Silkroad Online Forums

It's my current project, gonna take me some time tho cos i need to do many 1* trade runs with no traders in my party... I need to know how the maximum profit/exp can be achieved...
So well, if there are any experienced traders here please give me some input on the Exp/Gold Profit gained:

1-Whether there are traders with you in the party or not.
2-Having different types of goods.
3-Skipping a city and selling in the other.
4-Not skipping a city (re-buying goods).
5-Different cities?

thanks for any help

Mix items without skipping cities dw-const.

you got any data or proof? wat about being in a party with other traders?

The best way is con-sam, you make the most money in a certain amount of time.

China cities give half the amount that euro cities give.
Con - Hotan gives lets just say, 1.5X.
Con-Sam gives 1X. You can do 2 con-sam's in the time of 1 con-hotan. So thats 2X.
Con-DW gives you somewhere between 2X and 3X. (Don't remember)
Con-Jangan gives 3-4X.

That's all with skipping cities.

Now if you didn't skip cities it'd be this.

Con-sam = 1X.
Sam-HT = .5X
HT-DW = .5X
DW- JG- .5X

Depending on how far you want to go, you just add it up.

Extra traders does increase the profit gained for both the hunters and traders, I don't know the exact details on that though.

Different goods do give you a little bit more. I'd have to ask someone which ones it is for con and sam (I think you don't do the 3rd one for each, but I'm not sure, lemme find out). Ht, dw and jg all suck so don't know those ones.

The more hunters you have the less profit everyone gets, the more traders, the more profit everyone gets.

My union had 3 lvl 7 traders on babel, we tried everything. =)

All this is based on 5*'s though. The only ones that matter anyways.

I need that info too... and I doubt we can sell in a party full of traders since we usually have like 7 hunters.. it's not even fair for them...

thanks

Yeah, its not fair for the hunters if they are in a seperate party, they wouldn't get any exp. Best for both is 4 hunters 4 traders.

And for const and sam you buy 1st, 2nd, and 3rd items. Don't buy the 4th item for either city. It doesn't give as much. You buy some of each of the first 3.

from sam and con, buy the first three goods, mix them evenly (i don't know for chinese cities, sorry - chinese city trade routes were always more saturated with thieves in my experience). as you sell, the profit % goes down for each stack (max from sam->con or con->sam starts at 313%). if you buy all of one type of goods, this will go down a lot (into the mid-lower 200%ish), especially with a full 5*. if you mix them, then the first type of goods will start at 313%, go down to like 290%, then you'll start selling the next type of goods which starts at 313%, thus maxed profit.

the trader/hunter ratio while selling is EXTREMELY important (you can mix the parties however you want during the trade itself). the more traders that there are, the better the exp/money for both traders AND hunters. this is why the 7 hunters/rotate-1-trader idea sucks. it completely minimizes possible exp and money for everybody. the best thing to do is get an accurate idea of how much each of the traders are carrying and split that between, say, two parties.
EXAMPLE: you have 7 hunters, 5 traders. while selling, put 4 hunters and 3 selling traders in party #1. also include one more trader but make sure they don't sell their goods. so this party has a 1-to-1 hunter/trader ratio. not the best, but it's even. this party's hunters will make approx. 1.5 mil apiece (and that's not including your weekly reward). the selling traders will make approx. 3 mil or so (depends on their level and their type of transport).
then in party #2, have the other 3 hunters and the other 2 selling traders. now fill all the rest of the party spots with traders. this will make the hunter/trader balance uneven (compared to party #1), but keep in mind that party #1 had another full load of goods more than party #2. increasing the trader/hunter ratio makes the two parties almost even.
trust me, this is a lot better than the 7-hunters/rotate-a-trader method.

yes, selling in one city versus another matters, but not like you might think it does. if you start in constantinople, you will make more money in less time going to samarkand and back than you will going to hotan. yes, the selling profit % is higher in hotan, but there are many many other things to consider.
-TIME: time is essential on a trade run. the faster you can get a trade run completed, the more money you can make because you can do another one before people get tired/have to go to bed/etc.
-POTS: the longer the trade run is, the more recovery kits the traders use. this cuts down on their profit.
-VISIBILITY: the longer the trade run, the more likely you are to get thieved. the longer you are on the road, the more likely you are to be seen. i know that many of the hunters here prefer to have some action against player thieves, but remember that every time a trader loses their transport, you lose valuable time and resources and open yourselves up to more thieving. the moment a transport goes down, you have lost the initiative.

finally, the best method of transportation is, obviously, fortress animals. if you don't have those, try to use silk transports. they go faster than a horse, carry about as much as a camel/ox, and have a ton more hp. trading with silk transports makes life easy (not trying to advertise for JM or anything, it's just true).

Im gonna try this. I almost teared up at realizing there is finally someone who knows his information correctly. Im hunter though, but my best friend is trader. I'll get some union mates and try it out.

