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"Heheheh. Heya buddy. I wouldn't come in here 'less you've got [...] plenty of gold in your pockets. Ya get it? This place has a gold standard. Your emeralds ain't worth too much here, though the bank'll take 'em anyway."
Rymek Citizen, Wynncraft

Because many games have Money for Nothing economies, many RPGs include an area where the Global Currency you've been using all game just doesn't work. It may be a gaming center that runs on tokens, an insular country that doesn't accept standard currency, or a city inhabited by monsters - but one way or another, your money is no good here. Sometimes there's a way to convert your normal money into this alternate currency (usually at an obscenely bad ratio), but often there's nothing for it but to complete sidequests and minigames. May overlap with Premium Currency, especially if the game encourages players to pay real money to buy these alternate currency.

Occasionally this area is home to the Infinity +1 Sword, though this doesn't make either any more useful.

Not to be confused for Weird Currency.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Action-Adventure 
  • Bayonetta 3: Unlike the previous two games, there's now three types of currency. Halos, the currency of the last two games, are now a rarity because of the titular character killing most of the angels in the past, and are only used to purchase cosmetic items. Instead, the main currency is now seeds, dropped by the Homunculi and used to buy items and accessories, while orbs are obtained by racking up combo points in battle and mainly used to level up demons.
  • Beyond Good & Evil: The garage which provides upgrades to Jade's ship will only work for rare pearls. It's a good thing Jade needs Hal, Issam, and Babukar's services over the course of the game, because pearls (in spite of the fact that everyone and their brother seems to hand them out like candy to you) are illegal currency according to the backstory, making their refusal to take regular cash more than a little prohibitively bad for business. They still have vending machines on their premises that take normal currency, however.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • In Little Big Adventure 2, once the player reaches Zeelich, they will find out all the money acquired on Twinsen ("Kashes") is worthless, since the Zeelichians use their own coin ("Zlitos"). Afterwards, the player will encounter a ferryman who will only accept gems as currency.
  • Some vendors in Ōkami let you purchase items only with demon fangs, not the default currency. One vendor at the end accepts both currencies, but for different items each.
  • Unlike other Super Mario Bros. platforming games, coins in Super Mario Odyssey are only used to pay for stuff at shops. Gold coin shops are present in every kingdom and accept gold coins from all over the world but purple coin shops only accept purple coins that were collected in that kingdom (each kingdom's purple coinage is shaped uniquely to its locale, making them specific to that kingdom).

    Hack and Slash 
  • Diablo series:
    • In Diablo II, the value of gold coins quickly reached the Money for Nothing stage, so instead, players began using a very valuable ring, the Stone of Jordan as a standard currency for player-to-player interactions; it could easily be farmed through gaming the ingame casino, at least until Blizzard caught on and whacked it with a nerfbat, but it was a useful and compact item for player trading.
    • In Diablo III: Reaper of Souls a gambling system was introduced that has a high chance of yielding legendaries. Since most players have millions of gold by the time they start gambling the trader instead demands Blood Shards, a special currency that can only be gathered in small amounts from end-game activities on high difficulty levels.

    Role-Playing Game 
  • Atelier Iris features a village of rabbit and bear monsters where your Cole currency is not accepted. The same goes for a merchant in the Land of Mana.
  • Borderlands 2:
    • Black Market upgrades that increase how much ammo you can hold as well as inventory space can only be purchased using Eridium, which is quite a bit rarer than money. In the words of the Black Market vendor, "Cash is for clowns!".
    • From the DLC, there are other forms of currency, Seraph Crystals and Torgue Tokens which are only good at particular vendors who accept nothing else. The Seraph vendor doesn't even let you look at his wares unless you've got some crystals on you!
  • Some rare Manillo merchants (fish people) in Breath of Fire III and IV ask for fish you caught in the Fishing Minigame instead of Zenny in exchange for very rare items and weapons. The latter game also has a points system that you accumulate through this type of trade, which has even more rare items (including Rare Candy!).
