The game's kinda broken

[faijeya]

tl;dr: the game currently feels like a dungeon raiding economic sim.
While it's nice and all that, it's not a trading game.

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No, I'm not talking about bugs, though that I'm kinda frustrated that the zealot I've told to wander off, tells me each day that he leaves me. Is he some kind of stalker or what?
Actually, pretty much all quests are somewhat poorly worded (show this medallion in the inn in yyy) or bugged completely (getting daughters to monastery).

But it's a small part of the game.
I think, it's currently not a trading game at all.

At least for casuals like me prices are too unpredictable (no established producton centres) and travel is too expensive to rely on blind luck.
I understand the notion to have a huge wagon train and buying and selling only what's profitable.
However, prices on wagons are prohibitively high, and accumulation of the bad luck eats all the trade margin at the start.

It's not really possible to make some plans, even with illegal goods, like hill herbs, because they are sold at paltry prices.
Also, locking goods per trader level might make some sense, but not with mundane things like wood.

Maybe development of ruins and mines would help?
Nah, you'll get break even (both in money and in peons converted to money) in like four seasons.

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Anyway, the only way there is to make some certain profit is to carefully raid mines and ruins.
Carefully means raiding with just 10-15 people without any officers.
You don't want to defeat the monster, as there'll be no artifacts, no ore and no diamonds then.

So, the route is like:
1. Ovoros - Orse - Dwarfen Mine (maybe it's Dwarven?) is 3+1 = 4 days
2. Dwarfen Mine - Orse - Vergotto - Alokai - Muddy Mine is 1+2+3+1 = 7 days
3. Muddy Mine - Alokai - Urgune - Asmor - Rosuvio - Crystal Mine is 1+3+3+2+1 = 10 days
4. Crystal Mine - Rosuvio - Satio - Mines of Klashr is 1+3+1 = 5 days
5. Mines of Klashr - Fasbam - Wine Storage is 2+1 = 3 days
6. Wine Storage - Dunlaar - Abandonad Tower (maybe it's Abandoned?) is 2+1 = 3 days
7. Abandonad Tower - Ovoros is 2 days

Total time spent looting around is 4+7+10+5+3+3+2 = 34 days.
Usually it's closer to 40 due to various slowing events, but it's ok.

You get tons of ore and many artifacts.
Raising your luck in Ovoros before each round is recommended.

[Troglodyte]

In 15 hours of game play I'm over 1.2 million. I took notes on what the range of commodity prices were and traded accordingly. It's very doable as a trading game but the bugs and quests are, in my opinion, what I find holding evrything up.

[faijeya]

It's doable as a trading game when:
1) you have enough money and access to jewellry or spices (3kg per unit or 2 kg respectively)
2) you have access to high-speed travel like baloons to react on high/low prices events

In other terms, 10-20k and "trader" at least.

Expanding cargo capacity costs too much to validate low cost/mass items trading.

[Lilltiger]

You are doing it wrong, erly game you should only have 1 helper and no specialists. Then you can trevel quite far for a very low cost and still make a good profit. Like in real trading itäs very important to keep the expenses rely low.

[faijeya]

Well, let's take a look on the numbers (without any statistics or probability, that's too much for a forum discussion).


At the beginning you have a 300kg cart with no option to expand (it costs ~300 gold more than you have).
At the beginning you have access to food (30 items in a 300kg cart), hides (37 items), olive oil (27 items) and ore (31 item).
So, you have to make do with 21-37 items in your cart.

Even if you get lucky, you'll have 10 gold profit tops. Usually it's 5-7.
Ironically, we have nearly the same 5-6 gold a day burn rate with one helper and including toll bridges.

So it means it's reasonable to search for a market with 5-7 profit for just 10-15 days (keep in mind sometimes there'll be empty runs), having 50-150 profit from each run.
With a ton of real-life luck you can scrape a thousand gold in profit (and finally buy a second cart) in ~300 days.


On the other hand, I just made a test run raiding the ruins.
At 58th day I returned to Ovoros. I have 12 men (lost about 10 in the process).
After I sold all artifacts and diamonds I got 4146 gold or 4146-1538=2608 gold profit.


My good sir, I'm afraid I'm doing it right and you're doing it wrong.

P.S. In real trading you do not need to keep your expenses low.
You just need to be able to afford the expenses and to keep your profits significantly higher than expenses.

[Lilltiger]

I havent tried the dungeon loot strategy, how reliable is it etc, it takes me about 130 days to get my second cart without any selling of found items or playing with merchants i meet, not looting, doing no quests, no helping people from robbers.
Got my third cart day 227, day 270 i got my forth. In 300 days i had 4 carts and 4k gold.

Now it sounds like the raiding tactic might be better, so it should be nerfed, still the trading works just fine( too easy imo ).

...

p.s. Ofcourse, but the higher expenses the more reliant on luck, as in your example you got your second cart by the time i had 4 and could afford a fifth. (thought one should instyed sell off one and buy a better and then keep on replacing the worse ones, to keep the expenses low).

[Lilltiger]

How do you do the raid tactic, i tried to get as meny mercs i could, took about 30 days to get up to 17, then I went to the ruins at overost, sent in 16 and 6 died and the loot i got was only worth 700g all in all (they dident manage to defeate the creature).

[faijeya]

Nah, don't hire as many guys as you can.
The optimal team size is 10-13.

Don't worry if you didn't get any treasure. There are 4 dungeons left in the initial run (there are more dungeons on islands to the north, but they are not worth it).
Take a look on the list I've made in the first post, initial 1538 gold will surely make do for the first round.
Don't forget to search around the ruin. 3 ore is worth 2 goons, by the way.
Tally up the results after you make it back to Ovoros after five dungeons.

The worst you can do is to defeat the monster.
Then ore, diamonds and artifacts won't respawn after 30 days and you'll have to make a proper mine or distillery out of the place. It is boring and does not yield any comparable profit.

[Lilltiger]

Ahh ok, do you try to trade on the way to the different dungeons, or no trading at all?

[faijeya]

Nah, I just sell all the ore I find in "major" settlements.

"Small" settlements will give you 15-25 instead of 30-50.
I travel with a single cart and I don't really care if it is broken or not.

Make sure to open all cards in a temple after each circle to boost up your luck.

Ah, having a lot of unidentified artifacts really helps with "Trader" promotion quest.
They don't count in your starting wealth, so they'll give you a big boost.

[Michal]

No dude, don't reveal all the cards in the early game, they are way too expensive. 1st card is enough most of the time.

[faijeya]

With 1500-2000 income per round you can afford to spend measly 450 on your luck.
There are too many luck-sinks on the map and cards sometimes give you goods in 100-200 range.

[Lilltiger]

Can you record a session of your dungeon raiding and post it on youtube, so I can compare it too different trading runs too see how much they differ in profit generation. Sadly I cant record as I run the game in a virtual machine as I run linux as main OS and I have the no trade goods to buy bug :/

[faijeya]

Sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBzt3-elwyI

Not sure, why it's so jerky in youtube, I guess it's because of 30->25 fps transition.
But whatever, you got the idea.

[Lilltiger]

Neat, you manage to generate 500g more then I do in the same amouth of days trading, I think that is a flaw, one shouldent be able to raid with gains that erly.

[inyeol]

i'm afraid i agree completely with op. Price change makes it too unreliable early game ( Although i didn't realize other cards were too expensive. I was opening up all of them lol)

gonna try raid strat now