Merchants!

[Darkhadia]

Just tried out the merchant and I would like to share some tips that I wish I knew beforehand!

It is worth in your spare time using a sim to look at the throne room and use the table that shows information about other kingdoms, and writing down what can be traded for what because you will get a daily quest-thing (can't remember the name but the things you get two of a day and x hours to do them in?) asking you to trade with a kingdom.

Also when trading with a neighbouring kingdom, you need to make sure you have the item to trade with (in my case I needed 2 mushrooms to trade for 1 piece of wood), go to the dock and open the inventory on the ship to add your item to the ship, then when you get back from your trade, you need to reopen the inventory and take the traded item out of the ship and put it in your inventory, I forgot to do this and got the -focus debuff for not giving my traded wood to the carpenter! 

Just two pointers,
Happy medieval simming!

[Joria]

Another thing about Merchants.  If you just click on their house and select "enter", they won't necessarily do so!  You have to make sure you can see their bed and fireplace or the dummies will just stand there till they are exhausted and starving!  Once you see the bed/fireplace you can choose sleep or make food and they will go right there and do it.  If your Merchant, (or other characters), are very hungry or tired they simply won't do what you tell them to do until they are in good shape again, and their chances of collecting or fishing are zero! 

[Darkhadia]

I nearly didn't take my own advice and put the item from the ship back into my inventory, thankfully remembered in time and now my sim has completed both her daily tasks (yay!).

She only did that by not selling anything though because it took her too long to do anything else! Also every time she has been to the shop she has been asked to help someone, first a child with a lost toy and secondly with a mother and child being robbed, and has both times ended up with a -focus debuff for getting injured! I think next time she goes to the Shoppe she will have to stock up on medical cures!

All making it more fun though!

[Jonna]

I do not enjoy playing the merchant.  It seems like a lot of work for little pay off.  You have to go to the village to find out what's "hot," return, then go back to the village to buy the items, return, then go to your stall, add the items from your inventory (and take out your other items), open shop, and then convince people to buy something that's somewhat marked up.  And convincing people takes three actions, if you're lucky!

[HtFde]

Well, the merchant is my least favourite "class" so far - until I figured out what to do - or more precisely "HOW" to do it - the mini results in XP gain and money ... bleh. Maybe I am missing something but the merchant is very time consuming with his/her daily quests if you're unlucky and since you have to CONVINCE people to buy stuff, you're rather limited in your character creation.

[Schipperke]

I found the merchant a hard one to play at first, mainly because I didn't really know what to do and made lots of mistakes.  You'd think a merchant would be one of the more affluent sims, but mine had a really hard time making money.  All that work just to sell an apple for $9?  But the merchant turned out to be the star of my game.  I did a lot of quests with him, including one that gave him a legendary trait, and eventually he sailed away to establish his own kingdom.  He's now working on the Imperial Domination ambition.  The neat thing is that he started out as a level 10 king, which makes it very fast and easy to get through his daily tasks.

[Joria]

Merchant was a bit difficult for me at first too.  Poverty stricken at first, but I just went ahead and fished and collected and got some items I could sell while at the Shoppe.  Headed out and queued the what's hot thing then haggle and queued home.  Once there I added my merchandise but I never took anything out because you never know what a customer wants.  I was right in doing this as I seldom sold all of what was hot but definitely sold some of the other items including well water!  She wound up being quite wealthy.  I haven't gotten as far as Schip though.  At the moment my monarch is trying to get her suitor to marry her and I have a horrible feeling I picked the wrong one!

[Darkhadia]

I think i'd actually enjoy the job/selling part of the merchant if I had any time to do it! All these jaunts back and forward trading with other territories for my responsibilities are taking too long though   

[Schipperke]

One way of dealing with the merchant's time problem is to get extra supplies whenever you can afford them.  My merchants always get responsibilities of getting wood and gems.  Since these responsibilities always come up, having extra cheese or mushrooms in the inventory means I can skip the trip to the market.  I tried buying extra wood on one trip, wondering if that would allow me to skip the boat trip next time.  Unfortunately the deliver wood responsibility never came up again! 

[Darkhadia]

  I tried buying extra wood on one trip, wondering if that would allow me to skip the boat trip next time.  Unfortunately the deliver wood responsibility never came up again! 

I did something similar, having failed the responsibility once by not getting the wood out of the boat and into my inventory in time, so next time the responsibility came up I did wonder if I could use the wood from the last time but I couldn't    So I sold it instead 

[Joria]

It's rather annoying that you can't use the extras of things you get on those travels.  Each time the responsibility comes up you have to go through all the steps all over again.  Even my Smith, who had a ton of items, had to craft new ones each time for responsibilities.

[Ricalynn]

I have never had to re-craft potions, salves, swords, or armor for my responsibilities.  If they have them in their inventory that's good enough.  Unless it's the broken sword, but once I didn't completely the responsibility in time and it was in my inventory still so when it popped up again I could just turn it in.

[Ricalynn]

Um - not so - or rather: not generally. I traded a surplus of gems with my merchant and I also created a few extra poisons with my spy - both were able to turn in the prefabricated items rather than having to do them from scratch.

I'm sorry if my wording was not correct but that's exactly what I meant.  When I start a hero for the first time the first thing I do is make 5 of the basic things they can make.  So for a smith it's mail armor, longswords, basic staves.  Physician it's the salves and tonics.  So on and so forth.  So that when they get that responsibility they can just turn in and go about gathering/questing/whatever.

[HtFde]

I'm sorry if my wording was not correct but that's exactly what I meant.  When I start a hero for the first time the first thing I do is make 5 of the basic things they can make.  So for a smith it's mail armor, longswords, basic staves.  Physician it's the salves and tonics.  So on and so forth.  So that when they get that responsibility they can just turn in and go about gathering/questing/whatever.

Your wording was absolutely correct - I must apologize. It was late night down here and I am used to forum software where the quote button is below the entry not above so I cited your answer instead of the one above I meant to cite ... removed my earlier comment because of that.

[chadgar24]

It's rather annoying that you can't use the extras of things you get on those travels.  Each time the responsibility comes up you have to go through all the steps all over again.  Even my Smith, who had a ton of items, had to craft new ones each time for responsibilities.

I have found out that you can leave an item in the cargo hold of the ship.  Then, when a responsibility comes up to trade and deliver an item you can go to the cargo hold, drag the item into your invetory, and you can then deliver it.  So I would suggest stockpilihg wood and gems and leaving them in the cargo hold.