Merchant Archive

Well, based on Draznar's FAQ, I did the math for how dabblers can go up the merchant skill tree fastest. By dabbler, I mean someone who doesn't want to be a master merchant, but just wants some of the benefits. From talking to other tradeskillers, I see two main attractions from the vendor line:

- Advertising 3 (Planetary Ad campaign: register you vendor on the planetary map)
- Efficiency 4 (Cheaper structure maintenance, includes cheaper vendor maint too)

Advertising 4 being broke at the moment, not too many people are going for it. Efficiency 4 seems good, but tradeskillers who make lots of money often would rather have skill points than a 20% reduction in maintenance.

SUMMARY:

Place new vendors when they're available, to increase your xp rate.

- If you want BOTH Ad3 + Eff4, get to Management 2 first.
- If you JUST want Ad3 OR Eff4, get to Management 1 first.
- If you intend to master merchant, then of course get Management 4.

Calculations:

Climbing the management tree takes a certain number of hours:

2 vendors giving xp to get you to Management 1: 33.3 hours
3 vendors giving xp to get you to Management 2: 44.4 hours (additional)
4 vendors giving xp to get you to Management 3: 50.0 hours (addl.)
5 vendors giving xp to get you to Management 4: 53.3 hours (addl.)

(Sorry, the website threw a fit when it tried to post a table, so this may look ugly)

Hours to get to a goal with X #of vendors:
#vend / BOTH- , -Ad3- , -Ef4- , MASTER
(----) 2 / 534.0 , 200.0 , 333.3 , 1000
(m1) 3 / 355.5 , 133.3 , 222.2 , 666.7
(m2) 4 / 266.7 , 100.0 , 166.7 , 500.0
(m3) 5 / 213.3 , 080.0 , 133.3 , 400.0
(m4) 6 / 177.7 , 066.7 , 111.1 , 333.3

Hours to get to a goal with X #of vendors, including time to get to management level:
#vend / BOTH- , -Ad3- , -Ef4- , MASTER
(----) 2 / 534.0 , 200.0 , 333.3 , 1000
(m1) 3 / 388.8 , 166.6 , 255.5 , 700.0
(m2) 4 / 344.4 , 177.7 , 252.1 , 577.7
(m3) 5 / 341.0 , 241.1 , 261.0 , 527.7
(m4) 6 / 358.7 , 247.4 , 292.1 , 514.0


Conclusions:

For the absolute fastest leveling to Ad3+Eff4, you could go to Management 3 first. However, it saves only 3 hours over Management 2, and I'd suggest it's not worth it due to maintenance. For the fastest leveling to Efficiency 4 only, Management 2 is best, but again, for a negligible difference in time, it's more of a hassle.

Hope that helps somebody =)
- Saintly

I have heard about the trick to use not an npc but a machine as vendor, and putin it expensive stuff so that it boost the maintenance cost, and than more maintenance give more xp...

I have tried is and it seemt so be true, as as got 900 XP / hours instead as around 300 xp / hours

Anyone else tried it and has reliable numbers ?

Thanks