How much Gil is a lot of Gil?

[PkThunda]

Coming from a game like World of Warcraft and it's increasing gold inflation, I am curious about Gil-

Specifically, how much Gil is a lot of Gil in the setting?

 

Is 2kGil a lot for a night with a courtesan?

Would 20Gil be a small tip for a performer? 2Gil? 200Gil?

How much is basic food like bread, cheese, or gruel?

How about gourmet meals?

[Warren Castille]

I was going to reply but then realized I don't honestly know how the lore treats it. I thought about it for a bit, then ultimately figured that I equate one gil to one dollar.

[Mijisaa Qisaa]

I've always thought of 1 gil = 1 USD.  If there was a ratio, I'd have to do math...and that's not gonna happen.  

[Maril]

This is something that I scratched the surface of when trying to design a menu with gil-prices for a bar. I went around and about to find out what various npcs charged for various things, and what I found (according to my notes, this was back around november ish) that npc prices only rarely go above 50 gil for an item. I then went on to try and caulculate how much it would cost me in gil to make a meal with stuff bought from a vendor, with the idea that if you know what the value of a meal is, and you say people have to eat at least 3 x a day plus they also need to drink something, then you could say a person has to spend xxx amount of gil per day to keep themselves alive. Problem just is that I'm not that good at maths, and it got a bit overwhelming as it were. 

When I then designed the menu, I also tried to keep in mind that a bar has to turn a profit (That being said, most people probably don't eat at a bar every night) and so the prices would have to be higher than the raw NPC value.

So all of that lead to the price of a main course being around 120 gil, and probably in total a three course meal would be around 300. 

 

Some of the problems I encountered with the drinks area specifically, is the fact that the NPC's sometimes sells an entire bottle of something for very very little, because it's used in the start of a craft and as such has to be dirt cheap, and vice versa some things seemed needlessly expensive (in comparison) seemingly because these are used in the higher end of a craft. 

 

Another thing that you could count in (which I did not at the time) is the rewards for leves, but again levels play a factor here. But it could do for a vague "what might you get for risking your life a little bit" (in a world where risking your life as an adventurer is pretty normal?) 

 

I would love to be more thorough with this, to see how much you can pull out of the data we have and the lore and everything else. But it's a lot of effort and requires someone who is a bit more maths savvy than I am, I feel. 

However, based on all of the above, I would say that if your regular adventuring person eats at a bar once a night and has one or two glasses of alcohol, he'd need about 500 gil per day at least (and this would be eating at a cheap place and not at the bismarck) to get it to run around. 

And then based on that 2000 gil might not be a whole lot of money for a courtesan to have unless it's made in a day. 

If you look more towards mercenary hireings, especially of the someone probably needs to die caliber, a larger payment of maybe 5000 would probably be standard. 

Keeping it in those levels also means that being a gillionaire is actually still pretty darn sorted. 

 

HOWEVER, from experience as well, some RP'ers we had in the aforementioned bar tended to think of 50 gil for a glass of wine as being a bit much, whilst that wasn't our intention, I think there is a factor with what kind of currency the player OOCly is used to - they may think of 50 gil as being 50 dollars, and then it's really would be a very expensive glass of wine. Where as in my country, we're used to seeing a bit higher numbers with not as much value. 

 

Another thing I found is that in order to be able to show the changes in quality and type of alcohol you need a pretty high maximum, otherwise there's not enough space to show it off on. This all turned into a really long ramble, I hope some of it made sense and for all that is holy please don't take this for fact, but rather an observation. I would encourage you to find a point where you feel it sounds reasonable, and also use the emote "/em hands over a (small/medium/large) bag of gil" and "/em slides some gil over the bar to the bartender" because they're nice and vague but precise enough to get the message across.

[Aya]

Excellent Sastra ^^ I kind of pegged an expensive meal at around 100 gil, but I didn't do any sort of research, sounds like I will have to  up the Quick Sand prices a bit! You hear that Momodi?

[Warren Castille]

The trouble with using NPC costs is that food does scale with level, and as a result will straight-up cost more as a game mechanic takes over.

[Aya]

The trouble with using NPC costs is that food does scale with level, and as a result will straight-up cost more as a game mechanic takes over.

Warren says, "No! Keep the prices cheap Momodi!"

[Whittledown]

I had Hornet buy a crazy expensive bottle of wine for 4000 gil once, seemed right.

[111]

To me it's about 10 gil to a dollar in terms of purchasing power. It's a rough guide, but it seems to make sense. It even makes sense for houses. A small house is a few hundred thousand, larger houses are several million.

[Mercurias]

Normally I look at what NPCs sell basic goods like food for and gauge things accordingly. I'd assume, though, that 1 gil is at most worth half 1 USD.

[C'kayah Polaali]

I think it's in general a mistake to look at housing to get an idea of what a gil is worth, mainly because it's too tied to SE's rather unique housing philosophy - considering the size and the cost of a small house on Balmung, you're looking at prices comparable to Manhattan even at 10 gil per US dollar.

 

That said, looking at food prices is probably a good starting point. You can get a boiled egg for about 5 gil, whereas the same thing in the local ABC store is about $0.50. Fairly plan prepared dishes cost more than the egg, but not proportionately more. All together, I'd imagine the exchange rate to be around 5 gil per US dollar, but no more than 10.

 

This works for plain prepared dishes. It makes things like omelettes and orange juice work. The RPers 50 gil wine becomes something fairly nice. A 2000 gil courtesan ends up being affordable.

 

About the only thing it doesn't work for is housing and haircuts. I can live with that, though.

[Hiro]

I have my own sets, usually:

 

GIL:USD

 

15:1 - Ul'dah and Ishgard

10:1 - Limsa Lominsa, Gridania

8:1- Smaller Towns/Outposts:

5:1 - Lower/Other: Things beggars and wandering travelers may expect, basic interactions in smaller venues outside of cities and towns.

 

Various reasoning behind them all, but that's sort of my guide. It's kind of a to each their own situation but I feel like most people are on a similar wavelength from my interactions.