Merchant Archive

I've been over 10K merchant xp since Tuesday, but not spent it yet. I need to do it before I cap out on xp or I'm just wasting time in that regard. But I've been hesitating because I don't know which discipline to train in first. Hoping for some insight from the experienced merchants.

First, Efficiency: I keep hearing that it's either totally bugged anyway, or that when working properly (assuming it ever is) that the amounts you save are miniscule. Seems a waste to spend xp if I'm only saving enough money to buy an extra unit of steel per month. Then again, if they fix all the vendor maintenance costs and they are insanely high, and this really does lower them, maybe it would be a good investment.

Second, Extra Merchants: I don't know. We're a small village and I don't really have contacts yet to be placing merchants in any far off places. And with the placement of vendors in other people's houses bugged (except the machines) what's the point? I *guess* if I'm getting faster xp for having three merchants instead of two, I could stick a second one in my house. But I don't think I'm doing my customers much of a service saving them a fifteen foot walk back to my entry hall.

Third, Advertising: This one sounded the *most* appealing to me, but I keep hearing that barking is broken, that the vendor only barks for a short time and stops. Another report said the vendor shut down after that. Yikes! And the second level, customized barking, sounded fantastic, but now I see posts saying that it doesnt' work at all. If the high level advertising really makes you show up on the planetary map, it would put our village on that map to draw more people, so I'd consider it worth it, but does it work? Anyone done it? I've yet to see one appear on my planetary map on Talus.

Last, more vendor options: Ironically, this one originally seemed like the most frivolous and useless of the three when I first read about them, but now it's looking the most viable. I mean, if the other disciplines are completely broken, why not have fun with a better looking vendor?

I'd like to train these points tonight, so any feedback from you seasoned veterans would be welcome.

I have efficiency 1& 2

Efficiency 1 reduces bazaar fees by 20% *Sigh*

Efficiency 2 DOES reduce vendor maintennace but I have no idea how much - I still have pre fix NPC merchants who's maintenance went down from 1 to 0 when I trained Eff 2 - No idea what the real effect is (I am hoping 50%, but I bet it's more like 20%)

Planetary advertising does aparantly work at tier 3 - however your vendor will disapear from the planetary map each time their is server downtime, so it will not show up until you log in and re-list it...

Some people say the XP rate is related to teh number of merchants you have activated, but I personally dissagre.. That would just be silly. (although stranger things have and will happen in this game)..

HIring ??? Hmm well who knows whats happening there..

personally Im going to probably go like this

Efficiency 1& 2 (Already Trained)

Management to 4 (Just in case the XP gain is true

Advertising to 4

Efficiency to 4

Hiring to 4

Master ( In about 2 years )

I see Hiring is at the bottom of your list. (That's the one with more options on the appearance of the vendor, right?) Does it do anything else? I mean do the vendors get *better* at anything, if that's even possible, or do you just keep getting more options as to what they look like but they still work pretty much the same both from your and the customer's interface?

So far, I've been putting all my XP into Efficiency, with the following rationale:

Extra Merchants: Can't see myself needing any, at least not anytime soon.

Hiring: Would be OK, but because of bugs, there's no way to switch vendors without laboriously unloading every single item from my current vendor and reloading it into the new one, so no thanks for now.

Advertising: Tempting, but since it seems largely broken, I'll pass.

Efficiency: I'm expecting them to "fix" the almost-free NPC vendors soon, and I expect that when they do, they'll really put the squeeze on merchants with an excruciatingly high, vendor maintenance fee.

Basically, the way I look at it, everything else falls into some variant of "Nice, but non-essential, and buggy anyhow" category, and Efficiency falls into the "Might make the difference between the devs destroying my business or being able to make a meager profit" category.

Avoid Advertising.... it is bugged and worthless right now.
I wish I would have known before I invested all my xp into it.

C O R E .. R E S O U R C E S
E N E R G Y .. M I N E R A L S .. C H E M I C A L S .. G A S .. W A T E R .. O R G A N I C S

C H I L A S T R A ......... T A L U S ......... A V I A N .. C I T Y ......... W P : - 6 0 5 0 ...35 0

I have Ad 3, hire 3, and vendor 3. I have use for each tree except eff. Eff doesn't seem do do much except save you a few bucks which is pointless right now since most merchants have plenty of cash. Ad3 has made be 3 times what eff would have saved me in new customers from plantary map. vendor 3 is great so I can organize my stuff on vendors and have them seen better on plantary map. Hiring 3 is so I can have unique vendors no one else has and thus customers alays want to come to me to see what cool vendors I'll have out next. But ofcourse this is only my 2 cents.

I dunno, XCal, Sue Denim's words ring true to me. The devs may take four years to fix the stuff that is hurting merchants, but if they are aware that we are spending even one credit less than they think we should to do business, I can see that rushing stright to the top of the nerf list. And if the merchant fees are so crushing they put me out of business, I'm thinking that having 4 levels of 20% fee recuction may be the only way to remain viable.

Hrmmm... something to ponder on the way home.

The other thing is that they might take the approach of "Billionaire crafter/merchants are a problem, so let's give vendors a price high enough that a billionaire will feel the pinch." Which would be a price high enough to put any crafter/merchant who isn't a weaponsmith, armorsmith, or architect out of business immediately.

I'm sure this isn't their intention, but so far, most of their decisions would be consistent with a design philosophy of "punish tailors as severely as possible for making that career choice."

I would go with hiring and put up more vendors. More vendors = More experience