Treat Crafting Recipes like Magick Spells

[Angela Christine]

When you play a mage, your acceptance letter include the words for a few starter spells.


What if when you played a crafter, your acceptance letter included the ingredients for a few recipes?  Maybe 10 recipes for each craft you know at the start.  This means that everyone would start knowing some cooking recipes, since everyone knows that craft, but that's ok.

With magick everyone gets the same starter spells, but with crafting it might be better if it were 10 (5, 6, 20, whatever number) random recipes.  Random recipes would help get some of the rarer crafting items into circulation.  Since they are random you might get some high-skill recipes that you won't actually be able to use right away, but it will be something to look forward to.  It is a family specialty or something, but you haven't quite mastered it yet.


Or rather than all random recipes, perhaps a mix of standard and random recipes.  Like 3 standard newbie recipes that can be used almost anywhere in the world, and X random recipes to get odd items into circulation.  For cooking the standard newbie recipes might include travel cakes and kalan jam -- things that are useful right away, to almost anyone.  The standard newbie recipes for stonecrafting would probably use sandstone, because sandstone can be found or purchased easily anywhere in the known world.  Even crafts like fletchery should be able to find at least one recipe that can be made by a newbie Fletcher, from ingredients easily found in the south, so as not to screw over southern merchants more than necessary.




The acceptance letter would only include the recipes for crafts your character starts out knowing, NOT ones that he may or may not eventually branch.  That would give merchants another good reason to choose a crafting subguild, rather than trying to get some pitiful martial skill by choosing a martial subguild.  So if you want free armor crafting recipes you have to take the subguild.  And nobody gets the recipes for elite crafts like tent making and wagon making.



That way we preserve some of the mystery and excitement of discovering new recipes, but at the same time reduce the frustration of a crafter out OOCly doesn't know how to start.

[Malken]

Please do this, seriously, please.

[Tisiphone]

I would say that I like this idea with the caveat that it would place a lot more strain on the staff, but I don't think that's even a valid reason. I could see someone rather easily setting up an automailer and random-gen recipe maker to pump out these recipes without the staff even needing to look at them; it could even wait until after the character enters the world, in order to tailor the recipe list towards their coded home.

[manonfire]

Si, por favor.

[DesertChoad]

Well...the only problem I can see....

John makes a merchant pc....dies after four hours. Has his ten random recipies.

John makes another merchant...saves those 10 recipies as well (Maybe four were ones he didnt already have?)....Damn, died again to halfings, sucks ass.

John goes for merchant #3 and hopefully he can live this time....he gets his ten random recipies...four were new this time......

Now John has the recipies for 18 recipies....maybe a few really rare ones....that sure gives his current pc a big foot in the door.

Of course, you can always RP just not knowing them. *shrugs*

[Malken]

You wouldn't get to know 'rare' ones, the random ones would be a selection of rather common recipe, I would think.

Sometimes it's really hard to figure out even a common recipes.. Not everyone can figure out that X is made with a nail, a saw in your hand and two planks.

[Angela Christine]

I would say that I like this idea with the caveat that it would place a lot more strain on the staff, but I don't think that's even a valid reason. I could see someone rather easily setting up an automailer and random-gen recipe maker to pump out these recipes without the staff even needing to look at them;

Yeah, that is why I compared it to the acceptance letter that magickers get.  I assume that is automated in some way, and staff don't have to manually type out those spells each time.  Making it randomly select recipes from an approved list of recipes would be a little more complex than giving every merchant the same exact list of recipes, but I have tremendous faith in our super cool coders' ability to whip up something like that.  

Well...the only problem I can see....

John makes a merchant pc....dies after four hours. Has his ten random recipies.

John makes another merchant...saves those 10 recipies as well (Maybe four were ones he didnt already have?)....Damn, died again to halfings, sucks ass.

John goes for merchant #3 and hopefully he can live this time....he gets his ten random recipies...four were new this time......

Now John has the recipies for 18 recipies....maybe a few really rare ones....that sure gives his current pc a big foot in the door.

Yeah, that would be a bigger problem than you realized, because he'd get 10 (or however many) recipes for each of his starting crafts.  For a merchant that would be 40-80 recipes, depending on his subguild.


