Craft and trade
Work that feels like play.
Craft, gather, refine, trade and build through hands-on systems designed to be engaging in their own right — not bars to fill or buttons to press.
Professions with substance
Gathering and crafting are hands-on. They are built to be played rather than waited through, and doing them well is a skill that belongs to the player, not only to the character.
Quality is the point of that. Two people working the same materials with the same recipe should not reach the same result. Do the work well and the output is better than the materials deserved; do it carelessly and you have wasted something that somebody had to go and find.
That makes a good crafter findable and worth finding. It is what turns a profession from a resource sink into a reputation.
A player-driven economy
Resources don't magically appear where they're needed. Production, transport, storage, trade routes and dependable partners all matter in an economy shaped by players rather than by vendors with infinite stock.
Every link in that chain is a job somebody has to do. Something has to be gathered, refined, made, carried to where the demand is, stored until it sells, and protected on the way. Each of those steps is a place where a player can specialise, and a place where a shortage can open up.
Prices, therefore, are information. A spike somewhere is a signal that a link in the chain has broken, and the person who notices first has an opportunity. That only works if goods genuinely have to travel — which is why travel is a design system in its own right rather than a menu.