Merchant Archive

My current Merchant stats:

3/0/4/4

I can put clothes on my vendors and have a nice selection to chose from. Also, I can do Planetary ads.

What are the benefits to becoming master merchant other than lower vendor fees?

None... Seriously... None at all. We can all thank sony for creating a worthless class that only gives us a 20% savings on efficiency costs by becomming Masters.

Shoot. I have over 60,000 unused Merchant exp too. Oh well.

Ugh we are not completely worthless. Don't listen to nay sayers. I'm a master merchant. I'll tell you one good advantage, if you train the efficiency line, at skill 4 you get a 20% reduction to maint. costs on all buildings you own. As for the actual master skill, you get another reduction in vendor fee's. Personally, mastering merchant boosted my profits in the game by 200%. There is a point to becomming master, however, if you are not a crafter of some type, I would not encourage it. I would strongly encourage training efficiency tho.

I became a Master (yesterday) for the title if nothing else. I expect to make a lot of contacts just by having the title. I have received several tells of the character search already.

It all really depends on what you want out of your gaming time. We get no master crafted high-demand items to make. We get no special combat master moves to sway battles. We get no grand master heals or poisons to save the day for our comrades. We don't get that third pet, or to always slice for success. But we do get a name, a title, and that may or may not be everything to a certain individual. This is a make-believe game for imaginary goals. 3 million imaginary credits, winning an imaginaryfishing tournament, slaying an imaginary kryat or being an imaginary field commander are all just as valid goals as the imaginary title Master Merchant if you are having fun.

If you study the merchant skill benefits closely, you may notice they are based onrather real-world profit margins whererazor-thin profits are norm and selling for 2% less gets you the sale and your competetors out of business. Obviously a Sony bookkeeper was consulted in creating this class.

We have played the past months in the economy of 1000% profit. That time is mostly passed for us except for trendy items. Vendors were just a snazy way to display and sell items while you tended to real life.

We now play in the economy of 50% - 300% profit. Vendors are having to become a bit more creative, and a bit wiser it how they are used.

If, a really big IF, game prices ever reached real-world margins, then many of the cost savings that the merchant skills receive would shine brightly. The "artisans receiving aterminal vendor" disagreement would no longer be a sore spot for some, forthoseartisanscould not hope to compete with merchants in that kind of market. But we don't have to put real food on the table. We already "sleep"homeless in strange cities. No one has to be a chef or a medic or a harvester salesman because it was the only job they could find to pay the real bills. So it is doubtful the game economics will ever get that low. I don't know if that kind of reality would be good for a fun game anways. Most game economies are totally wacked, something is either worth nothing, a littleor everything depending on the fad of the month.

Hey, but who knows what's ahead for us?I'm having a blast as Master Merchant. Met some really nice folks along the way, have a good time and got stinking rich without having topull my blaster unless I wanted too.

So if you pass a well dressed, politebothan with his droid secretary or forklift along and wonder why he is smiling while dancing the fine line between Rebles and Imperials, just chalk it up to glitteringcrafting stations & Lok Wheat futures and perhaps a very different opinion of fun from the same game you play.

I hope you have fun no mater how many merchant skills you end up with.

Don't get me WRONG. I love being a master merchant... reminds me of me in real life. The only difference is, in real life I can negotiate maintance fees to MUCH lower rates then 20% savings.

The efficiency skills REALLY don't do all that much. Advertising is just as important as Management (which is good for adding experience until you've got what you want then destroy the useless vendors) and Hiring would be better if it wasn't broken... I mean REALLY BROKEN!

I'm actually in the same boat. I wanted to get my store on the map, and want to dress my vendors, but beyond that, is there anything at all worthwhile in the whole merchant tree? geez, like 90% of the tree, including master seems completely worthless to me.