Personal merchant

Description

Personal merchants only sell items that the owner gives them. You cannot sell any items to him/her, only buy from them. The owner of the merchant sets the price that the merchant sells it for. The merchant also takes a small cut (10%) of any money taken from a sale. You can buy a personal merchant contract from a trader for 10 silver coins.

Management

To manage your personal merchant locate in your inventory personal merchant contract and right click->manage. You must, then, name your merchant and select its gender. Now the way the definition for placing is phrased oddly. What it means is that no other creatures may be on the tile you are trying to plant the merchant on, it does not mean that no other creatures can be in the building. They may not be in the same building as traders
To add items to the merchant simply open a trade window and offer the items and the trader will automatically trade. Same for withdrawing items, if the trader has money he will give that to you as well.
After placing the merchant you can manage it and you will be presented with the following screen. The price modifier will take the Get Price and multiply it by X number(1.4 by default). When dismissing make sure you take all your items out and money before dismissing.
To change prices you can either locate the item in your inventory then right click->Price->Set Price or you can change it by giving the item to the merchant and then managing the contract. If your merchant is in a very busy place the latter isn't a good idea as it may be bought before you change the price. To be safe simply change the prices through the inventory. Alternatively, begin a Trade session (transfer items to/from the merchant beforehand if needed) and leave the Trade session open until you have set all your prices.

Additional information

• Although a Merchant must be placed inside a building, if the building they're in rots away they will still be able to trade and be managed.
• If the name you pick is too long, a random name will be picked for you.
• Dismissing merchants (to store them or move them around) seems to have no penalty as long as you remove items and money from them first.
• You can use the Trade window to 'lock' the Merchant while you review prices in the Manage Prices window.
• You cannot put items inside containers on to a Merchant. The container must be emptied before the Merchant will accept it.
• The inventory limit for a Merchant seems to be about 50-55 items?
• Simply removing items from the Merchant resets the 'Last Sold' timer (a bug?)
• Putting large numbers of low-value items on a Merchant is hardly worth the effort as you have to set the price on each one individually, even if they are all identical.
• The "Manage Prices" window is slightly better than Set Price, but not much.