Trader Guild

Abilities Table

applied trading = [appraisal/3]+[charisma*5]+trading

Hirelings Information

The helpful hirelings available for HIRE so far are ATTENDANT, LOCATE and CRIER. There are many more planned for the future! Currently, hirelings are very random when they arrive, they can be of any age or gender. Hirelings are placed by the Trader guild throughout towns and clans for use of members of their guild. Therefore, you can only hire the current ones while within town or clan's borders or in a specific location.

Generally speaking, the higher your circle, the better the appearance of your hireling. However, even the highest level traders may occasionally get a hireling with an 'attitude'. Anyone found abusing hirelings or using them to harrass other players can be blocked from using the system indefinitely. There is a cost for all hireling services and the hireling will tell you the cost if asked. Hirelings are available at different levels and each usually has 2 or more abilities that take even more levels to access.

Attendant: This hireling has MANY abilities that range from useful when conducting traderly activities to RP actions. You can ASK ABOUT HELP to see a list of commands. While the attendant can only be summoned inside a town, it can follow you around like a caravan, assuming you don't go too far ahead of it (it walks slow, not advised). If you're traveling between towns, you may find it more useful to dismiss it and get a new one if the journey is really long.

This hireling doesn't have multiple levels but it does have certain services that require a specific level. Those include boxing up a market table for the trader and retrieving stored goods from the market storage area for the trader.

   * ASK attendant FOR…  COMMANDS
   * GROOM
   * PERFUME
   * COLOGNE
   * ROPE
   * POUCH
   * GOODS
   * FOLLOW
   * STAY
   * LEAVE
   * DISMISS
   * COST

Locate: When summoned, this hireling can locate a person of the trader's choosing. You can ASK ABOUT HELP to see a list of commands. The hireling will give you about 5 minutes to give him/her a person to locate. If you haven't done so in that time, the hireling will leave and you won't be able to use the locating hirelings again for a bit since you've wasted their time. However, you have the option of dismissing a hireling if you've changed your mind.

This hireling has three levels to it. At the first level, you can locate someone in the same town. At the second level, you can locate someone in the same province. At the third level, you can locate someone within all five provinces. Time for locating is based on charisma and level, a hireling that likes you will work faster for you. You aren't likely to find people if they are hidden, invisible or in an area that usually prevents locating.

   * ASK locate FOR... HELP
   * LOCATE (person)
   * DISMISS

Crier: This hireling can only be hired in very specific areas. Those areas include: gem shops, furriers, pawn shops, market tables, market stalls, auction halls, shipping offices and horse brokerage offices.

They have two levels. At the first level, you can have your name and location announced to the entire town or clan. At the second level, you can have your name and location announced to the town/clan and nearby hunting areas. The announcement can be heard inside buildings.

Traders can only use this ability once an hour in a specific location. For example: if Trader A used it in the Crossing gem shop at 1:00 pm, no trader could announce again from that location until 2:00 pm. This is to minimize scroll that could be produced by multiple traders being in the same area. This does not prevent the same trader or another from going to the furrier and announcing themself via a crier. However, if it's found that you ran to every available location in a town simply to spam the town, you'll likely have the ability turned off.

Messenger: This hireling can be used to deliver a message to another player. You can ASK ABOUT HELP to see a list of commands. The hireling can remember a message of about 512 characters. Be sure to have the hireling repeat the message to you before sending it. You can also 'redo' your message if you make a mistake. The hireling will give you about 5 minutes to give him/her a person and message. If you haven't done so in that time, the hireling will leave and you won't be able to use the messaging hirelings again for a bit since you've wasted their time. However, you have the option of dismissing a hireling if you've changed your mind.

This hireling has three levels. At the first level, you can message someone in the same town. At the second level, you can message someone in the same province. At the third level, you can message someone within the five provinces. The messenger will not be able to deliver a message if the person is hidden, invisible or in an area the usually prevents locating. The messenger will return and let you know if the message was delivered, however you will not get a refund if your target isn't available. Of course, if the target isn't paying attention or is AFK, it's also possible for them to miss the message.

