~ Hel’s 10 Commerce tips ~
Hello! I’m Helryx from Alexina. I’m writing this guide because commercing is really fun, and while there already exist a few guides here and there, I feel like I can add my own level of depth that you might not of come across. These are all my honest opinions and ideas, based off my experience over the past few months have come up with great tips to help you with your commercing journey!
1. Talent! -You’ve got talent! Or at least, you should. Tip number 1 is to solo focus commerce, you wanna get it up fast? Then you gotta put the time in. A lot of people take their time with it, or try it once and are disappointed by the rewards for the work. //train gold strike while you’re at it. (it’s not as expensive as you might think)
2. Get some ducats early! - A great way to start your commerce journey is to do the fighter quest, by making your active talent fighter for the first time you get access to this content. Follow a harem style drama, and make 3k ducats! // another good way if you’re able to handle yourself to do bandit hunting with bronze/silver/gold bandit cards! Or get a high level to put Master bandits on finish to get the ruthless bandit badges which sell for 1k ducats per.
3. Be ready for a fight - no matter how good your bandits dodging skills are, you’re never going to be able to avoid every bandit, so if you’re riding solo make sure you have equips to deal with bandits. Or go with a friend.
4.Patience - This is one of the most important tips, commercing is long and repetitive, especially when alone, but the more trips you do, the more gold and ducats you make. My tip would be (if your computer can handle it) would be to watch anime on the side or read an awesome light-novel or book while you commerce!
5.Progression! - You make most ducats in one go with an Elephant, and they cost 350k ducats which at first, seems like a horizon away. But don’t fret! It will be slow to start off but once you get a (horse drawn)wagon, you’ll be rolling in ducats!
6. Route - Plan your route, this might sound strange but make sure know where you’re going. Time is a big factor in commercing, and you don’t wanna get lost! So learn the maps and work out how where to cut across the map for the fastest speed.
7. Trading posts - this comes with time but, leveling trading posts is important, same with commerce mastery, really vital for that extra percentage.
Advanced Tips:
8. Limited goods - limited goods are goods that have low stock, but sell for a really high value! At the very bottom of the trade goods, they are usually the last thing you unlock and is one of the main reasons you want to rank up the trade posts. But beware! Seeing as they’re so limited they get grabbed up pretty much as soon as they spawn. They spawn every two hours, starting from one hour after the day reset, and always spawn within 5 minutes.
In terms of places for limited goods it goes in this order:
- Tir - Best price you can get, but it’s gone instantly
- Dunby - Second best price and isn’t always gone instantly but the trading post can be difficult to rank.
- Cobh - Less people know about it, and it’s a great price if you have enchants.
- Tail - Alpaca/wagon run - usually a quick trip to dunby.
- Emain - not really notable, I would usually do my last run at tail.
- Belvast - It seems good but generally you want to avoid going to Belvast altogether, the boat is a novelty which runs out fast, too long.
- Tara - You can go to tara, just don’t take anything from it, unless you like really long hauls for not much reason.
- Bangor - highlander is better.*
*Lead is better if you don't have commerce rings, as highlander gets nuked as everyone wants to get it.
9. Commerce Gear/ GM merchant / letters / Partners- This is the expensive stuff. Commerce outfits are very useful for making great DPM (below).
- A g15 outfit (Bassanio, Antonio, Shylock, Portia) or a William partner commerce outfit. (giants can also get in on this they also have a giant version for shylock/portia now) You want to get yourself a good commerce reforge. 15+ the higher the better.
- Fleet feet also increases your speed by the equivalent of 5 commerce speed. An Alpaca robe is a good alternative to a commerce outfit and provides the equivalent of 10 commerce speed but this doesn’t stack with a commerce outfit.
- Wavesweeper unfortunately doesn't stack, rather it's slightly faster than fleet feet, but its hardly noticeable at 16%.