On the other hand, I don't think it would be a huge problem.  Knowing recipes is an advantage, but it isn't a huge advantage.  For one thing, many of the recipes would be more useful as "hints" and not immediately useful for a newbie crafter:

Many recipes require only a single ingredient, and are easily discovered.  Some of the "free" recipes would be those easy-to-find-on-your-own recipes.  Like the travel cake recipe, it is easy to learn on your own, but it is also a huge benefit for newbies to know how to make travel cakes, to help them survive until they learn to make money.  

Inevitably some of the recipes would be ones where the ingredients are not easily found, so even knowing the recipe doesn't give you an easy way to make cash.  From experience I know some lovely stone crafting recipes involving white alabaster.  The tricky part isn't figuring out how to use white alabaster, the tricky part is getting the white alabaster in the first place.  If you get a recipe that requires a chip of diamond, you probably won't ever be able to use it unless you get really, really lucky.

Some of the recipes would also end up being second or third generation recipes: ones that require crafted items as ingredients.  A recipe might use slices of kalan fruit as ingredients, and you usually can't buy slices of kalan fruit anywhere, so first you have to figure out how to make the slices yourself.  Many tool making recipes require a wooden toolshaft or a wooden pole, someone has to make those items first, before you can attach them to a tool head and make a finished tool.

Some recipes require a greater-than-newbie level of proficiency to attempt.  It doesn't matter if you know the recipe and have all the ingredients, you simply can't make that item until you get better.

It would also help level the playing field for total newbies, and for newbies to a particular craft.  I've played a bunch of crafters over the years, so I'm going to remember that certain things are useful for crafting.  I can't help it.  I can pretend I don't know, but when I've used a ---- stone and a ---- stone to make a two tone ring in the past, my next character is probably going to try to combine those two stones if she finds them.  I won't make a big database of all the recipes I've ever discovered to try to beat the system, but I can't help it if I remember stuff.  The 10 free recipes would help Newbies get over the OOC "experience hurdle".

You wouldn't get to know 'rare' ones, the random ones would be a selection of rather common recipe, I would think.

Actually, I'd really like "rare" recipes to be included.  There may well be recipes that no PC has ever used in the 7 years the crafting system has been around, because no PC with items X, Y, and Z in their inventory has ever attempted "craft X Y Z" and that's a shame.  Clan specific recipes should definitely be left off the list, and maybe recipes that require really obscure components, but most of the others should be in the list lottery.  Getting those unused and under-used recipes into circulation is the point of idea, or at least part of the point.  If someone comes into the game knowing an obscure recipe for Ginka and Scrab Toe Meringue Pie, great!  I'd love to see one.

[Ceryni]

Treat Crafting Recipes like Magick Spells

A wizened, grey-haired individual looks down to an enthusiastic young man and whispers, “So...you want to learn how to make cookies? First things first, come to some secluded mountain so that we don’t get caught and make sure you don’t accidentally set my dog on fire with your amazing fireball of barbecuing. ”


Sorry, odd mental image there.[/quote]

[Cale_Knight]

Absolutely. There must be dozens, if not hundreds of crafting recipes that are completely lost to the game world and will never be discovered randomly. There must be dozens, if not hundreds more that only exist in hoarded text files on the computers of our older players and that will also never be discovered randomly.

There is nothing wrong with giving some of these to newer players who would otherwise never get an opportunity to make unique things.

[Cenghiz]

