I have some interesting data about selling bonus to share, actually. It appears that bonus relies on circle and not on Trading.

I have been keeping track of my Trader's bundle and pouch sales since circle 4. I brought her up to circle 60 with only a minor increase in Cha (up to 15), then proceeded to keep selling pouches and bundles while advancing Trading but not circle or Cha.

From circle 4 to circle 60 she advanced from the baseline 10% bonus to a 32% bonus. I then took her from 320 Trading (circle 60 req) up to 529 -- and during this time I noticed almost no increase in her bonus. She made 985 sales and the median bonus for the first half was 32% and the second half was 33%. I could do more precise testing but this seems to indicate that Trading does NOT affect bonus; rather it is dependent on circle (and possibly Cha).

Ultimately Trading does act as a gateway to improved ability, in that you need it to circle, but it seems to me that it should really be affecting the bonus by itself.


- Navesi

I have heard from several people that the bonus caps at 60%.

A good test now would be for me to begin circling again and see if bonus picks up again, but that is a lot of work and not something I can promise.


- Navesi

>My small trader only keeps minimum of 10 Charisma since she learns all her trading through Contracts. Why bother?

You don't want an extra 60% of your bundles/pouches for free? For profit alone that's great. It will be even better when Traders become a "real" guild with magic and a speculate rewrite and can then increase their kill rate substantially.

It's not great but honestly I don't think it needs much touching. 60% extra money is a tangible, practical benefit to a skill even if that extra profit is only partially tied to Trading. Paladins have no skill. What does scouting do? Ranger trails? lol all but a couple of them a travel script or Genie's automapper can literally do the job faster, and the faster ones aren't much faster. Bardic lore?

There's definitely room for improvement, but I wouldn't go so far as as saying it's just a skill to make Traders different from commoners. Heck, Trading has two game systems (contracts and commodities) built specifically to support only that skill, no matter what you may personally think of those systems.

>>t's not great but honestly I don't think it needs much touching. 60% extra money is a tangible, practical benefit to a skill even if that extra profit is only partially tied to Trading.

That bonus only help push contracts down into third place for money making and that's if the Trader has worked hard a combats. A dedicated combat Trader makes money, worst to best; Contracts, Hunting, WO(specifically forging ones with access to rare ingots). The WO one is due to being lore prime.

Trading does not affect contracts. Contracts are a pure circle thing. Commodity trading I have no idea, it's possible but I'd be surprised. One of the 10 traders that actually uses that system would have to setup some major tests for it. WO I also don't think are affected by trading and I don't think we've ever been given the impression that they do. If a GM wants to weight in on if trading impacts WO's that'd be great.

60% for free bonus is nice. But so are lots of guild perks. Several guilds need a lot of work. Frankly only two guilds, in my opinion, have well developed guild skills. Most guilds are held together by virtue of the magic system. A few guilds, of which Traders are one, are held together with chewing gum.

It's not outrageous for Traders to ask for a system that's actually tied to guild skill ranks.

What Traders really need is a new identity. They are billed as the money making guild, but that's just not a supportable concept in DR when combat is king.

>>B) A system of Trader magic that was originally "previewed" on March 3, 2014, almost three years ago.

>>Point B is especially salient to me. We are going beyond Simu-soon

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I think you're selling the word "Soon" here short.

Su Helmas was soon. Weapon enchantments was soon. Both of those were the same time frame, or prior, to Necromancers. Natural healing.

Heck, I've given out a few "soons" in my time that have stretched past three years (... missing divination tools, some bard/recall stuff, certainly a large number of spells... the Kaldar village I swear I'll make some day (riiiight)).

Wait, what am I trying to argue again?

-Raesh

"Sometimes, I worry that I’m not the hero everyone thinks I am..." - Mistborn

>>8. Give up on magic and introduce new speculates that effectively work like barbarian abilities, but they're fueled by trading rather than "inner fire".

Mm, yes. I like that. Trader 'magic' just seems contrary to the trader, but since every guild has 'magic' I guess that is the way of it and this could be a way to do it without it being uh, 'magic'?

I liked all your suggestions and I think there are plenty more that could be incorporated into our Trading skill, from faster caravans (yep I said it) with more skill, or better yet, divide up trading to represent HOW you learn trading; Contract Trading, Commodity Trading, Work Order Trader, Market Trading, Gem Selling Trading...lol..yeah, I know that might sound ridiculous, but so did saying we can make a large object fly in the sky at one time.

