Silkroad Online Forums

I always prefer to listen to everyone and then draw my own conclusions. I have heard that it is a lot better to start trading well into 20's (25-29). While that might be true (will see when I get there), it is totally possible to trade at 20.

Take this as you will, this is experience after 6 out of 6 successful trades at level 20.

Must have things:
0) ONLY ONE STAR TRADES
1) Full rage bar - at 20 you will be able to get yourself out of at least one bad predicament using rage. Do not dare use it on Tigers and Chukji or anything of that type. Your rage bar is really to fight Gun(something) and Earth Ghost. Note: there is a reason I put both of those in single form!!! You will only want to fight them if you happened to get them on you at the same time as Ice Thief.
2) HORSE (yes you might get lucky on the camel, but you might not) HP pots for animals (used 35 in 6 trips)
3) Do not get off your horse once you are on the other side unless you want to level on Chukjis (but you can do it aside from trading)
4) You should only be on the road to cross ocean and bridges.
5) You can hold up to 59 of the 209 gold per item peaces without getting to 2 stars
6) While on the tougher side of the street, go toward people (you can see them on minimap). Edit: This is because chances are it is cleaner around them since they are probably hunting. If you are drugging more then 2 mos on your tail, keep going as straight as possible since that is the fastest way.
7) Use the Minimap to tunnel - draw a visual tunnel of where there are no mops and follow that road
8) It is mentioned a little lower, and I fully support it and use it, just forgot to add it. When you see other traders, chances are, they are higher level then you, especially since you are level 20, they will more likely then not spawn higher level Thieves, stay the hell away from them as you have enough of your own problems.

Tip: From western fairy, bear right for a bit then take sharp left into the mountains slowly baring towards the road from Eastern Fairy.

Tip 2: If you see you are going to die (ex: 2 earth ghosts and ice thief) use rage to get away instead of fighting, Pot your horse, if it dies double back and summon a new one.

Good luck, hopefully you will find it useful.

The reason I couldn't wait to mid 20's is I only play a couple hours a day, after i get to work and wife is asleep and before i get my 4 hours of sleep before work, while i still want to expirience the whole game.

This may be nice for you, but I've been killed numerous times by traders dropping their NPC theives on me. I find this type of behaviour rather rude. If you can't handle your NPCs don't do the trade run.

Same again on this and seeing as your on the lower side, your thieves will most likly kill the lower leveled players.

These are one star trades, if you are hunting on the tougher side of the street and can't handle those, you are screwed anyway, so chill.



Those thiefs are about as tough as Bandits, the reason not to get off the horse is so you don't have to wait 20 second to get back on. In 20 seconds you are already in Devil Bug area where any of the normal hunters will have NO problem with lvl 15 or so Thiefs.

One thing to add: hire hunter to protect you. That way trip goes faster since you can stay whole time on your horse while hunter kills thieves/other mobs. It's always good to pay to hunter for this service. We've done in guild some trips this way, 2-4 traders with 1-star load + 1 higher level hunter.

Hunting devil bugs at level 20 and chajkis can lower your health quite a bit, you dont need a cold thief or someone else's aggro killing you.

Before you tell me to chill make sure you consider all the facts.

I am 20 and i have hunted them just fine, while taking my horse through them with thieves spawning.

Once again you are thinking about the lvl 23-26 thives (or whatever are the ones that appear light red to me, yes those do pack a punch but the once that are behind me, if i don't kill them are either white to me or green. They attack for next to nothing in dmg.

you aren't listening. If I am doing my thing and killing monsters I get swarmed. I'm fighting for my life and along comes sharparrow on his horse bringing 1-3 monsters he's aggroed. That alone is bad enough, then a thief may spawn. Boom I'm dead, or just really pissed at you.

It really doesn't matter if you can kill them, its wether or not the other player can handle it and frankly you just don't know if they can.

For example, last night I was killing scorpions. I had a champ on me, then another spawned. A trader came by and dropped 2 more and a giant on me. No way in hell could I handle that. I almost died (50 health and posioned and potting like mad). I had to run and barely survived. It can be the same for earth ghosts, chajikis or devil bugs. You simply don't know what others can handle.

adjusted, didn't think about drugging that many mops. I normally drug 1 is any, and the reason for people is not so they can kill them but because their tends to be less mops around them. Normally a nice round circle of Clean on the map.

