History Main / MoneySink

** The gambling challenges which often rely on exact conditions to win. Like challenge #4 where you have to bust someone out in three different poker stations. The hands quickly get expensive and you usually have to go all in yourself to bust out. The Saint Denis location for poker is $5 and the hands can quickly get up into the $20 range. The most notorious of these challenges is #8 where you have to beat the dealer in Black Jack by hitting exactly three times. NintendoHard doesn't even begin to explain it. Even if you're betting small amounts, the total racks up quickly and it could very well you six hours worth of play to get the challenge.

*** The ''Heartfire'' DLC allows you to purchase land and build your own house from the ground up. Once again, it is quite costly, but you can at least find many of the building materials yourself to save money. You can build anything from a simple one-room cabin-like house to full blown mansions with dedicated trophy rooms, {{Mage Tower}}s, libraries, shrines to the gods of your choosing, and much more.

* VideoGame/{{Yakuza 0}} has the upgrade system, where you pour increasingly absurd amounts of money (all the way up to half a billion yen) into increasing the stats and abilities of your various [[StanceSystem stances.]] There's also the Cabaret Club Czar and Real Estate Royale (''especially'' the latter) side-quests, where you need to pour money into getting local businesses to sponsor your cabaret club or buy them outright, though these two are also your two biggest revenue streams in the game, so pouring money into them nets you more money in the long-term.

* The Gold Clock in ''Stardew Valley'' prevents decay of the fences and debris from spawning, which especially on the first day of a season saves a lot of time and energy. However, it is also the most expensive object in the game by far, costing 10 mil (for comparison, the second most expensive object is only 2 mil). By the time you can afford it, your energy meter will have been maxed out and good food become affordable, most of the terrain will have already been built on (eliminating them as debris spawn points), and the fruit trees will have been fully grown (debris prevents them from growing). In short, at that point it's more of a trophy to show off your earnings than a tool.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' has jewelry and the armor pieces, where some of them cost 2000 rupees. Purchasing Ancient weaponry is also really expensive. Bows, melee weapons and shields cost 1000 rupees a piece, while arrows cost at least 80 rupees per arrow (if you buy the bundle of 5). And unlocking the final Fairy Fountain will cost you a whopping 10.000 rupees! Luckily, there are a lot options to earn rupees really fast.

Exists almost solely to [[AvertedTrope avert]] MoneyForNothing. See CashGate for when this is required to advance in the game.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'' has the Pond of Happiness, where Link can toss in rupees in increments of 5 or 20 at a time. For every 100 rupees he throws in, a fairy will increase the maximum amount of bombs or arrows he can carry. Since most of the [[CashGate Cash Gates]] are cleared within the first half of the game, this gives the player something useful to do with the rest of it.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' has Tingle, who requires you to [[CashGate spend 398 rupees]] ''eight times'' in order to complete the Triforce quest. Also, getting the Island Merchants' items (which also gives you the magic armor and a Piece of Heart) also means using lots of rupees if you're aiming for 100% Completion, since you always have to pay a value difference between the item you're trading and the item you're receiving. The HD remake does away with most of the Triforce Charts (five shards out of eight are qcquired directly), but since the Magic Armor doesn't drain magic anymore, it instead takes away rupees every time you get hit, which means the more rupees you have, the longer you'll stay protected.

* The ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' series had the training barracks. You had to pay for every single level your characters actually earned in these places, so they can actually gain those levels (experience alone doesn't cut). It is mostly a sensible and natural concept, however. And the cost for leveling up increases geometrically (10gp times current level squared, meaning that going from level 1 to 2 costs 10gp, 10 to 11 costs 1000gp, and 100 to 101 costs ''100,000gp''), meaning that eventually it will be impossible to get enough gold to level up anymore. Same for MUD ''Realms of Kaos'', except the rate which you will gain experience will be faster than you can gain money.

** The Invention skill is a subtle one. It involves dismantling items (permanently destroying them) to get parts to enhance other items, and enhanced items are untradable. High-end items are needed for high-end materials. While this doesn't directly involve money, and drives up the ''gold'' prices of endgame items due to scarcity, the destruction and binding of items still results in a net reduction of high-level ''wealth'', slowing the overall economy.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'' has several money sinks. There is the sidequest where you donate 1000 rupees to repair a bridge and then 2000 rupees (can be reduced to 200 by completing a different sidequest) to open a shop. There is also an old man who you can give 30 or 50 rupees every time you talk to him. Donate 1000 in total and he'll reward you with an heart piece. And then there is the magic armor which costs almost 600 rupees and consumes rupees when you wear it, but makes you immune for damage (just like ''The Wind Waker'', refer to the previous example).

