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Keldun

All About Traders

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So, the wiki is a little short on information about how traders actually work and my understanding of the topic is a bit fuzzy. So I decided to start this thread to collect the infoation, this is what I heard sofar:

Traders deal with two groups of items: player made and special items.

When a trader is created the creator can set a tax rate of up to 40%.

He starts out with only 1 Silver and several special items.

Player made items

The game uses a list of base prices defined by type of item and quality. You can querry that value with the "get price" option.

A trader uses this base price and modifies it by some supply and demand values.

When he sells an item, he tajes this modified price plus a little gain(?) plus taxes.

When he buys something he subtracts gain and taxes.

In both cases taxes go to the deed.

Once in a while an invisible Kingdom trader comes along to take some items and bring money. This trade isn't necessarily equal though and depends on the success of the trader. Apparently a very successful trader can receive good items in addition to the money as well.

Special items

Those are not affected by tax.

They are never bought back.

When the trader sells one of these items he keeps some money and sends some money to the king. The ratio is different from item to item.

Transmutation wand: 50S Cost, 38S go to the King, 12S remain with the trader.

Settlement form, Merchant and Trader contract: Everyone claims all money goes to the King and the stuff is not affected by tax, so why do trade owners sell these contracts for less?

So that's all i found out so far, can anyone add more information or correct mistakes if there are any?

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This needs to be done. It seem people want to keep specifics out of the public view. I think this game would be better if more things where explained.

-- Making trades with a trader that is a citizen in your village will not incur taxes. Taxes are only applied when the trader deals with a foreigner.

-- I'm pretty sure all trader special items except settlement forms have 25% of the price stay on the merchant. That 25% counts as income earned for the trader. The remaining 75% apparently goes to the king and has no effect on the traders business (ratio anyway). All funds from settlement forms go to the king and the sale of them appears to have no affect on a trader.

-- Using Path of Knowledge, Get Info(level 1), on the trader, you can get information about the trader's business.

It might look like this event line, "[15:44:10] Economic breakdown this period: Earned=122042, spent=355227 Ratio=0.3435606."

Earned is actual coins the trader receives, spent is actual coins the trader pays out, and ratio is a measurement of cash inflows to outflows from the trader's perspective. Traders need to have a cash inflow that's at least 10% of outflows to continue receiving funds from the king. Earned divided by spent needs to exceed 0.1.

-- Every month (I think its 28 RL days) the traders ratio resets to 0. This is the same day your merchant contracts reset on.

-- "[02:29:24] Trader_Jill sells some items to an envoy from the ruler." That is a line from event when the trader receives a visit form the king. I haven't studied it closer to see if money is given then or items are taken off the trader.

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All of the money from the sales of player made items stay on the trader. This means you can buy back to reset the rato to .1 and all the money stays there for the next time. It also means you can drain it down to almost nothing and still have a good ratio. I can give you a step by step guide thing for setting up a new trader so everyone can see it. I am not sure i am doing it "right" and i don't crunch numbers but am going on what i was told and a few years experience.

1: Buy the trader contract:
Like was said there will be 25% of that money left behind so you need to make enough items to be able to drain the 12s 50c back from him before you go get it or buy one from a player for 40-42s

2: Set the trader up:
You can test a tile and see if the trader will work there before you build anything by using the manage trader by right click on the trader form. As long as you are not inside of a house it will not set the trader and will give you one of two messages. If you get a message that you need to set up in a house then you are fine but if you get a message that trader-(name) will not let you set up then you are too close to another trader and need to find another spot.

Once you find a spot that will work you need to build a 3x3 house there and place the trader in the center tile of that 3x3 house. If you place it along the wall of a building it can still be accessed by someone even in a locked house if they use the target window just right.

3: Setting the tax:
Now the tax that the trader earns will only be relevant to people that are not in your village. If they are a member of the deed the trader belongs to he will not charge them a tax even if it is set to max.

When you are setting up the trader it becomes a member of the deed that the person setting the trader belongs to even if it is not the deed your setting him up at. (Brookhaven has 10 traders as members of the deed even though only three of them are on that deed.)

oY3Am.jpg



4: Priming the trader to earn money from the king:
The trader starts with 1s and a ratio of 0 you need to prime the trader to get his ratio set to .1 or above. I do this by selling it a few things like rope/pelts/herbs anything that he will buy just make sure that you buy back 10% so the ratio is at .1 So say you sell it 80c worth of rope you need to buy back at least 8c worth of the rope for the ratio to be at .1 (when i buyback i use 20% just to be safe and most people will not have the "get information" skill when they first get started so it is best to do 20% to be safe.)

