So - your bank account is getting full, you don't have enough secure storage in your house and you're already using all 5 character slots. What can you do?
Are you trying to find a way to make some extra cash? Not sure how to go about it?
Thought of running your own vendor, have no clue how to do it?
Well - operating a vendor can be a fun and profitable way of disposing of those extra magical items that you have as well as providing other players with furniture, potions, recall scrolls, bulk resources (like wood, reagents, leather,etc.) and many other items.
You can purchase a contract of employment for approximately 1500 gp. These contracts can be purchased from most innkeepers around the land. The money that you spend here actually goes toward your vendor's daily wages, so consider it to be a down payment on your future.
Rules for vendor placement:
- Vendors may only be placed inside or on the steps of player owned buildings.
- Before you can place a vendor, the building has to be "public" (as opposed to "private").
- The front door of a public building can not be locked.
- If a public buildings has more than one room (i.e. most larger structures), the interior
doors of the building can still be locked.
- To place a vendor you need either to be the owner or co-owner of the building or a
"friend" to the building.
- The limit of vendors per structure is based on house size and can be found in the
House Sign menu.
- The ownership of vendors is non-transferable (in other words, only the person who
places the vendor can give her orders and maintain her).
- As long as there is a vendor inside (or on the steps of) a house, the owner of the house
cannot change it from public to private.
Your vendor cannot hold more than 400 stone of weight, and cannot exceed 125 items, just like other non-secure containers. A stack of anything counts as one item.
You are able to set certain things on a vendor that are "not for sale". These items include: books, unlocked containers containing only "for sale" or exempted items, items inside a container that is marked "for sale", or key rings.
Many vendor owners use gems or gold coins to make icons or words in their vendor's packs indicating such things as the circle of spells in a pouch or surrounding an important book for emphasis. Unfortunately, even though gold only weighs 1/50th of a stone each, a single gold coin not only weighs 1 stone, it also takes away from your item limit (125 total). Furthermore, unless you assign a price to these gold pieces and gems, you risk having the game assign a price to them (although for gold this is a non-issue).
There are two different methods of labelling your wares. Firstly, you should label all interior containers, just like you'd give any item on your vendor a description (for more details, see below in the section on Stocking Your Vendor). Secondly, you can place a 'not for sale' book adjacent to the container with a description of what's to be found within. This will enable players to click on the book to see what's in each container.
Stocking Your Vendor:
You open your vendor by double clicking on him/her and selecting "See Goods". You can then place whatever items you wish in the vendors backpack. Be warned, however, that if you place an item and take any other action before assigning that item a price, the item will be automatically priced at NPC shop levels!!
To assign a price: drop the item you want to sell in the vendors backpack. You will receive a message asking for a price and description. Type the price and give the item a description if you want, then press enter. For example: 50 Recall Scroll [ENTER]
Once it has been placed and priced, you can move it about in the vendor's pack without having to redo this step. If you want to change an item's price or description you have to remove it from the pack entirely and then put it back. It's a good idea to type out the price and description first, then place the item and hit [Enter].
Organization is everything. The popular vendor will have all of his/her items neatly arranged in differently coloured bags for easy identification. To place a "not for sale" bag or box on your vendor, simply type in your description without a price. Label the bags rather than placing labelled books near them so as to reduce your item count.
When shopping from a vendor, players do not have to have the gold on them to make purchases. The vendor can do direct withdrawals from player bank accounts!"
Maintaining Your Vendor:
Now that your vendor is ready for action, how can you keep him/her happy?
You have to keep paying him/her. The wage you vendor requires depends on the value of the inventory he/she is holding. If you have alot of high priced items on your vendor, the wages will be high. If your vendor runs out of gold, he/she will quit working. To see the daily wage, double click the vendor. To pay the vendor, simply drop some gold on them and it will add to the gold the vendor is currently holding. You can withdraw your gold from the vendor anytime by double clicking him/her and selecting "Collect Gold".
To generate return business, it is a good idea to mark recall runes for outside your shop and have them for sale (or for free) on each of your vendors. This way customers can just buy the already marked rune and drop it in their runebook.