To tell the truth, I'm against keeping _any_ crafting recipe secret. I don't know why they are secret any way. With my first two merchant characters, I wondered how they made trunks. There was none for me to buy and examine. There were no other merchants to ask. There was absolutely no way for me to discover. (I should confess I didn't try _everything_)
I'm not playing a game of puzzles. I'm playing a game of RP. I don't want to try 35 combinations with every new fruit I found to see if I can make a new kind of pastry. I don't want to try to find out how to make a table, when a table is just a simple craft for a masterwork woodcarver. I don't want to _buy_ jewelry to see only that they're not craftable, seeking new jewelrymaking recipes. etc etc...
I'm really willing to have all the crafting recipes except ones belonging to
specific clan members. Err.. I guess we may exclude 'component crafting' too, as well.
I'm against having puzzle-like elements in game at all. That gurth hid in its shell? Yes? A new player can make up 25 ways of killing it and RP them, but he's helpless till someone says he needs to 'kill shell'. I threw tantrum fits when I found that out with one of my very early characters.
I know now twenty-five people will respond with reasons to why crafting recipes should be uber sekrit. I don't care. I'm not the kind of person that likes to try 'craft gem;craft gem stone;craft gem beads;craft gem shard;craft gem bone' continuously. I do love to play merchants but I'm often shyed off, since I couldn't find a 'single' newbie skill crafting recipe for clubmaking with my all merchant characters.
*End of rant*
And about the idea? I'm all for it.

[Shiroi Tsuki]

I wouldn't like knowing all of the recipies.  I mean, for me part of the thrill is figuring things like that out, and then having a monopoly on (whatever).  What I would like to see would be something like the five to ten random recipies, which would keep some of the forgotten ones in circulation, and make is so that Bob Noobie!Tailor would at least have something to go off of.  I mean, he's a tailor right, it's not like he doesn't know how to do anything just because his player is new.

[Tisiphone]

I agree in large part with Cenghiz. Most of the common recipes would get tossed around, even across cities, to the point where anyone who had been crafting for the amount of time normally associated with 'life before PChood' would have heard about most of them. That said, I think there are a few, even outside of clan-specific crafts, that would be held somewhat more tightly - and even they should get the chance to be on the mailed list, albeit a smaller one. The only recipes which should be restricted completely from new players are those which are totally secret, meaning clan-specific ones, or others in similar situations.

I would also like to see more master crafters submitting unique items to be made (or even added to the database as not-necessarily-unique), along with crafting recipes for them, and then jealously guarding these recipes, only passing them on to a few trusted apprentices. I think the RP potential of individual crafters is woefully underexploited, in large part because being an indie crafter has a huge startup cost, from things like finding contacts and convincing them to buy, to things like buying new materials and items just to see if they can be crafted.

[spawnloser]

The problem with not knowing recipes is that it is an OOC fix for something that is already fixed by code.  You want to make the super elite sword encrusted with gems?  Good, get your skill level up higher.  And spend a butt-ton of cash to buy one and analyze it or spend a butt-ton of time/cash to find a bajillion gems and whatnot to keep trying hit or miss through all of them.  That is turning this game into a puzzle to find OOC combinations of words to do stuff instead of roleplaying.  I feel that it detracts from people seeking good interaction because they have to spend so much time doing useless crap that doesn't drive any plots.  (The same goes for foraging, but that's a bit of a tangent.)  I actually think that SoI has the right idea.  If it's craftable, put the recipe up in a section of the online documentation.  That way we can all get back to roleplaying.

[Doppelganger]

I think that idea is good, for the current state of economical affairs.

By the current state I mean
1) everyone have money, perhaps too much money;
2) there are non economical restrictions to how you can spend your money: without some social support you can't immediately hoard armies, not even bodyguard, you can't buy yourself significant social standing, property and so on.

Basically it means that you can spend money mostly on yourself, keeping in mind that there are your betters who are eager to take your money for free along with your life. On the one hand current state sucks as it cheapens and deminishes money and economy in general, on the other hand it makes possible abuses of crafting system less appealing.

As I understand there will change to that in Arm 2, making wealth more meaningful. And again, on the one hand my heart explodes with joy, on the other hand I understand that with proper effort and dedication it is possible to make economy to be another heaven for spammers, ceding them control not only over wastes as currently, but also over social and political powers within settlements. And by spammers I mean not some special evil beings, but I mean regular players, who are motivated to achieve coded powers in certain way.

In that light, I am cautious about idea of opening more gates for easy moneymaking. Yeah, I realize that it is quite possible to make whatever money one wants off the single cloth seller. But there are pure moneymaking diamonds among recipies, some of them don't even involve high skills and materials for them you can basically gather right off the streets.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that there are too many complex recipies never see the light since creation, and AC's idea resolves this problem well. And in case of abuse with recipie fishing it is possible to spread larger chunks of recipies to accounts, not to characters.

