Merchant Archive
Thread: Tale of a Holo-Merchant
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BrandonMontana
Mon Dec 08, 2003 10:58 am
#1
This will be long and probably boring but I just needed to get it out. I've always like Star Wars. The movies the extended universe everything. I was always amazed on how a single person orcreature who might have a 3 second shot in the movie could have such a detailed background created for them. When I heard that Galaxies was going to be come out I did some research and saw how wonderful the scenery and creatures looked and decided I was going to be a Ranger / Creature Handler. Spend the days out in the wilds hunting critters for pets and food. This play style worked great for me. I had a ton of fun spending the days just roaming around just taking in the sites and watching the animals. I had a little cabin out in the wilds of Corellia a 10 minute run from the nearest town. I spent most of my time on Dath hunting big spiders and Rancors. I had a little nest egg so things were good. The only time I went into town was for travel and the occasional healing of BF. I was a solo PVE king. Any animalunder a Krayt could be brought down by me with the help of my pets given the time to effectively work some strategy in. I hardly ever interacted with other players unless it was to rescue them when they were in a little over there head or to sell my Insect meat and Rancor hides.
Then the dreaded holocrons started dropping. Dark Troopers and Force Senstives are dropping these things to give you Jedi. The temptation was to much. To be a Jedi the pinnacle of all things Star Wars. The last time I took on a humanoid I was a novice marksman with no creature pets so I decidedly got my kiester kicked, so as a habit I always stayed away from them. But to be a Jedi I needed toloot them. So I went to Dant to look for Force Sensitive's killed a couple but no holocrons. Then I ran into the mess that is Dant. Campers, kill stealers and all around rude people. So I did some research and found out the you could generate Dark Trooper missions from Corelllia. So I started the Gram Mission cycle. I started dropping my Ranger Skills to get more pistol to make my Trooper hunting easier. I totally lucked out and got a holocron on my 96th Dark Trooper. I was so shocked and exited telling everyone I knew who was online at the time that I didn't even notice that a group of people came in and cleared out the rest of my mission. I guess you can't escape kill stealers anywhere. All my friends were saying to use it to see what it tells me I need to do. Looking back now that wasn't so smart since I was only 4 boxes from Master Pistoleer and it would have been a waste for it to tell me that, but I didn't know then what I know now. My friends were joking about me going to have to become a Dancer or Musician and sit in the cantina all day which I thought would be horrible. Just sitting there not being able to get out and go do things, yikes that would be the worst. So I used the Sith triangle and got for absolute power you must master Merchant. Merchant now that doesn't sound to bad. I sell hides and meat all the time this could be good.
So I decided I would finish up Pistoleer first, try to get a few more holocrons, and find out as much as I can about being a merchant while doing it. So I started reading the Merchant forum. I read as much as I could and did searches for what I could think of that might I might need to know. Draznar your merchant guide is absolutely awesome. Every profession needs one of these guides of absolute knowledge. One of the best pieces of advise that I got from the guide and everyone's posts was that the best way to get merchant xp was to make something people wanted so they would come to your store. Words to live by. So I started hanging out more in the city actually talking with strangers and other players. This was fun, usually I was out in the wilds only talking to my pets. I found from hanging out at the Starport that resources and StimB's were good sellers for lowly crafters without the master Weapon smith or Master Armor smith title. So I again researched and found the highest quality stuff for StimB's and set up harvesters for that and some of the more common resources that I saw people in the starport asking for. I also came to a couple of conclusions. This was not going to be fast and my house in the middle of no where is a bad, bad idea.
So I started looking for a place to set up a shot withlots of foot traffic. I figured CNet was the place to be. That town is always full of people and there seemed to be lots of commerce going on there. So I started looking for a place to put up a shop. I'm not sure about other servers butCNet onStarSiderhas a house ring around it that is unreal. I figured I was going to have to try and buy someone's existing house and the few people I contacteddidn't want to saleand the one who did wanted 10 million.But, as luck would have it this was just before the city and mount patch. While readinginfo here on this forum a little piece of information jumped out at me.The rules for putting a house on a slopewill be relaxed. Wow, this was it. This was how I was going to get my shop in a prime location. I scouted around and 650 meters south of the starport,rightwhere the houses start there was avalley with houses on the topand one on the bottom. Checking it out a small house will fit right on the slope. So each day I would logout sittingon the edge of the valley hoping the patch was the next day. Then the day of the patch. Hours, and hours of waiting for the servers to come up, just dreading and hoping that no one else had thought of my ideaand would beat me to my spot. Servers came up and I placed myhouse. Now I was one step closer, I just needed to set up a vender and get something to sale.
