Merchant Question

[DustMight]

I haven't played a merchant in a good long time and wanted to know if I were to play a merchant with specific crafting skills (say, weaponsmithing or instrument making) do I need to pick the approprate crafting subguild or can a merchant eventually craft anything?

Thanks!

[mansa]

I haven't played a merchant in a good long time and wanted to know if I were to play a merchant with specific crafting skills (say, weaponsmithing or instrument making) do I need to pick the approprate crafting subguild or can a merchant eventually craft anything?

Thanks!

http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?guild_merchant
Guild Merchant    (Character)
Merchants are the blood which binds the world together, the carriers of desperately needed goods from one land to another. Usually descendants of the old Dune Traders, merchants quickly learn the ways of the desert, the most profitable trade routes, and possess a handy charm for making friends of even the most bitter templar.

Merchants possess the ability to ride animals and pilot the argosies that cross the lands between villages and cities. They are also skilled at assessing an object's value, getting excellent prices from all but the stingiest traders, and noticing every detail around them. Furthermore, they have great talent in many forms of crafting, from simple cups to intricate forms of weaponry.

While faced with a hard life, merchants are often the richest people in any given city-state. The most sure way to find work as a merchant is to travel widely, joining caravans at every opportunity. Whenever he/she can, a merchant ought to find a village's or a city's traders and learn the prices of things there. By compiling this knowledge (knowing true item costs can be invaluable in doing this), the merchant can devise superior trade routes and make a great deal of money.


Bolded for emphasis.

[DustMight]

Thanks Mansa.  Apparently I missed the entire second paragraph there. 

[Erythil]

It's sometimes a bit obscure what paths are involved in branching skills.  If you really want your character to be defined by a certain craft skill that might be harder to branch, it's not necessarily a bad idea to pick the subguild, especially if you don't plan on it being a long-lived or permanent character.

[FantasyWriter]

It's sometimes a bit obscure what paths are involved in branching skills.  If you really want your character to be defined by a certain craft skill that might be harder to branch, it's not necessarily a bad idea to pick the subguild, especially if you don't plan on it being a long-lived or permanent character.

This is very good advice.

[Erythil]

Everything must be vague.

[Marshmellow]

Erythil, please do not reveal subtleties of the code like what may branch from what.  That's obscure, but not too obscure.

[Synthesis]

If you want every crafting skill that a merchant can conceivably get, you have to go subclass physician.

Your chances of branching armor-making if you don't start with it are about 1-in-a-million, though.

[mansa]

If you want every crafting skill that a merchant can conceivably get, you have to go subclass physician.

Your chances of branching armor-making if you don't start with it are about 1-in-a-million, though.

Not True.

[GloriousSalarri]

If you want every crafting skill that a merchant can conceivably get, you have to go subclass physician.

Your chances of branching armor-making if you don't start with it are about 1-in-a-million, though.

Not True.

Very much not true.

[hyzhenhok]

It is not a secret, though, that if your subguild starts with a skill that your main guild eventually branches, you basically start out with a free branch in that skill.

[jstorrie]

Some merchanting skills take a very long time to branch, are difficult to train, or are really deep in the merchant skill tree. As others have mentioned above, if you want to be a crafter of Item Type X, taking the appropriate subguild is wise.

[boog]

If you want every crafting skill that a merchant can conceivably get, you have to go subclass physician.

Your chances of branching armor-making if you don't start with it are about 1-in-a-million, though.

Yar, the latter is not true and the former, I wish I'd known. But I nubbed it up the first time. Oh welp.

[Riya OniSenshi]

Sorry, but Synthesis is right about physician, but we can't say why, obviously.

[DustMight]

Thanks for all the advice. Not sure why anyone would want to get "every imaginable" crafting skill however.

Also not sure how one would actually know this without playing a maxxed merchant with every single subguild combo because a cool feature (if it existed, I haven't a clue) would be to have certain recipes available only on selection of certain subguilds.  It seems to me if you haven't done exactly that, then you either don't know or have gotten your information from some other OOC source.

But again, thanks for the advice.