I am just unsure about idea, because I can't consider it separately from other economical features. That is why I am eager to see what Raesanos has done to craft and merchants and what exaclty Economy 2.0 will look like.

[bardess]

I think this would be amaaaaazing...

though, if there were ten, let's say there are six standard ones, three that were random within a pool of common items, and one from a pool of less common (but certainly not rare) items?  This would prevent the "John, John, John" incident, more or less.

[Fathi]

And by spammers I mean not some special evil beings, but I mean regular players, who are motivated to achieve coded powers in certain way.

I kinda fail to see how this is a horrible thing, to be honest. You said 'regular players,' so I'm assuming you mean a player that does a lot of crafting, but doesn't just sit around and craft items without emoting 24/7.

If someone's playing a driven, hard-working character that wants to amass wealth and political influence by crafting a buttload of stuff and they're doing it in a way that's believable in the gameworld, why is that bad?

If it's a goal for that character, how is 'achieving coded powers in a certain way' (I'm assuming you mean selling a bunch of stuff and then using the 'sid to gain influence and the like) anything other than 'accurate roleplay for a merchant'?

Merchants' skills all have one thing in common: the goal is to take raw materials and turn them into something more valuable, through skill, to make a profit. If someone wants to make 400 pairs of silk panties in order to get enough 'sid to afford bribing the local government to do something for him, why should he not be able to?

When you say "achieve coded powers in a certain way," it almost sounds like you're trying to say a successful merchant having influence in an area is somehow less legitimate or more twinkish than a warrior having influence in an area because people know he could kill them. Both are completely legitimate as far as the gameworld goes.

[Gimfalisette]

Agree with Fathi.

Agree that crafting recipes need to be less mysterious and more available, by whatever means.

I just want to see the role of the master crafter be so much more viable and fun. Better access to recipes, or better tools to discover recipes, is a necessary part of this.

[Only He Stands There]

I have to agree with Fathi on this one.

Spam-crafting is currently possible, and currently will make you boatloads of money, which currently makes you a person of power in your location, regardless of affiliation.

Spam-hunting is currently possible, and currently will make you boatloads of money, which currently makes you a person of power in your location, regardless of affiliation.

Spam-casting is currently possible, and currently will make you boatloads more powerful, which currently makes you a person of power in your location, regardless of affiliation.


And yet this cases are few and far between, because spam-anythingers tend to either A) die with alarming speed, or B) not have the patience to do anything that requires a fair amount of interaction, i.e. making contacts to gather materials TO spam-craft.

I don't think merchants will be the end-all, be-all of the economy of 2.Arm, and if they do... be half-merchant (or full-merchant).

[Doppelganger]

If I wanted to call someone twink or any other other word of my choice I would call them that, be sure of it. So I have said exactly what I wanted. It is not about how other people play it's about how system motivates them. And in case of magickers and crafters sytem motivates them to be boring isolationists, and I am not sure that it is healthy when boring isolationists take conrol over the gameworld.

Warrior succesful is not the one who attacks as many creatures as possible, warrior succesful is the one who survives all these attacks. Road to perfection for warrior is not only tedious task of maxing skills, it is also way full of obstacles and dangers. To brave it warrior must not only have patience, but also have to posess all virtues 'real' warrior should have: awareness, calculating risks and - especially to convert his abilities into money - social skills.

If at some point of sparring with dummy warrior could 'bash' 100-1000 sids out of nowhere, then I would agree that warriors on arm are just as fucked up as crafters. But they are not.

If there was no way how crafter could make any amount of money simply by walking from one shop to another five rooms away, all under protection of crim-code, if it was not possible to become succesful only by skill repetition, then I would say there is no problem with crafters at all. But there is a way and it is possible, and in fact it is encouraged.

Arm merchants are safe from their 'real' enemy - from competition. Sorry, I don't think that the need to be first to plunder resources from NPC seller and then to be first to plunder coins from NPC buyer is called competition.
But the lack of competition is only half of problem.