Should probably be moved/have been posted in Guides section.

agreed lvl 20 possible trading..
when at the donwhang area after teleport i prefer walking rather than sitting on the horse..so i can see whats ahead of me and can decide what to do...im a scardy cat.. i will walk until im near the earth ghost are..then i sit on horse..just keep walking to the gate and potting..

here another tip u may add(i think it works for me)
when see other traders...dont go directly to them..we dont wanna get their spawn npc to suddenly spawn near our horse and hit it..then we have more potting..and when see a thief..(what i will do) log out...lolz...after 10 sec log in.. they gone..

nice guide, will be moved and stickied :)

Interesting guide.
Thanks so much for it.

I did about 15 successful trades at lvl 20, including one lucky 2-star one (lost just one, and that was to an NPC thief spawned from a high-lvl thief transport), making enough money to start my guild, and I did not follow that guide, and I doubt I would recommend it.

1. I used a camel - if a high lvl thief wants to jack your 1-star trade, he's gonna do it even if you have a horse, it just might take a little longer for him to do it. If he wants to, he can just attract the attention of a bunch of Earth Ghosts or Demon Horses and lead them directly to you = instant death and free loot for the thief. The camel has a lot more HP than the horse, so you won't have to use a gazillion pots when it's attacked by a number of Ghost Soldiers and NPC thieves.

2. I never, ever sat on the horse or camel. Why should you? It's much easier avoiding aggresive monsters if you run ahead (but not too far). When you come to the Earth Ghosts, make sure your camel has caught up with you, then just run for the Donwhang gate.

3. I never, ever used the western ferry. The easiest route is to take the eastern ferry and just follow the road north and through the Hyungho ghost territory. Devil bugs are easy to dodge, and you can run away from the Ghost Soldiers if they get too aggressive. Anyway, the road is pretty safe, as long as you look out for stray Demon Horses and Earth Ghosts.

4. I stayed on the road all the time. Again, staying off the road may be good for avoiding player thieves, or if you're a high level player doing a multi-star run, but as long as you're doing 1-star runs the risk of being jacked is insignificant. You run a much greater risk of dying because you're attacked by monsters, especially on the Donwhang side, where a single Earth Ghost easily kills a lvl 20 pure INT, and even a pure STR will have a hard time killing it, leaving a lot of time for NPC thieves to kill your transport. The trick is to keep moving.

5. When you get close to the ferry, just ignore everything and run. When you teleport your transport goes with you, even if it's 100 meters behind you.

hello, i'm a noob, and 20 seconds ago i just turned lvl 20, and i wanna try it out, a few questions, what is the reward for completing these hmm job ' quests' ? hehe and also, when you say log off, do you mean by player thief? hehe and also does anyone know where i can get a map for the game? like where all the npcs are and all, cos it's really reallyconfusing to find where npcs for quest are when lvl up appears ( they neer open again when you close it _) thanks in advance

http://www.silkroadforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=230

For NPC placements.

http://www.silkroadforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=197

For monster placements and general layout of the areas.

Arigato

ok i confirmed it = i just did 2 trades, and i have to say it was hard as hell, hmmm earth ghost and those horse = owns, if you have more then one on you your pretty much dead, unless you haev millions of food to spam whcih i didn't, takes liek full 30 seconds to take down one earth ghost for me, i was lucky didn't get mobbed =) but i'll never ever trade again till like lvl 25+ hmmm thanks for guide btw = )

well, at level 20 me and Solyn would do trades a bit. she'd ride the camel, i'd fight mobs and NPC's. occasionally it would get to be a bit much for me(particularly in the earth ghost area), and she would hop off to fight also. it didn't really seem too hard to me, just get someone to go along to help with the mobs and you'll be fine.

well if you have the whole town behind you, of course you can handle it, but i think doing anything is about solo work, you can't call a successful trade if you had some friend with leet gears and all to help out, and i seriously do not believe any normal lvl 20 can find earth ghost not hard at all.

i'm not sure what you meant by that. it was me and my wife, both level 20. yea, the earth ghosts weren't exactly like killing a chakji, but i was never in danger of dying. THAT'S my definition of 'not that hard'.

so i wouldn't exactly call it the whole town behind me.... and no leet gears either. i didn't bother with really good gear at that time.... too often i had to buy new stuff, so was low on money.

and most stuff in MMO's are geared towards non-solo, it's more fun AND easier. i just get bored playing by myself, personally.

i'll be sure to try this using a combo of this guide and bonzais

Edit: i tried it and made it! the horse just helped keep the time down so it was good i'll use the horses i bought then try camels it worked great and i think i made made a 16k profit.

im running out of gold and i need more, what are the payoffs for trading and thiefing? as in how much money would u make going from donwhang to jangan on 1*2*3*4* and 5* runs? also how much money would you make from theifin from these trades? not 1 star of course

Nice guide, but I would have to say that you should be above 20 to start donig trade runs. I say this because of the large agro radius of the Earth Ghosts, you may get in more than 1 predictament. Also, I would say to carry at least 60+ camel pots. If you are near Donwhang and you have 3 earth ghosts and an ice thief or two on you then your pretty screwed. Once I used over 75+ camel pots xD.