One thing that bugs me still is how our Appraisal skillset, which I considered was one of our 'owned' skills even though others have it, has been shot full of holes with Appraise Focus so all that trader jewelry stuff, etc....to the trash heap. And why does none of the Renown Scrolls even use that as an evaluator on whether you get on it? That's a minor grip but just saying.

I've enjoyed the discussion.

>>Mm, yes. I like that. Trader 'magic' just seems contrary to the trader,

One of the big reasons to give Traders real magic is that the systems are already in place for creating spells. The systems that aren't magic have become "special snowflakes" that take extra work and understanding to develop, not to mention balance, and this is a large reason why guilds who had those systems fell behind in development. Another big reason for Trader magic is that the guild needs development in more directions beyond just "trading and making money". Magic gives Traders the opportunity to be a much more viable combat guild, not to mention benefitting crafting.

>>If Traders do get magic I hope it doesn't become a requirement for circling.

Elanthipedia shows the planned magic requirements on the Trader page. So there are requirements, but if you look they are pretty minimal. Also according to the GMs you will be grandfathered up to the requirements for your current circle.


- Navesi

>>You still have a good 30 years before this gets released, so you can get to 200th Circle reasonably fast.

Heh, yeah, I've heard promises in the past that never came to fruition, but then of course, it hasn't been 30 years yet.

---

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Bertrand Russell
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/search_results.html?q=love

>When I said like barbarians, I didn't mean fueled by kills. I meant that it's just not fueled by mana. Maybe they would be better off with a khri type system instead. Fueled by concentration, or fueled by something unique to traders. I said barbarians because they're on the magic-lite system, and you could more or less copy a lot of their abilities, change the skill it buffs, change the flavor text, teach it to a few guild leaders, and call it a day.... hand waving the inner fire recharge component.

I've not got any more insight into the current DR code than you do but I actually think just coding a bunch of spells for Traders might be easier than copy/pasting inner fire, I vaguely recall Armifer mentioning spell hooks existing to help make coding stuff easier.

It's skill-based like magic but that's where the similarities end apart from stuff costing IF like spells cost mana. The "kill stuff" is a big portion of it. Combat regen is different than non-combat regen, same for the inner fire cap. Heck, just checking your mana level is different with chakrel vs. without.

Frankly it' a headache, it you wanna keep them NMUs Thieves would be the way to go. But Navesi's spot-on when she says magic is a huge part of the game now, I'd rather they become magicians and take advantage of that sweet magic development.

I realize I'm over a month late to this discussion, but I'd like to add some input.

>It appears that bonus relies on circle and not on Trading.

GM word is that it's Charisma, Trading+App. I've never found anything to refute that.

Yes, the bonus goes up when circle does, but that's because Trading+App is going up as well. Charisma makes a huge impact.

I tracked the Trader bonus and published my results https://elanthipedia.play.net/Trader_gem_selling_bonus

I actually did that data almost rank by rank everytime I gained a rank in Trading+App.

I'm actually training up a second Trader to 90th and started repeating it with different Charisma numbers but I'm not doing as thorough a job. It's suggesting to me something like 1 point of bonus is equal to 40 ranks Trading+App total and 1 point Cha is 10 of those ranks, but my data collection has been rough enough I can't tell. What I should do is get another pair of my bonus app pouches (pouches worth precisely 10 plat, or a couple copper more) and start over on my third Trader. Or rather, roll up a 4th Trader, since third Trader isn't a novice any more.

>I have heard from several people that the bonus caps at 60%.

Apu once described it and the effect of Spec Finesse. Basically, the normal bonus stops at 50%. But there's an inherent +/-10% that you can see by getting a precise app and an NPC offer on a single gem, a tied pouch, or any bundle, and then do simple division. That gives an effective limit of 60% (1/21th of the time).

But when you use Spec Finesse, the cap is still 60%, there's still the +/-10%, but the 50% normal bonus limit is removed. My second Trader is somewhere around 37% standard, 47% with Spec Finesse. Naniaki has been at 50% non-Finesse for almost 5 years now, and his spec Finesse has climbed even higher. The data I posted on the E-pedia link above is where I stopped recording for him, but now in 2017, using Speculate Finesse, I never see anything lower than...54% I think. Might be 56%. Almost always 60%, because 3/4ths of the range is 60% or higher and capped at 60%. Meaning that in almost 6 full years I've gone from 50% to 64% bonus while using Spec Finesse (and if I still had my 60 Charisma, it'd be even higher).

