Your most Challenging Professions

[AriaGirl77]

Ok, so I finally had my chance to play the Merchant, dang that's a hard one!  I had the roughest time trying to get anyone to buy anything from him.  And thank goodness for the Prima Guide otherwise I never would have figured out the whole inter-kingdom trade thing.

Anyone else have any trouble or tricks that they've learned with certain professions?

[HtFde]

Most professions do nicely as they either can make lots of money (Spy, Blacksmith, etc.) or do not actually require money to get the daily jobs done. The merchant does stand out in this respect and it is the class I did not yet get comfortable with - if you're unlucky 50% of the day are spent on the daily chores ....

[Schipperke]

What I find hardest with the merchant is making money!  You'd think a merchant would be one of the wealthier sims, but all the effort he has to go through to sell some measly item is just crazy.  What worked best for me was picking quests where the merchant is working with someone else, particularly the blacksmith or the wizard, since those two can mine for metals - then you can transfer mana stones or other valuable items from the blacksmith or wizard's inventory over to the merchant.

[Ricalynn]

I started giving my merchant a bunch of herbs if I found that I have a surplus and sending him to trade with Tredony I think it was.  It was really easy to make it thru the voyage and have another $1000 simoles in the bank.

[Darkhadia]

Again, merchant is probably one of my hardest. Never have any time to do any selling because of the daily responsibilities, although I think next time I'm on her I'll send her to the shop and basically make sure she has every item in her inventory that she might possibly need to trade with, should save an hourish of sim time lol!

[Ricalynn]

Basically when you're finding out what you need to trade for as a daily responsibility take the time to see what their imports are.  If it's herbs buy as many of the herbs as you can and when you do your daily you'll get the money for the imports and the item you needed to trade anyway!

[Joria]

I guess it comes from my RL "be prepared" ethic but I really didn't have that much trouble with my merchant.  I knew she was going to need money, and since I hadn't given her particularly helpful traits I knew I'd have to be on what I considered her "routine".  Her fatal flaw was the worst, "hubris".  That in particular got in the way, but even with that I just followed a regular schedule and everything went well, with her finishing in platinum.  You get up the second she's mostly rested, you pee, eat, go immediately to the Shoppe, find the daily hot, buy as much of whatever you can, including things you yourself might want to put in your soup pot, stock, do the tasks and open for business later in the day.  No matter what time of day you open for business the customers come in.  Yes, it is a pain to get them to buy so I didn't rely on customers for my money.  Every chance I got I fished and collected.  On the way to the Shoppe I could collect three to four flowers, sell the flowers and grass weed and keep the seeds at the minimum.  Oh, my very first day I just did the responsibilities right away and spent the rest of the day fishing and collecting so I had a "nest egg" and didn't go to the Shoppe till the very last moment.  (Actually got a reward for finishing in the nick of time!)  That first shopping trip I bought extra things, like eggs, onions, etc.  Whatever was cheapest.  Oh, and I sold off some of her household furnishings.  I never noticed anyone buying that Raggedy doll for instance.  I made sure she had mushrooms and barley in her inventory after having read that map thing and only worried about selling from her market stall when she absolutely had to.  Not good business for a merchant I suppose, but the idea was to fulfill the quest in platinum. 

[SoftKitnz]

I don't like the merchant.  I found some of her responsibilities took forever to accomplish because she needed to have a certain rapport or relationship with the customer.   So most of the day was spent buttering someone up just to buy something or to get to point to butter someone up.   It was vastly annoying to play.  So most of the time she could only do one responsibility because of it.  It sucked for me.  I found her very useless to play and found she didn't contribute much to game play.

[samoht04]

I find it hard to make money as a Physician, especially with needing to collect herbs all the time then not being able to finish the Tasks in time and I suppose being a Single Mother of two doesn't help but I hardly feed them and she still stays below §100 Simoles most of the time.

[Simmerqueen]

I have trouble with the knights and spies while they are on the lower levels.  The knight is always getting injured or failing to defeat the people he needs to defeat in a duel, and the spy is always getting locked up in the stocks for failed pickpockets or lock picking.  Of course, I know those things also depend on focus - I'll have to be careful in future with the traits I assign to those two hero classes as well.  But both things make for a lot of debuffs.  After they level up, I don't have as much of a problem but I hate those lower levels.   

[Pam]

I wasn't fond of the Merchant at first, either.  It was difficult to make money and accomplish everything.  I started following Joria's tips about keeping items in stock for trading trip and that helped.  It also gets much easier as the levels become more advanced.  Now, at level 5, she can easily butter someone up and hustle to be able to ask him to buy something.  Her profit margin is steadily increasing, too.  Much like in Sims 3, it's just difficult in the early levels.  Plus, I'm still on the first ambition and there are so many left that I'm sure it will get better as we keep playing.

[Katluvr]

I also found the merchant most challenging to play - mostly because some of the responsibilities can take up your whole day if you need to go to the market and then trade items with foreign territories.  I still have problems doing quests with 2 heroes if one is the merchant because time management is so critical.

Joria's tips are excellent - collectables such as herbs, minerals, fish/meat are relatively cheap and yield a nice profit when traded abroad.  This is a great way to build up your cash reserves early so you can stock more expensive items in your market stalls.  The other thing that really helped was making sure that I stocked up on the trade items to complete responsibilities so I wouldn't have to run to the market before heading to the docks.

The other hero that has given me a little trouble is the Peteran priest.  The actual responsibilities and quests have been easy enough, but I have not been able to give sermons that improve popularity.  By comparison, it was very easy to get the Jacoban fear-meter in the sweet spot after about 4 sermons.  It isn't so much a challenge as it is an annoyance.

[WebbyMom]

I had the opposite experience with priests. My last Peteran priest was going like stink with good sermons and popularity was just getting to the sweet spot the last time I played him (I've ended that ambition now...  ). On the other hand, I was finding it really hard with my Jacoban priest to get close to that sweet spot. LOL

However, I have found the merchant and the blacksmith the hardest of professions, if I had to choose. I think because I know there is so much more I need to explore with both of them. I'm quite impressed with the complexity of these two jobs, particularly the merchant. I haven't yet done any overseas trading - something I'm definitely going to explore more in my 5th Ambition here.

[samoht04]

Merchant is my hardest profession, the daily responsibilities are just too hard and take too long to complete and if you don't even make much money doing that, so you need to do side jobs and then you have the Quest. Ugh, I almost threw my computer out the window!  (I'd never do that, too much of an addict!)

[Frozenoj]

Merchant and Blacksmith are the most challenging for me right now, but I haven't really played the Peteran Priest a whole lot. The first time I played my blacksmith I could not for the life of my find enough Cruddium to finish my daily responsibilities! But After that I just played quests with my monarch for a while and had her mine then leave the minerals in the forge, so now he has enough for a while. I wish there were a garden of deposits outside his house similar to the herbs outside the wizard's tower and doctor's house!

My problems with the Merchant are similar to those already posted. I will have to try out the tips mentioned next time I quest with her.