History Main / DungeonBasedEconomy

* Played with and ultimately inverted in ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}''. An otherwise normal village was made capital of its country because its local church housed one of the lords of Hell in a secret catacomb. The Prime Evil gradually corrupted the king, who bent the kingdom to ruin, but for a while, the town did well by selling to adventurers venturing into the church to fight demons. by the sequels, however, the demons had overrun the town and killed everyone.

* ''LightNovel/ICouldntBecomeAHeroSoIReluctantlyDecidedToGetAJob'': The human kingdom ran on this until the Demon King was defeated. Once that was done, there were no more jobs for heroes to fight demons, forcing all of them to find other fields of employment like retail and office positions.

* Maze City from ''[[LightNovel/ImABehemothAnSRankedMonster I'm a Behemoth, an S-Ranked Monster, but Mistaken for a Cat, I Live as an Elf Girl's Pet]]'' was built with massive walls to stop the labyrinth's monsters from swarming the world. The city prospers because adventurers go into the labyrinth dungeon to get materials that merchants use for various things, or sell in trade to other countries.

** In ''TabletopGame/{{Greyhawk}}, the titular castle with its vast dungeons brings adventurers and traders to the titular city. Generating a lot of trade, taxes and treasure.

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* In the world of ''LightNovel/IsItWrongToTryToPickUpGirlsInADungeon'', The dungeon works like a coal mine(albeit one actively trying to kill you). Adventurers go into the dungeon and harvest the magic stones from monsters, which are then used by the guild to produce power sources for appliances and other purposes. This is in addition to the usual OrganDrops and materials gathered or mined in the dungeon.

The most common facilities found in such economies include [[AdventurersGuild Guild Halls]] (which provide room and board for Adventurers, in addition to assisting in administrative services like hiring/firing and registering Quests), Taverns (which deal in information and Sidequests, as well as booze), Training Halls (where the town's guardsmen train and where veteran instructors teach vital skills), Item Shops (selling consumables like potions and escape ropes), Armories and Smithies (selling weapons, armor, and reforging services), Medical Facilities (providing training for party healers and helping to put your team back together in the event someone gets mauled/fried/squashed), Churches (for the party clerics and actual resurrections), and Wizard/Witch Shops (where magic users can trade spells and reagants). If the dungeon is safe enough, there might even be tours of the safe zones provided from the Guild Halls.

The most common facilities found in such economies include Guild Halls (which provide room and board for Adventurers, in addition to assisting in administrative services like hiring/firing and registering Quests), Taverns (which deal in information and Sidequests, as well as booze), Training Halls (where the town's guardsmen train and where veteran instructors teach vital skills), Item Shops (selling consumables like potions and escape ropes), Armories and Smithies (selling weapons, armor, and reforging services), Medical Facilities (providing training for party healers and helping to put your team back together in the event someone gets mauled/fried/squashed), Churches (for the party clerics and actual resurrections), and Wizard/Witch Shops (where magic users can trade spells and reagants). If the dungeon is safe enough, there might even be tours of the safe zones provided from the Guild Halls.

* ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'' has base camp towns at the entrance of dungeons that become more prosperous and better-equipped as adventurers recover valuable materials and OrganDrops from within. The hard bits of monsters can be crafted into equipment, and chemicals derived from plant material can be used to concoct healing potions and such, for example. Later games actually reduce the prices of some of the restorative items you can buy, but balance that with requiring the player to harvest the necessary active ingredients for brewing them first.

** In the True Ending for the first game, [[spoiler: the loss of the dungeon via destruction of the berserk Yggdrasil Core means that the inhabitants of the base camp town would drift off to other locations with the loss of a steady income of materials. The remake fixes this, instead having you save the woodsfolk from a deadly disease, stopping a pointless apocalypse started from a rogue AI (due to it deciding bullheadedly to fire the Gungir despite there being too much collateral damage from its blast), and capping it all by destroying the EldritchAbomination lurking at the final bottom of the dungeon (The aforementioned Berserk Yggdrasil Core that the Gungnir was meant to terminate in the event of the Core going crazy)]].
** ''Fafnir Knight'' features a restaurant that the player's Story Mode party is requested to support. This place not only uses monster meat and plants from the Labyrinth for cuisine, but also provides buffs with the meals thus created.

** SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome occurs in the True Ending for the first game, [[spoiler:as the loss of the dungeon via destruction of the berserk Yggdrasil Core means that the inhabitants of the base camp town would drift off to other locations with the loss of a steady income of materials. The remake fixes this, instead having you save the woodsfolk from a deadly disease, stopping a pointless apocalypse started from a rogue AI (due to it deciding bullheadedly to fire the Gungir despite there being too much collateral damage from its blast), and capping it all by destroying the EldritchAbomination lurking at the final bottom of the dungeon (The aforementioned Berserk Yggdrasil Core that the Gungnir was meant to terminate in the event of the Core going crazy)]].
*** However, [[spoiler:FridgeLogic sets in regarding the first game's ending once you realize that even without the mystery Visil struggled so hard to maintain, with all the resources in the Labyrinth (''especially'' in Lost Shinjuku and the Claret Hollows), Etria would actually become more of a scientific Mecca if anything, and adventurers can still thrive as escorts for researchers]].

* In ''Manga/DeliciousInDungeon'', dungeon crawling is a major profession, including supporting niche industries like body recovery, tourism, and maintaining campgrounds. The sunken kingdom the manga focuses on is the center of the Island's economy. However, this is shown to be ultimately unsustainable. The upper levels of the kingdom have been picked clean already, so most of the wealth is from searching for secret passages, harvesting monster parts, or trading with the orcs and outlaws that decided to live in the dungeon.

* Economy in ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}'' works the same way, albeit [[{{downplayed}} to a lesser extent.]] Whenever Lina's strapped for cash, she'll sell merchants whatever she's looted from local bandits, or any treasure she's carrying, but doesn't have a need for. If need be, she can even use magic to convert her loot into rare items with higher resale value.
* ''Anime/RuneSoldierLouie'': The Adventurers Guild trains warriors and mages to prepare them for exploring ancient shrines and tombs, which is how they earn their living. Genie, Melissa, and Merril come [[CityOfAdventure to]] [[PunnyName Ophun]] in search of a female mage for their travelling party (all they have is [[WhiteMagicianGirl a healer]]). Unfortunately for them, they wind up with [[IneptMage Louie]] instead.
* In the world of ''LightNovel/IsItWrongToTryToPickUpGirlsInADungeon'', The dungeon works like a coal mine(albeit one actively trying to kill you). Adventurers go into the dungeon and harvest the magic stones from monsters, which are then used by the guild to produce power sources for appliances and other purposes. This is in addition to the usual OrganDrops and materials gathered or mined in the dungeon.
* ''LightNovel/LogHorizon'': The world of the series being an MMORPG that suddenly became all too real for all the players, it's unsurprising that the only source of gold in the setting are monsters. The entire economy of Akihabara, once it's kick-started by more enterprising Adventurers, springs from monster-hunting and dungeon-raiding for money and high-level resources and artifacts.
* Maze City from ''[[LightNovel/ImABehemothAnSRankedMonster I'm a Behemoth, an S-Ranked Monster, but Mistaken for a Cat, I Live as an Elf Girl's Pet]]'' was built with massive walls to stop the labyrinth's monsters from swarming the world. The city prospers because adventurers go into the labyrinth dungeon to get materials that merchants use for various things, or sell in trade to other countries.
* ''LightNovel/ICouldntBecomeAHeroSoIReluctantlyDecidedToGetAJob'': The human kingdom ran on this until the Demon King was defeated. Once that was done, there were no more jobs for heroes to fight demons, forcing all of them to find other fields of employment like retail and office positions.

* In the world of ''LightNovel/IsItWrongToTryToPickUpGirlsInADungeon'', The dungeon works like a coal mine. Adventurers go into the dungeon and harvest the magic stones from monsters, which are then used by the guild to produce power sources for appliances and other purposes. This is in addition to the usual OrganDrops and materials gathered or mined in the dungeon.

* This is pretty much the entire plot of ''VideoGame/{{Moonlighter}}''. The town your character, Will, lives in only exists because of the nearby Dungeons, and a certain group of people, the Merchants, go into the dungeons solely to find things to sell.