>My small trader only keeps minimum of 10 Charisma since she learns all her trading through Contracts. Why bother?

>You don't want an extra 60% of your bundles/pouches for free?

If it's just contract trading and never sells bundles/pouches, it wouldn't do any harm. Charisma is big for gem/bundles, moderate for work orders, and pretty nil (probably, I don't study them) for contracts. I'd imagine Gidske would use his bigger Trader for those. Plus, my aforementioned Trader is running a 47% Spec Fin bonus on 45 Charisma, and I'm not training it any more, it should hit 50% by my 90th circle goal, I sell my own bundles accreted from all my lower alts at roughly 50-54% with Finesse up.

I had Naniaki at 60 Charisma, but when 3.0 hit with stat respec, I dropped it to 40 Charisma and still had 50% or better with Spec Finesse in order to keep hitting that 60% hardcap. I've raised it to 45 Charisma since then because of the minor increase in work order pay that I discovered, with a goal of 60 or preferably keeping it evenly divisible by 15 (LCM of 5 and 3 for Spec Finesse turn-ins).

>A dedicated combat Trader makes money, worst to best; Contracts, Hunting, WO(specifically forging ones with access to rare ingots). The WO one is due to being lore prime.

I posted a formula for 2-item work order payouts in Lore-General Discussions some time back. I disagree with this assertion that WO payout is best, because unlike combat (well, there's a small cost for item repairs), it costs money for the material for making items for work orders and a good chunk of time to make those WO items.

Ultimately, I think the best pay by time for a Trader, combat or otherwise, is through acquiring gem pouches/bundles from actual combat guilds who are far more effective at murder-stomping large swarms than Traders are. Paying 45-50% to the customer on thousands of plat and then turning and reselling for 60% is pretty lucrative on a cost per time basis. That 10-15% markup amounts to hundreds of plat profit on a few tens of minutes of work. In the off-time doing work orders enough to lock crafting skills and then training combat and then non-combats, which is what I strive to do.

Well, actually the absolute best pay per time I've gotten has been as a desired crafter of ultra-high end armor and shields, getting paid hundreds or thousands of plat. But that's rare, only occurring every few months at best.

>WO I also don't think are affected by trading and I don't think we've ever been given the impression that they do. If a GM wants to weight in on if trading impacts WO's that'd be great.

Not a GM, but they are not. Trading skill gain from WO is dependent on number of items turned in (linearly), and the difficulty of the items (Challenging Tier 3 and Hard Tier 3 teach identically). That is more or less what Kodius said when he announced WO teaching Trading. WO Pay is based on Guild, Charisma, and the app of the items turned in. More or less, there's still some oddities with WO pay I haven't gotten around to working on, and it's such a complex beast I don't have the time to figure out all the intricacies. All I know is that 3+ items pay less per item, and that's enough for me to not want to spend the hundreds of hours I'd have to do to rigorously figure them out. Although I suspect it'd be similar to the rather clean formula for 2-item.

Naniaki Felyran

"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

>You say you think Trading DOES affect bonus. If that is so, I'm curious about how you would explain my results? 209 ranks of Trading gained with no increase in bonus.

I don't know. I could be snarky and say imprecise measurement? Median sales bonuses are not the way to track the trader bonus given the random +/-10% modifier. Even a thousand of them. Especially just a thousand of them across 200 ranks. It can sometimes take me 40+ offers to pin down a precise bonus each rank. The last major bundle buy I did was 66 bundles and I didn't even get the full range, was 41%-60%. You have GOT to pin down the full +/-10% range to KNOW what your bonus is (Unless you're like me and at the 50% cap anyways).

The data I posted on E-pedia shows clearly that Trading+App increase it, or at least that a fixed circle does not inhibit increases. I went from 27% to 30% keeping circle the same. In my first few entries circle and Charisma are unchanged while Trading+App increase and the bonus increases as well. Unfortunately then I entered a phase where I kept circle+skills constant and trained a ton of Charisma before going into just a typical Circle+skills chasing.

I can keep my second Trader uncircled for 90ish ranks but as its general training is complete I really just do work orders and collect rocks and do logout drain, so it'll be months to stretch from 75 to effectively 90th.

This does make me mull over the formula though, because IIRC, a lowbie Trader doesn't gain a whole lot from a MASSIVE infusion of Charisma.

I wish it didn't take so much time to do all the testing I want to do. Not just for Traders, either.