  • Chrono Trigger has several examples, due to the Time Travel based plot:
    • The Prehistoric era uses a barter system of animal hides and horns, as you might expect from primitive cavemen. However, there is still an item shop that accepts regular currency even in that era; amusingly, the shopkeeper asks "Trade your shiny stone?!?" when you talk to him (he doesn't know what gold is, apparently, he just likes the shiny).
    • The After the End portion features features two shops, both of which give the player a bit of a jolt by asking "You call this stuff money?". This being After the End, however, they then accept your currency because there's nobody else to sell to.
    • In the Millenium Fair, you can earn special Silver Points that can only be spent within the fair.
  • Casinos in Dragon Quest games tend to run on tokens. They can be bought using the regular currency, but tend to be quite expensive. This is so that to purchase the often quite powerful weapons and armor available as casino prizes, you have to first actually win at the casino games. And the more money you're likely to have at the point that you reach the casino, the more expensive the tokens tend to be. A particularly egregious example of this in Chapter 3 of Dragon Quest IV, where by the end of the chapter Torneko can gather truly vast amounts of gold from his shop with minimal effort, gold that cannot be carried forward into later chapters. Savvy players will note that casino tokens did carry over from Chapter 2 and convert the excess gold into tokens, but will find that the exchange rate is 20 times worse than it was in the previous chapter.
    • Mini medals can be considered a form of this. They can't be bought, however; they can only be found. Most main games have a limited number of Mini Medals. How they're "cashed in" for the loot depends on the game, but you always cash them in with the Medal King.
  • One NPC in Dubloon is eager to sell you his goods, except he only accepts Farquaads. After beating the final boss and returning you will find an exchange service which will eagerly give you the necessary 1 million Farquaads... for 1 dubloon. The game doesn't even ask for confirmation.
  • In Dwarf Fortress, each civilization has its own currency and foreign currencies are only worth the metals they are constitued of.
  • Fallout series:
    • In Fallout Tactics, your money is in fact no good almost everywhere. The Brotherhood currency is not accepted in the wastelands. And wasteland currency is not accepted in the Brotherhood. Good thing almost everyone is willing to take looted guns in trade, eh?
    • Fallout 2:
      • The game does attempt to have something like this in Redding - the owners of the mines issue pay scrips instead of cash to employees. The thing is, they can be bartered off for full price when trading with anyone.
      • Also there's a quest in Broken Hills where you help a midget find a treasure. What's the treasure? Bottle caps from the previous game, which are worthless nowadays.
    • Fallout 3, you can find "Pre-War Money" in various locales which can't be spent outright but still carries its own inherent value and can be traded for the local currency of bottle caps or bartered as part of the value for other items. How much it's actually worth depends on your own bartering skill, of course, with the max typically being ten caps each.
    • Fallout: New Vegas:
      • There are different currencies for the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion, both of which can be exchanged for caps at a fixed rate (unaffected by Barter skill) and are accepted by casinos. Later, you'll find that the Brotherhood blew up some of the NCR's gold deposits, crashing the NCR dollar's value and making the Hub merchants re-create the cap.
      • Played straight in the Dead Money add-on. You can't take any caps with you, and since it takes place in a casino that was sealed just before the Great War, the holographic vendors wouldn't accept caps anyway, though you can barter for goods using Pre-War Money, loot, and Shop Fodder. Casino chips are also used as currency for the table games and vending machines (the vending machines actually breaking down the chips to do some molecular rearranging to create items), and collecting enough of them will ensure a large sum of them is regularly deposited for you back in the Mojave Wasteland after completing the DLC. Which is great, because there's a conveniently placed vending machine that can be used to buy piles of stimpaks and weapon repair kits, among other useful stuff.
      • Averted to the point of Lampshade Hanging in the Old World Blues and Lonesome Road add-ons. It is handwaved in Old World Blues partly as a testing shortcut, and partly as the scientist who created the only store in the DLC having correctly theorised that bottlecaps would be used as currency. It is briefly handwaved in a document found in Lonesome Road that states that the automated commissary terminals accept bottlecaps because they are coincidentally shaped just like the "counterfeit-proof" pay scrip the military was using at the time. Though this doesn't explain why the Commissary has thousands upon thousands of them in reserve (possibly the exploit was just that popular amongst the soldiers before the commissary terminals were locked down).
