I am wondering how every trade out there is doing. So, if anyone who reads this thread, please take the time to answer any of the following questions that applies to you:

Do you think there are many people in realms actually taking advantage of their merchant skills? Are shops regularly stocked with needed supplies: elixirs, clothes, weampons/armour, sigils, herbs? How difficult is it for you to find/purchase something you need/desire? Is the competition rough in the respective trades? Has your market oversaturated? As a customer, do you find the prices convinient for your pocket? As a manufacturer, do you find the process of making your goods helpful for your business? Are the materials you need for your wares readily able? What do you think should be change to make the acquisition and destribution of wares much more smooth?

Those are the questions I managed to come up with. In any case, I am sure that many of the people who visit this forums play at least one role: customer, distributer, manufacturer, etc. Any insight regarding current business situation from different people and their respective stance would be appreciated, especially regarding current times, when realms are no longer an embryon but have reached an stupendous infancy. So, feel free to shoot away

Alechmists keep underselling eachother so, really, it is almost pointless trying to practice the trade. That's my only comment.

And no one buys poisons.

Maybe alchemists should place a suggested retail price, just make sure you don't charge too expensively... or I say: undersell away!

Poisons are probably of very limited use, weapons don't provide a 100% chance of afflicting, no? The nice feature about poisons is the immunity obtained, though. Not sure what the process for obtaining it is, though... Ingestion of a poison in reduced quantities for an extended period of time? Poisons will be more useful the day people start mailing "love you" cakes with an icing of your favourite poison.

Ok. Though, to be honest... I was expecting longer responses. Oh well, I guess a response is better than no response. As long as it is pertinent with the subject.

I KNEW you derived sustenance entirely from long posts.

Two people allready own Masne shops with quite a bit of stock in them.

I think the market is doing just fine, anyone who says otherwise is not putting enough effort/creativity into it.

... I fail to see how your remark is relevant to the subject, Shiri. In any case, seeing how you allegedly claim I derive sustenance from long posts... why didn't you provide me with any? Just kidding

Maybe I should take the lead on responding these questions I asked, just to give my view on regards with current business.

I am a herbalist, as such I depend entirely on how available plants are initially. With a good number of herbalists out there, I am sure that competition must be fierce. Though this in no way affects my income, because for starters I decided to avoid becoming an avid merchant with my trade and harvest for personal use. So, I still posses income but through other means, nor do I harvest frequently so I am someone else may benefit from herbs I could've harvested in the first place. This means, that in no way do I exercise my tradeskill as a way to promote business. But because my trade bares no expense to start practicing it, other than effort, there is no way for me to loose money with it, so I can choose to exercise it at any given time.

As a customer, and after visiting various shops (in Celest and Serenwilde), I find that shops are easily stocked with herbs, clothes, elixirs and even poisons, but they are lacking of forged goods. So, when most of the essentials can be easily obtained, there is still this gap regarding forging goods... which are one of my top needs as a member of a warrior archetype. Though on the same aspect, regarding prices, where I deem prices of the different wares I consider them in accordance to what I think is a fair price. Except for the rare forged goods I find, where probably the expensive manufacturing costs may have as a direct effect expensive prices.

So, as a customer, I would probably encourage the diverse cartels to coordinate with their members into producing enough supply of produce, and find a coherent way of distrubution: cartel shops, or whatnot. This to try satisfy a demand, that I consider hasn't been entirely satisfied.

That the Market channel can be used to petition blacksmiths, tailors and alchemists? True, but I believe that it is a necessity and sometimes convinient to simply have a supply of produce already for sale in a location.

Um, this is my opinion. Remember allowing us (me) to know yours would be appreciated.

I find forging to be extremely slow going. With the long decay times chances of frequent repeat business is slim. It costs a nice chunk of gold to purchase something in the firstplace and then you need to tack on labour and time costs unless you don't plan on making anything which all in all leads to (at least for me) a very slow market.

I need a manse shop.

See, I'm too lazy to actively forge for others on projects and such, so if I can point them to a store filled to the brim with goods...

Other than that, business is going good. I can submit private designs, and I'm trans arts and forging.

Undercutting prices is the clear sign of a market which has not reached equilibrium. Any cartels will result in a market inefficiency - which would allow considerable economic profit, but not for members of the cartel, until a new equilibrium is reached.

Ahh forging. The secret to forging as a customer is to find a forger and get custom armor and weapons.