Naniaki Felyran

"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

>Did you have some other method to determine bonus, perhaps involving repeated requests to sell the same bundle without actually selling it?

Yes, that's what I do. Actually, I prefer using tied gem pouches of precisely 10 plat so I don't have to app and use a calculator. Tonight I whipped up 2 pouches of 100002 and 100003 Kronar pouches for my novice Trader (who I have just found has a 1% bonus with 12 Cha, 18 Trading, and 4 Appraisal at 1st Circle). My 72nd Trader I have down in Shard uses a tied bundle and I just use a calculator or Excel.

The making of these gem pouches also shows that gems are using decimal values, also evident when one breaks up tied pouches. For in finishing the second gem pouch, 11 gems appraised a total of 4744 kronar, but when put into a pouch, it wound up being 4747 kronar. Which particularly annoyed me, because if that had been as appraised, it'd have made a pouch of exactly 100000 kronar instead of 100003. I didn't have any other gem combination on hand to try to narrow down the 3 kronar difference though I don't usually worry about it.

>Sorry, maybe I missed this link?

https://elanthipedia.play.net/Trader_gem_selling_bonus

>but it does leave me very confused as to how I could have ended up with the data I did.

Well, I can think of 2 possibilities offhand.

1. I don't know how much App you gained, but I feel 200 ranks should increase the Trader bonus by 5%, more or less. It's possible that it could be lost in the +/-10% random noise, when combined with the fact that you said you had nearly a thousand sales over those 200 ranks, and many of those sales would have been when your bonus only went up by 1%, or 2%.

2. It's possible that having an EXTREMELY bad Charisma affects the formula in such a way that it requires significant rank increases to offset.

I don't really like either possibility.

Actually, I see a possibility with #2 because by my own data at 34 Charisma it took 66 and 64 ranks, and at 60 Charisma it took 36 ranks and then an average of 37 ranks per point to go from 38 to 50, although as I've said, I wasn't tracking it precisely by then to know the EXACT ranks I went up.

I had assumed when I went up 1 point neatly every 4 Charisma for 20 Charisma that it was just a simple formula of something like Charisma*X + Trading*Y + Appraisal*Z = SOMENUMBER that was put into a different formula that determined what your bonus was.

I didn't really consider it might be something like Charisma*(Trading+Appraisal) = something. If it was something like that, then I could see that having extremely low Charisma as abominable. 200 ranks for 1 point of bonus could be easily explainable.

Naniaki Felyran

"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

<<Another goalpost along the way is to find the exact ranks my 10, 20, and 30 Charisma traders can start selling gem pouches, which has been a very fuzzy thing>>

Just some data: at Circle 10 with 41 trading and 16 charisma, I could not sell a tied gem pouch.

With Speculate Finesse on and checking stats, charima was 16+1 and I could sell the tied pouch. I waited for the speculate to wear off (couldn't sell) and I trained charisma to 17 and was able to sell.

~K

I have a number of assumptions and theories that seem to have supporting data mounting up.

Assumption 1: Trading=Appraisal, or another way of saying it is that the sum of the 2 is important. Actually, I already suspected this, because years and years ago a former GM hinted at it to me in private conversation. Didn't say they WERE the same, just that "at the point you're at, they're effectively the same" or something like that. I just took it as "Meh, ok." I now think they ARE equivalent at all points.

Theory: Charisma is a multiplier on the Trading/App sum. I generally just note it as Cha/10.
Evidence A: My 10 Charisma Trader has gone up 1 point in bonus every 21 ranks Trading+App for the last 4 points (21, 42, 63, 84 total). My 20 Charisma Trader (actually part of my data is from my now canceled 30 Charisma Trader when it was at 20 Charisma), has gone up at half that, rounded up (11, 21, 32, 42, 53 total).
Evidence B: The now aborted Trader went to 5% training 22->23 Cha, 20+26 Trading+App, which would be 2.3*46=105.8 from 101.2 at 22 Cha. 105 is what I presume will be the 5% goal.

Theory: The bonus provided by Speculate Finesse is divided into 2 parts. Part 1 is +1% per 10 Circles, part 2 is the added Charisma.
Evidence A: It struck me when the 10 Charisma Trader rolled over from 3% to 4% at 9th to 10th Circle with Spec Finesse working, with no change except circling, I recorded it as a possible error despite my first thought being that it was just because I was still running the same Spec Finesse from the last rank (39/30 Trading/App). Which doesn't make much sense, now that I think about it. But that got me thinking and looking over this record. I noticed that the total*Charisma/10 would have been 77. First entry with Spec Finesse was a 10(+1)Cha*58=63 for 3%. Later was 5% at 10(+1)Cha*77=84.7, which would be 4% normally. That got me thinking it about the possibility that it was a Circle based bonus. I will see about confirming it by double checking when one Trader gets to 10th, and when both get to 20th.

