Trader
Main / Trader
Contents
Description
Placement
Trader is placed by using a trader contract, which can be purchased from other traders at a cost of 50s. A new trader must be placed at a minimum distance of 63 tiles away from other traders. Trader must be placed inside a building (not a market stall like Personal Merchants can), but stays functional even if the building disappears. Trader cannot be moved after it has been placed. If you own the writ to the building the trader is in and bring that building on-deed (for example by resizing the deed), the trader will automatically become a citizen of your settlement. If you disband your deed for any reason the trader will vanish unless you first manage citizens and remove the trader as a citizen. Non-citizen traders to not benefit your deed upkeep. You can not place a new trader on your deed with an old trader nearby. Resizing a deed does not remove a trader from a deed.
The three windows you will need to go through in order to place your Trader are on the left-hand side. They explain a bit about the Trader, allow you to name him or her, and what you want to set the tax rate of the Trader to.
The tax rate is the percentage of all sales that you want to go towards the upkeep of the deed he/she is apart of. The cap of this rate is 40%, meaning that at the very most, only 40% of the Trader's profit will go towards the upkeep of the deed he is apart of. If set to 0%, the Trader will not fund the upkeep of a deed, but rather only keep the money in his pockets to be given to those who sell merchandise to him.
Item stocks
A trader will always start with the following items in stock:
- 3 farwalker stones
- 3 farwalker twigs
- 3 large magical chests
- 1 personal merchant contract
- 3 resurrection stones
- 3 Rods of Transmutation
- 1 settlement form
- 3 shaker orbs
- 3 sleep powders
- 3 small magical chests
- 3 steel and flints
- 1 trader contract
- 3 tuning forks of metal detection
Once all of the items in any of these categories is bought, the trader will always have at least 1 in stock on the next trade. For example if you buy 3 large magical chests in one trade, you will see the trader has none left. On re-trading with the same trader it will always somehow have 1 more in stock.
Beyond this, traders only have the items they have bought from players. When the King distributes new funds to traders (see below), he may claim some items from the stock.
When purchasing an item from the trader, the majority of the purchase price goes directly to the King. For at least some of the above items, a proportion of the sale price remains in the inventory of the trader and they can use this to purchase items from the player. This is confirmed for:
- Trader Contract - 25% (12.5 silver) remains with the trader.
Cash flow
Traders will buy almost any item, unless he considers it worthless, it cannot be traded, or he is broke. Every item has a Base Price, which is modified by the trader according to local supply and demand. For each transaction performed by the trader, a small portion is added to the village upkeep fund as a tax. The tax is settable on trader creation, 40% maximum. The remaining money goes to the seller.
Exception: Money from deed and contract purchases go straight to the king.
A new trader starts out with 1 silver coin in funds. Periodically throughout the month, the king will distribute new funds to traders, provided the trader has sold at least 10% of what it purchased. You can see what amounts a trader has bought and sold with the Get Info ability. The ratio of items they have sold to items they have bought needs to be at least 1:10 (0.1 or higher on Get Info).
The envoy of the king will sometimes redistribute items on the trader to other traders and players in local will see. [11:50:48] Trader_Megan sells some items to an envoy from the ruler.
Traders ratio's also reset every 28 days. The period can extend by a couple hours probably due to server downtimes.
The main source of the kings funds is settlement upkeep. The king will not grant funds to traders holding 50 silver or more.
A Cash Flow Fix
Try this fix if your trader has not been receiving funds from the kingdom pool, and you have confirmed via Path of Knowledge that its ratio is 0.0. Buy 1 silver worth of player made items off the trader. Sell back the player made items as as you bought. If you are able to sell back all the player made items you bought, then the trader should have a ratio of around 0.5. Of course if the trader is a citizen of a deed, then a portion of the coin you put on the trader will go into deed upkeep so you won't be able to get the full 1s back. A ratio of at least 0.1 is needed to get funds off the kingdom pool. Once a Trader's ratio has been corrected, it may take a few days or a server restart before the trader start acquiring coin off the kingdom pool. I'm not quite sure how often the mysterious figure visits the traders, buying random stuff off of them which replenishes some of the trader's coins from the kingdom pool. This is speculative, however It seems I have been able to get 1 trader that was suffering from its 28 day ratio reset back in working condition. I won't make any guarantees this will work but if your trader hasn't been collecting any coin, a 1 silver investment could pay off. Detailed Knowledge of Traders is limited so this fix might have errors, but good luck. ~AAetius
Notes
- Traders will not disappear for not having any activity for a while.
- A 3x3 house with the trader on the centre tile is required to protect a trader from being used.
- Despite rumors, "abandoned" traders outside a deed, do not become a part of your own deed, even if you fund a village on top of him/her.
- Not withstanding the above, a Re-deed (of the same name and in a short time frame) has had the trader rejoin as a citizen.
- <Enki> Public Service Announcement - Citizen traders DO leave when you disband your deed. To keep the trader, remove it from your citizen list before deed disbandment.
<Enki> You do not get a new contract when a trader leaves. Non-citizen traders do not benefit your deed upkeep. You cannot place a new trader on your deed with an old trader nearby.
<Enki> Traders planted by a deed citizen automatically makes the trader a default citizen. Resizing a deed does not remove a trader from a deed.
<Enki> Keep this in mind before you decide to remove a trader from your deed's citizen list.
(29 May 2012)
- A trader you place will always become part of the deed you are part of, even if you place it on another deed.
- A trader who is physically on a deed, and has their citizenship revoked, will automatically rejoin that deed as a citizen when the server restart.
- You can now sell low quality items when stood next to a Merchant. See Sell for more information.
