There's a charming nonsense to Into the Emberlands' economy. It starts out pretty straightforward: buy an axe, chop down a tree, collect the wood. But then what do you do with that wood? You find a troll and give it to him, of course, in exchange for a crystal shard. Then you can take that to a giant chicken who can make your lantern bigger, so you can travel far enough to reach the petal fields and buy some shears to harvest flowers to give to a petalologist in exchange for… sorry, have I lost you?