** Due to a glut in gold after ''Warlords of Draenor'', ''Legion'' is raising the gold cap to ten million, allowing even higher bids on the auction house. At the same time a luxury vendor is being introduced who sells a toy for 250,000 gold, a bag for 500,000 gold, a pet for 1,000,000 gold, and a mount for 2,000,000.

** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'':
*** You could buy houses in several cities for astronomical sums of money. However, apart from letting you feel like a big shot, they have no impact on the game play, since any items you place in the chests and cupboards there tend to disappear into nirvana. You could also buy ''ships'', an AwesomeButImpractical option sadly missing in the latter games.
*** The Ship DID have two game effects: It cut down travel times, and provided a cheap way to escape danger. Since your ship was always anchored in the same corner of the map, selecting "ship" as your mean of transportation would cause you to teleport to it. It could also ''save'' you money once you've bought it: you could choose to (and when going to islands had to) travel by ship before buying a ship, but it cost money. Buying a ship makes going by ship automatic and removes the cost.
** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'', you could ''build'' a house complete with items and servants (!) upon reaching a certain high rank in one of the three local noble houses. Thankfully, the disappearing item glitch has been fixed since ''Daggerfall'' and since you can't sell most of the expensive loot to regular vendors, your personal chambers very soon turn into a TrophyRoom that'd make Queen of Sheba jealous. However, in Morrowind items left ''anywhere'' will remain indefinitely, and your house is never close to the game's interconnected PortalNetwork of different travel options, so it's generally a bad place to leave stuff you want to have access to compared to (for instance) the Mage's guild.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'' has houses the player can buy and upgrade in each town, but aside from looking pretty, giving you a place to sleep, and offering a safe spot to store items (the latter two of which can be done in many other places), it seems that their only function is to make you feel like a big shot. Additionally, enchanting items and creating spells also costs a huge amount of gold if you use more powerful effects, but at least these tend to be fun to play around with due to the game's [[WideOpenSandbox sandbox]] nature.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' allowed purchasing pre-built houses, and buying decorations for them to pretty them up (and to add containers to them). With a DLC add-on, it permitted designing, building and decorating houses at certain predefined locations. Another gold sink is the ability to "invest" 500g in merchants... except this results in raising their purchase cap by 500g, meaning you could immediately get your money back from selling to them (in Oblivion, merchants could buy everything you wished to sell, but would only pay up to their gold cap for any one item).
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsOnline ESO]]'' does not have buyable housing at the time of writing, but has gold sinks for: armor repair; horse purchasing and training; some forms of instant teleportation; trading fees in guild stores; NPC bribes in some quests; upgrades to inventory and bank size; and purchased items reselling to vendors for less than their purchase price.

** Due to poor planning, gold sinks became commonplace due to the ''billions'' of gold entering the economy daily due to gold generators being sold for Gaia Cash, with some requiring '''trillions''' of gold to meet all the intended goals, and often succeeding or getting fairly close to doing so! That said, the massive amounts of gold bought with real money are still in the economy (and they're still selling said generators), so it's highly unlikely that it will recover no matter how many sinks are done, at least in the near future. The "RidiculousFutureInflation" page gives a much more detailed explanation about the mess.

** And now, sinks are commonplace due to the ''billions'' of gold entering the economy daily due to gold generators being sold for Gaia Cash, with some requiring '''trillions''' of gold to meet all the intended goals, and often succeeding or getting fairly close to doing so! That said, the massive amounts of gold bought with real money are still in the economy (and they're still selling said generators), so it's highly unlikely that it will recover no matter how many sinks are done, at least in the near future.