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy VII has its Gold Saucer area, where normal gil doesn't work, and you need not one, but two kinds of additional cash — GP from finishing minigames (or by buying them from an NPC who is rarely present), and BP, which you get for battling in a Monster Arena.
    • In Final Fantasy IX, the points you accumulate in the Chocobo Hot and Cold minigame can be exchanged for prizes.
    • Final Fantasy XII has the city of Archades, where Gil does work for the things you normally do with gil, but getting to different parts of the city requires a totally different, non-monetary currency called Chops, which you can only get by doing good deeds in a sidequest.
  • Golden Sun has the coin-tossing minigame in Tolbi fountain (and Lemuria fountain in the sequel) where throwing coins gets you coins, but tossing Lucky Medals gets you unique items (and a summon in the sequel).
  • Mega Man Battle Network/Rockman.EXE has a separate set of currency called Bugfrags. They are pieces of junk data that can be given to vendors in exchange for some rare battlechips (of varying usefulness) or fed to machines that randomly spit out a battlechip. Some of the battlechips from the vendors are usually not obtainable anywhere else, and are thus required for 100% Completion in most EXE games.
  • In Persona 3, the proprietor of the Shinshoudo Antiques shop only takes gemstones that are dropped by certain Shadows in combat for payment. Since she provides items that boost your Persona's power in exchange, it can be assumed that she somehow "harvests" some sort of benefit from them to make the power-ups. She also sells other items that may be beneficial in combat or in leveling up your Social Links as well.
    • Persona 5 Royal has Jose, the strange boy in Mementos who gathers (and apparently subsides on) the flowers that grow there. He'll only accept these flowers as payment for his shop, which can provide some pretty useful things like SP-recovery items, incense, and even whatever Will Seeds were left behind after a Palace goes kablooeynote . There are also stamps that you can find across Mementos which you can use to change the item, money, and EXP rates of Mementos.
  • Pokémon:
    • Red and Blue had this in the Slots minigame, where you could only get certain Pokémon like Porygon by turning in a large number of tokens — which could be purchased at 50 coins for 1000 Poké Dollars (the exchange rate suggests that they're closer to Yen), or won at slot machines. The tradition continued in the later games in the series, although you couldn't get Pokémon from them. Due to changes in laws in how gambling is portrayed in video games, these "Game Corners" were increasingly censored until they stopped appearing entirely by Pokémon Black and White.
    • Later games in the series included Battle Facilities (Tower, Frontier, Subway, Maison, Royal Dome, Tree) which used Battle Points (BP) to buy items or teach Pokémon certain moves via a move tutor rather than use regular money. The same goes for the PokéCoupons in the console spinoffs. These are earned by winning battles, but its not easy to acquire BP via this method. Battle Points can also be earned by depositing a large number of Pokémon in Pokémon Bank or play the Mantine Surf Mini-game in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.
      • Platinum and HeartGold and SoulSilver have a currency only used during a Battle Frontier challenge: Castle Points (CP) for the Battle Castle. The currency rolls over between challenges but is emptied following a loss. Aside from assisting in the completion of challenges in the Castle, which reward BP, the Castle Points aren't used anywhere else.
    • Some NPC characters also ask for Heart Scales to teach your Pokémon moves they knew in the past, but forgot. In FireRed and LeafGreen, since Heart Scales and the Pokémon (Luvdisc) that carries them do not appearnote , the Tutors ask for Mushrooms instead.
    • Diamond/Pearl/Platinum's Underground uses spheres (including the pointy Prism Sphere) to buy furniture.
    • Poké Miles from Pokémon X and Y and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, earned by online interaction (internet, local wireless, infrared) and/or the Pokémon Bank.
    • In Pokémon Sun and Moon and Ultra Sun and Moon, the Festival Plaza uses Festival Coins, and the Poké Pelago uses Poké Beans.
    • Pokémon Sword and Shield has Watts, which is obtained mainly from Pokemon Dens, and coveted by merchants in the Wild Area. The Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra also have traders looking for Armorite and Dynite Ores, respectively.
    • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has League Points or LP, which is used to pay for TMs alongside new materials, and has a 1:1 conversion rate with the usual Pokédollars/Yen. It can also be obtained from interacting with Tera Raid dens, with the amount given depending on the rating of the Den.
      • In an inversion, The Teal Mask DLC takes place in the countryside region of Kitakami, and the local shop that substitutes for the usual Pokémart doesn't except League Points until you pester them enough about it that they install a terminal to accept LP.
  • This is the actual message received when trying to use your money where it doesn't work in Quest for Glory I. Every Quest for Glory game except the last two ones involves your character having to find a money changer to change his money into the local currency.
  • The Arena Resonance of Fate rewards the party for their victories with copper, silver, and gold arena credits, and only accepts said credits at their rewards kiosk.
  • There are several different kinds of currency in the SNES role-playing game Secret of Evermore, ranging between talons, dubloons and credits, depending where in time you're located. Of course, each respective time has convenient currency trading spots, allowing the hero to trade his futuristic credits in for prehistoric talons at the local caveman trading post.
  • Shin Megami Tensei smacks you with this perhaps a quarter of the way into the game, if that. Then again, after a Class 1 nuclear holocaust, it isn't like there's any government backing the yen you collected. The game does at least have an NPC who trades a fraction of your yen into macca, though.
    • Nocturne has another one with Rag's Jewelry, which will only accept the gems you've been collecting across the Vortex World for powerful healing and status items as well as Mitama and Element demons instead of Macca.
  • In South Park: The Stick of Truth, the player cannot use American money in Canada. Fortunately, you can either go to a bank to exchange money or simply sell items in Canadian vendors to get Canadian money.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • In Super Mario RPG, the currency accepted by Tadpole Pond's Frog Coin Emporium and a certain scholarly frog (as compared to everyone else) is Frog Coins, which can be used to buy some useful stat-boosting items. The catch: You can only get Frog Coins by (a) finding them in hidden or hard-to-reach boxes or (b) playing certain minigames, most notably Midas River, where you swim and barrel-jump down a river, collecting coins; only coins you collect can be exchanged, and the exchange rate is usually 60-80 coins = 1 Frog Coin. And each time you play the minigame, it costs 30 coins in and of itself!
      • It is possible, if just barely, to earn a Frog Coin by making ten consecutive jumps on the head of a certain enemy called Wiggler. This must be done outside combat, each successful jump makes the enemy move faster. Later in the game there are ant-like enemies found in sand-whirlpools that grant a Frog Coin for three consecutive jumps, but it's still just as hard to successfully pull off. These are the only enemies in the game on which players may jump without starting a battle. An NPC in Monstro Town hints at this, but to get the message you have to jump on him instead of talking to him normally.
      • Late in the game, there's an absurdly easy, very short, infinitely replayable minigame which gives out a Frog Coin every time you win.
      • There is an even better way than the Bridge game. Every time you beat the Sky Troopa game under 11 seconds, it gets you 5 frog coins. As an added bonus, it's free, and to play again, you just jump down and start again.
    • In Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, there are special NPCs who will sell you badges, but only if you trade them rare Star Pieces. Thousand-Year Door also features a casino that only accepts Pianta Tokens.
      • Pianta Tokens is justified though, as it's more like the Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp" version of poker chips than a separate currency in its own right.
    • In Super Paper Mario, you need to pay for a broken vase costing 1 million rubees (read: NOT "rupees"), rather than the usual currency of Coins. You earn these by performing menial labor for the people who charged you the money and can eventually open a vault that contains the entire sum.
    • Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: When everyone heads off to the Beanbean Kingdom, Toadsworth gives you 100 coins. However, when the brothers reach Stardust Fields, a local monster informs them that the exchange rate means they only have the equivalent of 10 beanbean coins (regardless of the amount of coins that they have on hand). This Mushroom-to-Beanbean coin conversion only comes up once more: a certain character bets you 99,999,999,999,999 Mushroom Coins he'll win at something only for it to be revealed that Beanbean Coins are worth 1,010,101,010,101 times as much as Mushroom Coins, meaning you only get 99 coins for winning, being very blatantly higher than before.