The more I play with numbers, the more certain I suspect this is all true. The first entry I did on E-pedia that had Spec Finesse just HAPPENS to coincide with the precise value I got for 39%.

However, it's just a framework, the actual points need filling in. Lots of filling in. Obviously 1 point every 21 points can't work forever, or everyone would be hitting 50% by 50th circle, so it has to scale longer between points. It might be roughly 220-240 points each point from 27-50.

Naniaki Felyran


"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

> It struck me when the 10 Charisma Trader rolled over from 3% to 4% at 9th to 10th Circle with Spec Finesse working, with no change except circling,

Considering that trader circle has more to do with contract returns than anything else, is it possible that this is less related to speculate finesse and more related to a trader's circle reaching a new multiple of 10?

> If Circle isn't used for the bonus at all, what would circle*10 matter for the bonus?

Do we know this for a fact, or is it only due to limited testing?

>Do we know this for a fact, or is it only due to limited testing?

Well, years and years ago GM was quoted as saying it's based on Charisma and Trading and Appraisal. I've always gone with that.

>Right. I'm just trying to catch up on the work done so far. Do we know that circle has no impact at all on bonus, or is this "unseen component" tied to circle rather than a buff that doesn't show up in exp mods or info.

I have never seen that circling affects my Traders' bonuses, except for when Spec Finesse is running. Although the most definitive proof I have is going from 43->56 Circle without ranking and before training Charisma where it changed a bit.

Naniaki Felyran

"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

The only thing that would suck after all this time you spent trying to unlock the math behind this is if the GMs finally put traders on a real magic system (lolol I know, fat chance!!!) and change this up completely.

"Brace yourselves, Squanto is going to bleh blah fart fart bleh.." -the player of the character formerly known as Pureblade

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11hiogTlgpijIqDf5n4ibRK7u_t9v-nF__vttLT9MFnA/edit?usp=sharing

My accumulated knowledge on the subject. It's only kind of cleaned up. It would be nice if people provided more info at higher levels. Seems like most people don't want to share, or are already well beyond the useful range of information. Or don't care.

It's a nice straight line to 2100 of 1% per 210 points for the first 10%. Sort of.

I did determine that pouch selling is activated at 2100 points, which is effectively 20 Charisma and 105 total between Trading+App.

However, right after that, I fell off into another function and I have as yet an imperfect understanding of it.

Naniaki Felyran

"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

This morning my 76th Trader bumped both normal and spec finesse, and I think I can give my idea of the entire formula.

Charisma*(Trading+App)= X
If you're using Spec Finesse, use modified Charisma*(Trading+App). Once you have Y bonus from the formulas below, add Trunc(Circle/10).

For X less than or equal to 2100, Trunc(X/210)=Y bonus
Effectively from 0% to 10% bonus.

Then there is a step.

For X greater than 2100 to...I don't know, I'm guessing 8400 because that's close to where I think it meets the third formula, Trunc(X/350)+1=Y bonus
Effectively you drop right off from 10% from the first formula to 7% on the second formula (But hey, you can now sell gem pouches). I've only gone as far as 10% under the new formula.

I am guessing a third step of Trunc((X+250)/2200)+21=Y. This is a very broad guess though, but it fits all the data I know of. I think the second step meets it at 25% and you drop down to 24% very briefly before going up to 25% on the third step.

This is about as far as I can go without spending another month or two training at least 1 Trader to roughly 150 ranks Trading+App if it does go out that far, and probably 2 Traders for precision.

It's accurate enough that I did successfully predict that my 20 Charisma Trader would roll over to 10% before it happened, and I knew the 76th Circle Trader would get a bump to both within the next rank or two on the chart of data I've been building, helping to narrow down the rollover point for the higher end formula. I'm a certain as can be about the first 2 formulas. I'm pretty sure about the 3rd, but wouldn't swear by it.

Or I could be wrong and there's an intermediate step between the 350 and 2200 and the non-existent data is borked.

Naniaki Felyran

"I have faith in the current crop of GMs to not screw people over"

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear