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There may be a slight issue with merchants in Menzoberrazan saving their inventories passed crashes, copyovers and resets. Because of the limited scope of items available to sell in the city (The majority is usually five items) The merchants are completely saturated and will no longer accept half these items. Meaning that drow can kill and kill to gain a gold coin now and then, but can't make any money off items they try to sell, or only make five percent of cost. Factor in the fact that the current bugs with mobiles within the game make it almost impossible to travel by foot to places like Ched Nassad and Skullport and the high cost to pay to travel by other means. This dooms the drow to a short lifespan of player use and ability. The argument used a year ago, that drow are wealthy, gain the most coin etc. is no longer the case. Instead I'd go as far to say that those of us with large amounts of coin are either hoarding now as our means of making coins are almost gone or giving it away to knew drow players or paying for them to be raised.

How can this be fixed?

- Cut the cost to use ic caravans to travel to Skullport and Ched Nassad to something reasonable. The high cost makes it less and less worthwhile to travel if you have to spend all your coin to get there and have nothing left over to train or use.

- Increase the variety of weaponry or loot available in Menzo. Once a merchant has five of one thing, he will no longer accept or buy anymore. It might do to give a wider variety of loot or at least clear the merchants in Menzo once every two months. This can be balanced by lowering the value of certain items, some coin is better than no coin for anything.

- Cut kismet costs to create a full drow, and instead increase the kismet to create a halfdrow. Halfdrow are easier to abuse than drow, since drow are confined to the Underdark.

- Introduce other ways for drow to make coins in the underdark like the trade routes on the surface.

I know drow are not that popular and that may create a perception that "Hey why spend time on the drow, if only two or three are ever on?" Well I say to you that you have to invest in something to see any kind of return. The less you invest, the more restrictive you are and resistant, the less you will see. Having requirements like "10 drow online for such and such period of time" is unrealistic. No one is going to play something very aggravating like a drow for long, they need incentive. And I personally don't see the need to let drow go to the surface or something like that. That would be the easy way out.

It'd be cool if there was an NPC that traveled from the surface to Menzo, from Menzo to the surface, etc. People of the surface would sell their items to said merchant for more then normal (maybe like a 5% bump in sells price) and the merchant would then go down to Menzo, maybe every Friday, and offer these items for sell for an increased price (5% bump in buying price). Only people of the Underdark would be able to buy from the merchant (So basically only drow can buy from said merchant) and only people of the surface would be able to sell stuff to the merchant. This would be an easy way to have more items/spell stuff sent down to Menzo, and it'd increase the variety of items in Menzo as well.

EDIT: The increase in sells price was to give people up top an incentive to sell to said merchant, and the bump in buying price makes the merchants trip worthwhile ic (Merchants travel to the Underdark in hopes to make huge proffits, its a dangerous trip)

JYSRAK

As i am a builder i am quite happy to work on some of these issues and in fact have several ideas of areas to build that may well help.

However i have just had an even brighter idea that i am going to float in the builders forum. The idea is to code scrap merchants, these would be mobs who would buy items based on there weight and the material they are made of and then melt them down/ recycle them so acting as an item sink (thanks Gwain for that idea). The price they would offer would not be huge but it would be consistent as there inventory would never fill up.

I would rather actually code an area where PC merchants from the surface could come and there is in fact such an area in canon. Though frankly Skullport is already fine for that, the only issue is the cost of getting there as stated by Cyprianus.

My own real problem at the moment as far as having a merchant RP is that i have no way of advertising my wares or receiveing orders other than in person. A message post in Menzo /ched nasad would go a long way to fix that.

Duranamir

This is a serious problem for the drow. I know one building proposal is being worked on for a Deliver/Errand thing down there, but overall the level of development is a long way from creating an independent market. So while these are all good ideas, there needs to be a more fundamental fix to help the situation there. Either go back to the old merchant system, or just issue bulk coin out to infuse it back to the market. Fundamentally, you have coin going out, but no trades, commerce or high-paying mobs to bring it back in.