Keen and akiller are probably your best informants for this. They were the top hunters on babel and their guild had the only level 7 trader for a couple of months before anyone got close to catch up.

Keen, I wanna ask you about something... i don't get it why i should only fill my goods from the first 3 types only???

another question, your saying if i buy 1 start from each for example and then i start selling, i'll start selling at 313% and it will keep going down till it reaches 290%, well the question is, wot if i buy 1 stack of that good, another stack of a different one, and so on, instead of filling 1 star of each and completing it, meaning, wot if i fill my animal with different stacks manually, so that each stack is followed by a different type, would that reset the percentage and keep me selling at 313%??? I hope that gives any sense lol...


well thanks a bunch for the info

The last one will sell for less and give less exp. It's weird but it's true.

I'd assume it would work that way. Usually the trader would buy 1* of the first type, then 1* of the 2nd type, 1* 3rd type, 1* first, and another 1* of 2nd, kinda thing. But if you wanted to do it that way, I'm sure it would work.

im gonna test it out next time...

as for the first three goods, i can only say that for SURE about con and sam. i don't have any information about the other three towns. for some reason, the fourth item in both towns sells for less (not always, but often enough that it's best to avoid it). if you want, you can fill up all but like one or two slots with the first three goods, then buy a couple stacks of the last one just to check.

as for the specific way to buy the goods, i don't think i was clear enough. don't buy 1* of each of the goods. you are correct: buying manually is the way to go. best way is to know how many slots you have to fill (or approximately how many slots), and fill 1/3 with each of the three types of goods. so, fill your transport 1/3 with the first item, then 1/3 with the second item, then the final 1/3 with the third item. so if your transport has 45 slots, buy 15 stacks of each of the goods.
this is what will happen while selling: i'm going to assume that you have the goods in order (for example, 15 stacks of item #1, then 15 stacks of item #2, then 15 stacks of item #3 - not real numbers! just for the sake of illustration). you begin selling, and your first 5 stacks of item #1 will all sell at 313% of what you bought them for (max profit). your next 5 stacks will sell for slightly less. the next five stacks will sell for slightly less than that, etc.
then, when you've sold all of item #1, it will switch to selling item #2. the first 5 stacks of item #2 will sell for 313%, the next five for slightly less, etc etc.
****again, please note that the number of stacks are completely made up, that all depends on your character level and your transport and the difficulty of the trade.*****

so as you can see, if you were to buy a full load of all of item #1, you would miss out on possible money because the sell back % keeps going down.

last but not least, i may be fairly experienced with this, but i am in no way perfect, so if you find something new/different than what i said, post it here- i'd love to learn.

Here here! What keenypops said.

some ppl say that other traders (even outside your own parties), when buying before you from a certain type of goods, when you buy from that type it will sell less... maybe that's why the 4th type always sell lower because most ppl tend to buy a full transport of the 4th type only?

i have no idea if that makes a difference or not .... if it does, then joymax is way smarter than i thought. if that's the way it is, then you won't really know which type of goods are best until you sell.
so, i guess in the end, it all boils down to the fact that i can only speak for what i've experienced, and i can't really say for anything beyond that. on babel, con->sam or sam->con runs, buying the first three was best. maybe venus is different? lol i don't know.

well thank you for the help Keeny... I need to test out all that -.- gonna take me some time I guess :S

We need to try a trade like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvK6csS5J5Y

Wow man, that's like in The Matrix movie, the scene with Agents Smiths vs Neo.

Holy jesus bawls. Thats more epic then redd's penis. =O

They need about 15 lvl 90 wiz hunters, lawl. XD

Nice!

That it is so much more complicated than escorting loots to thief town, when u sell goods @ the dealer in thief town, u get about 5.9k exp per loot (40 items each), if u have an extra thief in ur PT u get 2.9k exp each, if u have anymore than this, u get a fixed exp which is 2.3k exp each. (lvl 55 - thief lvl 3)

So, I automatically assumed that same happens in a trading PT, the more the traders and hunters, the less the exp. Which turned out to be so wrong. Each trader in the trading PT adds about 2k to the total exp distributed to each member, I think.
maybe that's the reason u never find any thief past lvl 4 on Venus, while hunters and traders lvl 6 & 7 r available.

that's why all thieves are inherently nubs. all they do is run around like chickens with their heads cut off, waiting to ruin some poor trader's day.
thieves = phail. the reason there aren't thieves past level 4 on venus is because they phail. phail phail phail.

good to see that somebody has their info nailed down about thieving exp though ...

The reason you don't see thieves past level 4 is because Midnight/BHA are the only people that do trade runs with enough loot to get you even close to enough exp to get past 3. Honestly, who the hell is going to be able to steal a decent amount of loot from them. Trust me, thieving is basically running trails and waiting near trader shops and only finding 1*s, occasionally a 2 or 3*.

i've always seen the jobbing system as a total failure... if the traders think they're in danger, they won't get out of city.. if the thieves think they're in danger, they won't get out of the city...