Zal has been an Artisan for a good long time now, and he owns a cartel. Designing is fun, but now I don't have the time for it, nor is the 5k gold drain per design appealing. Also, seeing as how I don't have that much time in the realms now, I don't get jobs, meaning the trade skill is earning 0 money. I also have never sold a single one of my own designs; I don't mind, but it's just a sign that designing is not a profitable venture, and is done only out of personal pleasure.

So, I've been considering switching to herbalism. It's pure profit, at the cost of being an utterly mindless trade. I'm a shopkeeper though, and would need herbs to stock and to refill kegs. Still wouldn't have too much time in the realms, but at least harvesting one herb translates directly to gold, and herbs are slightly (much?) easier to sell than artisan goods.

I'd still keep the cartel, and still keep it completely closed to outsiders; I'd still design once in a while, but that means the designs are either completely closed off for sale (and for purely personal pleasure only), or perhaps extremely rare to get (which would make little difference in their demand, I'm sure).

The question then is, do the costs of herbalism (changing trade w/o buying OOC creds to retrans, mindnumbingness of the trade, no creativity or thinking needed) outweigh the utter blah that is artisan (many time-worn complaints about the trade, personal designs that don't sell, lack of trade overall)

I voted for you to go herbs. When you do, you should induct me, and make me your trademaster, so I can design MOAR STUFFZ.

Make a crap load of kegs as an artisan. Then switch to herbs.

Yes.

Make me kegs, then get me herbs. I have a nice big 100K sitting around waiting for a nice little person to help me unload this great burden.

I plan to do that actually. Make a whole big stockpile of portable artisan stuff that I can hide away in my shop, if I do make the change. Which means a whole lotta kegs, pipes, some boxes...

(Does Celest let people take out new shop leases easily? Hm...)

Take it from someone who's been every trade and is always switching...go herbs. Makes a lot of more gold than artisan. And you can still TM when you're not an artisan (I TM for five cartels as a poisonist.)

Artisans rawk! Stay artisan. Just think of all the manual replanting and mindless harvesting... and keeping track of the months. Yeah, stick with artisan.





(We don't need anymore herbalists at the moment, but we'll keep your application on file should another position open within the year.)

You'll make more monies with herbs; more money = worth it.

Its pretty hard to get a shop lease ... gotta wait in a long line ... not fun.

Herbalism is clearly much more lucrative, and it's not like you have to stop designing artisan items when you switch trades -- you just won't be able to make them yourself anymore. Then again, herbalism is very grind-y and repetitive, so that could be a turn-off. But then again (again) there's always ways to semi-automate the process to make it easier for you.

In summary, I've been absolutely no help at all.

Necroooooooooooooooooooooooooo

... Bah, there I was giving semi-useful advice, and it's for a necro'd topic. Fie on you, Raikogen.

Oh crap! You're right! No more random forum surfing and answering when I should be doing my homework! Righto!

This should be clear even for the blind man (though you make it tricky with the switching and OOC credit stuff). However, herbs in my opinion is the best trade skill out there (yes, better than alchemy because herbs survive without alchemy, but alchemy needs herbs).

The income can be pretty damn nice. Before I went inactive I went from one shop with only herbs to three shops in Celest and one in Glom, raking in a hefty profit.

Only drawback is that it -IS- time consuming, though there are ways to work around it (read: novice herbalists). Ideally you'll want two or three people harvesting the cheapish herbs that there are many of (galingale, chervil, arnica, etc...) while you focus on harder to get things like sparkles, earwort, etc...

So yeah... herbs!