Let's pretend there are two merchants, one works gortok hides, and another works with silk bolts. Roughly the profit ratio is 1:3 in favor to silk, even for simple recipies. This disparity is understandable from OOC perspective, silk as material more expensive, requires higher skill and talent to work with and blalabla and so on. But if you look on it from characters point of view, you will notice that working with gortok is in fact more time- and effort-consuming then working with silk. Creative part for obvious reasons is neglected, skill and talent are replaced by repetition. So one merchant simply needs to go to shop, while another in order to get a steady supply of hides needs to hire hunters and then wait for them to hunt and hope they would not die to rogue magicker of the day. Indeed the one who does not involve other players is better off.

Same thing on the bigger scale of events. It is possible to go Cenyr and become rich beyond one's wildest dreams. But it would require alot of social work and preparation, besides this trip is likely to attract rogue magickers, and rivals are more likely to interfere and then there are gith and...would not it be easier to simply increase the pace of circling between shops and get the same money quicker and safer?

That's what I mean when I say that effort and creativity of character and player are not rewarded and repetition rule.

[Tisiphone]

Small point:

Capitalism dictates that producers are not rewarded based on effort and time consumed; rather on quality of and demand for product. It is completely understandable that a silk merchant would get paid more than one who worked with gortok leather, because people -want- silk.

The rest of the post, however, should be dealt with on its own merit, just as this point was dealt with based on its merit.

[Only He Stands There]

If I wanted to call someone twink or any other other word of my choice I would call them that, be sure of it. So I have said exactly what I wanted. It is not about how other people play it's about how system motivates them. And in case of magickers and crafters sytem motivates them to be boring isolationists, and I am not sure that it is healthy when boring isolationists take conrol over the gameworld.

As someone who has extensively (and almost exclusively) played crafters and magickers, this is by -far- not the case. Every single one of my PCs--even the ones that were "loners" by nature--had near-constant interaction with their peers. I make a decent living with my current PC by selling things I craft, and I guarantee you I don't spend more than an hour of the eight I spend a day logged in crafting--and the only reason I spend THAT long is because I have an entire clan to supply, and numerous people working to acquire the goods necessary to do so.

Warrior succesful is not the one who attacks as many creatures as possible, warrior succesful is the one who survives all these attacks. Road to perfection for warrior is not only tedious task of maxing skills, it is also way full of obstacles and dangers. To brave it warrior must not only have patience, but also have to posess all virtues 'real' warrior should have: awareness, calculating risks and - especially to convert his abilities into money - social skills.

"Warrior successful" is the one who rolls AI stats and joins a clan to repeatedly spar. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, don't get me wrong. Warriors have one thing their skills are focused on: killing things. Similarly, crafters have one thing their skills are focused on: turning raw materials into finished goods for a profit. You're stating that one of these doing what they're designed to do is fine, and the other is not, and I'm not following you at all.

Likewise, you're insinuating there's no danger in being a crafter, which is COMPLETELY false. Rival crafters -will- try to kill you. Thieves -will- try to rob you. People WILL get disgruntled that you rip them off and put hits out on you. Not only that, there's the matter of acquiring the goods required to craft, which means either A) you need 'sid to drop on buying them from a shop, which means you'll be spurring the economy further or B) you need to hire people to acquire them, which means social interaction, less bored grebber PCs, and, yes, spurring the economy. Win-win situation.

If at some point of sparring with dummy warrior could 'bash' 100-1000 sids out of nowhere, then I would agree that warriors on arm are just as fucked up as crafters. But they are not.

Just as a maxed crafter can turn a 200-sid piece of ivory into a 1000-sid earring, so can a maxed warrior turn a duskhorn into a pile of duskhorn parts that sell for a high price, turn a salt worm into a pile of saltworm teeth that sell for exorbitant rates, or even raid someone for easy 'sid--since not much aside from a prepared magicker can bring down a maxed warrior. Warriors can also provide escort for a price, hire themselves out as guards, et cetera--all of which use their skills to make 'sid, just as a crafter's does.

If there was no way how crafter could make any amount of money simply by walking from one shop to another five rooms away, all under protection of crim-code, if it was not possible to become succesful only by skill repetition, then I would say there is no problem with crafters at all. But there is a way and it is possible, and in fact it is encouraged.