  • Tales of Berseria has Tales coins, which you can pick up randomly but mostly earn from playing minigames scattered around the world. Tales coins are entirely spent at the same "vendors" running the minigames to buy costume items, a few types of consumables, and crafting materials. However, unless it notes otherwise, the price given for consumables and materials is per unit, and can cost thousands of Tales coins when the minigames only give a couple hundred each time you play. It's horribly inefficient.
  • In Tales of Eternia, there's a hidden town that you have to search the sea floor in a submarine just to get to, which nonetheless is somehow a popular resort town for the whole world. Their currency can be converted at exorbitant prices, and then used in slot machines to actually get enough to put in an auction for a chance at winning a nice item which may or may not actually be up for auction when you finally get enough. Most players don't bother, since you'd have to Level Grind a long time before you ran out of better uses for your gald.
  • Tales of Innocence has the Grades. Obtained by winning battles and completing missions issued by the Guilds located in each town, those are used to buy the ultimate equipment for your character as well as items that allow you to carry your items, weapons, armors, recipes, etc. to a New Game Plus.
  • In Tales of Symphonia, some shopkeepers sell Item Crafting materials for "grade", an abstract point score that can increase or decrease based on how well you fight battles. It is also used to buy New Game Plus bonuses, where it makes a lot more sense.
  • Transcendence: This roguelike 2D space game requires the alien currency Rin for the more powerful items towards the end of the game when you normally have huge funds in the standard currency, with no possibility of converting it.
    • The Eternity Port expansion introduces factions that use yuan and euros instead of credits.
  • A late-game shop in Wild ARMs 4 uses your party members' levels to create rare items, including Sheriff Stars.
  • While the vast majority of vendors in ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal accept gold coins as payment, the dwarves in Monagham flat out refuse to get paid with anything but precious crystals, which, unlike faery gold, aren't produced in unlimited quantities by every faery in the world (but which you can still buy for gold from a dwarf in Tiralin).

    Multiplayer Role-Playing Game 
  • Champions Online has, in addition to Resources, Snakebucks (dropped from mobs in the Snake Gulch amusement park, used in the gift shop), Acclaim (gained in PvP, used to buy PvP items and rewards, mostly Luchador costume items), UNITY and Nemesis Tokens (gained by completing UNITY and Nemesis missions, respectively, used for very high level, exorbiantly priced rewards) and a few others.
  • In the Discworld MUD, different cities of the world use different currencies, and most cities feature at least one money-changer (who charges exorbitant fees). Some enterprising (and very wealthy) characters run their own money-changing services on the side.
  • Everquest II uses a fairly large variety of specialized currencies, mostly for world and seasonal events, with merchants who only exist during the event to take these currencies. Examples include some currencies that are also useful as tradeskill components like candy corn during Nights of the Dead or Shiny Tinkerfest Cogs, and some of the currencies are tradeable while others are account-locked.
  • Final Fantasy XI has so many different Global Currency Exceptions that they needed to add a "Currencies" tab to the Status window just so players could keep track of them all. Then they had to split it into two tabs because the list was so long. Then they added more.
    • Its sibling game, Final Fantasy XIV, also does this. Notably, some of the endgame gears are only available for purchase with Allagan tomestones (or in the case of non-combat gears, through colored scrips). Then there are the Grand Company seals, ventures, Gold Saucer points, plus the Allied and Centurio Seals. Furthermore, each beast tribes also has their own currencies exclusive for each of them.
  • Guild Wars 2 has karma vendors scattered all across the world. The currency of karma is only accumulated through events, or certain untradable items. The items acquired through karma vendors also cannot be sold or traded to other players. There is also a vendor by the mystic forge that sells certain items for skill points.
  • Kingdom of Loathing loves this trope:
    • The Bounty Hunter Hunter sends adventurers to various areas collecting items for him. These items can be traded in for one Filthy Lucre per day, which is the only currency he accepts. They can't be traded between players either. Also, it takes about a year's worth of Lucre to get one of everything he sells. Yeah.
