Talk:Beginner Guide Part VI: Early levels efficiency strategy/@comment-97.93.230.234-20120817004810

Alternate Strategy:

Another way to do this is to focus on recipee production. As long as you "Gimp" your own crafters and not jump up to the city gates too soon, your will be able to 'out produce' your customers, allowing for some surprisingly efficient and profitable leveling.

When you level up, focus on getting fame to 5, followed by leadership to 5 before moving up to the city gates. were going to be mass producting here.

Hire an Alchemist - Train to Level 5 as soon as possible, leave them here. Focus on potion production but allways keep at least 1 potion of every other type you can produce.

Hire a Carpenter - Train to level 5 asap, produce your cheapie stuff and start having your Alchemist research everything they can research while the carpenter keeps the shop running. Swap them out and research his materials next.

Bump them both to level 10 - repeat researching pass overs untill everything is researched.

Do this again up to level 15 - AT LEVEL 15 Stop leveling these guys.

With the Carpenter, it should be really easy to finish your first couple quests and get into a guild to have your shop produced. More importantly, you have access to produce Lucky charms. These little babies are super cheap to produce and can be suggestive sold to every character class in the game. Try to get your stocks up to 3 items of everything you can produce, and don't make any "New" merchandice untill one of your old stocks have sold.

This is going to allow you to run a highly efficient shop. Don't worry about haggling, your goal is to be able to sell anything a customer asks for without having to haggle or suggest. Mass volume here.

Once up into the city gates, focus on getting your character build up to 10 fame, 5 merchantile, and 5 leadership, Use your spare points accordingly, then I would recomend splitting your points from this point into merchantile and leadership. Mass production here...

Grab your next merchant - Tailor. Don't worry about making anything with her, just start researching all her stuff and stop leveling her at level 15. Let your Carpenter and Alchemist keep your shop running and building a modest stock pile to get through the dual research project between your tailor and the other two.

Once thats done, stock pile loot again and grab your smithy. Again, forced level cap of 15. The shear number of research project this smith is capable of is insane, so just have your shop keepers keep things going and settle in the for the long haul.

Don't Bother hiring a Thug. He will break your profit margins. wait till you get to the next area.

Stay at the city gates untill you have purchased and upgraded all the first level gear, and researched all those friggin smithy recipiees. Trust me, you will have time for both if your workin on both. Do the quests you can as you can in between buttering up your guildies to work on your projects.

Don't make extra gear. Stop producing anything if all of your stores at 5. Youll save on wasted crafting materials, and your going to be able to pretty much sell any adventurer anything they ask for. No haggling needed, allways in profit because you sold to EVERY customer.

Now, you've done sooo much research your characters all have LOTS of XP to blow. When you level up your characters do it in multiples of 5 then stop leveling them untill you have everythign researched. This will keep your employment costs down. Only level them up just high enough to have access to the gear the customers are requesting.

With points in leadership, you will be able to mass produce gear at appropriate levels with minimal wage costs. With the shop upgrades and a few points in fame you'll have more customers than you can shake a stick at.

Safe, effective, and highly profitable once your up in running. Sell exactly what the customer wants, have plenty of stock, and never overspend on wasted materials.

^.^

Just a theory.