* ''{{LaTale}}'' has several, such as the repeatable guild quests, which could require you to buy several expensive fashion items easily costing over a million Ely, with one of the last quests in the chain requesting three golden hammers, very expensive items costing a million and a half Ely each. ss5 quests also require you to upgrade an item with a golden hammer, but with a 50% chance of failure, potentially costing even more if you're unlucky. And then there's [[ItemCrafting crafting]] special class armor at level 130, which needs, guess what? Another golden hammer. With five pieces in each armor set, and each upgrade needing another copy of the armor as fodder, a full set would easily cost tens of millions of Ely. Want to upgrade your [[InfinityMinusOneSword awesome Valkyrie weapon?]] Well that'll take another golden hammer, for each upgrade. Never mind you need to upgrade them 11 times, and when (not if) you fail, you need to start all over again. And of course, if you don't like [[ClothesMakeTheSuperman the enchantments on your equipment]] you can have Tonio reassign them. Of course the amount it costs to attempt this is depends on what the item itself costs, there's again only a 50% success rate, and the resulting enchantments are random, meaning you probably won't get what you want, you can easily wipe out your entire savings on an expensive piece of equipment trying to make it perfect. But then, you have to repeat the ordeal with every other piece of equipment you need reassigned...

* ''[[AirRivals Ace Online]]'' has the repair/reload bills, and a percentage tax on purchases from the town shops, as well as a tax on the warp shops, to control the flow of SPI and prevent virtual inflation from going too far. The occasional "Rare-storm" when rare items drop more often (during a Nation's Growth or Mothership Victory happy hour) also helps to offset ridiculous trade prices for especially powerful items and keep the money going around.

** The game has auction house fees and high repair costs for top-tier items, as well as a few scattered one-time costs: artisan training, storage space increases, and access to the gag level on higher difficulties. Crafting also serves this purpose, with the blacksmith taking the place of gambling in Diablo II and the jeweler upgrading gems which level to level have a linear power boost for an exponential cost increase.
** ''Reaper of Souls'' introduced the Enchanter who acts as a gold sink via transmogrification and enchanting. The former changes item appearance at a fixed cost per skin while the latter changes one stat with each additional change costing more. Empowered Rifts were added in a later patch which grant the player an additional chance to upgrade gems, but the cost is in the millions and increases significantly per tier.
** Kansai's Cube acts as a crafting material version, allowing the player to dump their stockpile of materials to reroll stats on items and randomly generate new legendaries. It also offers the money sink of empowering ancient items which requires, among other things, three top-tier gems which cost at a minimum 4,400,000 gold to craft. That adds up to a minimum of 13,200,000 gold per empowered item or 18,600,000 with lower quality gems.

** In ''VideoGame/[[TheLegendOfZeldaI TheLegendOfZelda]]'' rupees are hard to come by. The maximum you can carry is 255, but you can spend 250 of them on the blue ring. Also, the magical shield (at least 90 rupees), blue candle (60), arrows (90) and meat (60) will cost you a lot of rupees. Most of these items are required, if not strongly recommended.

--> ''[[{{Neopets}} The Neopian Times]]'' editorial (bottom of the page), [-[[http://www.neopets.com/ntimes/index.phtml?section=editorial&week=469 Issue 469]]-] (Note: The average Krawk Morphing Potion is sold at 15,000,000 NP)

* ''VideoGame/{{Neopets}}''. They do try to keep the inflation somehow reined in, but when most of your players make money by ''creating'' it (by playing games) you have your work cut out for you.

* ''WorldOfWarcraft''

** Also notable is [[BonusDungeon Hobopolis]], a clan-specific area similar to raids in other [=MMORPGs=] with a finite number of enemies and much of the best skills and items in the game, all exclusive to that area. It costs 1 million meat from the clan's collective coffers every time it is reset, and depending on how active your clan is, a reset could be needed several times a week or even daily.
*** And to get to Hobopolis you need to open up the clan basement, which will set your clan back a cool 10 million meat. This, however, is a one-off payment and does allow you similar access to other {{Bonus Dungeon}}s like the Slimetube, but your clan's first Hobopolis is still going to cost 11 million.

** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'', you could buy houses in several cities for astronomical sums of money. However, apart from letting you feel like a big shot, they have no impact on the game play, since any items you place in the chests and cupboards there tend to disappear into nirvana. You could also buy ''ships'', an AwesomeButImpractical option sadly missing in the latter games.