To a degree, it's possible, but people who make the extra effort to do a little more than just buy silk and make silk clothing are going to be a TON richer than people who do what you just described. Virtually 90% of the crafting recipes out there require something not on the standard list of items for sale in shops, which means you'll need to buy them from someone who can go out and get them, which, again, spurs the economy forward and promotes PC interaction.

Arm merchants are safe from their 'real' enemy - from competition. Sorry, I don't think that the need to be first to plunder resources from NPC seller and then to be first to plunder coins from NPC buyer is called competition.
But the lack of competition is only half of problem.

True, for the most part, but it's been made abundantly clear that this won't be the case in 2.Arm.

Let's pretend there are two merchants, one works gortok hides, and another works with silk bolts. Roughly the profit ratio is 1:3 in favor to silk, even for simple recipies. This disparity is understandable from OOC perspective, silk as material more expensive, requires higher skill and talent to work with and blalabla and so on. But if you look on it from characters point of view, you will notice that working with gortok is in fact more time- and effort-consuming then working with silk. Creative part for obvious reasons is neglected, skill and talent are replaced by repetition. So one merchant simply needs to go to shop, while another in order to get a steady supply of hides needs to hire hunters and then wait for them to hunt and hope they would not die to rogue magicker of the day. Indeed the one who does not involve other players is better off.

Entirely untrue. If one wants to make a continual profit with crafted goods, for one thing, they won't sell them to -shops-. They'll sell them to -PCs-. Shops have a finite amount of money to drop, and by and large, PCs don't buy from shops.

Any person who's played a crafter of any relative success has probably noticed that shops pay you absolute dirt for your crafted goods, compared to what you can charge PCs, and then turn right back around and sell them for exorbitant amounts that no PC would realistically pay for it. This problem makes the shops run out of coin and stay out of coin, further encouraging PC-PC sales.

Likewise, dozens of the higher-tier recipes, even with silk, require items not sold in stores (buttons made of certain gems) or sold only in certain stores (dyes of specific colors, bonings). This requires travel, which requires protection or risk, which requires awareness, calculating risks, and--especially to convert this risk to money--social skills.

Same thing on the bigger scale of events. It is possible to go Cenyr and become rich beyond one's wildest dreams. But it would require alot of social work and preparation, besides this trip is likely to attract rogue magickers, and rivals are more likely to interfere and then there are gith and...would not it be easier to simply increase the pace of circling between shops and get the same money quicker and safer?

That's what I mean when I say that effort and creativity of character and player are not rewarded and repetition rule.

Repetition only rules if you continue to have an outlet for your wares, which, if you're selling to shops and people are not buying the wares, runs out quickly. If you're selling to PCs, what's to stop everyone else from making the same thing, undercutting you, making more money...

Supply and demand ruling the economy? Preposterous.

[Angela Christine]

If at some point of sparring with dummy warrior could 'bash' 100-1000 sids out of nowhere, then I would agree that warriors on arm are just as fucked up as crafters. But they are not.

And yet, Warriors are far more common than Merchants.  Heck, Rukkians are probably more common than Merchants.   :roll:   If the Merchant guild is the easy way to money and power, why aren't half the PCs Merchants?


Spam crafting is incredibly dull.  The fact that the actual crafting is usually done in a safe location just makes it more dull.  Personally I find sparring to be as dull as crafting, but some folks think it is fun because there is an element of danger.  Meh.  Anyway, what keeps merchants in line is that being a bad merchant is boring.  Really, really boring.   Well, and it isn't as easy as you seem to think.  Getting supplies isn't easy.  Selling goods isn't easy.  Converting cash into power isn't easy at all.

[Doppelganger]

2OHSH
I will certainly talk to you in detail sometime tomorrow unless my attention will be averted by something shiny, one thing I want to answer immediately though.

Let's pretend there are two merchants, one works gortok hides, and another works with silk bolts. Roughly the profit ratio is 1:3 in favor to silk, even for simple recipies. This disparity is understandable from OOC perspective, silk as material more expensive, requires higher skill and talent to work with and blalabla and so on. But if you look on it from characters point of view, you will notice that working with gortok is in fact more time- and effort-consuming then working with silk. Creative part for obvious reasons is neglected, skill and talent are replaced by repetition. So one merchant simply needs to go to shop, while another in order to get a steady supply of hides needs to hire hunters and then wait for them to hunt and hope they would not die to rogue magicker of the day. Indeed the one who does not involve other players is better off.

