Trader
Main / Trader
A trader is a NPC who buys and sells items.
Placement
Traders are placed by using a trader contract, which is 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. Traders must be placed inside a building (not a market stall), but stay functional if the building disappears. Traders cannot be moved after they have been placed. Unlike Personal Merchants, Traders will not disappear if they haven't had any activity for 30 or more. 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.
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.
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 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, 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 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 .50 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 .10 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
