A Basic Guide to doing Trade Runs

A Basic Guide to doing Trade Runs

This guide is based on my own experience with the quest. If anyone has valuable information to share feel free to do so...

At first you will be able to do the trade run 2 times per day. The Merchant Skill Tutor (Mani Maini) will have two skills available to you. One of which will unlock a 3rd possible trade run per day and another which will allow you to bargain the price of the goods that you can buy. If you are serious about making money and earning Mercury Reputaion you must get the skill for the 3rd trade run. Bargaining doesn't make that big difference at the start. Later on, when you can do more trade runs and when your Target/Limit gets higher, Bargaining will be more usefull.

Important Notes:
1) Trade Union Members can be seen on the map as a small yellow monument.
2) When buying or selling items at the merchants you can right click the items to guy/sell the max possible.
3) When you hover the mouse over your current/target gold (can be seen on the Trade Tab in your Bag) you will see that you have a limit that you can make in profit. for the first trade run your target is 15000 but your limit is 18000. Second run it's 20000 target and 24000 limit, and so on.
4) Always try and sell the items so that you reach the limit, as your reward in Soulcoins and Reputation is directly linked to your profit. (Sometimes that will mean selling 1 stack of items and then buying 1 stack, selling the next stack, and buying one stack again, until bag is filled with 4 stacks of new items)
5) Mercury Reputation can be used to trade in Mercury Coupons for 1g each (uses 100 Merc Rep)
6) Mercury Coupons can be earned by doing Midas Touch (Random Reward) or by buying them from the Auction house or other players. Keep in mind that you only get 1g per coupon so never pay more than 80s for one as the profit gets too low.
7) Using the Merchants Caravans to travel to different zones is not suggested as trading items between zones are usually not profitable. You are welcome to explore the possiblities and add to this guide if you do so.

The Trade Run:
1) Start off by speaking to Christopher in Freedom Harbor to start your trade run.
2) Right in front of him you will find Isha from who you need to buy Wheat Bread.
3) Next, you need to run to the South of the town and sell the Wheat Bread to Sola Kim. He is near the Valley of Whispers. Buy Cloak from him.
4) Your next destination is Loke in Ironclaw Wood in the West of Kalaires Plain. Sell all the Cloak to him and buy Agaric Mushrooms.
5) Next you go to Aphca in Fossicker's Plain just North of last Merchant. Sell the mushrooms and buy Bear Liver.
6) After that, you go to Milia near Windcry Farm in the North of Kalaires Plain. Sell the Bear Liver and buy Wheat Straw.
7) Your final destination is Isha in Freedom Harbor where you started. Sell the Wheat Straw to her.

Finally:
1) If you have reached your limit by this point, speak to Christopher (Click Business Estimation then Settle Accounts) to end the Trade Run.

2) If you haven't reached your limit yet, do step 2 to 7 again until you reach the limit.
Take note that once you are over the Target you can't buy any new items, so sell wisely as described in the important notes above.

3) The items that I suggested above are the ones that I know sell for the highest price at each merchant that you go to next. So buying the cheapest items isn't always the best choice, unless you know who you will sell them to.

4) When you reach a point where you bought all 120 of a certain item and have gold left, you can then buy the next item available and carry it with you until you get a good selling price for it. Usually it will be the second merchant you get to since buying that item.

Thank you for taking the time to read this guide, I hope it helped to make the Trade Run a little bit easier for you.

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Base trade runs are basically similar and can be done after lv40. Be advised that NPC's outside the bases charge a flat tax rate of 10%, so once you get to a base enter the base with the lowest entrance fee (preferably 0 gold) and lowest tax rate to get te best value for money. Ofcourse you start at our base at the Trading Manager instead of at Christoper, but the path/items are similar.

Once you ave obtained lv50 and (hopefully) merchant lv2, more items become available at our base, as well as you being able to pick up the skill to recieve a extra trade run.



short berry juice run

Once you can use the berry juice at our base the optimum run is now a lot shorter. Buying Berry Juice from our base aim straight north to the windcry farm base stone. At that point sell berry juice and buy either Rum or Wheat. Sell the Rum/wheat to lila in Freedom Harbor and buy linen or parchment to sell at our base. This run is fastest on a 150% mount that can swim, however, if you set a waypoint on your map just by the bridge outside freedom harbor (by the ogre grocer guy) it is possible to do quite quickly on a basic ram mount.


Very short shell run

At the same time the berry juice opens up for you, so does the new item we recieved from upgrading the trading post last month. Glyph Inscribed Shells vary extensivly in price during the day, so advice is use on first runs if price is UNDER 200, and use only on later runs (run 3 & 4 for example) when price is above 200 but below around 275.

This item can be sold at profit in Freedom Harbor at Lila. Once you have sold them there, pick up linen/parchment to sell in our base. This run can be exceedingly fast especially on a mount that can swim, however using the waypoint method outlined in short berry run it can still be swifter on a standard mount than on foot.