* Browser-based MMORPG ''Travians'' has ten resources. You can eat the bread, but after a certain level it's better to buy other food at the Tavern. Other than that, the resources go to enlarge your warehouse (ability to hold resources) or your guild warehouse (ability to hold donations) or... ''taxes''. Every ten levels, you hand over a certain number of resources and money to the Tax Collector, or else you stop gaining levels and can't use guild artifacts. Argue about this on the forums and you're told that it keeps the economy going, since without the taxes, who would buy resources? and selling resources is about the only way to make money. So you gather resources to sell to other players, who buy them only to hand them over to NPC's who get rid of them...... Tell me this economy isn't in drastic need of an overhaul.
** Oh, and guild stuff. Guild artifacts that give you buffs, guild buildings that give you exp., etc. If you're not in a guild... your warehouse is the ''only'' thing you use resources on.
* In ''VideoGame/GuildWars'' optimal equipment is relatively easy to obtain. It's not too hard to grab a good base weapon/armor and add the one or two mods needed to make it perfect, and this costs only around 10-30 thousand gold for a whole set(Depending on how common your build is and thus the scarcity of parts) which is a sizable chunk, but not unreasonable for a character who has gotten to the point where he can buy all this. For example, in the third campaign (Nightfall), it is customary for new characters who have the cash and materials available to seek a "ferry" to a certain outpost (Consulate Docks) where a NPC armor crafter is present who can craft "maximum" armor for you at a relatively low cost (not counting the runes/insignia you put on the armor to buff it, and the dyes you use to color it). The game's actual money sinks come in the form of the absurdly expensive armor pieces, from the simple Elite Armor (Which is 10 times as expensive per piece) to Obsidian Armor, which runs for hundred of thousands of gold. These expensive pieces of armor do nothing but look prettier. The same can be said of the rare weapons, but as they involve mostly trade between players, this is not a proper money sink.
** On a smaller scale, skill purchasing is also a decent money sink, with the cost per skill going up until a 1000 gold cap.
*** It's questionable how much of a money sink skill purchasing is, especially in the case of "capture signets", which are used to acquire elite skills from defeated enemy bosses. Since each successful elite skill capture awards the player 5,000 experience points, "skill capping" is a popular route for players who can afford the signets to work on their "Legendary Survivor" title.

** [[VideoGame/GuildWars2 The sequel]] largely follows suit in letting players gear up cheaply (even letting them spend karma points built up from events instead of cash). The money sinks come from:
*** [[WarpWhistle Waypoint]] costs, from one to three silver a trip depending on distance.
*** Trading Post transactions with other players, which incur a 15% fee.
*** Crafting. Almost all crafting requires cheap components that can only be bought from merchants. And the highest-level weapons and armor are even more of a sink: They only provide about a 5% boost over the much cheaper exotics, and the items are automatically account-bound, removing them from the economy.
*** Gem conversion. Gems can be bought with real money, and used on boosters, cosmetic changes, or convenience items. You can use gold to buy gems or vice versa, but there's a fee going either way.
* The ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' series had the training barracks. You had to pay for every single level your characters actually earned in these places, so they can actually gain those levels (experience alone doesn't cut). It is mostly a sensible and natural concept, however. And the cost for leveling up increases geometrically (10gp times current level squared, meaning that going from level 1 to 2 costs 10gp, 10 to 11 costs 1000gp, and 100 to 101 costs ''100,000gp''), meaning that eventually it will be impossible to get enough gold to level up anymore.
** Ditto for MUD ''Realms of Kaos'', except the rate which you will gain experience will be faster than you can gain money.

* In the 1.10 update to ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}} II'', Blizzard added a special encounter with a "Diablo Clone" (who drops a very powerful item) if and only if enough Stones of Jordan are sold to vendors in the game. The SOJ was a powerful ring that was duped to such ridiculous levels that it served as the de facto currency in the game, and the Diablo Clone was Blizzard's way of getting rid of excess [=SoJs=].

* ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' has auction house fees and high repair costs for top-tier items, as well as a few scattered one-time costs: artisan training, storage space increases, and access to the gag level on higher difficulties. Crafting also serves this purpose, with the blacksmith taking the place of gambling in Diablo II and the jeweler upgrading gems which level to level have a linear power boost for an exponential cost increase.

