#decorate yourself in expensive gaudy accesories so everyone knows your status

[hopefullyababe]

fixating just a little bit on animal jam classic rn.

started playing it again a little bit ago for the nostalgia and i even bought a fuckin membership.

but it turns out there is this humungous trading and selling culture that i never got into when i was little and different items have different worths and you can trade them for eachother. i am. trying to get a feel for how much everything is worth. so i can sell them for a reasonable price at my den.

this game is really playing into my love of Learning The Rules of interactions like-

welcome to underthecut city, chief. you must be really interested in animal jam classic. well youre in for a longass ride.

okay so there was(or is) appearantly an event on mondays where members would get a rare item and those items are called RIMs (rare item monday's) and some were Only Obtainable thrugh rare item mondays. so those are really valuable. there are many items that are tagged with a rare tag but alotta the time that doesnt speak much to how valuable it is. sure rares are almost always more valuable than non rares but there are decided levels of rarity based on how widely available the item is, if its still in stores, if its a seasonal item, how old it is- etc.

one of the items ive been trying to get is a Teacup. it is a nm and non rare item but it is extremely valuable and hard to find. you can only get them through a specific adventure- and even then you are not sure to get one.

they were in the game at the very beginning during the beta, and then removed. they were added back briefly (i remember buying them in the store when i played as a kid) but then taken out again. because they were in the beta of the game they are called den betas. and because of their rarity they are worth quite alot.

there are two ways you can participate in the economy of animal jam classic. you can trade with other jammers or you can buy from den shops. trading is self explanatory but the den shops are what interested me. they were not in the game when i played as a kid, and it is very safe to say theyve changed alot. you can now buy items with actual gems or diamonds instead of trading. jammers can price the items themself to be as much as they think its worth. ive put several items ive received in the forgotten desert adventure in my shop.

theres no real concrete answer on how much curency every item costs. if you go to the wiki it gives you a vauge descriptor of what the items value is, and you have to draw your own conclusions. this is frustrating to me but it has been a little fun trying to decide how much to price everything.

ive also been trading things but only with nms because i think they deserve cool stuff too. as ms izzzyss pointed out in her video there is a very distinct class discrepancy. like you got the members who are basically just citazens of jamaa ukno. they get to buy whatever they want have as many animals as they want and have shops in their dens. they also get a jammer wall which is a whole nother level of social interaction that it feels cruel to deprive nms of- but i digress.

non members (nms) are basically second class citizens. they are the scum of the earth to some players. they get approx. one item in every store that they can buy (out of the approx. 10-25 items, and sometimes they dont even get ONE) they can only have 2 animals, they can only have hamsters as pets, out of the abt 40 different pets there are, they cannot have shops in their dens, and so on and so forth. they also have little to no access to the second currency in the game, diamonds.

basically i am trying to say that nms are very beaten down and oppressed in game.

maybe im being dramatic but it is true!

i interacted with two different nms whom i traded with. the first was a bunny who was looking to trade with anyone for anything. i traded them an item i didnt want for a plush they had i thought was cute. then i looked through my items for any nm things i had to give them- and i had this rare nm item. and i thought for a bit about weather i wanted to keep this rare and maybe sell it. but then i was like. fuck it. this bunny deserves a rare lei. and their trade box was empty so i sent them a letter asking if they could put something else in because i wanted to give them something. and they did.

when i gave them the rare lei they thanked me and tried it on and i felt very much like id done something very good! then the other one i interacted with was at a den store with me and they were looking to buy a mira statue but it wasnt for sale so i offered to give them mine. i put it on my trade list and said they could give me anything for it. they gave me a chair and i accepted. they were really surprised. and honestly i cant blame them.

people are very hostile about item trades and such and put so much value in things theyll never wear or love. things that arent even real. every item is capital. everything equals an amount of cash. you spend the whole game trying to find as many valuable items as you can to imediately go trade them off or sell them. and for what? what is the gain? some fake money? a shitty 3d model of a spiky collar?

anyway ill stop spewing fake intellectual shit.

the game is very addictive. i am an evil capitalist now.