>>Is there any way traders can at least start perceiving power? I understand we can take classes but it would be nice to be able to prepare in advance if we (i) can while out with our caravans.

I think it's safe to assume that Traders aren't going to get any early access to magic until they are ready to fully use magic. Access to classes is their attempt to let them pre-train to get ahead of grandfathering if they want to.

This is not a case where we can just flip a switch and turn on select portions of the magic system for Traders, neither as an IC concept nor mechanically. The structure has to exist before you can start moving in.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>You flip a switch, and anyone (even NMUs) can train arcana.

IIRC, this was always the case, depending on what the item required.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

> Particulary since sanowret crystals are achaedi crystals with a new skin and exp adjustment. They didn't even have to touch the magic system, just the item.

My point is that I don't understand why the item can put bits into experience bucket #6, but it's not possible to put experience in bucket #8 (layman's view - not actual buckets).

>>My point is that I don't understand why the item can put bits into experience bucket #6, but it's not possible to put experience in bucket #8 (layman's view - not actual buckets).

From the sound of things, it might be for one or two reasons. It might actually be a mix of both.

1) There is infrastructure we do not understand that prevents a non-magic flagged character from getting particular kinds of experience, and there's more to resolving that than switching the flag on. Speculation on my part, but I personally wonder if the flag would also do things like "now you can perceive mana, now you can invoke spells, now you can charge cambrinth, now you can also do X Y and Z," and if all those widgets aren't properly also fleshed out Very Bad Things (tm) can happen.
2) Since there should be logic to why a Trader can suddenly do things, there should be an IC reason why.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

> Yes, it could be possible to just make exp granting items. What I thought was the request was "just let Traders use power perception," which requires the infrastructure in the magic system that doesn't fully exist yet.

That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification. Any chance we could see some item that let's a trader start training these skills? Maybe ledgers sold in a festival shop somewhere with notes scribbled in the margins regarding specific skills. It doesn't have to be effecient, but anything would help.

I was thinking of something specifically to hold traders over until magic is released, much the way mech still works for crafting. It might be easier to just used scholarship ranks as part of the grandfathering mechanics.

Classes fill this role. There's even in game messaging for this, added when teaching in combat was overhauled, that implies that.

>>You're not sure what use the Targeted Magic skill could ever be to you, but you don't see any harm in listening to <Player>.

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I'll probably be lynched for asking this, but I've always been confused on why traders were a profession instead of a skill set available to all jobs. Especially now that all professions are gaining access to the same crafting mechanics etc. and because it doesn't really make sense why a normal character would not get better at haggling over time. Caravans could still exist, trading could still exist and current traders could keep their skills and just pick a new job and continue trading. Everyone can be a locksmith, everyone can be miner or an engineer, but only traders can trade? Why? I'm asking out of innocent curiosity and not any kind of spite.

I have two main objections here.

OBJECTION 1

Column A	Column B
Why can't Rangers backstab?	Why can't Barbarians self-heal?
Why can't Empaths run caravans?	Why can't Bards resurrect?
Why can't Thieves wear large arm-worn shields?	Why can't Warrior Mages travel like Moon Mages using summoning rifts?

All of these are simply game mechanics. The only difference between column A and Column B is that we have OOCly contrived lore reasons for column B, but not for column A.

So turning your question around a bit, from a game mechanics perspective, asking "why can't Clerics run caravans?" is no different than asking "why can't Thieves resurrect?" To me the real question then becomes "why have we done so poor a job of establishing Trader guild identity that people are unironically suggesting the guild be disbanded?"

The promising shadow of a guild identity is already here. Lore primary and armor secondary/magic tertiary makes them the guild most focused with practical matters at hand. The idea of a second lunar mana guild is one well worth exploring.

OBJECTION 2

I have a pretty middling understanding of coding and zero knowledge of DR's actual game engine, but it seems to me like disbanding Traders is probably a whole lot more work then you're probably thinking. It's not just flipping a few switches, it's heavily modifying quite a few games systems that have hooks for Traders built into them.

You're also probably looking at TONS of bug fixes and QC. Simple stuff like NPCs having unique dialog for Traders become a nightmarish quagmire when you just decide to randomly remove 1/12th of the game (if you count commoners as a "guild"). That NPC gets nervous and starts randomly vanishing, or simply ceases responding to all player commands, or even worse starts causing massive memory leaks.

You're also talking about a comprehensive rerolling/grandfathering system the likes of which we've never seen before. We've done grandfathering for new skills and stat rerolls and concentration rewrites, but eliminating an entire GUILD? That's going to take a good chunk of time just coding the systems to allow that.

As I understand it they have pretty decent support/templates for creating new spells right now. Honestly it's probably just as easy to write 30 spells for Traders as it is to eliminate them.

The biggest thing unique to traders is Caravans and for some reason they don't seem to want to develop Trader stuff around Contract Trading. So I do agree there is a sense of what is the point point of having a Trader guild if everything that is developed for? traders is available to everyone else also.

At one time, that seemed to be exactly what Godrich and team was doing years back, but at some point I guess they decided naw..forget about it.

+Gidske

Whatever it may be now or was doesn't mean it has to stay that way. Contract trading is what the guild was built on, and at one time was the only thing we had.

I'm all for other ways to learn trading, but don't abandon it; that would be a loss in one thing Traders have still and call it tradition or not, it's our history too. Instead spruce it up, fix it up..do something with Caravan/Contracts...

Travelling Markets for your Caravan
Yes, have commodities and contracts work hand and hand
and so on....but this isn't a suggestion folder.

+Gidske

Hello all,

just wondering if we have any updates to the release of Trader magic's? I know things got put on hold, but I haven't been able to find anything official as a followup since January?

>I am starting to think roughly around the time the world ends.

So, you're saying when hell freezes over?

It's slated for release right after the release of the bloodlust system, right? Or was it the paladin abilities? Or the bard abilities? I can't keep them all straight.