Trading
Trading is the merchant's skill — but it never trains through your own buying and selling (that would reward two accounts passing goods back and forth). It trains two ways: study courses at a Merchant's Guild, and Trade Contracts — real commissions that move real goods across the realm. Ranking up bends NPC shop prices in your favour and widens your reach on the auction house.
Study courses
Each course is a timed session at a Merchant's Guild that debits gold — tuition, destroyed — and always succeeds. Higher courses are studied at higher guilds. Study benefits from Yield like any processing action: a lucky session invests a second tuition fee for double the experience (skipped if your wallet can't cover it).
Trade Contracts
The Merchant's Guild posts commissions: source the goods it asks for — gather them, craft them, buy them, trade for them — carry them to the named town's Guild, and hand them in for Trading XP and gold. The board is available at the guild's towns: Wyckmouth, Mistval, Sedgeholm. It always shows 4 different commissions, and you can have one accepted contract at a time. Deliveries run to a town other than where you took the contract, and the reach grows with your Trading: early commissions deliver within Aldermoor (its guild counters take deliveries even where there's no board), while higher-level commissions send you on long cross-region hauls.
The gold reward is 60% of the goods' base value — more than a shop pays for them, but less than a shop charges, so buying the goods just to deliver them is always a loss. The profit is in sourcing them yourself; the XP is the real draw. Deliveries can be made in parts, and the reward pays out when the full quantity is in. Your lifetime completions are counted on your profile.
Don't like the board? You may decline (reroll) up to 2 commissions per day — abandoning an accepted contract counts too — and the allowance refreshes at midnight Eastern, the game's daily clock.
Every completed contract also pays Guild Seals — 1 for the starter band, up to 5 for the longest hauls. Spend them at the Guild Shop (from the Trade Contracts panel while at a guild town): a fifth board slot, extra daily declines, and guild titles. Seals can't be traded, and completions from before the Seals ledger opened were paid out retroactively, one per delivery.
| Trading | Goods the guild asks for | XP per contract |
|---|---|---|
| 1–15 | Bronze Bar, Cooked Shrimp, Plank, Leather, Cooked Trout, Bowstring, Cloth | 110–135 |
| 15–30 | Iron Bar, Cooked Salmon, Oak Plank, Hard Leather, Iron Arrow, Fine Cloth, Cooked Gar | 390–430 |
| 30–45 | Steel Bar, Birch Plank, Ash Plank, Steel Arrow, Cooked Eel, Greater Mana Potion, Fine Bowstring | 880–950 |
| 45+ | Sable Bar, Willow Plank, Blackthorn Plank, Sable Arrow, Shroud Cloth, Silk Bowstring | 1700–1850 |
What Trading buys
- Better shop prices — every level nudges NPC buy and sell prices 0.2% of the way toward fair value, capped at 15% — a shop will never pay you more than it charges.
- More auction listings — 1 concurrent listing to start, plus one at Trading 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 — up to 6 at once.
- A lighter listing fee — the auction house takes 5% of every sale; each Trading level shaves 0.06% off, down to a 2% floor.