* Forging and refining weapons and armor is a money sink for many players of ''VideoGame/RohanOnline''. Forging entails combining two weapons or pieces of armor into a rare weapon or armor, and you can do the same with two rare weapons or pieces of rare armor to get a unique weapon or armor. Refining involves lowering an attribute or level on a weapon, piece of armor or other item so that you can equip it. Both forging and refining have its problems both of which stem from the fact that success is not assured and the chance for failure increases when you try to forge higher-level stuff, particularly uniques. If you fail at a forge attempt, you lose both items you were using for the attempt (which can be REALLY aggravating if you were trying to combine two good weapons or pieces of armor into a better weapon or piece of armor), and if you fail at a refine attempt, in the case of weapons and armor, the item you were trying to de-level instead goes ''up'' by a number of levels equal to what you were trying to lower it by (though never above the level of the original), and if you de-level a given weapon or piece of armor enough and fail on a refine, you can actually ''destroy'' it. All this serves to gobble up whatever crones you have, and the only way to save whatever weapons or armor you have on a forge attempt is to get a preservation stone, which can only be obtained in a Consignment Auction for a good amount of crones or in [[AllegedlyFreeGame the Item Mall or Exchange Market for real money]], and which only protects your items against one failed forge attempt per stone.
** In addition, mounts, pets and food for pets are quite frankly the most expensive items you are likely to find in Rohan in general, and are not recommended for anyone below the 30s in regards to level.

** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline2'' uses weapon grinding. Nice, you got yourself an 11 or 12-star weapon! In order to make the weapon more powerful, you need to use Grinders to get it to +10, a process which can up to double its base attack. Here's the bad news: Each additional +1 reduces the chance of the next's success (down to a 30% chance), and increases the amount of grinds possible to lose if you fail (up to -4). Your chances of making it from +0 to +10 in one go? Only ''seven hundredths of one percent'' for an 11-star, though it's much more lenient for lesser weapons. FailureIsTheOnlyOption, so it's not uncommon to see people drop millions upon millions of meseta to get a rare weapon to +10. Getting it to +10 also lets you unlock its Latent Ability, which ranges from useless to game breaking...only doing so resets the weapon to +0 again. And since each Latent has three levels, to get the third you need to grind it to +10 ''four times''.
* ''VideoGame/MapleStory'' has a quest that is completed by literally just paying the [=NPC=] 5,000,000 mesos. If you're unfunded it's a ridiculously high amount, and even if you're well off you have to come to the decision of if 5,000,000 mesos is worth it to unlock 3 more quests in the chain. Also out of all the random rewards you have the chance to get at the end of the quest, only about 2 or 3 out of 27 will net you a profit selling it to the player base.
** Though if you're after the quest specialist medal (which is ThatOneAchievement, but it gives a stat boost) 5,000,000 mesos is a justified price for 4 more completed quests. It's just that the quest really sticks out by having the [=NPC=] simply requesting a big chunk of cash outright.

** Likewise, advancing to [[PrestigeClass Fourth Job]] can sink mesos. The classic Explorers can either pay 10,000,000 or hunt two rare bosses, while the newer Resistance classes have no choice but to pay 5,000,000. (Separate from the other 5,000,000 example above)

* ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombies'' has a money sink in the form of the Tree of Wisdom, for 2500 dollars (the biggest currency in the game is the diamond, worth 1000 dollars each) you can buy food or fertilizer for the tree to grow. The Reward? access to some visual cheats and tips for the game. More importantly, the tree keeps growing, so it functions as a kind of high score. Sadly, this Tree does not yet exist on the iPhone version, leaving players with no way to dispose of excess money.
** Remedied by the inclusion of Mini-games, "I, Zombie" puzzle mode, and the silver/gold gift boxes (50% and 100% chance of containing a plant you don't have in your Zen Garden). Each set of minigames costs 50000, the puzzle mode 150000, a silver gift box costs around 25000 and a gold one costs 50000.
* Oh ''{{Neopets}}''. They do try to keep the inflation somehow reined in, but when most of your players make money by ''creating'' it (by playing games) you have your work cut out for you.
** Most basic money sinks are in the form of NPC-run shops. Buy an item, and the money disappears. However due to low shop prices and the huge amount of players who make their money by restocking (i.e. buying from NPC shops at low prices and selling at a profit in player-run shops) it's a a matter of excellent luck, good timing, and lightning reflexes to find and get pretty much any item in the NPC shops.

** Perhaps because of the above, Valve introduced another sink in the form of Chemistry Sets, dropped items that require using up a large number of regular items to get a CosmeticAward. Either you spend about a half dozen regular items plus one Strange weapons to get a Strangifier (which makes a specific item count kills while you're wearing it) or spend '''200''' of a regular item to get a "Collector's" version.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'' has the Pond of Happiness, where Link can toss in rupees in increments of 5 or 20 at a time. For every 100 rupees he throws in, a fairy will increase the maximum amount of bombs or arrows he can carry. Since most of the [[CashGate Cash Gates]] are cleared within the first half of the game, this gives the player something useful to do with the rest of it.