Bright Star Studios has published a game economy overview for their free-to-play sandbox MMORPG, Ember Sword.  

In it, the studio discusses off-chain and on-chain elements, cosmetic items, merging collectibles, land, early access details and the token design of $EMBER, which is slated to launch on June 13th. We also get an updated roadmap featuring milestones from 2024 to 2026.

Off-Chain & On-Chain Items

To adhere to the team’s no pay-to-win gameplay design philosophy and ensure a solid player-driven economy, the game is set to utilize both off-chain and on-chain items, meaning that players will have the opportunity to own unique digital assets referred to as Collectibles. These are premium cosmetic on-chain items such as emotes, weapon and character skins, as well as land plots. Players will be able to interact with each other on these tradable land plots while the owner uses $EMBER to upgrade the space with new user services and gameplay features to make it even more attractive for other players to visit.

Cosmetic Collectibles allow players to express themselves with exclusive premium emotes, character skins and weapon skins. They’re immutable, rare and unique, available in limited supply while being earnable through gameplay. Premium Shops will also be available through which players can buy these tradable cosmetic items. According to the official post, players can get rewarded with new skins by having their wallet connected while playing. The amount of items that get added to the game for players to earn will depend “on a percentage of the user base on a daily or monthly basis.”

When it comes to land, there will be a total of 150k plots available for players to own, with 40k plots currently available for the nation Solarwood across 4 different types differing in size and more. Acquiring land is done through Public Land Sales, with the option of purchasing from other players available on secondary marketplaces like Immutable and Token Trove.

Owning land is rewarded with $EMBER tokens. The number of tokens you can earn will depend on the amount of players that are active in your plot.

Merging Collectibles

In this dynamic multiplayer world, players will be able to find Collectibles in 4 different rarity types: Common, Uncommon, Rare and Epic.

If you find 4 items of the same rarity, you are then able to merge the Collectibles using a small amount of $EMBER tokens, upgrading the item into a Collectible of higher rarity. By doing the merging process, players burn the 4 items to get one of higher tier, making collectibles potentially scarcer and rarer. As for the merging fee, the developers state that it will always be a fixed dollar amount, so even if the $EMBER price changes, the amount of tokens you’ll need will be in line with the fixed fee the team has in place.

$EMBER Token Design

The $EMBER token is designed for buying items from Premium Shops as well as for merging Collectibles into rarer assets. It can be earned by landowners when players trade on their plot and purchase items through their Premium Shop, with the earnings also depending on the size of the playerbase. The token’s distribution is also said to be “linked to active gameplay through PvE and PvP events.”

When it comes to supply, $EMBER will have a total supply of 2.5 billion tokens, 48.2% of which is reserved for community rewards and emissions. The team holds 17.3% of the supply, while advisors and seed round participants have 8%. Participants in private token sales have secured 10% of the total supply. 9% is allocated to the public & liquidity pool, with 5% placed in reserves and 2.5% used for partnerships and marketing.

Based on the new roadmap, Ember Sword is slated to launch in early access by the end of 2024, featuring the foundational on-chain economic features. Expansions will be released over time to add more content and features, as shown in the image below.