Bring your village market to life.
Market Express began with the produce boxes for Brinehook, a village on Palmreach in the Archipelago map project. The same system is being developed into a standalone mod for ARK: Survival Ascended. The current prototype replenishes a box's inventory and changes its contents display as stock levels change. Citronal, Rockarrot and Longrass are the current produce-box variants. The stock displays are working in development with the fill-mesh components set to replicate. Server owners can configure the stock limit, minimum and maximum refill amounts, and the period those amounts are spread across for each supported item type. This is an early development project, with no public download or release date yet. Fractional refill amounts now carry forward between minute-by-minute checks, allowing small top-ups over longer production periods. More item displays, balancing and broader multiplayer/save testing are still being worked through. The configuration guide records the settings currently wired into the prototype; names and defaults may change before release. Ore and currency economy — agreed development plan (30 October 2026) This is the planned jackpot economy, not a claim of completed implementation or final play-tested balance. Copper: each individual stone or flint resource gathered gets a 1 in 100 chance to award 1 copper ore. Smelting: 20 copper ore → 1 copper ingot. Minting: 1 copper ingot → 10 copper coins. Cost per coin: 2 copper ore. Silver: each individual stone resource gathered gets a 1 in 500 chance to award 1 silver ore. Smelting: 20 silver ore → 1 silver ingot. Minting: 1 silver ingot → 5 silver coins. Cost per coin: 4 silver ore. Gold: each individual stone or metal resource gathered gets a 1 in 1,000 chance to award 1 gold ore. Smelting: 20 gold ore → 1 gold ingot. Minting: 1 gold ingot → 1 gold coin. Cost per coin: 20 gold ore. Harvest rolls are per individual eligible resource unit, not per hit or per rock node. A harvest that gives 15 stone and 10 flint therefore creates 25 copper rolls, 15 silver rolls and 15 gold rolls. Metal units provide additional gold rolls. Each successful roll awards one ore; multiple successes from one node are possible. Results are random, and increased resource yields increase the number of rolls. Bank exchange: 100 copper coins = 1 silver coin; 100 silver coins = 1 gold coin. Therefore 1 gold coin = 10,000 copper coins. Plan for exchange in both directions at the same denomination values, so players can build up copper into higher denominations or break larger coins into spending money. Balance intent: precious-metal finds are jackpots. The three mining routes are deliberately not balanced to give equal monetary earnings. With equal numbers of eligible resource units, the planned silver route yields about 10 times and the gold route about 100 times the copper-equivalent value of the copper route. Actual supply also depends on stone/flint/metal yields, harvesting creatures and server harvest multipliers. These figures are long-run averages, not guaranteed payouts. Previously recorded ingot crafting times remain 10 seconds for copper, 40 seconds for silver and 100 seconds for gold; these times were not changed or re-confirmed in this economy discussion. Coin press crafting times, bank behaviour and final balance still need implementation/testing. Production intent: the Smelting Forge uses fuel; the Coin Press automatically processes ingots without its own fuel requirement. Pulling ingots from the smelter is planned separately and is not yet confirmed working. This plan replaces the older 10/100/1,000 ore-per-ingot recipe notes and the earlier ten-coins-for-every-metal proposal.
What it brings to your game
- Market boxes with automatic inventory replenishment
- Visible contents driven by current stock levels
- Per-item maximum stock settings
- Configurable minimum/maximum refill amounts and production period
- Produce-box variants for Citronal, Rockarrot and Longrass
- Fractional refill amounts carried forward for gradual minute-by-minute top-ups
Getting started
- Market Express is in development; a public download and installation instructions will be added at release.
- See the linked Market Express INI settings guide for the current development configuration.
See the official project page for current files and any additional installation notes.
