Ashes 101 Ashes of Creation Intrepid Store Explanation

Overview

Several new players in the Ashes of Creation community are confused behind the Ashes of Creation store. Some people are confused about its existence; why is there even a cosmetic cash shop attached to the game. Others are confused on how the store functions in regards to upgrades.

To start with the existence of the cash shop question, many people get confused when they see mounts, pets, ships, buildings, and armor sets in the cash shop. They immediately question: Is Ashes of Creation Pay-to-Win? The answer is no.

Intrepid Studios is using a monthly subscription plus cosmetic cash shop business model to avoid having pay-to-win as well as to avoid having a Box Price/DLC cost for their product. The only thing included in the cash shop is Cosmetic Items, they offer no powers, no abilities, no stats, nothing that will give the players a tangible benefit in game.

Anything purchased in the cash shop is a skin of an item that must be obtained in game. So, if you buy a mount skin, it is useless to you until you have your first mount.

Purchasing Individual Cosmetics

Newcomers to the official Discord will often hear other players talking about purchasing Individual Cosmetics, but when they go to the Intrepid Store, they cannot see individual cosmetics to purchase. That is because in order to be eligible to make induvial purchases you must already own a pack at the tier or higher where the cosmetic initially appears. Players who own a kickstarter or summerbacker package can purchase any individual cosmetics presented in the store. People who have purchased web pre-order packs can buy anything that appears at the tier of their pack or lower.

Usually the tiers of cosmetics is as follows:

  • Wayfarer ($75 pack) - the accessory cosmetic piece
  • Expeditionary ($150 pack) - the accessory cosmetic piece and the cosmetic pet
  • Voyager ($250 pack) - the accessory cosmetic piece, the cosmetic pet, and the mount cosmetic
  • Voyager+ ($375 pack) - the accessory cosmetic piece, the cosmetic pet, the mount cosmetic, the full body cosmetic, the caravan or ship cosmetic [vehicle] skin, the building cosmetic.

If you have previously purchased a Voyager package and you want to buy this month’s mount cosmetics as an individual cosmetic, you can do that. If you had previously purchased a Voyager package and you want to buy this month’s Caravan cosmetic, you would need to upgrade your pack to the Voyager+ Package, which would give you the current’s months cosmetics and unlock your ability to make individual caravan cosmetic purchases in the future.

Alluring, one of the moderators at the Official Discord created this image to help people understand visually how the individual cosmetic purchasing works.

Individual Purchase Chart

Package Upgrading

Another issue that causes people some concern is what happens when they upgrade their web package what will cosmetics items will then end up with. When you do an upgrade from one tier to another you will pick up all the new items from your new tier, but you will retain all the old items from your old tier.

For example, if you were to upgrade from the Wayfarer Package ($75) to the Expeditionary Package ($150) then you would retain the accessory cosmetics from your original Wayfarer package (the accessory) and pick up the pet cosmetic from the current month’s Expeditionary Pack.

Exclusive Cosmetics

To talk just a bit about the exclusive nature of these cosmetics. The cosmetics that appear in the monthly cash shop are exclusive. They are one and done, meaning you will not see them return to the cash shop in some sort of recolor, reskin variation. Additionally, the while parts of these cosmetics may appear in Ashes of Creation, they will appear as NPC variants, items used to make the NPCs have a diverse collection of appearance instead of a copy-pasta template throughout the world.

This is a matter that was somewhat confusing for a while as it was believed that variant versions of these cosmetics would be available in game. This was not due to Intrepid Studios, instead this was due to the player base misunderstanding what had been said.

The video to the right helps both clear up this misunderstanding and documents Steven’s statement about the cosmetics.

Mount Barding Cosmetic vs Mount Cosmetic

In January 2021 Intrepid released the normal monthly cosmetic pack; however, this month something new was introduced. For the first time since Kickstarter we saw mount barding available. This brought up several questions from the community.

To explain this briefly, you can put any Tier 1 Mount Cosmetic Skin on any Tier 1 Mount obtained in game.

So, if you wanted to put the Amethyst Boughbite skin on a Tier 1 Horse you could, provided the Horse had a Mount Cosmetic Skin slot.

If you also wanted to equip the Vanguard’s Hammer Barding Cosmetic to the Tier 1 Horse, it would also have to have a Mount Barding Cosmetic Slot.

More to come on this issue as more details are announced.

Mount Barding and Mount Cosmetic Example

Jahlon Disclaimer

I am 100% in support of the Ashes of Creation project, but I am 0% in support of how they are currently handling their individual cosmetics. For over a year I have been advocating for Intrepid to stop selling monthly cosmetics until they can tell us what buildings our Freehold Cosmetics can go on and which ship sizes our Ship Cosmetics can go on.

My last significant purchase from the Ashes of Creation cosmetics shop was on 6 December 2020. Other than the Lumilichen Stovepipe Hat (cause it’s a top hat) I’ve not purchased anything else in 2021 or 2022. This supposedly has been a pending correction since March of 2021.

As an influencer I feel it is important that I point this out, given that a number of you have registered for Ashes of Creation using my referral code. I don’t want to be responsible for even one person spending one dollar on a cosmetic skin they may not be able to use.