Merchant Archive

I am a smuggler that also is looking to gain some merchant skills. Only problem is there simply is not enough skill points to allow me to take more than one branch of the merchant skills. So, my question is which of the four branches is the most useful. I don't think the add a vendor one is that important, but what about the other 3? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

The extra vendors are I think the only useful skillset. Other than that, I'd stick with novice or if you have the points advertising3 to get on the global map.

Efficiency is only 20% and if you're doing that much in sales that's such a trivial amount, but that's a big "if" because if vendor costs on NPCs change to that of the bizbox and droids that might turn out to be the most valuable.

Hiring I think is a zip and I'm a tailor where looks are important, but it's easy enough to "dial for dollars" and keep rerolling vendors until you get something acceptable.

Don't discount extra vendors, you may need them someday and unlike efficiency and the others, extra vendors is a MUST. If you want a third shop, you need a vendor. You can't make do.

To a smuggler, I'm not sure... but to me, Advertising III was by far the best skill. Within 5 minutes of putting my vendor on the map, I had 3 customers show up, say "I saw your store on the map..." and buy from me. Before I was on the map, I was struggling to get by, now I have trouble keeping my vendors full of items.

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A lot depends on what your overall goals are. For me, I don't envision ever having more than one shop, so additional vendors is kinda useless for me. Hiring's nice in theory, but the extreme difficulty and hassle of changing one high-volume vendor for another makes it a low priority for me. Advertising's also nice in theory, but largely broken in practice. For me, Efficiency's number one. 20% discounts are nothing to sneeze at, and I'm also working under the assumption that, best case scenario, NPC vendors are gonna be as expensive to run as a big structure. Worst case (and one that looks not too improbable to me), they'll raise the price of NPC vendors to exorbitant levels because it looks like a good way to drain money from the economy, and that 20% might be the difference between bankruptcy and being able to eke out a meager profit while waiting weeks or months for the crippling changes to be fixed.