Entirely untrue. If one wants to make a continual profit with crafted goods, for one thing, they won't sell them to -shops-. They'll sell them to -PCs-. Shops have a finite amount of money to drop, and by and large, PCs don't buy from shops.

Any person who's played a crafter of any relative success has probably noticed that shops pay you absolute dirt for your crafted goods, compared to what you can charge PCs, and then turn right back around and sell them for exorbitant amounts that no PC would realistically pay for it. This problem makes the shops run out of coin and stay out of coin, further encouraging PC-PC sales.

Likewise, dozens of the higher-tier recipes, even with silk, require items not sold in stores (buttons made of certain gems) or sold only in certain stores (dyes of specific colors, bonings). This requires travel, which requires protection or risk, which requires awareness, calculating risks, and--especially to convert this risk to money--social skills.

As you have noticed, I was talking about getting resources and making things half of process. But anyway what you say about PC to PC sales sound more like a dream to me.

No, I agree that in theory PC market is much more appealing than NPC shops and I agree that for success you absolutely must keep an eye on it. But all those succesful examples known to me were based on free resources Great Merchant Houses provide. I mean of course, if you can send 'free' hunters to get you uncommon materials, if House pays off all your expenses for a modest share in your sales then you can go at large and make high-end items that PCs would buy. That, of course, if you are too shy to ask staffers to simply load those goods for you.

But I believe that in order to ahieve this level House merchants rob their Houses blind, as shares in sales never repay actual expenses for supporting, feeding and watering workers.

I have no reason to distrust you so far, but seriously are you talking about independant merchant, who honestly pays for everything from his own pocket? I seriously believe that you will be better off by selling three simple dresses instead of making one perfect one, at least in terms of time spent on gaining same profit.

And I think you seriously understimate the power of NPC market. Indeed PC merchants rarely meet with PC customers, so PCs do buy from shops. And while they would not buy simple things I am talking about, they do quite fine for refilling coins on certain shopkeepers and it's all you need.

2AC
May I refer you to my first post in this topic again?
Money are quite meaningless currently, they are very limited in use. You can hoard wealth, but it won't buy you secure social standing or anything that's beyond your social standing. It may change, if money will be powerful.

Likewise, magickers were not appealing to play until they got real coded superpower, and spam casting is incredibly dull, but whom does it stop now?

[Coat of Arms]

On the topic of the economy, here's my 2 'sid:

PC-to-PC sales aren't that common for several reasons. First of all, few PCs can make anything worth buying. Of the countless crafting skills, only a handful produce items with an actual demand. Clothes, jewelry, weapons, armor and possibly one or two more. On top of that, only a small part of crafted items are useful or unique enough for anyone to choose them over store-bought items. I don't remember seeing many succesful independent merchants, and the House merchants thrive almost exclusively off of wares that are part of their base stock or that an imm has loaded up, not things that the PC crafters have made.

Second, placing an order with a House merchant is one of the most frustrating things one can do. It'll likely take you upwards of a RL month or more to get the item, if you get it at all. There are probably exceptions but that's what I've always experienced.

Third, it's way too easy to make money. Anything from mining to salt grebbing to over-hunting or killing humanoid NPCs and selling their armor, or buying wooden shields in one city and selling it to the same House's stores in the other for a 300% profit. Or robbing all the apartments in the city and watching out for any newly rented ones, robbing them as soon as the first rent is paid. Having an actual job is a joke for anyone willing to use the code as it allows you to, because jobs generally prohibit you from doing all of the truly profitable things. Many shops' funds are depleted just hours after reboot without much being bought back to replenish it. All of this means that money pours into the game and rarely leaves. When people can actually afford to buy the grossly overpriced NPC-shop items, why wait for a PC merchant to show up? It could take weeks and months before they can get you what you want.

[Agent_137]

don't the helpfiles provide a few recipes?