I used the guide once or twice, quite useful for tips and hints but you must use your own judgement when begining as a trader. Personally lvl 26 is when you can safely start runs without too much risk from earth ghosts in small numbers, but lvl 30 would be best as you'll easily defeat those noob theifs who 1-star pop merchants.

Note see any theif on the road, like a high level merchant run for it. For the tricky people will get on a horse transport and run in front of you to spawn their high level theifs and overwhelm you for your gear.

Most low-level runs can also go through the eastern ferry but do so at your own risk. The fact is that all 1-star popping theifs hunt on the jangon side of this ferry before the long hill approach so use the western ferry whenever possible and you can always meet the eastern ferry on the Donwhang side by walking the road to it ( not that deadly really).

i can iven get from downhang to ferry to muth thiefs and player thiefs :s i need hunters if ur intersted for a trade run one time pm me

Hi,

maybe some additions provided from a thief? OK, here we go:

1.) If you ever meet me, don't be afraid! I don't wanna jack you, I'm thief, no robber. When you're dead, call for rez, and I'll rez you, if no nasty hunter is chasing me ... If you're in danger, cry "help" - I'll do, if I can. If you abandon your cargo - it's mine ;-))

2.) Know your way, especially with L20. Run it some times, be sure you can survive there. Choose a route where there are not this much poppers - these are the danger, if you made it across earth ghost country!

3.) Start in Donwhang, so the most difficult part is at the beginning. If things are too bad, you might succeed reaching DW again and start another try. Imagine having made all this way from Jangan, then dying in sight of DW city walls overwhelmed by a swarm of earth ghosts ...

4.) Accept help, and ask for it! Even if it is not a hunter, a slightly higher Lvl ppl can provide so much help! A lot of ppl will do their best if you cry for help. If you see someone helping you, ask if they want to escort - escorting is very much fun and you might get yourself a valuable help. Even at Donwhang exit there may be some ppl bored from grinding ready to escort you for free - but don't forget to provide at least a "thx" after save arrival ...

5.) Doing some escorting yourself before your first trade will give you insight in the ways things are going - not bad an idea ... And, as mentioned, escorting is very much fun! And it gives weapon elixiers! ^^

6.) If you run into 1Star poppers, you haven't read carefully enough what I've written - doesn't matter. Get on your transport (to not get it stuck), have your pills ready. Take road to Jangan, shortest way, stay on road and RUN!! Well, running on a camel is relative, I know ;-)) But stay on transport, pill like mad and cry for help! Don't ever stop, RUN!! And cry for help! Is not this much heroic, I know. But other ppl can provide very much help in such a situation - anyone with some grasswalk lvl & garment can distract a high lvl NPC thief without getting hurt, and there may be high lvl's around? I've escorted some 1Stars to security even with white horse thieves trying to pop 'em, and I'm ways below 30 ;-)) But this needs a smart & thinking trader.

So good luck and have fun!

PS: There was this [censored] that I met in a large horde of earth ghosts. I helped killing them, rezzed her, just to get surrounded by 10 (! doublespawn) blue to grey NPC thieves, at least one cold blade champion. What a battle - midst in earth ghost country. After I rezzed her again I learned that this was her first trade, and she had loaded a nice 5Star. Oooops!

If I could assist? Well, she agreed to do it my way, and we went through. She died some more times in between as we had another doublespawn, but we succeeded. And very near Jangans most remote gate there was this much pollution spoiling our beloved environment - after having her passing the gate I was able to remove a whooping 5Star (my first!) pile of waste and defending it in water ghost country. And I got 1 weapon, 1 shield and 2 accessory elixiers in this run ;-))

Moral of tale: Be smart, and get yourself some help! Be nice, and get rich!

I can help low lvl traders with there trade (not in a suit cuz i'll get owned) but I can kill every mob and spawned thieves (i know, thieves are mobs but still^^). Sometimes I can even help you to get rid of a popper if there's lvl like <40. Just call me one time (1 thing you have to be on Xian^^)

Well, my first sucess trade. What happens if u have more than 2 stars?