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The Treasury is where your house earns Gold. The Market is where you spend it. Everything here is bought with earned Gold — coin your holdings paid you as tribute — and almost all of it is heraldic finery or quality-of-life. The one thing Gold buys that touches a battle is a sellsword, and even that is bounded on purpose. Real money never enters the Market at all.

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How the Market works

Every item in the Market is priced directly in Gold (◉) — there is no second currency, no tokens to stockpile. At checkout each item gives you a choice:
  • Buy for your house — the entitlement lands in your own house.
  • Gift to another house — the same entitlement, granted to a friend, a court-mate, or a worthy rival.
You can only ever gift a cosmetic or convenience entitlement bought with your Gold — a coat of arms flourish, a livery, a Charter of Founding. You can never gift Gold itself, and you can never gift power. That single guard is what keeps gifting from becoming a back door to buying strength.
Prices are server-tuned live, so the team can adjust them without an app update. The Game Reference always carries the current numbers — the amounts on this page are illustrative.

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What Gold buys

Cosmetics & heraldry

The main sink — coats of arms, liveries, banners, mottos, and titles.

Convenience

Naming gates, a rename skip, and the Charter of Founding.

Scouting writs

Commissions that send scouts over distant ground.

Sellswords

Hired companies — the only Gold that touches a fight.

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Cosmetics and heraldry (the great sink)

Most of your Gold, over a long life in the realm, will go here — into how your house looks on the map, in the Herald’s dispatches, and across every leaderboard. None of it changes a single kilometre of ground; it’s all pride. Your coat of arms starts generous: every house gets a full free set of shields, iconic charges, and the true heraldic tinctures (see Heraldry). The Market sells premium Augmentations on top — each a permanent unlock for your house, previewed on your own crest before you buy:
  • A richer palette — a second and third colour, finer swatches, and free-form hex.
  • Fields & bars — the classic ordinaries and divisions of the shield.
  • A menagerie of charges — rarer devices and figurative beasts for the shield.
  • Crest treatments — a gilt edge, a damascened inlay, a burnished sheen laid over the arms.
Beyond the shield itself, the Market dresses the rest of your house:
  • Liveries — patterned fills (checky, bendy, chevronny and more) overlaid on your holdings on the map.
  • Banners & standards — a small pennant device flown over your land and walls.
  • Court crests — heraldic beasts reserved for courts, distinct from personal charges.
  • Mottos — a scroll beneath your arms, chosen from a set of classic devices.
  • Frames, borders, and finishes — flourishes on your house card, your holdings’ outlines, your Treasury, and the Herald’s feed.
Because these are cosmetic, they can be gifted — a patron can grant a court-mate a coat of arms Augmentation, or send a rival a grudging livery. A gifted cosmetic is always an entitlement, never Gold.
Cosmetics sit beneath the map’s combat signals — a livery never hides a besieged holding or a contested edge. Finery is always legible-first.
Individual finery runs from a few hundred Gold for a motto or a frame up to several thousand for a marquee coat of arms Augmentation — the authoritative prices live in the Game Reference.

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Vanity titles & styles of address

The Market also sells styles of address — a bought epithet that renders after your house name, “House Ashford, the Bold.” These are a deliberately separate class from the rank titles you earn on the road: they’re rendered in a quieter, distinct style, and they never sit where an earned rank chip sits. Buying “the Bold” never touches your true rank — that is fitness-earned, and only fitness earns it.

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Convenience

Quality-of-life, not power. A handful of Market spends smooth over friction:
  • House rename. Naming your house is free while your identity is still private — you can edit it freely until your first territory claim, or for a short grace window after naming, whichever comes first. Once your name is public on the map, a further rename costs Gold (with a brief typo-correction window). A paid rename doesn’t reopen the free grace.
  • Territory rename — “rename now.” Renaming a holding is on a cooldown. If you can’t wait it out, the Market sells a one-off skip so you can rename immediately.
  • Charter of Founding. Founding your own court costs a Charter, bought here with Gold. The Charter sits on top of the Freeman rank gate — Gold never buys past the rank, you need both. Because it’s giftable, a patron can fund an ally’s court.
Naming gates exist for a reason beyond convenience: locking a name once it’s publicly visible closes an offensive-name-on-a-shared-map hole. The Gold cost is the deterrent, not the point.

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Scouting writs

Scouting Writs are the commissions you spend to send scouts over distant ground — revealing prosperity and hidden treasure before you march. You earn most of your writs by staying active, but the Market sells a small, weekly-capped top-up so a slow week doesn’t leave your satchel empty. That cap is deliberate: purchased writs can smooth over a lean stretch, but they can never outrun what an active player earns on the road. And a revealed treasure still has to be marched to and held — a writ buys information, never the prize.

Scouting & Spoils

How writs, Scout Reports, and treasure work — and how much a writ costs.

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Sellswords (hired steel)

Sellswords are the only thing in the Market that touches a battle — and the design leans hard on keeping them a gamble, never a shortcut. A hired company only ever augments a real march you actually run; it never fights on its own, and effort always remains the true source of power. Three structural limits hold the line:
  • Regressive by design. A mercenary’s effect scales inversely with how much land you already hold — an underdog gets a real punch, a juggernaut gets almost nothing. Gold-bought muscle helps the small, not the mighty.
  • Always capped below earned steel. A hired garrison is strictly weaker than your weakest earned Wall, and any genuine defensive run out-restores it. Real effort always beats bought muscle.
  • The Sellsword’s Mark. Hiring anyone raises a visible flag over your house and a Herald announcement that you took foreign steel — and while it flies, rivals who strike you loot a richer bounty. Using bought power paints a target.

Sellswords, in full

How hiring, upkeep, the Mark, and the caps play out in a siege — with costs.

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Subscriber-exclusive cosmetics

Members see an extra, rotating shelf of subscriber-only cosmetics in the Market. They’re still cosmetic, and they’re still bought with earned Gold — a subscription unlocks access to the rotating set, it never sells the items for cash and never sells power.

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The bright line

Ashenmarch draws one line and never crosses it:
  • Real money is subscription-only. The single real-money purchase in the realm is your membership. There is no à-la-carte cash cosmetic, and there is no way to buy Gold.
  • Gold is earned only. Every coin in your coffers came from tribute your holdings paid — see the Treasury for how it’s earned.
  • Nothing is pay-to-win. The store is cosmetics and convenience. The one power sink — sellswords — is regressive, capped below earned steel, and paints a target on you. Bought strength can never out-fight strength earned on the road.
The whole point: a beginner’s personal best and an elite’s still count the same, and no amount of Gold — let alone money — changes who holds the map. That’s decided on foot.