- Commerce enchants - probably one of the most important things if you can get your hands on it, you want Trader (r7) and Trustworthy (rB). They give you discounts on trade goods and increase merchant rating at towns. With enchants like these you can make ridiculous high reward runs at any time.
E.g. Emain's Prices for Triple pasta make it one of the best runs.
- Grandmaster merchant - you get +100 weight capacity and an extra slot, definitely worth it.
- Letters of guarantee - You can get 30/40% letters for free from Festia boxes. It’s another great boost.
- Pets/partners An alpaca is great for speed runs from dunby and tail. You can also make the very useful Alpaca robe. William is the best commerce partner you can get, but a regular commerce partner is fine. More goods = more ducats.
10. DPM - To make the most ducats you want to get the best ducat per minute (DPM) efficiency. Don’t worry about the math, just bare in mind that speed runs tend to be better than long hauls. If you’re just starting out I would recommend taking Tir’s baby potion to Dunbarton when the price is at 7-10 ducats per - and then diet potion, all the way up to a wagon.
Comments
I'd say Scathach beach is something you should do if you're strong and not as invested into Commercing i.e. transport speed/enchants.
Farming commerce items is only worth it during 2x drop rate imo.
To get 10,000 or 15,000 ducats per run, you should aim to boost your merchant rating for one town to Level 7 as quickly as possible, so you can get access to the "Limited Items" that can give very large profits. Also, higher merchant ratings give you a bigger discount on the purchase price, which is good, but even at the maximum merchant rating it's only 3%, so that's a fairly minor effect.
So, pick a town as your home town. Only buy from the merchants at your home town. Deliver to whatever town is currently giving the best profit, then use a moon gate to teleport back to your home town and repeat. Keep doing this until you master Commerce Mastery. Only at that point should you consider buying goods from other towns and boosting your merchant ratings in those other towns.
I don't want to recommend a particular town as the best choice for your home town, because if lots of people followed that advice, then there would be lots of competition for the "Limited Items" from that town, and it would no longer be the best choice of home town. So, just choose a town at random.
Some would say to NOT choose Belvast as your home town, because of the extra travel time on the boat. On the other hand, the boat time makes Belvast unpopular, meaning there is very little competition for the "Limited Items". If you've got something useful to do during the boat ride, Belvast can be a viable choice.
So, what would be your best advice for this?
Without accessories. I have letters, William and the commerce partner, the alpaca robe and an alpaca.
So what would be the best way to rank this up fast?
There's another commerce thread in this sub-forum that might address this.
You need to multiply the number of goods by the listed profit. I know it sounds really simple but the number of times I've run commerce with both new and veteran players only to find out that they pick what they move simply by the profit amount is amazing. Sometimes because they didn't think about it too hard and sometimes because despite having done commerce long enough to unlock the elephant they hadn't realized different items were moved in different quantities.
Yep, some towns are 'wagon' towns and some are 'elephant' towns; IIRC Belfast is a 'wagon' town. Also, this is why later on, once you can fill your transport with ducats left over, the highest profit isn't necessarily based on rate of return alone. But early on when you don't have enough ducats to fill you transport THEN it's all about rate of return.
BTW the 'Hels' in the title of this thread isn't me.
I ranked mine by going back and forth from Belvast to Bangor and vice versa. Another player gave me the advice to do this and it helped me. Good luck
Yep, I ranked both those cities, at the same time, the exact same way, and this was on pre-Nao-merge Alexina.
IIRC it's:
10 Elephant to Belfast
20 Wagon to Bangor
30 goto 10
But when I reached the point where I decided it was safe to risk the rental, I decided to do so as an experiment. The result? I can certainly say that in the long run, the ducats/minute is enough to offset any objections. I will rent another one early next season.
So if you are serious about this element of the game, you should certainly invest in one when you can. Just be careful. It would be a waste of ducats if you rent yours at the end of the season, since rentals do not carry over.
Keep on
Truckin'Skiffin'.