Merchant Archive

...the 4th longest grind in the game. Grrrrr

1. Politician
2. Jedi (Knight-ready full template)
3. Force Sensitive (6 full branches for exit quest)
4. All you money-grubbing bean counters reading this!!

It's not too bad. Just place as many vendors as you possibly can. Go up the management tree first so that you get more vendors faster. You get xp per hour per vendor that you have placed. So just place vendors, sit back and play the game however you want to (or log off), and you'll soon be rolling in xp. I mastered merchant with only about 1/2 hour of play time (was busy with school at that time, only logged in to train).

The funny thing is that it is a lot faster than it used to be with all the extra vendors that got added last year.

Oh I completely agree that it's easy. It's sinfully easy, to be honest -- one need only wait and be patient.

...neither of which am I very good at.

Any other profession can be mastered in the course of a few hours to not more than a few days. Merchant takes around 2 weeks and there's no (legal) way to speed it up. I suppose you could have a few guildies using 3rd party macros to automatically list one of your vendors every 10.5 minutes, but I'm sure noooooobody here would stoop so low just for some extra xp...

?

My point is that this prof takes time to master and is gaited by the player's patience rather than his abilities as a player. Indeed, one need not play at all. This is for my 34th and final profession badge, and of *course* it had to be unnaturally long, grrr!

The lack of "risk" for the merchant grind is offset by the time gate so it's balanced.
Your very best bet for getting merchant xp is to have a popular vendor.
I was one of the lucky ones that mastered it WAY back when you still got xp for making sales.

3rd party programs are not required for your friends to help you. It can be done completely within the in-game macro system.

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Jer_Jedi wrote:

If I were to place each vendor in a different house would I get more exp then all 4 in the same house? Do you get more exp per item on the vendor?

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No.
You get a flat 150xp/hour per vendor IF your vendor is at 100% condition.
You will also get xp every time someone looks in one of your vendors but you can only get xp from the same person once every 10 minutes.

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Jer_Jedi wrote:

Right now my Alt Shipwright / Merchant has 4 vendors going. Onevendor has just a single item on it. If I were to place each vendor in a different house would I get more exp then all 4 in the same house? Do you get more exp per item on the vendor? Thanks for any response.

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You get xp 3 ways:
1) xp per hour per vendor (a significant amount). This is the easiest and most reliable way.
2) entrance fees on the buildings. You don't get much xp this way.
3) You get a little xp every time someone uses your vendor. There's a time limit though. You only get xp once per 10 minutes or so per person. But if you have a busy shop with lots of people using your vendor, this can be significant.

The only way putting vendors in several houses would help is if you put entrance fees on the houses and had people run to each house every 10 minutes and pay the fees. This turns out to be a pretty inefficient way to get xp though. You don't get xp for the items you have on the vendor (as long as you have at least 1), or for the price of the items, or even for how many sell.

Your best bet is to place lots of vendors and wait. If you have a popular shop with lots of people initializing your vendor, then that may be a good way to make xp too.

You can power grind merchant if you wand to. You just need to get loads and loads of customers coming to your shop. 50 XP per costumer that broses your vendor can become a lot if you have loads of costumers, 200 a day means 10.000 xp a day.
Of cause that means you actuarially have to be a good merchant and sell stuff that everyone want ad at prices that make people change to you as opposed to buy from thair regular supplier.
Ironically patience is what you need to be a good merchant, you put stuff up for sail and wait for the customer to come to you. So that it is required to level is only fitting.

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Elyssa wrote:

Actually, it's probably the easiest grind.

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I'm going to have to invoke ID here. ID takes no resources, is insanely simple, but can be finished from novice ent to master in about 2 1/2 hours. Other than that, I'd say yes, Merchant is extremely simple. Just slow. =)