Merchant Archive

It is quite simple. If your vendor isn't loaded, then you get no experience. I walked into my house after 12 hours of no exp. My 6 vendors then reloaded after about 10 secondsand I immediately got 900 xp. This would explain why it seems erratic - if no one walks into your shop, you get no exp.

Could someone pleaseconfirm it, bump it, and hopefully for the space expansion they fix it?

Everything in the house unloads quickly now, I recommend staying close. My house unloaded 5 minutes after walking to my factory out back.

What happened to me is that last night I checked at 6:52 and I had 32,700 xp, I logged in today at 6:57 and had 35,350 which sux. Here is the wierd part, I went directly to my house after reading this post to see what would happen after loading vendors. My xp bumped right up to 36,150 at 7:22, I think you may be right that the vendors need to be loaded for xp, Im going to macro something all night to get some results. I have never seen such weirdness xp wise. Last week I had 10,000 xp at like 4:00 and when I checked an hour later I had 23,000. Just doesnt add up!

So you jsut stayed on all day with an alt gathering xp. was your main character logged in at the same time? and did you stay at your shop w/ the alt? I can run an alt at my shop, but not at the same time as my main as I have only one computer atm. If i can be assured of getting the xp while my main is offline I will run the alt, but if not, oh well..... i didnt really want to be a jedi that badly, certainly not enough to already give up master BH, lol.

This seemed to work for me too.. The XP was rolling in last night when I was on dantooine fighting some, had 13200 xp when I logged out.

12 hours later I log in and I still had 13200 xp, but instead of going to my house I decide to keep on fighting (holo hunt), but the xp never came. So after 8-9 hours of fighing, I head for house and click my three vendors, 10 seconds laster I got 13650 xp.. So it seems to work, but I have no clue why the xp seem to stop every once in a while..

Any of you got a clue if I ever will get back get xp that I never got? I´ve read some on forum and some people seems to get it in lumps somehow...

Aye, peace

---

UOtamer wrote:

So you jsut stayed on all day with an alt gathering xp. was your main character logged in at the same time? and did you stay at your shop w/ the alt? I can run an alt at my shop, but not at the same time as my main as I have only one computer atm. If i can be assured of getting the xp while my main is offline I will run the alt, but if not, oh well..... i didnt really want to be a jedi that badly, certainly not enough to already give up master BH, lol.

---

I put my alt in my shop on Naboo and I went out to play on Rori. I did lose about 3 hours worth of experience, but I didn't make a long enough afk macro for my alt and went LD about 2 hours before server reset. It seems like every hour is accounted for.

I do believe we have found the perfect supplimentary professionfor the afkDancer.

Thanks you Grungie I have followed up this with a little experimenting myself and yes it truely does seem that if you dont leave ur vendors side they are willing to give the experience they are supposed to.

Guess the question is with this is:

1. Is it intential by design from the Devs that you do not get experience for just having vendors.


2. Is it a bug that needs looked at by the devs and fixed as soon as possible.

Personally I begrudge paying an hourly rate for a vendor if it gets to shut up shop during the quiet hours when noone is around. If its designed this way deliberatly I want to join their union !

Now all I need to find is a dancer willing to dance for me.

Oh wow. Interesting. Harvesters work the same way. I didn't realize the same mechanics applied to vendors and merchant xp.

Arithmetic is not my thing, and I don't remember the exact details, but I did read about how harvesters don't "exist" or "function" until someone is within range of it. Then the game "loads it" and it's animation, sounds and function kicks in. It isn't harvesting or pumping away when no one is there to "see" it. The harvester is actually empty until you walk up to it.

Then the game does some kind of check and starts up the animation stuff and how long it's been since you turned it on or last checked it, or retrieved ore from it, what resource you set it to gather, the density % of that ore, power, maintenance paid, etc., then and only then does it actually deposit the correct amount of ore it should have in it from the last time you checked it. Sometimes this process is a little slow and you panic when you see an empty hopper in aharvester that's been running on a 90% vein for 5 days. But if you wait a moment or two, and refresh the hopper window, the correct amount of ore will be there to retrieve.

Merchant xp accrues in set increments over time. It does not trickle in as it is acquired, but at checkpoints, where all the xp you gained in that hour, or three hours or whatever mystical timetable the devs devised, is all added up, then applied to your total xp. You do not gain the xps as they happen in real time. If no one pays your door access fee, or looks at your vendor, etc. within that window of time before the next validation check, (or whatever you want to call it) then you won't see any increase in xp gained. If you are offline and say, 10 people look at your vendor over the night, then each validation check will accrue xp until when you log back in, it seems you had a huge jump in xp. Time based xp accrual is confusing.

So, from the evidence stated previously, vendors must function much like harvesters in that they don't allow merchant xp to accrue until they "exist" in the game by having someone within range to activate it's "reality" and functions.

Okay. Now my head aches because it went to the Twilight Zone.

Very interesting observations, all. I still like how merchant xp used to kind of work before, but as long as i can get people in and out of the shop then i might be able to get my full hours worth every hour, or something along those lines.

so to get merchant xp we have to babysit our houses now... great... jsut what i wanted to be, a shut-in. Ive got dialup and cant afford to stay online all the time just to gain xp, gah what a ripoff

Well I had 20k exp to get to master Merchant. After 4 days I had only gotten 5k exp closer to my goal. Since yesterday, Ileft an alt in my house all day and got 20k experience in 24 hours. A further note: if you reset your vendor you get 0 experience that hour. You only get exp at a set time, if the vendor wasn't there for the full hour, you get nothing.

I did get impatient at 1500 left so I decided to explore the other less fruitful xp sources. The 50xp for the entry fee seems to work fine. The browsing of the vendors is not as easy. You have to hit the "Refresh" button to get 50 exp from the vendor, every 10 minutes, only one vendor per person per house (as per the FAQ). Putting a vendor in someone else's house does not generate experience for either you or the home owner.

It's all I can stand, I wanted my skill points back so I could pursue Jedi. I was a master for a full 5 minutes. I hope this helps anyone else frustrated with the exp in Merchant.

Interesting for sure I was not aware that harvestors worked in that way either.

However it seems like the experience is not being added up from the last visit in this case and the experience is only given while present.

AN example may explain what I mean, after reading this post I went to check on my vendors, who had been stuck on the same amount of experience for many many hours. On walking in and checking the vendors I found I had received experience (300 points - 2 vendors). I hung around chatting with guild friends answering questions and sure enough an hour later another 300. Another hour and other 300. Great I thought.

I ran out tended to some business checked on harvestors, started a factory run of items visited the PA Hall and yet again got chatting spent another few hours online and then rechecked - no experience. Going from the info gleaned on the boards I returned once more to my vendors and before I knew it another 300 experience. It is giving the experience if you are present during that hour if not it is not calculating it. It is however calculating the rent on the vendors from what I have calculated...

So this comes down to a simple quesiton, bug or design ? Would be nice to know one way or another.

Thanks for the initial idea it was fun checking it out and I can see its starting to make some sense for myself now. If that quesiton could be answered it may explain to alot of people why the experience is coming in wierd bursts and sometimes not at all.