5: Get Information:
This is the skill you use to check the ratio of the trader it can be cast every 18 hours and is a level 4 skill in Path of Knowledge while the trader is earning money the first month you need to be working on getting this skill. (takes about 2 weeks to get it and any f2p alt can get it just look it up in the wiki)

6: Trader resets:
Every trader on a server will get a ratio reset every month and you will need to get the ratio back to .1 before it starts earning again. I think it is every 28 rl days but i am not 100% on that. i just check my traders every day or so with the get information skill when i know it is getting close to the reset time. That is why the skill is so important to get as soon as you can. It might even be worth getting the skill before you even get the trader to start with.

Now the trader only started with the kingdom items and nothing player made except the few things that were sold by you from the start so you need to load it up with small stuff so you will have items to buy back every time. I use necklaces but anything you are good at making will work as long as it has value. Okay lets say you have checked the ratio with your new skill and see that it has been reset to zero. Now you sell it items and you drain it and get 26s 67c 34i out of it (i round it to the nearest copper) so now (20% of 26s 68c = 5s 34c) so you will need to buy back at least 5s 34c worth of player made items from him and you should get it back to .2 ratio. Now you can turn around and do this again as he as that 5s 34c still on him that you just gave him so lets do it again and say you get him to buy 5s 15c this time so (20% of 5s 15c = 1s 3c) you can just keep doing this and as long as you buy back 20% you can get all the money back you have to use to buy back.

After you get the hang of it and have enough small stuff to buy back i start using god statues at 50ql they bring about 20s each and i wait till they can buy two of them at 40s funny thing is the trader sells them for about 28s so you can use that to your advantage..

2x statues 39s 57c (20% of 39s 57c = 7s 92c)

I take a third statue and sell it to him while buying one from him for 28s so he ends up asking me for 8s more and that is what i needed to give him to reset the ratio anyway. This way i get a statue back and don't have to spend all my time making necklaces all day i can make 30-40 statues and it takes care of all the traders i have.

I am sure there are other things/ways to work it but that is how i do it. It would be interesting in seeing other peoples ways of doing it. Sorry if this is long and hard to understand but i am not the best at making long post like this...heh

Edit: looks like someone posted some of the stuff before i got done with my wall of text, lol

Edited by Kegan

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The crazy thing is if you get enough traders going.. You make yourself a rather handsome pile of silver and never need to pay cash for the game.

Edited by puncher

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The crazy thing is if you get enough traders going.. You make yourself a rather handsome pile of silver and never need to pay cash for the game.

Thing is if you sell the coin and buy the time from the store it is cheaper and helps the game too. You can get one year for 50e that is less then what one gold sells for and you get 12 months. Even the 10e for 2 months its a little cheaper but doing it all at once would make it easier to mess with. (If you buy /refers it is about the same price but /refers are not a for sure thing.)

Edited by Kegan

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Should make this a guide post and sticky it, even with it being explained so often, having it in a public place would help a lot.

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I was always up in the air about how the traders work but as long as someone buys the coin to start with then i guess it is fine. The average user will not likely stay long enough to see a profit from them anyway. At least now they vanish when a deed disbands that helps some but if they were to change them i am not sure i would stay playing if i had to play out of my pocket for the game. Don't get me wrong i spent a great deal getting it all started i think like $400 USD.

It would be interesting to see what people are getting each month looks like joebodo got 35s from his i am guessing that is on Celebration?

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This is very interesting to see the details of how the trader buys and payouts function. Although I don't use them myself, nor even object to others using them to fund their game time, make coins to sell for RL money or coins to use to purchase in game items from other players, I don't see how this really benifits the game; but rather just benifits the players who purchase them and understand how to set them up for the most payouts of coin back to them. This all just takes away RL money from Rolf's pocket that the playerbase would otherwise have to purchase directly from him rather than the players who sell the coins they make from traders by undercutting Rolf's shop coin prices. The thing is though, there was another thread when this drawback was pointed out to him and he said that he was ok with this and how traders functioned; so any loss of income is consented to by himself and the responsibility borne by him alone, as I see it.

=Ayes=

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I've found squares of cloth are the easiest and best way of stocking up stuff to sell. If you've got cotton coming in by the loads, just spend some time spindling some strings, then spam some squares of cloth. I've got thousands of 65ql string bulked made simply by a priest starting out with 1.00 cloth tailoring from 70+ql crap spare cotton we didn't need, and 65ql squares are worth roughly 1.6 silver.

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To get silver off a trader I had a whole bunch of 50 ql Iron lamps. I forget what they got but it sure worked well.

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The more traders there are on a server, the less each trader will receive from the king. Due to this post, everyone can expect less income from their traders.

  • Cat 1

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It has all been posted before and most of the players that play long term already know anyway. The ones that don't know don't last long and quit so i don't see that it will change anything. if there is a huge amount of traders placed because of this then that means there will also be a bunch of new deeds as well making more upkeep funds available to split.

  • Like 3

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About two years ago when I first started to work the trader ratio I was able to drain 30-40s per month from the trader. Now it's down to about 15s per month.

