Better Trading = More Fun Trader Class

[Ironsides]

I played my character on Dwilight as a trader for a little while but had to stop because there was nothing to trade. Everyone wants food but no one wants to give it up. Therefore, being a trader was useless unless I stole from the black market. The trading class should be revamped to be more fun and dynamic. It has a lot of potential for traveling and contact/relationship building and the lure of easy wealth. There are very few active traders as far as I am aware because of this limp class.

Any thoughts? Maybe trade in diamonds/silks or other luxury goods? Potential for wealth and prominence?

I remember an attempt to bring more trading goods to the game like wood and stone or something, what happened to that?

[Zakilevo]

I think the dev team has been planning to work on a new resource system. Your region produces different resources now I believe. Like metal, wood ...etc. Eventually, traders might be able to trade these things.

[Peri]

The new estate systems will allow a lot more food to circulate around in my opinion. Some time ago Morek was a large producer of food surplus and traders were quite involved (there were on the other hand no caravans yet back then), but now I can't think of any realm in dwilight who has enough surplus to safely sell it around.

With the new estate system and a lot more rural regions taken and kept at high production, I hope there will be a lot more trading around.

[Jeckyl]

As a Duke buying up every bushel I could find in D'Hara, I've noticed that the majority of trading is done by lord caravans. There are still, and will always be those regions that cannot be reached this way. Those regions however, are not allied territory. Allies tend to open up their food stores far more easily than far off realms that do not care whether your cities starve or thrive.

I have had decent amounts of fun playing a Trader, but I agree that there should be more things they can do besides searching half a continent to fill up a caravan or two. There is always add more stuff to trade! But that is a band-aid fix. We could.... add stuff only Traders can trade! That could work, if done correctly. Otherwise it would over power the trading game, and suddenly everyone is a Trader. I know! We could add something like the Banker's Manipulate the Books. An additional feature available only to Traders that adds some flavour. Oh nuts, we have that, its called the Blackmarket.

But I have an idea now. How come the Blackmarket is limited to food? Shady deals are made all the time, and in the setting of Battlemaster, I can think of nothing better to add than Unique Items to the Blackmarket. Its brilliant, think about it. Some fence offers to sell you Merlin's Staff of Rubber Chickens. Real? or Fake? Buy it on a gamble! It could work similarly to Hero's picking up volunteers, in terms of irregularly occurring. Perhaps even buy magic scrolls that I personally have only ever seen on BT as a result of the Dream?

[Nosferatus]

Iron resource could become very interesting.
To fight a long war, almost any realm would have to buy it elsewhere, creating trade that directly profits from war.
That alone would become interesting enough for the trader.

It would also spark alot more wars and more intent to takeover other regions than gold and food producing behemoths.

[egamma]

Come to D'Hara and I will keep you busy trading. I won't tell you my sources unless you join.

[Phellan]

Come to Madina, we need more traders to take our food to people outside the Realm :P

[egamma]

Come to Madina, we need more traders to take our food to people outside the Realm :P

SHHH! My precious!

[Jeckyl]

Iron resource could become very interesting.
To fight a long war, almost any realm would have to buy it elsewhere, creating trade that directly profits from war.
That alone would become interesting enough for the trader.

It would also spark alot more wars and more intent to takeover other regions than gold and food producing behemoths.

Tried that, lost a few hundred gold and a few hundred bushels, as well as acquired a ban. Not too anxious to repeat that experience..

[Nosferatus]

Tried that, lost a few hundred gold and a few hundred bushels, as well as acquired a ban. Not too anxious to repeat that experience..

Can't really follow you there, what did you do?

[Chenier]

The possibility to sell generic "goods", that sell for more the farther away you resell them, would be an interesting addition for traders. It would give them something to haul around when markets are low to justify keeping all of their caravans they need in the high season.

[egamma]

The possibility to sell generic "goods", that sell for more the farther away you resell them, would be an interesting addition for traders. It would give them something to haul around when markets are low to justify keeping all of their caravans they need in the high season.

Yes, that would be excellent--and simulate a locally-produced item, it would be nice for the goods to become more profitable, the further away one travels. Maybe have some random lower regions where the people simply aren't interested in pearls or whatever it is you have.

[Jeckyl]

Can't really follow you there, what did you do?

Bought food on the blackmarket from a realm at war with our allies. Not the most literal translation... But in my experience, no one will sell you food with they know its going to feed their enemy, or suspect so.

[Bedwyr]

The possibility to sell generic "goods", that sell for more the farther away you resell them, would be an interesting addition for traders. It would give them something to haul around when markets are low to justify keeping all of their caravans they need in the high season.

Traders have some ability to sell "exotic goods", which if I remember correctly shows up as a function of your trading skill.  I don't know if there are any distance modifiers.

[De-Legro]

Traders have some ability to sell "exotic goods", which if I remember correctly shows up as a function of your trading skill.  I don't know if there are any distance modifiers.

When a trader sells food there seems to be a chance you will also sell exotic goods, that you magically purchased without knowing and that you will sell without the game asking if you want to. The chance seems to be based on the distance between the purchase point and the sales point and trade skill.  At least I never saw this while selling inside a realm but I did a few times from transporting food from one realm to another.