   * ASK messenger FOR... REMEMBER (message)
   * REPEAT
   * SEND person
   * DISMISS

Adoption Services

A trader of appropriate circle (55th) can get 2 types of licenses from the clerk:

Management License - Only a last name owner can give management rights. If a license is a management license, the adoptee will have rights to distribute the surname via the adoption license. If the name owner allows management of the surname, he/she may not revoke the names that are given out. However, he/she can remove an individual's management rights via 'Reserve'.

Adoption License - If a license is an adoption license, the adopted player will only have the last name. He/she will have no rights to distribute the surname.

First, the trader must ASK the CLERK ABOUT ADOPTION. This allows him/her to obtain the adoption license. There are 4 signatures required for an adoption: the adopter must sign the contract, then the adoptee signs, the adopter confirms and then the trader normally signs as a witness. To sign the license, a player needs charcoal or a quill and they must WRITE LICENSE WITH . Once the license is filled out, and everything is in order, you will need to GIVE the LICENSE TO the CLERK. There is a 50000 kronar (40000 lirum/36080 dokora) fee for this process, so make sure the Adopter gives you ample coins for the transaction. When the contract is complete, the trader and adoptee must both be present in the genealogy office when the trader turns the license in to the clerk.

Note: Since the adopter and adoptee aren't both required to be present when the license is given to the clerk, characters on the same account can share names. With the current license setup, it's possible for a trader to travel between towns getting signatures and that the adopter and adoptee not be required to meet during the process.

Warning for adoptee: Make sure you read the license before you write your name on it!

Sharing a last name: You will be able to share last names with others if you have registered and become the owner of the last name. To do this, you will need to fill out a license and present it to the clerk. To complete a license, you'll need help from someone that is familiar with legal documents and contracts - a trader.

Skill Guide

Primary Skills

Lore

This is your primary skill set, making it the most important to you. You'll want to train all five of the skills available to you here. You are, in fact, required to train two of them: trading and appraisal.

Appraisal may not be the most fascinating skill to train, but it can come in handy any number of ways. Besides, you don't have a choice about whether to train it or not. It can tell you how difficult a creature may be for you to hunt and how much an item is worth. The easiest ways to lock this are appraising creatures, full bundles, and gem pouches. Items that appraise high are also useful.

Mechanical Lore and traders almost go together. This is the only guild that can master embroidery. To train this skill, you can scrape skins, dismantle boxes, braid grass/vines, fold origami, etc. You can also clean your dirty instruments if you have decided to train those skills after all.

Musical Lores: You can practice singing for vocals, playing wind instruments, percussion instruments, and string instruments. Not all of the Tavern Troupe members are Bards. These skills will not count towards your general lore requirement, however.

Scholarship is a little difficult to train if you aren't in classes a lot, but you can raise it by folding origami, reading library books, studying embroidery patterns or, if you're lucky, studying a spellbook.

Teaching may be difficult to get early on, but by the time you hit 30th circle, you should have little trouble getting people to listen to your classes. You learn this skill best by teaching a full class. 25 ranks will allow you to teach 2 people. At 50 ranks, you can teach 3, 100 teaches 4, 200 will teach 5, etc.

Trading is the skill that makes you what you are. The best way to learn this skill early on is to run contracts between guilds. If you're the more sedentary type, it's possible that fellow traders in your guild or the gem shops will teach it to you. Once you have reached 12 ranks of this skill, you must circle to at least 2nd if you have not already or the Minister will not give you more contracts to run. You can also learn trading by selling bundles to the tanneries and furriers. At second circle, you gain the ability to run commodities. When you're older, you can sell gem pouches, run tables in the marketplaces, and hold auctions.

Secondary Skills

Armor

You have some decisions to make here. If you are going to train hiding seriously, then leathers are a good choice. In the case that you wear leathers, I suggest light chain for your head and hands as they protect better and you'll gain more tdps. If you are more interested in protection than stealth, you should wear entirely light chain. Good beginner armors are supple hunting leathers from Haven and silver-gilt hauberks from Theren. Since you are required to learn two armors, shields will always be useful to you. I recommend arm shields for those of you wanting to train edged weapons and hand shields if you decide on crossbows. Being an armor secondary guild, you can use either small or medium arm shields.

Survivals

You have a lot of choices here. As you need to train six survivals, this skill set will end up being pretty important to you.

Climbing is pretty useful and easy enough to train. You could try the ladder in shipyard rats and/or the tree near the swimming hole in Arthe Dale. To find the ladder in shipyard rats, go through the office, then the work yard, then to slipway two where you'll see a ladder that's pretty easy to climb.

Disarm Traps and Lockpicking go together, so I'll keep them that way here. Unfortunately, for the most part, it's probably either these two skills or Skinning. While there are creatures that you can both skin and get boxes from, those aren't as common as one might wish. Remove your armor unless you're an extravagant type who likes to have a new set of armor every week. Start by typing disarm <box> identify and then, if the box is not above your ability (and you'll know when it is!), disarm mark <box> or simply go onto disarm <box>. When typing the final part of disarm <box>, you have the choice of disarming it quickly, normally, or carefully. Once you've managed all that, you then pick the box with a lockpick. You can even learn a tiny bit of mechanical lore early on by typing dismantle <box>.

Escaping is also a possibility, but is rather difficult to train. For those of you who crave TDPs though, having this can never hurt.

Evasion. Do you really want to risk going without? You have armor requirements and if you can manage to feel safe in combat without training this, you're either braver than I am or a lot more foolhardy. Besides, how else will you dodge pocket-foragers when they turn violent?

First Aid is just a nice skill. While you are unlikely to have ranks of a survival primary guild or an Empath, it might be nice to know that you have the option of not bleeding to death from an infection.

Foraging is a fairly easy skill now and you may find this useful, especially if you want grass and/or vines as a low cost way of raising mechanical lore. This will also help you to feed the pack animals in your caravan for free.

Hiding and Stalking may be skills you find you want to train because, again, those urban foragers can be very pesky. The best way to learn hiding is to hide in combat. If you train hiding, you may well want stalking. You can train it either by stalking creatures or by engaging them while in hiding. Hiding while moving with a caravan trains stalking.

Perception is always a handy skill. You can train this by buying jugglies with a weight appropriate to your skill level. (1 stone early on.) I cannot recommend this skill enough for a trader. Of all the guilds, you're probably the most likely to be a victim of stealing and this will help protect you.

Skinning is nice as scraping your pelts, hides, and skins will train both this skill and Mechanical Lore. It's sometimes a little frustrating ruining pelts, etc, as you try to skin creatures, but I find this skill is worth the effort.

Stealing. This will not count towards one of your six survivals. This may not discourage those of you who yearn to visit the less perceptive guilds and jail cells. For the rest of you, this skill currently helps deter people from visiting your pockets.

Swimming is pretty easy to lock in various places. You should start out with the swimming hole in Arthe Dale or the brook in field goblins out Crossing's west gate. If you one day decide to swim across a river or participate in some other, equally bizarre event, you'll be glad you trained this.

Tertiary Skills

Weapons

Let's face it. You're going to have a hard time making much of your weapons, but it may be worth it to you. After all, you'll have to face a lot of those sneaky people throughout your travels. With this in mind, I recommend edged weapons and any kind of ranged.

Edged Weapons: I personally think that light edged is a bad choice as they don't hit all that well and they're more apt to break than other edged weapons. However, if you're unwilling to train strength and agility enough to work the heavier blades, this may be your weapon. Medium edged tends to be the favorite of people using edged weapons and it's certainly the best choice for a beginner. It's well balanced and requires less strength and agility for minimum roundtimes than either heavy edged or two handed edged. If you're interested in clobbering your enemies and don't mind the longer roundtimes, you could try HE or 2HE.

Ranged Weapons: I recommend either short bow or long bow. Short bow is faster than long bow and lacks some of the power you'll see with long bows. It's simply a matter of preference for speed or impact. If you've decided to train shield, however, you may wish to use a light or heavy crossbow. These are slower weapons than either bow and, generally speaking, will hit harder. Other ranged weapons are sling, staff sling, light thrown and heavy thrown. I would not recommend training any of these last four as a required weapon as they are less effective than any of the bows. Heavy thrown is the exception to that, but is more tiring than the bows.

Magic

There's virtually no point in trying to learn this except in gaining tdps. I see no reason to bother when you can gain tdps from skills you can actually use.