Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24108228-20151119183340/@comment-5354667-20151119191943

Replying because why not.

This is going way back, about two years ago, when I was still fairly active. Since some of the mechanics of the game have changed since I played this style, this might be out of date, but the concepts are still pretty similar.

The best way I've found to set up shops is by selling resources, maybe some easier, lower-level buildings, such as huts, mills, etc, simply because you can transfer ownership. I liked to set up a forge (smelteries were non-existant at the time) for those who wanted to make weapons. Selling resources also promotes learning core game mechanics such as crafting.

You're going to have to figure out who you want to sell items to. Do you want to sell to end-game players or players who have just spawned? To nomads? To semi-advanced tribes? Or, do you want to be an all-around shop that caters to most player's needs? Players in different stages of the game will have different priorities in terms of items, eg. end-game players will want the resources for end-game tools and weapons, such as yew stumps, chrome, mithril, stuff for bluesteel, etc, while new players or players just starting out will be focusing on getting the basics down such as collecting enough food to last for a couple of hours and some of the starter buildings.

Figuring out this is essential for where you want to set up. If you want to cater to the new, beginning-game players, a spawning island would make the most sense. If you want to cater to the more advanced players and the nomads, an island such as Magma, the high points on Mainland, even a merchant frigate (you won't be able to use the shop building, but people can still see it from far away and is particularly useful if you're selling fish or to nomads). I've even set up a small artificial island attached to Spring with a shop on it.

As for what to charge, I noticed that a lot of players would rather work for you than buying from you (these players are normally the new players who don't have a good enough grasp of the game to survive on their lonesome). If you can get a couple of these players, it allows you to send them out to collect resources/make food and stuff, so that you can stay at the shop.

Something that I stole off of someone else learned was to set up on an island with an abundance of gold, such as Rockma, and place a coin press outside of the shop for players to make their own coins. Common resources (iron, bread, etc) would go for one coin, uncommon for two, rare(ish) for three, and mithril, mushrooms, pretty much everything that has a recipe censor on the wiki for five. Of course, I wasn't a huge fan of this, so I had my own little currency system going.

Iron - bought most of the common resources. I often had a setup on an island that had iron so that players could go mine it if they needed to. Coal - pretty much the same as iron. Charcoal would count for more. Gold (not the coin unless you want to make all of the people) - would buy most of the rarer resources, like mithril, mushrooms (I never explicitly sold poison, and looking back I don't really know why)

Then, if I had another larger tribe, I'd often trade away some of the coal, iron and gold.

If you want, I shall write more, but for now, I have to go shovel off the nice layer of snow we got last night.