    • The Hippy/Frat Boy War only takes dimes (dime bags, get it?) and quarters (as in the drinking game) respectively for their shops (these are also untradeable between players, and are not carried over into a new ascension, though the stores hold valuable Shop Fodder to enable conversion into the Global Currency).
    • The Game Grid arcade (accessible via tokens dropped by the Rogue Program familiar) has a number of prizes that can only be bought with tickets won at the games in the arcade.
    • Mr. Store only trades items for Mr. Accessories, which are given to players in return for a donation of real money ($10 each). In practice this is less of an example than some of the others, as Mr. Accessories are very tradeable, so with enough Meat you can buy one from another player. However, the market price for them tends to be roughly a month's worth of dedicated meat farming.
    • Big Brother in the undersea area only accepts sand dollars.
    • The hobos in the marketplace in Hobopolis only accept hobo nickels (again, untradeable between players).
    • For the 2009 Crimbo season (Crimbo being the Kingdom's Christmas equivalent), a currency called Crimbux was introduced for use in Crimbo Town. In 2010 a similar pattern occurred with "CRIMBCO scrip". In 2011, the pattern happened again with candy credits.
    • The Elven Moon Colonies (accessible via the transponders dropped by the Li'l Xenomorph familiar) trade only in Lunar Isotopes.
    • The longest-lived example is the Hermit, who only accepts worthless trinkets, gewgaws and knick-knacks as currency. He would not accept "valuable" trinkets, which nobody really want, but can be converted to Meat anyway.
    • The clan Dungeon Dreadsylvania, which opened in July 2013, has its own unique currency. Freddy Krueggerands occasionally drop off monsters in Dreadsylvania or can be found in non-combats, and can be spent on various items at the Terrified Eagle Inn.
  • In Phantasy Star Online 2, the Casino Area only deals in Casino Coins, which can be obtained through exchanging Casino Coin Passes that are distributed once per day or given as prizes through certain Client Orders or finishing a Recommended Quest (occasionally). Casino Coins are then used in either the minigames that can give you more CC, or the Casino Coin Shop, which sells neat items like untradeable Costumes and Camos, Room Items, and items that can be bought once weekly such as Rare Enemy Triggers or Lambda Grinders.
    • The Challenge Miles Shop only accepts Challenge Miles, which are a reward for completing Challenge Quest. While Challenge Quest is definitely not beginner-friendly, the prizes you can acquire with CM include Photon Boosters, which are used to unlock Hidden Potentials, rare Units, or Infinity -1 Swords.
    • The Treasure Shop accepts two currencies, but with different pools for each. The Meseta Shop takes the local Global Currency, and sells neat stuff for utterly exorbitant and disproportionately high prices. The Star Gem Shop, conversely, only takes Star Gems, a rare "premium" currency that can be acquired through a variety of methods that are too long to list, or purchased with real money. This Shop sells the rare Tribooster +100%, as well as an item known as Quest Triggers, which can be expended to start a Trigger Quest, which is a variant of an Emergency Quest that can be started at will with the correct Trigger.
  • Runescape:
    • The inhabitants of the underground city of Tzhaar only accept a special kind of obsidian currency (made from their dead) instead of the normal Gold pieces used everywhere else.
    • Similarly, Shilo Tai Bwo Wannai Village uses currency made of some unidentified vegetable material.
    • Mos Le'Harmless (a pirate island) uses pieces of eight, and Port Phasmatys (inhabited by ghosts) uses ectotokens (pieces of paper smeared with ectoplasm).
  • Ryzom has the Civilization and Faction vendors, who sell some cool stuff...but you earn points to pay them with by doing delivery quests and PvP, respectively.
  • Star Trek Online: Energy credits are mostly only used to trade between players in the endgame, as you can pretty much keep your ship and crew in up-to-date equipment with random drops while leveling without ever visiting a store. In contrast, Refined Dilithium can be traded between players on an in-game currency exchange for Zen, the currency used for microtransactions, and is heavily involved in buying and crafting endgame equipment. You will also generally need Reputation Marks, each rep having its own type. Lobi Crystals are also used at one specific store and mostly only obtainable by opening lockboxes with keys bought using microtransactions. Finally, there's also Gold-Pressed Latinum, which you get by gambling EC at dabo tables; it's really only useful for buying a few cosmetic items.
