, sapphires, and any "special" gems.

The convertible currencies at Skud Bank are silver, gold (equals 10 silver), platinum (equals 5 gold or 50 silver), jade (equals 100 platinum), and amberium (equals 100 jade).

Under Trademarket, you can also sell common diamonds for official price in platinum. Since you can buy them at the gem tables for the equivalent price in gold, diamonds are a semi-convertible currency. (Some altars and suchlike also take their price in diamonds.) You can also exchange 2000 diamonds for a First World Bank note, or vice versa. So, combining Trademarket and Skud Bank:

• 400 silver = 40 gold = 8 platinum = 1 diamond
  10,000 platinum = 1,250 diamonds = 100 jade coins = 1 amberium coin
  16,000 platinum = 2,000 diamonds = 160 jade coins = 1 FWB note

It's worth noting that coins are 100 to a weight unit, but gems are only 20 to a unit. So in bulk, diamonds are only slightly (40%) lighter than the same value of platinum.

Other Gems:

Common diamonds, rubies, and pearls can be bought for official price in gold, at the tables in Skud Bank and the Gem Shop lobby.

Otherwise, any shop will buy or sell gems and nuggets for a 3% cut from official prices. (Charisma doesn't affect these prices.)

Most gems have "special" versions: Gems of "great value" are worth 10 times usual price, those of "exceptional beauty" 100 times as much, and those of "flawless beauty", 1000 times as much. Oddly, there seem to be no "pearls of great price".

The "official prices" for gems in gold are:

• diamonds 40
  rubies 20
  sapphires * 18.5
  emeralds * 16
  amethysts * 12.6
  pearls 5
  
  gold nuggets * 4 (small) 40 (large)

* Computed from shop prices.

Notes on gems:

• I've seen amethysts in shops, but never in treasure.
  
  Gold nuggets don't need to be IDed (it doesn't affect their price), but they *can* be! (Oops... unless you're using jeweler skill, then you get experience for it.)
  
  WARNING: the Trademarket pays only 10 gold each for large gold nuggets! Probably a bug, but until it gets fixed, watch out!
  
  Mithril crystals fit into your pouches, but they don't have a fixed price like regular gems. I've gotten the best prices (~100 gold) from the Alchemy shop.

The Trademarket and Skud bank also deal in "imperial notes", worth 1000gp (200 plat) each. The Trademarket tables let you buy them with bars or buillion (gold, silver, or platinum). Skud Bank maintains their bank accounts in imperials. The bank takes a 5% charge on all deposits, and pays no interest. (That is, you pay 210 plat per note deposited.) They also let you "exchange" (cash in) imperial notes for platinum.

It's not really clear why anyone would want a Skud account, as jade and amberium make great wealth ultra-portable. Also, apartments can't be burgled, and theft in general seems rare-to-nonexistent. (I haven't played multiplayer, so YMMV!) That said, there are banks in a couple of towns where change tables aren't obvious.

Just for kicks, a couple of equivalences:

One amberium coin is worth half a million silver coins, which would weigh 5,000 units -- too much for even a 25 Str character to carry without containers of Holding, and tough even with them!

By contrast, a pouch of Holding can contain 375 weight, or 37,500 coins. If those are amberium, the pouch would be worth 375 million platinum coins, or 18.75 billion silver! But the same weight in silver would be worth a mere 750 platinum coins.

[Mental Mouse]

Coins are 100 to a weight unit, but gems are only 20 to a unit. So in bulk, diamonds are only slightly (40%) lighter than the same value of platinum.

[Leaf]

Nice write up and summary, made it a sticky.

Thank you!

[Mental Mouse]

Having finally checked back at the bank:

Skud Bank uses imperial notes for its accounts. These are worth 1000gp (200 plat) each. The bank takes a 5% charge on all deposits, and pays no interest. They also let you "exchange" (cash in) imperial notes for platinum.

It's not totally clear why anyone would want to do this, as:

• Theft seems rare-to-nonexistent, despite Gumble and the "stealing" skill. (I haven't played multiplayer, so YMMV!)
  
  Apartments can't be burgled nohow.
  
  Jade and amberium make great wealth ultra-portable.
  
  Fees, no interest.

That said, having a few notes in the bank came in handy when I found myself teleported to Santo Domingo (no change tables handy, and I was low on plat for ID tables.)

(Oh yeah, didn't mention above: ID tables don't make change for jade! If you drop a jade coin on an ID table, you get one item ID'ed, and waste the other 96 platinum!

PS: Leaf, thanks for the sticky... now if you could put this stuff in the handbook, or at least the spoilers doc, that would be even cooler.

[mwedel]

Just a note - as best I know, none of the tables that take gems or coins make change. But they will just take however many of the item is needed to get the task done.

So tables that perform a specific action per money drop you don't want to drop a currency larger than what the table will take. So if someone had some trivial table that cost 1 gp to cast a spell and you dropped a platinum, you'd also be out that 4 gold. It also means that any table that charges an amount not evenly divisible by the coinage will result in your losing out (a table that takes 33 gold would activate on 7 platinum, but you'd lose 2 gp in the deal)

For gem tables, you get a number of gems based on dropped quantity, so you don't loose out. You could however get a sufficient number of whatever created that you can't actually carry it all in one load.

[Mental Mouse]

Most altars and tables only take one currency -- usually gold for tables, plat or sometimes diamonds for "altars". The ID and detection tables are unusual in recognizing multiple currencies at all.

For example, the workshop-rental and apartment-purchase altars don't recognize jade, even though two jade coins equal 200 plat. Similarly, the change tables only accept one currency each, though that could reasonably be altered. That is, you could replace "silver to gold and "platinum to gold" with a single "change to gold" table which also takes jade. The "change to silver", and maybe "change to gold", tables probably shouldn't take amberium.....

It might be tricky to handle something like 2000 silver + 60 plat => 1 jade, though, and the issue is complicated by the existence of "short-change" tables in various places (12:1 silver to gold, and such).

[Leaf]

For example, the workshop-rental and apartment-purchase altars don't recognize jade, even though two jade coins equal 200 plat.

From a quick test, those maps are designed that way. They only accept platinum coins (slaying platinacoin).

They were also created before Jade and Amberium coins were added to the game.

[mwedel]

A lot of tables only take one type of coin because that is all the initial implementation supported - had to be gold coin, platinacoin, etc.

It didn't take us too long to realize that was annoying, so a special symbolic 'money' tag was added - those tables take anything defined as money (based on type of object). Many of coverters/altars added in after that changed used that name.

However, there are lots of old converters out there that were not updated, and even for new ones, it seems that sometimes folks didn't realize they could use that symbolic money term.

My personal opinion is that pretty much all converters that take a specific coin (vs the generic money) should get updated - I can't think there is much reason otherwise.

[Mental Mouse]

I'd say that when updating tables to take money in general, it would be worth making sure they don't take a denomination greater than their basic price.

[mwedel]

Maybe. The problem could be that it something takes 1 GP as the purchase price and you have thousands of platinum coins, you may not really care about losing a few GP.

The correct fix may be for tables that take type 'money', they should make change. The reason they might not right now is that the code they use and the code of altars is pretty similar.

It would be odd to put a sacrifice on the altar and the god makes change for you.