Labor

Labor is the fundamental engine of the ArcheAge economy.

You use Labor to craft goods and trade packs that are, usually sold for income.

If you are a free to play player you get 60 labor an hour while you are logged on. At 3 hours online a day that's 180 Labor - for free.

If you are a Patron you get 60 per hour plus another 60 per hour when you are logged on. At 3 hours online a day that's 1620 a day - for about 50 cents ($15 subscription for 30 days). That makes the cash cost of labor to be about 0.03 of a cent (50 cents over the 1440 extra you get from your subscription).

So what's labor worth on the open market?

It costs 10 Labor to mine Iron Ore. This generates 3-4 Iron Ore and 2-3 bits of stone. The stone is a by product so we'll split the labor cost at 2 per iron and 1 per stone (whole numbers make the argument easier to follow). This means each Iron Ore contains about 2 Labor.

What can you buy 1000 Iron Ore for? About 2gp, so a point of Labor is worth, at most, 20cp.

Gets worse if you turn it into Iron Ingots. Each ingot takes 3 Iron Ore (6 Labor) and another 5 to smelt them for a total of 11 Labor.

What can you buy 1000 Iron Ore for? About 6gp, making a point of Labor worth less than 6cp.

Worker's Compensation Potions

These cost 300 credits, which is about $2 if you're buying credit $20 at a time. They generate 1000 labor. What are they worth in game? About 60sp or less... - And there are people playing who will pay 200gp for an APEX and then turn it into 4 workers comp. potions... The cash value of the labor they generate from the subscription price above works out at about 30 cents (which is about 45 credits). They are a very expensive way of buying labor.

They do have their uses, for the things you have to craft yourself once you've used all your free labor up, but for making a profit, you're much better of spending your gold on buying stuff through the Auction House.