  • Star Wars: Galaxies has several types of currency: the Galactic Standard Credit, which is used with most NPC vendors and for the player driven economy; Meatlump Lumps, used for Meatlump Themepark vendors; Heroic Instance Tokens, which you earn for completing sections of the Heroic Instances: there are currently six types of token, one type per instance (Mos Espa Token, Akxva Min Token, IG-88 Token, Black Sun Token, Exar Kun Token, and Hoth Token).
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic has this in spades. Each planet has its own commendations which can be used to purchase equipment and upgrades from specific vendors. There's also commendations for several special guilds, the reputations, space fights, and Black Holes commendations which are for team missions.
    • The expansion folded all planetary commendations into one, which allowed them to be actually useful, instead of only being tradeable for equipment that was below your level when you had finally enough commendations to buy it. With the level-cap moving up to 55, they also introduced new commendations for the eldergame, which are basically (except for the very minuscule chances of random drops from bosses) the only way to get high-level gear. At this point, the only use for credits is for trade among players and buying your character's Skills.
  • The racing minigame area known as Goofy Speedway in Toontown Online uses tickets instead of jellybeans, and the two are completely unrelated and nonconvertible. This probably surprised quite a few people who saved up jellybeans when Goofy Speedway was not yet released. Sort of makes you wonder why the Goofy Speedway employees even want the tickets...
  • Warframe has Baro Ki'Teer, a weekly merchant with an ever-changing supply of mostly unique items (including upgraded versions of existing mods) that he sells for a combination of regular credits and Ducats, which can be exchanged for Prime parts and blueprints.
  • World of Warcraft
    • Argent Dawn tokens, Aldor/Scryer tokens (e.g. Holy Dust), "fallen champion" tokens, and Badges of Justice, used to buy high-end gear and enchantments. Most of these cannot be bought with gold, but earned in dungeon runs and raids.
    • As of Wrath of the Lich King, There are now so many different types of currency at this point that Blizzard has added a new tab to the character sheet to keep track of them all.
    • There's also Sporeggar in Outland, in which the Sporelings only accept a certain kind of mushroom for money.
    • In Cataclysm, most of the old currencies were consolidated into either Honor Points or Justice Points, depending on whether or not they were earned through Player Versus Player. There are also Conquest Points and Valor Points, which can buy new higher-level items.
  • Almost everywhere in Wynncraft uses emeralds for currency, with three exceptions:
    • Rymek's merchants deal solely in gold ingots, which are dropped from nearby Dead Prospectors. Additionally, a converter merchant at the bank will swap emeralds for gold and vice versa.
    • The vendors of Zhight Island only accept Zhight Money, a special currency unique to the island. Emeralds can be converted into them at very high rates, which are used for buying exclusive Zhight wares, such as Potions of Wisdom.
    • Dungeon Merchants, found outside every Dungeon, only deal in the two types of objects dropped from each boss at the end of the dungeon. Each dungeon has different such currencies, and this is the only way that a player can acquire high-tiered tools.

    Other 
  • Animal Crossing:
    • In the first two Animal Crossing games (the original and Wild World), while looking into someone else's drawers, you'll sometimes receive the message: "You found 10 Rupees! Too bad you can't use them here..."
    • Animal Crossing: New Leaf has two examples: items on Tortimer Island can only be bought with medals (earned by playing minigames on the island) and fortune cookies can only be bought using 3DS Play Coins (earned by accumulating steps on the pedometer). A November 2016 update introduces a new area (the campground) that accepts a third alternate currency called MEOW coupons (Mutual Exchange Of Wealth) which are dispensed by a CAT Machine (Coupon Allocation Terminal) upon doing certain tasks in your town.
  • In APICO, Rubees are the standard currency of APICO Islands, but Bobbee only accepts Honeycore as payment.
  • Avengers Academy has special currency for every special event in order to keep the decorations and characters obtainable there separate from the mainline characters.