I'll now make myself unpopular and say I really dislike the merchant inventory change in general. I don't think it accomplished anything at all but make a few people feel self-righteous. We all want the player trades economy to be self-supporting, but wishing won't double the size of the player base. It just seems to me that newer players, or those with more obscure RP, have it even tougher now.

Saranya wrote: I'll now make myself unpopular and say I really dislike the merchant inventory change in general. I don't think it accomplished anything at all but make a few people feel self-righteous. We all want the player trades economy to be self-supporting, but wishing won't double the size of the player base. It just seems to me that newer players, or those with more obscure RP, have it even tougher now.

It serves a good purpose on the surface because of the variety of items available. It can still benefit those in the underdark that are willing to branch-out and find new items, though the current climate makes this a costly venture. It was not implemented as a self-righteous venture though, the idea of a merchant or any mobile saving inventory is excellent when you consider the amount of items people may accidentally hand to mobiles or those players waiting for resets to oversell to an area and ruin the economy. That's been almost completely eliminated to the benefit of the majority of the playerbase.

I think if anything, just further refining or suggesting ideas like Duranamir's excellent idea can make it work in isolated areas.

Duranamir wrote: I would rather actually code an area where PC merchants from the surface could come and there is in fact such an area in canon. Though frankly Skullport is already fine for that, the only issue is the cost of getting there as stated by Cyprianus.

My own real problem at the moment as far as having a merchant RP is that i have no way of advertising my wares or receiveing orders other than in person. A message post in Menzo /ched nasad would go a long way to fix that.

Would be nice to have a less costly (coin and risk) means to reach Skullport and the Underdark. I know I would take old Gilain down there more for trading, but current means of travel are simply unappealing to him. Not hoping for easy travel, like between Waterdeep and Westgate, but definately would like an option I could reasonably consider.

Also agree with the message post. They are instrumental in surface trade and would be nice to see an Underdark version.

Gwain wrote:It was not implemented as a self-righteous venture though, the idea of a merchant or any mobile saving inventory is excellent when you consider the amount of items people may accidentally hand to mobiles or those players waiting for resets to oversell to an area and ruin the economy. That's been almost completely eliminated to the benefit of the majority of the playerbase.

Seems pretty slim reasons for decimating the only way most of us had to make some coin. Reboots really so often people were losing hordes of items this way? Happened to me once and I called for help on ask until I got it back a couple days later...

It also makes no sense beacuse code should take the place of the "unseen population" that any large city would have. You assume adventurers are braving monsters to bring back items that merchants then sell to townspeople. Merchant inventory should naturally go down after a a time...not stay static forever waiting for some other player adventurer to buy what they could go get themselves.

I think we strayed from one extreme to the other. We went from mass selling after every reboot to nearly no selling. I believe the folks behind the scenes are addressing certain aspects to bleed away some surplus trash items over time though. I know I am hung up on many store sold items being constantly out-of-stock (components for example) and look forward to any tweaking of the system planned.

I don't want to return to the old way. The habbits of selling several dozen looted swords and armour piece after reboots, essentially freezing the local economies, never sat well with me. Though not against the rules, it wasn't very healthy for the game. Plus, it was the easy road. Why try new money making methods when you could make 60 plat grinding mobs?

Trial and error, but no regrets.

I have recently started playing a drow char and am loving it so far. There are a few major draw backs however.
When i first started playing him i though to myself, wow im getting a fair bit of coin here for killing Gobs etc. But then as Lev 10 started to loom i realised that this started to dwindle. I am completely unable to sell anything i loot from corpses as not one of the merchants will buy anything!!
I would agree that drow probably do still get a little more coin for killing mobs, but all the costs down here are so much higher. I am real;ly struggling to train any new skills as i just cant afford it! And i dare not venture too far out because quite frankly i would get battered!!
I do think something needs re-evaluating in the merhcant codes for drow areas, just to give us a chance of making it to the surface and annoying the rest of you!!!!