I don't go with the 10% scheme as Kegan described. When the trader resets I buy a bunch of small stuff for about 15s (like rings) from the trader. I drain the money with one statuette for about 15s and get a ratio of about 1.0. This is enough so I don't have to worry about the ratio for the next month. During the month I drain whatever money is on the trader with the rings I bought on the start of the period.

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I personally use silver rings for everyday milking of my trader. All rings I'm making from low QL silver, none improving, just finish them is enough (in jewelry smithing 50+). All ql are usefull from ql 2 to 30+. After reset, I buy and sell back best ring or two, it is usually enough for good ratio for rest of month.

Even while personal trader is usefull for keep bank account healthy, do not expect more than 8-13s from trader per month these days. Most of my silvers comes from hard work shipbuilding and trader is only fuse for times, when ship market is unstable.

Edited by Zakerak

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I don't crunch the numbers or track anything on my traders but there are a few things i have heard and i think that is the real questions i would like to know..

1: Does having a higher ratio give you a larger cut in the funds? (i have seen people say this but i have never noticed it myself)

2: Does the amount the trader sells effect anything? (this one i'm not sure on what do you think?)

3: Do all the traders on the server receive the same amount of funds or is there something that helps them get more?

4: Does selling more Kingdom items earn you a larger cut?

I guess stuff like this would be more interesting to know then anything else.

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I think this guide is great as public knowledge - if everyone did this then all of the public traders would:

a) have money every 2nd day or whatever

b] actually pay some taxes to the upkeep of the deed that paid for them!

Edited by Shiraek

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If everyone did this, everyone would get a teeny tiny slice of the kingdoms money and it would all be pointless.

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What really becomes interesting is people that then take the silver they make off traders and plant more traders..

Thus making it less for the other guys but by percentage making it more for them..

Spreading over more and more servers in order to gain more and more silver.

Somebody did it right they could seriously make a dent in what silver everybody else gets and get more themselves.

I know it sounds nuts.. but this is wurm.. This is MADNESS..

  • Like 2

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I don't crunch the numbers or track anything on my traders but there are a few things i have heard and i think that is the real questions i would like to know..

1: Does having a higher ratio give you a larger cut in the funds? (i have seen people say this but i have never noticed it myself)

2: Does the amount the trader sells effect anything? (this one i'm not sure on what do you think?)

3: Do all the traders on the server receive the same amount of funds or is there something that helps them get more?

4: Does selling more Kingdom items earn you a larger cut?

I guess stuff like this would be more interesting to know then anything else.

Think the only thing that impacts the "cut" each trader gets is the number of traders and the coin value of server(s) "pool". With the fluctuations in deeds and active/eligable traders on each server, would be difficult to prove if the ratio is actually doing anything or if it was just lucky timing that more traders dropped off the list that time.

What really becomes interesting is people that then take the silver they make off traders and plant more traders..

Thus making it less for the other guys but by percentage making it more for them..

Spreading over more and more servers in order to gain more and more silver.

Somebody did it right they could seriously make a dent in what silver everybody else gets and get more themselves.

I know it sounds nuts.. but this is wurm.. This is MADNESS..

There are already folks and alliances doing this.. take that post with 10 traders as an example...

Edited by Hussars

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yea i have ten traders in/around my deed but i pay more then 50s a month upkeep too unlike most that use 1s deeds to do it.

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Didn't mean to seem like I was throwing you under the bus.. was just saying people do it, and used your post as an example.

Personally, I've never had a problem with people doing this, I only object when someone claims they do it for anything other than farming silver while they continue to sell coin in the WTS or Auction forums. I personally still feel if this was the intent of traders, Rolf should just offer a subscription service that provides X silver for some set amount per month...

That said, I'm glad more people are sharing the information since those who do this long term continue to pay into the system in some manner. Yes I know if you do it long enough it is "free" silver, which leads to those who try it and only do it short term, since they cause nice spikes in the economy.

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yea i have ten traders in/around my deed but i pay more then 50s a month upkeep too unlike most that use 1s deeds to do it.

Wow, and how much you can drain monthly ?

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Idk i spend it faster then i get it sending most of it back out in the game but i do sell a coin here and there. I never have put it down on paper and i just got this set up done. (i will know in a month but i guess it should be 1.5 to 2g??)

Edit: Dont think it is just a free ride i spent a lot to get it going i would say i have 8-9g invested in it. The traders alone would cost you 4g and Brookhaven cost me like 2.5g to set up not counting Nature Preserve and Nature Reserve deeds. It is not something that the average player would ever want/need but i plan on playing for many years.

Edited by Kegan
  • Like 2

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So if I just need trader for unkeep (primary) it would be worth it ? For long time

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Sure if you plan on playing for more then 3 months that is about the time it takes to earn the money back you spend on the trader.

Edited by Kegan

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