  • d20 Modern has the abstract "Wealth" score as a Global Currency to handwave all the potential complexity of modern finance. The d20 Cyberscape sourcebook for Cyberpunk gameplay introduced a Gray Wealth score to act as an Exception so characters can benefit from a similar abstraction of trade with illegal and illicit goods and the secondary market, as the regular Wealth score now represented an entirely digital (and thus easily traced) economy.
  • Disco Zoo: Moon and Mars rescue missions require Space Coins instead of regular coins, earned by sending rescued animals to space zoos.
  • Elona:
  • FTL: Faster Than Light has several events where you can trade stuff for other resources than the usual scrap, such 6 units of fuel for 1 drone part (a unit of fuel and a drone part normally cost respectively 3 and 8 pieces of scrap).
  • Averted in God Eater 3. When Fenrir collapsed, the Fenrir Credits everyone was using suddenly had no backing. There was a brief period of barter economy and other fiat currencies, until each of the remaining administrative units individually realized that such an economic meltdown After the End would utterly doom the human race, and made it clear to their own survivors and each other that they would continue to honor credits 1:1.
  • Littlewood:
    • In the Dust Caverns, the Hero can trade the Dust they dig up in the mines for a selection of items that changes each day.
    • Tha Card Shop has wares that can only be purchased with the Duelist Badges earned by playing Tarott Monster games to the end (a winning game earns more than a losing one). They consist of extra Tarott Monster cards and decoration.
    • An event shared by all four seasons from the first summer onwards consists of a day on which a shop that only accepts Dark Matter as payment opens in the player's town. On those days, Dark Matter can be found while cutting trees and mining, while Dark Matter is only a possible result of catching bugs in the Dust Carverns the rest of the year.
  • In the Facebook game Mafia Wars, profits earned in different cities are tracked separately, with virtually no opportunity to exchange between the various cities' currencies. Even Vegas and New York use different currencies, justified in-game by the former using casino chips rather than dollars.
  • In Neopets the player must use Dubloons instead of Neopoints on Krawk Island.
  • The browser-based web game PsyPets has a hidden "Mysterious Shop," which sells several rare items. In a Shout-Out to The Legend Of Zelda, the only currency it accepts is...Rupees. Unfortunately (quite unlike Zelda), Rupees can be hard to get, since the easiest way to get them is to build a Wishing Well and throw normal money into it. You have a chance of finding a fairy who will give you Rupees, among other things. At least she gives you a choice.
  • Rage (2011) usually uses generic dollars for currency, but racing certificates are required for purchasing vehicle parts and paint jobs. The only way to earn these are through completing races or destroying bandit cars for Sally/Brick, but they only give 1 to 2 certificate per car destroyed.
  • Slim Cognito appears in two places in Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando and accepts a different non-standard currency at each one: he sells weapon mods for Platinum Bolts and starship mods for Raritanium. (Funnily enough, he reappears in Up Your Arsenal, where he accepts regular Bolts.)
    • The first game had this too, where Gold Bolts were needed to buy upgrades for some weapons along with regular currency.
    • In Tools of Destruction, Device vendors charge Raritanium (which is otherwise used to make weapon upgrades) instead of Bolts. No explanation is given.
  • In Maxis' SimAnt, you can use the same cheat code that the other games in the series use to give yourself $10,000...but since you're an ant, you can't spend it on anything.
  • In The Sims the normal currency is Simoleons, but if you want to buy anything in Magic Town you need Magicoins. You can't simply "buy" Magicoins with your Simoleons, either; you have to earn them separately by performing magic tasks.
  • Realm Grinder: Every Ascension makes the upgrades from the previous Ascension free, but also greatly reduces their effect, and replaces the currency with a new one (from coins to diamonds to emeralds to amethysts to... you get the idea).

    Real Life 
  • Within the Eurozone, the two big standouts are the Czech Republic (still uses the Czech koruna, and is surrounded on three of its sides by Euro-using countries, making this trope perceptible if you are travelling from Austria or Slovakia to Germany and vice versa) and Switzerland/Liechtenstein (both use the Swiss Franc, while all of their neighbors use the Euro).


Alternative Title(s): Your Money Is No Good Here

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