You see, forging costs to much to just make hundreds of forgings and then sell the best ones for more money than other people.

Your average reforging on the smallest of items cost around 800 gold. Then, people who want forgings made, generally want specific ratios of some sort. On top of that, there are so many diffferent weapons and designs per weapon, that to mass produce them just does not make sense, unless your making wooden practice swords for newbies.

Making large amounts of scale armour is worth the time probabbly, but not when there are large amounts of steal and leather and cloth shortages.

So the answer to your forging needs is, buy the comms and then find your favorite forger.

I am afraid this is something I've grown to avoid. Experience in other realms with personal requests weren't good. I would either end up giving comms out and end up with a bad produce, and then pay a small amount of gold for the labor. Or only end up with a bad piece of produce that I would have to pay in the end because I requested it. So in the end I learned to scavenge every shop looking for forged wares, and always seemed to be able to find very good ones in the most remote cities. Though, I am pretty sure smelting must be very handy when trying to reforge something into something better... any forgers out there willing to sell me a good fieldplate and greathelm?

Like I said, reforging and smelting costs to much to really do that.

Forging works a bit differently here then it does in other realms, because of the importance of commodities and the way they work. also because of the fact that forgings can be made out of ANYTHING, and ther are just so many choices.

so while the mechanics might be exactly the same, the nature of the economics is vastly different.


READ: Don't use your experiences from other games to dictate your expectations here.

Scenario A in a given place isn't very different to Scenario B from another place. So, I am not really allowing my past experiences affect my expectations. Hey, with the current market being so young, I wasn't really expecting anything in particular.

Everywhere forging is too expensive to mantan, to be honest. In Lusternia things may be more expensive because of the form the comms are obtained, that is a given. Thanks to this, my experience with forging hasn't been good at all. So in no way do I intend on jumping on a forger's back asking him to forge something for me when I know it would cost me pretty much.

It's allegedly a 50% chance of afflicting, though I have never seen it anywhere near that high in practice.

You have to trans Poisons to become immune to a single poison. Very nice, but not worth 1750 lessons by itself, so the trade still has to be worth something, and thus far it really isn't. The main problem is that only 1/3 of people can even use poisons, and many of those don't. Plus one or two people made of credits who give away poisons, and thus ruin it for everyone else, doesn't help.

Poisons in food is a cool idea but of very limited use. The problem is, there's not a poison out there that you can't cure in a few seconds. Giving someone a poison when you're not there to take advantage of the affliction is a waste of your poison and his cures. About the only way I can see it'd be useful is to use force skills (like dominate and pooka): give them something and force them to eat it. Of course you could give them the vial and force them to sip it, but that uses up a whole vial.

In another thread we're discussing ways to make poisons a viable trade skill, primarily by increasing the market for it.

Right now there's only one poison you can sell for more than the cost of the empty vial it goes into, and that one requires you to be nearly trans Planar too. Transing two skills so you can go to a hugely dangerous place in hopes of gathering what you need to sell maybe one vial every other month at a profit of less than 1000 coins (personally mine is closer to 600) is really hard to justify.

Only trans Planar for Seren, though, right?

Could you expand on this, please? I know only basic economics and I'm not sure what you mean by "has not reached equilibrium". Does that mean prices will drop more, like they are starting to?

If Ishtinuse is talking about the same thing as whatever I'm being taught in Business & Economics now (granted I'm horrible at it), market equilibrium is the point (it's theoretically only achievably during one instant, really, but in that region) where demand is equal to supply. If demand is higher than supply, prices will up so the effective demand is lower, whereas if supply is higher, prices will fall until demand meets it. Where the two meet is market equilibrium.

Or that was a load of crud, but I could swear that's what I was taught

Its not just the price, the main difference in Lusternia to other IRE games, is that we have more customized weapons. So while you may choose broadswords over Rapiers, once you choose broadsword, you have your wicked broadsowrd, gleaming broadsword, etc. The only difference being what the comms cost. So even if I have a collection of 10 wonderfull stats on wicked broadswords, ineveitabllye people will want to be buying the gleaming broadsword. etc.

Its just different, and yes it is very different.

I'd like to just agree with the comments about alchemy. Some people are selling health/mana for 150 each, down from 300 at some points earlier in lusternian history. With everyone undercutting the way they do, its hard to make serious money. Alchemists need to agree on some price minimums so we can all actually make money.