The Merchant's Guild has existed in one form or another since pretty early in the game. Now that I'm back for a bit, I de ides to start advertising again.

The current incarnation of the guild is simply a clan that contains all transcendent merchants. We talk about commerce, and it's an easy way to get goods and services. No longer is there any obligation to provide those services, which legs us comfortably get around the whole enemy issue. Well, mostly.

We have our own tradehall in Deepnight which has a forge, a tailoring bench, a jewelry bench, an oven, and a garden. It will hopefully soon have a guild only entrance, slightly more spectacular than a door. Right now we're looking to pick up some funding for a pentagram, an alembic, and a fancy entrance. Most of the guild to date has been donated, actually, though I am putting up a few hundred credits. So, we need your help!

Besides having our own tradehall, we have one of each cartel type, and there are oppurtunities to run one of the cartels.

Check out clanhelp masters for the clanhelp, and contact me in the game.

You should use it to orchestrate monopolies in various markets. Get everyone on board to raise and lower the prices of different goods, such as esteem, according to guild decision- and control the Basin of Life.

If you start unionizing herbalists count me in.

I think that was always the intent, but the likelihood of getting everyone on board anything in Lusternia are slightly less than the odds of every air molecule in your room converging on a single corner of the room, suffocating you.

Besides, this guild seems to be interested only in Transcendent tradespeople, and while they may be better, but that does not mean that they control the market by themselves.

Thankfully!

The skillpoint retention is high enough between most trade skills that even if one managed to organize and start to gain enough market control to exercise monopoly power, other people would be quick to enter and reap profits.

In other words, if the current herbalists ganged up and said "lets fix prices", you'd get new herbalists saying "YAY FREE GOLDZ" and just undercutting them to soak up the market.

All of which is a pain.

Thus, there's always the old, reliable, knock down things and take their monies. After all, all that text gold has to come from somewhere! Sharks, moose, extra planar beings are the money mints of Lusternia.

Now, Richter's clan isn't really doing that on premise to begin with. It looks like a great way for shop owners and people who invest in their trade skill (in terms of effort and time) to communicate, and buy and sell their products to stock shops, which is better for everyone all around, so

I'm all for herbalists trying to monopolize (I'm up to sparkleberry, figure that's close enough to trans), but I agree that it's basically impossible, and so I'm not sure what an herbalists clan would accomplish, other than be a socializing space...it'd be an interesting RP tool though.

Exactly.

Now, there have been a few occasions where we tried to change prices market-wide, and succeeded on a small scale, but it's been forever since it's been attempted, and it's no longer been the intent. I do remember a number of times where I messed with the entire credit market just by myself, influencing it to go high or low.

Anyway, I'd really like to see this project take off. Let me know if you're interested!

Question: would influencing be counted as a trade? The esteem market is very interesting.

That's an interesting thing to consider. However, they can only make one product, and it doesn't get better with more ranks.

Who else remembers the jewlery monopoly of 100-115? I believe it was run by Vaan? (sp?)

hm..