Okay, these thoughts and questions have been tossing in my head the past few days. While I've always been interested in the economics of Elanthia (especially those for gems), I realized the other day that I don't actually know how it works.
When I played a trader, I was always told...get more charisma, get more trading for good prices. But I was never told (or did my own research) to find out how these things directly affected prices.
So, here are my thoughts that I have concocted to so far. Correct me where I am wrong.
Assumption 1: There are at least two types of items in game.
A. Range priced items such as gemstones (IE When a small rock crystal pops up in the treasure system it has a random price range between X-Y.)
B. Fixed priced items such as a weapon or other object you might buy at a store or merchant, so forth. (This is excluding haggling, charisma, trading, all that stuff. The item itself has a fixed price.)
Assumption 2: A character's appraisal has no effect on how much they sell it for, only how much they appraise it for.
Assumption 3: Charisma affects how much a merchant likes or dislikes you. So, higher charisma means bartering further down when buying, and bartering up when selling.
Assumption 4: The Trading skill is like a "bonus" on top of the general buying/selling mechanics, that goes hand in hand with charisma. However they are two separate entities. Thus, the reason traders get better prices (besides training there charisma high) is they have an additional bonus for price based on the trading skill.
Assumption 5: Both charisma and trading bonus have caps. (Still a bit fuzzy on that one.)
Okay, so there you have it. If I'm wrong about something, please tell me. I'm intensely interesting in the economical mechanics.
--Vyraka--
Gorbesh Checks and Balances Department
