CLOK BBS

Ok, back when there was talk about the traders guild and how it was originally meant to be traders instead of craftsmen I started thinking about the guild tasks they get assigned. As it stands right now they've been reclassified as artisans which is fine but they could still do a bit of trading here and there so I'm going to put this idea for trading up on the board here for the record. If this is already on your to do list then great, if not then here's an idea for you Rias.

Trademaster Manning tells you, "We heard there is a need for some <insert non-craftable item here>. Trade for 5 of them. They'll probably sell best in <town name> so take them there and report back to me or any taskmaster when you are done. This is going to require a fair bit of travelling and trading so good luck!

Ok now the grit behind the task. Each town/hamlet and maybe even some non-hostile areas could have major or minor trading posts that deal in certain types of items/commodities and the artisan would have to learn these things by visiting them ((an excuse to explore)). That person would then have to get a wagon and horse and travel to a market in Shadgard/Mistral Lake, Corvus outpost/Haiban to purchase out of pocket the first item from the market. ((This can either be something that is directly tied into the market command "list" or be a completely different command to see the list of trade goods.. I vote separate command as that'll focus the process.)).

That Artisan would then take the Iron they bought from Mistral Lake and travel to , let's say, Westbrook where they have a need for iron and exchange that for fishing implements. then off to Emleth where they could use with some improvements and more food to be exchanged for something they have on their commodity market. the process continues until the trader has a wagon with the desired amount of originally asked for items, then they take those to the town named in the task and hand them off to the market representative there. This wouldn't give an immediate monetary reward but would in fact give a little bit of guild points, I'd say 1 guild point per item. this guild point reward would also apply at each exchange post. The Artisan would then report to the nearest taskmaster that the job was completed and receive the riln reimbursement plus 10% of the riln that those trade goods would bring on the market they dropped them off at and 7 guild points per item the finally delivered.

with I know all that is a bit vague and I initially put it that way on purpose, but here is an example using no item names but with some real numbers.
5 original item
25 mistral lake item purchased for 1000 riln.
25 mistral lake item in exchange for 20 westbrook item. 0.5 guild point reward per item received for a total of 10.
20 westbrook item in exchange for 15 Emleth item. 0.5 guild points per for a total of 7.5.
15 emleth item in exchange for 10 keth item. 0.5 per for total of 5.
10 keth item in exchange for 5 ashdale (original) item. 0.5 for a grand total of guild points through trading of 25 guild points so far.
5 ashdale item (originally asked for to be handed off to the representative in Shadgard where they draw a price of 2250 riln total.
report back to a taskmaster and receive 1225 riln and 35 more guild points making a grand total of 60 guild points.

I would suggest that these guild tasks have a lower limit on what rank they get assigned like some other tasks. I would suggest guild rank 5 be required to get this task as by that time unless the person is not planning ahead or is doing something seriously not in character for a trader/artisan they will have enough riln for a horse and wagon for certain. I've run through this in my head and figure each task like the one above would run an average of about 30 minutes to perform if that person has taken the time to map out who exchanges for what. the trade goods list could be simple at first but if this is implemented at some future date I'd really like to see this expanded, if it works at all, so that people have choices on what trade route to take. So they might go on the quick for the riln, or they might make a long curcuit of trading to rack up some extra guild points. Oh and I intentionally put the actual guild points for trading low as a way to sort of discourage people from doing constant trading and making their guild points through this alone. I figure between that and mount fatigue, it'll keep the amount of taskfree trading to a minimum.

Discuss, poke holes, at your leisure.

Since i'm still a board newbie and don't know how to edit an already posted post. That mention of 1 guild point per item initially is a mistake refer to the example of the trade route for the 0.5 guild point per.

That actually sounds like a really cool task.

I'll be honest. If it was that for sixty guildpoints or wait three minutes for a weapons task worth 50? I'll skip over it. I do with most of the tasks now because the weapons tasks are drop dead easy for the most guildpoints. Double it, however, and now we're talking! I really dig that task idea the more I think about it actually.