At this time I was one box away from Master Gunfighter so I finished it up and was now ready to throw myself at merchant full time. I went from not even Novice Artisan to business 4 in a day grinding out more bofa treats than I care to imagine. I set up my first vender and was ready to sale resources while I tried to get my stimB's up to a point where someone might want to buy one. I started putting resources on the bazaar with advertising to my house saying that they were cheaper out there. It was amazing. I would sell out on the bazaar in a day,but no one would ever go out to the house, and then when one person did they bought everything I had. So now I was out of resources to sale and was getting no traffic, what is a poor aspiring merchant to do? So back to the forums to see what others did. Give away holocrons in raffles, didn't have any spares laying around for this. Raffle off some super rare pet, good idea but the best I had are some BioE Rancors and Gurrecks. Then it dawned on me after I trained my 20th mount that day. Mounts were something people wanted. So I created a vender with the rules of buy a ticket every 50th ticket I sell based on email confirmation gets a free mount. This way people wouldn't have to wait weeks and weeks to see who won the ultra rare item, and your odds of getting something was much better, 1 in 50 as opposed to 1 in 100's or thousands. Well I thought this was a good idea but after a week I had only sold 30 tickets and half of those were to friends. During this time I was still moving up the Management tree just like Draznar's guide told me. The xp per hour went up as well, 300, 600 and then the 900. Things were still slow but I was still having fun. Running out to check harvesters on Lok and Dathallowed me tostillgo out and see things however it was quite a switch to now trying to move around all reds instead of just taking them out for resources. No marksmanship is tough when you are use to Master Gunfighter. And something else you just don't get invited to join hunting groups with Novice Merchant as a title as apposed to Master Creature Handler.
I was still trying the resource option as well, when ever someone in town wtb a resource that I had, I told them I had it and would sell it for a discount if they would come out to my shop. I was constantly turned down saying they would only buy it if I came to them. I still find this amazing. How come people will not leavetown? I was almost to advertising 3 when I finally started making decent stimB's 320 power 28 charges 800-1000 a piece. Still not many buyers even though the vender was fully stocked. Then on Last Friday afternoon everything changed. I had my 50th ticket sold that morning so I gave away my first mount. I realized that 50 was way to long and dropped it down to every 20 tickets. Then I hit advertising 3. I registered my resource, my med, and my free mount vender. That night I had over 50 visitors, sold out my med vender, almost all my resources and sold 30 mount tickets. For all of you out there advertising works great. I'm not sure if it was the vender on the overhead map or the look up on the global map but I am getting the foot traffic that I need now. I went from 3/0/0/4 to 4/1/2/4 in three days, have given out 4 additional mounts. That is even with 8 hours on Sunday not giving me any xp at all, even though I was sitting in my house next to my venders AFK.
So that is where I stand now. Hopefully this foot traffic pace keeps up for a while longer. But I'm not going to be to sad if it doesn't, I can wait as long as I get the xp from my six venders. This has been fun and very informative. The interacting with all the real people is a blast. I still get a kick out of players talking back to my venders with their canned greetings. And helping out new players with some supplies and advise has been very rewarding since they usually come back to my shop to help with my xp as well. And probably the most shocking thing I've discovered is that there is no price normalization at all in this game. I swear a person could make a livening just buying water at resource venders for 2-3 cr/u and sell it on the bazaar at 5-6. And even on the bazaar I will put the same stuff at 3cr/u and 4 cr/u and the 4 will sell first. I guess people are to lazy to just browse around and find the best deals.
Thank you all who read all the way through this long post of stuff you already probably know. I have enjoyed this profession but after master will be letting it go, but I hope that this doesn't upset you true merchants and masters to much. Hopefully the thought that I learned a lot from this and was not one of those how can I grind this in a day posters will ease the frustration a little. I agree you guys needmore perks do to the skill points required. I think an extra couple of lots or so scattered around in your tree would be something that you deserve. So in parting to you masters, I salute you for your dedication on staying in a profession with lots of skill points where at 3/0/0/0 you are almost aspowerful as master. And to all of you starting out in merchant my advise is find a good location for a shop, sell something people want, come up with a gimmick and decorate accordingly, and get planetary advertising as soon as you can.
BrandonMontana
Ex-Ranger, Ex-Gunfighter, struggling Merchant
Viq
Mon Dec 08, 2003 6:21 pm
#3
I swear a person could make a livening just buying water at resource venders for 2-3 cr/u and sell it on the bazaar at 5-6. And even on the bazaar I will put the same stuff at 3cr/u and 4 cr/u and the 4 will sell first.
This is so true! One time I was carrying a stack of about 47k of a really nice Class 4 Liquid Petro and another stack of 47k of really low PE wind energy. I accidently listed 7500 units of the wind energy on the bazaar when I meant to do the liquid petro but I didn't notice... until the next day when I logged in to find the e-mails telling me some clue-impaired person had bought all of it!
Mo-Ti
Mon Dec 08, 2003 7:18 pm
#5
I read that all the way through. I think its actually i great story. 
I hope you have fun with whatever ya do.
Tigershark34
Wed Dec 10, 2003 1:25 am
#6
Thanks for the refreshing post. It is nice to hear that instead of how do I get to master in a day.
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